UD Front Page Pimpage??

[Anderu]

I don't want to come off as petty here, but with all the talk of a reinvigorated effort on the UD side of the house, it seems every time I see Steve talk about the DC effort in his "Forum Happenings" posts, Folding is prominently mentioned and UD is....well notably absent. I saw Rich include UD in one of his weekend posts, but that has been it.

I guess I just figured that equal billing is not so much to ask at this point, but I may be a little biased in that assumption.

 

[James_TheVirus]

Anderu,

While I am a UDer, and always will be, I think that it is too much to ask to have an equal footing. [H] has always been a Folding team which no one will deny...and it should stay that way.

Currently, [H] has roughly a 90%/10% Folding/UD split. I would like to see UD get to around 25% which I think is realistic, but also not over the top. It would benefit the UD effort immensely, while not reducing the Folding effort by too much.

 

[Rich Tate]

First of all let me respond by telling you that Moose, p[H] and myself have been working very hard to bring UD to the table. We all agree with your sentiments 100%.

You have to realize that we have all been very busy with the site update, and I am going to work on some things this weekend that will help us in terms of easier pimpage.

As you have already noted I have brought myself up to speed on UD, started using UD, and have a few things in mind to help out this project as well.

I personally have made a promise to make UD a priority, and if I can get done what I need to this weekend, I'll bet you'll see a lot more information and time dedicated to it.

Bear with us, we are trying.

 

[Duster]

Yeah i was wondering how the new front page would effect the forum stuff and what not since there are now different sections

 

[AtomicMoose]

Patience Grasshoppa

 

[Rich Tate]

Yeah i was wondering how the new front page would effect the forum stuff and what not since there are now different sections

As you can see our efforts will not change.

Kyle has stated to me a number of times that our folding effort is #1 around here, that will never change.

 

[Duster]

Patience Grasshoppa

pfft...

Yeah I didn't think the pimpage would change but now that we have diff sup sections I didn't know were the pimpage would be... So like if you only looked at [H]consumer or [H]console you might never see it

maybe we should get a link for [H]ardfolding beside [H]console

 

[Anderu]

I never asked for equality. I gave up on that notion years ago. But I did not think that front page pimpage necessitated equality. Apparently, that was an incorrect assumption.

It just kind of became something noticable when here, in the forums there was talk of increased attention to UD, and yet on the front page, no mention. It started to feel like UD was being treated like this "dirty little secret" that we are ashamed to admit to being associated with in public.

Having lived in the shadows for literally years, I was quite content with the "tacid" treatement that the UD effort got. It was not until the revived effort at UD was addressed that it even became something I cared about seeing on the front page.

Believe me when I say, I appreciate all the support I have been seeing here in the forums. But if I have exceeded my bounds by wondering why the same subject is not fit for even passing mention on the front page, then perhaps it should go back to the way it was. At least then, I had no expectations for anything beyond mere tolerance.

Edit: Sorry Rich, no problems with your efforts, and I know you are doing your best. I was mainly irritated by the suggestion above that the UD effort, despite recent postings to the contrary, should know and keep its place.

 

[Rich Tate]

Edit: Sorry Rich, no problems with your efforts, and I know you are doing your best. I was mainly irritated by the suggestion above that the UD effort, despite recent postings to the contrary, should know and keep its place.

No apologies needed bro.

We are going to do our best to make sure the project gets its proper place in terms of pimpage. There are just a few things we need to take care of first.

 

[KodiakStar]

Ok.

For the record... we, the F@H boys... months ago. on a Weekly basis.. would CONSTANTLY email... you guessed it. Steve.

steve@hardocp.com

And asked, Can you please pimp folding today. We did this week after week, day after day, because there are so many things going on in the fourms that they can't possibly capture it all, 100% of the time.

So for people who want to see UD pimped more. Do some work to get there.

It isn't going to happen sitting on the couch.

Eventually, after a few months, Steve realized that we were not going to stop, so he just made it habbit...

 

[Duster]

set up email to auto email every day

 

[AtomicMoose]

Anderu, once Rich makes the changes he is referring to, I think you will see both projects mentioned equaly and often. Let's just let the news team do their thing.

Also, as K* mentioned, rich@hardocp.com and Steve@hardocp.com is another option.

