Discussion about the future of the [H] DC team

Just a word of warning.

I have had direct warning from a moderator here in the [H]ardforum for speaking disparagingly of 7im. It is a bit unfortunate, since we all know what we think of him and his actions. Even when everything blew up at FF, I would rather go to the folding subforum of EVGA for assistance, than go to FF. It is probably best that we keep it that way.
 
jfb9301 said:
Just a word of warning.

I have had direct warning from a moderator here in the [H]ardforum for speaking disparagingly of 7im. It is a bit unfortunate, since we all know what we think of him and his actions. Even when everything blew up at FF, I would rather go to the folding subforum of EVGA for assistance, than go to FF. It is probably best that we keep it that way.
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Yet it is some how appropriate for Gilthanis, our defacto-leader, to call us all "point whores" and mock us for it, that's totally ok. :rolleyes:
Been folding for team 33 since 2008, some a lot longer and some with many more points and contributions than myself, and this is seriously how we're all treated...?

I don't see why it is so unreasonable for us all to get together and work as a team again on a few focused projects: F@H, WCG, and GPUGrid.
We all seem to be saying the same thing here, so I don't know what is stopping us from moving ahead with it, and enjoy some beer and tamales for all like the old days.


As for the insults, that shit needs to stop now.
I won't be a part of a team that insults all of the time, energy, money, and dedication put into a project, regardless of whether it's for the science or the points.

Why we fold is irrelevant, as it is the final results that count.
 
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Red Falcon said:
Yet it is some how appropriate for Gilthanis, our defacto-leader, to call us all "point whores" and mock us for it, that's totally ok. :rolleyes:
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No it is not appropriate. And I acknowledge that. The difference though (since you are implying poor moderation) is that I didn't single any specific individual out. Anyone associating themselves to my poorly chosen comment is doing so on their own accord. However, specifically calling out 7im is where he had the warnings given. Just making that clear.
 
Gilthanis said:
No it is not appropriate. And I acknowledge that. The difference though (since you are implying poor moderation) is that I didn't single any specific individual out. Anyone associating themselves to my poorly chosen comment is doing so on their own accord. However, specifically calling out 7im is where he had the warnings given. Just making that clear.
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Thanks for acknowledging it, though looking at it now, this isn't much of an apology.
Still though, even though you didn't single any one of us out, specifically, you basically just insulted everyone on here with negative comments, of which you showed no remorse for.

Technically speaking, anyone who folds can be easily associated with your remarks.
 
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jfb9301 said:
Just a word of warning.

I have had direct warning from a moderator here in the [H]ardforum for speaking disparagingly of 7im. It is a bit unfortunate, since we all know what we think of him and his actions. Even when everything blew up at FF, I would rather go to the folding subforum of EVGA for assistance, than go to FF. It is probably best that we keep it that way.
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Maybe one of the mods is 7im in disguise:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

But on a serious note yeah, the top teams can usually figure everything out for themselves and if we can't there is usually an idiot like me that still reads FF to venture over and ask
 
Nathan_P said:
Maybe one of the mods is 7im in disguise:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

But on a serious note yeah, the top teams can usually figure everything out for themselves and if we can't there is usually an idiot like me that still reads FF to venture over and ask
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Nathan_P, you are a simply a glutton for punishment. :D:D:D
 
I really don't know why some make such a drama out of the points versus science debate. Regardless of which reason you DC for the science gets done. More points, more science. Seems simple to me and complaining about people doing it for points is lame. Just DC what you want and to hell with all of the crap.
 
What is irritating about the term to a person like myself is it is belittling to a person and my guess is it is totally wrong term for most of the individuals that that term would lead a person to think about..

I am pretty sure I would fall under that term since at one time I was the single largest Individual run from home points leader. (And there are pretty good odds I will be again) The term implies that a person does not care about the science just the points associated with the science / project.

Well let me give you a little history my mother died at a rather young age of 57 from Cancer my Grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at 62 and lived with that miserable SOB of a disease until age of 74, And Grandma has been suffering from the results of Cancer for several years now. I do not know if any of you have ever watched someone die from either of those or not, but is not something I would wish on anyone.

Not too long after my mother passed F@H started in 2000 I read about it on the net I saw cancer and Alzheimer's mentioned and I ran my first WU as anonymous and no team association, I ran like that for quite a while, I think I joined a team in 01 or 02, and have been folding pretty much 24/7/365 ever since during my career I have been the #1 folder on 3 Teams and if you total them all up I am still #3 in the world on F@H.

