LHC@home

tpieloni wrote:

Yes, I am from CERN/LHC and I am new with LHC@home...
I am running some studies for the LHC and trying to learning how to use this powerful pool of CPUs.
I will try to stop by the forum every now and then to update you on the outcomes of the study.
Let\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s keep running.

Excellent. Welcome from us all!

Are we seeing another HR scenario where the same science app behaves differently on different hosts?

So what could nI do ? Is it the new Sixtrack or is it the new BOINC version ?
Thanks for quick help
Dr.Mabuse

...it sends a message to your Computer to abort the WU.

YAY WORK!
Can someone explain why I have on each machine, a bunch of WUs that finish properly, and a large amount that are tagged as redundant result, or cancelled by server. I did a search in the message boards, but got no results.
Is that because the search doesn\'t work either?

Does this have anything to do with the BOINC 6.x problem you are all talking about?

Cragg

Nice try but guess again.

So, where in the world can you divert funds from a gov\'t funded research project by simply \"[speaking] to the right person\"?

Fools and their money always part quickly.

I\'m gladly giving less than $0.1 a month to what I consider the most impressive project since the great pyramids were built. If you think that\'s foolish, fine for you, I couldn\'t care less. Personally I think it\'s great that I can contribute, even if it\'s just a tiny tiny bit.

Regarding diverting funds... there is someone who can divert funds, there always is. If funds haven\\\'t been diverted then you just haven\\\'t spoken to the right person or else you have but they\\\'re pretending to be deaf.

In other words, you have absolutely no idea what you\\\'re talking about at all.

As for me, I consider the scientists time more valueable than my CPU\\\'s idle cycles.

the very least they can do and it would take much from their budget

The least they can do is nothing and I have explained this the budget is set, they asked for money to do certain things and they got the money to do certain things and LHC@home was not in that plan THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED DIVERT FUNDS THAT HAVE BEEN ALLOCATED.

And if they don\\\'t like that then let them buy the CPU time they pee down the drain. I have a hunch things would get fixed real quick if they had to do that.

The work just wouldn\\\'t get done in that case, there is no money for this, no money at all zilch, zero, nada, nothing if they had to buy the CPU this work would not get done, this is not the perfect scenario for the LHC but that is what they would have to do.

You seem to think we relish \\\"stealing CPU\\\" and working on a best effort basis with no money.

I can assure you this project is very frustrating to work on without you telling me it is (by the way thanks for the reminder I was actually having a good day).

Do you think we have a massive pile of money we control and we are just sitting on it laughing maniacally? If we could make money and more effort appear we would have by now, all we can do is keep bidding for money from various bodies.

Yes this what this project does is important but when they look at the list of things to do be done the see more important things, like actually fixing the machine after the failure in September.

Your badgering doesn\\\'t \\\"shame the powers that be\\\" it just winds me up. We know you have misgivings about the IR minimum quorum and we have been talking to the scientists about it the new SixTrack they are working on should also to drop both of these numbers. In this case the squeaky wheel does not get the oil it merely makes the user consider walking

Nice try, Tomas, but you are wrong :)

I do run other projects. None of my computers are attached to LHC because more than 30% of the work done for LHC is wasted effort. It is wasted because they have set IR > minQ. Using the IR > minQ to get results verified sooner was justifiable years ago when BOINC server did not have as many features as it does now. Modern versions of BOINC server has features that permit efficent strategies for getting results verified quickly. Unfortunately, LHC steadfastly refuses to implement those strategies and use the CPU time donated to them efficiently, the way professionally run projects attempt to do.

The reason I complain about LHC\'s wasteful practices is because they steal CPU time away from other worthy projects.

Do you mean like what is suggested by the WCG in this document?
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/attachment/wiki/WorkShop08/ServerManagement-BOINC2008.pdf?format=raw

Same doc as a powerpoint:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/attachment/wiki/WorkShop08/ServerManagement-BOINC2008.ppt?format=raw

Why should I work for them for free when their parent project has a $6 trillion budget and more money on the way? If they want me they can pay me a respectable wage.

So that\\\'s the reason why you are complain time after time after time after time on the same issue instead of just choosing to run an other project. You are one of those consults who is looking for a job. :)

I think they don\'t have much time to run the project.

Maybe you could volunteer your services to help setup the system for free?

Thanks for sticking with us folks especially Dagorath who I have only contemplated killing on one or two occasions ;-)

According to the server status, there is about 17000 new work units being processed. I was not able to get 1 work unit. Is there any trick to get work units when they are available?

I don\\\'t think it is a technical problem but a mentality problem.

Wrong. It\\\'s a technical problem. We simply don\\\'t have the bandwidth. They have already explained that. When is it going to sink in?

My ADSL has 7 Mbit/s, but big cities in Italy reach 20 Mbit/s.

Fastweb is offering fiber to the home in selected cities. Once fiber is installed there is no limit to bandwidth.
Tullio

I don\\\'t think it is a technical problem but a mentality problem.

Is there any possibility for the Boinc/LHC@home community to write CUDA for number crunching support for LHC and/or other projects? It just seems like a treasure trove of threaded processing power waiting under the hood of some gaming boxes.

-Stu

anyone getting the problem of no work downloaded or is there somthing wrong with my connection lol

• ABC@home
  
• Einstein@home
  
• Spinhenge@home
  
• Quantum Monte Carlo at Home
  
• Malariacontrol.net
  
• Rosetta@home
  

Other projects that do not have steady work

• SIMAP
  
• LHC@home
  
• Proteins@Home
  

P.S. For any project that rarely has work, you should set the Resource Share to a small percentage or else you'll eventually have problems getting work from any project due to a problem with the work scheduler.

Another problem with the graphics cards/ps3 approach is that the cards are extremely fast single precision machines. Sixtrack however requires double precision. So the speed up is not as big.

Another problem is with rounding errors. Sixtrack is very succeptible to incorrect rounding of floating point numbers. It took ages to work out the differences in the intel and amd architectures. It would be a lot of work to be certain that the GPU chips calculate correctly.

Thirdly SixTrack as far as i remember relies on a lot of complex floating point math (sin/cos/exp/log) another area where the speed up of the graphics cards are not as impressive as when you can do simple vector operations.

