Thanks for jumping in and explaining that Eric. Hopefully that will help some folks in their decisions to stay or leave. Hopefully everyone stays, but sometimes you just can't make everyone happy.

Ain't that the truth!

From Eric's email:

So to avoid the coming credit war, BOINC is implementing this credit multiplier BOINC wide. This will be an objective way to make sure that projects don't grant too much credit. In other words, this will (probably) be happening at most every cpu intensive BOINC project.

So any project using Boinc is going to have their credit levels forced down by David Anderson?!?!

That seems really uncool to me. Other projects should be able to grant whatever credit they want to grant.

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From Eric's email:

So to avoid the coming credit war, BOINC is implementing this credit multiplier BOINC wide. This will be an objective way to make sure that projects don't grant too much credit. In other words, this will (probably) be happening at most every cpu intensive BOINC project.

So any project using Boinc is going to have their credit levels forced down by David Anderson?!?!

That seems really uncool to me. Other projects should be able to grant whatever credit they want to grant.

So they should be able to offer 5x the credit of SETI@Home? What about credit inflation and fighting over users? Why shouldn't all project offer the same credits per hour?

From Eric's email:

So to avoid the coming credit war, BOINC is implementing this credit multiplier BOINC wide. This will be an objective way to make sure that projects don't grant too much credit. In other words, this will (probably) be happening at most every cpu intensive BOINC project.

So any project using Boinc is going to have their credit levels forced down by David Anderson?!?!

That seems really uncool to me. Other projects should be able to grant whatever credit they want to grant.

No matter how far they drive the credits down, I don't think it will solve our problems with inflation or Fedral/US budget deficit;(

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When we finally figure it all out, all the rules will change and we can start all over again.

the credit of SETI@Home? What about credit inflation and fighting over users? Why shouldn't all project offer the same credits per hour?

How is it David Anderson's job to decide what other projects offer for credits? That should be up to the project admins themselves

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the credit of SETI@Home? What about credit inflation and fighting over users? Why shouldn't all project offer the same credits per hour?

How is it David Anderson's job to decide what other projects offer for credits? That should be up to the project admins themselves

If it were left up to the project admins, what's to keep them all in line with some sort of standard? Further, if they have no problem offering the same or similar amounts of credit, why is David Anderson the bad guy for trying to make it easier for them by removing the burden of responsibility? Why get in a huff and complain about something that may not be worth fighting for? Even if the other admins do have a problem with this, why is forcing a level playing field such a bad thing? Why should project admins be allowed to decide how much credit to give? What good would that do in the interest of fairness?

SETI was the first Distributed computing project around. Some crunch it solely because of the credits and some for the benefit of the project itself. It shouldn't however be up to the scientist here to set the credit standard across the board for all projects even though the BOINC program was developed here. That should be at the sole discretion of each indiviual project.So what if somebody else wants to increase their granted credit by 50%.That's their decision. The ones that really want to crunch for SETI will remain at SETI.

Are the BOINC programs in a competition amongst themselves? Not for cobblestones but for users? Even if this is so the SETI program wins hands down. Leave the credits where they were. If another program raises theirs , so what! They must really need the extra help and are willing to pay extra for it. I don't believe SETI would suffer much from it.

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Eric,

Thanks for the explanation of the whys and wherefores.

In all honesty it doesn't make it that much more palatable, it pretty much confirms my speculation.

It might have been a bit easier to swallow if it was explained prior to implementation.

Myself I'm going to run down my work units, leave and observe what happens both in the Seti project and BOINC wide, I may be back.

Why I'm I leaving?

It is really two fold, one the introduction of another app into Seti that being Astropulse, IMO it should be another project as in "astropulse@home" after all that is one of the advantages of the BOINC concept. I see its introduction into seti@home as an attempt to guarantee its success by forcing it down the throats of a captive audience at the expense of another balancing act.

The other sore point is the ever moving credit value and the cross-project cobblestone dream. Seti@home was ground breaking for distributed computing and still is an undeniable leader. IMO Seti@home was better off without BOINC although it is a worthy concept and has proven beneficial to many projects.

I think BOINC should merely be a common interface between projects, forget the inter-project comparisons and let the projects stand on their own merits with credit competition merely within each project. I see a lot of sideways looks at so called "credit whores" chasing the best credit paying across projects, but BOINC created the animal and the "problem". The multi-project teams could still exist, with standing within each project being the measure of comparison.

Just my thoughts and reasons,

Marcus

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SETI was the first Distributed computing project around. Some crunch it solely because of the credits and some for the benefit of the project itself. It shouldn't however be up to the scientist here to set the credit standard across the board for all projects even though the BOINC program was developed here. That should be at the sole discretion of each indiviual project.So what if somebody else wants to increase their granted credit by 50%.That's their decision. The ones that really want to crunch for SETI will remain at SETI.

Why should it be their decision? Why does everyone seem to have a voice in this without actually running a project yourself? Why should one project be able to offer 50% more credit and turn projects against one another over users who are admitted credit hounds?

Are the BOINC programs in a competition amongst themselves? Not for cobblestones but for users? Leave the credits where they were. If another program raises theirs , so what! They must really need the extra help and are willing to pay extra for it. I don't believe SETI would suffer much from it.

Every project is going to feel they need help. So project A increases their "pay" by 50% to attract the admitted credit hounds, benefiting Project A with more CPU power, but this steals CPU power away from Project B. Project B feels their project is very important and are upset that Project A raised their credit and took some of its CPU power (users) away, so they in turn (in an attempt to recover those users and perhaps gain new ones) raise their credit 50% more than Project A and regains their CPU power from Project A and some from Project C. Now Project C is upset with losing CPU power and wants to increase their "pay".

Do you see the developing problem with this scenario?

Projects should be selected on their scientific merit and not for the credits they offer, but some users will follow the credits wherever the pay is highest. Many of those crunchers have very fast machines, are very competitive and want to be number 1 (or as close to it as possible). What if one of these competitive users belongs to a small project with very few users? What if they achieve number 1 status simply because there's not too many people on the project and they like the credit "pay" they receive. Now what if another project decides they want to attract more users so they increase their pay beyond this small project, so this user decides they're going to leave and join that project to get the higher paying credit? The small project loses their biggest contributor over what? Credit? It shouldn't be that way.

No. Project should not have to enter a competitive state for users based upon pay. There is nothing wrong with making all projects "pay" the same amount. It should not be up to the individual Admins - and they shouldn't want the burden of paying credit, they should be focussed on their science instead.

Why should it be their decision? Why does everyone seem to have a voice in this without actually running a project yourself? Why should one project be able to offer 50% more credit and turn projects against one another over users who are admitted credit hounds?

Does David run these other programs??? So then why should he decide how they run their projects?

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It is really two fold, one the introduction of another app into Seti that being Astropulse, IMO it should be another project as in "astropulse@home" after all that is one of the advantages of the BOINC concept. I see its introduction into seti@home as an attempt to guarantee its success by forcing it down the throats of a captive audience at the expense of another balancing act.

I have to disagree. AstroPulse is still looking for SETI, but they are taking advantage of the data at hand and using it to find other things as well. Perhaps with these constant findings it will keep the project funded, which will also help keep SETI@Home alive. SETI@Home, itself, can only have one scientific finding, to which we may never answer that question, but Governments don't have the patience to keep paying tax dollars to a project that doesn't appear to have immediate benefits to mankind, but that doesn't mean the search should stop. I'm digressing though.

The other sore point is the ever moving credit value and the cross-project cobblestone dream. Seti@home was ground breaking for distributed computing and still is an undeniable leader. IMO Seti@home was better off without BOINC although it is a worthy concept and has proven beneficial to many projects.

I disagree here as well. SETI@Home would have been shut down if it weren't for BOINC and then there would be no search. Another benefit to SETI joining BOINC is to help popularize the BOINC framework by having at least one major successful distributed computing project attached to it so that other, smaller projects may have a chance to flourish with user interest that won't have to compete with incompatible programs from other distributed computing projects (such as the problem with running BOINC, Prime95 and/or Folding@Home together on the same machine to which a user might be interested in doing).

I think BOINC should merely be a common interface between projects, forget the inter-project comparisons and let the projects stand on their own merits with credit competition merely within each project. I see a lot of sideways looks at so called "credit whores" chasing the best credit paying across projects, but BOINC created the animal and the "problem". The multi-project teams could still exist, with standing within each project being the measure of comparison.

I have to disagree again. The animal was created out of demand by the users. The original SETI@Home started it with giving users a stat for every workunit completed, and users seemed to expect this with BOINC since SETI was moving to the BOINC platform. People like to be competitive, so even if credits were never offered, they'd still find something to obsess about. This is a natural phenomenon that exists regardless of what is sanctioned. It is better that Cobblestones were invented (sanctioned) and properly maintained and kept fair between all projects.

