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Message boards : Number crunching : BitCoin Utopia went crazy credit-wise

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Profile Retvari Zoltan
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Message 37160 - Posted: 27 Jun 2014 | 0:40:46 UTC

1 Billion credit per day. That's 42.3% of the combined CPD, and it's rising exponentially. Even Collatz Conjecture wasn't that crazy.

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Message 37164 - Posted: 27 Jun 2014 | 20:59:43 UTC - in response to Message 37160.

The large bulk of the credits are from SETI.USA. They appear to be using USB BitCoin miners that do nothing else but just crunch a algorithm. Unlike GPU and CPU that perform other functions within a computer, these things are devoted to just one simple function. From what I have been able to gather from a BitCoin miner who is in the Information Technology field, these BitCoin miners are very powerful since all they can do is crunch a algorithm to unlock the key to block of BitCoins. This project claims to donate the generated BitCoins to specific charities mentioned on their site, less 15% for their efforts.

One particular cruncher, STE\/E [BlackOps], should reach as of the day of this posting a billion total credits today or tomorrow and as of this writing he generated 265 million points for today. Very impressive.

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Message 37167 - Posted: 27 Jun 2014 | 22:10:14 UTC

I've noticed that BOINC's overall 'computing power' (as shown on the home page) went up from 10.030 PetaFLOPS on Tuesday morning to 12.306 PetaFLOPS this (Friday) morning, and is currently displayed as 15.667 PetaFLOPS.

Those USB sticks must be heap powerful juju. Can we make some that work here?

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Message 37168 - Posted: 27 Jun 2014 | 23:32:30 UTC - in response to Message 37164.
Last modified: 27 Jun 2014 | 23:33:47 UTC

RaymondFO* wrote:
From what I have been able to gather from a BitCoin miner who is in the Information Technology field, these BitCoin miners are very powerful since all they can do is crunch a algorithm to unlock the key to block of BitCoins.

This is true.

Richard Haselgrove wrote:
I've noticed that BOINC's overall 'computing power' (as shown on the home page) went up from 10.030 PetaFLOPS on Tuesday morning to 12.306 PetaFLOPS this (Friday) morning, and is currently displayed as 15.667 PetaFLOPS.

As far as I know, this simple algorithm is using integer arithmetic only.
So this shouldn't be count as FLOPS, since it stands for FLOating Point operations/Second. As a consequence, this ridiculous amount of credit shouldn't be awarded. Today's score is 1.7 billion credits by 500 users. This would tumble the balance of the projects.

Richard Haselgrove wrote:
Those USB sticks must be heap powerful juju. Can we make some that work here?

No, those are some ASIC chips designed strictly to mining purposes, and this project needs floating point calculations.

RaymondFO* wrote:
This project claims to donate the generated BitCoins to specific charities mentioned on their site, less 15% for their efforts
.
This raises the question of efficiency. Maybe it's more efficient to donate money directly for those who need it.

RaymondFO* wrote:
One particular cruncher, STE\/E [BlackOps], should reach as of the day of this posting a billion total credits today or tomorrow and as of this writing he generated 265 million points for today. Very impressive.

It is, but not the way I like to be impressed.

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Message 37169 - Posted: 28 Jun 2014 | 0:53:40 UTC - in response to Message 37168.
Last modified: 28 Jun 2014 | 0:58:23 UTC

RaymondFO* wrote:
One particular cruncher, STE\/E [BlackOps], should reach as of the day of this posting a billion total credits today or tomorrow and as of this writing he generated 265 million points for today. Very impressive.

Retvari Zoltan* wrote:
It is, but not the way I like to be impressed.


I agree with you and that was not meant to be a compliment. My attempt at subtle sarcasm was not effective. My apologies for the misunderstanding.

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Message 37172 - Posted: 28 Jun 2014 | 10:40:09 UTC

My post should also be read as sarcasm, especially the bit about the USB sticks.

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Message 37173 - Posted: 28 Jun 2014 | 12:00:46 UTC
Last modified: 28 Jun 2014 | 12:01:19 UTC

I use Bitcoinminers too with summary 4,6Ghash, but i would never get the idea to cheat my Credits on BOINC with that O.o

And yes, these Miners can only! do that. My 4,6Ghash need only 16Watt but has the power of 6*HD7970 Cards bitcoinwise.
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Message 37177 - Posted: 29 Jun 2014 | 12:27:09 UTC - in response to Message 37173.

The BitCoin Utopia project isn't research, it's a mining project that provides some funding for research projects.

ASIC's are not computer processors or co-processors, their design is bespoke, to compute specific algorithms. ASIC's only have one purpose - to mine.

As ASIC's are not processors or co-processors, they don't have computing power, they have mining power, which is incompatible with the Boinc credit system.

It's been clear for years that there should be different credit systems for different device types.
GPU's are obviously very different form CPU's, and ASIC's can only compute a few algorithms (albeit very well).

Even with GPU's, CUDA capable devices are very different from OpenCL/GL only devices and double precision is different from single precision. A GTX780Ti is 12% more efficient at SP than a Titan, but poor at DP. The Titan Z is good at DP (comparable to a top AMD) but very costly.

We now have a huge variety of CPU's, from servers with almost 200 cores, to the likes of Qualicom's ARM processors for smart-phones. RISC processors, workstation processors, standard desktop CPU's, processors for laptops, tablets, palmtops and a variety of Android devices, even processors with iGPU's.

If you consider the instruction set extensions of some processors (SSE4.1/4.2, AVX) you could argue processors should be subdivided/categorised by ability. Most CPU’s are very multifunctional and cater for a huge variety of requirements but many better facilitate some types of processing much better than others.

Then there is the research.
Some research types are Integer intensive, others floting point intensive, and many use specific instruction sets. As a result the relative ability of a CPU at doing one type of work over another can be quite large.

Processing power.
Core count and GHz isn't everything, but and generally speaking, a desktop processor does a lot more work than an Android processor, a good GPU can do a lot more than a CPU but is much more restricted in what it can do. Bespoke mining devices are great at mining, but can only mine.

The current credit system takes no account of the use of supporting hardware either.
Some projects require large amounts of RAM, disk space or bandwidth usage.

So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.
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Message 37182 - Posted: 29 Jun 2014 | 20:29:53 UTC - in response to Message 37177.

skgiven wrote:
So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

I know, and I agree. But...
I've started this thread because I think that there are many people who choose their hardware for their desired project, and they choose project by the amount of the credit the project awards for their work (because one might think that it's related to the amount of scientific progress they make, and it's quite logical to do it the most cost-efficient way). The amount of the credit awarded was misleading before the BitCoin Utopia boom, but now it's ridiculous on the outrageous level that shocked me: yesterday the 244 active users made 2 billion credits, today 2.44 billion, and I think this should be undone.
The main difference between BitCoin Utopia and the other projects is that the "somewhat imaginary" credits earned on BTC Utopia is in relation to the amount of real world things (i.e. money) they give away (which is a good thing by the way), but in my world BOINC is *not* about making money, therefore I take the mixing of money-mining with volunteer distributed computing as an abuse and as an offense (because of the undue amount of credit awarded).
I know that I'm on the wrong forum...

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Message 37184 - Posted: 29 Jun 2014 | 21:00:39 UTC - in response to Message 37182.

skgiven wrote:
So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

I know, and I agree. But...
I've started this thread because I think that there are many people who choose their hardware for their desired project, and they choose project by the amount of the credit the project awards for their work (because one might think that it's related to the amount of scientific progress they make, and it's quite logical to do it the most cost-efficient way). The amount of the credit awarded was misleading before the BitCoin Utopia boom, but now it's ridiculous on the outrageous level that shocked me: yesterday the 244 active users made 2 billion credits, today 2.44 billion, and I think this should be undone.
The main difference between BitCoin Utopia and the other projects is that the "somewhat imaginary" credits earned on BTC Utopia is in relation to the amount of real world things (i.e. money) they give away (which is a good thing by the way), but in my world BOINC is *not* about making money, therefore I take the mixing of money-mining with volunteer distributed computing as an abuse and as an offense (because of the undue amount of credit awarded).
I know that I'm on the wrong forum...

I mentioned that BOINC's overall FLOPs count (across all projects) had risen from 10.030 PetaFLOPS on Tuesday morning to 15.667 PetaFLOPS on Friday night. This figure is calculated (reverse-engineered) from the total credit awarded, so I'm pretty sure the two rises are related - and as you said, it's crazy that an integer project should change a floating-point measure to such a degree.

Yesterday, the BOINC figure was reading 17.063 PetaFLOPs. I've been pestering David Anderson by email about the absurd over-claim, and tonight it's dropped back down to 6.630 PetaFLOPS. I don't know if the two events are related (I haven't had a reply to my last email), but I feel more comfortable if BOINC doesn't make claims which seemed to be verging on the fraudulent.

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Message 37185 - Posted: 29 Jun 2014 | 21:12:39 UTC - in response to Message 37184.
Last modified: 29 Jun 2014 | 21:13:31 UTC

Cobblestones 1-0 Cobblers
Result!

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Message 37188 - Posted: 30 Jun 2014 | 11:28:56 UTC - in response to Message 37182.

skgiven wrote:
So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

I know, and I agree. But...
I've started this thread because I think that there are many people who choose their hardware for their desired project, and they choose project by the amount of the credit the project awards for their work (because one might think that it's related to the amount of scientific progress they make, and it's quite logical to do it the most cost-efficient way). The amount of the credit awarded was misleading before the BitCoin Utopia boom, but now it's ridiculous on the outrageous level that shocked me: yesterday the 244 active users made 2 billion credits, today 2.44 billion, and I think this should be undone.
The main difference between BitCoin Utopia and the other projects is that the "somewhat imaginary" credits earned on BTC Utopia is in relation to the amount of real world things (i.e. money) they give away (which is a good thing by the way), but in my world BOINC is *not* about making money, therefore I take the mixing of money-mining with volunteer distributed computing as an abuse and as an offense (because of the undue amount of credit awarded).
I know that I'm on the wrong forum...


Yes but....if BitCoin Utopia were to start actually FUNDING other Boinc projects that have lost their regular funding sources then I think that could be a game changer. Or even if each project could figure out how to do some form of that on their own, then the near constant funding issues might go away. I guess I am suggesting a sub-project at each project, that needs it, that crunchers could help generate money for a project, but NOT do any real Science in the process.

For instance if GpuGrid needed a new Server, they could open up a sub-project and let some people crunch just to create bitcoins for the Project to use for that purpose, earning Boinc credits for themselves too, but NOT doing any real Science. Then when enough money is raised the sub-project would be scaled back, or even closed, until it is needed again.

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Message 37193 - Posted: 1 Jul 2014 | 11:19:15 UTC - in response to Message 37189.
Last modified: 1 Jul 2014 | 11:23:27 UTC

That's exactly what we did in the past with Donate@Home.
But now it's not feasible anymore to crunch bitcoins with GPUs. Mostly with ASICS as people said.


You mean like this for 20 US dollars on Amazon:


http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=scrypt+miner&tag=mh0b-20&index=aps&hvadid=3527303871&ref=pd_sl_1sdp0j81oy_pp

Or this one for 5 US dollars:


I realize these are NOT anywhere near new spec parts, but if they work it could be worth 5 or 20 dollars to periodically donate.

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Message 37194 - Posted: 1 Jul 2014 | 12:21:03 UTC - in response to Message 37193.
Last modified: 1 Jul 2014 | 12:38:23 UTC

If a volunteer can generate more money using those ASICs than their TCO, then a project can do it for itself (of course it's still better for a project to receive only the funding, without the cost of generating it). If a volunteer can generate less money using those ASICs than their TCO, then it's not worth doing, as donating directly the money is more useful. However, if better and better ASICs will emerge, therefore BTC gets cheaper to generate, will this process devaluate BTC itself? (at least until the last unit is generated.) I think BTC is a very temporary thing, so every miner should make haste - which would make BTC even more temporary (contrary to the inventor's intentions). In the end the value of BTC will rise, and speculators will own most of it - but no one would sell it for 'real' money or buy anything for it, as they will wait for another rise in BTC's value - and that will be the end of BTC (and the end of the tinker-speculators' real wealth).

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Message 37197 - Posted: 1 Jul 2014 | 14:45:40 UTC - in response to Message 37194.
Last modified: 1 Jul 2014 | 14:54:16 UTC

It is expected that more powerful ASIC computational power will emerge to solve the increasingly complex and computational demanding algorithm that generates or "unlocks" newly issued bitcoins. Each bitcoin series/type (I will never call them “currencies” as they are not issued by any sovereign government. Others may feel differently) is designed to issue a finite amount of bitcoins over its computational life. As time goes by, few and few bitcoins should be issued from each individual type/series as the computational demands keeps increasing. The universe or series/types of individually issued bitcoins may increase. It is for this reason why GPU's are now deemed to be poor bitcoin miners and more powerful ASIC equipment to be more desirable to solve/mine that ever increasing single algorithm that unlocks additional bitcoins. These basic premises (finite bitcoin issuance spread out over a long time) should help the individual bitcoin series/type to retain its intrinsic value and not devalue itself. Some would argue (not me) that is what makes bitcoins valuable as no government can inflate the bitcoin and debase its stored value, unlike various world governments that hyper-inflate their currency and debase their currencies intrinsic store value.

For your reference, here is a chart of the various series/types of bitcoins currently available:
https://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

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Message 37244 - Posted: 8 Jul 2014 | 8:22:00 UTC

*sign* sad how all these guys can pass my combined 800M in some days -_- its hard to restist not to follow them and abuse my asics for not getting behind...be strong...be strong! o.O
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Message 37253 - Posted: 10 Jul 2014 | 18:01:16 UTC - in response to Message 37244.

Sorry about your Dog. It hurts to lose a family friend/child.

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Message 37257 - Posted: 11 Jul 2014 | 11:10:57 UTC - in response to Message 37194.

If a volunteer can generate more money using those ASICs than their TCO, then a project can do it for itself (of course it's still better for a project to receive only the funding, without the cost of generating it). If a volunteer can generate less money using those ASICs than their TCO, then it's not worth doing, as donating directly the money is more useful. However, if better and better ASICs will emerge, therefore BTC gets cheaper to generate, will this process devaluate BTC itself? (at least until the last unit is generated.) I think BTC is a very temporary thing, so every miner should make haste - which would make BTC even more temporary (contrary to the inventor's intentions). In the end the value of BTC will rise, and speculators will own most of it - but no one would sell it for 'real' money or buy anything for it, as they will wait for another rise in BTC's value - and that will be the end of BTC (and the end of the tinker-speculators' real wealth).


The key I think is that once you buy an asic machine you can then donate forever, if you donate cash it is more a one time thing. I can justify a one time expense, and then itty bitty electricity costs over the long term, but justifying a donation periodically seems like more money going out.

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Message 37260 - Posted: 11 Jul 2014 | 14:34:56 UTC - in response to Message 37257.

If a volunteer can generate more money using those ASICs than their TCO, then a project can do it for itself (of course it's still better for a project to receive only the funding, without the cost of generating it). If a volunteer can generate less money using those ASICs than their TCO, then it's not worth doing, as donating directly the money is more useful. However, if better and better ASICs will emerge, therefore BTC gets cheaper to generate, will this process devaluate BTC itself? (at least until the last unit is generated.) I think BTC is a very temporary thing, so every miner should make haste - which would make BTC even more temporary (contrary to the inventor's intentions). In the end the value of BTC will rise, and speculators will own most of it - but no one would sell it for 'real' money or buy anything for it, as they will wait for another rise in BTC's value - and that will be the end of BTC (and the end of the tinker-speculators' real wealth).


The key I think is that once you buy an asic machine you can then donate forever, if you donate cash it is more a one time thing. I can justify a one time expense, and then itty bitty electricity costs over the long term, but justifying a donation periodically seems like more money going out.



While you may be able to donate the ASIC computational power for forever, the value of the ASIC computational power decreases over time as the computational power needed to unlock additional bit coins increases. At some point, you are better off just making a direct contribution to the charity rather than sending the money off to your local electric utility.

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Message 37262 - Posted: 12 Jul 2014 | 5:58:32 UTC - in response to Message 37260.




While you may be able to donate the ASIC computational power for forever, the value of the ASIC computational power decreases over time as the computational power needed to unlock additional bit coins increases. At some point, you are better off just making a direct contribution to the charity rather than sending the money off to your local electric utility.


Following your line of reasoning ... since my current CPUs/GPUs will be producing far less work for the project than the CPUs/GPUs available 5 years from now then I should shut them down now and just send the project the money I spend monthly on electricity. Is that correct?

The arguments everyone is making are identical to when GPUs 1st came on the scene. It was the same trauma for those that didn't have a GPU. "It's going to ruin BOINC!". At least with ASIC mining anyone with a USB port can get into the game with a very small investment, $20 versus the hundreds of dollars that were required on the 1st (and current) GPUs.

The benefit to BitCoin Utopia versus Donate@home is that it is primarily using technology that doesn't take CPU/GPU resources away from other projects. Donate used the same resources and therefore it can be argued that it hurt the overall BOINC effort.

Typically projects award credits based on the amount of work being accomplished. A GPU will gain you more credits at "most" projects than running a CPU only. The GPU produces more work than a CPU and therefore should be rewarded higher. The same is true of BU. As someone mentioned, their 4.8Gh/s ASIC is producing more work than 6 HD 7970s. Shouldn't they be compensated for the work they are producing?

You guys are incorrect as to what an ASIC is. It stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. They ARE processors but they have been designed to perform a limited number of tasks ... very quickly.

I worked for HP for 32 years and we designed and used many ASICs. One ASIC I'm very familiar with did FFTs and inverse FFTS .... very very quickly. The heart of the Seti WU is preforming FFTs. So if someone were to design an ASIC that plugged into your USB port that could compute a Seti WU 1000s of times faster than a GPU would you be complaining because it isn't fair? Particularly since it would use a handful of watts versus hundreds of watts to do the same job. Of course the market is so small no one would every produce one for Seti ... you couldn't sell enough to pay for the development costs.

I agree with the person who mentioned that maybe projects should start their own ASIC mining sub-projects if they need funding. BU has approached MilkyWay@home to contribute to their program MW lost their grant and are in need of funds to continue.

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Message 37313 - Posted: 19 Jul 2014 | 20:12:04 UTC - in response to Message 37262.
Last modified: 19 Jul 2014 | 20:22:34 UTC

While you may be able to donate the ASIC computational power for forever, the value of the ASIC computational power decreases over time as the computational power needed to unlock additional bit coins increases. At some point, you are better off just making a direct contribution to the charity rather than sending the money off to your local electric utility.

Following your line of reasoning ... since my current CPUs/GPUs will be producing far less work for the project than the CPUs/GPUs available 5 years from now then I should shut them down now and just send the project the money I spend monthly on electricity. Is that correct?

You are wrong. The original post didn't say that it's not worth to mine with ASICs for the time being, but it says that it eventually will happen in the future, so your thoughts are not following the original post's reasoning. The correct projection of the reasoning of the original post to GPUs is that noone should crunch with previous generation GPUs, as running them in the long term is worse than selling them and collecting the money the cruncher saves on electricity while not crunching, and either buy a new card when the savings add up, or send the money directly to the project.

The arguments everyone is making are identical to when GPUs 1st came on the scene. It was the same trauma for those that didn't have a GPU. "It's going to ruin BOINC!".

It's not the identical argument, while the credit-trauma is the same.
While a GPU could be up to 1000 times useful (in scientific calculations) than a CPU, it's quite logical, that it should be awarded in direct ratio.

At least with ASIC mining anyone with a USB port can get into the game with a very small investment, $20 versus the hundreds of dollars that were required on the 1st (and current) GPUs.

It's truly a profitable possibility.

The benefit to BitCoin Utopia versus Donate@home is that it is primarily using technology that doesn't take CPU/GPU resources away from other projects.

While this is true, I'm not that naive to overlook the real benefit of BitCoin Utopia (and BTC mining ASICs): it's the only project which can generate a unique and precious resource to projects that no CPUs nor GPUs can generate efficiently enough: money. I'm happy that this project can solve the funding of scientific projects for some time.

Donate used the same resources and therefore it can be argued that it hurt the overall BOINC effort.

Besides, It wasn't efficient enough.

Typically projects award credits based on the amount of work being accomplished.

"Typically" :)
"the amount of work being accomplished": While it sounds good, in reality no such measurement exists. Projects are quite different scientifically and therefore the arithmetic they use is different too. Some of them don't fit into the original definition of credits, as the original definition is based on FLOPS measuring benchmarks, as these projects don't make Floating Point Operations at all. Just like BitCoin mining. Yet they award the same type of credit as GPUGrid awards.

A GPU will gain you more credits at "most" projects than running a CPU only. The GPU produces more work than a CPU and therefore should be rewarded higher. The same is true of BU. As someone mentioned, their 4.8Gh/s ASIC is producing more work than 6 HD 7970s. Shouldn't they be compensated for the work they are producing?

Let's turn it around:
Can these ASICs crunch MilkyWay, GPUGrid, Rosetta@home, SIMAP or other workunits? No.
Should be the same kind of BOINC credits awarded for them? No.
In theory you can write a code for CPU which does the same work as a GPU (but it will be significantly slower & less efficient). Many projects have GPU and CPU apps for the same work.
But even in theory you can't use that ASIC to crunch anything else, while you can possibly design one.
I don't think that these ASICs have no place among other BOINC projects, but the credit they award is simply too much - because it is based on the very inefficient CPU / GPU hashing clients. I'm saying that even GPU credits shouldn't be mixed with CPU credits, because there are some tasks which can be done only on CPUs, but there are some tasks, which can be done effectively only on GPUs.
Even before BitCoin Utopia showed up the Credits were an absurd measurement of "how much science" one has done.
This can't be measured, so that's why it's absurd. To make it even more absurd, it is used to compare CPU/GPU projects.
Until now no real world credits were linked to the BOINC credits, and no fund raising projects were present.
But now the work done directly for scientific projects is devaluated by a single fund-raising project, which is very incorrect, and it has a very bad message for the CPU/GPU crunchers.

Overall credit divided over projects: (I hope that you can see the pictures I've attached)


Credit divided over projects in the last 24 hours:

BitCoin Utopia awards 6.5 times more credit than the other projects together.
Is fund raising that important?
Is this the message the BOINC community wants to send to it's present and future crunchers?
Could it be mixed with scientific work?
Could be different scientific work mixed together?

Credit Per day chart:


BitCoin Utopia shows the flaw of the credit system even more, than before.
It's like when you have to decide which fruit is more tasty by measuring their weight: a strawberry, an apple, a banana, or a watermelon?

You guys are incorrect as to what an ASIC is. It stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. They ARE processors but they have been designed to perform a limited number of tasks ... very quickly.

I know that, and I'm sure that BTC mining made a lot of people learn that. :)

I worked for HP for 32 years and we designed and used many ASICs. One ASIC I'm very familiar with did FFTs and inverse FFTS .... very very quickly. The heart of the Seti WU is preforming FFTs. So if someone were to design an ASIC that plugged into your USB port that could compute a Seti WU 1000s of times faster than a GPU would you be complaining because it isn't fair? Particularly since it would use a handful of watts versus hundreds of watts to do the same job. Of course the market is so small no one would every produce one for Seti ... you couldn't sell enough to pay for the development costs.

This made me rethink my crunching career.
Are we crazy for paying our electricity bills instead of creating and funding a project which makes ASICs for the research GPUGrid does?
So we could have found E.T. long time ago if we'd developed and used an ASIC for that task?
We could have found the cure for AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer's, CJD, ebola if we'd developed and used and ASIC for each research?
If this is true, then we are all sons of b****es for we haven't done that.

I agree with the person who mentioned that maybe projects should start their own ASIC mining sub-projects if they need funding.

This is probably me. I'm considering that I should mine BTC to support my electricity bills.

BU has approached MilkyWay@home to contribute to their program MW lost their grant and are in need of funds to continue.

This is good news. Donate@home should be revived and switched to those ASICs.

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Message 37314 - Posted: 19 Jul 2014 | 21:47:51 UTC - in response to Message 37313.


Are we crazy for paying our electricity bills instead of creating and funding a project which makes ASICs for the research GPUGrid does?


There is dedicated machinery for molecular dynamics - google DE Shaw's Anton, and Riken's MD-GRAPE. The short of it is that it's hard and expensive to do: Cryptocurrency hash calculations are about as easy as ASIC design gets - MD's at the other end of the spectrum.

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Message 37315 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 0:49:53 UTC

MJH,
Why not resurrect Donate@home, and allow us to use our ASIC miners to find cash for gpugrid like we use to with our GPU's? Right now all my miners are crunching for milkyway@home via Bitcoin Utopia, but I'd love to switch some over to you. BTW Bitcoin Utopia has wu's for: ASIC miners only, cpu only, AND GPU only. if they think it's worthwhile, maybe you should reconsider. Just a thought.
Regards,
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Message 37316 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 9:13:23 UTC

Wow the 24 h credit amount chart above looks crazy O.o
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Message 37317 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 12:26:50 UTC - in response to Message 37315.

We should remember that this idea (of funding through mining) was first actuated in the form of Donate@home. The same issues were seen there. Donate wasn’t just a proof of concept project, it trail-blazed funding through mining, proved that there was enough interest and that it could be successful; ultimately Donate resulted in funding for a PhD student.

It was inevitable that another similar project would emerge.
Donate used GPU’s to mine one unit of currency (Bit coins) and had to retire because of the emergence of ASIC’s which increased the level of difficulty to the point of no return.
Donate could have tried to mine on CPU’s, but there were not enough crunchers for this to happen, yields were tiny and the implementation too much effort.
Donate could also have waited for and then started using ASIC’s, but there would have been too few crunchers with ASIC’s, new apps would have been needed and it would have distracted the researchers away from molecular dynamics.
Donate could also have diverged, crunching for a number of alternative currencies, but again it would have taken a lot of effort from what is a small team.
It really wasn't until a few months ago that ASIC mining had matured enough and became popular enough to make an ASIC based funding project viable. Prior to this however, it simply wasn’t.

The reality of crunching is that you can start-up whatever Boinc project you like, and crunchers can crunch whatever they like and for whatever reason they want.
Some crunchers crunch for whatever gives the biggest credit at any time. In the past these migratory credit opportunists typically crunched for projects such as Collatz, PrimeGrid, MilkyWay, Moo! Wrapper, Distributed Rainbow Table Generator, SubsetSum, ABC… and often only did so when the credits were highest, but many also chipped in at POEM, GPUGRID and WCG (when they had the HCC on GPU for a few months).
It’s no surprise to see the same crunchers over at Bitcoin Utopia, and to me this is an improvement. Crunching Pi, Soduko or any other meaningless crap resulted in nothing positive, Bitcoin Utopia on the other hand results in money going into research projects.
The only problem is the credits, and in the same way as GPU’s result in massive credits compared to CPU’s, ASIC’s result in massive credits compared to GPU’s. The difference however is that GPU’s can be used to do a range of scientific research, while ASIC’s can only be used to mine. Comparing CPU’s to GPU’s to ASIC’s is a bit like comparing a pair of shoes to a tram to an elevator in a sky-scraper.

