This is a very good article - thank you - BOINC Client Communications Infrastructure I didn't get much out of the second one though.

A long time ago I had done some PC programming - Visual Basic, Rexx, SPFPC (dialog manager) - so I had a passing familiarity with RPC. I can see using this for communicating between the manager and remote daemons/core clients. I just didn't understand why this method would be used to communicate locally. The answer seems to be simplicity of coding - keep the same code and just pop in 127.0.0.1 for the remote/local address and you're good to go (if I understand everything correctly).

Given that this is open source and given that the method works, one shouldn't be too picky. I get it. It would still be nice if the boinc manager didn't freeze up, but if no one can reproduce the problem, I suppose there isn't much to be done. And it's not a big deal anyway.

I am still concerned that people new to DC will have a problem with this software and I still wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't technically inclined. The focus group thing that the BBC did was a really good idea but I guess there's no way WCG would ever be able to do something like that. See BOINC, projects, account managers, and the community