41) Message boards : Number crunching : an unexpected pause (Message 5084)
Posted 11 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
It's also worth mentioning that since this project is about tuning the design of a collider, the WUs will come in "fits and starts". They make some changes, run some WUs and then analyze the data that is returned. Repeat as required. Even after the new permanent servers are installed, I expect to see interruptions in workflow. It's just the nature of the project, as I understand it.

42) Message boards : Number crunching : LHC official status report (Message 5072)
Posted 10 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> participating in a DC project is to offer help to the researchers. It's more
> tangible than just donating money. A chance for the little guy to dip his hand
> in science. The end result is what's important. Most people run more than one

Nicely put.

43) Message boards : Number crunching : Official Word on no more Work Units...!!!! (Message 5071)
Posted 10 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> In actuallity The real Bottom Line is if it weren't for the Credits none of
> these Projects would even exist,

I would agree with that with regard to it running under the BOINC platform itself. There is a heap of science being done without any credit whatsoever, however, so the question becomes one of "how to stimulate Joe Average into participating". Is the glory of an abstract number so valuable, really? I have a hard time grasping that.

> If you want to get on your high horse and say it's for the Science or whatever
> floats your boat so be it,

:-) Enter the thinly veiled insult. :-)

It has nothing to do with a high horse, I just honestly believe that credits are secondary to science. The science is the reason for the projects' existence. They do not exist to feed the egos of recognition-hungry participants; they exist in spite of them. The recognition is a sort of necessary evil to feed the egos of those who would donate resources to an otherwise worthy cause.

> So the Credits give you some sort of indication if you doing any good or not.

Frankly, what I mainly notice are people bitching about their lack of credit rather than worrying whether what they've contributed will benefit the project. You yourself dropped a project because you didn't get recognition quickly enough. Pooooooor baby. Not.

> @Trane (and many others)
>
> Please stop using the "for the science" phrase. This rather overused wording
> has about as much meaning as "let's do it for the children".

I'm afraid I have yet to see why "for the science" is an invalid/unwanted expression for participating in science projects. Try again, Scott.

> Please note that I am not trying to insult anyone by saying this,

Bollocks, that's precisely what you're doing. You (and many, many others) can't stand the thought of actually acknowledging the egotistical aspect of competing for something that has no real value, and the difficulty here is that the perceived value, IMO, changes significantly depending on one's viewpoint.

If I say I've done 12,800 WUs, is that good or bad? What value does the number represent? Does it have any worth? The number, in and of itself, means nothing, so one must look in context. Okay, so now we say I've done 12,800 classic S@H WUs. Does that have any worth? Some. The fact that each WU was crunched many times besides my own work might reduce the value of that contribution. Does the fact I've done 12,800 WUs make me any better than somebody who has done, say, 1000? I dare say not. I simply made use of resources that somebody else may not have had available.

Now, why would I invest in the effort to administer these systems and enable them to participate in BOINC projects? My slowest system is a dual P-II 300. My fastest is a P-III 1 GHz box. Not one is leading edge, so if it were about credits, why would I even bother? I wouldn't. My BOINC position falls in triple digits daily. Just wait till the masses from S@H join! So, why participate? SCIENCE! There is no other reason.

> But I get tired of it being thrown in my face thats it's for the Science
> because you make it sound like anything I run is somehow less Holy than the
> WU's you Run.

Let's just say that a S@H cert that proves you crunched so many WUs is worth about the time it takes to download the PDF file, i.e., naught. That you cannot see the worth of your contribution without some arbitrary number affixed to it is interesting and worthy of study.

[ Edited to add: This guy gets it big-time: http://lhcathome.cern.ch/forum_thread.php?id=990#5068 ]
44) Message boards : Number crunching : Official Word on no more Work Units...!!!! (Message 5062)
Posted 10 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> have to forgive me if I seem a little impatient with the Seti Site because
> they've done nothing but screw just about everybody that runs there and their
> still doing it from the Message Board Posts that I see.

You know this is coming, right?

It's science, man. They owe you nothing. They're not screwing with you. They're human beans who are prone to making mistakes just like anybody else. You gotta lighten up and just let BOINC crunch along. You'd do very, very well to not worry so much about credits.

Does that sound utopic and altruistic? Perhaps. I just find it pathetically (!) laughable for people to rely heavily on BOINC and yet condemn S@H, as it's the same team developing/maintaining both projects. Damn one, damn them both.

It's science. Your contribution to that is what matters. And you can laugh-at or poo-poo that comment all you like, but you know it truly is the bottom line. If it weren't, the project wouldn't exist.
45) Message boards : Number crunching : v64tunescana units (Message 5057)
Posted 10 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> > It took my PIII 450 66H to run one of those.
> >
> I got two this morning on my PII 266. May I transfere to a faster host,
> because it takes about 3 days to calculate each one.

No, the host that downloads them is the host that must process them. Besides, why not let the P-II work? The WUs will be processed before the deadline and that's all that matters.

