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Number crunching :
Fairer distribuiton of work(Flame Fest 2007)
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 caspr Send message Joined: 26 Apr 06 Posts: 89 Credit: 309,235 RAC: 0 |
Thats ok.... I crunch for enough other projects to keep my boxes busy(10)but I believe in the science and I'd just like to have a fair chance to make a differance! by the way.... I also crunch for nanohive and it seems that Brian is doing the best he can to stabilize things over there. When credits were low and we all kept crunchin he gave us some kinda retro credit,.... and then as he got a better handle on it we started LOSEING cridits!( WAAAAAAA!) so it's not that he's not trying to conform, it's just gonna take a little while to normalize to the rest of the boinc system and put us all on even ground. By the way... I run 3 boxes all on 5.8.8 have a nice day! A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory  |
Steve Cressman Send message Joined: 28 Sep 04 Posts: 47 Credit: 6,394 RAC: 0 |
I will never understand why anybody would morally degrade themselves by cheating to get credits that have no real world value. I would guess that these are the same type of people that would cheat at solitaire. Steve 98SE XP2500+ @ 2.1 GHz Boinc v5.8.8  
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Send message Joined: 14 Jul 05 Posts: 60 Credit: 140,661 RAC: 0 |
ok... DoctorNow.. How do you expect to have credibility when you have the kind of credit you have spread over 40 projects? Is that a joke? Not being flamatory, I simply cannot understand how you feel you have contributed *anything* to any one of your projects, even though your total contribution is at least noteworthy. 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. |
FalconFly Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 121 Credit: 592,214 RAC: 0 |
I wouldn't make such a harsh statement looking at the numbers. While it certainly looks somewhat overstretched (35 Projects), it still leaves an average 2850 Credits per Project... Nothing big indeed but still good enough for an initial, basic Evaluation IMHO - therefor I do believe he's got a good Idea of what he's talking about, opinions may differ of course. Additionally, I kinda like the Spirit. Share what you have among many projects, be it a whole fleet or just a single Computer... Scientific Network : 45000 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB 
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Send message Joined: 29 Dec 06 Posts: 100 Credit: 184,937 RAC: 0 |
@Aaron Finney Whooo! The love is flying!! I myself participate in 17 projects, but lhc@home is my Most-True Love, and gets the One Fat resource share number. Can't we all just get along? I hope not! Fire!! Heh-heh, yeah, FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! Heh, fire's cool.... _______ "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" . . . . . . . - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake . . . .  
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Send message Joined: 7 Oct 06 Posts: 114 Credit: 23,192 RAC: 0 |
:-) same here, love all the projects and try to keep the stats equal. makes a nice graph;-) :-) any way they have done some thing to BOINC 5.8.11, wont, any more, get to many tasks. :-) not Seinfield but Raymond might as well be cute 8-) Regards Masud. 
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Send message Joined: 29 Dec 06 Posts: 100 Credit: 184,937 RAC: 0 |
:-) any way they have done some thing to BOINC 5.8.11, wont, any more, get to many tasks. [off subject] There are some conspicuous problems with BOINC 5.8.11 (at least for Windows.) I was running BOINC 5.6 Beta for a long time - it was pretty cool. Then I installed 5.8.11 "stable"; it caused WUs to crash on both my boxes (for a variety of reasons.) Now I'm using BOINC 5.8.15 Beta, and it seems to work fine. Incidentally, there were some neat features in BOINC 5.6.x that are missing from BOINC 5.8.x --- *pout* _______ "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" . . . . . . . - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake . . . .
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DoctorNow Send message Joined: 17 Sep 04 Posts: 19 Credit: 308,023 RAC: 0  
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ok... DoctorNow.. @ Aaron Finney: Readed that by accident now. Well, I'm not posting much on most of the projects, but I still read most of the threads on that ones who interests me the most. LHC is one of my favorite (see sig) and I'm reading here from time to time to being up to date, although I'm not posting that much here. But that's no reason to say to me I would have nothing to say here. And deciding for credibility on what you crunched for the projects or by the amount of posts is not really professional in my opinion. I love BOINCing and crunching and because of that I'm participating in all projects, although I only have one computer (this will change soon btw and then I can crunch more ;-)). And last but not least I have a special project where I do post the most: RenderFarm. I hope you understand MY SPIRIT of BOINCing now a bit better ;-) Life is Science, and Science rules. To the universe and beyond Proud member of BOINC@Heidelberg My BOINC-Stats |
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Send message Joined: 14 Jul 05 Posts: 60 Credit: 140,661 RAC: 0 |
You're posting in a thread about how people are supposed to be getting 'their fair share' of credits out of the project. I'm sorry, but I don't think you are capable of quantifying a fair 'need' for work from *any* project, when you have one computer almost equally attached to 40 of them. If you're not getting your 'fair share' then get another computer and attach to less projects. 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 whenever it manages to find LHC in the other 35+ projects you have the poor thing attached to. Regardless, - It's not about fairer distribution of work. If you don't get work, TOO BAD. It's not about who gets work, it's about how fast that work gets turned around to the project and we all need to be a little less greedy and think about what's important here - Getting the work back to the server as quick as possible. - NOT making sure everyone gets 3.654 workunits each time(and nothing more, nothing less). That causes so many problems on so many levels.. I don't know where to begin. Leave the system AS-IS. The new admin's have WAY too many things to do as it is. |
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Send message Joined: 22 Sep 05 Posts: 21 Credit: 6,350,753 RAC: 0 
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There are a lot of projects out there and I've decided to concentrate on 8 of them over 5 machines. Now that predictor has work and with the occasional boincsimap and lhc, sometimes I think I've over extended myself and I'm relieved when those projects are taking a break (yes I could suspend or detach but...). I have to strongly agree with the fact that the turnaround is the most important point, not to see how long you can grow your sig (IMHO). People have different resource capabilities and just because I'm attached to lhc today, doesn't mean I'll be attached next week when there's work available. There are also people that stop boinc'g for extended periods before coming back or quit although. There are people (I'm assuming) that lose their email address (change ISPs, etc.) and have to abandon a username and create a new one. The reason for the comments are think of what it would administratively take to "fairly" distribute the work. But, then again turnaround is the most important point on these projects. William 
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Send message Joined: 29 Dec 06 Posts: 100 Credit: 184,937 RAC: 0 |
...I hope you understand MY SPIRIT of BOINCing now a bit better ;-)...I don't know where to begin. Leave the system AS-IS. The new admin's have WAY too many things to do as it is. For someone who doesn't know where to begin, you sure blow a lot a steam. Heh-heh. On the other hand, you're right about the admins not having time to deal with this issue. But remember that we're just talking here - throwing ideas around. Maybe someday in the distant future these ideas will bring positive change in work distribution; maybe not. _______ "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" . . . . . . . - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake . . . .
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 Send message Joined: 25 Feb 07 Posts: 11 Credit: 7,956 RAC: 0 |
OK, I am a newbie at LHC. Yet, I must admit to being thoroughly perplexed by this obsession with “fair†distribution. I just let BOINC poll for work and forget it. If work is assigned, wonderful. I have no plans to open a vein if there is no work available today, tomorrow, or even for the next several months. There are other projects, and mountains of numbers in need of crunching. Those clamoring for “fairness†appear more interested in self-gratification than science. My grandchildren regularly ask for change to purchase an ice cream at the corner store. Sometimes I have some. Most times I do not. While they might express mild disappointment, they do not demand I alter my routine so there will always be coins available. They understand the true meaning of fairness However, I do find the suggestion for placing limits on distribution of WUs intriguing. Perhaps I can convince the local casino to implement such a scheme. No other gamer at the roulette table, having once won, could be paid until my number came up on the wheel. |
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Send message Joined: 4 Oct 06 Posts: 38 Credit: 24,908 RAC: 0 |
