I'll simply speak my piece since I've never mentioned it on MW.

Do I think that MW and Cosmology grant pretty silly high credits. Yeah, but I don't administer the projects, so I can't do anything about it other than "vote with my feet" and leave. Am I going to do that? No, because I just don't give a damn about these stupid "credits" anymore.

I'm a meteorologist, so I compute for Climate Prediction. I know they grant relatively low credit. I don't care. I do it because I value the science.
I'm an amateur astronomer, so I compute for Einstein, Cosmology and Milky Way. One grants a bit above average and the other two grant silly high amounts. I don't care. I do it because I value the science.
An Einstein user developed an app to really speed it up by using SSE. I installed it right away SO I COULD DO THE SCIENCE FASTER.
The bulk of my own research in the last 4 years has been devoted to Near Earth Objects, so I'll compute for Orbit once they're up and fully going. I don't care what they give in credit. I value the science.
I still compute a bit for SETI. Well, I don't strongly believe in it, but it's what brought me to BOINC and I guess I've always felt that you "dance with the gal that brung ya", so I probably always will give them a bit.

I care about my ranking within a project because it gives me a feeling of how much I'm contributing to the particular project, but cross project?!? Who could possibly give a hoot when you're trying to compare yourself to collections of users under a single name and clusters and dedicated science grid computers, etc. I don't give a fiddlers fart about some guy churning out massive amounts for Rosetta or QMC or ABC or anything else. If he/she/they support that science then let 'em go to town on it.

In some mythical perfect world, all the apps would be hand coded to take advantage of every little tweak in every processor architecture and everyone would sit down over a nice coffee and agree on the international exchange rate for my cpu operations and everyone would be even, but that's so freakin' unlikely that it's laughable.

I just wish everyone would shut up about credits, whether high, low or perfect. Jeez, just count workunits or hours or angels on the heads of the pins of my processor or something... I DON'T CARE. Just tell me how my computers are helping your science and I'm happy.

---

Sorry, I do NOT believe that either you or Jeff is correct, and I certainly do not know that you are correct. If that were the case, there would not be a discussion.

Certainly, you can pick based on scientific value. What you are saying is that you are selecting based on how many credits per hour you are granted (how much the project values you). Having projects grant whatever they feel like is a way to have an inflationary race:

Project 1 needs more participants so it raises the credits granted.
Now project 2 does the same.
Now back to project 1...

I do not see this as a good scenario, but apparently you do.

John, John. Still the same old sophistry. Last year you ignored the key issue (wrongfully recognizing effort rather than achievement) and you are still ignoring it. And you are also still peddling an imaginary problem (so-called "credit inflation") that has not happened and never will (as nicely understandable from Thunder's posting). If "credit inflation" were a real issue, all those below-average projects would be starving. They're not. So please call off your self-appointed PC credit police. You've harmed SETI. Isn't that enough? Leave the other projects alone!

---

--Bill

This issue aside but still on topic....I personally feel BOINC should be concentrating on calculating how to get all its contributers tax deductions for charitable contributions based on avg cost per type and % of time Boinc is allowed running..... instead of concentrating on credit which starts becoming as meaningless and non rewarding as the current paradigm,of which I am still prepared to fight a battle over from a principle of real fairness.

---

Jeez, just count workunits

That is how my "credit system" of BOINC would look like - I loved that as old SETI Classic did show that in the account.
Regardless from what a machine can crunch in time, it would show how much real work you have done for a project, because of regular credit changings you cannot estimate that nearly...

But I guess even with that system some people would find reasons to moan about. ;-)

---

Member of BOINC@Heidelberg and ATA!

My BOINCstats

I agree for once John....the original post needs to be deleted as non relevant.

It is really hard for the first thread to be irrelevant to the topic of the thread.

Yes John it is relevant but not about credit calculations....so the thread should read "Do what we tell you to do or we will force it"

---

Credits Calculations vs. Credit (CPID) Problems? I wish as much effort would go into getting the Credits straight as in the Granting of Credits/cross project parity.

My Credits http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_user_graph.php?pr=bo&id=b65b36154e3a49f636a3148d4e0b3c83 have been seesawing back and forth since Nov 06. Actually, I'm not into this for Credits, but it would be nice to look at once in a while to see how my efforts compared to others. So as it stands for me, it doesn't matter if I get 1 or 1000 Credits/Hour because it doesn't show in any stats that use CPIDs for their stats.

Since I only have 2 cents I don't want to spend it all here. :D Patience is a Virtue.