46) Message boards : Number crunching : Official Word on no more Work Units...!!!! (Message 5031)
Posted 8 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> How do you people get more than 1 workunit at a time? I always get one when
> the other is finished but no more than 1. In fact you are taking Workunits
> away from people that get them one at a time.

Many of us have multiple systems. Many also have changed their cache settings from the default 0.1 days to something higher in an effort to ensure their systems are busy when the work gets spotty.

trane

47) Message boards : Number crunching : Last wu crunched - kind of a sad feeling (Message 5017)
Posted 8 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> It's ok though, it's getting to be a real hassle trying to keep LHC work on
> them so I'm going to re-connect to Seti & crunch over there until LHC
> comes back up once they shut down. I'll just leave them set to 50/50 & if
> any trickle in they'll get crunched that way ... :)

That's how I've always done it. I figure that the core client knows what it's doing with regard to managing its connections to the various projects. Forcing connections all the time does NOT do the project servers any favours, especially with servers as fragile as the ones currently hosting LHC@home.

48) Message boards : Number crunching : Einstein@home (beta) now live (Message 5016)
Posted 8 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
Hey, thanks for the update. This could mean that the project goes live in the not-too-distant future. I'm signed up for notification of that.
49) Message boards : Number crunching : delete it i say (Message 5006)
Posted 7 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
Just shut up already, Guido.
50) Message boards : Number crunching : Official Word on no more Work Units...!!!! (Message 5004)
Posted 7 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
The official "word" from the main page is "low on work", so things aren't over yet.
51) Message boards : Number crunching : Last wu crunched - kind of a sad feeling (Message 5003)
Posted 7 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> Same here ,, out of work , I�ve switched back to seti as the 4.07 seems to
> have fixed the slowdown problems there when lhc comes back on line in dec /

You switched back in order to get fewer credits for crunching? That's a wee bit odd. :-D

52) Message boards : Number crunching : BIONC GUI taking up to 30% of CPU Usage ... !!! (Message 4834)
Posted 3 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
> -1- on HT CPUs configured as HT, if there is only one WU to do,
> the GUI takes over the "rest" of the (virtual-) CPU left.

Is that still a problem in 4.13? I used to see this behaviour on my dual P-II 300, but that's no longer the case after upgrading to 4.13.

53) Questions and Answers : Windows : Boinc/sixtrack failure to correctly allocate multitasking of WU’s (Message 4786)
Posted 1 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
The full-load-on-idle-CPU-core issue is solved in 4.13.
54) Message boards : Number crunching : POLL: Q what are YOU doing with the ready2Report ?? (Message 4785)
Posted 1 Nov 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
I just let BOINC manage it all.
55) Questions and Answers : Wish list : Wish a stats total (Message 4440)
Posted 27 Oct 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
Yannick, if you want stats, I recommend that you visit one of the many stats sites. Personally, I like http://www.boincstats.com/.
56) Message boards : Number crunching : Something blew up in Linux (Message 4439)
Posted 27 Oct 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
You're running the application directly from the archiver. You need to properly install this, so stop clickity-clicking. ;-)

Open a console and from your home directory, create a boinc installation directory. I call mine 'boinc'. Move the .gz file from your desktop into this new boinc directory. In your console, cd to the boinc directory and unpack it, e.g., 'gunzip boinc_4.13_i686-pc-linux-gnu.gz'. This will leave you with an executable. Make sure it's got the proper rights: 'chmod 744 boinc_4.13_i686-pc-linux-gnu'. Now, use locate or find to determine where all your account*.xml files are located and moved them into your new boinc directory.

With all that done, you should just be able to start the BOINC client with './boinc_4.13_i686-pc-linux-gnu' and see it begin working. Feel free to set up running the client as a cron job.

57) Questions and Answers : Wish list : Can't merge host after OS reinstall (Message 4361)
Posted 26 Oct 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
Since the OS is different, the host is different. There's nothing to solve.
58) Questions and Answers : Wish list : A Command line Client (Message 4360)
Posted 26 Oct 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
BOINC shouldn't use any noticable CPU time as long as you keep it set to the Messages tab. Even a P-II 300 MHz box sees 0.5% CPU usage with BOINC on Messages and minimized.

59) Questions and Answers : Windows : LHC Does not share resources in multi-boinc projects (Message 4359)
Posted 26 Oct 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
Uh. Exactly what's your question? This is the expected behaviour. Only one project executes at any given time for a CPU (or core on a hyperthreaded CPU). After LHC executes for a given period, defined in your project-specific preferences, you'll see LHC paused while another project executes.

60) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : SMP? (Message 4358)
Posted 26 Oct 2004 by Profile Trane Francks
Post:
BOINC will automatically use the number of processors you've specified on your general preferences. By default, the maximum number used on SMP machines is two, but you can set BOINC to use more. While you may run multiple instances of boinc, it is not necessary.


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