Milkyway: DOUBLE CREDIT FUNDRAISER CANCELLED

[RSS]

Dear MilkyWay@home volunteers, It appears that I have made a mis-step in management of MilkyWay@Home, regarding double credits for fundraising. I believed that this had been done before. I have since discovered that not only I was incorrect, but it is also inconsistent with the BOINC credit system. As volunteers, you have donated enormous computational resources to my group, and on top of that have created a powerful community that not only helps us with software but also teaches us how to be responsible members of your community. We will be running double credit two days this week to make up for lost credit in the past, but we will not be running a double credit fundraiser in September. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. I will need a little time to understand what the right way is to do this, so stay tuned. Best Wishes, Prof. Newberg

More... (http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=2521)

[Mike029]

I guess "they" got to him. Sad times when a guy can't run his own project without being accused of "inconsistent with the BOINC credit system"

Unreal.

[Beerdrinker]

Someday DA someday...You will find yourself in front of a very unpleasant looking east-european gangster, who don´t give a f.... for your BOINC credit system!!...


Man I am sick of this...DA is dictating how a Professor should run his own project? How lame is that?

[Duke of Buckingham]

Maybe is a comemoration of the first edition aniversary of Hitler's "Mine Kumpf" or Nero's Rome fire. Some cientists can be a very good project of ditactorship. :p


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPa01kmxP4w

[Fire$torm]

Man, DA you are a totally narcissistic, arrogant prick...... He must think he is "Up There" with Bill Gates, Larry Ellis or Steve Jobs. Just a nerd lost in his own little Academic Microverse.

I sincerely hope DA is NOT Swedish or Scandinavian...... It would a absolute bummer to be related to that @ss, even if three times removed.......

[vaio]

A one man disaster zone.

He must have a serious flatulence problem cos eveytime he has one of his farts he screws up the whole boinc system and causes one hell of a stink.

* note sig link * \m/

[Cruncher Pete]

I think it is about time we got together and discuss an alternative to DA's Boinc. He might be credited as the creator of Boinc, but he will also be the demise of Boionc as we know it. Surely we do have amongst us somebody who could create an alternative system especially in view that Boinc is open software or whatever it is called. I am not into these things. I just crunch in memory of friends and relatives who died of Muscular Dystrophy. I am having fun at the same time and crunch any science project and like the way we can compete against each other on a level playing field. Chopping and changing scores in the middle of a game is not for me. It seem that whilst currently I am not a member of Folding, it will not be long before I will be. DA can go back to run his Seti for I have had enough of his dictatorial way of running Boinc. I paid for my equipment and am paying for my Electric Bill and time. Enough is enough...

Edit. I apologise if I am misleading people to think that it was DA who stopped the Double Credit Fundraising in MW. Having re read MW Message Boards there is no indication of any direct involvement in his part. I am just pissed off with this NewCredit deal and assumed it related to it. Never the less, I feel that it could be alleged that there was some interference in order that Prof. Newbery changed his mind. Either way, one should read things a bit more carefully and I did not...

[trigggl]

I guess I better test Milkyway before this may or may not happen.

[YoDude9999]

ANDERSON, Wikipedia:


Anderson, Andersson or Andersen is a surname deriving from a patronymic meaning "son of Anders/Andrew" (itself derived from the Greek name "Andreas", meaning "man" or "manly"). It has originated in parallel in Scotland and the Nordic countries.

In Scotland, the name was first found in the Great Glen and Strathspey[citation needed], where the Anderson family was seated from ancient times[when?]. The name soon migrated to England. Anderson is the 43rd-most common surname in the United Kingdom.[1]

In Sweden, the form Andersson (and also Anderson) is the second-most common name[2].

In Norway and Denmark, the form Andersen is quite common, being the fifth most common surname in both countries[3][4] - see Andersen.

