In the interest of being "fair" the personal credit was taken as the median of three scores. It seems that in the interest of "science" there now seems to be an average of four scores is taken. i.e 75% of all work is thrown away. I can see 50% or 60% at most, but there must be a solution that does not waste so much processing power.

What this comes down to for the individual is, the faster the machine you have the more you are penalised. (I now have at least 40 work units that are listed as "pending" even though many have four results registered against them!!!)

That system has been tried many times and has failed every time. In its last political incarnation it is known as "communism".

Lets go back to "capitalism" it works!!

I must admit that I would never have guessed that I would resort to political terms, but that seems to be the communication method that works these days (especially in South Africa!).

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> In the interest of being "fair" the personal credit was taken as the median of
> three scores. It seems that in the interest of "science" there now seems to be
> an average of four scores is taken. i.e 75% of all work is thrown away. I can
> see 50% or 60% at most, but there must be a solution that does not waste so
> much processing power.

Just.relax...as far as I know, nothing is wasted until now. The credit for the pending units will soon come.
> What this comes down to for the individual is, the faster the machine you have
> the more you are penalised. (I now have at least 40 work units that are listed
> as "pending" even though many have four results registered against them!!!)
>

See this as an "invesment", soon you get 4x the credit you get at a normal day.

> That system has been tried many times and has failed every time. In its last
> political incarnation it is known as "communism".
>
> Lets go back to "capitalism" it works!!
>
> I must admit that I would never have guessed that I would resort to political
> terms, but that seems to be the communication method that works these days
> (especially in South Africa!).

Hehe..the analogy you used is interesting, but let's hope that, ET doesb't know anything about communism or capitalism.

As mentioned before, relax and don't give up on the project

The validator (this hands out credits and validates the results) is running very slowly at the moment due to some database problems over the last few days. According to the server status page there are over 140,000 results awaiting validation so you are not alone and this has nothing to do with the science or work being wasted. The database is just behind. They tried to move to a newer, faster database machine today but things didn't work out. When this move is completed, (as Ozgur said) your credits will come.

---

A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
For rankings, history graphs and more, check out:
My BOINC stats site

> > In the interest of being "fair" the personal credit was taken as the
> median of
> > three scores. It seems that in the interest of "science" there now seems
> to be
> > an average of four scores is taken. i.e 75% of all work is thrown away. I
> can
> > see 50% or 60% at most, but there must be a solution that does not waste
> so
> > much processing power.
>
> Just.relax...as far as I know, nothing is wasted until now. The credit for
> the pending units will soon come.
> > What this comes down to for the individual is, the faster the machine you
> have
> > the more you are penalised. (I now have at least 40 work units that are
> listed
> > as "pending" even though many have four results registered against
> them!!!)
> > I realise that at some time in the future (seems to get further and further), credit will be accrued, but since my machines seem to be on the faster side of average, I will get further and further into arrears and never catch up until I join the "madding crowd" of slower machines which I do not intend to do.


>
> See this as an "invesment", soon you get 4x the credit you get at a normal
> day.
>
> > That system has been tried many times and has failed every time. In its
> last
> > political incarnation it is known as "communism".
> >
> > Lets go back to "capitalism" it works!!
> >
> > I must admit that I would never have guessed that I would resort to
> political
> > terms, but that seems to be the communication method that works these
> days
> > (especially in South Africa!).
>
> Hehe..the analogy you used is interesting, but let's hope that, ET doesb't
> know anything about communism or capitalism.
>
> As mentioned before, relax and don't give up on the project
>
>

---

> The validator (this hands out credits and validates the results) is running
> very slowly at the moment due to some database problems over the last few
> days. According to the <a> href="http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_status.html">server status[/url] page
> there are over 140,000 results awaiting validation so you are not alone and
> this has nothing to do with the science or work being wasted. The database is
> just behind. They tried to move to a newer, faster database machine today but
> things didn't work out. When this move is completed, (as Ozgur said) your
> credits will come.
>
I understand that, but see my previous reply - I am just going thru an upgrade at home which will make one of the machines there even faster. (My previous reply said that because my machines seem faster than average, the credits granted will fall further and further behind the work done.)

---

> > The validator (this hands out credits and validates the results) is
> running
> > very slowly at the moment due to some database problems over the last
> few
> > days. According to the <a>
> href="http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_status.html">server status[/url]
> page
> > there are over 140,000 results awaiting validation so you are not alone
> and
> > this has nothing to do with the science or work being wasted. The
> database is
> > just behind. They tried to move to a newer, faster database machine
> today but
> > things didn't work out. When this move is completed, (as Ozgur said)
> your
> > credits will come.
> >
> I understand that, but see my previous reply - I am just going thru an upgrade
> at home which will make one of the machines there even faster. (My previous
> reply said that because my machines seem faster than average, the credits
> granted will fall further and further behind the work done.)
>

You will catch up when the validator validates the backlog and the faster you go will not get you behind faster, relax you can not do anything with these credits... If I could I would give you all my credits cause they mean nothing to me........

---

Semper Eadem
So long Paul, it has been a hell of a ride.

Park your ego's, fire up the computers, Science YES, Credits No.

> In the interest of being "fair" the personal credit was taken as the median of
> three scores. It seems that in the interest of "science" there now seems to be
> an average of four scores is taken. i.e 75% of all work is thrown away. I can
> see 50% or 60% at most, but there must be a solution that does not waste so
> much processing power.

Nothing is being wasted. The results are crunched on four different computers to make sure none of them did anything wrong. Repeating an experiment four times in the real world is hardly uncommon and certainly not called "waste."

> What this comes down to for the individual is, the faster the machine you have
> the more you are penalised. (I now have at least 40 work units that are listed
> as "pending" even though many have four results registered against them!!!)

You aren't being penalized for having a faster computer at all. The way the benchmarks are setup, you should claim a comperable amount of credit per workunit *and* you're granted the same amount of credit as those of us running "slow" computers. In reality, there's some discrepancy in the amount of credit claimed, but everybody is still granted the same amount of credit.

As Toby pointed out, your 40 workunits waiting for points are the result of a sluggish database and the validator not being able to keep up with all the workunits we're sending back. It can't check them for consistancy and grant credit as fast as we're giving it workunits to check.

> That system has been tried many times and has failed every time. In its last
> political incarnation it is known as "communism".
>
> Lets go back to "capitalism" it works!!

Uhhh... huh? Having people crunch the same workunit as somebody else to verify results is ... communism? Having just one person crunch a result, with no verification is ... capitalism? Errrm... okay....

> I must admit that I would never have guessed that I would resort to political
> terms, but that seems to be the communication method that works these days
> (especially in South Africa!).

You didn't resort to political terms, you resorted to economic terms. "Communism" and "capitalism" refer to economic systems, not political systems. Perhaps you were confusing them with "dicatorship" and "representative democracy" ...? I'm not entirely sure if that makes any more sense, however.

Please do tell... what are you talking about?

---

Rob