LHC@home

To whom it may concern,
Whomever is the department head, in charge of the free community computing department, (BOINC, etc), concerning LHC@home work credits seems in need of either;
A. A lesson in arrogance.
B. Remedial training in marketing and math. Just sayin.
I run BOINC 7.0.64

I can run an "advertised" 00:10:30:00 hour LHC program which actually takes 00:21:00:00 hours to run and be credited with 200 points.
OR
I can run an "advertised" 00:01:30:00 Milkyway@home project which actually takes 00:02:45: 00 and be credited 106 points. Do the math.

Which tends to lead my thinking, "if such a prestigious endeavour as the LHC can drop the ball on such mundane items BOINC credit points, is it not also possible that the finding of the Higgs Boson was simply a political pencil whip of "Yes we found it?""

As far as I'm concerned, the credits issued for the crunching I do are what they are and I don't see anything really productive is spending a lot of Project staff time sorting the discrepancies out. It's not like I get a check at the end of the month based on the number of new credits received.

Only you can decide which projects you run, and how much emphasis you place between the credits and the science. I have run Milkyway when work has been sparse here but find the credits there are over inflated. They, and other projects, are attracting people purely for the credits which, for me, devalues those projects so I tend not to run them. If your interest is just credits then choose your projects accordingly. I prefer to run projects that interest me, with any credits earned being an amusing but ultimately worthless aside.

Credits are like money. The more they are the less they are worth.
Tullio

BOINC in general, and LHC@home in particular, is first and foremost about doing science, not accumulating spurious points. Credits are irrelevant to me. It is enough to know that I am contributing, albeit in a very small way, to an extremely important research project. If you want to play computer games go back to your Xbox.

Credits are like money. The more they are the less they are worth.
Tullio

Well said.

KR
Michael

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Team Linux Users Everywhere

Hello everybody,
actually I'm not aware of how the credit are assigned, but I'm sorry to see that people out there are not happy. The problem is that we have lot of work to do here, and unfortunately checking that everything work well and everyone get the credit he deserve is not an easy task.
What I can say is we will try to have a look at the problem and maybe find a better solution.
Anyway, I think that you all subscribed to LHC@home project because you were in some way interested in what we are doing and wanted to help us as you can, not only for getting some credits...
You have to trust me when I say that we really appreciate your help and that without you all our life will be a lot more complicated!
Thanks and keep supporting us!
Danilo

Credits per device help me to see how device is performing and compare them.
Credits itself aren't anything I'd worry about - if many of credits make you proud of your input, why few credits don't?

It's clear there are two groups of crunchers: those who are interested in the credits and those who are not.

If you're NOT interested in the credits, why even bother reading, let alone commenting on a thread entitled "... credits"?

The Baron's concern over credits is just as valid as your disinterest in them.

The system was designed to have credits to make it more interesting. We don't need your holier than thou rhetoric about doing it just for the science. If you're so convinced credits are unnecessary, ask David Anderson to remove all credits - so that only the true acolytes are welcome.

Get off your high horses.

That having been said, the credits are low and I don't crunch this project much as a result. If the credits were higher and the error rate was much lower, I'd crunch a lot more. The Baron knows his marketing and maths.

And remember, if you're utterly disinterested in credits, why are you even reading this?

Since these are open discussion forums there are those that are not especially interested in credits but still feel they have the right to express an opinion.

One of the reasons that people who don't have an interest in credits express a concern is that we recognize that developer resources are limited and feel that maybe those resources would be better spent sorting out issues that are more closely related to the Project.

I lived through a 6 months long battle on SETI watching dozens of messages go back and forth daily because of the wide variety of opinions that were expressed as to exactly what was a fair credit accumulation system.

It's just my opinion.

It's clear there are two groups of crunchers: those who are interested in the credits and those who are not.

If you're NOT interested in the credits, why even bother reading, let alone commenting on a thread entitled "... credits"?

(snip)

And remember, if you're utterly disinterested in credits, why are you even reading this?

