SETI@home Needs your Help - email from Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

SETI@home and SETI BETA - project now closed, maybe for good :-(
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UBT - Timbo
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SETI@home Needs your Help - email from Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Anyone else get this:

(quote)
SETI@home needs your help. But before we tell you why - and how you can help -
Dan and I would like to thank you for your role in the SETI@home success story.

We would first like to thank you for your participation in SETI@home
(http://setiathome.berkeley.edu). During the first SETI@home project you
personally assisted us by searching for extraterrestrial signals in 10073 data
chunks and providing 8.519 years of computing time. We want you to
know we appreciate your efforts and the efforts of the other 5.4 million
volunteers who have donated over 2.4 million years of processing time.
When we started, people thought our projection of 100,000 users to be
overly optimistic! You helped us prove that public participation in
scientific computing could work. You also helped us to see that this type
of community effort deserved to be more common. That's why we developed the
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing or BOINC. BOINC has the benefit of
allowing our volunteers the option of sharing their processing power with other
worthy projects in addition to SETI@home. These projects range from looking for
gravitational waves to searching for cures to diseases.

But all these successes are just a beginning. As you are aware, SETI@home
has successfully transitioned to operating under BOINC. Because of this,
new searches are on the horizon for SETI@home. We are releasing a new
version of our processing software that increases the sensitivity of our
search by a factor of two or more. We are building and installing a new
data recorder at Arecibo. This data recorder operates in conjunction with
a newly installed receiver that has the capability to observe seven places
on the sky simultaneously. It also increases our sensitivity by another
factor of five. These increases in sensitivity mean that SETI@home will
have capability of detecting signals that are three times more distant
than we could before. The region of space we can search will expand by a
factor of thirty. That's thirty times the chance that your computer will
detect that faint signal from another star.

This increase in capability isn't without cost. Following the "dot com"
bust, the commercial support that kept SETI@home running has largely
disappeared. Because of this loss of support, we can no longer count on
matching funds from the University of California. We are rapidly
approaching the end of what funds we do have. We we will need to raise
about $750,000 to pay for these new capabilities and to keep SETI@home
operating for the next year. Without this support SETI@home may be forced
to shut down (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_budget.php).

We hope that you will consider making a donation to SETI@home
(http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php).
You can make a secure
donation by credit card by clicking this link. Instructions for donation
by check or money order are there as well. Unless you specify otherwise,
your donation will be noted by a star icon next to your username on the
SETI@home pages and your username will appear on our list of donors. If
you do not wish to have this recognition you may indicate that as well.
Please be assured that regardless of whether or not you choose to have
your donation be anonymous, SETI@home will not share your address with
other organizations.

You can check on our fundraising progress by visiting our main site at
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

Thank You,

 Sir Arthur C. Clarke (Author and Futurist)
 Dan Werthimer (Chief Scientist, SETI@home)

For more information about how to donate:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php

(/quote)

OK PEOPLE.

We have 301 members in the UBT SETI Team.

And only 2 green stars !! (Respect: "Seti-Cruncher" Image and "UBT - Damon Birch" Image )

Please show how generous you are by making even a small donation and let's get some green stars on OUR team.

Suggestion: (edit) SETI suggests $25 is the minimum - about £15 - but you can actually donate as little as $10 - enter it into the box to the right on the donation page (which is basically a few "pints")

If every SETI cruncher on our team donates at least $10, then we raise $3,000+ (/edit), to the project. If you don't want to do it directly, then you can give me your credit card number (I have a Merchant Account to do cc transactions) and I'll do it on behalf of the group. BUT then you won't get a green star !!.


regards,

TimImage
Last edited by UBT - Timbo on Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:49 pm, edited 6 times in total.
UBT - Halifax-lad
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Post by UBT - Halifax-lad »

But they don't accept my card so I can't donate :!:

Oh well, would be so much easier for them if they opened a paypal account as anyone can pay to one of those
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Halifax--lad wrote:But they don't accept my card so I can't donate :!:
If you want, you can send me the dosh/or card details and I'll pay your bit with my donation.

Holds true for anyone else interested....!