Cheers,
Chrulle
Ex-LHCatHome developer

I restarted lhc@home and shall report. I am still thinking that the problem arises when the server deletes a redundant result.
Tullio

No, it is not sending that message, only this:
Scheduler request succeeded, got 0 new tasks

Wed 01 Oct 2008 02:03:15 PM MDT|orbit@home|[work_fetch_debug] work fetch: project not contactable; skipping
Wed 01 Oct 2008 02:03:15 PM MDT|lhcathome|[work_fetch_debug] work fetch: project not contactable; skipping

It seems this happens also on other projects when the client asks for works and receives none. See this on the BOINC message boards:
BOINC client exits
Tullio

 
[Hydrogen@Home] Message from server: No work sent

24-Aug-2008 06:52:57 Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks

The BOINC boinc is not static executable

[dagorath@Henry64 BOINC]$ file boinc
boinc: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, stripped

I\'ve searched the OpenSuse site for a BOINC installer but could not find it. Cheers.
Tullio

I installed from BOINC but I am running also SETI, Einstein, QMC, CPDN, CPDN Beta and I never had any problem. On SETI I am running also an optimized application and Astropulse and never had a compute error. Only LHC@home gives me some problems.
Tullio

Would this be happening when the server cancels redundant work units? (Just speculating out loud)

Yes. it happens after the client tries to connect to the server. I\'ve suspended LHC@home until I get an answer. I have 5 other projects running with tight deadlines and I cannot afford a boinc client stopping when I am not present.
Tullio

26-Sep-2008 21:06:02 [lhcathome] Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks
SIGSEGV: segmentation violation

/lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0)[0xb7d49fe0]
./boinc(__gxx_personality_v0+0x165)[0x804bc21]

Now, from your latest post I\'m getting a different picture. I could be all wrong but it sounds like maybe you are trying to make a political statement by not upgrading.

No, I just mentioned that because I do think that they have their priorities out of order and that they knew that there were older clients downloading tasks, yet either they did not test that scenario or they did and considered 0-credit as \"A-OK\" so long as it returned a valid result. IOW, they speak with forked tongue in regards to the value of credit parity.

Anyway, my primary reasons for not going for any newer versions are, in order:

• The installer blowing up and leaving BOINC in a non-functioning state that took multiple reinstalls of 5.8.16 to fully correct.
  
• No real need for any of the newer features.
  
• The bugs of the newer versions (apppears to be sloppy testing and/or poor judgement on \"go / no go\" decisions to me).
  

Only when this project started doing the cancels did I have a \\\"need\\\", but since I do not run this project very often, and considering that when I do I run it exclusively until I\'ve cleared out the work, then I can manually abort tasks just as easily.

I tell you what. When David Anderson and/or Eric Korpela make 5.10.45 the minimum version that will get work from SETI instead of allowing 3.x and 4.x clients to continue to download work, then I\'ll consider it. The \"fear\" of not forcing a newer version is that people were behind NTLM proxies and they would be \"cut off\" and that those people MIGHT be sponsors and that they just absolutely could not \"cut off\" a sponsor, nor could they even ask any of the sponsors if they were having that problem or if they knew people who did have problems, nor could they contact a sponsor and ask them to update. Meanwhile, knowing all this, they did not do testing of the newest science applications there under those versions of BOINC.

That\'s what I call \"shameful\"...

So you mean if I start to crunch the WU before connect with the server, the WU will be completed without cancelling even when during the crunching, BOINC communicates with the server?

I think LHC@home does not use HR. I have primarily Linux hosts. I have not received LHC work for quite some time but if I recall correctly they were almost always grouped with Windows hosts so heterogenous redundancy seems to be in effect here.

That is the case. My line of thinking this moring was related to being involved in a Homogeneous Redunancy project that currently has a very severe problem with HR (Cosmology). I was in a bit of a rush, and have something else on my mind too (death of someone I grew up with), so I was a bit...terse (and perhaps tense) this morning...

Anyway, I noticed after posting that the status box listed the project as \"down\", but with work available. I didn\'t have the time to go back to clarify...

As for the newer versions of BOINC, I\'m still not convinced to try even 5.10.45, let alone 6.x.x. Many things are for Vista, which I don\'t have and don\'t plan to have anytime soon. As for the non-Vista stuff, most of that seems to be geared towards making the messages more palitable for \"non-technical\" users that might stumble across them. I think it also has some fix for NTLM proxies, but since I don\'t use one, that\'s not an issue I need fixed.

I just think its unfair for the people who finish the WU before the deadline but only a bit later than other people. Not all the computers are running and connecting to Internet and crunching LHC@Home 24 hours.

It wasnt very long ago that I joined this project, and I must admit that initially I felt the same way you do. It just seemed totally unfair that after waiting SO long for WUs to crunch, that when I finally get some, it seems that most get aborted before my clients barely get started on them.

I dont feel that way any longer. Why, you might ask? Well, not long ago, while I was in the process of composing a post for a new thread(not unlike the first in this thread), I had an epiphany. I suddenly realized that, it really shouldnt matter to me how may WUs I crunch and get credit for. The important thing is that the work just gets done period. It doesnt matter if my total credit is 1 or 1 million. For me, its not a contest, because the only "winner" should be the LHC and the scientists who have devoted their lives to the science.

By participating, I am offering my available resources to the project. If they are used, great! If they are not, thats OK too. Either way, I am still participating and feel like I am a part of something very important thats much bigger than me.

Leevis

Hi Leevis

I understand what you mean, as long as you can contribute something to the project, you are satisfied.

But please don't forget crunching needs electricity, and in Australia, the power stations burn coal(85%). LHC@home aborted the results, this means some CO2 was generated for nothing.

It's not sustainable.

Cheers

As for the sched_op_debug thing, I thought that it would still tell you the HR-related messages, but since I do not use the newer versions of BOINC, I could very well be mistaken.

To clarify, if there was work available for other hosts, you will be told that there was work available for other platforms in the response message from the scheduler.

There are tasks \"in progress\" right now, but no tasks needing to be sent out. This project is at least fairly reliable when it comes to sending correct messages to BOINC hosts when there is no work, unlike the major problems being encountered over at Cosmology.

<cc_config>
<log_flags>
<sched_op_debug>1</sched_op_debug>
</log_flags>
</cc_config>

What a childish staement, my little Bouncer !