In terms of Boinc cross-project stats I'm starting to drop too; was around 280ish, now 290 and falling... Entirely down to BitCoin Utopia as I had been rising slowly.
Personally, I'm not particularly bothered whether I'm 250th or 400th, but I expect many crunchers in the top 10 or 100 wouldn't like to be shifted from that hard earned position because a couple of hundred people plugged in USB sticks!

Again, regarding credits there needs to be a segregation by project types (various scientific areas and non-scientific fields).

The present fields (according to the Boinc Client) are:

- Biology and Medicine
- Cognative Science and AI
- Distributed sensing
- Earth Sciences
- Mathematics, Computing and...
- Multiple Applications
- Physical Science

I don't think any of this is respected in any of the stats sites though.
Unless Boinc command steps in and sorts this out, it's down to the stat sites to deal with this, after all it's their stats that are looking pointless!

This would do the trick,
- Funding/Mining (doesn't count for cross-project credit)

However, the stat sites can count what they like, so it's down to them.
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Message 37318 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 14:22:13 UTC

I'd also question the efficiency of the fundraising. According to the graphs for Campaign #1 (Aquaponics) and Campaign #2 (HopeGames), they have raised about $(US)1,500 and $300 respectively. That sounds considerably less than the participants are likely to have spent purchasing ASICs, and very little money raised in the grand scheme of things, for a lot of effort.

The rate of donations is gathering pace, so maybe Milkyway's target of $20,000 is achievable - but it looks like hard work at this stage.

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Message 37323 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 20:54:17 UTC - in response to Message 37318.

The project is fairly new (about a year old).
While many people have participated on CPU's and GPU's this was ineffective - the yield was low.
However, attention to the project has grown in the last month or so due to the credit awarded to ASIC's. Recently, the number of ASICs attached has significantly increased and will inevitably continue to increase. To boot, the project might yet facilitate more ASIC models, so as a funding project it might turn out to be quite fruitful (if enough high end ASIC's can be attached)...

The credit is still skewed though; while it might reflect some relative performances it neglects the fact that a USB device needs to be attached to a computer!
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Message 37324 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 21:06:01 UTC - in response to Message 37323.


The credit is still skewed though; while it might reflect some relative performances it neglects the fact that a USB device needs to be attached to a computer!


Well, you can have four of the critters on a single Raspberry Pi...

It's such a shame that Cryptocoin proof-of-work functions aren't comuting anything useful as a side effect.

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Message 37326 - Posted: 20 Jul 2014 | 21:15:16 UTC - in response to Message 37324.

You could have a lot more than that if you used a USB hub, and some of them daisy-chain!

If also attached to WUPROP, some stats are collected. Other previous and potential NCI projects could be attached too...


The credit is still skewed though; while it might reflect some relative performances it neglects the fact that a USB device needs to be attached to a computer!


Well, you can have four of the critters on a single Raspberry Pi...

It's such a shame that Cryptocoin proof-of-work functions aren't comuting anything useful as a side effect.

Matt


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Message 37330 - Posted: 21 Jul 2014 | 6:26:19 UTC

For me the think i hate it the combined 'douchebag' credit system. It mean nothing. Badge was not a bad idea.

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Message 37331 - Posted: 21 Jul 2014 | 8:09:04 UTC - in response to Message 37318.
Last modified: 22 Jul 2014 | 8:11:04 UTC

The rate of donations is gathering pace, so maybe Milkyway's target of $20,000 is achievable - but it looks like hard work at this stage.


Arguably they can get more funding and faster by making a kickstarter :D (or rather https://experiment.com/)

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Message 37335 - Posted: 21 Jul 2014 | 11:56:30 UTC - in response to Message 37318.

I'd also question the efficiency of the fundraising. According to the graphs for Campaign #1 (Aquaponics) and Campaign #2 (HopeGames), they have raised about $(US)1,500 and $300 respectively. That sounds considerably less than the participants are likely to have spent purchasing ASICs, and very little money raised in the grand scheme of things, for a lot of effort.

The rate of donations is gathering pace, so maybe Milkyway's target of $20,000 is achievable - but it looks like hard work at this stage.


The one thing I would disagree about is that like cpu's or gpu's asic boxes are a one time purchase for a long time use. So it's not like you have to buy a new asic box every week or so to keep generating the money. I too am crunching using an asic box, the credits ARE huge, but the money I am generating is WHY I am doing it, and over the long run I hope it comes out to be worthwhile. Kind of like buying a new gpu to run here, I hope it turns out to be helpful, but it can be used elsewhere if I decide it can't be. Right now an asic box can only be used, in Boinc, at BU, hopefully that will change over time as projects figure out how to make work that can use them, just as they did when we first started using gpu's.

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Message 37336 - Posted: 21 Jul 2014 | 13:22:21 UTC - in response to Message 37335.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

I filled in the data for the new (July) AntMiner S3. It would never come close to breaking even mining Bitcoins. Probably wouldn't even pay for half it's cost and within 6months or so it would yield less than what the electric costs.

It begs the question, are any mining devices profitable?
If not then as a funding project, donations would be better.
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Message 37340 - Posted: 21 Jul 2014 | 17:10:48 UTC
Last modified: 21 Jul 2014 | 17:11:25 UTC

Bitcoin only is profitable when you sell permanent your miners and buy new fastest ones. The more the better, a single usb hub should have a absolut minimum of 30ghash+. But there a much bigger minerbackplanes, they are better. So its a lot of work ;)
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Message 37342 - Posted: 21 Jul 2014 | 17:48:36 UTC - in response to Message 37340.

Bitcoin only is profitable when you sell permanent your miners and buy new fastest ones. The more the better, a single usb hub should have a absolut minimum of 30ghash+. But there a much bigger minerbackplanes, they are better. So its a lot of work ;)

The more I read about this, the more it worries me. I added the emphasis on 'buy': presumably, the best profits of all are available to pre-release testers and those closest to the centre of the development and manufacturing chain. By the time new hardware has passed through manufacturing and out into retail, the 'early adopter' margin has already been lost. And if you sell the used hardware because it no longer gives you that margin, what value does it have to the second user?

While I don't know enough about the subject to cast doubt on the integrity of the original concept of crypto-currency, the current implementation seems to have more in common with a Ponzi scheme or South Sea Bubble.

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Message 37348 - Posted: 22 Jul 2014 | 11:59:47 UTC - in response to Message 37342.

Bitcoin only is profitable when you sell permanent your miners and buy new fastest ones. The more the better, a single usb hub should have a absolut minimum of 30ghash+. But there a much bigger minerbackplanes, they are better. So its a lot of work ;)

The more I read about this, the more it worries me. I added the emphasis on 'buy': presumably, the best profits of all are available to pre-release testers and those closest to the centre of the development and manufacturing chain. By the time new hardware has passed through manufacturing and out into retail, the 'early adopter' margin has already been lost. And if you sell the used hardware because it no longer gives you that margin, what value does it have to the second user?

While I don't know enough about the subject to cast doubt on the integrity of the original concept of crypto-currency, the current implementation seems to have more in common with a Ponzi scheme or South Sea Bubble.


There are bars, restaurants, real estate brokers, Newegg.com and lots of other places now taking bitcoins as payment for their services. I don't think they currently think it is a Ponzi scheme or South Sea Bubble, but of course they could be wrong. The problem with 'schemes' is they sound good which draws in alot of even reputable companies, I am NOT evaluating any company here, then when it bursts alot of people get hurt.

After the Mt Gox and other newsworthy hacks and stealing of their bitcoin hashtags, I am personally worried about mining and storing my own bitcoins. Theoretically I could mine one, get the code and move it to an off line pc for long term storage, BUT one of the NSA leaks said that they had intercepted some motherboards and installed some hardware on them that lets them connect to it even if the pc has NO internet connection!! I am NOT saying the NSA would hack me, but if they can anyone can figure it out given enough incentive.

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Message 37350 - Posted: 22 Jul 2014 | 12:50:49 UTC - in response to Message 37348.


There are bars, restaurants, real estate brokers, Newegg.com and lots of other places now taking bitcoins as payment for their services. I don't think they currently think it is a Ponzi scheme or South Sea Bubble, but of course they could be wrong.


Pedantically, merchants accepting Bitcoins most likely are doing so through a third party such as Coinbase. Coinbase accepts a recipt of bitcoins and the transaction is settled with the merchant in cash (assuming the market is liquid), so there is minimal exposure to Bitcoin's volatility.

Certainly, Dell et al aren't maintaining a bitcoin holding themselves, at least not for the purpose of ecommerce.

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Message 37363 - Posted: 22 Jul 2014 | 16:17:11 UTC

This discussion and the concept of Bitcoin itself is meaningless.. Bitcoin reads "fraud, thieves, you will lose your money!" all over it.

Any form of money / currency is only as good as the entity that is behind it and vouches for it. Since the invention of the concept of currency, there has been a sovereign entity behind each currency. This is what creates the faith in party A that the money it has taken from party B for providing some service or good will in actual fact carry its value in the foreseeable future. Where is that entity behind Bitcoin? I hear people crying out "the Network", well let me ask "the Network" to vouch for the value of my Bitcoins and guess what "the Network's" response will be. The picture of a slowly rising middle finger forms in my mind!

It is either that, or exchanging gold / silver / diamonds / some other valuable material, like corn for example. "Value" means it can be used by people to some end. Silver, gold and platinum (and other precious metals) have extremely good physical / chemical / electrical / thermal / etc properties, which make them suitable for many uses, including making long-lasting ornaments. Corn makes bread, the basis of human diet.

In contrast, what can one do with Bitcoin? Can one eat it, make a tool out of it, create a long-lasting (practically invulnerable to nature) item from it?

No. People give it value because it is practically finite. Well, so are prime numbers, should we start trading in primes?
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Message 37364 - Posted: 22 Jul 2014 | 18:03:12 UTC - in response to Message 37363.

Vagelis, well I don't personally use physical money so much anymore, mostly my credit card. My money are mostly numbers in a bankaccount (too small numbers sadly) :) My bankaccount is in turn governed by greedy bank bosses :)

And banks can also go bankrupt ;)

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Message 37371 - Posted: 23 Jul 2014 | 10:16:42 UTC - in response to Message 37364.

Ryle, you couldn't possibly be more off the mark!

What is insubstantial in what you do is the exchanges, not the money itself. When you make an electronic money exchange, it's like saying "give me this product / service and I will have your money waiting for you in the bank". In fact, the electronic exchange is MUCH more secure than that!

The exchange / transaction is "in numbers", but the money being exchanged is very, VERY real! When you go to the bank or the cash machine, you will find it is VERY real cash you can get in your hands.

On the other hand, when you get some Bitcoin in exchange for something, do you trust you can go somewhere (really, where? Do you trust "that site" will exist tomorrow?) and pick cash? Are you certain?

This is the (BIG) difference.
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Message 37373 - Posted: 23 Jul 2014 | 12:24:06 UTC - in response to Message 37363.


Any form of money / currency is only as good as the entity that is behind it and vouches for it. Since the invention of the concept of currency, there has been a sovereign entity behind each currency.


This part is very subjective, each entity that issues money, we have had MANY of them here in the US alone over our short few hundred years, is dependent on it's own values as to whether the money is any good or not. During our own Civil War both sides issued money, after it was over the losing sides money was declared null and void and anyone holding it was FLAT BROKE! People lose MILLIONS of dollars overnight, just because they supported the 'wrong' Government. In the beginning of our history each State issued its own currency, it them becoming null and void as they joined a National Government. The US Government itself has issued currency over the years, ie Silver Certificates, that are now worthless except to collectors. All of this means that having a Government standing behind a currency is not ALWAYS a good thing. What happens in Europe if some of the countries now using the Euro go back to the old ways? Some ARE considering it, whether it will happen or not I have no idea, but if they dump the Euro you may have to travel to be able to spend what you have.
In addition over the years MANY Governments have devalued their currency, meaning what you have is now worth a very small portion of what it was worth just yesterday!!

I am NOT saying bitcoins are the be all end all of money, or that they will outlast anything, but they are worth something right now and that is why people are collecting and spending them.

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Message 37379 - Posted: 23 Jul 2014 | 19:55:16 UTC - in response to Message 37363.
Last modified: 23 Jul 2014 | 20:02:33 UTC

This thread is not about BitCoin itself, but I have to clarify some misunderstandings.
I'm not against changing the world. BitCoin (and the other crypto currencies) is about changing the the basis of the economy of the whole world (that is the monetary system). I think that it can't be done against the will of the participants of the economy. If the powers of the monetary system wanted to change the basis of the economy all of us living in, it could have been done long ago. The so called socialism (or communism) - beside many things - was (or at least it was intended to be) an attempt to do that. This attempt has been failed, not just because the "communist" block was preparing for WW3 all the time of its existence (I lived in it for 20 years, so I know it from the inside), as the other block did the same. I think that the change the crypto currencies bring to the current monetary system are against the interest of the powers of the monetary system, as it would diminish (or even end) their influence on the source of their power. This power comes from the fact that they can change (usually lower) the value of the money by issuing more of it than needed. This is not a bad thing while it has a fairly low rate, because no one wants to keep the money in the long term, because it will devaluate over time. So one could either spend it, or invest it, or put it in a Bank (and they will invest it), which will result in a growing economy. The point of modern (so called fiat) money is that it's an infinite resource, therefore it could finance the growth of the economy for all eternity :). But the powers controlling the flow and creation of fiat money have to be very aware of how the others spend/invest this money, because there are some monetary entities, which has only one purpose: to grow as big as they can by exploiting the infinity of fiat money. On the other hand, if money would became more valuable over time, it would decrease the flow of itself, result in a decaying economy which would lead to mass loss of jobs (which is pretty bad).

This discussion and the concept of Bitcoin itself is meaningless..

The discussion of any subject is always useful: it could make the ignorant learn something about the subject.
About the meaning of BitCoin: "everything has a purpose, if nothing else it could serve as deterrent"

Bitcoin reads "fraud, thieves, you will lose your money!" all over it.

The powers of the current monetary system makes you believe it, partly because the powers pushed out of the monetary system (that is criminals) have to use alternative currencies.

Any form of money / currency is only as good as the entity that is behind it and vouches for it.

While the "good" sound familiar, its quite incomprehensible when talking about complex entities who have many faces, beside issuing money.

Since the invention of the concept of currency, there has been a sovereign entity behind each currency. This is what creates the faith in party A that the money it has taken from party B for providing some service or good will in actual fact carry its value in the foreseeable future.

This is the part of the monetary system based on fiat money what the common people perceive. But it's much more than that.

Where is that entity behind Bitcoin?

Nowhere. There is no entity behind it, only the users of it ("the network"). That's why it's revolutionary. That's why nobody knows how it's gonna work out. If there's big enough crowd behind it, it could work. But only if the current powers of the current monetary system will resign their powers.

I hear people crying out "the Network", well let me ask "the Network" to vouch for the value of my Bitcoins and guess what "the Network's" response will be. The picture of a slowly rising middle finger forms in my mind!

The problem with "the network" is that the economy cannot work without a power who throws out those who seek deals where they win by the other party's loss.

It is either that, or exchanging gold / silver / diamonds / some other valuable material, like corn for example. "Value" means it can be used by people to some end. Silver, gold and platinum (and other precious metals) have extremely good physical / chemical / electrical / thermal / etc properties, which make them suitable for many uses, including making long-lasting ornaments. Corn makes bread, the basis of human diet.

Is there so much corn in the world which can be exchanged for a fusion power plant?
The gold became the carrier of value because at that time it couldn't be used to make anything useful (as a tool or weapon), as it is soft (when pure) and dense (heavy), while it don't corrode on air.

In contrast, what can one do with Bitcoin? Can one eat it, make a tool out of it, create a long-lasting (practically invulnerable to nature) item from it?

Can you eat a dollar bill, or a plastic credit/debit card, or gold? These things only work while the economy is working as it is working now. When something would hit the economy hard (like a war), the people would receive bread for tickets, not for money. While this sounds odd, they will be happy because they lived.

No. People give it value because it is practically finite. Well, so are prime numbers, should we start trading in primes?

While the known prime numbers are finite, there are infinite prime numbers exists. However they become more sparse as they become larger.
When the basis of the monetary system was gold (a finite resource), it has limited the growth of the whole economy, as there wasn't enough gold in the system to support its growth. The modern economy passed over this phase, that's why we live in better circumstances than ever before. There is a finite number of BitCoins, however it can be split infinitely (as far as I know). This is quite the opposite of fiat money.

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Message 37398 - Posted: 24 Jul 2014 | 21:47:20 UTC - in response to Message 37315.

MJH,
Why not resurrect Donate@home, and allow us to use our ASIC miners to find cash for gpugrid like we use to with our GPU's? Right now all my miners are crunching for milkyway@home via Bitcoin Utopia, but I'd love to switch some over to you. BTW Bitcoin Utopia has wu's for: ASIC miners only, cpu only, AND GPU only. if they think it's worthwhile, maybe you should reconsider. Just a thought.
Regards,
Col. Rick A. Sponholz


Could someone from GPUGRID respond to the post above? Several people have posted their opinion on the credability of bitcoins, but GPUGRID used them in the past (earned via Donate@home). I'm going to mine for some project, wish it could be for GPUGRID.
Thanks in advance for your consideration & response.
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Message 37404 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 13:56:06 UTC - in response to Message 37398.

Rick,

Donate@Home was a success for us because we had access to a lot of (AMD) GPU that we weren't using for anything else, at a time before ASICs when it was still possible mine Bitcoins usiing normal hardware.

We saw the effect of the introduction of ASICs almost immediately (indeed long before most of the customers actually received theirs, why that was is left as an exercise for the reader) and our return dropped to almost nothing very quickly.

Shortly after that happened we stopped the project as the human effort to run it couldn't be justified in the absence of any return. We're still accepting Bitcoin donations via direct transfer however.

I understand that some of you have ASICs now but, frankly, I doubt there'll be enough to make a worthwhile mining pool. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to make a straw poll of crunchers to see.

Right now, however, if you do have ASIC mining hardware and want to generate Bitcoins for GPUGRID, firstly: thank you! and secondly: the best I can suggest is you subscribe to one of the large mining pools and reap a share of their activity, then xfer that to us.

Cheers,

Matt

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Message 37410 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 17:13:41 UTC
Last modified: 25 Jul 2014 | 17:14:31 UTC

Thats rediculess! Past by a user with a 232M Today BitCoin Utopia.. Lost place on place on the Worldlist. My no so far away finish to 99,99% is surely over now and never reachable, that sucks :(
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Message 37411 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 20:19:52 UTC - in response to Message 37404.

...I understand that some of you have ASICs now but, frankly, I doubt there'll be enough to make a worthwhile mining pool. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to make a straw poll of crunchers to see.


If you resurrect Donate@home with ASIC computing capabilities similar to what BU has done...we will come. Plus GPUGRID.net will have the added benefit of stating all bitcoins generated will go towards GPUGRID.net without I believe the current 12% cut going towards the project administrators to cover overhead with the remaining amount being given to a charitable enterprise many are probably not familiar, with the exception being Milkyway@home. Donate@home could be an effective counter weight against BU since they will no longer be "the only game in town" for this type of crunching activity. Using cgminer should aid this process since that is what BU uses, and it is always best to attract a currently installed user base.

If you build it...we will come. That is my forecast, however whether or not is is worthwhile for GPUGRID.net to build and support this infrastructure with respect to the cost/benefit analysis is something only GPUGRID.net can answer. The BU WEB site does state the generated bitcoin amounts for each campaign which could be a useful guide to help with that analysis.

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Message 37412 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 20:31:19 UTC - in response to Message 37411.

If you resurrect Donate@home with ASIC computing capabilities similar to what BU has done...we will come


Right, I would be 1 of the 1'st to throw my ASIC's on the GPU Grid Project which I consider to be a much more worthy Project than Bitcoin Utopia, but for now I'll run BitCoin so I don't get Stampeded by the Credit Seekers.

I'm not really happy about the Bitcoin Project myself & the amount of Credit they give out, I've even expressed that in my Teams Forum. I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain. I'd rather get on Board with the ASIC's & lead rather than follow much like I did when the GPU's 1'st came out ... ;)

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Message 37413 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 21:31:37 UTC - in response to Message 37412.

If you resurrect Donate@home with ASIC computing capabilities similar to what BU has done...we will come


Right, I would be 1 of the 1'st to throw my ASIC's on the GPU Grid Project which I consider to be a much more worthy Project than Bitcoin Utopia, but for now I'll run BitCoin so I don't get Stampeded by the Credit Seekers.

I'm not really happy about the Bitcoin Project myself & the amount of Credit they give out, I've even expressed that in my Teams Forum. I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain. I'd rather get on Board with the ASIC's & lead rather than follow much like I did when the GPU's 1'st came out ... ;)


I completely agree. ASICs are here to stay and the only questions are:

1. When will other projects follow?
2. Will they offer similar credits to BU?

I had mustered 43m cr in 2 years on my motley fleet. I'm now approaching 1/2 billion in the last month and it cost me $75. My amazing super-cruncher is awaiting a CPU and now my decision is buy that $300 AMD toy or buy 4 R-BOX miners. It's a game changer alright...

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Message 37414 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 23:33:41 UTC - in response to Message 37412.

I'm not really happy about the Bitcoin Project myself & the amount of Credit they give out, I've even expressed that in my Teams Forum.

It's quite comforting that I'm not the only one.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

I'd rather get on Board with the ASIC's & lead rather than follow much like I did when the GPU's 1'st came out ... ;)

That is a quite logical move from your side, and quite predictable from BU's side.



While the credit awarded by BU is only 1.57% bigger on today's chart than on the previous one I've posted, still this means that BU has awarded 7.5 times more credit today than the other projects together (the previous ratio was 6.5). This ratio is steadily growing, as more and more crunchers attracted like you. This undue amount of the awarded credits by BU, and the predictable actions it has called forth reminds me the way politicians manipulate people to provoke the action they wanted to achieve (however it was the same when GPU crunching became available).
This story is different though, as high-end GPUs are usually more expensive to buy and to run than CPUs, but these ASICs are very cheap to buy and to run yet they earn astronomical amount of credits.
In the short term the other projects won't suffer significant loss of crunchers, as these ASICs won't take the place of CPUs and GPUs. However in the long term it will make significantly harder for the old projects to attract new crunchers, when someone could make 100 times more credits with much cheaper hardware.

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Message 37415 - Posted: 25 Jul 2014 | 23:58:12 UTC - in response to Message 37404.

Rick,

Donate@Home was a success for us because we had access to a lot of (AMD) GPU that we weren't using for anything else, at a time before ASICs when it was still possible mine Bitcoins usiing normal hardware.

We saw the effect of the introduction of ASICs almost immediately (indeed long before most of the customers actually received theirs, why that was is left as an exercise for the reader) and our return dropped to almost nothing very quickly.

Shortly after that happened we stopped the project as the human effort to run it couldn't be justified in the absence of any return. We're still accepting Bitcoin donations via direct transfer however.

I understand that some of you have ASICs now but, frankly, I doubt there'll be enough to make a worthwhile mining pool. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to make a straw poll of crunchers to see.

Right now, however, if you do have ASIC mining hardware and want to generate Bitcoins for GPUGRID, firstly: thank you! and secondly: the best I can suggest is you subscribe to one of the large mining pools and reap a share of their activity, then xfer that to us.

Cheers,

Matt



Thanks for the reply Matt. I believe if you build it, we will come. In any case, thanks for your consideration of the idea. Regards, Rick

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Message 37419 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 5:15:47 UTC - in response to Message 37414.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.


???

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Message 37421 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 10:46:37 UTC - in response to Message 37419.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.


???


I thought exactly the same thing...WHAT? People said EXACTLY the same thing when gpu's came out and people started wiping the floor of the stats of people who had used only cpu's for YEARS!! Every new technology gives a bump up in both the ability to do it faster and getting more credits for it.

I personally don't have any problem with BU using credits to attract people to their project, I think alot of projects do that in one way or another. Some keep the credits low so only a few dedicated people will stay, giving the project more stability and less need to grow their infrastructure. Some, like BU and DistRTgen use credits to attract people to their project, and have the resulting infrastructure growing pains to show for it.

The problem has ALWAYS been when people start comparing the credits earned at on project to another project, that is where it becomes unfair. Unfair to both the users and to the projects. You can't compare the credits earned at GpuGrid with the credits earned at MilkyWay or Einstein, why compare them to BU? As for overall credits they are just that...lifetime stats like a baseball player that has played for a dozen teams. Fairly meaningless today, but good for getting into the Hall of Fame.

My Seti stats are like that, ALL earned pre gpu times, and not one credit earned since March 2007 when I left! BUT they are still listed in my overall stats, and on the Seti page so are my pre-Boinc numbers. They are meaningless to what I have done lately at the different projects, but still recorded in the digital history books of Boinc. Word is that Bitcoin mining has a limited life span, and when it is done there are no more, meaning BU will be another defunct project that ceases to exist and the numbers will then be recorded someplace in our stats as we move on to other places to crunch.

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Message 37425 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 12:47:41 UTC - in response to Message 37421.

I thought exactly the same thing...WHAT? People said EXACTLY the same thing when gpu's came out and people started wiping the floor of the stats of people who had used only cpu's for YEARS!! Every new technology gives a bump up in both the ability to do it faster and getting more credits for it.

There's a big difference. GPUs crunch scientific WUs. They are simply a faster way to process the same WUs that CPUs were running. ASICS only generate revenue, they can't do science. You could similarly say that people should be given huge credits for donating money or equipment to projects, or shoes to the needy for that matter. On top of that BU in particular looks like a personal money making scheme if they're raking off 12%. That's a lot of money.

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Message 37430 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 16:53:37 UTC - in response to Message 37425.

The solution? Don't compare stats crossproject. It's that simple.

Like mikey said, it only makes sense to compare stats within each project, even if we didn't have those ASICs and only CPUS vs GPUs. It has never been fair in BOINC, since some people can afford more PCs than others and so be it. That's just how that is.

That aside, it IS pretty insane to achieve 1/2 billion points in one day, which takes several years even on GPUs.