The Scandinavian forms Andersson and Andersen were often rendered as Anderson by immigrants to the English-speaking countries, whereby the latter form become one of the most common American surnames. The name was eleventh most common surname reported in the 1990 United States census, accounting for 0.3% of the population.[5] It is the twelfth most common surname reported in the 2000 United States Census.[6] Anderson is also one of the most common surnames in Canada[7]. Other spelling variations include: Andison, Andersonne, Andersoun, Andirsoone, Andresoun, Androson, Andirston, Andresson, Andrewson, and Andresen.

I hope this doesn't cause you undo stress....but ah, yeah, there it is.

[Fire$torm]

I hope this doesn't cause you undo stress....but ah, yeah, there it is.

If he is even distantly related I'll just have to do something drastic. Maybe sue him........ yeah...... right. :(

[Slicker]

Since BOINC is open source, the projects admins have the ability to bypass the new credit system and do whatever they want.

Does DA remind you of NASCAR officials? NASCAR forces drivers to use restrictor plates in much the same way that projects credit uses DA's new credit system if they upgrade their software. For those who don't know what they are, restrictor plates block the amount of air going into the carburator which reduces the horsepower it can make. The more horsepower a car makes, the smaller the hole in the restrictor plate. Of course, the officials say restrictor plates are meant to slow down the vehicles for safety reasons. Sounds good in theory. In reality, they make all the cars go almost exactly the same speed. That means the cars get bunched up and that means more crashes. That's kind of the opposite of safety if you ask me. In addition, it penalizes the good teams and rewards the crappy ones by leveling the playing field. (I though they were pros! Do they give pro drag racers a head start? No!) Anyway, it sure sounds a lot like the new credit system to me.

I always thought the admins lowered (or raised) credit on their own accord and the whole "credit cops" was a conspiracy theory. Until now.... Anyone else see the e-mail in the boinc_projects mailing list between DA and the eon project admin the other day?


> On Jul 29, 2011, at 1:18 PM, David Anderson wrote:
>
>> Sam:
>>
>> The BOINC server code (intentionally) has no mechanism for adjusting
>> credit, to avoid spiraling credit inflation. Instead:
>>
>> - Ask your volunteers which projects are giving more credit than
>> yours, and tell me. I'll investigate.
>>


Looks like the credit cop is not a myth. The really funny part (if you want to call it that) is that the eon admin's reposonse listed WCG, SETI, and uFluids as some of the projects getting more credit. SETI pays high credit? (ROTFL)

[Fire$torm]

OK, that does it.....
Of all the pompous, self centered, egotistical, narcissistic, POS SOB's to walk the planet, DA takes the cake!

Out of curiosity....
*Starting at the 101 level, what is needed to learn to code something like a BOINC server app? (I am serious here, though I realize the odds of success are very slim atm)

*Are there any good free or low cost online classes available for learning most or all of what I would need to learn?

*What does the BOINC backend consist of? And is there a better way to implement a similar setup?

[Mike029]

Wow.. Thanks for the info Slicker. Have they ever reached out to your project? Too bad Boinc does not have any real competition for projects.

[Fire$torm]

Well this ----> http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditNew <---- wasn't hard to find and must come straight from DA's fevered brain....


Credit system goals ¶

Some goals in designing a credit system:

* Device neutrality: similar jobs should get similar credit regardless of what processor or GPU they run on.
* Project neutrality: different projects should grant about the same amount of credit per host, averaged over all hosts.
* Gaming-resistance: there should be a bound on the impact of faulty or malicious hosts.

The first credit system ¶

In the first iteration of BOINC's credit system, "claimed credit" C of job J on host H was defined as

C = H.whetstone * J.cpu_time

There were then various schemes for taking the average or min claimed credit of the replicas of a job, and using that as the "granted credit".

We call this system "Peak-FLOPS-based" because it's based on the CPU's peak performance.

The problem with this system is that, for a given app version, efficiency can vary widely between hosts. In the above example, the 10 GFLOPS host would claim 10X as much credit, and its owner would be upset when it was granted only a tenth of that.

