And to Climateprediction.net goes the most reliable project award. They released it on time, and then they got crunching. No downtime, no server losses, no memory leaks and the like that needed plugging, 0 user intervention, it worked with every upgrade I made to boinc since, yet didn't require me to do any of them (not all projects are yet compatible with the later versions). Through all the BOINC turmoil, it stood strong and proud!
Workunits dont loose their progress due to one reason or another, credits and graphics were there and working from day one (although they arent fancy, they are there, and you actually see earth and temperatures, isnt that neat).
And they have a nice triklets system where your computer notifies the server every once in a while about how much work was done on your giant work unit, and you get full credit for that portion almost immidiatly and without contesting.
Not to mention that it ADDED boinc as the new option, but users may choose to use the old standalone version indefinatly (although they only plan on making new versions for boinc). and they both count.

Climate Prediction, I salute you.
- no, I really don't have any "point" with this...

> And to Climateprediction.net goes the most reliable project award.
>
Yes. Must agree. As was said before: CPDN is the future of Distributed Computing.
But SETI is the mother of all. It will recover from its popularity!

well yea, SETI is what got me hooked on distro computing, and the project to which I am most loyal...

While I prefer practical experiments, I dont consider climate prediction all that practical, cause really, who cares if it rains XD (yea i know its for more severe weather, but I dont care about that either, or rather, I relish bad weather, it makes me feel all funny to see mother nature lashing out).

LHC is the most practical of them yet... use it to help build a more accurate partical accelerator, practical. Although I dont care that much about them either...

The one project I am DYING to see is astropulse, or any other mapping project. I really wish I could contribute to the mapping of the universe... (cant own my own spaceship and go freelance yet, so I'll settle for letting my computer do that for me)

> > And to Climateprediction.net goes the most reliable project award.
> >
> Yes. Must agree. As was said before: CPDN is the future of Distributed
> Computing.
But SETI is the mother of all. It will recover from its
> popularity!

>
> [url=http://www.setisynergy.com/stats/boinc-stats.php?id=110777]

HeHe... You must not look at the CPDN boards that often. CPDN has it's problems as well.

And yes, WUs can just loose their progress for one reason or another. Which sucks if you're into it 200 hours or more.

(just playing devils advocate)

Well, if it has its problems it keeps them under check, because I have yet to actually encounter one. While the other projects I have to check on twice a day.

Its all a matter of relativity... As I said, "MOST reliable project", not a "perfectly reliable project".

I don't think it is that they "keep them in under check" better but rather that the extended runtime of the work units just slows everything down a notch so that problems don't escalate as quickly. Take for example this uploading problem. CPDN probably isn't getting more than 100 work units/day returned. If a major problem is noticed, only a few work units will be affected before it is noticed. The did actually have a problem with work units not uploading correctly but only a few people were hit before they came up with a fix and emailed everyone who was affected by it and told them how to fix it. So there wasn't a storm of angry users crashing their message boards demanding answers, not because they handled it better or quicker than seti@home but because they had more time to work with before it became a MAJOR issue. Around here, one small thing goes wrong and you instantly have 10 new threads about it and people foaming at the mouth.

The longer running work units also put much less strain on the scheduler, validator, and database so they can run on much less powerful equipment than what is in seti@home's server closet.

So yes, CPDN still gets the prize but lets look at the reasons behind it :)


---------------------------------------
- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
Possibly the best stats site in the universe:
http://boinc-kwsn.no-ip.info

and what, pray tell, keeps seti from running longer work units? In fact, I suggested it several times on the forums. Their servers keep on crashing and their raids keep on failing and their HDD keep on dying because they are overworking them, they should use bigger work units. With credits being awarded in the new method, where it doesnt count work units but computations, that is a perfectly valid action, as crunchers wouldnt hunt them down and kill them for it. What surprises me is that LHC actually cut down their work unit sizes to a tenth of what it was before. But they coupled it with a change of supporting files and the like, so it might have been all for the better (the redesigned the system they used because it was overloading their servers causing them to crash).

Also every single machine in the CP reports daily. Its called tricklets. It doesnt make a final submission about the work, but it gives some data about what was done, claims credits, etc. Their computers listing, their credits server, etc, are all working fine despite the once a day report.

