Posts by FalconFly

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Why BOINC 6.X has issues with LHC@home and other things (Message 20829) Posted 28 Nov 2008 by FalconFly Post: @Neasan While I fully understand your situation, I still think it is wrong that LHC is exploiting your/our work to good use but denies any form of crediting (must not necessarily be direct funding, although it'd seem appropriate after all these years). But anyway, worst case let's call it dedication to the matter which many of us share and don't get rewards either. That's life. Have you ever considered going the way of i.e. SETI or PrimeGrid (or associated BOINCstats service) and accept donations? As I assume your yearly budget doesn't consume 476000 US$/year like SETI, this may provide a more realistic funding than keeping things run on a shoestring with all its side-effects... (of course donations would come with expectations; I assume primarily to fix long-standing annoying bugs/website or server issues and alike; basically sending the projects through a body-shop to repair & shiny up the whole thing)
2) Message boards : Number crunching : I get no \"workload\" (Message 20093) Posted 10 Sep 2008 by FalconFly Post: Hm, and I thought a 0.5 days Cache on a fully Long Term Debt-starved project should be more than quick enough, being run on fairly high performance Systems - running 24/7 with permanent Internet connection (?!) If that's the true reason behind the Aborted by Project results (on my side mostly helped by taking hours to simply upload onto the crippled server), LHC@Home is going to see alot of not so happy folks, since turnaround times will hardly get any better than this. Some of the cancelled WorkUnits had a turnaround time of as little as 90 Minutes, apparently all of them significantly less than the 0.5 days - if even that's too slow I really can't help it... (naturally, I'm not going to set a 0.1 days or even realtime cache for a single project that most of the time doesn't have work anyway) -- edit -- Odd enough, the Results table flawlessly accepted alot of the Results that I saw with the "Aborted by Project" Flag on the Clients. So all in all, looks buggy to me... or some hidden Flags or Quick&Dirty server-sided workarounds bending BOINC around itself.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : I get no \"workload\" (Message 20086) Posted 10 Sep 2008 by FalconFly Post: Never mind, the majority of "work" that I have seen consists of < 2 Minute runtime, difficulties uploading and finally getting flagged "aborted by Project" all over. The Project is still running on its last leg, behaves like a crippled Alpha Pre-Release and by now looks rather BOINC-Experimental to me. If the admins would like to continue using it (giving the timelines I've seen so far) I would recommend closing the doors for 5 years, fixing the da*m code for once and not re-open before it's at least behaving somewhat functional. If the Large Hadron Collider itself was behaving like this Project, it would never pass any QA and safety protocols.
4) Message boards : LHC@home Science : Its all about theories... (Message 20022) Posted 7 Sep 2008 by FalconFly Post: And is it safe to gamble on such a big scale? I need more information, anyone? Yes, it is safe * , because even if the Energy used to build a black hole at LHC's absolute maximum power levels, it remains effectively and literally - small. And it's not a gamble, they just take known parameters and push the previous limit further back with increased power and increased detector capabilities. Additionally, I can't imagine them firing up the LHC for a full-power drive at the very first runs, they'll likely increase total power slowly, step-by-step (after all, it's a very complex machine and a very expensive, unique science tool - they'll treat it friendly ;) ) If it ever succeeds making one, we'll have the most short lived, most tiny "black hole" in the Universe. So tiny, a butterfly could go right through it and destroy it. IF they ever build a 300000 Mile, 1E20+ times more powerful accelerator around the orbit... one can start thinking whether that's a smart idea building into terrestic orbit rather than in deep space for safety reasons. But that's not going to happen too soon. To build a self-sustaining black hole, you'd need more Energy than this entire Planet produces in a thousand years at current rate. With existing tech, we couldn't even build a tiny one the size of a PingPong ball - which wouldn't be self-sustaining at all even if we tried hard... if one existed on earth, it would simply blow apart due to lack of Gravity or comparable stabilizing force. Bottom line : High numbers often sound impressive, but in the really big scheme of things (space, e.g. black holes) what LHC does is absolutely microscopic - and that's an optimistic description (it's actually less than that - far far less) Someone (years ago) on the topic of AntiMatter once calculated, that all Accelerators combined, operation sustained at maximum power levels, could at best produce approx. 50mg of pure AntiMatter per year. Actually lucky that is, plus the enormous containment requirements (power-hungry electromagnetic forcefields and space/weight constraints) to stabilize the samples that prevents anyone from building an AntiMatter Bomb, apart from the insane production costs... (that would be a Thermonuclear bomb on steroids and bad news for the planet) * Safe means that no known, harmful radiation will exit the superstructure. For all I know, the radiation or particles are extremely short-lived and either near-instantly absorbed by the detectors or no later than the surrounding superstructure itself. And if unknwon particles or related radiation actually makes it through hundreds of meters of dense steel, concrete and rock - it is expected to simply pass through all known, living organisms without being absorbed at all, which makes sense in my mind. PS. Building a Tesla grid loaded with 16 TeraVolt would be a more risky business - apparently "funny" things start to happen around extreme electromagnetic fields when exceeding certain limits... but that's another story.
5) Message boards : LHC@home Science : Large Hadron Rap (Message 20021) Posted 7 Sep 2008 by FalconFly Post: Hehe, really hilarious stuff, well made! ...nice lady btw. :D
6) Message boards : LHC@home Science : Hei~!Look at the following massage,the disaster seems have an order (Message 20020) Posted 7 Sep 2008 by FalconFly Post: Oh, I love this, could someone explain to the physics failures how cough \"big\" of a black hole one can create with 16TeV please...