---

Jeez, just count workunits

That is how my "credit system" of BOINC would look like - I loved that as old SETI Classic did show that in the account.
Regardless from what a machine can crunch in time, it would show how much real work you have done for a project, because of regular credit changings you cannot estimate that nearly...

But I guess even with that system some people would find reasons to moan about. ;-)

The Problem with just Counting Wu's is that at some Projects the Wu's can take Hundreds of Hours while at others they just take a few Seconds or Minutes. Guess which Projects would get the most Participants ... :)

Hmm. Boycotted by a project with merely 5K members and only 3K active? Hardly much of a threat.

Must have you flustered John as I would expect a better response than that!

Are all participants of Cosmology only connected to 1 project? Do you think team members would not support unfair treatment? Force away......you will never achieve anything near submission going into project boards arguing this same point....The rally cry may sound at such dismissive behaviour! You think the usership here will listen with those kind of inflammatory comments?

We and Cosmology have now been dismissed by Boinc as hardly much of a threat....ok I am done ...I refuse to respond to this type of Geastapoism.

You never answered as to why SETI needs to have a private club of optimized...the crux of my arguement?

BOINC is not well designed to distribute optimized applications to different clients of the same basic CPU and OS. It was made barely possible when the CPU optimizations were reported back. Work is in progress for the BOINC client and server to make this relatively easy, and S@H is, I believe waiting for that. The anonymous client was implemented long before the detection code was implemented in the client to distinguish which FPU extensions were implemented. The anonymous client was implemented so that people could develop applications for hardware that the project could not devote the manpower to implement the application for (i.e. OS2). It has been used for this. Some users also figured out that the same mechanism could be used to implement optimized applications. S@H has implemented some of the optimizations that have been developed into the stock client. Others have not been incorporated. There was an enormous debate about credits granted to optimized apps, and another when S@H incorporated some optimization and cut the credit grant to keep the credits / hour on hosts with stock applications about the same.

Basically what has happened has been that better hardware gets more credit per hour (the optimized applications count as "better hardware"). However, when the stock application gets optimized that does not count as "better hardware" for everyone and the credit grant was reduced to match the increased performance. I expect that when (may be later as Astropulse is absorbing much of the programming time) optimized apps per FPU extension start being used the credit request will be reduced again to reflect the reduced FLOPS count and to keep the average credits per hour about the same.

BTW, did you know that about 1% of the time the optimized applications at S@H fail to generate the correct result and therefore get no credit granted? This is one reason that not all of the optimizations were incorporated into the stock client. Another is, of course, that the BOINC client was not reporting the FPU extensions and therefore the server could not send a specifically optimized client.

John thank you for that answer but my question still has not been answered in that for example Einstein had a 3rd party app come about the same reasons as you describe as the project did not have the ability to do so....but they incorporated it into an app everyone receives....why can't the 3rd party be eliminated ,have the project incorporate all it sees fit into what is sent out as an app and credit those individuals who contributed to the code ?

Politics and control questions have not been answered...why the continued private club as I call it?

Another question not answered...Why no postings (et al harrasement) of the lowest undergranting projects like LHC? Why go after the 'ridiculous high' and not the low if not political?

Another scenario...a project has 1gb memory requirements....tad high for most hosts....should not that project be allowed to compensate at a higher credit level due to the ensuing computation errors at unexpected times? How much is enough....how much is too much? This is why it won't work, projects with super long or tough tasks to complete will never have a chance!

I see no allowance for this in the 'enforcement agenda'

I predict another platform will come along to compete with Boinc if all this comes to pass.

The third party application is harder to eliminate than you are saying. At S@H it is being used for its original intent - that of supporting minor platforms such as OS2 which the main development team just does not have the time to develop.

S@H has incorporated the optimizations that it can for the moment.

So far, super long projects don't come much longer than CPDN, while they always could use more volunteers, they don't seem to be hurting too badly.

A platform that competes with BOINC will have to be just as easy for the scientists to use, and will have to consider the elements of fairness as well.

---

BOINC WIKI

Sorry, I do NOT believe that either you or Jeff is correct, and I certainly do not know that you are correct. If that were the case, there would not be a discussion.

Certainly, you can pick based on scientific value. What you are saying is that you are selecting based on how many credits per hour you are granted (how much the project values you). Having projects grant whatever they feel like is a way to have an inflationary race:

Project 1 needs more participants so it raises the credits granted.
Now project 2 does the same.
Now back to project 1...

I do not see this as a good scenario, but apparently you do.