 

[Anderu]

Rich and Moose, I am good with that. I have been looking at the new format on the main page myself today, trying to decide if I like it or I am just too attached to the way it was to be objective. But I can definetly appreciate the work that went into it, so of course I understand there are larger considerations than one old timer with a passion for a cause. If it takes some time, I think I can be patient. I have done it before on this issue.

All I am looking for is kind of a "Hey, if Folding ain't your gig, we have this UD thing going on too, so if you DC for the [H], you have two choices instead of just one" type of thing. I don't want folks to get the impression that I am advocating anyone abandoning their current Folding efforts for UD. I learned 5 years ago what it meant to tangle with that particular tiger. It was ugly and fortunately, there are no forum records going back that far to show HOW ugly it got. I have no desire to recreate that scenario. I guess I envisioned that all it would take is typing it a different way (to include a UD reference) when the Forum Happenings are posted. But if there is more too it than that, no problema.

I just want to make it clear, I am NOT attempting to upset the status quo, or piss anyone off, and I am certainly NOT trying to influence anyone at the [H] bunker to push UD to the forefront of our DC efforts. I am only attempting to figure out what the parameters for the new interest in UD really are.

 

[marty9876]

I just want to make it clear, I am NOT attempting to upset the status quo, or piss anyone off, and I am certainly NOT trying to influence anyone at the [H] bunker to push UD to the forefront of our DC efforts.

Maybe you should...

 

[DooKey]

Without UD I never would have done the folding thing. I'm back to UD now, but didn't mind helping the [H] with folding. All us UDer's ask is maybe those folks just folding will dedicate one of their machines to UD as a measure of respect and appreciation for those of us who answered the folding call. Besides that UD is a good project. Anyway, that's my .02


Here are my badges just to show I put my machines where my mouth is.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Rich and Moose, I am good with that. I have been looking at the new format on the main page myself today, trying to decide if I like it or I am just too attached to the way it was to be objective. But I can definetly appreciate the work that went into it, so of course I understand there are larger considerations than one old timer with a passion for a cause. If it takes some time, I think I can be patient. I have done it before on this issue.

All I am looking for is kind of a "Hey, if Folding ain't your gig, we have this UD thing going on too, so if you DC for the [H], you have two choices instead of just one" type of thing. I don't want folks to get the impression that I am advocating anyone abandoning their current Folding efforts for UD. I learned 5 years ago what it meant to tangle with that particular tiger. It was ugly and fortunately, there are no forum records going back that far to show HOW ugly it got. I have no desire to recreate that scenario. I guess I envisioned that all it would take is typing it a different way (to include a UD reference) when the Forum Happenings are posted. But if there is more too it than that, no problema.

I just want to make it clear, I am NOT attempting to upset the status quo, or piss anyone off, and I am certainly NOT trying to influence anyone at the [H] bunker to push UD to the forefront of our DC efforts. I am only attempting to figure out what the parameters for the new interest in UD really are.

I definitely do not see your statements as being anything bad. I've been thinking to myself in the past week that I would like to see a mention for UD along with Folding on the pimpage. I personally do not crunch UD and currently have no plans to start as I like to stick to one project.

The way you mentioned the pimpage is very similar to what I was thinking. I'm a Folder so I would prefer to see F@H keep the major pimpage since it's my preferred project. After having said that, I would not want UD thrown in as an afterthought. I would like to see UD mentioned as an alternative to folding. Some people don't like F@H even after they try it and may like UD better. It's a good idea to let people know that option is out there and right now it's not shown unless you step in here which most people don't do.

Something I would like to mention is that many people put F@H and UD together under the header of folding. If you notice, I've done it previously in this post. For me, it's just an easy way of mentioning both projects at once. I'm not sure if the front page pimpage reflects that line of thinking or if it's F@H exclusive. I don't feel like looking back at previous pimpage but usually it's just folding that's mentioned and not F@H or Stanford specifically. I believe most of the links go to threds that have both projects mentioned.

I still think UD should be mentioned separately in the pimpage so that people know there are two choices for the team and they can find which one suits them better. I don't see this as a way that could hurt the F@H team anyway. Some people just aren't going to run F@H no matter what and that's not going to hurt us. But, they may want to run UD if they know about it. Others may try F@H and decide they don't want to mess with it and stop crunching for it. However, they may pick UD and stick with it. Sure the F@H team may get a few less WU's because the person didn't join that project, but the other [H] team picked up someone that will stay. I want all the WU's F@H can get, but I would rather see someone stick with one project or the other instead of trying one and quitting because they did not know of the second option. That scenario plays out a lot better in the long run and helps everyone out more.

