Posts by WornOutTire

1) Message boards : News : Visualization/Screensaver Work (Message 36944) Posted 4 Mar 2010 by WornOutTire Post: The first thing I have to say is "THANK-YOU" for the screen-saver work!! I don't understand how the project actually works so I can't contribute much on to how to show the progress. Is there a "Milkyway@Home for Dummys" primer? I am guessing (WAG) position refinement occurs by taking views from different positions of earth's orbit and measuring the miniscule shift of closer stars against more distant stars? Then modeling the expected movement within the galaxy and comparing to subsequent observations? I think shifting the .scr from the galaxy big picture to the wedge should happen slowly and only once, discarding the processing needed to "semi-render" the full galaxy. And since the wedge itself still has too many stars to render, zoom in to 200 - 300 of the closest neighbor stars of the current target and blink the target(s) being refined, maybe showing an alternate blink of the previously computed position if an adjustment is made. My suggestions are obviously out of ignorance, so please excuse my lame opinions. p.s. As much as I love SciFi and Star Trek, please don't cheapen the project by imatating the LCARS. Again, IMHO.
2) Message boards : News : Increased WU Deadline (Message 35951) Posted 23 Jan 2010 by WornOutTire Post: Thank you for extending the deadline. I also was getting 3 days instead of 5. Since I actually have to do WORK on it as well, this will fit in better with my priorities. The 5 days would have been fine probably. I wonder why I had 3. Anyway, it is not like the stars are going to move much in the meantime.
3) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : Screensaver (Message 34146) Posted 3 Dec 2009 by WornOutTire Post: Shame. Sometimes if you want to get the kids to play you have to offer them some candy. Running a screensaver is like taking candy from a baby - it uses valuble CPU cycles which reduces the amount of data processed and therefore, means it will take longer for the project to reach its goal. But if you catch 20x more "kids"? 20x more computers running ½ effeciency is still more processing. Even good science needs marketing to gather funding and other support. Right now you are just getting the "nerds" who want to push their processors hard instead of more mainstream office computers. Want to compare the demographic numbers? People in my office run SETI just because the ScrSav is "cool". Not because they care about SETI.