It was pretty stupid of WCG to start up the project without sufficient work to keep crunchers active. However, there are other worthwhile projects to keep machines busy until the scientists can catch up with us. There are always periods when work gets low so I normally run at least 2 projects from WCG and another BOINC project to utilise my GPU. WCG haven't got around to that yet!.

Mike

The purpose of the project is not to keep crunchers active, but to find a cure for Ebola. If they wait to generate enough work units to give us something to do, it could add months to the time to find a cure.

I get tasks are committed to other platforms way more often than no tasks are available for OET. Just curious if it's known which platform(s) are hanging things up, or if this is just a relic of whatever was last delivered when nothing else is available?

The only point in the general debate that makes much sense to me, is the one posted above: it seems unfortunate to have a launch press release when so little work for it is available to WCG newcomers or return-ers attracted by that release. But it's done. Maybe they will be more patient than some of the rest of us :-p

It is always easiest to "play armchair quarterback" without having the full picture of what the Project is actually undergoing. Sure, anyone can look back and say this or that could have been done. But, we have today and the many days of tomorrow to help these scientists solve all manner of problems.

With this kind of work, a person needs to broaden their perspective well beyond a week or all the problems that happen with launching a new WCG Project. When your heart (and perspective) is in the work (first and foremost) all the other stuff is just chatter along the way to realizing something great.

Think back to every time our work has resulted in finding something new to attack a problem or disease. That sometimes takes years to realize, but we have people here that stick with helping regardless of the hiccups along the way. That is what makes WCG and all of our collective efforts so special.

Propose the technicians use an 'In Progress' control per machine [they can as can be done with the beta program]. Only give the equivalent of 2x cores. This way all get some modicum of chance to fetch a few and speed up the quorum complete chance. Also recommend a mail to be send to all who signed up for OET1 exclusively to alert to the limited availability, describe the reason in all frankness and recommend to till then pick the "If there is not work for..." option. Yes I know, this is not why we came here for, said so myself too, but there's just a serious technical issue that cropped up why the floodgates could not be opened at the last minute.

Whilst, this research is now running, 50K results have returned that can be send back for the scientist to gloss over today, rather than waiting, further postponing then re-launching. Time in this case has money as subordinate, no time for frust.