Furthermore, the credits granted to a given host for a series of identical jobs could vary widely, depending on the host it was paired with by replication. This seemed arbitrary and unfair to users.
The second credit system ¶

We then switched to the philosophy that credit should be proportional to the FLOPs actually performed by the application. We added API calls to let applications report this. We call this approach "Actual-FLOPs-based".

SETI@home's application allowed counting of FLOPs, and they adopted this system, adding a scaling factor so that average credit per job was the same as the first credit system.

Not all projects could count FLOPs, however. So SETI@home published their average credit per CPU second, and other projects continued to use benchmark-based credit, but multiplied it by a scaling factor to match SETI@home's average.

This system has several problems:

* It doesn't address GPUs properly; projects using GPUs have to write custom code.
* Project that can't count FLOPs still have device neutrality problems.
* It doesn't prevent credit cheating when single replication is used.

Goals of the new (third) credit system ¶

* Completely automated - projects don't have to change code, settings, etc.
* Device neutrality
* Limited project neutrality: different projects should grant about the same amount of credit per host-hour, averaged over hosts. Projects with GPU apps should grant credit in proportion to the efficiency of the apps. (This means that projects with efficient GPU apps will grant more credit than projects with inefficient apps. That's OK).

[DrPop]

This is a nail in the coffin to end BOINC's glory days. Why on earth should I ever upgrade any of my rigs if credit is going to suck no matter what? Come to think of it, what’s keeping me from pulling a bunch of plugs right now? Does this guy realize how much we spend on electricity alone every month for his little pet BOINC project?

[YoDude9999]

OK, that does it.....
Of all the pompous, self centered, egotistical, narcissistic, POS SOB's to walk the planet, DA takes the cake!

Out of curiosity....
*Starting at the 101 level, what is needed to learn to code something like a BOINC server app? (I am serious here, though I realize the odds of success are very slim atm)

*Are there any good free or low cost online classes available for learning most or all of what I would need to learn?

*What does the BOINC backend consist of? And is there a better way to implement a similar setup?

Didn't I mention this on the Aqua thread and others also?
I coulda swore everyone told me, it would never work, bla, bla, bla, impossible, the projects will never do it, or trying to get them to would be too daunting a task, bla, bla, bla, etc.

You'll need to learn visual studio and the C language. You can find all the client source code on the Boinc website.

[DrBob]

Well I generally try to stay out of this argument when it re-appears every 12 months or so but I need some clarification from those that are concerned…

Here’s what I’m reading, please tell me where I’m wrong.


Credit system goals

Some goals in designing a credit system:

* Device neutrality: similar jobs should get similar credit regardless of what processor or GPU they run on.
* Project neutrality: different projects should grant about the same amount of credit per host, averaged over all hosts.
* Gaming-resistance: there should be a bound on the impact of faulty or malicious hosts.

Device neutrality – Similar WUs should get the same credit no matter what type of CPU/GPU they are processed with. Faster CPUs will still get more credit/day as they process more WUs, GPUs would also get more credit/day if the code was efficient and the projects app can take advantage of the multiple streams. And of course fasted GPUs would still receive more credit than older versions as they would complete more work.

Project neutrality – Comes up all the time and yes in a perfect system a particular host should get the same credit/day no matter which project it is attached to. However I don’t see this ever happening in the “real world” and different apps on the various projects will still perform more efficiently on different system architectures. My only complaint here is some (Including DA) complain when a particular project is granting too much credit but say nothing of projects granting a fraction of what they should.

Gaming-resistance – Absolutely, if a host is turning in bad results or someone is turning in fictitious results just to gain credit the host should receive limited new work until the “problem” is corrected. IMO those proven to be purposely scamming the system should have the credit zeroed out.


Goals of the new (third) credit system

* Completely automated - projects don't have to change code, settings, etc.
* Device neutrality
* Limited project neutrality: different projects should grant about the same amount of credit per host-hour, averaged over hosts. Projects with GPU apps should grant credit in proportion to the efficiency of the apps. (This means that projects with efficient GPU apps will grant more credit than projects with inefficient apps. That's OK).