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Message 37431 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 16:54:16 UTC - in response to Message 37419.

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

???

Sorry for I wasn't clear. Not your reaction is the bad message, but the fact that the impact of this project on science is way below its impact on the balance of the credits (while the impact of the GPUs in scientific use is nearly in direct ratio of credit difference between GPUs and CPUs). I think BU's impact on the BOINC community (science - if you like) could be even adverse in the long term, despite the profitability in the short term if they keep on awarding this amount of credits (that is the present projects cannot substitute the crunchers they will possibly loose in the future from the funding they receive in the present - there is only one such project at the moment).
However ASICs' impact on science could be as big as the GPUs impact if they'd be used directly for research. I think that the algorithm Collatz and DistRTG is using can be put more easily on ASICs, than GPUGrid's or MilkyWay's or PrimeGrid's. Furthermore I think that an advanced ASIC could do the same reverse engineering as rainbow tables are used for, making the whole DirstRTgen project obsolete. Still, in my opinion, they won't have such a device, as there's no one who would finance its development. The only reason for the existence of the BitCoin miner ASICs is that their development was financed by the present use of them.

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Message 37435 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 21:07:59 UTC - in response to Message 37431.
Last modified: 27 Jul 2014 | 14:10:00 UTC

I was happy just using my CPU's to run worth while Projects, but I'm not going to sit by, complain & watch other's run me over in a few weeks what took me over 12 Years to attain.

That's what I call a bad message for the old crunchers.

???

Sorry for I wasn't clear. Not your reaction is the bad message, but the fact that the impact of this project on science is way below its impact on the balance of the credits (while the impact of the GPUs in scientific use is nearly in direct ratio of credit difference between GPUs and CPUs). I think BU's impact on the BOINC community (science - if you like) could be even adverse in the long term, despite the profitability in the short term if they keep on awarding this amount of credits (that is the present projects cannot substitute the crunchers they will possibly loose in the future from the funding they receive in the present - there is only one such project at the moment).

However ASICs' impact on science could be as big as the GPUs impact if they'd be used directly for research. I think that the algorithm Collatz and DistRTG is using can be put more easily on ASICs, than GPUGrid's or MilkyWay's or PrimeGrid's. Furthermore I think that an advanced ASIC could do the same reverse engineering as rainbow tables are used for, making the whole DirstRTgen project obsolete. Still, in my opinion, they won't have such a device, as there's no one who would finance its development. The only reason for the existence of the BitCoin miner ASICs is that their development was financed by the present use of them.

I knew what you meant Zoltan, however this isn't just a tetchy subject, it's a defining one for Boinc and those associated with it (which especially means high end crunchers), so if you say anything that could be misinterpreted it will be latched onto - the crowds are amassing...

To clarify, and in my opinion, you were saying that crunchers who have been around for many years, who purchased high end products, upgraded and ran expensive hardware for many years are being replaced by noobs with USB sticks who get crazy credits for unworthy BitCoin mining, and that is a bad message to send out to long-standing crunchers.

If ASIC's actually cost less (TCO) than they generated I would be all for them, but they don't. At best you're buying into a bubble and we all know what happens to bubbles.

While I'm all for ingenuity, creative thinking, trailblazing, entrepreneurialism and self-funding research, the reality is that ASIC's represent a controlled market and those who buy into them are the product!

GPU's were and are primarily designed for gaming. When they were viably used for mining, they represented a regulating factor; they were designed for another purpose and controlled by parties with no ties to BitCoin mining.
This outside factor has now been acquired by ASIC developers. So, regulation is now owned by the ASIC developers. Forget any nonsense about needing 50% of the global pool to control the markets, it's already controlled!

The only way Boinc credits can be regulated is by dismissing all mining project credits or awarding credit per actual cost...

In my opinion, and I agree with Zoltans analysis on this, people are being over-rewarded for mining and are now purposely buying mining equipment rather that crunching equipment for scientific purposes or making donations.
What is the true value of a mining project, if it rewards more than it's worth?

If you spend £1000/year on IT equipment to crunch for worthy causes and someone with a couple of USB sticks (£10 to buy and £10 to run per year) replaces you on the credit leader-board then the credit system is flawed.
The chances of the slowest (330MHz) USB stick finding a BitCoin are infidecimally small, yet the Boinc credit system accepts that because it can do one useless thing extremely fast that it's fine to reward stupid-credits - seriously >1M Boinc credits/day for a USB stick?!?
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Message 37436 - Posted: 26 Jul 2014 | 22:50:01 UTC - in response to Message 37435.

I entirely agree with Retvari Zoltan* and skgiven, however the one point I have trouble understanding is I always thought BOINC was not supposed to be for a commercial enterprise/platform especially since BOINC has received funding from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), yet BU clearly states on the front WEB page, first sentence "Bitcoin Utopia is a commercial platform... . What am I missing?

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Message 37449 - Posted: 27 Jul 2014 | 22:34:24 UTC


Another 2.68% rise in BU's share of the total credits awarded. This small rise in the percentage means that BU awarded a little over 10 times more credits than all other projects combined. BU has 352 active users today, they have 207 more users since this started (19 June 2014), which is ~50% rise (5.3 new users per day regarding this period), so this is only the beginning. How will this chart look like, when there will be 10000 active BU users? By looking at the present chart I'm sure they will allure that many users by the end of this year. I think that BU will completely overtake the credit pie above. Is there any authority who can audit their credit policy? Do they think that they need to reduce their credits?

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Message 37450 - Posted: 27 Jul 2014 | 22:43:48 UTC - in response to Message 37449.
Last modified: 27 Jul 2014 | 23:02:36 UTC

Is there any authority who can audit their credit policy? Do they think that they need to reduce their credits?


There have been people who have called for a Credit Reduction but they get shot down pretty quickly. The Admin of BU has also stated that he will not Reduce the Credits either, about the only way they get Reduced now a little is the difficulty increases every 2 weeks. Larger difficulty = slower mining = slightly less Credit's.

There have been several of us bumping against the 1 Billion Per Day Wall, several (not me) will start going over it today & some more in a few day's ... Really Ridiculous, it's like an Arm's Race, so & so got this Miner so they use that as an excuse that they have to keep up & get 2 more of them them selve's, then the other guy gets 2 more himself & so on. I'm seriously thinking about putting my ASIC's up for sale on E-bay & just go back to crunching CPU work which I enjoy much more than this Arm's Race going on now ...


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Message 37452 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 9:34:35 UTC
Last modified: 28 Jul 2014 | 9:49:56 UTC

How happy and proud i was with the fact i will join an exclusive club by getting my first billion credits this Year with science only! Thats more then much who crunch nonsense distrgen and so on. Now every noob can get a billion in some days. Thats a hard kick in my ass even when i dont crunch for credits, but it was something parallel to the publications i was proud of and calculated on boinc and not folding :(

Like another mentioned, over 1M with a 330M usb stick. Lol so i could get additional >20M/day only change the asics to boinc. When this would work out, i would get a second hub with some asic monster only to reach 100M per day because this would make adicted because it is sooo unbelievable cheap to buy and to run them.....im sure much credits seeker out ther sell all of there distr/collaz gpus to get a tons of BU ascis.

1,5kw energy for my 1,4M per day against 2,5watt for a single low end asic. I have no problem with the fact it supports projects, thats a really good thing and idea, but not with this amount of credits. Im so shocked about the chart, soon it will destroy that pie before the year end because there are enough people out there like me who didnt get it to work immediatly on the first try (only wanted to look how much some rare workunits would bring to get a calculation about the possible amount per ghash per day) so they will join later.
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Message 37453 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 10:27:44 UTC - in response to Message 37452.
Last modified: 28 Jul 2014 | 11:06:05 UTC

There is something I probably don't understand about the whole thing. If I were able to build up an ASIC miner farm that will be profitable over the time I would surely do this and start earning some (real) money. Having some more money to spend I'd presumably use it to go on vacation, make presents, buy a sport car etc. I would also give a percentage to people who really need money (there is plenty around the world). There are also scientific projects that I find interesting and (for a variety of reasons) are not able to get funds the 'usual' way.

On the other hand, if I decide to put all the ASIC miners into Bitcoin Utopia I get:
- A lost of 12% of the money just because of 'system handling'
- A very limited set of projects that I may choose for funding
- No tax deductions

So, where's the deal? Getting boinc credits?

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Message 37454 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 12:00:27 UTC - in response to Message 37452.

How happy and proud i was with the fact i will join an exclusive club by getting my first billion credits this Year with science only! Thats more then much who crunch nonsense distrgen and so on. Now every noob can get a billion in some days. Thats a hard kick in my ass even when i dont crunch for credits, but it was something parallel to the publications i was proud of and calculated on boinc and not folding :(


I think we have been missing something in this conversation, we are GAINING overall Boinc crunchers with BU and it's asic machines, and that's a GOOD THING. When bitcoin crunching ends all those people can then be utilized at other projects to help with something else. We just need to find a way to make that happen before the end of mining comes.

As Retvari said I think some projects could be converted to use asic miners once the while bitcoin thing ends. After all what will people do if they can't crunch and who will buy them if they can't use them. I have no idea how miners actually work, but they are doing something akin to how gpu's did things when everyone was using cpu's. Gpu's needed special setups at each project, drivers etc, just to get them to crunch, it seems to me that with some work even an asic machine could be used to crunch. SOME projects have said they cannot make gpu apps for their projects, and some others don't want to, but there are some projects that don't have cpu units, they are strictly gpu based for their crunching. Asic miners still do math, and that's crunching!!

As for the credits that BU gives out I don't care one way or the other, the whole thing is said to end within a short period of time and as Steve said, the crunching gets harder every 2 weeks anyway. It will sort itself out in the end.

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Message 37455 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 12:08:56 UTC - in response to Message 37452.

I'm sure many credits seeker out there [going to] sell all of their distr/collaz gpus to get a tons of BU ascis.

That is quite plausible course of action. That will hurt the other projects pretty soon.
I haven't thought of that, maybe because the primary reason for me to crunch is to aid science, not to collect credits.

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Message 37456 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 12:09:32 UTC - in response to Message 37453.

There is something I probably don't understand about the whole thing. If I were able to build up an ASIC miner farm that will be profitable over the time I would surely do this and start earning some (real) money. Having some more money to spend I'd presumably use it to go on vacation, make presents, buy a sport car etc. I would also give a percentage to people who really need money (there is plenty around the world). There are also scientific projects that I find interesting and (for a variety of reasons) are not able to get funds the 'usual' way.

On the other hand, if I decide to put all the ASIC miners into Bitcoin Utopia I get:
- A lost of 12% of the money just because of 'system handling'
- A very limited set of projects that I may choose for funding
- No tax deductions

So, where's the deal? Getting boinc credits?


I think it's down to 8% now, but either way all the rest of the money is donated to projects that need to raise money to stay around. MilkyWay for instance is the #3 project units they crunch.

Boinc has never been about tax deductions, it is a way for the average person to help their favorite project and indulge their inner scientist, without doing umpteen years of Science to do it.

As for how many projects you can mine for, get YOUR favorite Boinc project to talk to BU, they are looking for more projects to support and have said they will talk to ANY project. There is no reason any project needing donations shouldn't be talking to BU in my opinion. All they can do is say no, if they say yes though it is a potential funding stream and another place for us crunchers to chose to spend our electricity money on.

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Message 37457 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 12:10:10 UTC
Last modified: 28 Jul 2014 | 12:44:56 UTC

Valterc: It is not possible to do anything else with ascis then bitcoin mining at all, thats why they are so cheap, and limited architecture to need low power and running really fast FOR BITCOIN MINING. When mining dies, ascis die too, some serious seller tell you that when buying some. They are NOT The GPU Generation 2 (power and functionalwise). So its not possible to say, asics are that what gpu was "after" cpu. And the difficulty raises, and? The power of the asics are raising too...thats how bitcoin works, so it will not drop creditwise dramatical. Thats my theory. So i can live with collaz/distr/primeguys until today, the projects are not so crazy like they was some years ago so its ok, but BU...schlägt dem fass den boden aus, in good old german ;) even when they instant reduce the credits by 100times for the future work as example, the maindamage is done. And every single day makes it look more crazy. The only way in my opinion is to exclude this project from boinc combined only, so user can still competitive within the projectstats but not with the rest of boinc projects.
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Message 37460 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 18:54:08 UTC
Last modified: 28 Jul 2014 | 18:56:09 UTC

I have no Problem with them taking BitCoin Utopia from the Combined Stat's, just as long as they do away with Combined Stat's altogether & let each Project stand on it's own. The BitCoin Project was / is allowed to be a BOINC Project so you Can Not Exclude it from the overall / combined Stat's.

To do so would be Highly Hypocritical is so much as the Stat's from all Previous Excessive BOINC Project's are allowed to be Combined with the Much Lower paying Project's
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Message 37461 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 20:11:24 UTC - in response to Message 37460.
Last modified: 28 Jul 2014 | 20:35:27 UTC

I have no problem of project bitcoin @ Utopia
It's exactly the same situation as though some projects, scientists have developed an application for GPU performance and rac degrees from the cpu counting hundredfold.'s Happened years ago and also around that they were fierce debate.


Taking just the principle of science and scientific progress, we should support the counting on other future architecture-as it is now, for example, ASIC and others ..

When some people may benefit from a clusters in schools, universities or other public or private places only for your personal account for boinc .. or competition as BOINC Pentathlon or other competitions which runs constantly on various projects .. so if you're the Super Administrator at the University it's nice for your team ... and they do not make it legally .. their only excuse is-that it is good for the boinc project .. loool

ASIC is a challenge for scientists and programmers in BOINC projects as take advantage of this awesome efficiency.

STEVE- rac your credit or anyone else can not be deleted or moved to another statistics!

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Message 37463 - Posted: 28 Jul 2014 | 21:17:04 UTC - in response to Message 37450.

Is there any authority who can audit their credit policy? Do they think that they need to reduce their credits?

There have been people who have called for a Credit Reduction but they get shot down pretty quickly. The Admin of BU has also stated that he will not Reduce the Credits either, about the only way they get Reduced now a little is the difficulty increases every 2 weeks. Larger difficulty = slower mining = slightly less Credit's.

That is BU gives credit for bitcoins, not for crunching.
It's like if rosetta@home would give credits only for those who find the lowest energy protein configuration (ok, it's a bit of excess).

There have been several of us bumping against the 1 Billion Per Day Wall, several (not me) will start going over it today & some more in a few day's ... Really Ridiculous, it's like an Arm's Race, so & so got this Miner so they use that as an excuse that they have to keep up & get 2 more of them them selve's, then the other guy gets 2 more himself & so on. I'm seriously thinking about putting my ASIC's up for sale on E-bay & just go back to crunching CPU work which I enjoy much more than this Arm's Race going on now ...

This confirms that if someone is addicted to credits, he/she will sell his/hers non-ASIC (also expensive) crunching hardware to buy ASICs, which is quite logical decision. On the other hand, it will decrease the GPU/CPU crunching power of all projects. I think it will hurt the already known credit-factory projects like Collatz Conjecture, Milkyway@home & PrimeGrid, and probably the others too.
Let's check the charts to see if there's any correlation:

BitCoin Utopia: 182000% gain

Collatz Conjecture: 43% loss

MilkyWay@home: ~20% loss

PrimeGrid: ~12% loss

World Community Grid: ~5% loss

GPUGrid: ~10-18% loss

Again: this is only the beginning. The credit factory projects will loose more (up to 90% I think) than the other projects. If not selling all their crunching hardware (as it is also good for gaming), it's not worth to crunch on them, because it's very expensive to do compared to the ASICs.

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Message 37471 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 2:07:31 UTC

Another way to look at it is from the point of view of those among us who are competitive and do care about credits as a reward for investment in a project. I have nearly always had at least 1 GPU on GPUGrid for the science ( except for periods when the units just keep crashing my system ). I am the number 1 in my taem on the project and the only one with a constant presence.
At the same time I ran Collatz etc to bolster my credit. Being able to run my ASICs for the benefit of Milkyway after they lost their funding was why I put them on Bitcoin Utopia. The credit from BU sated my competitiveness, so 5 more nVidea GPU's were transferred to GPUGrid. My AMD's are now all on Milkyway and Einstein.
Prior to BU I was already in the top 300 users for Boinc as are most of the current crunchers on BU, so not exactly the noobs suddenly turning up and passing you all by. Most of the users you are talking about are credit orientated anyway and have bought equipment to further those aims.
After following this thread and the hysteria and venom at a project not toeing the official boinc credit line , do you want to guess whether my 6 nVidea cards are staying here or going back to Collatz ?

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Message 37475 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 7:05:14 UTC
Last modified: 29 Jul 2014 | 7:06:13 UTC

This confirms that if someone is addicted to credits, he/she will sell his/hers non-ASIC (also expensive) crunching hardware to buy ASICs, which is quite logical decision. On the other hand, it will decrease the GPU/CPU crunching power of all projects. I think it will hurt the already known credit-factory projects like Collatz Conjecture, Milkyway@home & PrimeGrid, and probably the others too.


So how many CPU only Projects were Hurt when the GPU Work started to Flow, I read countless Post's in some Forum's that they were turning off their CPU's & running GPU Work only.

Sure it was a Boon for the GPU Project/Projects as People migrated towards them but it hurt the CPU only Projects too ... IMO
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Message 37476 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 7:37:56 UTC
Last modified: 29 Jul 2014 | 8:31:10 UTC

Retvari: mhm milkyway isnt giving you that much credits anymore since a longer time. I get way! lower credits ( max 200k on a good day) there for a fully loaded OC 7950hd witch is compareable with a minimum of 300k nvidia card on gpugrid ;) yesyes i now dp/Sp opencl cuda blabla ;) i know but only as general ;) wish i could use it on a medical project again, but poem has soooo low ati workunits counts, never got one while trying one hour -_-
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Message 37482 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 13:45:09 UTC - in response to Message 37379.

This thread is not about BitCoin itself, but I have to clarify some misunderstandings.
I'm not against changing the world. BitCoin (and the other crypto currencies) is about changing the the basis of the economy of the whole world (that is the monetary system). I think that it can't be done against the will of the participants of the economy. If the powers of the monetary system wanted to change the basis of the economy all of us living in, it could have been done long ago. The so called socialism (or communism) - beside many things - was (or at least it was intended to be) an attempt to do that. This attempt has been failed, not just because the "communist" block was preparing for WW3 all the time of its existence (I lived in it for 20 years, so I know it from the inside), as the other block did the same. I think that the change the crypto currencies bring to the current monetary system are against the interest of the powers of the monetary system, as it would diminish (or even end) their influence on the source of their power. This power comes from the fact that they can change (usually lower) the value of the money by issuing more of it than needed. This is not a bad thing while it has a fairly low rate, because no one wants to keep the money in the long term, because it will devaluate over time. So one could either spend it, or invest it, or put it in a Bank (and they will invest it), which will result in a growing economy. The point of modern (so called fiat) money is that it's an infinite resource, therefore it could finance the growth of the economy for all eternity :). But the powers controlling the flow and creation of fiat money have to be very aware of how the others spend/invest this money, because there are some monetary entities, which has only one purpose: to grow as big as they can by exploiting the infinity of fiat money. On the other hand, if money would became more valuable over time, it would decrease the flow of itself, result in a decaying economy which would lead to mass loss of jobs (which is pretty bad).

This discussion and the concept of Bitcoin itself is meaningless..

The discussion of any subject is always useful: it could make the ignorant learn something about the subject.
About the meaning of BitCoin: "everything has a purpose, if nothing else it could serve as deterrent"

Bitcoin reads "fraud, thieves, you will lose your money!" all over it.

The powers of the current monetary system makes you believe it, partly because the powers pushed out of the monetary system (that is criminals) have to use alternative currencies.

Any form of money / currency is only as good as the entity that is behind it and vouches for it.

While the "good" sound familiar, its quite incomprehensible when talking about complex entities who have many faces, beside issuing money.

Since the invention of the concept of currency, there has been a sovereign entity behind each currency. This is what creates the faith in party A that the money it has taken from party B for providing some service or good will in actual fact carry its value in the foreseeable future.

This is the part of the monetary system based on fiat money what the common people perceive. But it's much more than that.

Where is that entity behind Bitcoin?

Nowhere. There is no entity behind it, only the users of it ("the network"). That's why it's revolutionary. That's why nobody knows how it's gonna work out. If there's big enough crowd behind it, it could work. But only if the current powers of the current monetary system will resign their powers.

I hear people crying out "the Network", well let me ask "the Network" to vouch for the value of my Bitcoins and guess what "the Network's" response will be. The picture of a slowly rising middle finger forms in my mind!

The problem with "the network" is that the economy cannot work without a power who throws out those who seek deals where they win by the other party's loss.

It is either that, or exchanging gold / silver / diamonds / some other valuable material, like corn for example. "Value" means it can be used by people to some end. Silver, gold and platinum (and other precious metals) have extremely good physical / chemical / electrical / thermal / etc properties, which make them suitable for many uses, including making long-lasting ornaments. Corn makes bread, the basis of human diet.

Is there so much corn in the world which can be exchanged for a fusion power plant?
The gold became the carrier of value because at that time it couldn't be used to make anything useful (as a tool or weapon), as it is soft (when pure) and dense (heavy), while it don't corrode on air.

In contrast, what can one do with Bitcoin? Can one eat it, make a tool out of it, create a long-lasting (practically invulnerable to nature) item from it?

Can you eat a dollar bill, or a plastic credit/debit card, or gold? These things only work while the economy is working as it is working now. When something would hit the economy hard (like a war), the people would receive bread for tickets, not for money. While this sounds odd, they will be happy because they lived.

No. People give it value because it is practically finite. Well, so are prime numbers, should we start trading in primes?

While the known prime numbers are finite, there are infinite prime numbers exists. However they become more sparse as they become larger.
When the basis of the monetary system was gold (a finite resource), it has limited the growth of the whole economy, as there wasn't enough gold in the system to support its growth. The modern economy passed over this phase, that's why we live in better circumstances than ever before. There is a finite number of BitCoins, however it can be split infinitely (as far as I know). This is quite the opposite of fiat money.

Excellent post Retvari. Everyone could gain a greater perspective of the monetary system by watching the Zeitgeist movies, for a start. Youtube is one place to find them. Our current monetary system perpetuates our oligarchical societies and many (if not most) of the problems we have in this world. Even cryptocurrencies make more sense than the current system, which has no valid basis behind it at all. Money is manufactured at will by the central banks according to their whims and according to their current self serving economic theories (how to prop up "economies" and those in charge of them). It is an increasingly corrupt and singularly self serving system. It is backed by weapons and fear. Unfortunate for all but a tiny percentage of the population.

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Message 37483 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 14:37:08 UTC

Money is not the reason of evil, it is its product. If there should be no money anymore, there will be another evil. We (people) will surely take care of that! Like always in human history. It's all about people, our nature.

BTW, my RAC at vLHC@Home is ~2500, which is a really good score (15. place) :-D And I believe it's a good and useful thing. Not like those empty numbers at BU, or some other projects, that just waste power.

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Message 37484 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 15:31:58 UTC - in response to Message 37475.
Last modified: 29 Jul 2014 | 15:40:03 UTC

Lets get back on topic about BU and away from monetary theory.

While the GPU and CPU debate is well known and discussed, both processes produce a valid research result for their project. We can discuss the projects validity in another thread or privately. The meaningful query here is that BU does not generate a valid research result, it helps solves a algorithm to release bitcoins. The actual purpose of that algorithm being processed does what again? When the algorithm is completed or at some other point during its computational life does the algorithm generate a result/answer that finds the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness? A cure for cancer, ebola and the common cold? Does someone on this planet know the answer?

What is the purpose or meaning of the algorithm other than releasing bitcoins?? Why was BU allowed to use the BOINC platform for their purpose?

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Message 37490 - Posted: 29 Jul 2014 | 20:21:07 UTC - in response to Message 37484.
Last modified: 29 Jul 2014 | 20:23:51 UTC

Why was BU allowed to use the BOINC platform for their purpose?


Because BOINC can be used by anybody for their own distributed computing projects, either public or private would be 1 good reason. If you don't like a Project then you don't have to run it ...

Right from the BOINC Project List ... http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/project_list
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Message 37493 - Posted: 30 Jul 2014 | 9:31:17 UTC - in response to Message 37454.
Last modified: 30 Jul 2014 | 10:17:00 UTC

How happy and proud i was with the fact i will join an exclusive club by getting my first billion credits this Year with science only! Thats more then much who crunch nonsense distrgen and so on. Now every noob can get a billion in some days. Thats a hard kick in my ass even when i dont crunch for credits, but it was something parallel to the publications i was proud of and calculated on boinc and not folding :(

Reached 1Billion boinc-wide a day or so ago, and glad that milestone is behind me too, as I fall down the rankings...
http://stats.free-dc.org/cpidtagb.php?cpid=ccd132458da90a454e2065e34b1d7cfa&theme=21&cols=3
Doesn't include some retired projects, or previous accounts,
http://stats.free-dc.org/cpidtagb.php?cpid=ee8e4512e5c14def7a1170807d844299&theme=21&cols=3

I think we have been missing something in this conversation, we are GAINING overall Boinc crunchers with BU and it's asic machines, and that's a GOOD THING. When bitcoin crunching ends all those people can then be utilized at other projects to help with something else. We just need to find a way to make that happen before the end of mining comes.

While BU might have attracted a few ASIC miners to Boinc, on the whole I think BU is not attracting new crunchers but is attracting existing GPU and CPU crunchers who are not only moving to BU because of the credit but are abandoning/reducing their GPU and CPU input for other projects, and 'investing' in ASICS purely for Boinc credits.
Further, any ASIC miners who are attracted to Boinc will soon realise the relatively poor credit from GPU's and CPU's especially, and probably won't do a lot of scientific crunching.

As Retvari said I think some projects could be converted to use asic miners once the while bitcoin thing ends. After all what will people do if they can't crunch and who will buy them if they can't use them. I have no idea how miners actually work, but they are doing something akin to how gpu's did things when everyone was using cpu's. Gpu's needed special setups at each project, drivers etc, just to get them to crunch, it seems to me that with some work even an asic machine could be used to crunch. SOME projects have said they cannot make gpu apps for their projects, and some others don't want to, but there are some projects that don't have cpu units, they are strictly gpu based for their crunching. Asic miners still do math, and that's crunching!!

ASIC miners are designed to mine. Someone might come up with another 'use' but it's probably not going to be an existing science project.

As for the credits that BU gives out I don't care one way or the other, the whole thing is said to end within a short period of time and as Steve said, the crunching gets harder every 2 weeks anyway. It will sort itself out in the end.