I DC for my children, grandchildren and humanity most of my DC goes to Medical research it always has and it always will. And yes I like points they add some fun and compaction to it. I have often wondered why anybody would use such a term with such a lack of respect towards any group of people who are willing to contribute so much to humanity. I always thought it should be just the opposite that any person willing to devote some much time, effort and $$ to help out there fellow man should earn a little respect. Surely they should not be disrespected with a name like Point Whore's
 
I'm sorry you had to go through all of that, and your reasons are the same reasons I fold.
When I started folding in 2008, one of my cousins passed away from stomach cancer (horribly I might add) and left behind a husband and kids; she was in her early 30s.

My grandmother passed away after completing chemotherapy last year on Thanksgiving, and my other grandmother passed away from advanced Alzheimer's earlier this year (of which my grandfather also had a slight form he suffered from before he passed in '08).
Hopefully all of this work we do now will ripple into a positive effect for people in the future.

I may not fold 24/7 due to location and heat, or with as many systems as Grandpa_01, but I believe my heart is in the same place, folding with what I can.
The points are certainly fun, giving us a sense of a goal, friendly rivalry with each other and other teams, as well as good-natured bragging rights, especially when we are about to mow someone down. :)

But in the end, the people of the world are who will eventually benefit from all of this, even in some small way, now or later.
I agree, though, calling us all names and degrading us does not really inspire us to fold further for team 33, that's for sure.

We are going to fold, one way or another, that won't change.
 
Nathan_P said:
Maybe one of the mods is 7im in disguise:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
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not likely

it's not a rule I can find, but as a courtesy please don't call out staff from other forums by name...
 
FLECOM said:
not likely

it's not a rule I can find, but as a courtesy please don't call out staff from other forums by name...
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I hear what you are saying and I don't disagree, but for clarification, 7im was removed as moderator of FF about 5 years ago.

Occupation:FAH WIKI Administrator FAH web site Editor FAH Wikipedia Contributor Retired Folding Forum Moderator Folding 12+ years for Ars Technica #14
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Years ago, free electricity and being single led me to fold as much as possible, with all the outdated stuff I could get my hands on.

Time passes. Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Population ++, House +, Cars +, Bills +++
It just became to expensive to keep up.

Not to mention the many times of being part of the joke to becoming the butt of the jokes... that was no fun. Curious to read this topic and see current comments. Should there be an inexpensive way to become involved again, I would, but it does need a strong community to survive.
 
Well.. cost is all relevant to what kind of contribution you are looking at. I would encourage contributing where you can and being content with that until more favorable times arrive. For example, you can run WCG on your smart phone pretty cheap. No you wont break point records, but it is probably the most efficient processing out there right now and is extremely cheap over head. I just don't recommend going out and buying a phARM just for DC'ing yet as the up front cost may hurt. Dual core smart phones are now down to the $9 USD mark. Just saying.
 
Gilthanis said:
Well.. cost is all relevant to what kind of contribution you are looking at. I would encourage contributing where you can and being content with that until more favorable times arrive. For example, you can run WCG on your smart phone pretty cheap. No you wont break point records, but it is probably the most efficient processing out there right now and is extremely cheap over head. I just don't recommend going out and buying a phARM just for DC'ing yet as the up front cost may hurt. Dual core smart phones are now down to the $9 USD mark. Just saying.
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Maybe we should all fold on smartphones with minimal point gain.
I would hate it if you thought we were all a bunch of point whores.

On the subject, just how many PPD does it take for one to become a point whore?
Perhaps we should all fold on ARM systems, that way we could ensure that would be point minimalists, that would be much better. ;)
 
Red Falcon..... easy easy.... he has apologized.

The chastising was after 7im's removal, and I don't recall which mod it was. For the record I don't think it was FLECOM, and I don't really care. I just wanted to warn others since the ill wind was blowing in 7im's direction, and I didn't think we wanted more trouble.

Oddly just having this discussion up seems to have woken up some of those who have not folded seriously in a while.

As to contributions, a lowley and inexpensive GTX960 ($200) and easy on the Amps with a single PCIE power connector, can net in excess of 150,000 PPD. It adds up to quite a bit of science for not a lot of card.
 