Credits on this project seem fair to me. I am running 6 BOINC projects and credits are assigned in different ways. In Einstein@home and Albert@home you get a fixed amount of credit for a given task. SETI@home uses Creditnew, with many complaints. Test4Theory@home credits vary from one PC to another ( I have 2) for the same task. Recently, I upgraded SuSE Linux from 12.2 to 12.3 on my HP laptop after changing its SSD disk from 120 GB to 250 GB and it is considered a new host, getting much less credits. Its floating point benchmark fell from 894 to 508, I don't know why, and that is probably why I am getting less credits.
Tullio

It's clear there are two groups of crunchers: those who are interested in the credits and those who are not.


And remember, if you're utterly disinterested in credits, why are you even reading this?

noone said we aren't interested in credits.
could you comment on why having more or less credits gives you different feelings?

It's clear there are two groups of crunchers: those who are interested in the credits and those who are not.


And remember, if you're utterly disinterested in credits, why are you even reading this?

noone said we aren't interested in credits.
could you comment on why having more or less credits gives you different feelings?

I quote the One-Arm Badger:

... Credits are irrelevant to me....

I never said I had feelings, just that I'm sick of people who think they are above everyone who wants more credits.

I never said I had feelings, just that I'm sick of people who think they are above everyone who wants more credits.

same)

I don't think the credits here are particularly bad compared to other projects. I run the project because I am interested in the science. Others will choose Climate modelling or Biology or Mathematics because that's what interests them.

If your interest is just credits then choose your projects accordingly. I prefer to run projects that interest me.

The "credit new" system was supposed to have put every project that uses it on parity and avoid cheating but the credit question has followed Boinc around since it started and the question has always been:

How do you add apples and pears without people going bananas?

Some projects have better floating point calculations, others are better at integers.

I don't object to credits (I've got quite a few) or people competing but ultimately the only true comparison is against other users WITHIN a particular project.

Since I took time to go through these postings, I can as well comment.

We don't do anything that would artificially lower or increase the credits.
All credit assignments as per boinc library settings and it is the NewCredit system.

In the past, we did experiment assigning credits based on the runtime os sixtrack and that prevented people cheating with the old boinc assignment system. However, I found our runtime based credit was close to the standard boinc credit. Therefore, now the standard is in place.

I guess, I could easily put a multiplier in there to attract credit-conscious people to the project. However, if all admins start a contest like this we will create an inflation spectacle to the dismay and joy to all of you, dear volunteers.

Igor.

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skype id: igor-zacharov

To whom it may concern,
Whomever is the department head, in charge of the free community computing department, (BOINC, etc), concerning LHC@home work credits seems in need of either;
A. A lesson in arrogance.
B. Remedial training in marketing and math. Just sayin.
I run BOINC 7.0.64

I can run an "advertised" 00:10:30:00 hour LHC program which actually takes 00:21:00:00 hours to run and be credited with 200 points.
OR
I can run an "advertised" 00:01:30:00 Milkyway@home project which actually takes 00:02:45: 00 and be credited 106 points. Do the math.

OK, I did the math and I must say the outcome means little to anybody except credit whores who somehow cannot let go of the illusion that credits mean something or have some worth. They do not. They are worthless as well as meaningless and those who believe otherwise are idiots. I apologize if that offends you and I promise that in the future I will try very hard to be less offensive if you will try to not be an idiot.

Why are credits worthless? Because anybody can steal as many credits as they want. So if my stats say I have bazillion credits it means nothing because I may have very well stole those credits and done no more work than someone with a measly 1,000 credits.

Furthermore, some projects (Milkyway for example) have morons for developers which means they can't come up with an efficient application that gets their work done in a reasonable amount of time. The only way they can get significant work done is to buy large numbers of credit whores like you. If credits had any value or worth (in other words if they had to pay for them) they could not afford that strategy. Fortunately they can create credits out of nothing. The fact that projects can obtain credits from nothing underlines the fact they are worth nothing. So when your stats say you have a bazillion Milkyway credits it means nothing more than my stats that say I have 100 Sixtrack credits.