(And I'll provide a scan of the PDQ till receipt to show what's been donated, if required).

regards,

Tim
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DONATIONS

Post by UBT - Timbo »

OK

So:

mikeejones1 has his star - WELL DONE.

I've now donated, so I'll be getting my star soon enough.

Anyone else....?

regards,

Thermistor
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Post by UBT - Halifax-lad »

I'm not on the principal that the University Campus doesn't seem to care about the project :!: and I also don't have a Credit Card.

Don't get me wrong the staff care loads, Administration don't though.

Eric from SETI@Home replied to a post I had made regarding this subject.

Basically I criticised this funding drive as it is limited to only a small proportion of users, due to only accepting Credit Cards, I mentioned PayPal.

He came back to say they had all these developed and ready to go sometime ago with a PayPal link and everything, but the University said NO :!:

So the poor guys & gals at SETI are penalised and may not get as much money as is possible

If they work around some way of doing it then i'm in
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Halifax--lad wrote:If they work around some way of doing it then i'm in

Hi David,

Here's a workaround (open to anyone)....!

1) You send me a postal order/cheque.

2) I'll do a donation on your behalf on my cc - I can put in your email address and username when the transaction is processed - so YOU WILL get a green star.....!

3) That's it.....!


Let me know if you're interested - this way, the project gets it's funds and the admins at the Uni are circumvented....!


regards,

The Mistress
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Post by UBT - Halifax-lad »

I didn't know it could be done that way around, when it gets to payday in 2 weeks time I will PM you
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Post by UBT - GysmoSan »

Dun 8)

Martin

PS Still waiting for mi nise shinny sta tho ... :(
Last edited by UBT - GysmoSan on Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Halifax--lad wrote:I didn't know it could be done that way around, when it gets to payday in 2 weeks time I will PM you
Hi David,

I'm pretty sure it's OK - when I did my donation earlier today there's a space to put the username in and your email address. Guess they match those up to your SETI BOINC account.

I received a confirmation email that they had made the deduction to my cc. And there's no "confidential" info on that email, so if I contribute on behalf of someone else, it's not a problem.


regards,

Tim
UBT - Timbo
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Re: DONATIONS

Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Timbo wrote:OK
mikeejones1 has his Image - WELL DONE.
I've now donated, so I've got my Image - so well done to me !


And we're up to 5 stars now:

Gregory Williams has got his Image - Good one, Gregory

Any more takers.....?

regards,

Tim
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - GysmoSan wrote:Dun 8) Martin PS Still waiting for mi nise shinny sta tho ... :(
WELL DONE Martin

The star takes a couple of hours to appear - depends on when they process the donation I guess. Might not appear until Monday, depending on admin workload though... :(


But just for good measure you can have this one on loan:

Image


regards,

Tim
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - GysmoSan wrote:PS Still waiting for mi nise shinny sta tho ... :(

Martin,

You've got your star now. Image

And so has "~ Daniel ~" Image


So we're now a 7 Image Team.



I'm sure some more must be "in the pipeline"....!


regards,

Tim
UBT - Mikee
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Post by UBT - Mikee »

Took me forever to find my star! Ain't that prity? Just checked out the Masters profile - ugh. Far too many ///////'s for my liking. Apostrophy///////s are so annoying anyway!
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UBT - Halifax-lad
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Post by UBT - Halifax-lad »

It does it on mine every time I amend the profile I just delete them and save it and all is fine on mine now.
Darren
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Post by Darren »

Bloody php that is.
It stores them as \'. Then if you don't display them right when you save it again it saves them as \\\'.
And this just gets worse and worse.
Tell them they need to stripcslashes!

sorry, rant mode off.
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Green stars !! (UPDATED 10th Jan 2007)

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi all,

We now have 551 SETI@home members with credit....(and another 49 who have yet to contribute any SETI@home credits at all !! - net membership is up by 52 members since  last update on 18th Nov 2006) !

But we're still "only" an 33 Image Team

That's still only 5.989110707% of members who have donated !!

Roll of honour includes (in alphabetical order):

:notworthy:

~ Daniel ~
65steve
Andrew+KateBarton
acrscotland
actraider > new member
Bob Harris
DATAjammer
Gregory Williams
GrimRob > new member
Jheral
Kam Ho
mikelee
Newbury
OriginalGodlike
Peter Banbury
ronniehare
rovert
Seti-Cruncher
Shauny13uk
Suzuki
SwissNic
Tim Hammond
UBT - AndyJG247
UBT - Damon Birch
UBT - Granville
UBT - GysmoSan
UBT - JsF
UBT - Mikeejones
UBT - PaulC
UBT - Simon > new member
UBT - Steve Taylor
UBT - Timbo
UBT-Timby


To the green star members - please click here and add your msg + name: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_th ... p?id=29103

So, c'mon you guys - only takes a minimum of $10 (about GBP 6) to get a star and help the SETI project keep going for another year - think what you'd do, if they shut down - you'd lose so many friends and your PC would just sit there, thinking about the "old days" when it crunched meaningful, real-world data (instead of playing bl**dy computer games ...!)

(edit) Will keep this msg updated as new members donate - saves having to create a new posting everytime - last edit see below !.
Last edited by UBT - Timbo on Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:45 am, edited 30 times in total.
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Post by UBT - Halifax-lad »

Latest News from the Fund Raiser

We've made $100,000 so far during our first annual fundraising drive

Thank you for your help so far! Please help us reach our goal by contributing today
UBT - Steve Taylor
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Post by UBT - Steve Taylor »

Ok Count me in like you said its only a couple of pints
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Steve Taylor wrote:Ok Count me in like you said its only a couple of pints
Well done Steve. You're #11. Only need another 295 members to donate.....!

regards,

Tim
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Post by UBT - Simon »

I'll donate hopefuly next week, this week seems to be bill week yet again *sigh*
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Halifax--lad wrote:We've made $100,000

See what happens when you get a "celeb" involved with your promotional activities!!

OK - so who do we get to promote the UBT?

Jordan? - or is that going too far?
Natsaha Kaplinsky? - she seems to be on everything else!
Carol Voderman? - ditto

Sian Lloyd? (keeps the Welsh happy)
Charlotte Church? (keeps the Welsh even happier)

Anne Widdecombe? (speechless - I can't think of anything good to say!)
Jeremy Beadle? - dito


Am sure thre are others.

regards,

Tim
Last edited by UBT - Timbo on Thu Jul 06, 2006 9:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by UBT - Halifax-lad »

Well I know have the best reason yet as to not donate, they have sent a e-mail to all the people who have donated to say thanks etc etc.

However when sending it they sent the e-mail so that all the e-mail addresses would show up of all the donors.

They have apologised for it but I don't trust them not to do it again
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

UBT - Halifax--lad wrote:Well I know have the best reason yet as to not donate, they have sent a e-mail to all the people who have donated to say thanks etc etc.

However when sending it they sent the e-mail so that all the e-mail addresses would show up of all the donors.

They have apologised for it but I don't trust them not to do it again
Hi David,

Yup - I got one of them. To think when I "cocked" up, I only (accidentally) cc'd to about 400+ members of UBT.

How much do you reckon I can get for the 2,979 email addresses I now have of SETI donation makers......!

Hmmmmmm..... so much for their privacy policy......!

regards,

Tim
Last edited by UBT - Timbo on Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
UBT - Mikee
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Post by UBT - Mikee »

Ah - Think I must have ticked the 'don't send emails' as I got a nice, REAL letter from the University. :)
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Post by UBT - Timbo »

mikeejones1 wrote:Ah - Think I must have ticked the 'don't send emails' as I got a nice, REAL letter from the University. :)
Yup - me too - got a letter and a "University of California" "tent card" plus a receipt.

All very tickety-boo.

Wonder how much it cost to process and then post.......although that has been mentioned before and they haven't taken up the suggestion of other SETI members to include a tick box if you DON'T need a posted receipt.

It would save them money if people didn't want these sent out - but then the admins at the University would have nothing to do....to justify their salaries!

regards,

Tim
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