John, John. Still the same old sophistry. Last year you ignored the key issue (wrongfully recognizing effort rather than achievement) and you are still ignoring it. And you are also still peddling an imaginary problem (so-called "credit inflation") that has not happened and never will (as nicely understandable from Thunder's posting). If "credit inflation" were a real issue, all those below-average projects would be starving. They're not. So please call off your self-appointed PC credit police. You've harmed SETI. Isn't that enough? Leave the other projects alone!

Your claim that being paid for results instead of effort is what every gets is just plain wrong.

I and everyone I know gets paid for effort. I get paid twice a month, and the amount of the check does not vary depending on the number of lines of code that I got written. A couple of examples why (at least in my industry) pay for meeting a performance goal is an extremely bad idea. Occasionally, I can use a tool that writes 10,000 lines of code in 5 minutes. At the other extreme, sometimes the research takes so much time that two of us spent 6 months figuring out how to write 50 lines of code because of the lack of documentation on the system we were trying to work around. Just try codifying that as other than pay for effort please. Another example is from "Dilbert" where the PHB tells the programmers that pay is going to be based on the number of bugs fixed - Wally states "I am going to go write me a mini-van." Another example of why in some cases pay for results is not a great idea.

Another example comes from the summer I spent working construction. My pay was hourly for that job. One of the tasks for the landscaping crew was to dig holes in particular places. On that particular jobsite most of the holes were filled with a fairly soft rock (but still rock) that could be broken up slowly with a pickax or a digging bar. However, that took about an hour for a hole one foot on a side and a foot and a half deep. On the few occasions where the company rented a jackhammer for other reasons and there was some time left before it was returned, the landscaping crew got to use it. This changed the time from an hour to about 5 minutes for the same hole. However, my pay stayed the saem. Again pay based on effort.

The only two classes of people that I can think of whose pay is based almost exclusively on results are Piecework workers and Salesmen on commission. Everyone else has much of their pay based on effort.

Admittedly raises are based on overall effectiveness - but that is similar to having better hardware.

---

BOINC WIKI

Jeez, just count workunits

That is how my "credit system" of BOINC would look like - I loved that as old SETI Classic did show that in the account.
Regardless from what a machine can crunch in time, it would show how much real work you have done for a project, because of regular credit changings you cannot estimate that nearly...

But I guess even with that system some people would find reasons to moan about. ;-)

Not a great concept for a couple of reasons. In classic it led to "Cherry picking" as tasks could be known for either taking a long or a short time before they were started. It also denies the possibility for cross project parity as SciLink (tasks took about 5 minutes) and CPDN (tasks take weeks to months) do not even fit on the same page.

---

BOINC WIKI

Credits Calculations vs. Credit (CPID) Problems? I wish as much effort would go into getting the Credits straight as in the Granting of Credits/cross project parity.

My Credits http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_user_graph.php?pr=bo&id=b65b36154e3a49f636a3148d4e0b3c83 have been seesawing back and forth since Nov 06. Actually, I'm not into this for Credits, but it would be nice to look at once in a while to see how my efforts compared to others. So as it stands for me, it doesn't matter if I get 1 or 1000 Credits/Hour because it doesn't show in any stats that use CPIDs for their stats.

Since I only have 2 cents I don't want to spend it all here. :D Patience is a Virtue.

You have two different CPIDs. The solution: Attach one machine to ALL projects you have done work for. Cycle through the projects with update giving at least three complete successful cycles.

Second solution. The BOINC client and server have (very recently, not released yet) been modified to incorporate an extra time stamp on the CPID. This will eventually fix the problem automatically.

---

BOINC WIKI

So far, super long projects don't come much longer than CPDN, while they always could use more volunteers, they don't seem to be hurting too badly.

So do the DC Projects which have no Cross Project Parity among them, some of those Projects give 1 Credit while others give Hundreds with no Rationalization why 1 Project with 1 Hour Wu's will give you 1 Credit while another Project with 1 Hour Wu's will give you many times that amount.

I was on the AMDUsers Team for quite awhile and as far as I knew they ran the DC Projects more than they ran the BOINC Projects, some of the Team Members flat out refused to run the BOINC Projects and I would see mention now & then from some of them that they were leaving the BOINC projects for the DC Projects.

Their reason at times for leaving the BOINC Projects was because of all the Bickering about the Credits & Cross Project Parity. They could of cared less about that but were just fed up with the whole argument about it.

Myself I could care less about it either, I'm not somebody who has to take up the whole Screen with my Signature every time I post, in fact I hardly ever even Post my Signature because it's really meaningless.