Not sure I would have any problem with the “goals” of the new credit system but doubt they will ever be achieved equitably.
As I said earlier, I try to stay out of this particular debate. If I’m reading something terribly wrong here please feel free to educate me. :)

If our old boards were still available we could go back and read the numerous and often lengthy threads on this particular subject.

[zombie67]

Fact: Cross project parity is impossible. It assumes static apps, no development or optimization. Here is a simple example of why it will never work. There are MANY more scenarios that would demonstrate the same thing.

Project A and B have CPU apps that have the same c/h. Then a volunteer for project B works hard and creates an app that 2x faster, and shares it with everyone. Now what? B cuts their credits in half, or has them cut in half automatically? Thanks a lot! That volunteer was stupid to try to help out the project...unintended consequences.

Now throw in things like 32 vs 64 bit apps, GPUs, MT, optimized apps that run on only a subset of machines (SSE3), etc. Oh yeah, and don't forget to throw in projects where there are more than one sub-project, some with GPUs, some without. You have to average that all out and compare the whole mess to another project and somehow mess with the credits to achieve parity? Impossible.

---

Personal opinion: This is why MMs are the true way to measure performance, both individually and as a team.

[Fire$torm]

I agree with much of zombie's way of thinking. Not that I don't respect alternate views on the subject.

The fact remains that DA set the bar years ago by ALLOWING project admins to implement an alternate credit schema. It is also a fact that he created BOINC as open source software albeit with a restricted LGPL license. Common sense dictates that he was hoping for and received a LOT of help from the DC community. And now that the BOINC project has reached the point where much (or at least a decent percentage) of the vocal DC community has motivated some projects to "Up the Ante", DA comes along and decides they have no value, hence deserve little or no respect. This is evidenced by two simple truths, one - the CreditNew schema and two - DA has never had an open discussion, round table, public hearing or whatever one might call it with the DC community at large. At least not that I have seen.

Bottom line. DA has accepted a ton of code from the community but when community members voice an opinion..... His answer is "Shut up and bend over".

[DrPop]

So, this leads us to one question: What 'er we gonna do about it? ;)

[zombie67]

So, this leads us to one question: What 'er we gonna do about it? ;)

My answer: I will use a different method to measure ourselves, that DA cannot influence. I will use MMs to do just that.

[YoDude9999]

My answer: I will use a different method to measure ourselves, that DA cannot influence. I will use MMs to do just that.

Okay, maybe I'm missing something here, so slap me if I'm dumb.

Aren't MMs directly related to credit? And if DA can manipulate the credit schema, doesn't that directly effect MMs over all? I fail to see how the use of MMs would not be effected as an overall measure and how the use of MMs could be something that DA has no affect over.

[Cruncher Pete]

Okay, maybe I'm missing something here, so slap me if I'm dumb.

Aren't MMs directly related to credit? And if DA can manipulate the credit schema, doesn't that directly effect MMs over all? I fail to see how the use of MMs would not be effected as an overall measure and how the use of MMs could be something that DA has no affect over.

Actually, I think you are both right. Although DA has a direct influence of just how much credit you will get, you need to consider that it will effect all of us therefore we be looking at a somewhat different playing field that will get us longer to get to our to our target but it will take the same time for everybody else as well. What really hurts is that those ahead of you got there relatively easy to date only and from here on we are all on the same playing field. For those that are ahead consider yourself lucky and for those that are behind consider it as bad luck. That statement by the way is not mine but an interpretation of what DA is doing.

[YoDude9999]

What I REALLY don't get is, Why does he even care? So what if projects are giving out credit at different rates for WUs.
I can only surmise, he has a vested interest in something and that changing the credit scheme is the only way to get to whatever it is he's striving for.
With that in mind, perhaps it's something like, he has a particular fondness for a project or two, or more even, that no one, or very few are actually crunching and that the reason no one is crunching them is because the credit is so low, no one wants to. This leaves him only one way to get his pet projects running again and that would be to lower the credit on everything else to the level of his pet projects. This way, it won't matter that people flock to Collatz, MW or PG any more, because he's managed to nerf them to get people to look in other directions.