I got several of those WUs recently. And since the machine that I've made available currently to LHC is a slower box, I wasn't one of the first to complete a WU. My machine checks in with LHC@HOME frequently, and so got the request from the server to cancel the processing of that WU.

So, even though some of the "extra" time wasn't used, the project was nice enough to let me know it didn't need it. That's better than letting me finish the whole WU and then not give me credit. It's a good balance.

Mark

That means that a 3 meter long steel rail cooled down to -250 Celsius would shrink 250x3/100 = 7.5 mm. How come that these magnets shrinks so much as 200 mm?

Well the magnets are not made of steel used for building rails. They are made of different materials like maybe Alnico & a combination of many other alloys - each having their own expansion coefficinets, so you see the difference.

I just did not realized that the difference between different metal was that big.

Which metal has the biggest temperature dependent change?

The whole apparatus works under extreme conditions. I\\\\\\\'ve read that the 3 m long magnets get shortened by 20 cm when supercooled. Imagine the mechanical problems. I think that a failure was almost inevitable.

Why does BOINC Manager not remember how I want it to appear whenever I call it up?

i still cant get any work :(

there are Results ready to send 13,308

so what should i do ??

THx for all replies.

Sure is better to speed-up the server-side; when 3 sucess results are returned, then the other work is not necessary.

But you can do this by sending out only 3 WU !!
(or 4 , for assurance, when one fails)

The short version:
I got work on the 13th, completed on the 13th.
Since then, I get nada.

But compared with how it used to be this will definitely speed up the process.

Next time I will set the manager of \\\"no more work\\\" from LHC, when I reached daily-quota, and contact the server when all WUs from LHC is done (not earlier !!!), so I can crunch all work which was send to me...

At most I think mmx.,but not sure.

i just signed up.. where do i download the software to LHC@home??

They haven\\\'t said why version 6 clients don\\\'t work but the most likely explanation is that the science application isn\\\'t compiled against the version 6 API.

hi i don\'t get any work from lhc@home but at einstein and seti @ home it works. why ?

I seem to have received no credit for the following WU:

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/workunit.php?wuid=2850021

It\'s not a lot of credit but could happen to a WU that runs for hours.

The only thing I could suggest would be to try upgrading to the latest 6.2.18 client. I don\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t think it\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s helped other people, but you never know.

Michael

Okay, I\\\\\\\'ve done this and am now running 6.2.18.

06.09.2008 12:30 BST -

Hi,
Further to yesterday\'s news item, we are recommending that you download/use the 5.10.X version of the BOINC client for your opertaing system. We hope to have this sorted as soon as possible but with LHC turn on in 4 days everyone is busy preparing for that.
Later days,
Neasan

It hasn\'t helped. I gave up on expecting this result to finish properly and decided that maybe the best thing to do was reset the specific computation/task. Unfortunately I messed up on this and ended up causing the task to end with a Compute Error (is this better than a result that hangs indefinitely? I don\'t know.

Dagorath --

Is it possible that the fourth and fifth crunchers are not continuously attached to the Internet? Perhaps they connect only once a day, or maybe even once every other day, because they utilize a dial-up connection.

I grant you, that the method being used may not be the most efficient, but it does work (most of the time).

Like you, I do not get all the WUs that I can handle

, and remember, I FREELY DONATE MY TIME TO THIS PROJECT (among others).

Last time I looked, there is nobody holding a revolver to my head, and forcing me to make time available on my machines. I am here BY MY OWN CHOICE. If I feel at any time, that my services are being mis-used, there\\\'s a button on the PROJECTS page of BOINC called DETACH ... I understand it works very well

Many thanks for the replies.

I have been doing distributed computing for many years,
be it for Seti@home, the Cliamte prediction project,
or stardust@home, and only very recently I started
with LHC@home, that\\\'s why my knowledge about it is rather
limited, so thank you again for the info.

Physics was always my passion, and I am more than happy
to contribute to one of the greatest scientific experiments
of our time, whether it is a simulation or real data,
and even if it is only needed once every 6 months! ;-)

Yeah, it would be nice if the max amount of WUs we get queued up at any time was less than it is now. I get the feeling there\'s a lot of slow computers out there chugging away at more WUs than they should have received. Not that their help isn\'t appreciated, but it would be more efficient with shorter queues as the faster PCs would be able to pick them up after finishing their first sets.

Just wondering about the size of the data files download and uploaded by BOINC.. I don\\\\\\\'t have an unlimited internet connection..

The program lets you limit bandwidth(speed), but not a data limit.

Any one able to give a weekly or monthly estimate??

Why is it, when the Server Status says:-
--‘Up, 4200 workunits to crunch’
And I hit the ‘Update’ button to get more tasks
The message reply says
--‘Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks’

This is really irritating

Mike

What does RAC under my mane mean?

Thanks :-)

The admins have estimated they need about £60k to do all the upgrades and enhancements they would like to, but they don\\\'t have the funding. (Given the cost of the LHC itself, that seems rather short-sighted of CERN, but that is the current situation.)

Maybe Mr. Anderson should try fixing his software before worrying about his other pet peeves?

This said, BOINC is 32-bit typically and in any case the client files are.

Is there any advantage in running an O/S in 64 Bit config with the workload in coming months,I run Ubuntu/Linux at moment in 32 Bit mode.
jon

Only my two linux machines running 6.2.14 are getting redundant WUs.
My two linux and four windows boxes running older clients haven't got any.

That, the stderr message, and considering 6.2.14 is a pre release version, a "development version that may not function propely" as it warns at start, seem to point to a core client problem. But it could be just coincidence.

I am switching those two machines to 6.2.15 today, when they crunch their last cached WUs. Let's see if that gets rid of the problem.

Am I the only one experiencing problems with the posting text box?
Words disappear or mess up and backlashes get added to single and double quotes when I hit the preview button. It's pretty awkward.

I got eight WUs labeled redundant and canceled.
This one
lived only 46 minutes, from creation to return time.

Stderr says: <core_client_version>6.2.14</core_client_version>, but I crunch for SETI and E@H too, without redundant WUs so far.

Any redundant WUs with the core client 6.2.15?

Like you both mention - the discussion of initial replication is one for another thread, but for a 'junior cruncher' like myself, it works ...

This is a feature which came with the new server code recently installed. Might or might not have been consciously activated by the admins.