 

[Kvothe]

Well to put you guys at ease, in discussions with both Rich and AtMo, this isn't a one project getting something over the other. This is pulling both projects to equal footing with regards to coverage and exposure so what you'll probably see is a similar, mini-FAQ-ish pimpage for both projects on all pimpage opportunities. We already do both projects, its just up to the prospective folder to determine which one they'd prefer. We're just going to be linking resources to both.

 

[Anderu]

Smoke, you were practically channeling my thoughts there, even if I had not done a good job of expressing it previously. I would rather someone coming by the main site see that there are two possible choices for DC'ing for the [H], and if one of them does not appeal, perhaps the other one will. I look at it as a way to increase the overall size of the DC effort, rather than see a perspective farm (or even single PC for that matter), slip away because they were unaware of the choice.

Phantom, I am liking what I am hearing!

 

[Rich Tate]

Phantom, I am liking what I am hearing!

p[H] hit it sqaure on the nose. Like K* said, I'm a folder. I am running UD on my big box and will continue to do so, but personally my ideals go along with folding more.

That being said, we are a two horse team, and we want to do what we can to make things as even as we can and above all give people the choice of which project they want to run.

I sometimes worry people may pass on DCing period because we don't show them the options they have enough.

I got a TON of work done today, so you can expect to see a new look type of pimp as early as this weekend.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Well to put you guys at ease, in discussions with both Rich and AtMo, this isn't a one project getting something over the other. This is pulling both projects to equal footing with regards to coverage and exposure so what you'll probably see is a similar, mini-FAQ-ish pimpage for both projects on all pimpage opportunities. We already do both projects, its just up to the prospective folder to determine which one they'd prefer. We're just going to be linking resources to both.

Oh, my mind is at ease or at least as much as it can be being stored in the gutter. I'm not worried about anything as much as I'm just trying to agree with Anderu and explain my thoughts as well as I can. It's just that I've been bothered a little lately about the front page pimpage not mentioning UD. It wasn't something I consciously noticed but something that had been eating at me for a while. It just seemed like something was missing.

As I said before, I'm fully behind F@H but as UD is an official project something should just be said specifically pointing it out. I'm just annoyed at myself for not noticing it and mentioning something earlier. I have nothing against UD personally and would like to see that team climb back up in the ranks as well.

I would rather not see a bunch of people switch boxen from F@H to UD (no offense to the UD guys that temporarily switched over to F@H a while back to help us out) as the race is still hot and heavy and will continue to be that way. The best option I see for everyone involved is just to get the word out on UD so people that want to can join them as well. Besides, the folding pimpage is getting a bit stale (no offense to Steve) and adding the UD portion to it will get people to notice is more often as there is a change and people that normally gloss over that part will re-read it which could be the last nudge they need to join.

I really should do what I had thought of a while back and write up a couple of different pimpages and send them to Steve to see if he would like to use them or at least parts of them in the pimpage in order to keep things fresh and point out different threads and topics we have in DC.

 

[Flying Fox]

Members of the UD team that have been holding down the fort had learned a rather painful lesson not to expect too much. Opinions towards "The #1 Plan" aside, Folding is still the preferred choice, but not the only choice. That's the general understanding that the entire [H] DC community seemed to have settled on, and personally I don't expect it to change any time soon, just like Anderu.

Of course, more mention is good, as long as no one takes it the wrong way that the UD side is trying to lure people from the other side. We are talking additional boxen here, then all should be good.

I am really hoping that the new software client will be out soon, but too bad UD is still busy trying to deal with the aborted WUs and the whiners on the forums. I expect our real campaign to begin after this new super-duper client version is out, hopefully within this year.

 

[Strikemaster]

Members of the UD team that have been holding down the fort had learned a rather painful lesson not to expect too much. Opinions towards "The #1 Plan" aside, Folding is still the preferred choice, but not the only choice. That's the general understanding that the entire [H] DC community seemed to have settled on, and personally I don't expect it to change any time soon, just like Anderu.

Of course, more mention is good, as long as no one takes it the wrong way that the UD side is trying to lure people from the other side. We are talking additional boxen here, then all should be good.