I can see no other reason why he should care so much about it.

[DrPop]

MMs are not unaffected. In any project that has had its credit output changed over the course of the project (I'm betting this is a considerable amount), some people got their MM with "cheap" credits, and some got their MM with "expensive" credits. While I see where you're coming from, I don’t think MMs are immune to this credit madness! Which is very unfortunate ... :(

[zombie67]

Credits and the ability to accumulate them, change within a project all the time, and that is *without* any manipulation by DA. Let's take SETI as an example. I made 500K with the stock app. Then opt apps were created. Then GPU apps were created. In this example, the people who came later got it easier than the early crowd. For another example, a project could add a different sub project that does not have the same ability to earn credits differently for a number of reasons (no GPU app available, only a sub-set of OSs supported, etc). The point is, things are always changing. You get your MMs as fast as you can, when you can, just to be sure. And usually early adopters are getting the short end of the stock with regard to credits and risk to wasted time.

[Mumps]

What I REALLY don't get is, Why does he even care?

If I recall correctly, it's been posted that he wants to be sure it's not the credits that decide for a cruncher which projects to crunch. His focus is to have the decision always be based on the actual science as the only meaningful thing to use to determine where your resources should be allocated. He doesn't want projects to be able to "buy" resources by inflating the "credits" they hand out because it could lead to "inflation" where projects need to hand out more and more credit to attract the resources of the hard-core crunchers.

So instead, he works at a scheme to hand out less and less credit. Thereby causing the folks running farms for the sole purpose of credits to decide it's not even worth it to create all these extra resources, simply to help out whichever project is willing to hand over the most credits. So the personal farms go away, leading to less volunteer work being performed. A win-win situation if there ever was one. :mad::mad::mad::p

[YoDude9999]

Someone need to send that $%#@ a heated email 'splainin' things to him.

[Cruncher Pete]

You are right. If this guy can not see that if by my personal expense I add more machines to my farm I am helping the scientific community, than BOINC has no future. Perhaps he thinks we already have too many volunteers and he does not need any more for his pet project can not handle the volume. In this case, since he has the capability, the only thing he can do is reduce the credit for all until his pet project gets to be on the top. In either case, he is a looser for I can not see a new lap top user will replace my farm when I give it away as futile to crunch for such useless numbers that in effect only means something to those who are competing against each other and by doing so, increasing the input to the researchers.

[trigggl]

If I recall correctly, it's been posted that he wants to be sure it's not the credits that decide for a cruncher which projects to crunch. His focus is to have the decision always be based on the actual science as the only meaningful thing to use to determine where your resources should be allocated. He doesn't want projects to be able to "buy" resources by inflating the "credits" they hand out because it could lead to "inflation" where projects need to hand out more and more credit to attract the resources of the hard-core crunchers.

If they wanted people to only crunch for the science, they never should have introduced credits or teams.

[CudaStream]

Well the system has you by the short hairs. You can't get to the top in the DC world without playing the BOINC game. The only alternative in town is to do the non-BOINC projects of which there used to be a bunch of them. However all the boinc crowd pressured the heck out of the majority of the projects and they switched over to boinc. So now reality is that you either play the boinc game or you have a very restricted set of games to play. Take a look at folding@home. They don't play boinc. However they aren't immune to the points game manipulation. Recently the SMP projects within f@h were realigned with their QRB (quick return bonus) point system, which also has point parity issues within just the SMP client projects, let alone the GPU and the non-SMP client projects. And again there you have the science nazi's and the points nazi's going at each other's throats.

So the point is that it doesn't matter really whether it is boinc or non-boinc as there is always going to be manipulation of the system with the carrot and stick approach.