>CPDN has it's problems as well.
> (just playing devils advocate)
>
Yes. Fer sure. (And when did i become CPDN advocate?)
Failed downloads and the like. But CPDN are trying new approaches. Helped by fewer donators no doubt.
We will all benefit!

a new approach that seti and its buddies should adopt.

> and what, pray tell, keeps seti from running longer work units?

Maybe the fact that a lot of their science code, work unit splitters, etc is coded for 407 second work units and they don't have the necessary manpower to change it all while they are still doing seti-classic, developing BOINC and maintaining the servers? Would have been a good thing to do before they launched BOINC but alas, here we are with no way to change the past. Also, making much larger work units would prevent slower computers from participating. Or at least discourage them. The ideal situation would be if they had seperate large and small work units that they could send out to faster and slower computers, respecitvely. BOINC supposedly supports this but we have yet to see it in action.

> Also every single machine in the CP reports daily. Its called tricklets. It
> doesnt make a final submission about the work, but it gives some data about
> what was done, claims credits, etc. Their computers listing, their credits
> server, etc, are all working fine despite the once a day report.

Technically it isn't "daily" but rather every 10802 time steps. On some computers this means 2 trickles/day and on others it may be 2 days/trickle. Also, trickles take a lot less processing by the servers than reporting a result. There really is no comparison here. Especially considering the following copy/paste from my stats website.
Seti@home:
Total number of users in database: 50038
CPDN:
Total number of users in database: 14407




---------------------------------------
- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
Possibly the best stats site in the universe:
http://boinc-kwsn.no-ip.info

I am not directing my post at any one ,and I have no point to make , just some interesting , information and comments from: </br>Carl Christensen , Research Officer www.climateprediction

the following was copy from: Sir Ulli's post_here_
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=3067#18886


Carl Christensen , Research Officer , www.climateprediction.net , wrote the following:

Well that's a bit harsh, SETI has orders of magnitude more users and workunits & results to deal with than any other DC project. BOINC is cutting edge and still pretty new, and right now is a critical time where three projects are coming together to use it "live" with more waiting in the wings. There's no real other comparison to what BOINC entails other than actual operating systems. And Linux and Win took hundreds if not thousands of programmers over far longer time to "gel" and be stable & useful (and plenty would argue one or the other still isn't user friendly enough or stable etc). I think BOINC is actually quite a bit ahead, and CPDN, given the complexity of our climate model to run, probably helped stall & complicate things with a lot of changes required so BOINC could accomodate us (trickles, long workunits, separate monitoring program for the climate model etc); for which we're eternally grateful! So these are "interesting times" (in the sense perhaps of the apocryphal Chinese curse).

Also I don't think many people realize how much work needs to be done on DC projects, and how little money & few staff we have! For instance, the sort of project management & software engineering & planning & network & database administration I was used to in the corporate world (and you list in your letter) usually has a staff of at least 20, and we had the time & luxury to plan things out with Gantt charts and UML diagrams and big testing & release plans etc, and could hire $100-$200 an hour consultants when we needed a hand. These are all of the things we don't have time or money for on CPDN, as it's Tolu & myself doing all the computer work (we now have a new guy Neil doing the "grid" server stuff); with scientists changing requirements on us every day so my software engineering and project plans and deadlines go out the window! ;-)

Now I don't think SETI is as "volatile" as we are, but I know there's only a handful of people there that have to take care of large #'s of users and data handling and development that in the corporate world would have a nice building in Palo Alto with 50 people running things -- 15 programmers, 5 test people, 5 operations/networking types, 2 DBA types, 2 project managers at least (one BOINC, one SETI), 4-5 web designers/developers, 5 support staff (secretaries & administrators), a "press officer", 10 overpaid vice-presidents who do nothing, a CEO who takes all the money and runs when it goes public, and a call center in India. And they'd still have a tough time at it and go bankrupt in a year! ;-)

So this email isn't really an apology or excuse, it's just a little reality check. And I hope you persist with BOINC because I'm confident that after all the initial "bumps in the road" in a little while, when all the projects are up with version 4.x and the others come online, it will all be worth it. It's the best game in town as far as I'm concerned. And I know it's cliche' but I think that relatively soon, when you're running CPDN & SETI & Predictor & LHC & whatever simultaneously under BOINC and everything's working and staying up with plenty of workunits, you'll be laughing about these early "growing pains" of the 3.0/4.0 days!