Which tends to lead my thinking, "if such a prestigious endeavour as the LHC can drop the ball on such mundane items BOINC credit points, is it not also possible that the finding of the Higgs Boson was simply a political pencil whip of "Yes we found it?""

They didn't drop any ball. They simply have better things to do than futz around with insignificant, meaningless crap just to keep a few credit whores happy. If all 5 of you whores stopped crunching this project forever it would make no appreciable difference to anybody or anything.

It's clear there are two groups of crunchers: those who are interested in the credits and those who are not.

You're close but not quite right. There are two groups: those who realize credits are worthless and those who suffer from the illusion that credits have some worth.

If you're NOT interested in the credits, why even bother reading, let alone commenting on a thread entitled "... credits"?

I comment because I am concerned about your lack of understanding and your sanity. I am wondering how someone can come to be so deluded. It's an interesting aberration and I believe it merits study.

The Baron's concern over credits is just as valid as your disinterest in them.

Not really. His concern is born of ignorance and psychosis.

The system was designed to have credits to make it more interesting.

Any idiot knows that but what you fail to understand is the fact that the mechanisms the credit system depends on don't work. For that simple reason they don't make anything more interesting. Yet you persist in the illusion that everything is fine, fun and interesting. Wake up and give your head a shake.

We don't need your holier than thou rhetoric about doing it just for the science.

We don't need your desperate, nonsensical babbling and your psychotic attempt to turn fiction into reality.

If you're so convinced credits are unnecessary, ask David Anderson to remove all credits - so that only the true acolytes are welcome.

See how screwed up your thinking is? You're saying removing credits makes credit whores unwelcome. You don't see how that's abject nonsense do you. You losers will always be welcome whether there are credits or not just don't expect the rest of the community to go along with your whorish tendencies and infantile demands and beg you to stay and help.

He has been asked to do just that and he hasn't refused. I think the only reason he hasn't removed them is that they are so intertwined into the code it's not easy to remove them without messing something else up. I get the impression he is working on it though and I look forward to the day when credits and all five of you credit whores are gone for good.

Get off your high horses.

Get off your own horse, you're high. What is it... crak again?

That having been said, the credits are low and I don't crunch this project much as a result.

Nobody cares that you don't crunch Sixtrack much. You can leave anytime. In fact if you hurry up and leave you can take your time coming back.

If the credits were higher and the error rate was much lower, I'd crunch a lot more.

So what? This project is under no urgent deadline. It's never had any trouble meeting the needs of the LHC engineers. The project gains nothing if you stay and loses nothing if you leave. That applies to all 5 of you credit whores.

The Baron knows his marketing and maths.

The Baron doesn't know spit. He thinks BOINC is some kind of a market in which credits are a currency. Lol! Credits are no currency. Credits are worthless.

And remember, if you're utterly disinterested in credits, why are you even reading this?

Because in spite of the extremely low chance of success, I hope to educate you and/or help cure the psychosis that plagues you. So that you may become one of the true acolytes. Now go and sin no more my son.

Henry
You sound a bit disappointed.
Why?

Disappointed? What did I say that makes you think I'm disappointed?

On the contrary I see a challenge here, a challenge to cure and/or educate, as I stated in my previous post.

I also see a bit of humor/irony/whatever. For most of this project's history the main complaint has been "Boohoo, I can't get any tasks." Historically this project has been oversubscribed i.e. too many volunteers for the number of tasks available leading to long and frequent "task droughts". Though the amount of work has increased lately there are still dry spells and when Eric perfects the new apps the long droughts will return. Now along comes dumb and dumber with some crackpot theory this project needs to pay higher credits and get more crunchers. And the one says the other knows his marketing! LOL!! I guess where he works the boss gives raises when things get slow?

The LHC is offline for upgrades and the projected restart date is some time in 2015 so they sure as heck don't need us to provide magnet alignment data next month. Not even next year. Don't be surprised if upgrades last into 2016. The Sixtrack app is now faster and they've stopped that wasteful IR = 3 MQ = 2 nonsense which means everything is at least 33% faster. So where's the big rush?