I am really hoping that the new software client will be out soon, but too bad UD is still busy trying to deal with the aborted WUs and the whiners on the forums. I expect our real campaign to begin after this new super-duper client version is out, hopefully within this year.

To give you an idea of what it's been like to bring up additional (idled) boxen for UD:

1. Unresponsive member's site at United Devices. I thought it might be the one machine. Then, I thought it might be my SME server/firewall. Web browser (I use Opera)? Time of day? Wrong planetary alignments? Halitosis, for Chaos' sake!?! All this week, over five different computers, two different locations, just trying to get anything from the UD member's page is futility defined. Two clients, right now, can't either send or get work.

2. Installer issues. Granted, it's been just one machine, but having it crap out with a vague "Can't do this, no MSI, fix" on what seemed to be a good Win98SE crate, *which was running the UD client in the past*, is a bit much.

I'd love to help. I'd like to at least bring a good scare to Atomic_Moose during the gauntlet , but I LIKE reliability and availability, and so far, UD hasn't given either.

 

[Strikemaster]

Members of the UD team that have been holding down the fort had learned a rather painful lesson not to expect too much. Opinions towards "The #1 Plan" aside, Folding is still the preferred choice, but not the only choice. That's the general understanding that the entire [H] DC community seemed to have settled on, and personally I don't expect it to change any time soon, just like Anderu.

Of course, more mention is good, as long as no one takes it the wrong way that the UD side is trying to lure people from the other side. We are talking additional boxen here, then all should be good.

I am really hoping that the new software client will be out soon, but too bad UD is still busy trying to deal with the aborted WUs and the whiners on the forums. I expect our real campaign to begin after this new super-duper client version is out, hopefully within this year.

To give you an idea of what it's been like to bring up additional (idled) boxen for UD:

1. Unresponsive member's site at United Devices. I thought it might be the one machine. Then, I thought it might be my SME server/firewall. Web browser (I use Opera)? Time of day? Wrong planetary alignments? Halitosis, for Chaos' sake!?! All this week, over five different computers, two different locations, just trying to get anything from the UD member's page is futility defined. Two clients, right now, can't either send or get work.

2. Installer issues. Granted, it's been just one machine, but having it crap out with a vague "Can't do this, no MSI, fix" on what seemed to be a good Win98SE crate, *which was running the UD client in the past*, is a bit much.

I'd love to help. I'd like to at least bring a good scare to Atomic_Moose during the gauntlet , but I LIKE reliability and availability, and so far, UD hasn't given either.

 

[Anderu]

To be fair, I doubt that the development team for the UD client installer have worked especially hard to support installation on OS versions going back that far. I am sure they are happy if it works on a Win9x box, but are not terribly surprised if it does not. It probably requires at least Windows Installer v2.0 if not v3.0, which would be an update for anything but WinXP. Like most software developers, I am sure they have a cut-off on full legacy support. I have not attempted to install it on anything less that XP for well over a year, and I have to imagine that the installation itself has evolved even over that time.

Far be it from me to turn away help of ANY caliber, but lets try to avoid generalizing on the reliablity of the client, based on experiences with barely supported OS version.

As for the website, I would have to agree with you on that one. It has been less than responsive since they move their entire facility to a new location. This was done to increase their infrastructure capacity and allow for expansion for existing and future projects. I think they are still working hard on that, but have not yet gotten things where they would prefer. To that, I can only reiterate my comments in another thread about the sheer size of this project. It is currently 3 to 4 times the size of Folding, and as such, when they have issues, they are BIG issues that take time to work out. They are definetly a project that requires a little more patience and understanding, but for the most part, whatever their issues behind the scenes, they just keep delivering WU to comptuers and tabulating the returned results, and that is what counts. The other stuff will work itself out.

I am not making excuses, just stating what I know about the project from years of experience.

 

[Flying Fox]

1. Unresponsive member's site at United Devices. I thought it might be the one machine. Then, I thought it might be my SME server/firewall. Web browser (I use Opera)? Time of day? Wrong planetary alignments? Halitosis, for Chaos' sake!?! All this week, over five different computers, two different locations, just trying to get anything from the UD member's page is futility defined. Two clients, right now, can't either send or get work.