It's fine, but I hope he will be a little more respectful in the future.
True, little hardware can gain us all so much.

I do feel bad for those with 2P and 4P systems, but if anything, the CPUs can work on other projects, while the GPUs can be dedicated to F@H, GPUGrid, and more!
 
Well, my 2Ps and 4P are still great for doing CPU-only projects like WCG. I wouldn't pay much for a new one these days, but they have gotten years of good use (and are still being used) so I can't complain.

And who knows what the new gromacs core will do for big cpu on f@h.
 
Not to mention you can get these rigs a lot cheaper now... ;) When I spoke of ARM devices, I said efficiency which goes beyond points. I have ~18-20 of these devices now. Some were free, some were replaced with upgrades to my phone plan, and some were bought to dual purpose with income earning apps. They use less electricity for the same number of completed work units. They just take much longer time to complete. The up front cost is why they aren't a good investment. Thus why I say not a smart move to specifically buy for a phARM.
 
FWIW, my inevitably rambling thoughts on the matter. (It IS long and a bit of a mess, sorry! There's a 6+ hour gap in here!)

Honestly I cannot remember when I started folding. It's been a while. Pretty sure I started at F@H, dropped off for a long time, came back online for a while and haven't been there for quite some time again. However, unlike many, it has nothing to do with the project drama (for lack of a better term) as I wasn't involved with that, nor does it have to do with the demise of BigAdv.

The 'drama' I really cannot comment on. Shit happens. Egos flare on both sides. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I honestly don't care. If you, fellow reader, do, then that's OK and completely up to you. Whatever happened, happened.

The BigAdv I can comment on, as I partook in them for a while too. I understand people being upset about this... but honestly... get over it. To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, no other project offers BA type WUs. You gain more points by bringing more cores and more MHz to the party. This often meant 2P, 4P and bigger boxes. Even without BA, this inherently means you have a big advantage over people running a few desktops. Isn't that good enough for you? As for those who built up 4P boxes and now they're not doing as well.... isn't that more or less inevitable? Projects grow, code changes. Just because *YOU* made a decision to spend *YOUR* money chasing points doesn't mean -any- project has an obligation to make sure -their- code makes you happy. It was your choice. No one held a gun to your head.

Points are a double edged sword, aren't they? In the BOINC world some are generous and some really suck. Let me put it this way. When I first started BOINC I started on Enigma. Partially because I found it interesting, but mainly because it issued a LOT of points. Racked up 10M points in short order and was happy. I can be a points whore, I don't deny this.

Lately, for various reasons, I've been banging away on SkyNet/POGS. Part of that reason was my eldest son (8-1/2) really enjoyed watching the trophies rolling in. I also find the idea of helping map the cosmos to be fascinating. Will also admit that being one of the heavy hitters on that project has its appeal to. Absolutely do not deny this.

But let's consider something here. On September 7th my daily production for SkyNet was 674,615 points. No one else was even close. Following is a list of all the CPUs that were involved to achieve that result:

E5-2640 v3 - 6 processors

E5-4607 v1 - 4 processors

E5-4640 v1 - 8 processors

E5-4640 v2 - 4 processors

E7-8867 v3 - 4 processors

All computational firepower that for "just" ~675K PPD.

Back in the F@H BA heyday that number would have been what? Several million?

So what.

The only thing that would make me angry in a project is changing the point system after things have been going for a long time. I gather this happened with WCG when it merged with another project. It irritates me seeing one number on their website, but a BOINC reports something like 1/7th of that total.

Yes. It's irritating. But so what. The "science" was done and the nearly 73 years of computational effort provides the same net result to the projects regardless of how many points they award. It's up to us to mentally deal with the points thing. With BOINC projects that can be very hard as they all award points in different ways. One cannot compare them to each other... and that takes some getting used to.

(insert six hour gap here... previous train of thought totally lost!)

So why am I not doing F@H? Because as most of you know, I have access to a lot of idle hardware at work and, unfortunately, F@H doesn't support SOCKS proxy. Some have mentioned Socksify and I keep forgetting to look into it. (A couple years ago tear generously setup a proxy for me to access. I've always appreciated that and personally consider tear and Gilthanis to be two of the head guys here at HF) If/when I get that little access problem figured out I'm going to switch back to F@H for a while. At some point I'll get bored, or partake in a team challenge or something and will move to something else.