Regardless of what face you put on the beast, its still the same beast. Trying to keep it fair is about the best anyone can do to keep it tame without it getting out of hand.


All in all, you'll do what you need to do. Eric regretfully expected people to leave, and each person leaving will definitely hurt the project, but I'm sure this has been weighted in with the decision of credit multipliers and the outcome is inevitable.

Thanks for all your help and I hope to see you back here again sometime, and hopefully soon!

Why should it be their decision? Why does everyone seem to have a voice in this without actually running a project yourself? Why should one project be able to offer 50% more credit and turn projects against one another over users who are admitted credit hounds?

Does David run these other programs??? So then why should he decide how they run their projects?

No, David is in charge of BOINC, and oversees development of this infrastructure. BOINC's vision is to enable scientists with mass amounts of CPU power without the funding required to purchase supercomputers. What good is this vision if everything becomes a battle over credits? It demeans the entire purpose IMO.

David is not actually telling them how to run their project (the science), but is merely trying to keep projects from having to fight for users whom are only interested in the highest credit. If I were a project Admin, I would only be too happy if the burden of responsibility were taken off my shoulders about credit so that I can focus on my science.

You seem to want to connect this action to a form of dictatorship without actually knowing how other project Admins feel about it. Why should you be so bothered by it if other Admins don't have a problem with it?

You seem to want to connect this action to a form of dictatorship without actually knowing how other project Admins feel about it. Why should you be so bothered by it if other Admins don't have a problem with it?

Back when this came up a few months ago there was a major issue where--I believe--the Rieselsieve admins were very upset that there would be a chance this would eventually occur. I remember there were at least 2 online forums discussing the issue with their Admins. The logs are somewhere on the setiusa website...I remember reading them at the time

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You seem to want to connect this action to a form of dictatorship without actually knowing how other project Admins feel about it. Why should you be so bothered by it if other Admins don't have a problem with it?

Back when this came up a few months ago there was a major issue where--I believe--the Rieselsieve admins were very upset that there would be a chance this would eventually occur. I remember there were at least 2 online forums discussing the issue with their Admins. The logs are somewhere on the setiusa website...I remember reading them at the time

OK, two admins out of how many BOINC projects? They can always choose to write their own program outside of BOINC if they think its unfair, though it boggles my mind that they would have a problem with it. Why should they care? Shouldn't they focus on their science instead?

Regardless, I think that this should be an issue between the Admins of those projects and David, not for the users to play out on forums in political fashion. I personally feel that every Admin should think this is a great idea, but you're always going to have someone in a group swimming uphill.

It is really two fold, one the introduction of another app into Seti that being Astropulse, IMO it should be another project as in "astropulse@home" after all that is one of the advantages of the BOINC concept. I see its introduction into seti@home as an attempt to guarantee its success by forcing it down the throats of a captive audience at the expense of another balancing act.

I have to disagree. AstroPulse is still looking for SETI, but they are taking advantage of the data at hand and using it to find other things as well. Perhaps with these constant findings it will keep the project funded, which will also help keep SETI@Home alive. SETI@Home, itself, can only have one scientific finding, to which we may never answer that question, but Governments don't have the patience to keep paying tax dollars to a project that doesn't appear to have immediate benefits to mankind, but that doesn't mean the search should stop. I'm digressing though.

If I understand correctly, AstroPulse is using the same observations to search for cosmic explosions rather than ET. AP is looking for broadband pulses rather than narrow band patterns.

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BOINC WIKI

You seem to want to connect this action to a form of dictatorship without actually knowing how other project Admins feel about it. Why should you be so bothered by it if other Admins don't have a problem with it?

Back when this came up a few months ago there was a major issue where--I believe--the Rieselsieve admins were very upset that there would be a chance this would eventually occur. I remember there were at least 2 online forums discussing the issue with their Admins. The logs are somewhere on the setiusa website...I remember reading them at the time

OK, two admins out of how many BOINC projects? They can always choose to write their own program outside of BOINC if they think its unfair, though it boggles my mind that they would have a problem with it. Why should they care? Shouldn't they focus on their science instead?

Regardless, I think that this should be an issue between the Admins of those projects and David, not for the users to play out on forums in political fashion. I personally feel that every Admin should think this is a great idea, but you're always going to have someone in a group swimming uphill.

Also, the last proposal was incredibly broken and everyone was arguing against it. This one might work better.

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BOINC WIKI

You seem to want to connect this action to a form of dictatorship without actually knowing how other project Admins feel about it. Why should you be so bothered by it if other Admins don't have a problem with it?