Michael

I hope it was activated on purpose. I have long stood behind the project's decision to issue extra tasks to increase turnaround. However I do not like my machines doing unneeded work. This feature allows the extra initial tasks without the unneeded ones.

Maybe they just don't want rogue states to have access to the data.

What are they going to do, build their own black hole and suck the whole world into it?

Great pictures from the LHC

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html

Congratulations! You've won this week's "Post The Same Link A Day Later In A New Thread Award"

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/forum_thread.php?id=2817&nowrap=true#19860

;)

j/k

Al.

They've already said the average BOINCer doesn't have the bandwidth required to transfer the humongous data files that will be generated when the collider is running. Maybe more SixTrack work for us? Or some new app related to training the magnets? If not then why did they update the server software? So we can have a nicer forum to discuss why there's no work? How considerate of them.

The basic Seti work likewise generates large data file but they have managed to figure out how to "chunk" the data out so us lowly peons not running Crays can participate. This just sounds like an lame excuse.

Looks like lots of work coming up for us here then :)

Al.


I wouldn't bank on it!

'bout time I test something here.

EDIT: yup, as I expected, the security hole I used on previous posts in this thread to get into Neasan's account is still open.

Have a nice day. Keep your passwords safe! :)

Maybe a little taste of their own medicine will get us, the people who donate the CPU time that makes this project work, the respect we deserve.

Respect is earned, and not always deserved.

This is not a poke at you, but a comment on this process. You can have the well intentioned desire to improve this project, but ultimately this does fall into the hands of those runing the project. I am sure that they would love to upgrade the server systems to the latest and greatest, but may have other internal politics to deal with that cannot be discussed in this open forum.

And to quote a cliche "all good things take time". "Patience is a virtue".

You and others have expressed valid concerns, but I think that you should ease up a bit on the direct insults, but that's just my opinion.

guess you dont have much of a memory either.... have a nice day! you need to re read that last post.....wheres all those GREAT THINGS? I wanna see you help for a change instead of trashing everyones effort on the message boards!!

ya right back at ya,... boy, u'r to smart for me!!!!!

Now thats interesting.... you consider this project a charity.... personally I consider it an opportunity to help on a project that may help ALL mankind....

u'r worried about respect but u show NONE!

Dago........ for the last time......... ARE YOU GOING TO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION, OR ARE YOU GOING TO BE PART OF THE PROBLEM?

DUH... IS THAT A TOUGH ONE?

Seems to me everyone should "stand back" and let Alex and Neason do their job without interference,

and while constructive criticism is helpful it seems that all this arguing is counterproductive.

considering what they inherited I think they're doing a great job and yes the server needs to be updated. NOW I'm sure their painfully aware of that. I guess it comes down to this, who's gonna be part of the problem and who's gonna be part of the solution? if their not getting it done as fast as you think they should then give them a hand instead of creating more headaches for them.

Good thing time was spent on changing the look and feel of the web site, rather than fixing the servers.

They succeeded at making the upgrade even harder; now they have to merge the new look changes with the thousand changes from the official code. Seriously, that was totally the wrong order.

I tell you what I'll do my job and you do yours mmm'kay?

The quota has been altered. We've been talking to the scientists about the workflow and at the moment they are unsure whether it will be more constant when we know you'll know

but in fact, scientists could use the results at the moment the quorum is okay...

so why you don't get your own project instead?

Good point but having 5 crunchers working on WU A when quorum = 3 means WU B gets delayed (because 2 of those 5 crunchers could be working on WU B rather than A).

You could argue that replicating anything more than the quorum is causing a "delay" in work being done, but you have to keep in mind that the insertion into the science database is the ultimate goal, and it may or may not be delayed by more replication.

The fact that LHC units are so short at this point in time and that nobody is holding a large cache makes it difficult to give you a good example of what can happen if you get a reissue.

To give you a better idea of what can happen, take a look at this example from Einstein numerous reissues.

As for task A and task B waiting, the bigger cause of any "wait" right now is the forced low quota...

Bear in mind that it may need a server upgrade, and folks like me, that use BOINC 5.8.16, would not process the server-side requests due to the support for it was added in BOINC 5.8.17 (I believe). I know 5.8.16 doesn't support it...

you simply don't like my posts and you don't like them because it means less WUs.

I cut out all the noise and boiled it down to this. The "you" mentioned above is to be taken in general, not specific, as your words were aimed at those who disagree with you...

I think you can tell that I don't totally disagree with you. At least I hope you can tell that... Having said that, in my opinion, you are spamming multiple threads and what you're doing does border on hijacking the thread.

I've laid out some reasons why the additional replication can help speed the process up. Neasan has said that they will revisit the issue with the project scientists. Alex and Neasan are only the administrators of the servers. They have to abide by what the project scientists want.

Anybody who is unhappy with my posts is welcome to either ignore me or kiss my ass. The issue, C0M you insufferable twit,

Rules:
No messages whose only intention is to annoy or antagonize other people.
No messages that are deliberately hostile or insulting.

Dagorath and Fat Loss 4 Idiots (and anyone else) you are volunteers here and as such are free to take your computers elsewhere. If you wish to detach that is fine but by staying attached you're implicitly agreeing to do things our way. You have both made your points and we have not just ignored them but we have set IR to 5 and are leaving it as such.

If you do detach I will not delete your credit, if you read the post you will see that I was pointing out that if you stayed attached and willing to do the work but continued to bitch, moan and whine I would consider taking the drastic step of banning you and deleting credit.

Also the predictor@home thing was a bit much don't you think? I've let you have your say and only as a last resort have I threatened to do anything drastic.

Anybody who is unhappy with my posts is welcome to either ignore me or kiss my ass. The issue, C0M you insufferable twit, is primarily to save CPU cycles and secondarily to save electricity, if you would care to read the thread (though I doubt reading is one of your basic skills.

As for spam, the definition of spam is invariably linked to unsolicited messages. You numbskulls fail to realise ALL the messages here are unsolicited therefore your own drivel is spam too, by your definition. The reason you asses trot out the spam word is that you simply don't like my posts and you don't like them because it means less WUs.

Wow, sounds like schoolyard, i didn't expect to hear something like that here, its even worser than one of our Collaboration Meetings.(Yes, i am a particle physicist. And i doubt you really know what this project wants to accomplish.)
By the way, i had to look up some of these nice/nasty words, cause thats not the language i am used to.