OK, I am a newbie at LHC. Yet, I must admit to being thoroughly perplexed by this obsession with “fair†distribution. I just let BOINC poll for work and forget it. If work is assigned, wonderful. I have no plans to open a vein if there is no work available today, tomorrow, or even for the next several months. There are other projects, and mountains of numbers in need of crunching. Please don't take any offense to my comments since none was intended. Good day, and welcome to the project! [Disclaimer]I had fun thinking about this analogy, ask my wife, I like analogies and sometimes they get pretty far out there[/Disclaimer] I think you may be a bit misguided on what is happening. To relate to your grandchildren/ice cream scenario: Let's say you have 7 grandkids, and you come across $5 and each ice cream costs $1. How do you distribute it? What is happening: The first child that asks you for money gets it all. But only spends $1 today, $1 next week, and so on... You have an agreement with your source of $5 (I won't ask what that is... :) ) that you will not get any money to distribute to your grandkids until the previous distribution is spent. That one child will happily get an ice cream every week for 5 weeks and the other six kids get none. The next $5 comes around and the first child to ask you for money (randomly different from the previous distribution) gets it all... and so on. I would like you to convince me (or any child) that this scenario is "fair" What would be "fair": The first child that asks you for money gets $1 and the next kid gets $1, etc. but now only 5 kids get ice cream this week, the other two don't (but being good kids, they are ok with that and understand grandparent aren't made of money). Next week you get another $5 because the previous $5 was spent. Once again the kids ask you and the first 5 (again randomly different from the 5 last week) to ask get $1. Then you have the crazy kids that "double fist" the ice cream cones (dual cores) that need two at a time, or the really obese ones that eat an ice cream cone every day (super fast over-clocked water-cooled), or the humble ones that come from a poor family and take a bite each day and put it back in the freezer til tomorrow and won't finish it until like 3 weeks later (the PII 233 MHz hosts). And no, this is not directed toward you grandkids at all. :) When there isn't enough for everyone, the best way is to hold back on giving it on a first come first serve basis. Give a couple WUs to the first computers that ask and if they finish those, they can ask for more. 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 while my host has none and could be crunching those that are sitting idle on the "greedy" host. I realize that the users are not usually greedy, it's just the nature of the algorithm that a host will download hundreds of WUs since it's been starved for the last month or two or more. Right now there are ~3000 WUs out there somewhere and my host has not had a WU for some time now. It could have completed several WUs since the batch was distributed. 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. But, such is life. @ Da Phoole: I agree with you, if there's work on my comp, fabulous; if not, oh well maybe next time. Don't get distracted by shiny objects. 
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 Send message Joined: 14 Jul 05 Posts: 275 Credit: 49,291 RAC: 0
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"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. Even if the project doesn't really need it fast (which I strongly doubt), 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). |
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Send message Joined: 31 Dec 05 Posts: 68 Credit: 8,691 RAC: 0 |
If the project needed the results back 100 times faster (or whatever the number actually is), couldn't this be achieved by setting the Work Unit deadlines such that the WUs would reach deadline (and timeout / be returned for other crunchers) before those with big caches had time to crunch them all? The fact that this project already has fairly tight deadlines suggests to me that they don't need the work back any quicker. |
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Trane Francks Send message Joined: 18 Sep 04 Posts: 71 Credit: 28,399 RAC: 0 |
The fact that this project already has fairly tight deadlines suggests to me that they don't need the work back any quicker. There's no arguing with the logic of that statement whatsoever. As has been hashed over repeatedly, BOINC works fine as it is. Just leave it, watch the messages and be happy when the work comes. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't. When LHC doesn't keep my boxes busy, other projects do. No worries! |
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Send message Joined: 13 Jul 05 Posts: 456 Credit: 75,142 RAC: 0 |
The fact that this project already has fairly tight deadlines suggests to me that they don't need the work back any quicker. OFF TOPIC Please read the first five paragraphs of the first post again. Or read them for the first time, perhaps. This thread is about suggestions for ways of implementing changes that a lot of users want. Whether the project "needs" it from a point of view of the science is OFF TOPIC here, a lot of folks who donate computer resources would appreciate changes and as donors their views are relevant too. All this was said when I inaugurated this thread, as the basis for what this thread is about.
yeah fine, you are not worried about it. Others are. A lot of others, judging by the comments we get on these boards. Is it easier to give the donor what they want in return for their donations of computer resources, or to try to argue them into feeling differently than they do? You correctly say it has been hashed over repeatedly. That tells me that the 'argue them into liking it' approach has always failed. Telling people to 'be happy' with something that they perceive to be unfair is never going to work. To get back on topic, OK if these chages were made they would not improve the crunching experience for you. Would they have a negative impact? In your technical opinion, would the changes create technical issues elsewhere in the project? Those points are relevant, so that when the time is available for the project to look at these suggestions the programmers need to know the negatives as well as the positives. Positive and negative tech comments, positive and negative emotional reactions are all relevant. Trying to change what others want from the project is not relevant, nor in my opinion useful. R~~ |
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