Standardized Credits

[DrPop]

Right, I Bow to the #1 BOINC'er ...

ROFL! Hahaha...oh man, don't get me started. This really could be simple. Slicker's got it figured out, and Collatz is done right. It's not that arbitrary, either. X credit based of X rig. Your rig either does more or less work in 24 hours than the baseline, and you wind up with appropriate credit.

Rant ON
Credit new blows and there is literally no other description for it. It is an asinine concept . . . *censored* . . . created by those who want to give everyone the "same" BOINCing experience. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Kumbya and credits don't exactly mix.
The Germans and SICI* aren't holding our hands around the campfire and strumming the guitar with us. They are kicking our arses and laughing at our impotence as we bounce around at a 4th place RAC. Unfortunately for some, this does involved points, it's a game, and unlike what they try to teach my daughter here in California schools, by definition, there WILL be a winner and there will be loser(s) because it IS a game.

Alright, I was holding back there as good as I could...go on, ask me how I really feel about Credit New and screwing any of us who invested money, energy and time into upgrading our rigs for the sole purpose of crunching. We ARE the hand that feeds them, and yes, you did just feel a bite.
Rant OFF

[spingadus]

Rant ON
Credit new blows and there is literally no other description for it. It is an asinine concept, completely ill founded by liberally brain washed academic nut jobs who have never worked in the real world and therefore don't understand the concept of competition
Rant OFF

Personally, I think they are just being lazy. I do agree with you DrPop that creditnew is asinine, although I don't agree with the generalization that it's a liberal/academic thing. I consider myself to be a moderate and my political are both conservative and liberal depending on the separate issue. Meaning, I don't toe any party line other than my own. This means that I have had many friends on both sides of the isle,from ultra conservative to ultra liberal and in both academia, the military and in the private sector. I can't think of a single friend that would think that it's ok to give a faster machine the same credit as a slower one. More work should equal more pay. It's just common sense. I think the BOINC devs can't figure out a way to accurately measure devices properly and so are just averaging things out. If they can't do it right, they shouldn't do it at all and let the projects deal with it internally.

[DrPop]

Personally, I think they are just being lazy. I do agree with you DrPop that creditnew is asinine, although I don't agree with the generalization that it's a liberal/academic thing...

Edited my post above for you, just to keep it "non-political", because I was not referring to "politics" as in conservative/liberal "GOP vs Dems". Not at all. I was talking about the philosophical bent of those in charge. There is a difference, but I suppose only those who really have gotten into either a lot of academia or are into that sort of thing would understand where I was going. Really, though - I do not want to hi-jack this thread in that way, and/or offend anyone who is easily offended in that regard. There is room in the crunching hobby for all "opinions" on that sort of thing.

Speaking of Credit New alone:
I do, however, completely fail to understand how ANYONE in their right mind could conceive of such a plan where those who have acquired newer, faster hardware that is able to get more work done, are PENALIZED to "support" and come in line with those crunching on old, dated, slow hardware that gets less accomplished in the same amount of time. Are we trying to go backward or forward here?
I think, based on that analysis of Credit New, you can appreciate where I was coming from in my post - they are taking a nearly "market driven" system and turning it into an entirely different regime when they do this. It is not good for those who wish to be competitive and boost their team's standings, etc. Penalizing genious, penalizing effort, penalizing ability, is not how you encourage growth. We're talking economics 101 here. They need to re-take that class, LOL!
Thank you for understanding about Credit New. And, we can always have the other political / common sense chats in a different thread or by PM anytime.

[spingadus]

Edited my post above for you, just to keep it "non-political", because I was not referring to "politics" as in conservative/liberal "GOP vs Dems". Not at all. I was talking about the philosophical bent of those in charge. There is a difference, but I suppose only those who really have gotten into either a lot of academia or are into that sort of thing would understand where I was going. Really, though - I do not want to hi-jack this thread in that way, and/or offend anyone who is easily offended in that regard. There is room in the crunching hobby for all "opinions" on that sort of thing.

Fair enough although I wasn't offended. It's just a conversation. I guess it was directed to the academia crowd on the forums. But hey, I may be there one day as I'm back in school again. I'll just keep an eye out for the DA types

Speaking of Credit New alone:
I do, however, completely fail to understand how ANYONE in their right mind could conceive of such a plan where those who have acquired newer, faster hardware that is able to get more work done, are PENALIZED to "support" and come in line with those crunching on old, dated, slow hardware that gets less accomplished in the same amount of time. Are we trying to go backward or forward here?
I think, based on that analysis of Credit New, you can appreciate where I was coming from in my post - they are taking a nearly "market driven" system and turning it into an entirely different regime when they do this. It is not good for those who wish to be competitive and boost their team's standings, etc. Penalizing genious, penalizing effort, penalizing ability, is not how you encourage growth. We're talking economics 101 here. They need to re-take that class, LOL!
Thank you for understanding about Credit New. And, we can always have the other political / common sense chats in a different thread or by PM anytime.

I concur.

[DrPop]

Fair enough... I'll just keep an eye out for the DA types ...

Haha! Yes, thanks for not being offended, this is a discussion that for some reason gets people up in arms. To me it seems pretty simple - these artificial stones we get "the credits" are the only leverage a project has to get more crunchers, beside the "goodness" of the project. So for example, WCG gets a lot of crunchers because of its humanitarian nature. Yay! Good for them. But, their credits are loooooow...and that's simply because they can be. So they don't care. I guarantee if everyone stopped crunching WCG tomorrow, they would consider raising the credits. That's the simple, wonderfulness of supply and demand, if "outside powers" don't interfere with it, it always works.
Consequently, who would *really* crunch DiRt instead of WCG if the credits were equal? I wouldn't. The guys that run DiRt understand this. Therefore, the giant credit bombs they offer per WU get us to crunch their project.

With DA's Credit New scheme, you take that leverage away from the projects...that's kind of what I was meaning by a "market driven" economy in BOINC - I'm not sure how the academics that are running the thing see it - but they apparently either don't see reality, or they know something we don't? Because from our viewpoint as the crunchers...well, I'm just not getting it.

Anyone else have any ideas as to why they are doing this?

[Zytozux]

Thank you all for your wonderful responses. I like zombie's and poorboy's ideas on crunching a lot. So, I have decided that stats like this are not a very good judge of who is contributing the most work.

We enjoy ~8 new members a day on Seti@home, and I think some of that comes from the visibility of being in 1st place. Therefore, as a member of the TopGun division, I am going to donate my resources towards improving our rank on a popular project where the team is in 66th place, WCG.

[DrPop]

Thank you all for your wonderful responses... I am going to donate my resources towards improving our rank on a popular project where the team is in 66th place, WCG.

Nice, and a worthy cause to be sure! But, can you also do folks like Slicker and I a favor and put your GPU on something high paying while your CPU is on WCG? Thank you if you can!!!