All I ever see it seems is a Hard Core Group of 3 or 4 people even bring the subject up, I'm sure theres other people working behind the scenes the bring this about if possible. But it's always the same people who get everybody riled up about it and then don't want anybody to argue with them because they feel they are right and everybody else is wrong that argues with them.

They don't want to be Flamed either when actually their original post about the subject is nothing but an Inflammatory post to being with that they know is going to bring up a heated discussion about the subject.

As far as I'm concerned this should be done behind the scenes & if it comes about fine. But if I don't like how it works then I'll leave the BOINC Projects myself. I guess I'm like most sane people in that I don't like something shoved down my throat by a very minority group of people ... :)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


Just stop already............You don't like the credits given here...

Go somewhere else!

John, John. Still the same old sophistry. Last year you ignored the key issue (wrongfully recognizing effort rather than achievement) and you are still ignoring it. And you are also still peddling an imaginary problem (so-called "credit inflation") that has not happened and never will (as nicely understandable from Thunder's posting). If "credit inflation" were a real issue, all those below-average projects would be starving. They're not. So please call off your self-appointed PC credit police. You've harmed SETI. Isn't that enough? Leave the other projects alone!

Your claim that being paid for results instead of effort is what every gets is just plain wrong.

I and everyone I know gets paid for effort. I get paid twice a month, and the amount of the check does not vary depending on the number of lines of code that I got written. A couple of examples why (at least in my industry) pay for meeting a performance goal is an extremely bad idea. Occasionally, I can use a tool that writes 10,000 lines of code in 5 minutes. At the other extreme, sometimes the research takes so much time that two of us spent 6 months figuring out how to write 50 lines of code because of the lack of documentation on the system we were trying to work around. Just try codifying that as other than pay for effort please. Another example is from "Dilbert" where the PHB tells the programmers that pay is going to be based on the number of bugs fixed - Wally states "I am going to go write me a mini-van." Another example of why in some cases pay for results is not a great idea.

Another example comes from the summer I spent working construction. My pay was hourly for that job. One of the tasks for the landscaping crew was to dig holes in particular places. On that particular jobsite most of the holes were filled with a fairly soft rock (but still rock) that could be broken up slowly with a pickax or a digging bar. However, that took about an hour for a hole one foot on a side and a foot and a half deep. On the few occasions where the company rented a jackhammer for other reasons and there was some time left before it was returned, the landscaping crew got to use it. This changed the time from an hour to about 5 minutes for the same hole. However, my pay stayed the saem. Again pay based on effort.

The only two classes of people that I can think of whose pay is based almost exclusively on results are Piecework workers and Salesmen on commission. Everyone else has much of their pay based on effort.

Admittedly raises are based on overall effectiveness - but that is similar to having better hardware.

Good Grief! More sophistry.

John, "effort" - in the end - doesn't get most people very far without achievement. Most of us have to deal with things like annual reviews. The Wallys of the world don't get the raises and promotions that the Alices do. Socialism may reward effort, but free enterprise ultimately rewards productivity. "Effort" is but a component of that. Effort, per se, is not the metric. A good boss (not the PHB) knows the difference and will base reviews on a person's effectiveness. It's not better hardware, John. It's competence and effectiveness. People who try hard but don't have impact aren't regarded as well as those who do.

Other people understand this. I've got to believe that you do too, so it's a mystery why after a year you're still pushing your phony arguments. As I pointed out before, the "below average" projects are not starving. There is no problem. Your campaign is just stirring up resentment. Please give it up.

---

--Bill

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


Just stop already............You don't like the credits given here...

Go somewhere else!

You don't get credits for what's rattling around in your head, pinging your sense of fairness, or offending your grand sense of the order of things.

I believe they are granted for what you have plugged into the wall.

Voltron

You don't get credits for what's rattling around in your head, pinging your sense of fairness, or offending your grand sense of the order of things.

I believe they are granted for what you have plugged into the wall.

What credit could I get for plugging my head into the wall then? :P

---

Credits Calculations vs. Credit (CPID) Problems? I wish as much effort would go into getting the Credits straight as in the Granting of Credits/cross project parity.

My Credits http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_user_graph.php?pr=bo&id=b65b36154e3a49f636a3148d4e0b3c83 have been seesawing back and forth since Nov 06. Actually, I'm not into this for Credits, but it would be nice to look at once in a while to see how my efforts compared to others. So as it stands for me, it doesn't matter if I get 1 or 1000 Credits/Hour because it doesn't show in any stats that use CPIDs for their stats.

Since I only have 2 cents I don't want to spend it all here. :D Patience is a Virtue.