Back when this came up a few months ago there was a major issue where--I believe--the Rieselsieve admins were very upset that there would be a chance this would eventually occur. I remember there were at least 2 online forums discussing the issue with their Admins. The logs are somewhere on the setiusa website...I remember reading them at the time

OK, two admins out of how many BOINC projects? They can always choose to write their own program outside of BOINC if they think its unfair, though it boggles my mind that they would have a problem with it. Why should they care? Shouldn't they focus on their science instead?

Regardless, I think that this should be an issue between the Admins of those projects and David, not for the users to play out on forums in political fashion. I personally feel that every Admin should think this is a great idea, but you're always going to have someone in a group swimming uphill.

I see we're back to David's Credit Crusade again.

Let me tell you what just happened to my Credit/Hour over at Cosmology, one of the "bad and evil" projects, in David's eyes. It may be in yours as well. I don't know. What I do know is the chart at BOINC Combined Statistics will not tell the truth about my specific situation.

My AMD 3700+ system makes a benchmark * time claim of about 15.1 cr/hr. Yes, I was getting quite a bit more than that before the new app and the credit limit of 70 over there. Anyway, making it "fair" across the board is one thing. Doing so by essentially "punishing" certain classes of systems outright is another.

If you take a look at my results over there you'll notice that 4 out of the 5 tasks that I've reported since the new app and credit amount were put in place have requested more credit than they were granted. I've already done the math. With the fast-running result, average claimed is 70.422. Without it, the average is 77.793. None of the tasks have validated, but if/when they do, they will be granted 70.

Edit: The afore mentioned 7-hour monster apparently hit a point where the app has a significant speedup, and is now on track to finish at only about 5.5 hours, which is in line with the rest of the results, except for the one outlier. This will bump the avg. claim up, but not as substantially as I first thought. The issue still remains though that the project, on average, is now granting less than claimed.

HOWEVER, Core2 systems seem to be fairing much better. Since they are the prevalent system out there now, their situation is such that they are still able, on average, to get more than what they claim, so in the end, that wonderful statistic will state that Cosmology is either paying out "just right" (within 20%, if I remember correctly), or is still "too high".

You can preach about how things should be equal, but until you recognize the FACT that the chart at BOINC Combined Statistics is but an average, you, as well as David Anderson, will fail to understand why this is so irritating to me and others.

I am not one who "chases credits". If I were, I would've joined ReiselSieve. I would've been involved with Cosmology even more than I was on my AMD system, as it was paying out much more than Einstein was. I would've probably checked out Milkyway, ABC, or QMC. No, I'm just someone who picked a project that I liked as an alternative when I became dissatisfied with the way things go around here.

If this is the way of the future, for "ancient" machines such as mine, then BOINC will lose my participation totally, as the credit, while meaningless in real life, is the only thing I get as an immediate benefit for my continued energy consumption.

I do not want a reply from you on this if it is more talk about how things "should be fair and equal across the board". It isn't, especially not as viewed by that stupid chart at BOINC Combined Statistics.

My Pentium 4 is going off of this project again tonight. I'll be kind enough not to abort the tasks that I have.

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If I understand correctly, AstroPulse is using the same observations to search for cosmic explosions rather than ET. AP is looking for broadband pulses rather than narrow band patterns.

Its also looking for broadband ET pulses too...

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Do you Good Search for Seti@Home? http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=888957
Or Good Shop? http://www.goodshop.com/?charityid=888957

So, they are slowly going to the "Dropping RAC" credit system? No dual credit system? Dual credit system = one credit value for the dropping RAC lovers, and one credit value for constant RAC lovers (like me)?

So, my RAC eventually goes to zero even if my 2.8 GHz dual core processor is still doing the science like it has done the last two and a half years?

I am very sorry, but I cannot see any usefulness in dropping RAC system. Maybe they should abandon the whole credit system. Maybe they should start to calculate the finished WUs instead...

;(

Henri.

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Manned mission to Mars in 2019 Petition <-- Sign this, please.

Computers are going to be faster and faster almost exponentially so it won't take many years before 8-core Nehalem's RAC is 0 (if they use the dropping RAC system).

Just my two cents.

PS. I am not saying that I am quitting this if they lower the multiplier (and my RAC). I am just afraid that hundreds or thousands of people will quit if their RAC is going down.

Henri.

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Manned mission to Mars in 2019 Petition <-- Sign this, please.