Good points, dreplogle!

I occasionally pop over to read the news posts at Folding@home. Very interesting. We may pick up some good ideas from them.

My personal opinion is that the truly critical point is acquiring GOOD projects to run. That is the key. Pick the right mission, then experiment with tactics. We are not ignoring the need to improve our computing organization. We do intend to expand from our current Windows-only configuration.

mycrofth

I did originally start using folding@home but then switched to WCG. Why? Well, I came across folding@home first hence that's why I started with that.

Then I found WCG and thought folding@home was specific to a particular project, whereas I perceived WCG to be a more open with the promise of hosting other projects. (ie I perceived folding@home = 1 project benefitting a (albeit fair) few with an 'expirey date' (i.e. once the main project is over, what then?), WCG = many projects benefitting many people, on a continuous basis with new projects being introduced all the time)

Unfortunately, though, my initial enthusiasm might have been a bit misplaced. 6 months since I first started using WCG (under a different user - I forgot the details so created a new account), there's still only the one project.

I think I would be much more enthusiastic if the standard for project inclusion was lowered so there were more causes to actually benefit from the grid.

I would prefer to select myself which causes should benefit from my CPU, rather than have a committee I don't know make that decision. I'm sure that others must be either being turned away or put off because of the high standards, but for who I would be quite happy to provide my CPU cycles to. Currently it seems the standards are so high that only 1 project makes the grade! Surely there are many other causes who want to run projects?

Whilst I can understand that the WCG grid team may want to run one project at a time to get results faster, it may be backfiring because it appeals to a narrow range potential contributors.

Different people prefer to support different causes... some people (like myself) have lost relatives to cancer and so prefer to help cancer research, others may prefer to help causes like AIDS research, malaria research etc.

If people could see a whole long list of causes that could really benefit from them joining the grid, and maybe select for themselves those which they prefer to give their CPU time to, then I think many more people would be eager to help.

Also, including (even just small) projects from non-american institutions from all-around the world may also help to combat the perception that I have (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) that the world community grid should actually be called the "support american economy grid".

I'm quite sure there would be willing organisations and institutions in non-US countries who could develop and host (all outside of US jurisdiction) some small projects for the grid, which could demostrate that the grid really is for all. (The grid software could install DLL's (plugins) from non US countries as part of it's installation and updating routines, wthout those DLL's ever being transferred through a US jurisdiction - much the same way as software like adobe photoshop allows a user to add plugins that the original program authors have never had anything to do with)

I just can't help thinking though that that will never happen, because in reality the WCG is just a PR exercise by an american company (IBM) to further it's own (and other american company's) commercial interests.

Please WCG prove me wrong... I really would like to be proved wrong on this one...please include some non-american originated projects, and give the user the option to select which projects they donate their CPU time to... (with the default option set to share equally between all projects for those who don't wish to discriminate)

Anon.

If it's something to make results faster, fine!!

I will say I used to do Stanford's genome-at-home, and they closed the project with 2 days' notice, because they ran out of money! I was very disappointed.