Hi a0a

The linux agent is on it's way and I'm sure multiprocessor support will shortly follow.

I am sorry if I have offended any of the members of /. who continue to crunch day by day as your 132 Million point contribution to the project is astounding.

At the end of the day we are just one big team getting this important job done asap.

If I've managed to spur just one /. member or one member of TW into leaving their WCG agent running for that bit longer then my first post was worth it.

Thanks to all members of /. and TW for your contribution to this worthwhile cause.

Best regards
Dave

Hey Beren that's not fair

The World Community Grid is not anti anything as long as it's in good taste. The post was aimed at TW and /. not IBM. This forum is as good as it's contributors. If you want it to be more social pitch in. If you are a smaller team wanting to get noticed get posting. MOT started with 1 team member just like every other. Your team was posting 335,650 points and set out to "crush" MOT that 2 Million lead you have on us now won't last forever as you are now posting daily in that 3rd slot. It's not IBM that have stopped you crunching just a lack of commitment from your Tribalwarriors.


You need to put your heart into anything in order to make it a success.

Come on pick it up at the back there......

Dave

I know MOT started out small, and came through. I applaud you for that. But you also come from being that person, and being in a team that is 100% Folders. It is different form alot of the other teams fundamentally.

When i look down the list of teams i see alot of teams that are interest groups or other forums or other such things. They get zero recognition for what they do, and the behemoths of slash and TW get to the top without much effort. It is all these small timers that WCG rides on the back of, and yet they get the least recognition. I have said many times before they need to re-do the team stats to encourage such groups. The more into it they get the better for the whole of WCG.

WCG as a community is basically a poor effort because as you say there is only what you put in, and very few people put in. That is because there is little need or desire too. I would like to see the stat on what the average amount of time people actually fold for. I bet it is like 1-2 weeks before they leave. WCG doesn't capture peoples interest for the long term. A team like TW flies to the top, thriving on the chase, but once it gets there finds that WCG is just an empty shell. The little teams stay back on like page 5, not able to compete with the large teams who have raced ahead with little effort, and then leave. They are as un-inspired as those that run WCG and haven't changed the format of things to cater for the bread and butter folders of the grid.

I am well aware of why we are here, and i am aware that yes the project is going forwards. My annoyance s that it could be done much better, and finish the project better, without just being a big advertisment for IBM. But actually be a more positive constructive community that has a output it can be more proud of.

5 hours a day is pitiful. I average close on a 100, others with many PCs average far beyond that. The Mode would be an interesting value, hell the median would be well below that i am sure also.

These posts have been edited (abbreviated) for convenience. EVERY effort has been made to highlight the essential meaning of the posters w/o altering the meaning in any way. julied


My impression is that the posters from /. and TW are making the same basic 3 points.

First, the site itself is “technologically challenged.” It does not accommodate itself to state of the art hardware (Linux, multi-processor, etc). Please do not respond by saying, “But we are working on it.” We all know and understand this – really. But right now (no judgments) it just is what it is.

Second, the software design of the Forums is “user unfriendly.” (Again, we know.)

NOTE: I have omitted direct references by these posters to these first 2 points as this would be unnecessarily redundant. They are established facts.

Third, unless you are a 100% dedicated folder who essentially wants to discuss nothing but folding related matters, the WCG forums quickly become boring, boring, boring for MOST posters.

My own personal “take” on this third point is:

Every member of WCG only needs to share the willingness to dedicate their idle CPU time to WCG for the benefit of humanity. Everything else is irrelevant to WCG’s mission. Humanity means a whole lot of diverse individuals who do not necessarily share the same values, ideas and goals. If you wish to appeal to “all” of them; then you must “appeal" to all of them.

"In good taste" is meaningless. It is entirely arbitrary and subjective. WCG uses such a narrow yardstick to measure “in good taste," and enforces this yardstick with such zealotry, that it is quickly obvious that virtually no other content is welcome (except parenthetical personal remarks.) Unless you are a folding zealot, exactly how much mileage do you expect to get from this one, and only one, “extremely dynamic and fascinating topic”?

If this philosophy works, fine. It’s WCG’s/IBM’s ball. But, when it doesn’t, don't just turn around and expect everyone else to make WCG the center of their lives just because some members do.

And for God’s sake, stop pointing fingers by pulling the old “loser’s limp” routine: “It’s all your (TW’s) fault.” Please! When TW arrived the energy level skyrocketed: When they left, if crashed. There are plenty of mainstream member’s posts that observed the fact.

Still, this too is irrelevant. If WCG is failing to maintain user involvement, then it must simply find a strategy to counter the significant attrition rate. But why IS the attrition rate so high? Usually, it’s from a lack of interest.

Here is a useful anthropologic fact. Dogs play (compete) to practice inhibited biting (controlled aggression). People play (compete) to gain superiority, or advantage, over one another (controlled aggression).

Another interesting fact: The latest research concludes that intimate relationships succeed not because of what the couple has in common, but because of the nature of their differences.

The most compelling fact: Biological life arises and exists only at the very edge of chaos. Life is diversity and uncertainty working itself out over time. If you attempt to introduce excessive order into a system, then you will unwittingly be working against the very life principle that motivated you take this action in the first place. It’s the essential biological paradox; and it is entirely inescapable.

Read the news. Pick up a book. Talk to someone new. Look around you. Where there is no controversy, there is no interest. That is because controversy IS the human expression of the life principle when people communicate with each other about the world which they live in. To attempt to eliminate controversy is not only boring, it is “a priori,” suicidal. WCG is strangling the life out of the Forums.

Controversy only gets such a bad rap because human beings take themselves and their opinions so seriously that any disagreement, no matter how well intentioned or potentially useful, is invariably interpreted as an intolerable and destructive personal attack. (This, by the way, was what TW posters were always poking fun at.)

Until the hardware and software are improved, if WCG wants to minimize attrition then it must put the same positive energy into keeping these members that it initially put into recruiting them. The current vision of the WCG Forums is just too rigidly defined and overly moderated to accomplish this objective.