It is my mPU time to waste. I am here because I choose to be. I hope the LHC proves the Standard Model to be wrong, but if I'm wrong that would be OK too.

Which pretty much proves they don't need the results back ultra-fast (the argument some people were using to justify IR=5 in spite of the fact IR=5 only slows things down).

<snip>

Well, if your objective is do unnecessary work then you can be happy. The fact is the project could be getting the same results (a quorum of 3) with 40% less work. Nobody should be happy about that.

What does indeed get slowed down is archiving the completed workunits. The workunit as a whole must remain so long as there is one resultID that hasn't been turned back in and that has not passed the deadline for the result.

From what I've been able to read (and experience), this project is much more sensitive to floating point math differences than others. I had a couple of results that were declared invalid just over this past week. In both cases I was either first or second to report a completed result. If the replication had been at 3 and quorum at 3, then there would've been at least one more replication made. That replication would have the same amount of time to be returned as the initial replication, but it causes the workunit as a whole to be waiting longer to be stored in the Master Science Database than perhaps a replication of 5, all with the same deadline, would have.

To make the determination you're making that 5 is "wasteful", you really need to know the exact error rates on the first replication. I don't think someone outside of the project team can know that for a fact...

I think the best thing to do is to implement the server-side aborts, like what SETI did, but leave the replication at 5.

Other than the fact that some WU's may get crunched 2 more times than needed (with credit granted), I'm not sure where this is causing harm. Sure you're using electricity, but it's up to the project.

People have been complaining about "lack of work" here for years, and to cut IR from 5 to 3 means that there's 40% less work right off the bat.

Right now, today, LHC, has taken some measures to keep work in the pipeline longer - the 2/day/cpu, the 1h delay, etc. with the press release and all.

I think we should all just step back and be happy that there has been a flow of work (be it 2/day) for the longest time I've seen in years.

If you don't like the way the project is being managed, speak with your feet and crunch for another project.

With BOINC 5.10 it should be possible to abort the already send workunits when three canocial results are back!?

My 2 cents worth...

1: I doubt that the engineers assembling this beast really wait much longer, if at all with the IR set to 5 rather then 3. Why? Because we have more hungry systems then work to do. The work gets done much faster then the "due by" date. I'm sure they are not just "sitting around" waiting for us to get done; I'm sure they have scheduled work as needed and don't just wait for us. [Yes I know you think that we waste 40% that could be used by other projects - see point #4]

2: We work for "them", in this case being LHC@home. If "they" wanted to set the IR to what ever, then let them set it. Yes voice your opinion, but don't keep hammering it when you don't get your way.

3: From my understanding the internal and international coordination efforts probably totally swamp this piddly 3 vs 5 IR issue. You need to keep some perspective.

4: Act locally. If you are really that concerned with efficiency and waste what are YOU doing about it? Are you using solar/battery power to run your systems? Have you gotten rid of all other applications on your systems and removed any non essential tasks so that back ground task switching does not use CPU time? Are your running RAID 5 or 10 to speed disk access? Do you have enough real memory so that you never swap out to disk? Are you using Dual Quad CPU's? Are your systems dedicated? Have you installed a virus/spam gateway device (like IronPort)and removed antivirus/antispam software from your systems that don't access the internet except for BOINC?

IR = 5

That is the decision that has been made by the project, with input from all sides

:) thanks Dagorath ;) never say die, LOL.
Regards
Masud.

Already I hear folks saying like "How dare you threaten/coerce this project?" My response to that is... "How dare these project admins waste precious donated resources when it would take only a few minutes to correct the problem."

You can't get your way, so you throw a tantrum and resort to blackmail? Wow - that's incredibly lame. Congratulations on just flushing any credibility you had on these boards right down the shi**er. You've belittled yourself and any point you may have hoped to make. Good work. I actually thought your arguments had some degree of sense to them, although I find your level of emotional commitment to the subject more than a little disturbing. But now, this is just sad. Turning to tactics like this doesn't make you powerful, or any more of a man. It makes you a weasel and a crybaby. And yes, you can take those as insults if you like. You've earned them.

Aye, it will make the admins unhappy. But if crunchers don't hammer the server they won't get work and they'll be unhappy. And if only a few crunchers get work (like now) then LHC will have to have IR=5 and then I will be unhappy. It's better for admins to be unhappy than crunchers be unhappy.

Users unhappy -> users quitting the project -> less users asking for work -> more work for the ones who stay. But by telling everybody how to hammer the server, it would be the same as if nobody did it, with the difference that server overload may make it even more difficult to get work.

Only the server admins can. It's server-side parameters.

Exactly. Server side.

I think the admins should set min_sendwork_interval to an insane value like 3600 to make your stupid "solution" stop working.

can anyone say "hammer the server"?

I can say it; but it's a very bad idea.

Can anyone tweak the parameters mentioned in this thread.

Only the server admins can. It's server-side parameters.

Commands:
 --get_state
 --get_results
 --get_file_transfers
 --get_project_status
 --get_simple_gui_info
 --get_disk_usage
 --result url result_name op
   op = suspend | resume | abort | graphics_window
 --project url op
   op = reset | detach | update | suspend | resum
 --project_attach url auth
 --file_transfer url filename op
   op = retry | abort
 --set_run_mode mode duration
   mode = always | auto | never
 --set_network_mode mode duration
 --get_proxy_settings
 --set_proxy_settings
 --get_messages seqno
 --get_host_info
 --acct_mgr_rpc url name password
 --run_benchmarks
 --get_screensaver_mode
 --set_screensaver_mode on|off blank_time [deskto
 --get_project_config url
 --get_project_config_poll
 --lookup_account url email passwd
 --create_account url email passwd name
 --read_global_prefs_override
 --read_cc_config
 --network_available
 --get_cc_status
 --set_debts URL1 std1 ltd1 [URL2 std2 ltd2 ...]
 --quit

There are two quotas:
1) The amount of WUs you can download at a time
2) The number of WUs you can download for each CPU

I'll clarify that... There are four parameters that can be tweaked:
1a. The maximum amount of WUs you can download on a single scheduler request. (max_wus_to_send)
1b. The minimum amount of time you must wait between requests. (min_sendwork_interval)
2. The maximum amount of WUs you can download for each computer *per day*. The counter to check for this quota is reset (for that host) every 24 hours. (daily_result_quota)
3. The maximum amount of WUs a computer can have on its cache at a time (max_wus_in_progress; not supported by your ANCIENT server code).