You have two different CPIDs. The solution: Attach one machine to ALL projects you have done work for. Cycle through the projects with update giving at least three complete successful cycles.

Second solution. The BOINC client and server have (very recently, not released yet) been modified to incorporate an extra time stamp on the CPID. This will eventually fix the problem automatically.

Hi JM7,

Kinda close. I have 4 CPIDs which have been there since November 2006. I have 16 Hosts attached to 70+ projects (not getting work on all of them). The problem with the CPIDs is in the hosts. Some hosts, actually, have 4 project CPIDs in it. Each time a different host connects to a server it changes the project CPID. If my 4 CPIDs are checked, some of the projects are listed in 2 or more CPIDs (depending on the time of updates) and they switch back and forth.

A fix for my host is what is needed (If I knew how to change all my Projects CPIDs in my hosts to one, I would do it). I know when I look at the Project CPIDs it has a Hash and in most hosts there are 3 to 4 different hash codes.

Theses are the 4 Projects CPIDs in Host PC-13:

HASH(0xe8b240)
HASH(0xe9bb30)
HASH(0xe9bb40)
HASH(0xe8b320)

and here's PC13client_state.xml:

http://www.xgrubberskickass.com/Misc/PC13client_state.xml

All host are like this. The only difference is CPIDs for each project are different from PC-13s

I did a ticket at dev which a fix was projected in 6.2.x and it looks like we're going into 6.3.x shortly. Sure could use a Sync for host CPIDs for the peojects

Hehe, 19 months of this so I guess there's no hurry.

Bill

Edited: Note: Email Hashes are the same.

Credits Calculations vs. Credit (CPID) Problems? I wish as much effort would go into getting the Credits straight as in the Granting of Credits/cross project parity.

My Credits http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_user_graph.php?pr=bo&id=b65b36154e3a49f636a3148d4e0b3c83 have been seesawing back and forth since Nov 06. Actually, I'm not into this for Credits, but it would be nice to look at once in a while to see how my efforts compared to others. So as it stands for me, it doesn't matter if I get 1 or 1000 Credits/Hour because it doesn't show in any stats that use CPIDs for their stats.

Since I only have 2 cents I don't want to spend it all here. :D Patience is a Virtue.

You have two different CPIDs. The solution: Attach one machine to ALL projects you have done work for. Cycle through the projects with update giving at least three complete successful cycles.

Second solution. The BOINC client and server have (very recently, not released yet) been modified to incorporate an extra time stamp on the CPID. This will eventually fix the problem automatically.

Hi JM7,

Kinda close. I have 4 CPIDs which have been there since November 2006. I have 16 Hosts attached to 70+ projects (not getting work on all of them). The problem with the CPIDs is in the hosts. Some hosts, actually, have 4 project CPIDs in it. Each time a different host connects to a server it changes the project CPID. If my 4 CPIDs are checked, some of the projects are listed in 2 or more CPIDs (depending on the time of updates) and they switch back and forth.

A fix for my host is what is needed (If I knew how to change all my Projects CPIDs in my hosts to one, I would do it). I know when I look at the Project CPIDs it has a Hash and in most hosts there are 3 to 4 different hash codes.

Theses are the 4 Projects CPIDs in Host PC-13:

HASH(0xe8b240)
HASH(0xe9bb30)
HASH(0xe9bb40)
HASH(0xe8b320)

and here's PC13client_state.xml:

http://www.xgrubberskickass.com/Misc/PC13client_state.xml

All host are like this. The only difference is CPIDs for each project are different from PC-13s

I did a ticket at dev which a fix was projected in 6.2.x and it looks like we're going into 6.3.x shortly. Sure could use a Sync for host CPIDs for the peojects

Hehe, 19 months of this so I guess there's no hurry.

Bill

Edited: Note: Email Hashes are the same.

There are only two things that are required to get the CPIDs to match. The email addresses must be the same (INCLUDING case). And there must be a path from server to client to server that covers all of the projects. This path must include the project with the OLDEST join date on every client or things come apart.

---

BOINC WIKI

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


Just stop already............You don't like the credits given here...

Go somewhere else!

Since this is a problem affecting the entirety of BOINC, NO.

---

BOINC WIKI

There are only two things that are required to get the CPIDs to match. The email addresses must be the same (INCLUDING case). And there must be a path from server to client to server that covers all of the projects. This path must include the project with the OLDEST join date on every client or things come apart.

Ahhh, yes...

I just spent an hour scratching my head trying to remember this caveat to the second criteria required for getting CPID to sync reliably as it stands. :-)

As the Commander Powell once said, "... You forget so many things..." . :-D

Alinator