The member's site is usually not available for a few hours a day (I find it to be mostly in the afternoon, Eastern time zone) for the stats update. Their existing database is quite monolithic and stores almost everything from the project's beginning of time. Therefore any job they run is going take a while. You just have to figure out when you want to check. Of course the whole site itself has been down a few times since the move too.

Robby has been pretty good in posting regular status in the Announcements forums. A few UD people and I try to report back any important news from time to time. Remember grid.org's philosophy is not to plaster you with "everything is good" news item every day, if they don't have a lot to say it is probably "steady as she goes". Some people may take it as a "lack of response".

I personally don't check the stats page every day, and almost every time I check I have access. It may just be your timing.

2. Installer issues. Granted, it's been just one machine, but having it crap out with a vague "Can't do this, no MSI, fix" on what seemed to be a good Win98SE crate, *which was running the UD client in the past*, is a bit much.

Grid.org is not to blame, Windows is. Win98SE does not have Windows Installer, so that's not a reliability issue. Too bad my old installer has been removed. All you need to do is install Windows Installer first (it does run on Win98SE), and then run their installer. WI2.0 is what I think you will need. Try this on for size.

I'd love to help. I'd like to at least bring a good scare to Atomic_Moose during the gauntlet , but I LIKE reliability and availability, and so far, UD hasn't given either.

Reliability I can understand, but it is not as bad as other DC projects either. Even Folding have its fair share of having to clean out the bad WUs and doing all sorts of things. For me, UD has actually been the best in terms of not needing to babysit it too much. Apart from the "re-registration" stemming from The Big Crash last summer, I never have to fiddle with any settings once I have the client installed. It just downloads and crunches, and wait patiently for retry when the server is down.

 

[Strikemaster]

The member's site is usually not available for a few hours a day (I find it to be mostly in the afternoon, Eastern time zone) for the stats update. Their existing database is quite monolithic and stores almost everything from the project's beginning of time. Therefore any job they run is going take a while. You just have to figure out when you want to check. Of course the whole site itself has been down a few times since the move too.

Robby has been pretty good in posting regular status in the Announcements forums. A few UD people and I try to report back any important news from time to time. Remember grid.org's philosophy is not to plaster you with "everything is good" news item every day, if they don't have a lot to say it is probably "steady as she goes". Some people may take it as a "lack of response".

I personally don't check the stats page every day, and almost every time I check I have access. It may just be your timing.

In this case, the phrase "Morning, noon and night" comes to mind for timeframes when I'd attempted to use the site. This evening was the first time this week that I could do anything worthwhile to my Devices listings, and even then, I'd switch away from the UD tab to check something else, then come back about two or three minutes later when the tab showed the page had loaded (or timed out).

Grid.org is not to blame, Windows is. Win98SE does not have Windows Installer, so that's not a reliability issue. Too bad my old installer has been removed. All you need to do is install Windows Installer first (it does run on Win98SE), and then run their installer. WI2.0 is what I think you will need. Try this on for size.

Thanks for the tip, I'd already twigged on that problem. Being lead tech support in a small ISP does bring some "intuition" on what to do when Windows chokes, blows up or even boots properly. The latter, just sit back and stare in amazement...

Still, there's got to be a shite-ton of SE boxes out there still cranking away on UD. NT4, I'd understand that being abandoned (and thank your personal gods for that!)...

Reliability I can understand, but it is not as bad as other DC projects either. Even Folding have its fair share of having to clean out the bad WUs and doing all sorts of things. For me, UD has actually been the best in terms of not needing to babysit it too much. Apart from the "re-registration" stemming from The Big Crash last summer, I never have to fiddle with any settings once I have the client installed. It just downloads and crunches, and wait patiently for retry when the server is down.

Here's where we converge in experiences. I had three boxes running UD pretty much unattended, one of which I had no idea it was still doing anything at all for UD. That one box accounted for ~60% of my total time!. The same box was also a prime F@H folder, just left in the corner for months at a time. Folding has been a non-issue as far as needless babysitting, I usually just fire it up and come back to it if EM3 tells me something looks odd. I'd say 90% of Folding problems have been PSU-related here.

And in closing, I wish to quote Mr. Spock:

"Full power restored."

All resident DC "farming" computers are now online.

I have parts for one more 1.6ghz AthlonXP boxen, and a restored Dell / Xandros combo snoozing under the bench, but running 16 total CPUs on one 20amp circuit is a touch risky. I guess I'll just have to run another line from the breaker panel...