It's already messed up the Boinc credit system/exposed fundamental weaknesses.

...
As for how many projects you can mine for, get YOUR favorite Boinc project to talk to BU, they are looking for more projects to support and have said they will talk to ANY project. There is no reason any project needing donations shouldn't be talking to BU in my opinion. All they can do is say no, if they say yes though it is a potential funding stream and another place for us crunchers to chose to spend our electricity money on.

Any project that asks for BU to mine on it's behalf is condoning BU. Clearly most projects don't want to back BU, even for some financial reward, otherwise they already would have.

...
So how many CPU only Projects were Hurt when the GPU Work started to Flow, I read countless Post's in some Forum's that they were turning off their CPU's & running GPU Work only.

Sure it was a Boon for the GPU Project/Projects as People migrated towards them but it hurt the CPU only Projects too ... IMO

You are comparing the move from Scientific Research on CPU's to Scientific Research on GPU's+CPU's, with the move from Scientific Research on CPU's and GPU's to mining (not scientific research) on ASICS.
GPU's and CPU's are otherwise useful while ASIC's are not, and can't even perform scientific research.
GPUGrid went from PS3 crunching to GPU crunching.
Projects such as MW and WCG run/ran both CPU and GPU projects simultaneously. In the case of WCG when they released OpenCL GPU tasks many people attached their GPU's to that project and shifted their CPU's to other WCG projects.
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Message 37494 - Posted: 30 Jul 2014 | 12:34:09 UTC - in response to Message 37493.


You are comparing the move from Scientific Research on CPU's to Scientific Research on GPU's+CPU's, with the move from Scientific Research on CPU's and GPU's to mining (not scientific research) on ASICS.
GPU's and CPU's are otherwise useful while ASIC's are not, and can't even perform scientific research.
GPUGrid went from PS3 crunching to GPU crunching.
Projects such as MW and WCG run/ran both CPU and GPU projects simultaneously. In the case of WCG when they released OpenCL GPU tasks many people attached their GPU's to that project and shifted their CPU's to other WCG projects.


So you are saying people have been moving around to the different Boinc projects since the beginning but NOW it's a problem? If a project depends SOLELY on crunchers to support it thru donations they are going to be shut down soon. UNLESS they can do something different then every other project that is also competing for their interests. Most Since type projects are so far beyond the average cruncher that the only way for the cruncher to help is thru Boinc or cash. How many people, that crunch, can sit down and design an algorithm to map the MilkyWay, let alone convert that into something a computer could help with? How about the average cruncher designing some protein folding model on the back of a napkin? Most of us would say 'huh what's protein folding?', let alone then write software so a computer can help!

In short projects need to grab and keep our interest, right now BU is doing that thru very high credits and the idea that while getting those credits we can help support projects like MilkyWay TOO!! The grabbing and keeping our interest thing is what Seti tried in the beginning, but they have been at it sooo long with no reported successes that people are losing interest in them. Sure it could be fun to find some 'little green men, but are they even close? Who knows, they certainly have no clue, it could be today, tomorrow or 50 years from now. At least projects like MilkyWay, Rosetta and others do have some results and the potential of more all the time. BU on the other hand has results RIGHT NOW TODAY, you can SEE the numbers going up as we crunch their units and the money being generated because of that crunching. That is a HUGE draw for people who just want to SEE that all their crunching IS in fact helping!!

For waaaay too long Boinc Projects, in general, have accepted our contributions yet VERY FEW even acknowledge that help in any Scientific Papers they file! MY contributions ARE helping someone someplace, but I don't know to what degree because they don't tell me!! BU IS showing me, they have a chart that IS going up and up across all 3 of their current projects that shows the money that is being given to each project, and it is going up all the time.

MalariaControl was one of those projects that did tell it's crunchers the results of their work and how it was being put to use in he field! MilkyWay does too, they now have a picture showing how much of the Milky Way has been mapped. PrimeGrid also gives feedback to its users when they find a new prime number. That, to me, makes those projects interesting and keeps me crunching for them. BU is doing the same thing, and is why I also crunch there.

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Message 37513 - Posted: 31 Jul 2014 | 15:54:17 UTC - in response to Message 37493.

While BU might have attracted a few ASIC miners to Boinc, on the whole I think BU is not attracting new crunchers but is attracting existing GPU and CPU crunchers who are not only moving to BU because of the credit but are abandoning/reducing their GPU and CPU input for other projects, and 'investing' in ASICS purely for Boinc credits.
Further, any ASIC miners who are attracted to Boinc will soon realise the relatively poor credit from GPU's and CPU's especially, and probably won't do a lot of scientific crunching.

Make no mistake about it, anyone who's been crunching science projects as competition for BOINC credits is now thinking of dumping their machines. A huge loss for science.

So how many CPU only Projects were Hurt when the GPU Work started to Flow, I read countless Post's in some Forum's that they were turning off their CPU's & running GPU Work only.

You are comparing the move from Scientific Research on CPU's to Scientific Research on GPU's+CPU's, with the move from Scientific Research on CPU's and GPU's to mining (not scientific research) on ASICS.
GPU's and CPU's are otherwise useful while ASIC's are not, and can't even perform scientific research.

I for one put on more boxes to run more GPUs. Those X6 Phenoms also run 4-5 CPU WUs each, a plus for for both CPU & GPU SCIENTIFIC computing. ASICs do no science and do no CPU or GPU WUs on the side. Switching to ASICs is a huge loss for science as the machines that actually run the science go away.

Maybe the stats sites could add a new category: "Total credits for science projects" and replace the current total with "Total credits with cryptocurrency schemes". Maybe even put cryptocurrency projects in a separate class for those who want to run them and not mix the totals at all.

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Message 37518 - Posted: 31 Jul 2014 | 18:28:11 UTC

One of the things this thread has shed (plenty of) light on is a hidden motive of some high-level crunchers for crunching for GPUGRID (or perhaps more generally for GPU crunching):

Big bucks (sorry credits)!

I keep reading posts about how altruistic people are and how they go off buying expensive kit to crunch for science.. and then they go off whining about how unfairly BU gives tons of credit in a day, that they have taken years to get!

I don't understand, aren't you doing it for the science??

If you are really doing what you do for the science of the thing, why whine so much about the credits?? Ignore them! At least, ignore non-GPUGRID credits! They won't be affected by BU or any other nonsense we-re-here-to-help-the-children(-and-make-a-buck-ourselves) type of project!

If you primarily care about your position in the combined world Boinc charts though...

perhaps Dagorath was right.
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Message 37519 - Posted: 31 Jul 2014 | 20:33:38 UTC
Last modified: 31 Jul 2014 | 21:31:21 UTC

Complains to BU reminds me complaining multimillionaire to billionaire..

I will explain------

User under the nick-name-bcavnaugh in the project -theskynetPogs
Must use this enormous and expensive hardware for credit F*** ONLY RAC 250 000 approx...

4P 64 Core AMD Rig GTX 650Ti
2P 32 Core AMD Rig GTX 660Ti
Intel i7-4960X 3 GTX Titans
Intel i7-3970X 3 GTX 780
Intel i7-3970X 3 GTX 690
Intel i7-3770K 3 GTX 680 Classified
Intel i7-3930K 2 AMD R9 290X

ONLY ON CPU!!!! skynetpogs is one of the most effective projects for the cpu only!!! Others boinc cpu projects are less efficiently programmed.

How expensive graphics cards YOU need to rac 250,000 to GPUGrid ?? 100-200 EU from secon hand....loooool

Nobody here did not complain that this user has to spend so much resources on 250,000 rac but to complain when someone have million more per day, while ASIC machine set to count without errors is hard to..more hard than just instal boinc manager and run..


So this pitiful screeches and cries from some users here as to the shape of rac does not matter to them ..Now it turned out that they are dependent only on rac..lol..

You are completely laughable when you complained to the project BU...

I only hope that the leader and pioneer BOINC projects ,SETI elaborate the beta application for ASIC and other effective machines..

takk

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Message 37521 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 11:48:43 UTC - in response to Message 37513.


Maybe the stats sites could add a new category: "Total credits for science projects" and replace the current total with "Total credits with cryptocurrency schemes". Maybe even put cryptocurrency projects in a separate class for those who want to run them and not mix the totals at all.


And when GpuGrid, or any other boinc project, adds asic mining to their own list of usable devices, even if to only run bitcoin mining so no loss thru any 3rd party site, what happens to your stats then?

Stats have been a problem ever since the introduction of credits, people with multiple machines were outdoing people with single machines, people with single gpu's were being outdone by people with 4 or more gpu's in a single machine. All of this just moves the pc world further ahead as well as the world of Boinc. Without gamers would anyone have thought to use a PS3 or even a gpu to crunch with at Boinc. Dr A certainly never considered it in the beginning, his initial grant paper was for 'users', not even pc's.

Asic machines must do some kind of calculating very fast, someone will figure out what that is, even if it is only adding two numbers to each other, and then figure out how to make their Boinc units fit into that. They did it with gpu's, it took time to make it work right, but we have a great community and someone will figure it out. Maybe even a new Boinc project will be born, mapping dinosaur DNA or whatever using asic machines, what happens to your stats then?

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Message 37522 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 12:09:50 UTC - in response to Message 37521.
Last modified: 1 Aug 2014 | 12:11:05 UTC

Asic machines must do some kind of calculating very fast, someone will figure out what that is, even if it is only adding two numbers to each other, and then figure out how to make their Boinc units fit into that. They did it with gpu's, it took time to make it work right, but we have a great community and someone will figure it out. Maybe even a new Boinc project will be born, mapping dinosaur DNA or whatever using asic machines, what happens to your stats then?


I'm not too sure about this.

GPUs were originally purposefully built to be generic fast 3D graphics renderers. Then the big players came up with "common platforms" such as OpenCL and CUDA, so they could be additionally repurposed as "generic work processors".

ASICs, however, are purposefully built to be non-generic. They perform a single task, and it's likely there will never be a push toward some sort of "common platform" to make it more generic.

If anything, a BOINC project would come up with the purpose, and then design the ASIC around the purpose. But that too is highly unlikely, because it is very expensive, from what I understand.

The stats problem we have here, is that we have no tangible way to relate "how much science work" an ASIC does. We can only compare how fast it is against other ASICs, and also compare how long it would take a generic CPU to do the same non-science work. With GPUs, you can sort-of compare "it would take x times as long to do this science work on a CPU", especially for OpenCL... But for ASICs, which (so far) are not doing any science work, there is no comparison.

It is a pickle. I don't have an answer. I just know that this stats panic seems to need to be countered.

In the meantime, users should try to keep in mind that, instead of buying ASICs, they should focus on "how to efficiently convert their electricity into science results." But most users like "longer" stats.

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Message 37525 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:02:18 UTC - in response to Message 37522.
Last modified: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:03:04 UTC


The stats problem we have here, is that we have no tangible way to relate "how much science work" an ASIC does...... But for ASICs, which (so far) are not doing any science work, there is no comparison.

It is a pickle. I don't have an answer. I just know that this stats panic seems to need to be countered.

In the meantime, users should try to keep in mind that, instead of buying ASICs, they should focus on "how to efficiently convert their electricity into science results." But most users like "longer" stats.


Until someone can stated what the purpose or meaning behind the algorithm that is being processed (other than unlocking/releasing/distributing additional bitcoins) I have very serious doubts that it does anything else. At best a mathematical computation is occurring, otherwise we are looking at a "blackbox" scenario.

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Message 37526 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:07:52 UTC - in response to Message 37521.

And when GpuGrid, or any other boinc project, adds asic mining to their own list of usable devices, even if to only run bitcoin mining so no loss thru any 3rd party site, what happens to your stats then?

Once again, ASICS can't do science.

Stats have been a problem ever since the introduction of credits, people with multiple machines were outdoing people with single machines, people with single gpu's were being outdone by people with 4 or more gpu's in a single machine. All of this just moves the pc world further ahead as well as the world of Boinc. Without gamers would anyone have thought to use a PS3 or even a gpu to crunch with at Boinc.

Asic machines must do some kind of calculating very fast, someone will figure out what that is, even if it is only adding two numbers to each other

It's already known. It's a simple algorithm specific to bitcion or litecoin. As you say, someone could also just make a BOINC project that adds 2 numbers together for a minute or two and decide to award a billion credits/WU. Credits were introduced as a way to get more users into BOINC. It's more or less a gaming system, except that the game actually does valuable science as people are having fun playing. Adding non-science arbitrary "projects" with huge credit awards to BOINC destroys the game in any useful sense. Those interested in playing the BOINC game will do much better by running projects that don't do science at all. What many are saying essentially is that due to ASICs and the huge credits awarded, the "BOINC science game" is now broken. Some of us will keep crunching projects that we feel are valuable but a large number of people will either lose interest in the broken game or switch to ASICs. Either outcome means less science done, both outcomes are negative if you care about useful science, which is the whole purpose of BOINC. This could be avoided by putting ASIC projects into a totally separate category and not mixing the totals or perhaps by limiting the credits to an arbitrarily determined amount. I've never had much love for credit-new and it still has problems but maybe requiring it of all projects may be a solution.

This argument will not be resolved however in forums like this as those to have purchased or are thinking of purchasing ASICs will of course disagree and even attack people who voice the opinion that ASICs aren't good for the BOINC world. You can see this already happening in some of the previous posts. Hopefully it will cease as bullying is an ugly way to argue. It simply shows that those using the tactic have little logic behind their opinions.

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Message 37527 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:23:44 UTC - in response to Message 37526.
Last modified: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:26:42 UTC

Beyond:

The ASICs that are used in BitCoin Utopia, have been created to mine cryptocurrencies. Specifically, BitCoin, I think. ASICs that have been created with the specific purpose of doing something scientific, can do science. I'm sure they exist. ASICs can do science, if they were built to do science. Please stop saying they cannot. :/

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Message 37528 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:39:12 UTC - in response to Message 37527.

Beyond:

The ASICs that are used in BitCoin Utopia, have been created to mine cryptocurrencies. Specifically, BitCoin, I think. ASICs that have been created with the specific purpose of doing something scientific, can do science. I'm sure they exist. ASICs can do science, if they were built to do science. Please stop saying they cannot. :/

Jacob, of course some ASIC could be created to do any specific task. The ones that everyone is discussing here are ASICs that run cryptocurrencies. Of course it's possible to design one that does do science. Will you see many of those? Probably not, as designing and producing the chip is expensive and without a profit motive it's not likely, unless the government funds it for some purpose like decrypting our communications :-)

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Message 37529 - Posted: 1 Aug 2014 | 14:59:49 UTC - in response to Message 37527.
Last modified: 1 Aug 2014 | 15:02:19 UTC

Beyond:

The ASICs that are used in BitCoin Utopia, have been created to mine cryptocurrencies. Specifically, BitCoin, I think. ASICs that have been created with the specific purpose of doing something scientific, can do science. I'm sure they exist. ASICs can do science, if they were built to do science. Please stop saying they cannot. :/

An ASIC is just another kind of processor, it can theoretically be designed to do any kind of calculation, including solving heavy scientific special-purpose algorithms. The problem is that it costs a lot of money to do this, from design and engineering to mass production and IMHO no-one will do such a thing in the near future.

As posted earlier, GPUs were designed mainly for 3d-processing but computer graphics, rendering, gaming, simulations, computer vision etc. need some kind of 'generic' hardware (even if not so generic like CPUs), not just suited to solve a few algorithms. That's the reason why GPUs were somewhat easily 'evolved' as computing co-processors (but can also do a lot of other things).

Also, the BOINC platform has been designed for helping projects which cannot (for a lot of reasons, most of them complicated) afford to spend a lot of money. If you have a lot of money (because you got big grants) you can simply buy/rent a supercomputer. So, I don't think any BOINC project will even think about, develop, produce, sell and convince people to buy any kind of (even scientific) specialized device such an asic, just able to solve a specific algorithm. Also remember that projects wich require special devices (like RadioActive or Quake) started first developing the sensors and had good reasons to spread them around the world, it's a completely different approach.

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Message 37533 - Posted: 2 Aug 2014 | 6:52:19 UTC

What i think about Bitcoin Utopia...

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Message 37538 - Posted: 3 Aug 2014 | 19:05:36 UTC - in response to Message 37526.

As you say, someone could also just make a BOINC project that adds 2 numbers together for a minute or two and decide to award a billion credits/WU.


Isn't this already the case of Collatz ? Not a billion points, but still quite huge credit and in fact has no scientific value.

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Message 37541 - Posted: 4 Aug 2014 | 6:39:44 UTC

I've found this works for me....

Crunch for a project because you want to either 1) compete with other crunchers, or 2) because the underlying work means something to you; if neither of these conditions are met, make sure your PC switches to standby when not in use and save yourself some KWH/£.

If 1) or 2) work for you, then you've made a choice and you'll need at least a CPU and whatever other appropriate hardware you can afford (or are willing to buy) to take part to the level you alone choose.

Crunching is an 'emotional investment' at best - check with your accountant if clarification is needed.

Depending on 1) or 2) make sure you are looking at the Stats which are meaningful to you.

....... €0.02 worth of my personal opinion.

P.



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Message 37544 - Posted: 4 Aug 2014 | 11:52:42 UTC

A friend of mine who is using R-Box crunchers, two of them, at BU says he has done some research, and is now testing it, but says he can make $45 US every month using his two R-Box's mining for himself.

I have no idea if that is true or not, but am interested to find out. If true it could mean the end is near for BU and it's funding of any Boinc projects, and THAT would be a bad thing IMHO. You can buy an R-Box for about $70 US on the internet, meaning a two month payback and then you are padding your bank account from then on, until it all ends.

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Message 37584 - Posted: 14 Aug 2014 | 15:29:22 UTC

Interesting and timely topic regarding generalizing credit:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized

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Message 37679 - Posted: 19 Aug 2014 | 7:57:14 UTC - in response to Message 37584.

Very interesting and reasonable proposal !!!

Interesting and timely topic regarding generalizing credit:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized


With date August 19, 2014, there are many crunchers (around 500) in the "BOINC statistics for the world" that have negative credits.
Does anyone knows if BOINC has implemented this proposal?

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Message 37682 - Posted: 19 Aug 2014 | 9:43:21 UTC

Their Stat's are totally Screwed up ... IMO

Stoneageman who has over 6 Billion in Credit's at the GPU Project which is included in the BS Stat's show's only 4.2 Billion in Total Credit's ... Go Figure

What your going to end up with is 100 Different Stat's Site's that all report differently so everybody can point to the Stat's Site that best reflects their own Credit Position in the Stat's ...
____________
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Message 37684 - Posted: 19 Aug 2014 | 11:53:54 UTC - in response to Message 37679.

Very interesting and reasonable proposal !!!

Interesting and timely topic regarding generalizing credit:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized


With date August 19, 2014, there are many crunchers (around 500) in the "BOINC statistics for the world" that have negative credits.
Does anyone knows if BOINC has implemented this proposal?


No they have not done anything yet except talk, and it looks like it might continue for a bit yet.

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Message 37685 - Posted: 19 Aug 2014 | 11:54:40 UTC - in response to Message 37682.

Their Stat's are totally Screwed up ... IMO

Stoneageman who has over 6 Billion in Credit's at the GPU Project which is included in the BS Stat's show's only 4.2 Billion in Total Credit's ... Go Figure

What your going to end up with is 100 Different Stat's Site's that all report differently so everybody can point to the Stat's Site that best reflects their own Credit Position in the Stat's ...


+1000

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Message 37686 - Posted: 19 Aug 2014 | 12:15:30 UTC - in response to Message 37682.

Their Stat's are totally Screwed up ... IMO

Stoneageman who has over 6 Billion in Credit's at the GPU Project which is included in the BS Stat's show's only 4.2 Billion in Total Credit's ... Go Figure

What your going to end up with is 100 Different Stat's Site's that all report differently so everybody can point to the Stat's Site that best reflects their own Credit Position in the Stat's ...


If it's designed right, I'd imagine it would be a stats site where the visitor can choose certain filters to include/exclude, so that the visitor can see what they are after. Let's try to be optimistic!

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Message 37693 - Posted: 20 Aug 2014 | 11:43:08 UTC - in response to Message 37686.

Their Stat's are totally Screwed up ... IMO

Stoneageman who has over 6 Billion in Credit's at the GPU Project which is included in the BS Stat's show's only 4.2 Billion in Total Credit's ... Go Figure

What your going to end up with is 100 Different Stat's Site's that all report differently so everybody can point to the Stat's Site that best reflects their own Credit Position in the Stat's ...


If it's designed right, I'd imagine it would be a stats site where the visitor can choose certain filters to include/exclude, so that the visitor can see what they are after. Let's try to be optimistic!


+1000

I had to do this because I agree with you too, it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it. Too many options though could mean too much Admin time needed and end up being a pay site.

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Message 37698 - Posted: 20 Aug 2014 | 19:13:27 UTC - in response to Message 37693.

it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it


Right, that way everybody can argue until the Cow's come home who's doing more for BOINC or argue that their Holier than you because they run only Supposedly Scientific Projects ...

____________
STE\/E

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Message 37699 - Posted: 20 Aug 2014 | 20:50:49 UTC - in response to Message 37698.

it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it


Right, that way everybody can argue until the Cow's come home who's doing more for BOINC or argue that their Holier than you because they run only Supposedly Scientific Projects ...


Yes, that is correct. The viewer will have the choice. And that is a good thing.

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Message 37703 - Posted: 21 Aug 2014 | 12:29:32 UTC - in response to Message 37698.

it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it


Right, that way everybody can argue until the Cow's come home who's doing more for BOINC or argue that their Holier than you because they run only Supposedly Scientific Projects ...


I am not sure there is an 'ideal' way other then no credits, and we are waaaay past that fork in the road. Way back before Boinc we got 'credits' for crunching for Seti, when Boinc came along they were persuaded to keep them going, it seemed like a good idea at the time anyway! The problem is now we not only have cpu's but also gpu's and this new thing, an asic box, thrown into the crunching mix. What comes next, I have no clue but you can bet your bottom dollar SOMETHING WILL!! Heck we have even had people using PS3's to crunch with!!

As for what's 'Science' and what isn't...Mathematics is a 'Science' and mathematics is what our cpu's and gpu's, and now miners, are doing, so yes EVERY project is related to 'Science'. What 'kind' of Science is where the debate lies, imho, is finding the best beer recipe 'science', how about finding the best way to win at Sudoku? Is looking for little green men science, or just listening to radio waves? I'm not sure ANY project is about PURE Science as defined by EVERYONE.

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Message 37707 - Posted: 21 Aug 2014 | 20:55:39 UTC - in response to Message 37703.
Last modified: 21 Aug 2014 | 20:56:25 UTC

it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it


Right, that way everybody can argue until the Cow's come home who's doing more for BOINC or argue that their Holier than you because they run only Supposedly Scientific Projects ...


I am not sure there is an 'ideal' way other then no credits, and we are waaaay past that fork in the road. Way back before Boinc we got 'credits' for crunching for Seti, when Boinc came along they were persuaded to keep them going, it seemed like a good idea at the time anyway! The problem is now we not only have cpu's but also gpu's and this new thing, an asic box, thrown into the crunching mix. What comes next, I have no clue but you can bet your bottom dollar SOMETHING WILL!! Heck we have even had people using PS3's to crunch with!!

As for what's 'Science' and what isn't...Mathematics is a 'Science' and mathematics is what our cpu's and gpu's, and now miners, are doing, so yes EVERY project is related to 'Science'. What 'kind' of Science is where the debate lies, imho, is finding the best beer recipe 'science', how about finding the best way to win at Sudoku? Is looking for little green men science, or just listening to radio waves? I'm not sure ANY project is about PURE Science as defined by EVERYONE.

To you and everyone else " Get over yourself" you either donate to the science or projects that you want or you don't. Cobblestones mean NOTHING.
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Message 37716 - Posted: 22 Aug 2014 | 21:57:36 UTC - in response to Message 37707.
Last modified: 22 Aug 2014 | 22:07:47 UTC

Cobblestones mean NOTHING.

This is true only in the sense of you can't exchange your BOINC credits (=cobblestones) to anything in the real world.
But within the BOINC world Cobblestones have meaning and also have purpose.
This is very easy to see. Just take a look at this "Number crunching" topic sorted by most views first.

topic views BitCoin Utopia went crazy credit-wise 28489 ATI vs NVIDIA GPUs 25508 Milkyway@home on ATI cards 23329 Specs of the GPUGRID 4x GPU lab machine 17388 Credit per € / $ 17082 BOINC 6.12.26 released 11324 CUDA Benchmark tool 10467

Change in the credits awarded for whatever reason trigger events in the real world. This is not a problem until the change in the credits awarded aligns with the aim of the credit system, that is to motivate crunchers to support science. But in my opinion Bitcoin Utopia f**ked up the whole credit system in exchange of $4210,4 (see the pictures I've attached at the bottom). As this project awards credit for BitCoin (not for crunching power - which is I think in "violation" of present BOINC "rules") and they awarded 543,960,595,953 credits so far for that amount of money, anyone can calculate an exchange rate between real world currency and BOINC credits (which is insane). With that exchange rate, anyone can make a "reverse" calculation of how much money their credits worth in the real world (very very little). So BitCoin Utopia broke the rule of "you can't exchange your BOINC credits (=cobblestones) to anything in the real world." aka
Cobblestones mean NOTHING.

However - after all - it is our fault, as most of the crunchers won't donate money directly to their favorite project.
It would be fair if the money donations would be kept apart from BOINC credits, as they were kept apart until BitCoin Utopia showed up, so BitCoin Utopia should not award any credits, but their miners should be showed as money donors at the project's homepages. Moreover as this project is a BOINC project, it would be fair if they would give money to all active BOINC projects, however to agree in the proportion of this money between the projects would be a much harder debate.








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Message 37748 - Posted: 28 Aug 2014 | 22:12:17 UTC
Last modified: 28 Aug 2014 | 22:42:23 UTC

I am not trying to stir the pot. But I felt it important to share my own experience, so here goes.

I recently purchased a YellowJacket 2.2GH/s USB ASIC miner.
- http://www.asicrunner.com/Yellowjacket--2Gh-USB-Stick-Miner_p_8.html
- Total cost, including international shipping from London, was something like $45
- Quality is fragile (could easily snap USB port off it if I tried), but durable (can crunch very hard with no hardware errors using stock settings).

My motives were, ordered by what mattered most to me listed first,
1) I wanted to learn how coin mining works
2) As a BOINC Alpha tester, I wanted to make this odd resource type, work better with BOINC
3) I wanted to see how it would affect my credits (I enjoy large numbers, like many others).

Here is what I've learned about mining, as it relates to BOINC:
- I've learned quite a bit about mining, and about the MultiPool mining group
- I've learned quite a bit about how BitCoin Utopia is trying to manage this resource
- I believe I've calculated that my USB stick gets about $0.04 per day. Pretty crummy, I know.
- Mining coins with an ASIC, feels very non-sciency to me. But again, my motives were not profit. My motives were to improve BOINC.
- When running in BOINC, it gets CRAZY stats. Something on the order of 5 times the stats of my GPUs and CPUs combined.
- There are some glaring problems, in the BOINC client software. It is not detected as a resource, and has to be specified as a "miner_asic" "coprocessor" in the cc_config.xml file. It is erroneously susceptible to things like "Suspend GPU", since BOINC treats all coprocessors as GPUs. And, there are bugs in how it requests work, such that anything before 7.4.14 requires you to also be in a situation where you need regular-CPU work, for it to ask projects for asic work. So, the miner can easily get stuck in a situation where it's idle, and BOINC doesn't get new tasks for it. We're in bad shape for this resource, in my opinion.
- There are some glaring problems, in the BOINC scheduler software. I believe that, currently, it only looks at the "CPU requested instances" and "CPU requested seconds", instead of the "miner_asic" values. So the scheduler might not issue tasks, if the client is correctly asking for miner-only work. I'm not sure if it's fixed yet, but this too indicates that we are in bad shape for this resource.

Here is what I think I've learned about BitCoin Utopia:
- They have an interesting setup, in terms of different applications for different campaigns (your choice of applications determines which campaign you mine for), as well as platforms (CPUs, CUDA GPUs, AMD GPUs, and ASICs), where different ASIC applications are also split by speeds (so you can get small BOINC tasks for your tiny USB stick, or massive BOINC tasks for your rocketbox).
- They've got 3 campaigns, and I think 2 of them are pretty much wrapped up. Their aquaponics campaign sounds very interesting, though it feels very homegrown and possibly not very big-world applicable. Not sure.
- The MilkyWay campaign is their big focus now, with a target of $20,000. Some say that target is unreachable.
- They use MultiPool to do their mining, and have their tasks attach to 4-10 different servers to share the load. This is a pretty respected pool, quite popular I think, and does a great job of keeping work flowing smoothly.
- BitCoin Utopia takes a 12% cut of the value mined. That's pretty significant.
- They have used cgminer quota values to control that "cut", but now I think they're transitioning to setup the tasks such that each task mines solely either for the 88% campaign or for the 12% BU cut.
- There is a current problem, quite troubling, where it appears that USB devices will "stop responding properly" when a task completes. This means that, when the new task tries to get started, it can't, and it just stalls until the task's time limit. Then the next one also stalls, etc. Leaving the entire resource wasted doing nothing.

I absolutely DETEST any wasted resources. I keep my 3 GPUs, my quad-core hyperthreaded CPU, and now my miner, completely busy doing work, 24/7. It is that philosophy that made me such a great helper, when David Anderson and I tackled many work fetch issues several months back.

So, with the "miner_asic" Client problems, the "miner_asic" scheduler problems, and the Bitcoin Utopia USB Hub problems, all resulting in the resource being WASTED... I have been mining outside of BOINC for a while now. I've configured my own .bat file with my own cgminer parameters, to mine directly toward MilkyWay's account, in an attempt to sidestep Bitcoin Utopia's 12% fee, since I'm not using BOINC to mine. It's working quite well for me.

Now I all know you want to hear my take on stats. And I've avoided that in this post, so far. But I will now tell you my take.
- BitCoin Utopia tried to do things right, in my opinion. According to my discussions with others, they attributed "reasonable" stat values for their CPU and GPU applications. And when it came to their ASICs, they used those "normalized" CPU/GPU values to determine how much the ASICs were worth.
- I too am at odds with the disparity in the credits. In fact, I relayed this very thread to David Anderson, as a concern that I and others shared. It's quite probable that he already knew of the issue, but this thread exemplified the concerns that some users have for the community. They are valid concerns.
- David documents the policies, pitfalls, concerns, and even a proposed solution... in this article: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized. It is being discussed on the boinc_projects mailing list, and so far as I know, constructive feedback is welcomed there. I think the future is still being discussed, even if implementation has begun.
- I like his idea, really. An ASIC mining coins really is "related" to a seismometer. They both achieve something from a "specific" resource that lacks the "generality" to be applicable to all projects.
- I know a lot, but I don't know enough to know the best approach here. I think that, ideally, it'd be great for a user to select "what stats they want to see". If they want to exclude GPU stats, allow them. If they want to exclude ASIC stats, allow them. And yes, by default, I think stats sites should exclude ASICs, since they lack that "generality"... while still allowing users to include them in the stats if they'd like that.

I told you I'm not trying to stir the pot. I'm really not. But I offer one example that is a little funny/strange, and worth thinking about. Suppose a new project comes along, that uses only CPU and GPU, to calculate the best cooking recipe based on combining ingredients and analyzing the "savorability" of the combinations. 1) Is it science? [I say yes.] 2) Should that project be listed alongside other more heavy-science projects? [I say yes.] 3) Why? [I say: Because, ANY BOINC project, should be listed in a BOINC stats listing.] 4) Should its stats be included in the general status totals? [I say: Yes.] 5) Why? [I say: Because those GPUs and CPUs could have been just as effectively used on other projects.] I challenge you to think of your own examples, to see if/how they fit into David's proposal. Consider: Project that tries to prove that random numbers are truly random? Project that simply counts upward forever? Project that capitalizes text? With ASIC? Project that continuously shifts bits to see if bit rot exists in registers? Project that copies the same file over and over, to test hard drive durability? Project that measures how fast pop tarts can be shot out of toasters? Project that scours YouTube videos to help determine popularity? You get the idea.

Regards,
Jacob

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Message 37759 - Posted: 30 Aug 2014 | 5:01:12 UTC
Last modified: 30 Aug 2014 | 5:43:55 UTC

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

If people are so inclined to crunch for bitcoins and use an amount of any real world monies they are able to make to donate to BOINC projects, then that is their option to do so, but in no way whatsoever should there actually be a BOINC project for it that increases any BOINC ranking scores since no real work for scientific/humanitarian research is actually being done. It also devalues the ranking and point system for legitimate work that is being done.

Sorry if this offends or belittles anyone, as that is not my intent in making these statements. Regardless, this is my sincere and strongly held moral view on the whole matter.

Best regards.
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Message 37760 - Posted: 30 Aug 2014 | 11:02:14 UTC - in response to Message 37759.

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

Best regards.


Two thing first Dr David Anderson has already agreed that Bitcoin Utopia is NOT giving out too many credits for thw work it is doing, in fact it is underpaying for the amount of work being done. That being said he also has some concerns and is reviewing the situation and until he and his 'posse' make a decision none of us have an say in the matter. He IS taking input from us on the Boinc Mailing List though.

Second you are trying to say that this kind of Science is not equal to that kind of Science, and that is a bad argument for Boinc. Boinc is designed as an open infrastructure networked computing project, not JUST for this or that kind of Science. It is, or was, about finding the best grasses to grow to regrow Americas prairies of the 1800's, it was also about finding the best beer making recipe for some guy, or for finding the fastest way to solve a Sudoku puzzle, or mapping the Milky Way, of finding a treatment for Malaria, or even finding the right process for how to do medical research, etc, etc. The idea behind Boinc is NOT just Science, it is getting many little computers to all work on a single project, each of their users choosing, instead of the researchers paying for time on a super computer. It has NOTHING to do with 'Science' as 'Science' is defined in the dictionary. If YOU come up with an idea that could use many pc's to help solve it, the Boinc is the way to make that happen. Is it easy and a breeze, not even close, just look at all the projects that have problems or end up closing because of them!!

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Message 37761 - Posted: 30 Aug 2014 | 14:05:36 UTC
Last modified: 30 Aug 2014 | 15:00:23 UTC

Yes, I am personally making the distinction between crunching for scientific and humanitarian research in any form it might take and mining for bitcoins. While obviously I do not dictate what BOINC projects should and shouldn't exist, nor should I be able to, that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion on their relative merits and BOINC-worthy-ness.

I do not feel that mining for bitcoins falls under the same apparent spirit and intent of BOINC overall, regardless of any specific mission statement or lack there of. If for some reason having and expressing this opinion is deemed to be a "bad argument," then so be it.

I'm also not saying that other people's opinions on the matter are any more or less valid than my own. I'm just expressing my opinion and the reasons for it.

Hope that helps clarify what I'm trying to get across.

In the end, it likely still just comes down to what we as a whole and as individuals decide we want to crunch for or not.

Best regards.
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Message 37766 - Posted: 31 Aug 2014 | 9:27:59 UTC - in response to Message 37760.

Wrend wrote:
Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

It's not nefarious, it's necessary. Projects do need funding.

Mikey wrote:
Dr David Anderson has already agreed that Bitcoin Utopia is NOT giving out too many credits for the work it is doing, in fact it is underpaying for the amount of work being done.

What kind work is being done exactly? I think you refer generating money as work being done. I think this is not scientific work, however the way this kind of money is generated is based on mathematics, which is a science in deed. It's just like in real life: to mine gold is not a scientific work, but to build a gold mine, you need certain scientific knowledge. But if I accept that generating money equals work being done (therefore awarded with BOINC credits), then real world money donors should also receive BOINC credits for they money donations (in astronomical amounts), as earning real money in the real world is usually a result of doing real work.

What if someone starts a BOINC project, which does the following:
1. gives 130 million BOINC credits for each USD its users donate for the project
2. keeps the 12% of the donated money for itself
3. sends the rest of the money for projects which apply for it
4. decreases the amount of BOINC credits awarded per USD on a regular basis

Does it sound like a project which should be among the other BOINC projects? As you've guessed it, BitCoin Utopia does this, while making everyone blind with that bullshit of generating BitCoin is the same work the other projects are doing because they are using the same infrastructure (BOINC) and similar technology (ASICs), while it's not. It's just donating money. Why don't you see that as it is? Could someone please explain to me why donations made in BitCoins are awarded in BOINC credits, while donations made in any other currencies are not? (that's just a rhetorical question as I think there's no such explanation, but you can have a try...)

So, the present situation is unfair in two ways:
BitCoin donations through the Bitcoin Utopia project ...
1. make projects doing directly scientific calculations less attractive by over awarding them by two orders of magnitude (regardless that this project is not giving out too many credits for the "work" being done), while no scientific work is done.
2. are awarded with BOINC credits, while direct money donations are not.

That being said he also has some concerns and is reviewing the situation and until he and his 'posse' make a decision none of us have an say in the matter. He IS taking input from us on the Boinc Mailing List though.

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Second you are trying to say that this kind of Science is not equal to that kind of Science, and that is a bad argument for Boinc.

I think too that this kind of science is not equal to that kind of science, and I don't think this is a bad argument, because:
Boinc is designed as an open infrastructure networked computing project, not JUST for this or that kind of Science.

So it can be easily abused for doing something what sounds like doing science, because doing it is based on some kind of science, right?

It is, or was, about finding the best grasses to grow to regrow Americas prairies of the 1800's, it was also about finding the best beer making recipe for some guy, or for finding the fastest way to solve a Sudoku puzzle, or mapping the Milky Way, of finding a treatment for Malaria, or even finding the right process for how to do medical research, etc, etc. The idea behind Boinc is NOT just Science, it is getting many little computers to all work on a single project, each of their users choosing, instead of the researchers paying for time on a super computer.

All of the projects you've listed are scientific projects in their own way, still you are trying to convince your readers with this list that BOINC isn't a tool for doing science.

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Message 37767 - Posted: 31 Aug 2014 | 9:57:41 UTC
Last modified: 31 Aug 2014 | 9:59:17 UTC

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Your opinion is unique, and others don't speak for you. So far as I know, your thoughts are underrepresented.

If you'd like your voice to be better heard, please bring constructive ideas to the BOINC "Projects" (boinc_projects) email list.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/email_lists.php
Please read through the recent archives, before joining the list.

Thanks,
Jacob

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Message 37770 - Posted: 31 Aug 2014 | 11:17:08 UTC - in response to Message 37766.

Wrend wrote:
Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

It's not nefarious, it's necessary. Projects do need funding.

Mikey wrote:
Dr David Anderson has already agreed that Bitcoin Utopia is NOT giving out too many credits for the work it is doing, in fact it is underpaying for the amount of work being done.


What kind work is being done exactly?


The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern. You too are thinking of the end result, not the process of how we get there. Bitcoin Utopia, MilkyWay, Einstein GpuGrid all use a specified process of how we use our cpu's, gpu's or asic machines to crunch numbers, THAT is what he has agreed is similar. BU uses all of those things, cpu's, gpu's and asic machines to crunch with, right now every other Boinc project uses some combination of the other two, with some using both the cpu and gpu and still others using only the cpu OR gpu.

We seem to be hung up on what they DO with our crunching resources, not THAT they can use them. I think that has sent this whole conversation into a different track then it should be. WE can't decide how a particular Boinc Project uses the resources we give to it, WE can only support it or not support it. What it does with our resources is not within our control as WE are not the Admins of that Project. It's alot like America making the atomic bomb, WE didn't have a choice, WE were just along for the ride as others made the choices to do it or not to do it. WE got to chose which President got to be the one to chose whether to use it or not though!

Dr David Anderson will be the one in the end making this decision, Boinc is his 'baby' as he was the one who got the first grant to bring it about, and he is STILL in charge of its current direction and scope. He has the info and the opinions of some very trusted people who HAVE been listening to all of us voice our opinions. He will make his decision, when he is ready, and we will live with it! Obviously I for one think the door is open and there is NO sense closing it now, the horses are gone!! Some projects STILL do not have a gpu application, they say it won't work for them, some don't have a cpu application as they say it's too slow for them. I think the same thing will happen with the asic machines, some projects will figure out how to make it work, and others won't.

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Message 37771 - Posted: 31 Aug 2014 | 13:56:23 UTC - in response to Message 37770.

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).

You too are thinking of the end result, not the process of how we get there.

Well, this is (the end result, or research area) what differentiates one project from another. This is (or should be) the basis of the donor's decision on which of the projects they will support.

Some projects STILL do not have a gpu application, they say it won't work for them, some don't have a cpu application as they say it's too slow for them. I think the same thing will happen with the asic machines, some projects will figure out how to make it work, and others won't.

Here we go again. These mining-ASICs are designed and manufactured to do hashing for BitCoin, and they can't do anything else. Think of them like a digital jackhammer. There's no way other projects can use them. That is the main difference between ASICs and CPUs or GPUs. In the beginning GPUs were ASICs for a couple of years, but then NVida made the G80, which changed the role and the purpose of the GPUs, as it was the first "programmable" GPU. ASICs are not (re)programmable after they manufactured. However, it is possible to to design and manufacture a different ASIC for any research, but it takes a lot of money and time, what BOINC projects are always lacking (so it's very unlikely to happen).

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Message 37774 - Posted: 31 Aug 2014 | 17:35:37 UTC - in response to Message 37766.
Last modified: 31 Aug 2014 | 18:33:28 UTC

Wrend wrote:
Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

It's not nefarious, it's necessary. Projects do need funding.


I meant with the use of bitcoins specifically, as they are often used for black market purposes, and seem as they're (at least to some extent) specifically designed to do so - a bartering method to evade laws and oversight that real money might otherwise not be able to as easily do.

I would rather BOINC and BOINC projects deal in real money than pirate money. I understand of course that you can't crunch for real money, well... generally speaking, at least.

In my opinion, blood stained (or soon to be blood stained) money is still blood stained money, even if it's possible to use it for what we would deem to be good purposes. It's just harder to see the blood stains on bitcoins because they aren't real. It seems to me that the more legitimate uses of bitcoins there are the easier it will be for their nefarious uses to hide.

This is more than somewhat off topic though, so it might not be entirely relevant to this discussion.
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Message 37779 - Posted: 1 Sep 2014 | 11:34:37 UTC - in response to Message 37771.

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).


Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

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Message 37780 - Posted: 1 Sep 2014 | 15:06:07 UTC - in response to Message 37779.
Last modified: 1 Sep 2014 | 15:49:58 UTC

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).


Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

But... you didn't play the game. You used your computer to try and solve Sudoku. These are different things. One is playing a game, the other is trying to solve the game "for science," similarly to how checkers was solved. There is a clear distinction there, though you might not choose to acknowledge it.

Regardless, bitcoin mining isn't playing nor solving a game either, so if being a game for some reason entitles something to be a BOINC project, that still doesn't entitle bitcoin mining to be one (not that I think being a game actually does entitle anything to be a BOINC project).

At the heart of the matter though, what you seem to really be arguing overall is that anything can and should be a BOINC project and award BOINC points regardless of what it does or doesn't do; I suppose as long as it can use distributed computing in some way. That's fine if that's your opinion. I (and Retvari Zoltan*, it would seem) just don't agree with it. There's no need to dwell on and debate the minutia of our differences of opinion.
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Message 37781 - Posted: 1 Sep 2014 | 16:11:57 UTC - in response to Message 37779.

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.


Here, take a closer look at what you yourself said: "The purpose was to figure out..." Now, can you recognize the general differences between bitcoin mining and other BOINC projects and why some of us think bitcoin mining shouldn't be a BOINC project?
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Message 37782 - Posted: 1 Sep 2014 | 22:52:58 UTC - in response to Message 37779.
Last modified: 1 Sep 2014 | 22:53:36 UTC

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

You imply that I'm playing on my PC for the same purpose as that Sudoku project does, in order to justify your point of view. But when I'm playing on my PC I do it solely to be entertained, therefore it doesn't serve as a research thus I don't deserve any BOINC credits for playing to be entertained. On the other hand, a PC can't entertain itself by playing some sort of logic game, so when someone makes a PC to do that, its purpose is to learn something, i.e. it's a research (its scientific value can be argued, but it doesn't matter). Therefore the users of this project deserve BOINC credits for their efforts. So it's not the crunching, nor the numbers, nor the pattern what matters, but its purpose does matter only.

The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

What is the purpose of the BitCoin utopia project? To generate and give funding to projects. (I do appreciate that.) It is a research? No. If it's not a research, then no BOINC credits should be awarded. BOINC credits shouldn't be awarded especially in exchange of money donations, as every project has a special place for their money donors on their homepages, still none of them gives BOINC credits for money. I my opinion that would be a shame if they would. Now the BitCoin Utopia project made that shame routine. Would it be okay, if the GPUGrid project gave Hypernova 426.8 billion credits for his 2500EUR donation? Does the BOINC community want to change its moral that way?

Truth is, that I wouldn't have noticed the BitCoin Utopia project, if they didn't award so much credit that makes the participants of all other projects look stupid (that is 13~15 times more credit than the other projects combined). BitCoin Utopia is a turning point in BOINC history, but not the way GPU crunching was, that is not because these ASICs can do so much more "work" than GPUs and CPUs, but the purpose of the "work" they are doing. So much of the argument of the times when GPU crunching began are not applicable now. If the "work" they do (that is the amount of money they generate) gets awarded in the future with the same BOINC credits as other projects award (which I'm against), the amount of that credit should be in relation to the expenses of the science related cobblestones (which is quite different between projects, especially when comparing GPU projects to CPU projects). It seems to be impossible to agree a single "exchange rate" of cobblestones to USD. That's why I'm against selling BOINC credits.

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Message 37786 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 10:57:13 UTC - in response to Message 37781.

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.


Here, take a closer look at what you yourself said: "The purpose was to figure out..." Now, can you recognize the general differences between bitcoin mining and other BOINC projects and why some of us think bitcoin mining shouldn't be a BOINC project?


In one message you say this "At the heart of the matter though, what you seem to really be arguing overall is that anything can and should be a BOINC project and award BOINC points regardless of what it does or doesn't do; I suppose as long as it can use distributed computing in some way. That's fine if that's your opinion. I (and Retvari Zoltan*, it would seem) just don't agree with it. There's no need to dwell on and debate the minutia of our differences of opinion."

And now in this message you seem to be going back to trying to argue what is or isn't a valid Boinc Project. I guess the key here is they NEITHER your nor I get to decide what does and what does not become a Boinc Project. Bitcoin Utopia IS a Boinc Project, there is no going back and undoing that or total chaos will consume the whole thing and the writing will be on the wall for the end of Boinc. Could other choices have been...woulda, coulda, shoulda, you cannot rewrite the past!!

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Message 37787 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 11:14:57 UTC - in response to Message 37782.


What is the purpose of the BitCoin utopia project? To generate and give funding to projects. (I do appreciate that.) It is a research? No.


I happen to disagree with this...Bitcoin miners ARE doing math to discover the key to the current formula and get a part of a bitcoin. They don't hand those out like candy and they are therefore valuable, which is how they are helpful to Boinc. MilkyWay is doing 'math' to figure out the map of the MilkyWay, Asteroids is doing 'math' to map Asteroids, Rosetta is doing 'math' to figure out how to better solve medical things. The different Malaria project are all using 'math' to find a cure for Malaria, or at least a treatment that works. Bicoin is doing 'math' also, we may disagree on the 'scientific' value of that 'math', but it is still 'math' and that is what Boinc is all about.

Boinc is providing a framework, much like Microsoft provides a framework of Excel is a 'spreadsheet'. It is all in how it is used that makes it valuable. Some people use Excel for illegal purposes, does that mean that they should not be allowed to use Excel, WE don't get to make that choice, someone else does. Boinc is free for anyone to use, how it is used is not up to people like you and I. Sure Dr A could have, and probably still could, put some limits on who and how it's used, but I do not believe he has yet. Has EVERY project that has been submitted to Dr A been approved as a Boinc Project, not even close, some are just not viable or robust enough to handle people like you and I, and all the other people who chose to crunch. Open up a new project and you can get anyone from the guy with a single core pc to someone like you with 10 dozen pc's and 40 dozen gpu's, I exaggerate for effect. But's let's face it you are NOT a typical Boinc user, nor am I with my own resources. Either one of us could crash a poorly run Boinc project in a very short amount of time, and probably have!

Could Dr A have told Bitcoin 'yes but...', sure he could have, but he didn't at the time and is now rethinking that position. Until he is done NOTHING we say will change anything he is doing, or not doing.

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Message 37788 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 20:49:49 UTC - in response to Message 37767.

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Your opinion is unique, and others don't speak for you. So far as I know, your thoughts are underrepresented.

If you'd like your voice to be better heard, please bring constructive ideas to the BOINC "Projects" (boinc_projects) email list.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/email_lists.php
Please read through the recent archives, before joining the list.

Thanks,
Jacob

For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

The BitCoin Utopia phenomenon

I’m new to this list so this post could be a bit unusual, just as its subject.

We’re discussing this subject for two months on my main project’s forum, and Jacob Klein advised there that I should post my point of view to this list.

Currently there are two indices of the contribution:
1. Computational (Cobblestones)
2. Monetary (USD, EUR, …)

The computational index has two purpose:
1. to measure the throughput of a project, or a given set of projects
2. to motivate donors to support their chosen project(s)

The monetary contributions are handled separately by the projects.

BitCoin, and the BitCoin Utopia project linked these two indices together, as this project is awarding BOINC credits for BitCoins mined by the project’s participants.
The amount of BOINC credits awarded by the BU project is reduced on a regular basis as the hashing difficulty rises. This practice confirms this project’s commercial attitude, as otherwise the credits awarded should be in direct ratio with computational performance. Regardless of this practice the project made up an exchange rate between real world currencies and BOINC credits (it comes from the nature of this project), which is unprecedented. The current average exchange rate is about 130 million credits per USD. By pronouncing this exchange rate I’d like to express that this project raises much more severe questions than turning the stats’ sites upside down (however that event made most of us notice them).

The way of money donation before the BU project was the following:
1. the donor earns the money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project puts the donor’s name and the amount on their homepage.
In this case value moves only in one direction, so it’s a donation.

The way of money donation through the BU project is the following:
1. the donor earns (mines) money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project awards the donor BOINC credits for the mining.
4. the project takes its share, and sends the rest to the destination project
In this case value moves in both directions, so it’s commerce.

Fund raising is a very sensitive problem for every project, yet none of them sold BOINC credits to collect their funding, until the BU project showed up.
The problem of awarding BOINC credits for mining BitCoins is that the system awards the same thing twice: once for the donor who earns (mines) the money receives credit, second the project which receives the money.
To put it in another way: the award for mining is BitCoin itself, it shouldn’t be awarded again.
The present situation is unfair, as the real money donations are not rewarded like BitCoin donations (i.e. with credits).
The nature of the BU project caused a moral problem by merging BOINC credits with money.

Under the present credit system there are two ways of resolving the change the crypto currencies have brought:
1. accepting it, and let the other projects collect funding by rewarding money donations with BOINC credits
2. denying it, and forbid the BU project to award credits for mining money
If we accept it, then there should be some authority which sets the price of BOINC credits, which is a very difficult and debatable task.
I’m on the side of denying it, but it would be unfair to the participants of BU (and would induce harsh reaction) if the credits they’ve earned would be lost.
However, it would be fair to the other projects, if contributions made through the BU project would be kept in BTC, USD, EUR or whatever convertible currency, as BOINC credits are not such a thing.
In that way the participants of the BU (or any fund raising project) could easily check if the TCO of their mining equipment makes it profitable or not.

I think it wasn’t worth it to turn the cross project stats upside down in exchange of a couple of thousand USD, making years of CPU/GPU crunching look obsolete.
A temporarily solution could be reducing the amount of credits awarded by the BU project – regardless its computational capacity – to a level on which it doesn’t fool common crunchers by acting as the Holy Grail of BOINC.
From the replies on GPUGrid’s forum I can tell that the astronomical amount of BOINC credits the BU project awards made a lot of people blind, and it’s very hard for them to see the BU project as it is: fund raising – not science.
Should the BU project go like this in the long term, their impact could be even adverse on the overall scientific contribution of BOINC, as that much disparity in the awarded credits could make people to sell their expensive crunching hardware to buy more and more cheap hashing ASICs as they might think that they serve better the aim of BOINC when they earn more credits. This is not the same situation as when the GPU crunching caused similar credit shock as there’s much more aspects to consider. Some people think that the other projects could use these minig-ASICs in the future for their own (scientific) purpose.

On the other hand, I do appreciate BU’s effort in gathering funds.

Allowing the BU project to reward BOINC credits in exchange of monetary contributions was a fatal mistake, which couldn’t be seen in advance and it would be very hard to take back. Thus it made the reform of the BOINC credit system more urgent.

