David Baker

[em99010pepe]

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m41/rsmura/th_DBakerNeedyChildren.jpg (http://s101.photobucket.com/albums/m41/rsmura/?action=view&current=DBakerNeedyChildren.flv)

He is right....people run for the stats, they just want to have their machines busy and don't understand the essential of a project..lack of intelligence...

Carlos

[Paratima]

That view is completely, utterly wrong.

Three and a half years ago (Yes! Believe it or not, it was in early 2005), a project call Distributed Folding (DF) finally folded. Free-DC and a ton of other teams had crunched it for about three years. As it turned out, their scientific approach was pretty much a dud, as verified by the CASP tests, culminating in CASP-6. We knew they were in scientific trouble, but we kept on crunching DF anyway. I ran a mirror site to help with download traffic and I believe someone else did, too, but it's been a while. Free-DC hosted their official web site, as we have for other projects. Anyway, even with a failing project, the competition was intense and the participation was heavy.

Nobody complained because the admin was forthright and communicated almost daily. His real name was Howard Feldman and he participated in crunching and in the forums as "Brian the Fist". The project science guy was Dr. Christopher Hogue, who went by the name "FeedBobo". He was also a regular contributor to the forum discussions. They had huge posts regarding both the science and the computer/network administration. When they had problems, they posted about them. I can't recall going a day, much less a weekend, wondering what was happening on the other end of the wire. In short, they took a professional approach to the care and feeding of the crunchers who donated their processing time.

When the project folded, some folks actually wrote teary farewells because it had become such a comfortable virtual space to inhabit. Compare that to the non-posting or occasional posting of many of today's projects. No explanations given for lost weekends or lost WU's. An attitude of "I'll get to it whenever I bloody well get to it".

Go the the main forum and look under "Retired or Complete Projects". Learn how good project administration can be.

Toward the end, it got a little rough. After all, it was shutting down. There still ought to be a "How to Run a DC Project" by Brian the Fist and it ought to be required reading before you open a DC project.

[IronBits]

I'll :cheers: to that, spot on Paratima :thumbs:

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Freaking hell yeah Paratima, I crunched DF even when it was obvious it was a crock of sh!t and people were bailing out (or was that something else).
Yeah I do remember that, We got a problem with this or that we're working on it bear with us, with updates. I seem to also remember help was given where needed and even ended up in the client been tweaked speedwise to perfection or almost there. It was a shame CASP proved it was a crock I don't know maybe some of the theories / conjectures that DF created / studied could be re-used but it wouldn't be the same unless FeedBoBo :thumbs: n BriantheFist :thumbs: were in charge of it or high up members of the team, Mr Baker could learn a thing or two..

:cheers: Paratima, :cheers: IB
IB - wasn't this the project where you got the Handle "Target Butt"..

[Paratima]

Hey, I'm not calling any particular project admin a left-handed wanker and I'm not saying that DF was perfect - we all got in our shots from time to time. But they doggone well responded when we did.

I am saying that the way to keep crunchers happy is to let 'em know what's really happening, so they can make intelligent decisions about what to run, how much and when.

NOT slamming you, Carlos. But it's not lack of intelligence on anyone's part; it's lack of communications by the project leadership that creates the most friction.

PS. You will now enjoy at least a week free from my ranting, as I'm going on vacation (holiday, to the Brits). Happy crunching!

[Scoofy12]

I agree that DF was a great-run project.
However more to the point, in the video I don't think that David Baker is expressing the view that the users are stupid, just run for the stats, and don't understand the project.
He said that users complain when the software doesn't work on their computers, and they don't get credit when there's a problem with the stats. Of course they do like the stats, and they want the stats to be fair, and they have different ideas about exactly what fairness means. David Baker has to deal with all the normal issues with supporting widely-distributed software and a largeish-scale web backend, keeping the users happy via technical and policy means.

[Bok]

and there will always be complaints about stats... I know.. :rotfl::lmao:

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Yeah bok there is always going to be a problem until you fix the stats so they say #1 Gopher :rotfl::rotfl: