Posts by Saenger

41) Message boards : Number crunching : BOINC poll @ Berkeley (Message 14328) Posted 14 Jul 2006 by Saenger Post: There's a poll for BOINC at Berkeley: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/poll.php Several volunteer computing projects, including Climateprediction.net, Einstein@home, and SETI@home, use software called BOINC. If you participate in projects like this, we request that you answer the following questions. This will help BOINC-based projects increase participation and achieve greater scientific results. Please answer as many questions as you want, then go to the bottom and click OK. If you previously completed the survey but your answers have changed, please complete it again - your new answers will replace the old ones.
42) Message boards : Team invites : SETI.Germany, das #1 Team bei BOINC (Message 12569) Posted 29 Jan 2006 by Saenger Post: Hello fellow crunchers! Join the #1 BOINC team, with Chat, Forum, Performance-Statistik and more... Hallo Mitcruncher! Kommt ins Team #1 bei BOINC, mit Chat, Forum, Performance-Statistik und mehr... Hier klicken zum Beitritt
43) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 9532) Posted 21 Aug 2005 by Saenger Post: <blockquote> We like to grant credit based on the CPU time dedicated to the project. If there is minor computation error yielding a partially differing result, we think it is most likely not the user's fault. For those people trying to fake results, getting the results anywhere near the correct answer (and thus, earning fake credit) is too hard to be worth it. <blockquote> Lot's of invalid mean, that this CPU/OS setup is not suitable for this projects needs. I can either fix it, or leave. That's fine, no harm done (as is imho with fake credit). </blockquote> I admit there should be better way to see how many results have been invalid for a certain user. Let's see if we can do anything about it. </blockquote> Thank you for the answer, Markku! As I said before, I can live with that solution, the other is something for the wishlist. <blockquote>EDIT: A bug found and killed. Let's hope there aren't too many left.</blockquote> And I hope everything is fine now, and that we'll see the difference somehow ;)
44) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 9462) Posted 18 Aug 2005 by Saenger Post: <blockquote>I even crunch for betas without any credit. But this here is just disgusting. ========= If it's so Disgusting to you why don't you just go processes some WU's from another Project thats less Disgusting to you...</blockquote> Because I like the science behind this project, although after this I sincerely think about leaving, if this isn't solved, or at least acknowledged as a bug. This "Shut up, everythings fine" behaviour, while it's obviously not doesn't help. "Granting" without adding is just the behaviour that was observed and rightfully posted here as a mayor bug, and it's still not solved. And whether the general policy of partly granting is still en vogue has also not been answered.
45) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 9409) Posted 15 Aug 2005 by Saenger Post: <blockquote>For heaven's sake, Saenger, let it go. Chrulle has answered your question quite succinctly. There's no point in dragging this minor problem up over and over again, and certainly no point in spamming other threads with the same non-issue. My opinion: You can't eat credit, you can't spend it. Why worry if it's not quite 'right' (whatever that means).</blockquote> Idon't care so much about my credit (it's not mine btw) but for the credability of this project, and the handling of this issue says a lot about it, and not the best. Chrulle hasn't answered my questions. He has claimed, that there was some bug, that was fixed. It was obviously not. And the questions regarding this substandard credit handling, obviously to avoid detection of invalids, is something that really will turn me away from this project. I regard the credit handling as a kind of litmus test for the seriousness of the projects. I don't mind losing them, if a good and valid explanation is given. I even crunch for betas without any credit. But this here is just disgusting. No consistent policy, no real answers. If he has answered, can you please tell me where? Where has he written whether partial credit for invalids is still the standing policy? If so, why it isn't added to the totals? Or if this should be added, why it's still not done?
46) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 9407) Posted 15 Aug 2005 by Saenger Post: <blockquote>And another week goes by without any sufficient answer from the team :( I'm getting a bit upset, and begin to suspect there is none, at least none that could be made public without embarrasment. My questions again: What is the current project policy regarding invalid results? Is the policy of granting partial credit still in place? If so, are these credits realy granted, or just some cover up for not granted? My opinion: Invalid is invalid is 0.00 credits. Invalid results will only be recognised by participants, if nothing is granted, and it is of great value to know, if ones puters just crunch invalids. Lot's of invalid mean, that this CPU/OS setup is not suitable for this projects needs. I can either fix it, or leave. That's fine, no harm done (as is imho with fake credit). If too little participants can reach the desired results, the project team on the other hand has to fix it's problems, as something has to be wrong here. </blockquote> As obviously nothing has changed (see here), and answers to my direct questions were avoided, I bump this one up again.
47) Message boards : Number crunching : credits (Message 9406) Posted 15 Aug 2005 by Saenger Post: So it's still the same bulls*** like before, and nothing has changed. Like I asked several times in the other thread,where it wasn't answered in a suitable way as well, I'll ask here again: As granted is granted, why isn't it added? If nothing is added, why is it listed as granted? What's this disgusting behaviour about? There are only two possibilities: Don't grant (that's 0.00 credits) for invalids, or add to the totals all that is written as granted. Everything else is either a mayor bug or deceit.
48) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8997) Posted 28 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: And another week goes by without any sufficient answer from the team :( I'm getting a bit upset, and begin to suspect there is none, at least none that could be made public without embarrasment. My questions again: What is the current project policy regarding invalid results? Is the policy of granting partial credit still in place? If so, are these credits realy granted, or just some cover up for not granted? My opinion: Invalid is invalid is 0.00 credits. Invalid results will only be recognised by participants, if nothing is granted, and it is of great value to know, if ones puters just crunch invalids. Lot's of invalid mean, that this CPU/OS setup is not suitable for this projects needs. I can either fix it, or leave. That's fine, no harm done (as is imho with fake credit). If too little participants can reach the desired results, the project team on the other hand has to fix it's problems, as something has to be wrong here.
49) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8788) Posted 22 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: Hello again! Weekend is nearing again, and still no satisfying answer regarding this issue. Is the policy of granting half the credits for close but invalid results still in place? Will these granted credits be added to the totals? Is there a solution for past results (like his)? It's impossible to look up the (in)valid result anymore, as the database has been cleaned as designed. And the follow-up of such things is getting harder because of this purges as well, as you can't just add-up all results any longer, but have to keep track somehow manually. But that's no problem, as the glitch is identified and can be dealt with imho.
50) Message boards : Number crunching : Upgrading BOINC (Message 8762) Posted 21 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > I take it back. > > BOINC 4.45 will not allow either Internet Explorer or Mozilla > Firebird to work. > > I'm back to BOINC 4.19 and a working browser. > Working fine with both (OK, it's Netscape, but...) on my machine. What's the problem?
51) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8700) Posted 19 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > > How could this happen? > > Because the result with id 1554936 has been flagged with validate state: > Invalid in the database. Its credit has therefore not been added to his > total. If the result is invalid, why has credit been granted? Claimed is OK, the machine doesn't know it better at that stadium, but granted credit is just that: granted!! If it's taken away out of sight from the person who got it granted, I call this deceit. If invalid results don't add anything, why is there something in the column? Why is this fake value stated in there? What is this fake granted credit good for? Why not just write 0.00? Or, if it's intended to give those close, but not right, something, as has been said in former answers, why not add it? If invalid will not be added, it has to be stated as granted credit 0.00. If some granted credit is listed in the table, it has to be added. Everything else is either a glitch, programming error, whatever, I don't mind, it can happen, it's been found fortunately and can be repaired. Or, if not considered as such but considered as "work as designed", it's deceit, betrayal, cowardice....whatever, definitely not my project any more. I believe it's the first, I really do, and I think it will be repaired soon, as I can't believe, the second is a real possibility with a project like LHC@Home. edit: Not to be taken false here, if I get more invalids here in this still beta stadium, it's OK, so what, it's just credit. But with this kind of presentation I will never know, because I will never see anything invalid, unless I look close at every single result after validation. To know, I've got lot's of invalids is of value as well: I'll know, there's something wrong with my puter, I should take a closer look.
52) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8697) Posted 19 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: Hello to the project team! Still no change and no satisfying answer :( > If you look at his results, and add up the granted credit, it'll give you 49.49 edit: it's now 142,34 ( incl. 1.58 of 1 result, that is purged by now) > > if you look at all the other pages here (not the external stats pages of > course), where this should be listed, it's always only 36.58 edit: it's now 129.43 (incl. 1.58 of 1 result, that is purged by now) > Computer summary > Account Data > Team List > > How could this happen? This question still stands! As I said before: No real big problem with partial grants, but a real big one with pretended granting just to keep them quiet. edit: An "OK, we see it's broken, we're working on it" will be sufficient for now.
53) Questions and Answers : Wish list : Claimed credit (Message 8666) Posted 18 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: AFAIK it's been already dealt with with the newer Boinc clients, and the ridiculous amounts of claimed credit from the old 4.19 for windoze are no longer there (if you changed to the new client, as I did ;) So, if the project claims a client newer then, say, 4.45, all should be fine. (btw: atm I claim less credit in Seti, as I run the optimized app., but not the (benchmark-)optimized client, as I only run it 10% and don't want to cheat with the other projects)
54) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8656) Posted 18 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > Deceit? That seems like a pretty harsh word to be throwing around. BOINC isn't > perfect (yet) and there are going to be inconsistencies between projects. I > personally don't think anyone at CERN is trying to be deceitful, and from the > good work I've seen accomplished by the limited staffers assigned to this > project, I think you're being just a little bit unfair. Sorry for a possible non perfect wording, but I'm no native speaker. But... The decision to grant credit even for non-valid results is one made by the project. I may not like it, but can live with it. What I can't live with is fake granted credit. In the case of OTN it looks like this on the surface: Credit wasn't granted in reality, it was just written to his table to keep him quiet, but not added to his totaly. Unfortunately he had little credit at all to see this happen. That's the surface, but as I don't expect something as evil as this from the team, I think it's a glitch, that has to be (and can be) repaired. > Which is worse? Credit for valid work even if the results can't be used, > or no credit if the result is 'invalid' through no fault of the participant? Worst is credit just written as granted to the participants results table, but in reality not granted. If that is a real policy, I'll stand even with the harsh word "deceit". IMHO invalid is invalid is zero credit. If this leads to too much invalid results, the validator and/or sixtrack is broken and has to be adjusted. BTW: There has been some new credit added to his table and his totals, but the 12.91 granted for result 1554963 are still missing.
55) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8633) Posted 17 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > Maybe the table that sources the summaries is updated at a different time to > that which holds the results? > I just had a peek in the FAQ, where it says, they update once every 12h. The situation is still the same now, 18h after my initial post (and 22h after he made his post on the S.G Board). If you take a look at the WU, the last result came in 15 Jul 2005 16:26:39 UTC, give it another 12h to validate (and that's quite long imho), and it's 16 Jul 2005 02:26:39 UTC, that's 32h since granting. So enough time has elapsed now to make it update. The problem comes with this inconsistent handling of invalid results. Either invalid is invalid thus no granted credit, or there is a new category "not-quite-valid-but-not-that-bad-as-well", where half the amount is granted. But then granted is granted, and not just some fake value in the table, to put you at rest, and lets you expect everything is fine, but don't add this to your score. That's deceit, and I don't even see some advantage for the project from this.
56) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8611) Posted 16 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > I think it's the nature of software development where a numbers of programmers > are working on the code. Changes get made to software or systems and > sometimes the regular users don't notice. > > Boinc is used by a large number of projects, but I think this is the only > project that gives partial credit for 'close' results. Maybe one of those > SETI guys optimized the boinc server code to add numbers faster or something. > > Maybe the easy fix is for LHC to not give out partial credit. I'm not into programming or database handling, I just saw this inconsistencies and pointed to them. I didn't want to rant, just to know why. I personally would prefer to get nothing for invalid results. As I said in the other thread: granted credit, no matter what amount, is fo me a sign of proper work. If it's less then expected, I'm unlucky, but I would presume that I had a valid result. I would never look whether I had valids or invalids with all of them granted, and a lot of invalid results is imho a sign of a broken hardware beneath my table. So what I know now is this: There is something broken in the credit allocation, and it's catched attention because it's more visible for people with little credits at all. That's reasonable, and as it is weekend, I don't expect a solution before monday ;) Happy crunching! (and I have to put the Wiki link in my sig as well ;)
57) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8608) Posted 16 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > If you look at the 12.91 credit's workunit results, you'll see that it's an > 'invalid' result. > > 34.77+ .23+ 1.58 = 36.58 > > Maybe this is related to running updated Boinc server software, and those of > us with a lot of credits don't notice the odd 'invalid' workunit not being > credited because we aren't looking at the project as closely as we used to. It was granted 12.9058951654525 credits, and as I've been told in the other thread, that common here. And granted is granted, so it has to be added. If nothing is added, nothing is granted. Why write some fake granted credit in the table, when it's in fact not granted?
58) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the Credit addition (Message 8599) Posted 16 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: Hello, one of my teammates has just asked this on our board: If you look at his results, and add up the granted credit, it'll give you 49.49. if you look at all the other pages here (not the external stats pages of course), where this should be listed, it's always only 36.58 Computer summary Account Data Team List How could this happen? Is the data also just updated once a day, and not from the main data base itself?
59) Questions and Answers : Windows : Problem with french characters (Message 8598) Posted 16 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: Hello Stéphane, it's not only a problem with the french, but with all non-english characters. I usually write my Name Sänger (like in my sig), but the conventions of the handling of this characters, not in the first numbers of ASCII, is different from project to project (and stats-site to stats-site). So I decided to use the long version. It's been a discussion at Seti, Einstein and BoincStats before, mostly with some scandinavian guys/gals, who also have this problem. But I think, once we more or less latin-character users have been given a solution, those with other alphabets will say: Hey, what about us? how can I use my cyrillic, my japanese, my hindi... So teh best will probably be: Stick with the first ASCII.
60) Message boards : Number crunching : Bug in the credit assignment? (Message 8597) Posted 16 Jul 2005 by Saenger Post: > ..because this project is a scientifice based project;---) So is at least Einstein, Predictor, Folding and CPDN, Seti is indeed open for discussion ;) > I guess, a valid result in match is more usuable to the Wissenschaft as > a result "differing" to much. Define "valid"! Validated against what? Only real validation is of course against reality, and as long as Heisenberg doesn't jump in, there is only one of it. If against other results, and the outcome of different CPU/OS combinations varies in an inappropriate manner, there are imho the following possibilities (don't beat me, if I miss some): 1. The results of one of the combinations are not valid and therefore have to be restricted from this project. 2. The code is somehow bad written/compiled, resulting in a too big system dependancy. 3. The validation restrictions are too strict, and don't comply with the reality test. As I'm neither programmer, nor hardware builder, I can't say what's the cause, and definitely won't blame anyone for this. > The base of this project is not like scanning something already done, like at > SETI or Einstein (analysing prerecorded Datas), no, here the experiments are > "generated" and the client is calculating this. It's a bunch of mathematical operations over a set of data, resulting in a result ;) The origin of the set of data is irrelevant, but if the operations come to reasonable different results via different CPU/OS combinations, something seems to be murky. > Just look at sztaki, the times there are crazy too:) Can't read hungarian ;) > So far my understanding, perhaps not correct. > The message is, the runtime of a WU can be in a small time toleranz differing > not much in time, depending the experiment, it also can finished in a much > shorter time. > This will also have an influence to the "credit" calculation. Runtime has nothing to do with this. Different runtimes result in different credits, that's fine, and it's the same in almost every other projects (besides CPDN and Folding). But the same WU should of course run the same CPU-cycles on different puters, and therefore get the same amont of credit. If it comes to a different number, the validator should decide who's wrong, and who's right. And that's imho a question of all or nothing. > It looks like, you have spend to much time at SETI (G)... > Enjoy the ride "as it is" and crunch whatever you can and get I've been with Seti, CPDN, Predictor, Einstein, Lattice, Folding so far, and I enjoy my ride here. But I still wait for a sufficient answer to the why? > auf die Dauer hilft nur Power.. Latürnich!

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