I would like to make an addition to the “generalized credit” proposal.
There should be a fifth kind of credit, which is money.
This is viable as a separate resource even for fund-raising projects, because they can’t use only one project defined credit to track the cumulated hashing done, and the total currency collected as the hashing difficulty is continuously rising. Besides, knowing the amount of money generated by others, new donors can make profitability calculations before purchasing and running mining equipment. (This is a very important factor in this case.)
If money would be the fifth resource it could help projects to build their own mining pool, leaving BU (and it’s share) out of the way of donating money.

Zoltan

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Message 37789 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 21:12:16 UTC

A veerrryyy good text!
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Message 37790 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 21:28:16 UTC

Damn fine post, Retvari.

Thank you for taking the time to think things through, present your rational opinion, and even offer an idea I hadn't heard before. Money as a resource :) I'll have to ponder that one.

Thanks again for replying, and welcome to the boinc_projects list. I think you'll like it.

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Message 37791 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 22:17:08 UTC - in response to Message 37786.
Last modified: 2 Sep 2014 | 22:54:38 UTC

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.


Here, take a closer look at what you yourself said: "The purpose was to figure out..." Now, can you recognize the general differences between bitcoin mining and other BOINC projects and why some of us think bitcoin mining shouldn't be a BOINC project?


In one message you say this "At the heart of the matter though, what you seem to really be arguing overall is that anything can and should be a BOINC project and award BOINC points regardless of what it does or doesn't do; I suppose as long as it can use distributed computing in some way. That's fine if that's your opinion. I (and Retvari Zoltan*, it would seem) just don't agree with it. There's no need to dwell on and debate the minutia of our differences of opinion."

And now in this message you seem to be going back to trying to argue what is or isn't a valid Boinc Project. I guess the key here is they NEITHER your nor I get to decide what does and what does not become a Boinc Project. Bitcoin Utopia IS a Boinc Project, there is no going back and undoing that or total chaos will consume the whole thing and the writing will be on the wall for the end of Boinc. Could other choices have been...woulda, coulda, shoulda, you cannot rewrite the past!!


Hi, mikey.

Sorry if I was being overly confrontational. Really, I was just trying to point out some of our (or at least my) reasoning for having this opinion. Though as mentioned, you might of course still not agree with it, which is fine.

And yes, we can't change the past, but at least we can learn from it and try to change what we can for a better future.

Thanks for your time.
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Message 37792 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 22:27:39 UTC - in response to Message 37788.
Last modified: 2 Sep 2014 | 23:19:30 UTC

For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

...


Thanks for sending this e-mail. If it were a petition, I would sign it.

Hopefully something productive and beneficial can come of this. I don't think the BOINC community wants to be known and promoted as a bitcoin mining donation service that also does some trivial (in comparison) amount of data crunching for scientific and humanitarian research on the side.
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Message 37793 - Posted: 2 Sep 2014 | 23:55:21 UTC
Last modified: 3 Sep 2014 | 0:35:18 UTC

Put more personally and in another way: Is the work I have my computer do really that worthless in comparison and how much could I a save on my electric bill if I didn't feel it was meaningful?

This is a rhetorical and reflective question for the most part, though to be honest, I have had several people ask me why I bother with this BOINC business, and I can't find an easy way to justify it to them, so it often gets written off as just an eccentric hobby of mine, which I think is unfortunate. It almost seems as though people aren't supposed to be taken seriously if they care about anything these days unless they're a mad-eyed fanatic or something. Guess I'd rather be taken as being an eccentric than a fanatic.

(My apologies for the multiple posts in a row, but I'm unable to edit my previous messages beyond an hour and tend to think of things to add to them. Maybe I should just leave a typed out message up for a few hours and edit it as needed before posting it.)
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Message 37796 - Posted: 3 Sep 2014 | 6:18:23 UTC - in response to Message 37788.

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Your opinion is unique, and others don't speak for you. So far as I know, your thoughts are underrepresented.

If you'd like your voice to be better heard, please bring constructive ideas to the BOINC "Projects" (boinc_projects) email list.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/email_lists.php
Please read through the recent archives, before joining the list.

Thanks,
Jacob

For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

The BitCoin Utopia phenomenon.........

Zoltan


Impressive - well said (typed) Zoltan.

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Message 37797 - Posted: 3 Sep 2014 | 13:12:30 UTC - in response to Message 37788.


For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

The BitCoin Utopia phenomenon
Zoltan


I too think it was very well written and wish to say thank you for writing it, ALL sides of any discussion should be represented and you stated your opinion very well, and in the right place for the right people to hear it.

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Message 37799 - Posted: 3 Sep 2014 | 14:42:41 UTC - in response to Message 37797.

Thank you guys. Especially Mikey.

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Message 37800 - Posted: 3 Sep 2014 | 15:53:52 UTC
Last modified: 3 Sep 2014 | 15:54:23 UTC

Just so you guys know, for my project where I determine which toasters shoot out PopTarts the fastest... I plan on offering 20,000 BOINC credits per PopTart analyzed by my video analysis app that a donator runs.

How's that for "science" :)

My point is that, in my opinion, BOINC could be used for almost anything. And, the project owner can determine how to pay credit. And aggregated stats were meant to record FLOPS. And by default, they should show FLOPS. But some users might want to see their PopTart credits also somehow, and showing them should also be somehow supported (but separate from FLOPS).

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Message 37803 - Posted: 3 Sep 2014 | 23:54:49 UTC - in response to Message 37800.
Last modified: 4 Sep 2014 | 0:00:59 UTC

...

How's that for "science" :)

...


Of course you're joking, but since you mention it, I do believe and would agree that that technically would at least be a form of scientific research, unlike bitcoin mining, though hopefully you'll forgive me if I don't jump at the chance to sign up for that project. :)
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Message 37805 - Posted: 4 Sep 2014 | 11:51:48 UTC - in response to Message 37803.

...

How's that for "science" :)

...


Of course you're joking, but since you mention it, I do believe and would agree that that technically would at least be a form of scientific research, unlike bitcoin mining, though hopefully you'll forgive me if I don't jump at the chance to sign up for that project. :)


It certainly WOULD be about Science, gravity, and using or overcoming it can be very complicated and technical!! IE which spring design gives the most oomph with the least amount of metal, cost etc, etc. Also does a quick release work better then a slow one etc. Didn't Nasa use a spring and a spin device to 'launch' the satellites out of the shuttle when it was flying?

Retvari I may be passionate about my opinions, but do enjoy seeing others give their opinions too, I find I tend to learn more that way! I hear things I might never have thought of otherwise!!

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Message 37821 - Posted: 4 Sep 2014 | 18:07:54 UTC - in response to Message 37518.
Last modified: 4 Sep 2014 | 18:12:02 UTC

.1

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Message 37822 - Posted: 4 Sep 2014 | 18:10:13 UTC

One of the things this thread has shed (plenty of) light on is a hidden motive of some high-level crunchers for crunching for GPUGRID (or perhaps more generally for GPU crunching):

Big bucks (sorry credits)!

I keep reading posts about how altruistic people are and how they go off buying expensive kit to crunch for science.. and then they go off whining about how unfairly BU gives tons of credit in a day, that they have taken years to get!

I don't understand, aren't you doing it for the science??

If you are really doing what you do for the science of the thing, why whine so much about the credits?? Ignore them! At least, ignore non-GPUGRID credits! They won't be affected by BU or any other nonsense we-re-here-to-help-the-children(-and-make-a-buck-ourselves) type of project!

If you primarily care about your position in the combined world Boinc charts though...

perhaps Dagorath was right.

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Message 37829 - Posted: 4 Sep 2014 | 22:26:27 UTC - in response to Message 37822.
Last modified: 4 Sep 2014 | 22:51:29 UTC

Hi, Jozef J.

Some of what you say is likely partly true, but please don't be so quick to judge the motivation and integrity of others. It is easy to vilify people you might not agree with. (For example: Is it wrong for me to have assumed based on your post that you have done a share of bitcoin mining yourself before confirming that you have?) Of course we all do this to help in ways that we feel are meaningful, regardless of points (though they can be an additional incentive).

I myself only just recently (about a week and a half ago) started crunching for GPUGrid, and only crunch for BOINC on one PC. However, I also very much feel that bitcoin mining has very little to directly do with scientific & humanitarian research, even if some amount of its generated wealth goes to finance those efforts. I don't agree with it having been made to be a BOINC project in the first place, though that opinion may be irrelevant at this point. I also think the point and scoring system for BOINC should be proportional to the amount of computing work toward scientific & humanitarian research that has been done. Of course this can't easily be precisely measured, but that doesn't mean the scoring system shouldn't strive to do as best as it can at it.

Let me put it to you another way: The point system should be a measurement of something relevant and beneficial to the community at least. Otherwise what is the point in having it at all? As it is now, and as I previously stated, it looks like the primary purpose of BOINC is to be a bitcoin mining donation service that contributes a trivial amount of actual crunching for research on the side.

Additionally, with the way the scoring system is currently set up, it quite likely somewhat detracts current and future BOINC contributors from crunching for scientific & humanitarian research projects, which is in my opinion significantly unfortunate.
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Message 37835 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 11:30:07 UTC - in response to Message 37829.

(For example: Is it wrong for me to have assumed based on your post that you have done a share of bitcoin mining yourself before confirming that you have?)


If you just click on a person name in the left hand column you can usually see which projects they are, or have been, crunching for, and their total contribution to each. It does NOT show a cumulative number though, because as Jozef J says, each projects credits are only related to that project, not any other project.

For instance I now have 3 projects with over a billion credits each, that and a couple of dollars can be a cup of coffee at my local Starbucks! Credits reflect the contribution to THAT project and that project alone. BUT because we are human beings and naturally competitive the stats sites have a running total so you can compare where you stand as compared to all other Boinc crunchers. MOST of us ignore that number though because we just cannot compete with the people who have access to rooms full of pc's, making the whole thing VERY subjective!! I have 15 pc's running here at my home, from dual core pc's to 6 core pc's, most have gpu's crunching in them, that is nothing but a drop in the bucket to people who have access to DOZENS AND DOZENS of pc's at their work place, yet the World Standings do not reflect the total number of pc's a person has.

A while back Retvari mentioned he had reached 38th in the World, even with his current RAC here of 3,932,107 he is now only 91st. I once got as high as 48th, today I am 79th, it means NOTHING at all, it is just numbers! I have contributed Credit: 73,034,540 here, Retvari has Credit: 3,633,028,062, you Wrend have Credit: 10,818,300, while Jozef J has Credit: 500,958,862 and Jacob Klein has Credit: 238,477,385, to me THOSE are the ONLY numbers that matter!! That means I am ahead of you and Jozef J, but behind Retvari and Jacob Klein!! BUT it is NOT a competition unless YOU AND I think of it as one, if you think of it as just contributing then my 'competing' with you is a non event, as YOU aren't competing with ME!! I may secretly want to kick Retvari's and Jacob Klein's butts, but if they don't resist what's the point? In the end the ONLY thing that matters is that GpuGrid gets their workunits crunched and they get further along towards achieving their goals.

ps I am NOT here to kick ANYONES butts!!! I have my own 'goals' and they are what they are and have NO relation to any other cruncher!!

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Message 37836 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 12:19:55 UTC - in response to Message 37835.

I openly want to kick all your butts in stats.

I monitor my stats here:
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/detail/4275/lastDays
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/detail/4275/charts
Credit per day, and Rank, both matter to me.

I monitor BOINC's overall stats here:
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/projectStatsInfo

And I investigate any new project, usually hearing about them here:
http://boincstats.com/en/page/projectNews

I spent the $45 on a tiny USB ASIC, to experience BOINC's implementation of it (since I'm an alpha tester), and to experience the stats phenomenon. I will admit that seeing the numbers go up that fast, really is exhilarating for a stats junkie.

I agree with Retvari that something must be done about Bitcoin Utopia's current ASIC "stats-grab", and I agree with David Anderson that ASICs are non-generic (ie: they are project-specific) and should not count in the aggregate stats.

And, if I made a PopTart analyzing app, if I paid credits by "computational FLOPs spent analyzing", it SHOULD be included in the aggregate stats, but if I paid "a certain credit amount per PopTart analyzed", it shouldn't, because that would be a project-specific concept.

That is as simple as I can make it.

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Message 37841 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 15:53:47 UTC

No changes will not, my, your voice or anyone else has the same weight ..
No man in BOINC is not important. more or less
If you Retvari or other jakob of mind will change anything so you are wrong.

It is important to support projects through BU. While not rising to astronomical deliverability
There will already explained steveblackops of BU project is not infinite, bitcoin can be mined, in theory.

And you one question-I was involved in SETI WOW event. where I am with ALL MY HW RAC reached about ONLY 90,000 ... the RAC 90,000 in GPUGrid me enough cards for 75 eu second hand ...why do not complain to ?????

Gotcha kicked you to realize how big the difference is between the Support Yes the CPU and GPU projects projects ?!

All the talk about a commercial or non-commercial platform boinc are due RAC nothing more and nothing less..

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Message 37843 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 17:15:07 UTC - in response to Message 37836.
Last modified: 5 Sep 2014 | 17:15:33 UTC

I openly want to kick all your butts in stats.




And, if I made a PopTart analyzing app, if I paid credits by "computational FLOPs spent analyzing", it SHOULD be included in the aggregate stats, but if I paid "a certain credit amount per PopTart analyzed", it shouldn't, because that would be a project-specific concept.

That is as simple as I can make it.


The ONLY problem with that is that there is MORE then one project paying a fixed amount of credit per workunit finished right now, and they ARE included in the stats too! Cosmology being one of them that I am crunching right now, GpuGrid being another!

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Message 37844 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 17:24:36 UTC

Fine.

I will offer 500 million credits per PopTart. Who's going to stop me?

GPUGrid, I think, at least sets their "base credit amount" using the length of time the task would run on one of their in-lab GPUs. Then they tweak it a bit, especially the long-runs, to award more since they are more error-prone and require continuous running in order to get prompt results back.

Their "basis", as I said though, is based on performance of GPU. I didn't do calculations, but I'm betting the short-runs are near in-line with the amounts of credits most projects pay per FLOP.

I'm not certain how Cosmology does it. But I know that, if I paid per PopTart, that's neither an apple nor an orange, if you get my drift.

Side note: Which would you rather have? 500 million credits? Or 1 PopTart? I wonder how many people would want the credits :)

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Message 37845 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 17:47:18 UTC - in response to Message 37844.

Side note: Which would you rather have? 500 million credits? Or 1 PopTart? I wonder how many people would want the credits :)


I'll take the PopTart.

What I mean is, I've always thought it made sense to track contribution by the total number of tasks completed. Credits don't mean much to me and I often find myself working backwards to figure out how many work units I've completed for a project based on the amount of credit I have. Personally, I think that's a more meaningful statistic.

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Message 37848 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 22:57:09 UTC - in response to Message 37845.

Side note: Which would you rather have? 500 million credits? Or 1 PopTart? I wonder how many people would want the credits :)


I'll take the PopTart.

What I mean is, I've always thought it made sense to track contribution by the total number of tasks completed. Credits don't mean much to me and I often find myself working backwards to figure out how many work units I've completed for a project based on the amount of credit I have. Personally, I think that's a more meaningful statistic.


They did that before Boinc at Seti, it made for some easy to cheat scandals, they went this way because it was easier to monitor and police. I have no idea which is better but it could be waaaay too late to change now, unless of course we all just start over, and that may not go over so well either. People like their cpu contributions and now their gpu contributions, to wipe them all out could be a no fun time!!

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Message 37849 - Posted: 5 Sep 2014 | 23:52:14 UTC - in response to Message 37848.

I agree with you, Mikey, about it being way to late to revert to that system. I just find it to be a better way for me to track my contribution. For example, at World Community Grid, one's contribution is tracked by Total Number of Tasks Completed, Total Amount of Run-Time, and Total Amount of Credits. I find the number of tasks and run-time to be WAY more useful to me than credits.

But that's just me. I'm happy to contribute to the science regardless of how individual contribution is being tracked, or if it's even tracked at all.

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Message 37850 - Posted: 6 Sep 2014 | 0:47:44 UTC

Zoltan:

Just saw you got a reply from David on the boinc_projects list. Congrats, I think. Your idea of "money as a resource" was probably novel to him, too. We definitely appreciate not just the people who voice concerns, but especially the people that voice potential solutions.

Thanks again, keep the ideas coming,
Jacob

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Message 37851 - Posted: 6 Sep 2014 | 10:44:21 UTC - in response to Message 37849.

I agree with you, Mikey, about it being way to late to revert to that system. I just find it to be a better way for me to track my contribution. For example, at World Community Grid, one's contribution is tracked by Total Number of Tasks Completed, Total Amount of Run-Time, and Total Amount of Credits. I find the number of tasks and run-time to be WAY more useful to me than credits.

But that's just me. I'm happy to contribute to the science regardless of how individual contribution is being tracked, or if it's even tracked at all.


The stats site Free-DC gives the number of units crunched per day too, but only when the project reports it in their stats. Maybe that too is something Dr A can work on, consistent stats sent out from each project. We all crunch 'workunits', if Dr A can figure out how to put that in the Server Side software then the same stats would be sent to the stats sites and a new way of looking at things could be started, with the eventual replacement of 'cobblestone totals' across projects being seen as something to crow about. ie I finished 25,403 MW funding BU units yesterday, but have no clue how many GpuGrid units I finished yesterday. I know I have 43 valid units for the 2 pc's I have attached here, but unless I go thru the list one by one have no clue how many were yesterday or the day before or the day before that, etc. GpuGrid KNOWS, it just isn't a stat they are giving out right now.

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Message 37864 - Posted: 9 Sep 2014 | 11:16:25 UTC

Maybe we could give out credits by number of papers published (multiply credits by impact factor and number of citations) :D
Then we would have a slightly more scientific BOINC, hehe.




ps. This is mostly a joke. I know it's probably a horrible idea due to salami publishing, impact factors being a nearly useless metric and some great science being done without publishing much.

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Message 37866 - Posted: 9 Sep 2014 | 12:21:15 UTC - in response to Message 37864.
Last modified: 9 Sep 2014 | 12:28:14 UTC

Maybe we could give out credits by number of papers published (multiply credits by impact factor and number of citations) :D
Then we would have a slightly more scientific BOINC, hehe.

ps. This is mostly a joke. I know it's probably a horrible idea due to salami publishing, impact factors being a nearly useless metric and some great science being done without publishing much.


Yeah some projects will NEVER publish a paper so would either fade away or never even get off the ground. Rosetta for example is trying to 'find a better way' to use pc's to help scientists, or they were. There is not a lot of 'papers' going to be published in that kind of work, but the work can be helpful never the less.

Collatz is trying to prove a 'conjecture' is right or wrong, no papers will ever be published until it is 'proven' one way or the other. There are tons of other examples of 'worthwhile' Boinc projects that will never publish 'papers', those two not being evaluated for their 'scientific value' by me.

The other thing is that most projects do not document the fact that Boinc itself was used in their research, so publishing a paper and not then acknowledging Boinc means ANY paper will work for credits. I am NOT discounting your idea, I am just pointing out some things that need to be thought of before going that route.

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Message 37908 - Posted: 14 Sep 2014 | 17:43:08 UTC
Last modified: 14 Sep 2014 | 18:22:27 UTC

Let's see... as of 20 July, they'd raised $1800 for various causes. They'd also awarded about 93 billion credits.

Their process is just one of giving money, but with the added catch that one must burn up electricity to make bitcoins in the process, which is bad for the environment and adds no benefit for the charitable causes involved.

The saner way to do this would be to cut out the electricity wasting, and just sell credits. 93 billion credits / $1800 = 51.67M credits per dollar. How about projects just selling me a billion credits for $20, then? It's just the same, other than wasting a bunch of electricity, isn't it? And when it comes to return on investment, I have a couple of thousand tied up in hardware, which it costs me around $20 a month to run, but which can barely break 10M a month! Why should I be a total sucker and crunch for science, when I'm only generating 300k a day, less than 0.6 cents a day worth of crunching, and I'm paying a hundred times that much just for the power?

All this is making Folding@home look awfully attractive.

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Message 37912 - Posted: 15 Sep 2014 | 11:02:53 UTC - in response to Message 37908.

Let's see... as of 20 July, they'd raised $1800 for various causes. They'd also awarded about 93 billion credits.

Their process is just one of giving money, but with the added catch that one must burn up electricity to make bitcoins in the process, which is bad for the environment and adds no benefit for the charitable causes involved.

The saner way to do this would be to cut out the electricity wasting, and just sell credits. 93 billion credits / $1800 = 51.67M credits per dollar. How about projects just selling me a billion credits for $20, then? It's just the same, other than wasting a bunch of electricity, isn't it? And when it comes to return on investment, I have a couple of thousand tied up in hardware, which it costs me around $20 a month to run, but which can barely break 10M a month! Why should I be a total sucker and crunch for science, when I'm only generating 300k a day, less than 0.6 cents a day worth of crunching, and I'm paying a hundred times that much just for the power?


And ALL we crunchers do here at GpuGrid is "burn up electricity" crunching for this project, which is also "bad for the environment and adds no benefit for the charitable causes involved". Boinc is Boinc and some projects are 'worth it' and some aren't, the key is each person gets to decide that for themselves and hopefully the not so 'worth it' ones will be weeded out. Since BU is based on asic mining, although they DO have both cpu and gpu apps too, and the credits are getting harder and harder to get as the difficulty goes up, AND there could be a limited supply of Bitcoins altogether, the whole thing may work itself out by the whole project just ending one day.

There are, or were, other projects paying exorbitant amounts of credits too, DistRTgen was one of them, people used their gpu's at it and since it also was a Boinc project it got its stats added to the totals too.

Oh and crunching the campaign #3 workunits at BU DOES help Science as it helps keep the MilkyWay Project in business. As has been discussed before credits are credits, a few billion credits and 5 bucks can get you a small coffee at StarBucks. In fact you can get the coffee with just the 5 bucks alone, as the credits are worthless. The newer campaign #4 units at BU are designed to help study "The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization", so it too could be considered a 'science project' as man is trying to travel to Mars in the not so distant future, the value of doing that traveling can be debated elsewhere though.

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Message 38654 - Posted: 24 Oct 2014 | 9:34:06 UTC - in response to Message 37912.
Last modified: 24 Oct 2014 | 10:02:26 UTC

I think Xenu makes a very valid point (that isn't to say that I disagree with yours) and it has to do with the goal of these BOINC projects. As far as I can tell, the ideal goal of crunching for BitCoin Utopia is to raise funds for BOINC projects, but for the majority of us (if not all) it would be much more cost effective to just donate to the projects directly by cutting out the middle man project that skims a bit off the top, the hardware, internet connection, and of course electricity used which adds some varying degree of pollution to our world.

All this makes me think more so even that really most people likely just crunch for BitCoin Utopia for the credits with a few other less realistically relevant reasons added into the mix. I'm not faulting them for that, really, though it does seem a little misguided (if not hypocritical) to me. With that being said, and given that BitCoin Utopia is a BOINC project, it would seem to me that it actually would be more beneficial overall if people could just buy BOINC/project credits by donating funds directly to them. (Though of course I personally wouldn't like to see that be an option, similarly to why I don't think BitCoin Utopia should be a BOINC project in the first place.)

The goal of (in crunching for) the majority of other projects is to contribute directly to doing the fundamental computational grunt work for scientific and humanitarian endeavors, and it could conceivably be argued (though I won't attempt to do so here) that this kind of work does more good than harm in regards to pollution caused by electrical energy generation, and of course because it is actually contributing to these projects' endeavors as apposed to inefficiently funding a speculative future potential amount of work that might be done for them.
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Message 38656 - Posted: 24 Oct 2014 | 11:57:55 UTC - in response to Message 38654.

I think Xenu makes a very valid point (that isn't to say that I disagree with yours) and it has to do with the goal of these BOINC projects. As far as I can tell, the ideal goal of crunching for BitCoin Utopia is to raise funds for BOINC projects, but for the majority of us (if not all) it would be much more cost effective to just donate to the projects directly by cutting out the middle man project that skims a bit off the top, the hardware, internet connection, and of course electricity used which adds some varying degree of pollution to our world.

All this makes me think more so even that really most people likely just crunch for BitCoin Utopia for the credits with a few other less realistically relevant reasons added into the mix. I'm not faulting them for that, really, though it does seem a little misguided (if not hypocritical) to me. With that being said, and given that BitCoin Utopia is a BOINC project, it would seem to me that it actually would be more beneficial overall if people could just buy BOINC/project credits by donating funds directly to them. (Though of course I personally wouldn't like to see that be an option, similarly to why I don't think BitCoin Utopia should be a BOINC project in the first place.)

The goal of (in crunching for) the majority of other projects is to contribute directly to doing the fundamental computational grunt work for scientific and humanitarian endeavors, and it could conceivably be argued (though I won't attempt to do so here) that this kind of work does more good than harm in regards to pollution caused by electrical energy generation, and of course because it is actually contributing to these projects' endeavors as apposed to inefficiently funding a speculative future potential amount of work that might be done for them.


You make some VERY good points, but it all depends on people giving up their cash to keep a project afloat, and THAT seems to be the hard part. MilkyWay is a well run project, they just lost their grant so need an influx of cash to keep running. What happens if this, or any other, Boinc project has the same thing happen? We all know how expensive and time consuming keeping pc's can be, now think about the costs of keeping a Server running that thousands of people contact on a daily basis. Most projects have a core group of supporters who will donate every time a project asks them too, but there are some people who just don't for whatever reason. BU is a way for THOSE people to contribute too, while still 'crunching' using their cpu's, gpu's or if they choose a special asic miner.

Boincstats, a Boinc stats site run by 'Willy', is the latest campaign BU is funding, one of their reps said they spend almost $3000 per month just for their internet. I can't imagine what GpuGrid, MilkyWay or some of the other Boinc projects spend per month for things, but if we users don't want ADS popping up everytime we click we must find another way to keep projects running. Even University based projects have budgets, and some have had some serious problems lately when a part failed and the University said 'there is no money in the budget for new parts'.

I am NOT saying BU is for everyone, or even most people, but if people won't donate their cash then some of the better known projects could be history in the not too distant future. Even Seti goes down every week due to budget constraints, MilkyWay says they need $40K per year to stay open. I don't know how bare bones that is, but they may find out as BU is only 1/4 the way to their goal of half of that amount.

In short SOMEONE has to pay to keep the projects running, if the grant money stops flowing and the users won't pony up some cash, then they have few options to keep running. I personally would NOT want click thru ads at every project just to read the forums, and to keep them running.

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Message 38657 - Posted: 24 Oct 2014 | 13:31:16 UTC - in response to Message 38656.

