There's a news item on the front page regarding a new account manager Grid Republic.

I went to their home page and saw very strange things over there:
On Theirr stats page they brag with the computing power of the whole BOINC community, while afaik they didn't do anything theirself up to now. I think this is a rather repugnant behaviour. They don't even support all BOINC projects, like the other account manager (BAM!), but still do as if it's all owned by them.

And where is the forum to discuss all this? I could not locate anything like a forum on their pages. I tried the usual BOINC name of the fora, but only got an 404 error. No link to any forum whatsoever.

Afaik it will deploy a special branded BOINC client instead of simply using the regular one and just do as usual for an AMS: manage the existing accounts and hosts with the existing client.

And, of course, they should only enlist their own crunchers in their bragging, definitely not me!
Does anyone know anything about those pretenders?

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Gruesse vom Saenger

For questions about Boinc look in the BOINC-Wiki

As far as I know it's another "AMS" like BAM is. An account manager service. I know Rom has built Boinc clients specifically for there use/testing in the past (5.3.3 comes to mind). I haven't joined but maybe they're wording what they are in a manner which might be taken wrong?

tony

If you take a look at their "stats page", they claim all of the work done by BOINC as their work, that's just ridiculous. I don't think they have done anything up to now.
On the other one they claim to have 970K citizens, while I know not a single one of them. 970K in just 9 projects is more then the total of BOINC on all projects. That's even more ridiculous.

They have done nothing so far, so what are they bragging with?

If you take a look at their "stats page", they claim all of the work done by BOINC as their work, that's just ridiculous. I don't think they have done anything up to now.
On the other one they claim to have 970K citizens, while I know not a single one of them. 970K in just 9 projects is more then the total of BOINC on all projects. That's even more ridiculous.

They have done nothing so far, so what are they bragging with?

have you looked at the "stats page" link? They have a whole list of actual supercomputers and some serious muscle. They even give kudos to boinc, since Boinc actually helped them evolve. To me it looks like boinc for the big boys.

I'm not too worried (for now).

If it helps to bring more people into Distributed Computing, than as far as I'm concerned that is a good thing.

It will be a question of wait and see...

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Sometimes I think we are alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we are not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

If you take a look at their "stats page", they claim all of the work done by BOINC as their work, that's just ridiculous. I don't think they have done anything up to now.
On the other one they claim to have 970K citizens, while I know not a single one of them. 970K in just 9 projects is more then the total of BOINC on all projects. That's even more ridiculous.

They have done nothing so far, so what are they bragging with?

I send them an e-mail asking for more details.

have you looked at the "stats page" link? They have a whole list of actual supercomputers and some serious muscle. They even give kudos to boinc, since Boinc actually helped them evolve. To me it looks like boinc for the big boys.

They don't have any serious muscle they have all ready admitted by email that the figures are wrong they never noticed apparently, they also said they did not realise the amount of users using it was wrong too. There was no way on Earth they had that many people using GR

Stay away don't touch it and use BAM! that's my advise.

BAM! supports all projects and works really good, lots of features built in etc etc

Also everything is written as if they have done it all, any one who wishes to lie and put ideas into peoples heads that they did all the work should not be given the time of day

PS: They also force a download of a new BOINC client on you when its not needed, all so they can get there branded client to you (it also installs to a different directory than normal)

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On the other one they claim to have 970K citizens, while I know not a single one of them. 970K in just 9 projects is more then the total of BOINC on all projects. That's even more ridiculous.

They have done nothing so far, so what are they bragging with?

That one does make me laugh loads as the stats sites bring in total BOINC participant's to around 769,326 ish. One wonders where all the excess members came from!! lol

Its one super slow computer if you ask me, all the figures provided are false (maybe trying to impress people to join up by saying look at how many people we have got) its only been open a few days in BETA and before that in Alpha only about 5 people participated :)

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have you looked at the "stats page" link? They have a whole list of actual supercomputers and some serious muscle. They even give kudos to boinc, since Boinc actually helped them evolve. To me it looks like boinc for the big boys.

Yes, I have, I copy'n'pasted it from the url-line in my FF ;)
They have a list of serious muscle from somewhere else, none of it is theirs. It's all just lying and pretending, a lot of hot air with nothing behind.

I have no problem with extra crunching power, I'd appreciate it, but they offer none. They only want to live off someone elses merits.

At least I can happily say I will never use it, cant see it been too popular either.

From the looks of it they will only support projects with a screensaver that leaves out some very important projects in my book.

The branded client also features the GR logo on your screensaver too and on the BOINC client it downloads

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At least I can happily say I will never use it, cant see it been too popular either.

From the looks of it they will only support projects with a screensaver that leaves out some very important projects in my book.

I'd do neither ;) I'm happy with the obviously far better BAM! .

But regarding support:
That's just what I want to know: Who's behind them?
I heard Rom did something with their client, so it's at least not absolutely without support from important people (and I regard Rom as a BOINC-VIP;).
But their HP, and it's blatant lies, is just disgusting.

And that's just what I want to know: Who's behind them?
I heard Rom did something with their client, so it's at least not absolutely without support from important people (and I regard Rom as a BOINC-VIP;).
But their HP, and it's blatant lies, is just disgusting.

Nothing special about the BOINC client at all (from what I recall) its the normal standard client (so latest client in this case) with an XML file in there that adds GR logos and also auto attaches to GR on install, enter user-name & password then GR downloads the work.

As far as I know it suppose to be a non-profit organisation or something? Dunno really.

I know BOINC Dev's have sung it praises for a long time. God knows why? Its pretty basic and doesn't support all the BOINC projects hardly a suitable AMS

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GridRepublic Setup.exe 07-Aug-2006 18:05 9.5M
GridRepublic Setup_pdb.zip 14-Mar-2006 01:18 3.2M
gridrepublic_5.3.4_pdb.zip 20-Dec-2005 23:17 2.7M
gridrepublic_5.3.4_windows_intelx86.exe 20-Dec-2005 23:18 11M

All in the Boinc /dl folder, made by boinc for GR.

GridRepublic Setup.exe 07-Aug-2006 18:05 9.5M
GridRepublic Setup_pdb.zip 14-Mar-2006 01:18 3.2M
gridrepublic_5.3.4_pdb.zip 20-Dec-2005 23:17 2.7M
gridrepublic_5.3.4_windows_intelx86.exe 20-Dec-2005 23:18 11M

All in the Boinc /dl folder, made by boinc for GR.

when providing info it helps if you would please provide the correct information. ;)

GR uses 5.4.11 no point looking at old builds

so as I said it uses a standard BOINC client with a modified XML file (that brands the client to GR)

Edit: Pretty much sure thats how it works as I remember reading the explanation a while back

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what I'm trying to get across is that is being done with the knowledge/assistance of boinc, and doesn't appear to be a rogue like "shoft". I don't know much else about it to add to this conversation, as I only took a cursory look at the site Saenger posted.

what I'm trying to get across is that is being done with the knowledge/assistance of boinc, and doesn't appear to be a rogue like "shoft". I don't know much else about it to add to this conversation, as I only took a cursory look at the site Saenger posted.

Yes we all know that bit its the lies with Stats and other anomalies that are making the whole thing an unreliable AMS and that's even before they start. I do know a fair bit about them (well some aspects not all) from when I did ALPHA testing for them, but I soon got bored of it and reverted back to BAM!

Edit: Also BOINC would not have put it on to there news page if it wasn't done with there knowledge

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I send them an e-mail asking for more details.

They are aware the stats given at their webpage is incorrect. The reason is they count the users and hosts from each project separately resulting in a too high number.
People at Gridrepublic are trying to correct this ASAP.

I send them an e-mail asking for more details.

They are aware the stats given at their webpage is incorrect. The reason is they count the users and hosts from each project separately resulting in a too high number.
People at Gridrepublic are trying to correct this ASAP.

Thanks for the info, by the way we had all that already lol ;)

Edit: forgot to say most of this has been discussed at BOINCstats

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Here's the reply to my e-mail, might answer a few concerns to anyone out there. I'm BAM! all the way but I'm sure someone out there will like GR ;)

let me attempt to address some of your concerns--

* why only nine projects-- we started GR several years ago ( http:// boinc.berkeley.edu/acct_mgrs.php ), and when we designed the UI the idea that it would support up to ten projects seemed more than adequate. since then, boinc has grown considerably as a platform, so now this limit is a problem. we need to do a significant overhaul of the UI to support hundreds of projects. but this will take a while as our first priority is to get the basic functionality down and there are still a few things i want to add in that area. so give me a couple more weeks on this issue.

* why no special characters in the usermame-- there is no reason for this, just an oversight, thanks for bringing it to my attention. we'll update it. (though again, please don't be disappointed it this is not done immediately as we have a couple pressing issues to resolve first)

* why force a download-- this is a thing that will be fixed soon... the new "join" workflow can detect users who are have preexisting accounts. after this we will add support for Mac, Linux, and Solaris--each will have a separate download and separate instructions. and when we add the multiple platform support (and associated multiple workflows) we will at the same time introduce functionality that treats users with preexisting accounts differently from "new" users: in the case of users with preexisting accounts we will not initiate downloads automatically.

...as for us being a rubbish service, well, that's why they make chocolate and vanilla, as the saying goes. one point that i encourage you to consider, however, is that our first priority was to design a system which is useful to new users-- to draw new people into volunteer distributed computing; and adding support for existing boinc users-- who have already "drank the kool aid", so to speak-- is of secondary concern and is as yet incompletely implimented. so i think you will see that most of your concerns apply to the latter class of users an not the former; and so i hope you will perhaps withold your most withering criticism for a few months as we continue to evolve.

best wishes,

...matt

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david,

about your recent post to CNET News, "Don't use GR its pants"--

just so you know, i've been sweating blood for the last couple years, to build GR. just so you know, i conceived the concept of account managers, and worked very hard with david anderson and the boinc team to realize the idea. this took a lot of time and money-- a staggering lot-- and i haven't asked anything for it, and i've been ok with david publishing the results of this collaboration so that guys like willy could come along and build their own account managers, based largely on this work. good for willy.

and after working this hard to create account management and to launch my site, i just sort of deal with the fact that you are talking trash about my work in discussion forums, knowing nothing really about the larger situation; and i just sort of deal with belligerent emails from you in which you criticize me and call my work rubbish. but listen: i think maybe it's a bit much when you follow around all our news items on the web and post trash talk after them also. if you want to advocate for BAM, that's great. but i submit that it does not do anyone any good to trash my work in the process. to build your house you don't need to demolish mine. we all have the same goals: to increase participation in volunteer distributed computing.

see: GR is not set in stone. it is a work in progress, so rather than attempting to kill us over trivialities like "special characters in usernames", how about you help us to improve? and if you don't want to do that-- which is fine-- then please go merrily on your way but maybe don't expend so much effort trying to ruin the fruits of many years of my labors.


thanks and best wishes,

...matt


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"in a world with so much meaningless evil, why not a little meaningless good?"
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