Right. So! Moving on.

Personally I want to start focusing on medical research more. Some of you know this already, but my youngest son, who just turned two, has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type II. Chances are many of you have never heard of this; I certainly hadn't until ~18 months ago. It's the most common of the rare birth defects with 1:10,000 births (others report ~1:7,000) and somewhere around 1:50 people are carriers of SMA. It's not a perfect example, but think of it like ALS, but in babies and little kids. (ALS effects the motor neurons at the top and bottom of the spine; SMA "just" effects the bottom) Thankfully of all the motor neuron diseases it is said that SMA is the closest to a cure. Fingers crossed. For those that are curious, www.curesma.org is a good place to start.

I wish that there were SMA specific DC projects, but there aren't. If you know differently, please enlighten me. (Ideally CPU friendly)

We can't tell anyone what they can/cannot do with their rigs. I think a lot of the Prime stuff is silly (I did it for a while wanting to try and get my name in the books :p), same for trying to find ETs radio. Others think that Skynet/POGS is silly, and that's OK.

What WOULD be great is knowing that our team mates will COMMIT to pulling together a few times a year to take on an agreed upon set of common projects. This means being willing to give up your other projects and/or put aside your grudges for a few days/weeks at a time and banding together with your fellow HF crew. We're all a bunch of head strong SOBs... but surely we can manage to do that??

At the end of the day, points and badges are all fine and dandy, but the results of the crunching are all that matter. Let's try to remember that.

Regards,
Jason
 
For me, the other existing distributed( mainly BOINC ) are not that motivating to do. The incentive to build large massive machines is about zero. A person with a 2P 32 core machine would get the same point as a person with 4 8 core machines. That was a strong point of FAH; You want to spend the extra money, time, and effort, you get the extra points. Without incentive for larger machines or advantage of tweaking/optimizing systems, a lot of people are not going to be motivated. For me that was one of the main points, to build and setup systems that are stronger than others.... and get the points to show it. If there is some project that comes around that would do this type of reward system, I think most of the people would come out of the woodwork around. Until then.... meh.
 
fastgeek said:
I wish that there were SMA specific DC projects, but there aren't. If you know differently, please enlighten me. (Ideally CPU friendly)
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For a long while, I was searching for a project that did work specifically on MS, as I know 2 different people who have been diagnosed. I found that GPUGrid is doing neurological work (lower level stuff, not targeting any specific condition). Unfortunately, the cost of admission is just too high for GPUGrid right now, my best GPU would not have been anywhere near close to the deadline for any work that it pulled, and I'm just not at a place where I'm considering buying additional hardware for DC.
 
alan2308 said:
For a long while, I was searching for a project that did work specifically on MS, as I know 2 different people who have been diagnosed. I found that GPUGrid is doing neurological work (lower level stuff, not targeting any specific condition). Unfortunately, the cost of admission is just too high for GPUGrid right now, my best GPU would not have been anywhere near close to the deadline for any work that it pulled, and I'm just not at a place where I'm considering buying additional hardware for DC.
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Thank you for the reply. I've done CPU only WU's on GPUGrid and might re-enable that project shortly. Wish I had a lot of fancy GPUs floating around, but alas, I haven't been able to convince the powers-that-be to go that route. It's inevitable that they'll use compute boards / GPU processing someday. Part of the reason I wanted to work on FAH more is due to their medical focus; just wish some of their projects were related to SMA/ALS/MD (motor neuron diseases)
 
How old of a card are you talking alan2308? Last I checked a low end GT430 still completed on time. (though not enough for the QRB) Maybe I need to look at those again to see where they stand...

Edit: Hmm.. looks like I haven't had a rig with a GT430 do any work there in a while. Perhaps I need to check some logs and do some updated testing on current work units to see what is up.

fastgeek, they don't always have CPU work available, so that is a get them while you can situation.
 
Pretty old. I've got a 8800gs, a 9800gt, and a 210. I don't game, so even those are overkill in my boxen.
 
alan2308 said:
Pretty old. I've got a 8800gs, a 9800gt, and a 210. I don't game, so even those are overkill in my boxen.
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Yeah... those are old enough that you would probably only be able to use them at:

SETI
SETI BETA
Moo
PrimeGrid
Collatz
RC5-72
BitcoinUtopia
Einstein
Albert

I am not sure if you can run them at Asteroids@home or GIMPS
 
Yep, and I'm sure I'd absolutely clean house on any project that I set them loose on. :D
 
Found a copy of the old banner

TeamBanner.ashx
 
Think on this. The owner of the web site still has policies in place that his employees still advertise FAH every Monday and Friday. That is either completely out dated, or we have completely lost our way. It is Kyle's site, we should at least listen to his guidance.