Boincstats, a Boinc stats site run by 'Willy', is the latest campaign BU is funding, one of their reps said they spend almost $3000 per month just for their internet.

A factchecker writes:

The BOINCstats donate page shows costs of €300 per month for "Server rack/bandwidth/power" - which sounds more like it. That's about 380 USD at today's exchange rate.

That was written by Willy de Zutter himself, not some un-named 'representative' - perhaps you could re-check with your source?

Having got that confusion out of the way, I fully agree that anybody who is spending significant amounts of their own money in buying or building computers purely for running BOINC should allocate a small percentage of the budget they have available for their hobby, towards meeting the server costs incurred in providing the raw materials that make it possible - i.e. data in the form of WUs.

Of course, I don't feel that people who simply use BOINC in the way it was originally designed - using spare cycles on a computer purchased and running for some other purpose - should feel under any pressure to donate.

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Message 38674 - Posted: 25 Oct 2014 | 11:18:29 UTC - in response to Message 38657.

Boincstats, a Boinc stats site run by 'Willy', is the latest campaign BU is funding, one of their reps said they spend almost $3000 per month just for their internet.

A factchecker writes:

The BOINCstats donate page shows costs of €300 per month for "Server rack/bandwidth/power" - which sounds more like it. That's about 380 USD at today's exchange rate.

That was written by Willy de Zutter himself, not some un-named 'representative' - perhaps you could re-check with your source?

Having got that confusion out of the way, I fully agree that anybody who is spending significant amounts of their own money in buying or building computers purely for running BOINC should allocate a small percentage of the budget they have available for their hobby, towards meeting the server costs incurred in providing the raw materials that make it possible - i.e. data in the form of WUs.

Of course, I don't feel that people who simply use BOINC in the way it was originally designed - using spare cycles on a computer purchased and running for some other purpose - should feel under any pressure to donate.


WHOOPS these darn fat fingers added a zero! I also 'assumed' it was dollars from the BU post, sorry on both counts!

And I do agree with you.

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Message 38759 - Posted: 29 Oct 2014 | 20:59:28 UTC - in response to Message 38656.



In short SOMEONE has to pay to keep the projects running, if the grant money stops flowing and the users won't pony up some cash, then they have few options to keep running. I personally would NOT want click thru ads at every project just to read the forums, and to keep them running.


The other issue you have with asking donors for money is not knowing if that money will actually reach intended use. Some Universities will accept that money and then maybe a very small percentage will actually make it to the project. Carl over at QCN explained to me once that efforts to get funding for them was pretty much pointless in this way. He said that it equated to maybe getting the staff beer and pizza one night because the donated funds just weren't actually divied where the donors intended. So, when volunteers are asked for donations many will ask the skeptical questions. However, at every project there is some die hard who jumps to the defense and claims how reputable such organization is and how you can fully trust them. Seriously, the people that run Universities aren't much different than other organizations. Money goes where it can grow first and foremost. As for a For Profit website for stats keeping, those issues are up to them. I do support when I can because I use their sites. However, my "donations" aren't much. I have however seen the ads. I have actually spoken with a few other projects after suggesting Milkyway to BU and Carl at QCN. POGS is one of them and are considering the opportunity. It is a pitty that it isn't better received. I also appreciate that BU has recently reduced fees a second time to 10%.
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Message 39028 - Posted: 26 Nov 2014 | 18:36:02 UTC

It's too quiet in here. We need something to get people fired up. I noticed over at BOINC the top 100 users listing. In the calculations they must be using a GFLOPS rating for bitcoin miners that seems more realistic than the crazy credits being awarded over at BU:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/chart_list.php

Of course since bitcoin asics apparently don't do any GFLOPS at all is even that rating too high? Is the BU graph color red because it's making the BOINC devs see red? Subconscious color pick? Guess I'm bored this morning...

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Message 39034 - Posted: 27 Nov 2014 | 12:30:25 UTC - in response to Message 39028.

It's too quiet in here. We need something to get people fired up. I noticed over at BOINC the top 100 users listing. In the calculations they must be using a GFLOPS rating for bitcoin miners that seems more realistic than the crazy credits being awarded over at BU:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/chart_list.php

Of course since bitcoin asics apparently don't do any GFLOPS at all is even that rating too high? Is the BU graph color red because it's making the BOINC devs see red? Subconscious color pick? Guess I'm bored this morning...


FIRST Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

Second now that BU is crunching to help Seti the 'devs' may be a bit less upset with BU, bribery always works for politicians anyway. ;-)) ACTUALLY the money is supposed to go towards the future development of Boinc, but I have heard there is no way to earmark the money in that way. Dr A is STILL investigating the credit situation, but has put out a preliminary statement that they may in fact be a bit low in the amount being awarded when compared to how the other devices, ie cpu and gpu, get awarded credits. I saw a comparison by someone who compared asic miners to a gpu as akin to a home pc compared to a super computer.

I have no idea though if an asic miner can be utilized at any other project, some folks have said emphatically NO, but others have said 'maybe'. It will be interesting if some project can and see what kind of credits they give out. Personally I HOPE they can, it would be a shame to waste all that computing power on JUST mining, no matter what credits are given out.

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Message 39036 - Posted: 27 Nov 2014 | 16:37:39 UTC - in response to Message 39034.

Thought that would fire you up ;-)

> Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

+1

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Message 39039 - Posted: 28 Nov 2014 | 12:29:09 UTC - in response to Message 39036.

Thought that would fire you up ;-)

> Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

+1


Maybe, but it is about crunching and that I can do.

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Message 39053 - Posted: 30 Nov 2014 | 21:06:11 UTC - in response to Message 39034.
Last modified: 30 Nov 2014 | 21:28:48 UTC

Beyond wrote:
It's too quiet in here.

This thread is one of the most viewed on this forum, so people are quite interested about its topic.
I know that many readers of this topic come from other forums, and for some of them my (our) irritation prove their success.
Well, I got tired of feeding their ego by expressing my feelings and thoughts.

Beyond wrote:
We need something to get people fired up.

For what end do you want to fire people up?
To ban the BU project?
That wouldn't happen. This "battle" has been lost before this thread was started.
If I were a project which receives funding from the BU project, I would accept switching the BU project off only if someone else would provide my funding.
I think the change BU have brought is irreversible in the sense that taking it back would do more harm than it's doing now. I was worried about crunchers leaving the scientific projects for BU, but it didn't happen, at least not to that extent I was worried about. If the warnings posted in this thread had the slightest part in that, I think it's reached its goal.
That goal is making this community to see and handle this project as it is: It's fund raising not science, therefore it shouldn't be rewarded the same way as doing science is rewarded. At the moment it's the best rewarded contribution, which carries the same bad message real life does: money talks. That's not the spirit of the community I've joined 10 years ago.

Beyond wrote:
I noticed over at BOINC the top 100 users listing. In the calculations they must be using a GFLOPS rating for bitcoin miners that seems more realistic than the crazy credits being awarded over at BU:

GFLOPS and BOINC credits are basically the same thing.

Beyond wrote:
Of course since bitcoin asics apparently don't do any GFLOPS at all is even that rating too high?

There is no such exchange rate which can express the ratio between a floating point operation and a hashing operation, as these are not exchangeable at all. Besides generating crypto currencies hashing is a rare (and very simple) task for a user level application (it's used mostly for storing passwords). Its use wasn't that important to optimize CPUs or GPUs for this type of tasks. This high rewarding of hashing comes from that neither CPUs nor GPUs are made for hashing, therefore CPUs and GPUs can do hashing only in a very ineffective way, and the awarded credits reflect that even a very fast CPU (having a high FLOPS rating) can do very little hashing. Hashing can easily optimized for parallel processing; there is many dedicated hardware present in a state of the art computer which using some kind of hashing, as data storage and transmission in today's density and speed couldn't exist without different error detection and correction codes. (For example: any networking device, CD, DVD, BR discs, SSD and HDD controller chips (inside the device), cache memory inside the CPU and memory controllers for servers equipped with ECC, hardware accelerated RAID5 & RAID6 controllers.)

Beside the technological aspect of the BU phenomenon there is a more important aspect: the moral one. Truth to be told, this aspect wasn't that important to think about until BitCoin mining was done on the same devices as crunching (GPUs and CPUs), as these devices can do hashing in a very ineffective way, so the cost of crunching for scientific purposes (i.e. the cost of earning a credit) wasn't much higher than the reverse calculated price of a credit earned by donating BitCoins. When ASICs came to mining BTC, this situation has changed drastically for the worse, emerging moral questions like: "How much money does a BOINC credit worth?" or "What is more important: doing science at home, or donating 1000 USD for scientists?". Following the logic that money donations were handled separately before - that is a donor didn't receive BOINC credits for money as nobody had the authority to set the price of a BOINC credit - this reverse calculation shouldn't exist at all. However the BU and the donate@home projects did it without any authorization. Either BU miners shouldn't receive any credits for mining, as their donations should be kept in BTC, EUR, USD (just like for real money donors), or the real money donors should receive the same amount of BOINC credits for their donations. The present situation is unfair, one-sided, wrongful, biased, etc. It makes me feel like a part of a community which consists of a bunch of geeks loosing contact with reality.

If we had to set the price of a BOINC credit anyway, we should do it on moral basis, as if we leave it as it is now (on technological basis), bringing bigger or more advanced ASICs into mining will make this exchange rate worse and worse (making crunching on GPUs and CPUs even less attractive considering its costs). So we should take the average price of a credit earned through the GPU projects, and make the credits awarded by the BU project for BTC based on that average price. However that wouldn't fix the disparity between BTC donations and real money donations.

Mikey wrote:
...now that BU is crunching to help Seti the 'devs' may be a bit less upset with BU, bribery always works for politicians anyway. ;-))

This bribery works towards the miners, as they earn astronomical credits for donating a fraction of BitCoin, while real money donors don't.

Mikey wrote:
ACTUALLY the money is supposed to go towards the future development of Boinc, but I have heard there is no way to earmark the money in that way. Dr A is STILL investigating the credit situation, but has put out a preliminary statement that they may in fact be a bit low in the amount being awarded when compared to how the other devices, ie cpu and gpu, get awarded credits. I saw a comparison by someone who compared asic miners to a gpu as akin to a home pc compared to a super computer.

As I said before, the moral aspect of this is more important (in my point of view) than the technological aspect, that makes any argument based on comparing different devices based on different technologies irrelevant.

Mikey wrote:
I have no idea though if an asic miner can be utilized at any other project, some folks have said emphatically NO, but others have said 'maybe'.

ASICs are hardwired devices (this makes them that fast), in exchange they can't be reprogrammed to do different tasks. Any other project using these BTC-minig ASICs should be another BTC-minig project only.

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Message 39055 - Posted: 30 Nov 2014 | 21:50:22 UTC - in response to Message 39053.
Last modified: 30 Nov 2014 | 21:51:07 UTC

Beyond wrote:
It's too quiet in here. This thread is one of the most viewed on this forum, so people are quite interested about its topic. We need something to get people fired up.

Retvari wrote:
For what end do you want to fire people up?

Like I said, the forum was too quiet. Thought it would be nice to get some dialogue going.

Beyond wrote:
I noticed over at BOINC the top 100 users listing. In the calculations they must be using a GFLOPS rating for bitcoin miners that seems more realistic than the crazy credits being awarded over at BU:

Retvari wrote:
GFLOPS and BOINC credits are basically the same thing.

Except that bitcoin ASICs apparently don't do any GFLOPS. If you look at what DA is awarding BU users in imitation GFLOPS, it's far different than the credits awarded at BU. So apparently he sees the BU credits as being way too high for the work done. It's interesting, that's all.

It's also obviously a moneymaking scheme as they rake a significant amount off the top. Business model: award huge BOINC credits to lure in credit greedy users and then rake off the profit. Not a bad business model if you want to make some easy bucks.

This is nice, we do have a dialogue started. What do I think about BU? I think it's fine except that the credits awarded are crazy compared to the actual work being done. What do you think about BU?

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Message 39056 - Posted: 30 Nov 2014 | 23:07:54 UTC - in response to Message 39055.
Last modified: 30 Nov 2014 | 23:27:29 UTC

It's also obviously a moneymaking scheme as they rake a significant amount off the top.

I don't think they keep too much for themselves.

Business model: award huge BOINC credits to lure in credit greedy users and then rake off the profit. Not a bad business model if you want to make some easy bucks.

That's true, but they were lowering their percentage as more users were lured to the project. As I said before, this is a commercial project, so it's no wonder that those who run this project want to make a living from it, or at least cover their spendings on hardware.

This is nice, we do have a dialogue started. What do I think about BU? I think it's fine except that the credits awarded are crazy compared to the actual work being done. What do you think about BU?

I think that way too. But it's the simplification of the problem. The "award" for mining is BitCoin itself, it shouldn't be awarded again with BOINC credits. When a miner have some BTC, they can do anything with that BTC they want: donate it for a project, or exchange it to real world currency, and spend it, or donate the real world currency. There shouldn't be BOINC credits involved in donating money (BTC).
The exchange of BTC to real world currencies raise the question: Who pays real money for virtual money? Those who want to exchange their money anonymously. It's quite plausible that criminals are prevalent in this group of people. That would be very regrettable, if it would turn out that the most part of the money the BU project give away comes from drug dealers, illegal arms dealers, pimps, prostitution, human trafficking, illegal organ traders and terrorists - just to name a few.

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Message 39057 - Posted: 1 Dec 2014 | 14:18:19 UTC - in response to Message 39056.

It's also obviously a moneymaking scheme as they rake a significant amount off the top.

I don't think they keep too much for themselves.

Business model: award huge BOINC credits to lure in credit greedy users and then rake off the profit. Not a bad business model if you want to make some easy bucks.

That's true, but they were lowering their percentage as more users were lured to the project. As I said before, this is a commercial project, so it's no wonder that those who run this project want to make a living from it, or at least cover their spendings on hardware.


BU just reduced their 'take' from 11% to 10% and are now talking about dropping it even further to 9%. In addition they are talking about donating the portion of the 9% that is unused for BU expenses to a charity. They say NO money is being used to pay people to run and maintain BU, I have no choice but to believe them, as I have no ability to audit them, or any other project.

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Message 39058 - Posted: 1 Dec 2014 | 14:49:53 UTC - in response to Message 39056.

This is nice, we do have a dialogue started. What do I think about BU? I think it's fine except that the credits awarded are crazy compared to the actual work being done. What do you think about BU?


I think that way too. But it's the simplification of the problem. The "award" for mining is BitCoin itself, it shouldn't be awarded again with BOINC credits. When a miner have some BTC, they can do anything with that BTC they want: donate it for a project, or exchange it to real world currency, and spend it, or donate the real world currency. There shouldn't be BOINC credits involved in donating money (BTC).


The problem with that idea is that each user does NOT donate directly to the projects, it's more like a crowd funding thing. Since each person does not get any recognition for their contribution to the 'campaign' they donate their crunching to, they get credits instead. BU IS a Boinc project, so Boinc Cobblestones are currently the only way to recognize each persons crunching contributions.

As most of us have said before the Cobblestones earned at GpuGrid do NOT comparable to the ones earned at Cosmology, PrimeGrid, Seti, BU or ANY other project, they are best used for comparing results within GpuGrid ONLY. Whether that be user to user, or each users own performance over time. If we could go back in time and get the stats sites to STOP combining them into one big overall number, then this wouldn't be an issue, unfortunately that door has been opened and it may never close again.

I am crunching Cosmology cpu units right now and am getting a flat 480 credits for each unit, with some units taking over 15 hours to complete!! I just checked one of Retvari's units and he is getting 147,600 credits for roughly 7.5 hours of work, HOW is that comparable? The answer is...IT ISN'T!! It NEVER should be, nor should it have ever been. BUT we are all human and want to see how we compare to others. The problem is they just aren't comparable, like comparing me to a football/soccer player, I have bad feet and am over 60 years old, we are NOT comparable!!

It's a bit like comparing my gpu's to both Beyond's and Retvari's gpu's...they are all gpu's but beyond that they really aren't comparable. Beyond has almost all Nvidia 750's, I have some Nvidia 760's, while Retvari has some 980's, 780's, 680's and even a 750! They are NOT comparable to each other beyond the fact that they all crunch!

Beyond has 1,218,146,142 total credits here, Retvari has 4,087,611,712 total credits here, while I have 100,346,915 total credits here. THOSE are comparable!!

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Message 39168 - Posted: 17 Dec 2014 | 20:17:48 UTC
Last modified: 17 Dec 2014 | 20:20:06 UTC

Doulble post. My bad.

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Message 39169 - Posted: 17 Dec 2014 | 20:17:48 UTC

There shouldn't be BOINC credits involved in donating money (BTC).

There was BOINC credits given when donate was run here. What's the difference?

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Message 39171 - Posted: 17 Dec 2014 | 21:04:15 UTC - in response to Message 39058.
Last modified: 17 Dec 2014 | 21:05:23 UTC

Cpu crunchers we can initiate to BOINCstats remove the gpu projects!
For us it is discriminatory!
Cpu tasks crunchers job is difficult. It's such a doctorate from the University.
1000 000 rac day in cpu projects requires 15K+Eur + time + one person take care 24/7.
GPU crunching is as elementary school. 1000 000 Day RAC knows every man with two graphics cards. just € 1,000.


Happy Christmas :-) )))))

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Message 39172 - Posted: 17 Dec 2014 | 21:44:15 UTC

How about if the stats sites just divide the bitcoin credits by a reasonable amount? I don't know what the constant might be but for instance:
bu crdits/20 = BOINC credits on the stats sites...

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Message 39174 - Posted: 17 Dec 2014 | 22:10:47 UTC - in response to Message 39172.

How about if the stats sites just divide the bitcoin credits by a reasonable amount? I don't know what the constant might be but for instance:
bu crdits/20 = BOINC credits on the stats sites...

Why should anyone really care about points? If you're doing any kind of DC for points than you have the wrong motives IMHO. If you're going to reduce the BU points in BOINC to 20:1 then maybe you can get them to give WCG full credits instead of 1 BOINC point for every 7 WCG points.

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Message 39176 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 0:03:55 UTC - in response to Message 39169.
Last modified: 18 Dec 2014 | 0:12:17 UTC

There shouldn't be BOINC credits involved in donating money (BTC).

There was BOINC credits given when donate was run here. What's the difference?

The difference is the impact of these projects.
Donate@home wasn't a big success, as it was inefficient, but it was just as immoral as BU is.
I'm very sorry that I didn't realized this back then. My only excuse for that is the insignificance of that project.
BU haven't had a big impact, until the ASICs came.
When I fully understood what is going on actually, it was too late to take it back.

This thread has 73342 views.

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Message 39177 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 0:09:28 UTC - in response to Message 39171.

Cpu crunchers we can initiate to BOINCstats remove the gpu projects!
For us it is discriminatory!
Cpu tasks crunchers job is difficult. It's such a doctorate from the University.
1000 000 rac day in cpu projects requires 15K+Eur + time + one person take care 24/7.
GPU crunching is as elementary school. 1000 000 Day RAC knows every man with two graphics cards. just € 1,000.

You are right (partly), but this thread is not about this problem.

Happy Christmas :-) )))))

Same to you!

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Message 39178 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 0:29:14 UTC - in response to Message 39174.
Last modified: 18 Dec 2014 | 0:29:52 UTC

Why should anyone really care about points? If you're doing any kind of DC for points than you have the wrong motives IMHO.

You are right, but there are such people.
When I realized that the BU project (and donate at home also) actually selling BOINC credits for BTC, I was shocked by the immorality of it.
This shock haven't passed.

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Message 39182 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 11:59:20 UTC - in response to Message 39178.

Why should anyone really care about points? If you're doing any kind of DC for points than you have the wrong motives IMHO.

You are right, but there are such people.
When I realized that the BU project (and donate at home also) actually selling BOINC credits for BTC, I was shocked by the immorality of it.
This shock haven't passed.

I respect your point of view but I disagree. BOINC points have no intrinsic value and therefore can't be sold IMHO. If I choose to run my miners at my own expense to raise donations for projects I deem worthy then that's my choice. The "points" are just an acknowledgement of my contribution and nothing else just like the badges that some projects award. If any of it stirs up a little friendly competition and raises money how is that immoral?

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Message 39183 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 12:20:04 UTC - in response to Message 39178.

Why should anyone really care about points? If you're doing any kind of DC for points than you have the wrong motives IMHO.


You are right, but there are such people.
When I realized that the BU project (and donate at home also) actually selling BOINC credits for BTC, I was shocked by the immorality of it.
This shock haven't passed.


So by that logic we are buying Scientific credibility by crunching too? They are not "selling" Boinc credits for bitcoins, they are awarding credits for crunching, just like every other project does. Here at GpuGrid we crunch and the project does what they do with the results and we users get credits, THAT'S the Boinc way. You provide your resources to a project or your choice and you get credits, that are in fact worthless, in return. Retvari you personally have SEVEN pc's here, all of them Intel i-7 cpu's, and you also have some of the latest and greatest gpu's in them all crunching for credits here at GpuGrid. Are you "selling" yourself to GpuGrid for those little icon thingys saying your work was used in a "Scientific Publication"...I don't THINK that's the way you see it.

Then WHY would you think that crunching for BU is "selling" yourself for bitcoins? When someone crunches for MalariaControl are they "selling" themselves for the lives of those saved from Malaria? NOT in my opinion they aren't! We all contribute what we can, how we can, and in return we get "cobblestones" that are in fact just numbers on a page. One Trillion "cobblestones" and five dollars can get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, BUT without the five bucks you CANNOT get any coffee at all! You can ALSO take ONE CREDIT and five bucks and get that SAME cup of coffee though!!

The point is that each of us contributes to the Boinc project of our choice, some of us more than others, but we don't do it so WE get anything in return, we do it so OTHERS can advance that project further than they could without us! In our own way we ARE helping advance things we often have no clue about, nor have the time to learn HOW they do it! At bu we are doing the same thing, except they are generating money instead of 'mapping the cosmos', or 'solving some math equation' or 'folding proteins' or whatever other projects we chose to contribute too. At BU the Admins then take that money and DONATE it to different "campaigns" that have been asked, or have asked, for funding help. Several Boinc projects and even a stats site or two wouldn't be here today without bu's help. Seti itself is now accepting help from bu, it turns out that no matter how many times they ask their crunchers just won't contribute enough to keep them running, much like other projects that have funding problems.

GpuGrid could even contact bu and ask for help for this or that purpose, the Admins there will be happy to talk about the possibilities. BUT bu is also picky in that they don't just accept anyone off the street that needs money either. They vet every request, with some being accepted and some being rejected. The 'buying more and better pc's for mikey' request would most likely be rejected as it doesn't benefit the 'greater good', but keeping the Boinc Projects Seti and MilkyWay around was accepted as they DO!

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Message 39184 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 13:26:30 UTC
Last modified: 18 Dec 2014 | 13:31:36 UTC

I feel the main points are being missed. I'll summarize what I believe the main points are:

"New Resource Utility - Bitcoin Mining"
- BOINC used to do: Donate spare CPU/GPU cycles ==> Enhance science/publications ==> User rewarded with credits
- BOINC can now do: Donate spare CPU/GPU/ASIC cycles ==> Enhance campaigns with Bitcoin ==> User rewarded with credits
... In both cases, the user is "selling out" their resources.
... But in the Bitcoin Mining case, you literally can make a proportional comparison between amount of resources allocated, and amount of money generated.

"New Stats Resource - ASICS"
- BOINC projects used to do: Use benchmarks to determine how many FLOPS a CPU/GPU can effectively do, then use that in an equation to determine credits ==> The CPU/GPU resources can be used at any project that implements an application for them, and cross-project credits should be semi-comparable, even capable of generating competition.
- BOINC projects can now do: Determine a credit value for ASICs that actually is based upon a comparison against FLOPS, but is very very high in credit value ==> ASICs can only be used for a single purpose (are not generalized computation devices; can only be used at certain projects that use that exact same purpose), and thus cross-project credits aren't comparable. Also, their high credit values negate an ability to generate credit competition.

My conclusions:
- This issue is affecting the community, and should be addressed.
- I do not think that ASIC credits should be arbitrarily lowered to try to "fit" the GPU/CPU model of credits.
- Rather, I think we need an easy way to, when viewing stats, optionally "strip out" the "single-purpose ASIC credits".
- To do this, we need a way to segregate them; a new shiny "bucket" to put them in.
- David Anderson has created a proposal (which makes sense to me), and he has requested feedback on the BOINC Projects Mailing List.
- The links are:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized
http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_projects
- Please make sure feedback makes it to him.

Regards,
Jacob

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Message 39185 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 13:58:56 UTC

I'm going to Hell in a Hand Basket, so sue me, I'll talk to the Devil when I get there about Increasing the Inadequate Watered Down Credits we get there now ... :P
____________
STE\/E

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Message 39186 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 14:06:10 UTC - in response to Message 39184.

- Rather, I think we need an easy way to, when viewing stats, optionally "strip out" the "single-purpose ASIC credits".

Bad idea IMHO. Credits are credits no matter how many or how they are generated. The GPU trumped the CPU. The GPU credits weren't stripped out. Now asics have trumped the GPU. If you "strip out" the asic credits now what happens when the next tech advance surpasses asic capabilities? Does this whole discussion start again?

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Message 39187 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 14:20:23 UTC
Last modified: 18 Dec 2014 | 14:23:08 UTC

- Rather, I think we need an easy way to, when viewing stats, optionally "strip out" the "single-purpose ASIC credits".

Bad idea IMHO. Credits are credits no matter how many or how they are generated. The GPU trumped the CPU. The GPU credits weren't stripped out. Now asics have trumped the GPU. If you "strip out" the asic credits now what happens when the next tech advance surpasses asic capabilities? Does this whole discussion start again?


Please do not confuse the reason for the request to re-categorize the credits.

The reason is NOT: Because ASICs work harder/faster/better.
The reason IS: Because ASICs computations cannot be generalized in a way to be applicable to other projects, like CPUs/GPUs are.

There is a huge difference in those reasons, and you keep erroneously mixing them up.
You do know what the acronym ASIC means, right?

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Message 39191 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 16:31:52 UTC - in response to Message 39187.

The reason IS: Because ASICs computations cannot be generalized in a way to be applicable to other projects, like CPUs/GPUs are.

So accoding to you and for that reason alone the ASIC ponts should be stripped out of BOINC awards? Pretty narrow minded IMHO

There is a huge difference in those reasons, and you keep erroneously mixing them up.


Your point of view on the reasons does not extrapolate to an error on my point of view.

You do know what the acronym ASIC means, right?


You do know what the acronym EBCAK means, right?