A high min_sendwork_interval and low max_wus_to_send would improve things quite a bit. But the real solution is max_wus_in_progress. That would really avoid hosts with a hundred vs hosts with nothing.

Girls, girls! Please!

Has everyone quite finished telling the guys actually planning and running this project how to do their jobs?

Let it ride, will you?

and here we have it: Flame Fest 2007 Part II

I sincerely hope your pointless e-arguments inflate your e-ego to the point where you feel better about yourself in the real world. At least something good will come of this nonsense.

The initial studies when the IR was decieded upon showed an almost aysomatic(sp?) curve in turnaround time when increasing the IR. The point of diminishing returns was between 5 and 6 copies for a quorum of 3, so 5 was chosen. Once the design and testing phase of the collider is finished a different IR will most likely be desireable, until then the reasons for this decision are still valid.

Basically that means any work with the sixtrack application should continue to have the same IR and quorum. Work with other applications will most likely have different needs and therefore different IR and quorum.

I've also added four machines to this project. If you’re still upset about wasting time, feel free to leave the project as you've mentioned. I'll pick up your slack.

I can always tell when I am dealing with someone of lesser intelligence when they resort to overworked cliches like the above. You have demonstrated your ability to repeat rote and very little creativity or ability to analyse the situation and generate new ideas unfetered by dogma. Now take your hackneyed "I can cover for you" attitude and ram it up your nose.

After re-reading what I said, I'll admit that was a stupid comment on my part. And reading your reply, I'd have to say our intelligence about the same. <g>

I agree the setting IR 5 to can be a waste, but I see my questions haven't been answered, lets try again.

Sometimes the results don't match what then? What if a host machine crashes and the work is lost?

So, with IR set to 3, what happens? Does a new batch have to be created for the missing/corruped work? How long does this take (identifiying what work is missing/corrupted, creating the new batch, waiting for the work to get completed, and hoping that runs 100% error free)? Maybe 4 would be better?

Free Ads said

Why waste computing time? If you only need a quorum of 3 why an initial replication of 5???

... if this project continues to waste resources that other (just as deserving projects) could have used to actually accomplish something then I will donate my humble resources to them.

Dagorath said

No, it does NOT give a safety margin. If you think it does then you obviously are not aware of how the quorum works. If the first 3 results match then they declare the canonical result. They do not wait for the 2 remaining results to return to see if they match with the canonical result. So how can you possibly say 5 provides a safety margin? Man, THINK about it.

If this were a perfect world, I could see your argument. But it's not. Sometimes the results don't match what then? What if a host machine crashes and the work is lost? And the one I've experienced a few times, upgrade BOINC and it wipes out the work? (Again, if this were a perfect world, I would ALWAYS back up the BOINC folder before upgrading) Now you have to reissue the missing work, and if I remember correctly, that won't happen until the batch is complete. Now the scientists have to wait, wasting time.

Let’s also not forget that this project has just moved to a new home with new admins. I think I read somewhere that this is not a typical BOINC installation. I'm sure time is needed to figure it out, a few jobs will need to be run to make sure things are running correctly.

I've also added four machines to this project. If you’re still upset about wasting time, feel free to leave the project as you've mentioned. I'll pick up your slack.

How's your blood pressure? Not too high, I hope.

I am not persuaded by arguments that resort to yelling and name calling.

If you want to be too literal:

"At least three" might be construed to mean "not less than three", but it does not mean "not more than three".

So five is OK, gives a saftey margin, provides more work from a limited supply, ensures that a quorum is met sooner rather than later and allows for evaluation of the possible AMD not equal to Intel issue.

The issue of wasting resources can be carried to extremes. If I wanted to be a dictator I might order that only recent AMD CPUs and C2Ds and C2Qs be used in a project because all the others are wasteful of resources due to operating inefficiency. That's not going to happen but it might be a reason for an individual to voluntarily retire their own old computer.

I am assuming that one day in the not too distant future there will be a steady supply of LHC work or that the runs will become so big (or hosts so few) they won't be gobbled up in a few hours.

While I haven't been with the project that long I don't remember this being true in the past and I wouldn't hold my breath that it will ever be true.

Your observation is absolutely true.

Not efficient? Probably true.

Why we do it the way we're doing it? Probably easier to implement.

Are you saying that it's normal for you to doubt? (A deliberate misconstruction by me. I'm just teasing you!)

I think there is some concern that the AMD results don't match or might not match the Intel results. That's still a valid reason to get as many WUs run that have both AMD and Intel results represented for a single WU.

...why make other work wait while you waste time crunching results that don't need to be crunched?

Even with the initial replication of 5, I don't see ANY work waiting on the servers here since it all gets distributed so fast, or are you referring to the work on your host? Sure somebody's host will be taking time away from some other project. Where are you trying to optimize useful results : work done? Considering only LHC, and all of it's odd work availability, it's OK to have a higher replication to reach quorum faster since it is unknown how fast certain hosts will be, and there is FAR more hosts available than there is work. Taking a step back and looking at all projects, LHC could be seen as (not in my opinion) a "resource hog" but that is what LHC admins/scientists have decided what they need in order to complete their task, which is to build a damn sweet machine. Taking a step in and looking at a single host, a result that is not needed for quorum would be wasted effort and redundant. Which is exactly why the new feature that Scarecrow mentioned came to fruition. Draw your line and take your stance.

If you feel this project is such a waste of your time, there are other projects that you apparently don't have issues with. Why not just stick with those. That is normally what a person does if they don't like something, they move to something else.

I'm looking at the tasks this way: There have been multiple migration issues and the configs need to be tested. So if I am just running results to help with testing the hardware, I am fine with it. The high number of replicated tasks could easily be to check for patterns of errors.

Einstein can afford this kind of thing occasionally, LHC can't.

Thanks for the opinion but I'll wait for LHC to confirm that statement before I believe it.

LHC has people waiting on the results to get physical work done (aligning the magnets). Einstein does not. Since LHC has real world deadlines, LHC has a problem with maximum turn around time for the WUs, therefore a higher initial replication is required. Einstein and S@H on the other hand are trying to get through a huge pile of work, and that leads to an initial replication to match the minimum quorum.