7) Message boards : Number crunching : The project giveth then taketh away (Message 19926) Posted 13 Aug 2008 by FalconFly Post: Seeing the same here, lots of WorkUnits "cancelled by Server" despite still lots of headroom to the deadline (and I'm working on 0.75 day cache, so deadlines are normally never a factor). At least it looks like they're cancelled at 0%, which I don't have any problems with (apart from the odd looks of it, I assume it's either a test or a Server Setting that still needs tweaking after the upgrade)
8) Message boards : LHC@home Science : LHC Images (Message 19878) Posted 6 Aug 2008 by FalconFly Post: No wonder some less educated folks are scared by this device being prepped for power-up. Looks not unlike the StarWars Death Star's main weapon array ;)
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Well, those pesky 0.00x pending WU's are still here...... (Message 19873) Posted 4 Aug 2008 by FalconFly Post: - edit - Just checked, against initial suspicion they're all 0.01Cr Results, so the Pending table indeed did not increase. Still alot that needs to be fixed...
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Well, those pesky 0.00x pending WU's are still here...... (Message 19865) Posted 4 Aug 2008 by FalconFly Post: And the latest Batch even increased that List for me... It's really time for the admins to clean that mess up, that should also help merging/removing all those pesky duplicate/obsolete hosts.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : The new look bugs (Message 19827) Posted 26 Jul 2008 by FalconFly Post: When I want to click on any Link in the "My Account" Page, it appears that with every click onto the Link, the Font on the Page is reduced by 1px, thus the first 1-2 clicks actually miss their target, as the entire page shrinks and resorts its size (??!) (Firefox 2.0.0.16)
12) Message boards : Number crunching : How often does LHC shut down? (Message 19608) Posted 13 May 2008 by FalconFly Post: That sounds quite weird, either you're "part of the team", give and get your share in return, or something is really not as it should be. Sounds like the LHC guys get the data, say "thanks for the fish" and just walk away. Not quite the kind of return one would expect when delivering data that effectively is a smart multi-million-$ damage prevention program (?)
13) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Milestones (Message 19082) Posted 24 Feb 2008 by FalconFly Post: Just passed 250k
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Stil a pending credit (Message 18933) Posted 30 Jan 2008 by FalconFly Post: Indeed, work done is work done, but seeing LHC not tidying up the few remaining Problems... it just looks like the transition to the new maintainers is somehow still incomplete after all this time. I like projects 'clean' with all the small advantages that come with that.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Stil a pending credit (Message 18915) Posted 29 Jan 2008 by FalconFly Post: I'd like to join, and hope the Admins clean up the old remains. Oldest Pending : 27 Jan 2006 ~18 Pages of 0.00 Pending Credit Results
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc farms. (Message 18857) Posted 21 Jan 2008 by FalconFly Post: Another year, another Update ;) 1x Athlon64 X2 5000+ EE 2x Athlon64 X2 4800+ EE 3x Athlon64 X2 4600+ EE 4x Athlon X2 BE-2400 EE 4x Athlon64 X2 4000+ EE 4x Athlon X2 BE-2350 EE 1x Athlon64 X2 3800+ EE 3x Athlon X2 BE-2300 EE 2x Athlon64 X2 3600+ EE Last year the Network ate 2542W of Power, now it's much more potent and energy consumption is down to 2043W. Gotta love Energy Efficient computing :D
17) Message boards : Number crunching : It's raining LHC WU's - I love it ! (Message 18742) Posted 19 Dec 2007 by FalconFly Post: Anyway, since you're here, why did you have your entire AMD fleet offline for a while? I had looked to do some comparisons over on Einstein for S5R3, and I notice you've removed the AMD X2 4400+ systems you had... I was not at home for a longer period of time, therefor the whole Network was shutdown. I returned home just 2 weeks ago, and due to energy prices exploding here (once again) am in the process of eliminating all old 89W TDP CPUs. (saved upto 40Watt per System going from old So939 Athlon64 X2's to G2 Stepping AM2 Athlon X2 BE-2350/2400, these things rock for power saving) After another short Xmas leave, I'll be on full steam again on Einstein before January (unless LHC has more work to do ;) )
18) Message boards : Number crunching : It's raining LHC WU's - I love it ! (Message 18737) Posted 18 Dec 2007 by FalconFly Post: Hm, the batches yesterday and before had about a 10% ratio of those 0.x Seconds WorkUnits. Today, I'm seeing exclusively those, also seems those don't go smooth somehow (the total number of "WorkUnits in progress" has barely been sinking). One would expect those to run down these numbers within a few hours. Looking at the server status, the number jumps back up all the time, as if these 0 Second WorkUnits didn't really count correctly when finished (?) ...needless to say, these 0's have piled up in the Pending Credit list quite a bit (almost 400).
19) Message boards : Number crunching : It's raining LHC WU's - I love it ! (Message 18723) Posted 17 Dec 2007 by FalconFly Post: Indeed very nice :) Must be the first time since years that I see my Network on full steam with LHC work again.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Merge?? (Message 17776) Posted 15 Aug 2007 by FalconFly Post: If at least the Validator and Deleter would work up all the old Results, one could at least delete old Hosts. Best Idea (currently) would be to go back to a more relaxed set of Merging Requirements. ...basically like in the old days of BOINC, upto and including allowing Users to Merge any Hosts they wish - since that was abused to create single "Uber"-Hosts with hilarious RAC, it shifted to more and more restrictive Merging policies. Either that or something inbetween. Right now it's just painful with little means of fixing it on the User's side (short of manually manipulating Client xml files and alike).

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