John
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jfb9301, I waited to comment on this as I rarely look at the front page. However, I think brilong had mentioned it in another thread at one time. I believe that they have NOT actually advertised our team in quite a while. I've been checking in periodically and am either looking in the wrong place or they have stopped advertising.
 
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Yup, Kyle/Steve have been promoting F@H for what seems like forever on the front page. Unless things change over at Pandegroup I have no plans on running F@H ever again. With the big donors they get periodically I feel like they don't care about us small donors that much. We're more of a distraction. The other thing is I feel like I was just giving free computing time to help post grads get degrees. In over a decade all I see is papers produced, nothing else. I'm not a super fan of WCG but at least their results have led to more than just papers. Just my opinion.
 
ChelseaOilman said:
I'm not a super fan of WCG but at least their results have led to more than just papers. Just my opinion.
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This is a HUGE selling point to me. I know that research organizations are justified by the papers that they submit and get published. However, when a project is actually getting results from the research, it is really hard to deny it. I've supported over 100 projects including those outside of the BOINC umbrella. Unless you count Primes being published for whomever wants to use them (which is usually some form of encryption), most just don't really show much for their work. Many projects don't even try to get any follow up and report it to the donors so we don't know if there has been any follow through.
 
I am not sure that you will ever see any final results listed by PG they only do the protein structure research then publish it for others to use in there research for new methods and drugs to fight the diseases and aliments. Whereas I believe WCG follows their research. I have seen F@H mentioned in other branches of research and development as being among the research that they used to develop their work which has lead to better drugs and understanding of ailments.

F@H biggest problem in in my opinion was there dealing with the FF the BA removal was a choice that had to be made one way or the other and I understand it. GPU folding is faster and yields more results quicker. For me in the long run it will be cheaper to run and maintain and get a higher yield for $ spent. Which is the same in Boinc.

Boinc has even bigger points discrepancies between projects than F@H does the only difference is boinc has a single core point value that is = somewhat there are a couple of projects that AMD is faster at but receive less credit than Intel due to the way there benchmark system works which is wrong but they will not fix it.

Both projects Boinc and the projects within it, and F@H have their strengths and weaknesses as far as a official team DC project for HardOCP goes we already have one, it is F@H and it has 313 current members running it, whereas all the Boinc projects combined have maybe 75 and that may be a little generous 54 of which are currently running WCG which is the majority of Boinc members and would suggest it should be the Official Boinc DC project.

The numbers pretty much speak for themselves F@H is the most popular project within the HardOCP realm then Boinc with WCG being the most popular within the Boinc realm. I myself run both F@H and Boinc always have and probably always will, with the majority of my DC budget going to F@H.

Anyway perhaps the title of the thread should read (Discussion about the future of the [H] DC Boinc team) ;)
 
Grandpa_01 said:
Boinc has even bigger points discrepancies between projects than F@H does the only difference is boinc has a single core point value that is = somewhat there are a couple of projects that AMD is faster at but receive less credit than Intel due to the way there benchmark system works which is wrong but they will not fix it.
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I agree with this but also think it is a bad comparison. The BOINC umbrella being compared to FAH is still extremely poor. You are saying almost all other DC projects lumped together then compare their different point structures and wow... more discrepancy. Rather you should say... look at WCG and its sub project compared to FAH and its... "cores"... Then you would have a better comparison. And if you actually compare the 1 project to the 1 project, you would find WCG to be a lot closer match between its sub projects in the long run than FAH and its "cores". Now if you wanted to lump WCG and GPUGrid together (since that has been an option tossed out there) then yes you will find the points to be wildly different as GPUGrid not only has GPU scoring but also is one of the very few BOINC projects that also has a QRB on its work units.

I only stress this clarification as it has not been determined yet whether the BOINC'ers majority would prefer to go WCG solo or WCG + GPUGrid in the mix of restructuring just yet. It may make a huge difference on how people look at things.
 
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