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Message 39193 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 17:15:07 UTC

ASIC credits should not be "stripped out". They should be "categorized" such that a user visiting a stats site can choose to not include them, since they came from a resource that is not generalized.

I was seriously asking if you knew what ASIC meant. Your insulting reply was uncalled for.

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Message 39196 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 19:54:17 UTC - in response to Message 39193.
Last modified: 18 Dec 2014 | 19:55:08 UTC

ASIC credits should not be "stripped out". They should be "categorized" since they came from a resource that is not generalized.


Again, your opinion.

I was seriously asking if you knew what ASIC meant. Your insulting reply was uncalled for.

IMO your question was condescending and got the reply it deserved. I'm done. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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Message 39197 - Posted: 18 Dec 2014 | 19:58:24 UTC

Sorry for offending you. Some people don't know that an ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit), by definition, is not capable of being generalized for use by all projects.

And I am well aware that my proposals are "opinions". They are, what I believe to be the best approach to alleviate the concerns people have. In a sense, everybody wins -- If you visit a stats site and want to see ASIC included, that's your choice! If you visit a stats site and want to exclude credits from project-specific resources like ASIC, that's your choice!

Happy holidays to you.

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Message 39210 - Posted: 19 Dec 2014 | 12:16:27 UTC - in response to Message 39197.

Sorry for offending you. Some people don't know that an ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit), by definition, is not capable of being generalized for use by all projects.

Happy holidays to you.


My question then becomes 'what happens when project xyz comes online, using asic's, and is all about 'the Science'? Suppose Seti, for example, figures out how to optimize their Astro-Pulse units so as asic device could be used? Would that change the equation?

In the beginning ONLY cpu's could be used in Boinc and gpu's were for 'the gamers', then someone sat down and figure out how to utilize the gpu's specific calculating power to crunch Boinc workunits. Someone WILL figure out how to utilize an asic device, maybe a whole new app, just like when the gpu's started out, and then what? Do we STILL strip out the asic stats?

To me the genie left the bottle when cpu stats and gpu stats were combined, to now say well asic's are 'different' so they must be stripped out is kinda late. What about all those cpu ONLY crunchers, aren't their stats being blown away by those that use gpu's at the same projects...YES they are! How are asic devices any different? Boinc Cobblestones are about 'numbers', nothing more and nothing less. That fact that a gpu can kinda sorta be related to the way a cpu works is immaterial, they both produce relevant data to the project. An asic device can and does too, to penalize ALL future projects because of one newcomer is short sighted and alot like closing the barn door after the barn has already burnt down to the ground around it, IMHO.

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Message 39211 - Posted: 19 Dec 2014 | 13:35:06 UTC - in response to Message 39210.
Last modified: 19 Dec 2014 | 13:42:40 UTC

My question then becomes 'what happens when project xyz comes online, using asic's, and is all about 'the Science'? Suppose Seti, for example, figures out how to optimize their Astro-Pulse units so as asic device could be used? Would that change the equation?


Mikey, if you read through the Generalized Credit Proposal:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized
... you'll see that your question has already been answered. It is one of the questions/answers at the bottom, that SETI themselves asked!

David's response is:
My feeling about this is that computing credit should measure general-purpose FLOPs, i.e. FLOPs that are usable by most science applications. FFT FLOPs are not general-purpose. So the right thing would be for SETI@home to grant both computing credit and project-defined credit. CPU and GPU jobs would be granted both; jobs done by ASICs or FPGAs would be granted only project-defined credit.

So.... A "project-specific" device, such as an ASIC, whether it mines coins or searches for aliens, would generate credit that goes into the "project-specific" bucket.

In the beginning ONLY cpu's could be used in Boinc and gpu's were for 'the gamers', then someone sat down and figure out how to utilize the gpu's specific calculating power to crunch Boinc workunits. Someone WILL figure out how to utilize an asic device, maybe a whole new app, just like when the gpu's started out, and then what?


There is nothing stopping anyone from creating an ASIC to do any type of work they desire -- protein analysis, space radio scanning, RNA sequencing... it's doable right now. It's just not cost effective. But it won't be "generalizeable" like GPU architecture. It will be a device that can only do 1 thing, very very quickly. That is why it will be a "project-specific" device that generates credit that goes into the "project-specific" bucket.

To me the genie left the bottle when cpu stats and gpu stats were combined, to now say well asic's are 'different' so they must be stripped out is kinda late. What about all those cpu ONLY crunchers, aren't their stats being blown away by those that use gpu's at the same projects...YES they are! How are asic devices any different?


The difference is a big one! The difference is that, the GPU is a generalized device that can be programmed to complete work on any project. The user is free, in a sense, to re-allocate that device to a different project. An ASIC is an "application-specific integrated circuit"; it is not generalized, and cannot be re-allocated toward another purpose.

Boinc Cobblestones are about 'numbers', nothing more and nothing less.


I look at the stats as a good way to measure how much "power" a user has, and where it's being allocated. The stats measurements, for CPU and GPU, are pretty comparable to FLOPS spent... even when comparing a CPU to a GPU. Bitcoin Mining isn't even comparable. There are rough estimates out there that try to "convert" a "hash" in a "FLOP" equivalent, but it really is apples and oranges. In fact, that describes what has become of our current stat situation - anyone that has ASIC included in their stats, has thrown some oranges into the mix. And some users would prefer to only count the apples.

If Wildlife@Home gives 15000 credits for each video watched, if StarDust@Home gave 10000 credits for each reel of video footage manually scanned for space dust, if SETI gave 20000 credits for each AstroPulse ASIC task completed, if Radioactive@Home gave 14000 credits for each day worth of analyzing radioactivity at your location, if ClimateAndWeather@Home gave 15 trillion stats for each day worth of weather monitoring at your location, if PopTart@Home gave 2 billion credits per PopTart video analyzed, and if Bitcoin Utopia gave 20000 credits for each 1.6GH/s ASIC task completed ......... they'd all be project-specific oranges.

Nobody is trying to take ASIC credits away. We are just looking for a way to categorize them, so that a user can choose to view the stats while excluding the project-specific credit!

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Message 39272 - Posted: 23 Dec 2014 | 2:02:28 UTC

Actually an ASIC is just a specialized FPGA and they could be programmed for any project or task given the desire to do so. It is quite possible to program, for example Seti, to run on a FPGA and hence to far outstrip the computing power of cpu's or gpu's.

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Message 39914 - Posted: 30 Jan 2015 | 18:16:57 UTC - in response to Message 39272.
Last modified: 30 Jan 2015 | 18:53:45 UTC

I would consider getting one or two of these if I had 220 power and not 110 here at home or had access to a place with 220 power. http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/products/sp35-yukon-power-shipping-from-stock

At 5.5 TH/s, it would be a great way to build a profitable pooled or even personal bitcoin inventory. Especially if the decrease in bitcoin mining caused by the decrease of bitcoin price causes a re-evaluation of the difficulty of hashing out bicoins to a lower difficulty. I only wonder if BOINC could be installed on these so that you could mine bitcoins AND receive BOINC credits for the hashing. After all, it is Linux. I just wonder if it allows ssh access to install third party software or if it is locked down because of some proprietary software actually doing the hashing.
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Message 40002 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015 | 8:48:23 UTC - in response to Message 39178.
Last modified: 2 Feb 2015 | 9:05:20 UTC

Why should anyone really care about points? If you're doing any kind of DC for points than you have the wrong motives IMHO.

You are right, but there are such people.
When I realized that the BU project (and donate at home also) actually selling BOINC credits for BTC, I was shocked by the immorality of it.
This shock haven't passed.



For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

The BitCoin Utopia phenomenon

I’m new to this list so this post could be a bit unusual, just as its subject.

We’re discussing this subject for two months on my main project’s forum, and Jacob Klein advised there that I should post my point of view to this list.

Currently there are two indices of the contribution:
1. Computational (Cobblestones)
2. Monetary (USD, EUR, …)

The computational index has two purpose:
1. to measure the throughput of a project, or a given set of projects
2. to motivate donors to support their chosen project(s)

The monetary contributions are handled separately by the projects.

BitCoin, and the BitCoin Utopia project linked these two indices together, as this project is awarding BOINC credits for BitCoins mined by the project’s participants.
The amount of BOINC credits awarded by the BU project is reduced on a regular basis as the hashing difficulty rises. This practice confirms this project’s commercial attitude, as otherwise the credits awarded should be in direct ratio with computational performance. Regardless of this practice the project made up an exchange rate between real world currencies and BOINC credits (it comes from the nature of this project), which is unprecedented. The current average exchange rate is about 130 million credits per USD. By pronouncing this exchange rate I’d like to express that this project raises much more severe questions than turning the stats’ sites upside down (however that event made most of us notice them).

The way of money donation before the BU project was the following:
1. the donor earns the money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project puts the donor’s name and the amount on their homepage.
In this case value moves only in one direction, so it’s a donation.

The way of money donation through the BU project is the following:
1. the donor earns (mines) money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project awards the donor BOINC credits for the mining.
4. the project takes its share, and sends the rest to the destination project
In this case value moves in both directions, so it’s commerce.

Fund raising is a very sensitive problem for every project, yet none of them sold BOINC credits to collect their funding, until the BU project showed up.
The problem of awarding BOINC credits for mining BitCoins is that the system awards the same thing twice: once for the donor who earns (mines) the money receives credit, second the project which receives the money.
To put it in another way: the award for mining is BitCoin itself, it shouldn’t be awarded again.
The present situation is unfair, as the real money donations are not rewarded like BitCoin donations (i.e. with credits).
The nature of the BU project caused a moral problem by merging BOINC credits with money.

Under the present credit system there are two ways of resolving the change the crypto currencies have brought:
1. accepting it, and let the other projects collect funding by rewarding money donations with BOINC credits
2. denying it, and forbid the BU project to award credits for mining money
If we accept it, then there should be some authority which sets the price of BOINC credits, which is a very difficult and debatable task.
I’m on the side of denying it, but it would be unfair to the participants of BU (and would induce harsh reaction) if the credits they’ve earned would be lost.
However, it would be fair to the other projects, if contributions made through the BU project would be kept in BTC, USD, EUR or whatever convertible currency, as BOINC credits are not such a thing.
In that way the participants of the BU (or any fund raising project) could easily check if the TCO of their mining equipment makes it profitable or not.

I think it wasn’t worth it to turn the cross project stats upside down in exchange of a couple of thousand USD, making years of CPU/GPU crunching look obsolete.
A temporarily solution could be reducing the amount of credits awarded by the BU project – regardless its computational capacity – to a level on which it doesn’t fool common crunchers by acting as the Holy Grail of BOINC.
From the replies on GPUGrid’s forum I can tell that the astronomical amount of BOINC credits the BU project awards made a lot of people blind, and it’s very hard for them to see the BU project as it is: fund raising – not science.
Should the BU project go like this in the long term, their impact could be even adverse on the overall scientific contribution of BOINC, as that much disparity in the awarded credits could make people to sell their expensive crunching hardware to buy more and more cheap hashing ASICs as they might think that they serve better the aim of BOINC when they earn more credits. This is not the same situation as when the GPU crunching caused similar credit shock as there’s much more aspects to consider. Some people think that the other projects could use these minig-ASICs in the future for their own (scientific) purpose.

On the other hand, I do appreciate BU’s effort in gathering funds.

Allowing the BU project to reward BOINC credits in exchange of monetary contributions was a fatal mistake, which couldn’t be seen in advance and it would be very hard to take back. Thus it made the reform of the BOINC credit system more urgent.

I would like to make an addition to the “generalized credit” proposal.
There should be a fifth kind of credit, which is money.
This is viable as a separate resource even for fund-raising projects, because they can’t use only one project defined credit to track the cumulated hashing done, and the total currency collected as the hashing difficulty is continuously rising. Besides, knowing the amount of money generated by others, new donors can make profitability calculations before purchasing and running mining equipment. (This is a very important factor in this case.)
If money would be the fifth resource it could help projects to build their own mining pool, leaving BU (and it’s share) out of the way of donating money.

Zoltan



100% agree.

There is hope to save spirit of scientific BOINC:

BOINC combined
BOINC combined without ASIC

In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.
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Message 40003 - Posted: 2 Feb 2015 | 11:56:24 UTC - in response to Message 40002.


In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.


Woo boy that's ANOTHER whole HUGE can of worms there!!! Hopefully another thread too!

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Message 40014 - Posted: 3 Feb 2015 | 1:58:53 UTC

Bitcoin Utopia is currently running fundraising for multiple Boinc projects incl Seti and Milkyway as well as helping out Boincstats...I say don't throw rocks in a glass house. Let them do what they want.

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Message 40791 - Posted: 8 Apr 2015 | 22:28:46 UTC - in response to Message 40014.
Last modified: 8 Apr 2015 | 22:34:46 UTC

Bitcoin Utopia is currently running fundraising for multiple Boinc projects incl Seti and Milkyway as well as helping out Boincstats...I say don't throw rocks in a glass house. Let them do what they want.

Would those who hash for BU donate directly SETI and Milkyway if these projects would give 100 million BOINC credits in exchange for one dollar donation?
Then why wouldn't let we these projects do what BU does on their behalf? ("what they want")
Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media.
For whom the end is lawful, the means are also lawful (i.e., the end justifies the means)

This thread has 94.200 views.
This number is increased by 20858 since 18 Dec 2014.

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Message 40797 - Posted: 9 Apr 2015 | 11:33:33 UTC - in response to Message 40791.

Bitcoin Utopia is currently running fundraising for multiple Boinc projects incl Seti and Milkyway as well as helping out Boincstats...I say don't throw rocks in a glass house. Let them do what they want.


Would those who hash for BU donate directly SETI and Milkyway if these projects would give 100 million BOINC credits in exchange for one dollar donation?
Then why wouldn't let we these projects do what BU does on their behalf? ("what they want")
Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media.
For whom the end is lawful, the means are also lawful (i.e., the end justifies the means)

This thread has 94.200 views.
This number is increased by 20858 since 18 Dec 2014.


Most projects give special badges to those who donate, Seti used to give gold stars, I don't know if they still do or not, that would show up next to your name for all to see. The exchange rate for Bitcoins fluctuates soo much that an accurate number isn't possible, but more or less 155 Million Credits ~ 1 USD at Bitcoin Utopia. So it ends up being more of a 'it's new so let's do it' type of project for the individuals. TOGETHER though great things have been done, several Boinc Projects have been assisted as well as one of the stats sites, and some non Boinc things have been helped as well. A list is on their home page, if you click on the campaign number you can see exactly what it was about and how much was actually donated. Three campaigns are currently underway with two more possibly coming on line soon, one of the three has almost reached it's goal in a much earlier than expected time frame.

It's kind of like you said in the other thread "horse for courses", what works for one person doesn't work for everyone. BU gives people another option and since it is a Boinc Project and can use highly specialized hardware it gives out more than the standard credits. DR A has said he is reviewing the amount of credits being given out, but thinks that some of them may actually be TOO LOW for the amount of work being done when compared to the standard model that projects follow. DR A has NOT come back with his final assessment yet that I am aware of though.

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Message 40798 - Posted: 9 Apr 2015 | 12:00:49 UTC - in response to Message 40003.
Last modified: 9 Apr 2015 | 12:06:52 UTC


In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.


Woo boy that's ANOTHER whole HUGE can of worms there!!! Hopefully another thread too!


We can throw out 90+% of the BOINC Projects that have been run then ...

No where in the BOINC Name does it say Scientific Work
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
it just says Network Computing for those that want to Volunteer their Computers ... If people want to Volunteer their Computer to the BU Project then so be it. When the time come that a few dictate to the many what they can or can not run then that's the time to stop Volunteering my Computers.

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Message 40799 - Posted: 9 Apr 2015 | 13:12:13 UTC - in response to Message 40798.
Last modified: 9 Apr 2015 | 13:12:59 UTC


In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.

Woo boy that's ANOTHER whole HUGE can of worms there!!! Hopefully another thread too!

We can throw out 90+% of the BOINC Projects that have been run then ...

True.

No where in the BOINC Name does it say Scientific Work
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
it just says Network Computing for those that want to Volunteer their Computers ... If people want to Volunteer their Computer to the BU Project then so be it. When the time come that a few dictate to the many what they can or can not run then that's the time to stop Volunteering my Computers.

Ture.
And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

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Message 40800 - Posted: 9 Apr 2015 | 14:44:18 UTC - in response to Message 40797.
Last modified: 9 Apr 2015 | 15:07:04 UTC

It's kind of like you said in the other thread "horse for courses", what works for one person doesn't work for everyone.

Well, this is the best answer so far. It's all psychology then. But BU's psychology and their success could be easily transferred to other projects: The donors receive a special workunit for every dollar they've donated, and the project gives them 155 million credits for each special workunit they've processed. Then there's no need for BU at all. Problem of funding solved once and for all.

BU gives people another option and since it is a Boinc Project and can use highly specialized hardware it gives out more than the standard credits.

I thought that BOINC (besides its being a tool, or framework) is a community, and I think that it is exactly what its participants made of it. The more we crunch for science projects, the more it's a scientific community. I am deeply worried because the disparity between the credits given by the BU project for fund raising distracts the crunchers from science. Excuse me for being a little personal only for one sentence, and please don't get me wrong I don't want offend anyone for the project they crunch for, but Ste\/e is one of the perfect examples of the effect I'm afraid of. I'm really appreciate that he donated so much money for different projects through BU, but he ceased to crunch for GPU projects since the ASICs entered the BU project. His selection of projects are perfectly reasonable under the given circumstances, and I don't want to change his mind about his selection. I want to change the circumstances.

DR A has said he is reviewing the amount of credits being given out, but thinks that some of them may actually be TOO LOW for the amount of work being done when compared to the standard model that projects follow. DR A has NOT come back with his final assessment yet that I am aware of though.

From my point of view (i.e. there should be no BOINC credits awarded for donation at all regardless the means of donation) it's indifferent whether the ratio of the hashing done and the BOINC credits awarded is right or not.

Back to my idea of the special workunits for 155 million credits:
Wouldn't be the non-donor crunchers of a project upset as I am upset about BU, that a donor can take their place on the top list for much less money than what the non-donor spent on electricity and hardware? It's obvious why a BOINC project couldn't sell BOINC credits for money, so it's better that we have a separate BOINC project for this purpose. Well it's a contradiction, right? BU is a living paradox.

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Message 40801 - Posted: 9 Apr 2015 | 14:56:22 UTC - in response to Message 40799.

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)


That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.

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Message 40802 - Posted: 9 Apr 2015 | 15:31:59 UTC - in response to Message 40801.
Last modified: 9 Apr 2015 | 15:51:06 UTC

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.

Of course.
I thought that someone would give me a link to some wiki page of BOINC which actually contain the rules of credits and donations and their relations.
It is explicitly forbidden to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then BU shouldn't be a BOINC project.
It is explicitly allowed to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then every project could do that, and BU shouldn't exist.
There is any rule about selling BOINC credits at all, or this practice was so out of the question that nobody thought it should be regulated?

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Message 40814 - Posted: 10 Apr 2015 | 13:11:42 UTC - in response to Message 40802.

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.


Of course.
I thought that someone would give me a link to some wiki page of BOINC which actually contain the rules of credits and donations and their relations.
It is explicitly forbidden to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then BU shouldn't be a BOINC project.
It is explicitly allowed to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then every project could do that, and BU shouldn't exist.
There is any rule about selling BOINC credits at all, or this practice was so out of the question that nobody thought it should be regulated?


Being open source and freely available to anyone and everyone rules like that would be hard to enforce. That being said in the past 'some' people did seem to be selling their credits, who knows what for, as their credits went with them from team to team. This was changed a while back when any credits earned on one team do NOT transfer to another team, the user ALWAYS keeps his credits, but team credits earned while on a team stay with the team when you leave. Your new team starts getting any credits earned from that point on.

You could see teams jump from 10,000th place to first place, and vice versa, when someone with a ton of credits switched teams. The rumor was money was changing hands, but I have no clue if that was true or not. I have not changed teams since I joined Boinc, except for very recently when I moved some pc's on some projects to a 2nd team for testing purposes. I will probably end up moving back to my normal team in the not so distant future though as the test, while working, doesn't seem worth it.

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Message 40815 - Posted: 10 Apr 2015 | 13:13:19 UTC - in response to Message 40801.

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)


That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.


OH BOY, with the money I give to the power company every month I could be MUCH closer to number one!! But without all the fun!!

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Message 40816 - Posted: 10 Apr 2015 | 13:22:43 UTC - in response to Message 40800.


From my point of view (i.e. there should be no BOINC credits awarded for donation at all regardless the means of donation) it's indifferent whether the ratio of the hashing done and the BOINC credits awarded is right or not.


This idea was thrown out in the very beginning, even before Boinc, when Seti gave one credit for every workunit crunched. Now with the multiple ways of awarding credits, open source tends to have multiple solutions, that horse left the barn and it's WAY to late to close the doors now.

One idea was floated, and rejected, of being more like sports stats, where you keep a running total of your best achievements, but every year you start over from zero with your credits. So while Messi is a great soccer/football player, he has only scored X number of goals this year. His stats this year do not reflect his past goals, but the total is kept for posterity on a stats site. Essentially we would all start over every year equal, so Ste\/e, Retvari and I would be tied, YAHOO, for about 3 seconds before you both pulled away.

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Message 41847 - Posted: 19 Sep 2015 | 3:40:47 UTC
Last modified: 19 Sep 2015 | 3:41:51 UTC

Not a good day for bitcoins here in the United States:

Bitcoin Is Officially a Commodity, According to the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission

CFTC Orders Bitcoin Options Trading Platform Operator and its CEO to Cease Illegally Offering Bitcoin Options and to Cease Operating a Facility for Trading or Processing of Swaps without Registering

Bitcoin now classed as a commodity in the US

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Message 42071 - Posted: 1 Nov 2015 | 14:51:36 UTC - in response to Message 40816.

One idea was floated, and rejected, of being more like sports stats, where you keep a running total of your best achievements, but every year you start over from zero with your credits.
This is completely off topic, but my idea is quite different: the credits earned should have "interest-rate", to make the credits earned in the past numerically comparable to the credits earned in the present. If you do reverse thinking about crunching, you'll never start it, because on the hardwares of the near future it will be much easier to earn this much credits, thus it's not worthwhile doing now.

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Message 42073 - Posted: 1 Nov 2015 | 15:45:15 UTC - in response to Message 39055.
Last modified: 1 Nov 2015 | 15:46:13 UTC

I've read back this thread, and I decided to post what I wrote almost a year ago, because I consider it to be too good to be sitting on my desktop any longer - even though I feel that I'm beating a dead horse.

This is nice, we do have a dialogue started.

Sometimes I have the feeling that we keep on repeating our separate monologues in this thread, which doesn't necessarily result in a dialogue.

While I was thinking about how we tried to convince each other previously, I came to the conclusion that we see the BU project in a different way because we have different emotional relations to this project. I'd like to think of myself as I am neutral, but it's quite obvious that I don't like the way this project changed the character of the BOINC community without the knowledgeable consent of the participants / founders.

A scene came to my mind from one of my favorite movies: "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991).
You should watch it before you read on, it's very suggestive (both the clip and the whole movie too).
Because I could not get this quote out of my head for days, I did a little transcript of the dialogue in the clip I've linked, and I share it with you:

Hannibal Lecter: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does this project do, the BitCoin Utopia?
Clarice Starling: It's hashing numbers.
Hannibal Lecter: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing it does? What needs does it serve by hashing?
Clarice Starling: Mining cryptocurrencies. sir...
Hannibal Lecter: No! It donates. That is its nature. And how do we begin to donate, Clarice? Do we seek out things to donate? Make an effort to answer now.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin donating by earning money every day. Don't you earn money to buy the the things you want, Clarice?

mikey
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Message 42100 - Posted: 4 Nov 2015 | 11:38:35 UTC - in response to Message 42073.

I've read back this thread, and I decided to post what I wrote almost a year ago, because I consider it to be too good to be sitting on my desktop any longer - even though I feel that I'm beating a dead horse.

While I was thinking about how we tried to convince each other previously, I came to the conclusion that we see the BU project in a different way because we have different emotional relations to this project. I'd like to think of myself as I am neutral, but it's quite obvious that I don't like the way this project changed the character of the BOINC community without the knowledgeable consent of the participants / founders.


Actually the original creator of Boinc, Dr Anderson of UCBerkley, didn't say anything at all about what Boinc was to be used for EXCEPT as an experiment to get lots of diverse, unknown to each other people using his creation. Dr Anderson's original grant request was for the money to setup and run Boinc on alot of pc's, that's all. Now him working at Seti may have been in his mind, but he didn't express that in his request. He is still part of the team of people upgrading and maintaining Boinc to this day, although since all outside funding has been cut the Team is more part-time than full-time.

That being said Bitcoin Utopia has been in contact with him and has proposed some additional funding, but apparently Boinc is still tied directly to UCBerkley and they have some specific rules on what happens when you donate. The Admins are all working on it, in the background, and I am NOT a part of the process, so don't know anything but what is said in their forums by the Admins.

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Message 42105 - Posted: 5 Nov 2015 | 0:07:31 UTC

I stumbled over an ad for “gridcoins” over at BOINCStats (http://www.gridcoin.us/). I was wondering if somebody has heard about it and used it.

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Message 42106 - Posted: 5 Nov 2015 | 1:56:22 UTC - in response to Message 42105.

Yes, there is a team for gpugrid and it's whitelisted.
Go to the website and follow the guide. I think you should try it.

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Message 42107 - Posted: 5 Nov 2015 | 12:16:40 UTC - in response to Message 42105.

I stumbled over an ad for “gridcoins” over at BOINCStats (http://www.gridcoin.us/). I was wondering if somebody has heard about it and used it.


I tried, cpu projects only though, and it is interesting, after getting someone to 'seed' me some credits I was able to earn some gridcoins, I earned about 7 US dollars worth over about a 30 day period. Then I upgraded the software, putting it on a new pc in the process, and changed the password for my wallet. After a reboot my wallet would NOT accept my new password and wanted the old one instead, since it was a 'generated' one and not one I had picked those gridcoins are gone and never coming back for me. I left at that point. A gridcoin is worth a very small fraction of a bitcoin, there are conversion charts on the net.

Essentially GridCoin is a Team you join and they pay you to stay on their Team. I have been on one Boinc Team almost since the beginning and wasn't going to switch my high powered crunchers to GridCoin and leave my regular Team, so my experience may not be equal to yours.

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Message 42108 - Posted: 5 Nov 2015 | 18:06:44 UTC

Must have been a Full moon out the Trolls are running Amok ... :)
____________
STE\/E

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