David still works at SSL and will continue to be the director of Seti.

A title which has been largely symbolic for many years now, though I've recently seen him working on some code under the project codename 'nebula'. Although so far it looks a bit like my data distribution history, working out which workunits came from which tape.

That's the feeling I got from the document, which is arguably narcissistic in construct.

Well, not only that. The people whose names are on the Contribute page, they weren't asked if they wanted the job. If you were already in the job, you just got added to the list of being a commiter for this or that. I know, as no one asked me and I got added.

It is possible the same thing happened to the PMC, but someone has to ask the people on the list that.

That's not the first time I heard that. Funny what a difference a day can make to understanding the big picture :)

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Has anyone considered long-term fundraising via Boinc Utopia. I really don't consider it crowd fundraising.

Milkyway has raised over $4,000 there and I would be more then happy to offer to manage the efforts to do such fundraising if interested.

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A question I have is where does the Boinc code that we down load reside and how is that server paid for?

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The BOINC source code is at GitHub, which is a web-based Git repository hosting service on an open source server.
The BOINC executables, forums, etc. are on the BOINC domain run from a server in Berkeley's co-location.

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Before you ask "what about crowd-funding", it was one of the first things I asked David when I got the news. He answered me:

That would be a last resort.
The main beneficiary of volunteer computing is government-funded science research.
We save these funding agencies (like NSF) many millions of dollars, so logically they should fund us.

Also, Rom and I are expensive, and it's not likely that crowd-funding would
produce enough to support us.

No they are not expensive.

I think it would be very expensive to develop some water to not to fill the void their fingers would leave once dipped into a cup and raised back up.

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To overcome Heisenbergs:
"You can't always get what you want / but if you try sometimes you just might find / you get what you need." -- Rolling Stones

How interesting that when the money dried up it was no longer "for the science".

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Greetings,

I just looked at the BOINC Project Governance page.

My memory is a bit murky of late, but I seem to remember some sort of controversy centered around Bruce Allen of Einstein@Home. Can someone with better memory elaborate on this, or set me straight on whatever it is that is planted in my brain. I cannot remember any details; I only know that there was some major discussion centered around Bruce Allen.

.oO(I thought that name looked quite familiar for some reason...)

Any info would be greatly appreciated! :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Greetings,

I just looked at the BOINC Project Governance page.

My memory is a bit murky of late, but I seem to remember some sort of controversy centered around Bruce Allen of Einstein@Home. Can someone with better memory elaborate on this, or set me straight on whatever it is that is planted in my brain. I cannot remember any details; I only know that there was some major discussion centered around Bruce Allen.

.oO(I thought that name looked quite familiar for some reason...)

Any info would be greatly appreciated! :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

I'm not aware of any controversy surrounding Bruce Allen. He is described on the Einstein home page as

Director of Einstein@Home;
Director, MPI [Max Planck Institute] for Gravitational Physics, Hannover;
Professor of Physics, U. of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

I believe he mainly works out of Hannover these days: that's where I met him in 2011 and took this photograph of him with the rest of the Einstein team, staff and volunteer moderators.


(Prof. Allen is kneeling front left, not wearing a hat)

He is also well known for developing monitoring tools for the S.M.A.R.T. hard disk self-checking protocol.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983
http://www.smartmontools.org/

Greetings Richard,

Well... As mentioned, my memory is a bit murky these days. I searched the fora here and only found 2 mentions of Bruce. I went to the Einstein forum, searched there and found only 1 mention. Heck, for all I know I could be mixing Bruce up with Paul Allen. Who knows? ;) There's just this tiny little bell ringing in the back of my mind... :\

Thanks Richard, I'll just let this drop. :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

How interesting that when the money dried up it was no longer "for the science".

The three main BOINC developers have always been paid personnel. The past 12 years they have been full-time contributors, programming the BOINC client, the back-end, the forums, and helped several projects and 3rd party developers bring working science applications, add-ons and special versions of the BOINC client to fruition.

These three developers have their own homes and mortgages, families with needs, hobbies that cost money, friends that demand attention. If you really feel it was money first, or that these people should've done all this programming, day and night, through vacations, through hardship and joy, out of the goodness of their heart, you just have got to be kidding. Are you doing your job for nought? Then why should the BOINC developers have had to?

As for BOINC its intention, best read its original white paper. I guess it managed all that and more.

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Definitely make a "point" of it.

Assume it is "weighted" and in the end it is supposed to be good science...

Seems like Folding@home did the right thing many years ago.

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The House of Ni!

Seems like Folding@home did the right thing many years ago.

I'm slowly learning that, for some institutionalised mindsets, it's very difficult to see how small teams, or groups of teams, are so effective. I think perhaps the project governance dictate requires a counter proposal, if the Boinc infrastructure is to survive.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

I wasn't aware Folding didn't use BOINC, until now that is.

Interesting

Bob

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Sometimes I wonder, what happened to all the people I gave directions to?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SETI@home classic workunits 4,321
SETI@home classic CPU time 22,169 hours

Now *imagine if* there was a way folding@home's team might be encouraged to show us what they've learned, in exchange for what we've learned (that's been actively suppressed).

---

"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

what we've learned (that's been actively suppressed).

An "interesting" comment there.

Isn't it just. And no, I don't know what he means either. Jason, would you mind unsupressing it here, please?

Ok, first imagine some pretty coarse language.

I'm not going to write since a) I would have to self-mod me and b) I don't have a good command of coarse languae. So just imagine the worst you can and you are probably pretty close to what I'd be writing if I was the person to write such things.

Second

@Jord April eh? We should have known. we knew he was applying for funding, when he didn;t say he'd aquired it we should have known... We (i.e. Richard and I) figured _something_ was going on when that Project Governance draft turned up.
Why work to the last second without saying anything? The change could have been so much smoother if we'd known. Oh well. No crying over split milk eh?

Third

No crying over spilt milk. The cataclysm has happened, now we need to look at the broken pieces and decide how to go on. [in fact some 'we' already are]
As always in such cases, you can quit, you can start new and you can try to salvage.

Fourth

Strange that we are all quite agreed that a commitee doesn;t really work for this - you can convince one person (like talking to David until he sees reason) but to convince a group of people is somethign else entirely.
If we know that, why the heck did 'they' think it would work?
I never wanted push rights. Now I feel I should have made sure I had them. [not that anybody in their right mind would have given them to me :D]

Fifth

Somebody please fix my coffee machine.

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A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. (Mark Twain)

I think people are picking out the word 'committee', and imagining it in the wrong context. I've written extensively elsewhere about my experience of a development project team in the 1990s. As a practical, working, day-to-day tool, nothing beats teamwork (even if ours worked fortnight-to-fortnight). But in writing about software development, it didn't even seem necessary to state the obvious - that the team operated under the umbrella of a limited company legal structure, with a board of directors.

My view is that we should allow a reasonable amount of time for the project management committee - BOINC's board of directors - to convene a teleconference after the 4th of July holiday weekend - say 72 hours.

And then ask them their preliminary views on what software teams they're going to convene to continue the actual, practical, work.

ROFLMAO

Sorry Richard, I don't think I can explain what is making me laugh that hard at your comment :D

Yes, with the right group of people it _can_ work.
But is it the right group of people? I think that is where we are having our doubts.

I usually have no problem in letting people try to live up to their promises and expectations first and hit them over the head when they fall short or mess up.
In this I am a bit reluctant of letting them mess it up, I feel too much depends on a contiunued smooth running. (*)
On the other hand I don't quite see how I can prevent 'them' making silly mistakes.

(*) Not that it was running smoothly :D But at least it was bumping along.

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A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. (Mark Twain)