-- Carl Christensen, Research Officer, www.climateprediction.net

copy from: Sir Ulli's post here:
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=3067#18886

> Technically it isn't "daily" but rather every 10802 time steps. On some
> computers this means 2 trickles/day and on others it may be 2 days/trickle.
> Also, trickles take a lot less processing by the servers than reporting a
> result. There really is no comparison here. Especially considering the
> following copy/paste from my stats website.
> Seti@home:
> Total number of users in database: 50038
> CPDN:
> Total number of users in database: 14407

In other words CP's credit scheme was "better thought out"...since at 14407 users SETI was out for at least a week...(these guys at CP are still ticking, or trickling...) :):):)

I would like to point out that there wasnt any intent of criticizing any project. I realise that they are facing many hardships. I would like to point out that ALL the projects face those same issues. The only real difference between the projects is the SCIENCE. Assuming that there isnt some unkown to me extremely odd things about the science of some of the projects that greatly differs from the other projects, then I feel no qualms about giving this award!

Also, I was one of the people who had to "repair" the climate predicion problem. I forgot about it, because:
-It drowned in the slew of the problems of other projects
-I received an email with the notification I have the problem, telling me EXACTLY which computers of mine have it, and how to EASILY fix it (took 2 minutes)
-It didnt really impair anything
-I didnt have to go on the forums and to find out about it myself.

Also, the reason why seti has small WUs, is that it started many years ago (well not too many) when broadband was a privilage. It was meant to not be a burden for people with dial up... in the days where 56k modems were top of the line and many had to do with 14k dialups that was good. Also, there is the whole processing issue, on my first computers it took DAYS to complete a single classic WU.... But computers have evolved, and connections have improved, and its very feasable to have larger workunits.

I think the best solution is the one suggested before where there are small WU as usual for people with dial ups. and new big WUs.

I am NOT making a demand here, I am point out the facts, it would be a better solution. But I understand there are constraints, and I dont expect anything. (its not like it would benefit me anyways). But one must remember, sometimes save cents to waste dollars, we spend hours to save minutes. One must look at the bigger picture and see if maybe, its better off to just switch approaches.

As I say: Once you buy the candy you already wasted the money. If you eat the candy you are also wasting your health, and more money and time you will spend in the future to loose the extra weight. If you bought it on a craving and ate half, well, spit out whats left in your mouth and throw the rest in the trash, you will be doing yourself a favor!

---

I do not have a superman complex; for I am God, not superman!

> As I say: Once you buy the candy you already wasted the money. If you eat the
> candy you are also wasting your health, and more money and time you will spend
> in the future to loose the extra weight. If you bought it on a craving and ate
> half, well, spit out whats left in your mouth and throw the rest in the trash,
> you will be doing yourself a favor!


And that is why I'm looking for my cuban cigars...:)

(after all, it's a health issue...)

Predictor - don't forget predictor!

Might not have been the "most reliable", but holds high honors for "Keeping users informed if there was a problem!"

---

> Predictor - don't forget predictor!
>
> Might not have been the "most reliable", but holds high honors for "Keeping
> users informed if there was a problem!"
>

Then perhaps you should switch to Predictor...since they keep you well informed :)

switch?

Are we all running all 4 projects at once? (only reason why I aint runnig pirates is because they are only playing around with a screensaver and not doing any actual real work, in their own words)

---

I do not have a superman complex; for I am God, not superman!

This 'SPACE' Rented.

The anonymity of the Internet, brings
forth, yet another EXPERT.

---

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.

> switch?
>
> Are we all running all 4 projects at once? (only reason why I aint runnig
> pirates is because they are only playing around with a screensaver and not
> doing any actual real work, in their own words)
>

That's why I detached from Pirate too. I'm waiting for Einstein to start up next year, already signed up for it.

L8R....

---

---

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