And to carry it on a step further, take a look at distributed.net. They had a nice, solid approach with a good following. One of the projects, RC5-72, turned out to be adaptable to parallel processing so voila, along came the gpu clients for it. And then along came a gent that created a wapper for it, DNETC.COM and there ends up another adaptation to the point system that created a bunch of internal controversy. So within the distributed.net original point system all the folks running the boinc wrapper for dnetc.com end up under one "user" account in the original distributed.net system -- but within the boinc system it is a separate project with it's own point system that falls within the boinc realm. And then voila! Along comes moowrap.net, yet another boinc wrapper for RC5-72. However with this one, it allows each user to add points within the original distributed.net's point system as well as being a boinc project that also has a point system within the boinc realm. So in effect, with moo wrap, crunching away with the boinc wrapper for it you get points within the boinc realm, as well as points within the original distributed.net's point system so you are getting points in two projects by crunching "one" project. So what would that impact? Oh things like the d.c. vault project if it had added both distributed.net's rc5-72 and the moo-wrapper project withing it's competition walls.

So now my brain is beginning to hurt...................................... But anyways, you will always have manipulation of the point system no matter what. DA tried to create a system that would keep things fair across the board -- sort of a global DC point thing to keep some parity across various projects. Why? Hard to say. I don't really think that the folks that create projects really give a rip about any global parity in anything. Rather all they care about is their own project and getting the project's work completed. There's stats whores out there in the world, there's points whores out there, there's scientific whores, and just a lot of plain old whores.

In the end, you crunch because you like to crunch for whatever reason. I participated in the boinc beta testing in the beginning of boinc. There was some serious cheating going on in the DC world prior to the boinc thing. In that regard, boinc put forth a serious effort to try and make a level playing field for all. Boinc was a huge effort that took a ton of time and a ton of talent to produce. Some like it, some hate it. But to build a replacement for boinc is a massive undertaking, and in the end, what would it accomplish? More than likely you would end up with somewhat of the same animal, complete with a love/hate relationship as there is with boinc. Myself, I don't care for boinc and prefer the non-boinc projects. Reality is though that the great masses out there, the great unwashed of the computer users of the world find it easy to use and it has enabled them to participate in many worthwhile projects. And at the other end of the spectrum you have folding@home which is non-boinc, and also has a massive following.

About the only thing for sure here is that Team seti.USA has to embrace the boinc world, otherwise is changes the whole game of why the team originally came into being. So while folks are pinging on DA, it's sorta like saying toilets suck. They may well suck, but they happen to be the most efficient way at present for doing the job they were designed to do................. sorta like DA's boinc.

[DrPop]

Alright, points taken there. It is all good and well what DA and BOINC have done for the DC community. But WHY on earth does it matter to him (or anyone) how much credit a particular project gives out per WU? If you don't like the project, don't crunch it! It really is that simple. If a person doesn't care about points, then they can crunch any project they darn well please and it won't matter that they are 10,000th on a list of names. Because, remember - they (supposedly) don't care. So why do they act like they care about the rest of us, who are inclined to chase after points? It shouldn't bother them, right?
I think the real problem is that people like those folks, DO CARE about where they are on a list, and that is the thing here. Some people say they don't care about points or competition at all, but I don't buy that. Everyone has at least a tiny competitive streak in them; it's just human nature.

But...when you're trying to get a TEAM going up the ranks, you kind of have to care about POINTS or...well...what's the point then? :D ;) I think my head hurts now too. :p

[CudaStream]

yup, the points is the primary basic issue behind teams and the competition between the teams. And I'm with you there. Myself, I have a real problem with boinc. I'll crunch it for a while mainly just to help some others out. In the process of doing that though I really get sick and tired of the quirks in boinc and I end up going back to just crunching non-boinc. I don't think things are better now in the DC world though. I really miss the early years. It was really fun then. The forums of most teams now are really slow compared to what they used to be. Is boinc a part of that? Too many new projects starting up now days, only to crap out in a short time, or they are unreliable and you end up with a bunch of wasted machine time and electricity. I dunno. Seems like more and more frequently anymore I think about just hangning it up and finding another hobby. lol

[Fire$torm]

If they wanted people to only crunch for the science, they never should have introduced credits or teams.

Thank you for that. My thought exactly.