someone's getting impatient

Everybody wants everthing and right now. :-)
And we are wondering why the crisis came.
We have a saying "The patience brings roses"
so stay patient ;-)

It may rain in some locations, but I think that most of us will not see the benefit.

I've had two machines running for close to three weeks now with DDDT-2 and only one other project selected in the profile the machines are running. I did manage to get one, count it, one, DDDT-2 WU in that entire time. Since the release of DDDT-2 I've returned six total results, just short of three days total crunching time.

Yet I see folks who already have badges that represent years of crunching for DDDT-2 posting to the forums. There has to be a better explanation than 'luck of the draw' or reliable machine vs unknown machine for this.

I don't have fancy PCs. I can put up to six machines online at the same time. Sixteen total cores. But the usual config is six cores on the two desktops that are on all the time. The others are only running once in a while, mostly in the winter when heat isn't as much of an issue.

The two machines that are online have been (in one form or another) for over two years. There have been occasional errors, but for the most part they just crunch along, returning valid results.

I tried a test before I wrote this. I set the profile for all of the PCs to only DDDT-2, and then fired up one of the other PCs. It has been running for hours now, checking for work, and getting nothing. I also noticed that the time between attempts to communicate with the project servers increases as the hours tick by. What was about a minute right after starting this experiment is approaching six minutes now. So it seems that idle machines are handicapped too.

The other two will be finished with their queued tasks overnight. I'll leave all three trying to get DDDT-2 WUs for a couple of days and see what happens. And yes, I know that if there is no work to be had, there is no work to be had. But see badges being earned, and I see the reasonably frequent references to an WU being captured now and then. So I think that there is work out there.

I suspect that I'll just have idle machines, but I'll be able to pick out more and more crunchers who move smartly along towards their badges.

I've heard the pleas for patience. But if this is to be thought of as an intermittent project, and not a project released to be crunched, then the admins should put it in either Beta or Intermittent status.

The science is, in the end, what we're all hoping to contribute to. But WCG constructed the 'Ladder of Badges' in part to keep folks involved in crunching by giving them something tangible for their efforts.

So, in a community of 'all for the science', it is disconcerting to see what appears to be a distribution model that favors certain high performance machines, rather than distributing the 'science' to all participants.

I like the 'beta or intermittent' characterization for what is happening with DDDT-2. I can get behind that knowing that the beta process does have requirements for things like WU return times. The sooner the beta is back, the sooner people can look at the results and make needed corrections, etc. So, pull DDDT-2 back and call it what it is, a beta. When the bugs are worked out and it is ready for EVERYONE to crunch, then release it again.

I was only using the Beta/DDDT2 comparison as an analogy - in that, currently, the available number of WU's is very low - and, just like with Beta (before the recent changes were introduced), the crunchers who had learned various "tricks" (all of which are documented in the various forum threads - and thus, are publicly available), and also have numerous cores available to them (be it, more/faster/higher spec machines etc), were able to gather more WU's for their badge. This is exactly the same with DDDT2 - i.e., those with faster/higher spec machines and/or have more cores available to them, have a higher chance of grabbing loads of WU's when they're flowing.

Yes, there have been a few minor bugs which slipped through the Beta process, although in the main, they're all ironed out now. So, really, the main "hold up" we have, are the scientists themselves (who are only human, and thus, need time to sleep/enjoy the recent Easter holidays/spend tmie with their families etc.).

Also, as we've basically now completed the first complete run through of a target (erlc), as well as the testing targets (ts01..06), I'm assuming that the scientists are wanting to verify that everything is a-okay before starting the next wave.

Thus, there WILL BE MORE WORK!!!!

Yes, perhaps in hindsight (and, apparently it was discussed behind the scenes), this project should have been placed into the Intermittent class - due to there being large periods of time when there's no work available to crunch. Perhaps, it might still be moved there...

Anyhow, please refer to the pinned thread Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together Phase 2 Work Unit Types for a more detailed explanation of how this project is expected to pan out.

Finally, so far, this project has had 147,853 results returned (which relates to just over 69 years 293 days), whereas we're expecting there to be something like 36,000 "A" types, 72,000 "B" types and 22,000,000 (yes, 22 million) "C" types. Thus, we've only just started out...