This is documented in earlier threads if you care to go looking (try a couple of years ago).

I don't care what you think Dagorath.

As an example I give you a wu from Einstein

Einstein unit

basically the wu was initially issued on 8th June but did not reach quorum until 27th July !! enought said?

The project admins/scientist are the only people who have the whole picture, we who contribute our resourses can only trust that they are choosing the correct parameters. Thats not to say we cannot suggest what we think is better.

Einstein can afford this kind of thing occasionally, LHC can't.

:-)welcome back Dagorath. we were computing the adjustments of the magnets for the machine at CERN. i think the power required to warm it up will be far more then what we spend on crunching extra WU's. keep the safety factor in mind.
Regards
Masud.

Why waste computing time? If you only need a quorum of 3 why an initial replication of 5???

There's a mathematical reason that there's 5 sent out instead of 4.
20-25% of the crunching instances have errors. (I looked at the most recent work units that MY pc crunched, and there were 5 out of 27 client errors reported by all pc's crunching)
With that error rate, a replication of 4 ends up with the server having to resend out work units again after the deadline has passed for 20% of the work units.

For a 20% error rate:
1000 work units, will need to have 200 work units redone. 200 reworked units will fail again, resulting in another 40 to be redone, those 40 will have 8 that needs to be redone, and another 8 will be redone.
This results in having to wait 3 iterations for all results to come in.

If you have a replication of 5.
1000 work units will need to have 70 redone. Those 70 will need 10 redone, and those 10 may need 1 redone.

It's when you have a 25% error rate, that having a replication of 4 ends up in more work than an initial replicaton of 5.

Crunching for LHC means that the Intel PC's don't always agree with the AMD PC's, so you will always see a higher redo rate than Seti (which is just a fast fourier filter performed on data which is not sensitive to floating point errors in the the last precision digit)

Then again, some people's computers just suck: http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/results.php?hostid=88058

Was just wondering, at cern the big particle thingy (cant remember the name of it at the moment) should be up and running by th end of this year. Once it is running, will we get lots of work?

k00k whiner

Ooops!

My apologies to Dag (and the kcuf wits, who can reasonably feel insulted by me).

Alex, I rarely do this, so please know that I do so out of necessity

This project has had 5 months to transition the server and get things running.

I call BS, and you sir - smell of it!

On an afternote, there would be nothing to please me more than for you to prove me wrong. I dare you. Double dare you!

Course.. that would mean we would get the stats exporting problem fixed... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! - that'll happen.

Aaron, I rarely do this, so please know that I do so out of necessity

You are a DH

- The necessity here is that the minus ratings and red x's aren't working.

... when I find something out it solves 1 problem but reveals 2 more...

There would be no point is sending WUs if nothing has changed for the results would only prove that the same bugs/faults are still present. I therefore assume they altered some code and that they sent the WUs to test the new code. If the new code works then they've made progress. If it does not work then it's still progress in the sense they will learn what does not work and will be steered in a new direction.

Has the app version changed then? (I honestly don't know, my host hasn't picked up any WUs from the last few batches - I don't have it on 24x7) In the past new batches (as I understand it) have been with the same code using different parameters.
Since the initial Sixtrack runs were finished some time ago, I guess that this flurry of new WU batches is either related to the problems LHC had a couple of weeks ago, or is part of testing by the new Admins to see that they have the new server set-up etc. working. I could be wrong of course, (and the work could be for a different reason) but it would be nice to know...

The Admins have specifically stated that they aren't working on this project even remotely full-time. That is the reality.

The fact they sent out a few thousand WUs last week is proof something is happening behind the scenes. I call it progress.

I don't. Sporadic unannounced batches of WUs has been the nature of this project for several months. Nothing has changed, so where is the progress?

For example, continuous, neurotic whining about the lack of WUs from lhc just begs the response I gave a few posts up. It's beyond passion, beyond hyper-passion, it's bloody sick and to not call it so does a disservice because they get the impression their behavior is normal and healthy.

Although I'd rather tend to take it with humor, this isn't simple whining you're witnessing.

People came here to support an Idea and since more than a year now, find the Project claiming be active, but in reality continue to find it dead as a doornail.
Visible Progress is zero, updates (if any) come in at a pace that would disgrace any freeware SourceForge Developer.

It's all about expectation, and if people are told to "hang in there", that's what they'll simply do (at least most of them). That's not "bloody sick", it's what you get from some of the most dedicated, best bunch of people any Distributed Project can wish for.

Had they closed down and just said :
We don't expect to have this baby up & running before mid-2007...
...folks would have accepted it (no other choice anyway) and checked in periodically and waited for the projected timeframe.

What is wrong here is that this Project is hanging inbetween and going nowhere, for more than a year now.
Noone made the decision to shut it off, yet noone made the decision to put an appropriate effort to affect the other either.

That's basically what ticks people off, at least the few that remained here to date.

Although someone recently called that "the best proof for a successful BOINC Project", I'd call it a "DC Community Test : how long can a BOINC Project last without any maintenance or progress made"
I'm surprised it didn't permanently go offline at some point e.g. after a power outage by now, because Staff forgot it was still there.

Personally, I don't come here to expect anything running anymore, it's just out of curiosity and time to spend to read through a few Forum threads a week.

By by !

Martin

Dagorath, I like you.

But you're the biggest ass wipe in the lhc forums. Do you always drink a few cocktails before posting? Next time try posting sober. Works for me. - - ;)

There's no harm in being hyper-passionate about a project.

I hope your friend is including in his costs all the gas he's burning running his route. That's gotta be a significant impact againt his profits ...

I disabled work requests on this project.
I don't like the idea that somebody, sometimes throws me peanuts.

What's wrong with peanuts? :-)

Well, in that case, they could work around the problem by adding a pressure relief valve to their plumbing to reduce pressure load.

3 possible reasons why that's a bad idea:
- You end up spraying Helium into a confined space (tunnel) giving an asphysiation risk
- Spraying very cold Helium all round electrical equipment is a bad idea
- Helium's in short supply and getting darn expensive

As I implied before, the whole LHC is _very_ complex, and the specific magnet flaw is only part of the problem exposed here...

Henry

(and why do we have to have this idiot BBCode thing that can't manage simple lists?)

• you would pipe helium escaping a relief valve away from the confined space
  
• then no danger with electrical equipment
  
• ok, who's hoarding all the helium?
  

Can we get some more computer experts in

What's the use of a 64-bit BOINC-Client?!?
BOINC does not do any calculation, so there's no other use in optimising it than cheating.

Well, in that case, they could work around the problem by adding a pressure relief valve to their plumbing to reduce pressure load.

Yeeesh! Beverley Hillbillys proves that.

Yeeesh! You learn about the world from TeleVision? or Hollywood? That speaks volumes.

And how do you deduce that hill-folk speak that way?

And how do you deduce that hill-folk speak that way?

Maybe my "grand scheme of things" is to grand, or possibly, inapplicable. But for better or worse, that's how I perceive the World.

There may be some movement on this issue at Predictor.
According to the QMC Forum, Mr. Braun has frozen the account.

Grrr I was really out of it when I posted that last. My thoughts on the matter are the same, but here is the real text from that post. The mistakes I put in the last post are fair evidence of why the mob should not go on a rampage before doing some fact checking.

<quote>This thread is closed. Please do not create a new one.

Since this thread was first created I have deleted two other threads incorrectly accusing volunteers of cheating.

If someone has installed the boinc client on machines that they do not have permission to that is wrong. I have no way of knowing if this has or hasn't happened. Just because "some guy" posted something on the internet is not good enough reason to take any action against anyone.

dlb</quote>

The major complaints I keep seeing are "I started a new thread discussing Wate and it was deleted". Not surprising since they asked that people treat the problem as handled & get on with their lives.

As for false accusations, their final statement says it well; "Just because "some guy" posted something on the internet is not good enough reason to take any action against anyone"

One of those banned said he had 7 new threads deleted ... maybe the Admins just got tired of swatting flies and put up screens,

If you read the final message in the thread linked to, you will find that the Admins there banned 2 people for posting false accusations. They also state that where there is no evidence they cannot assume a breaking of the rules. That seems to be fair enough.

I haven't looked at their message board rules, but if there is mention of posting false or unsupported info that harms, or is intended to harm. another user, that would justify the 2 banishments mentioned.

If Admins there declared the matter closed and asked that new threads beating this dead horse not be created, then it would be well within their rights to delete threads as they appear, again haven't looked for this, but they have stated that they are dealing with the person who has been proven to have violated their rules and from the Admin's comments & Pscheofer's complaint they are containing the issue in a manner they deem best.

What about that fried rice receipt?

Well, it's "recipe" not "receipt", and I truly appreciate that you are so candid about language skills. This thread is a great place to learn English, and I will be happy to help. Be prepared to have someone say something negative about that; ignore them.

As for the fried rice recipe, I'm not sure what Quantum was thinking but I have one of my own.

Spam Fried Rice
1. Put a very small amount of cooking oil in a wok or large frying pan.
2. Heat oil to medium-high temperature.
3. Add 4 to 6 ounces of thinly sliced or diced Spam (1/2 inch or less.)
4. Cook Spam until light brown or slightly crispy.
5. Add previously steamed white rice and mix until evenly coated with oil.
6. Add steamed green peas, corn, diced carrots, and/or other steamed vegetables.
7. Mix and turn for about 5 to 10 minutes, or until rice begins to clump.

Yum.

and as the author of BOINCprog, I'm satisfied that I've given back to the community sufficiently to be forgiven for the occasional whinge or lapse in judgment.

You insult me by calling me a troll. You can't defeat the arguments with logic so you launch a personal attack. You broke the rules.

ALL your damned posts are personal attacks

YOU are breaking the rules, and basically shouting asking for a ban.

I've seen this but that is not an answer of my question. Sorry!
What have Intel and AMD to do with claimed credits? I only know there are differences between Windows and Linux in claiming credit.

I honestly do believe you to be trolling. It is not intended to be an insult, but you should feel free to take it as such.

Odd, the k00k whiners who masquerade their ridiculous little yearnings

Troll. Go away. 0 credits, 0 RAC, 0 credibility.

I will not lose a moment of sleep fretting over the fact I have failed to endear myself to selfish imbeciles.

If you would refrain from personal attack and insults, you might have SOME credibility. As it is, you have none. Troll.

As for profanity, if you don't like words like crap then don't write crap

Crap wasn't the word to which I was referring. It just happened to be the one I quoted. Have a splendiferous day, troll.

You post that crap as if you're the only one in this forum who has figured that out.

You, sir, have a gift for not endearing yourself to others. You would also do well to skip the profanity.

"Helpless because I can't crunch them", I haven't heard anything so ridiculous for a long time.

Rules:
# No messages whose only intention is to annoy or antagonize other people.
# No messages that are deliberately hostile or insulting.

Was that comment really needed?

He's expressing an OPINION, and it's in fact the most accurate description of the problem I have seen.

it's not fair credit-wise.

Imagine this: the project has a thousand hosts, and sends a thousand workunits, which are grabbed by 10 hosts (a hundred each). That's wasted computing power. They would get it done a hundred times faster if it was one WU per host. It's useless to have so many hosts attached if only a few will have work at a time. Of course, this "hundred times faster" is an exaggeration, I don't know what are the actual numbers (average number of units per host when work is sent).

Can Linux run underneath a full-fledged GUI... somewhat the way DOS used to run underneath Windows and Solaris can, but doesn't necessarily need to, run underneath Java Desktop?

Also, does BOINCview run well on Wine? What about KBoincSpy?

Finally (hope I'm not annoying you all) is openSUSE/KDE something that runs with Linux or instead of Linux? (Hey, don't roll your eyes like that!)

I'm thinking of converting one of my Windows boxes to a Linux box, so any helpful comments would be much appreciated.

This will benefit the project because you won't have a single host sitting on hundreds of WUs that won't finish within a month

That is what I don't find to be "fair", it is NOT fair to the project.

I am not bothered by the fact that I don't have any LHC WUs to crunch. I am bothered by the fact that there are WUs to crunch and I feel helpless because I can't crunch them.

I can't believe that you would INNOCENTLY sit there and tell me that my computers need to be limited so that your *single* computer can get it's 3 alotted work units...

Difference of opinion I guess, but I would like to think that you could find a project you like enough to actually give them something worthwhile.