Having read this very interesting thread, I'd like to add my humble comments.

Personally, I've been crunching at WCG for 'a good few years' and contributed the 'odd year or two', so, my take on DC is that it's discovering the unglamorous building blocks/the foundations from which other/more glamorous scientific breakthroughs can then be made from - even if that means finding out 'where not to build'. I'm okay if (as is likely), WCG doesn't get the recognition as providing the 'silver bullet' to solve X, but there HAS been advances in science/health care etc., as can be seen by the survivability of cancer (to name but one example), has proven.

Yes, there have been times when I've questioned my continuing participation (when I was made redundant from IBM and was unemployed for a few years being one of the main times - there have been others), but I'm still here, with my 3 machines of various vintages, currently with 20 cores in total.

With respect to the AI question, I personally don't think that this would speed up this research - as a vast amount (if not all of AI), is based on 'past results/knowledge', and if we're 'breaking new ground', then AI won't have that knowledge to harvest/use.

There are some very good points in this thread - such as communication/e-mail's etc., and really, these should be taken up/run with - but, as with everything, it comes down to resources. If there's not enough resources to go around (and IBM decided that the resources it was putting into WCG was better 'spent' elsewhere - having worked inside 'Big Blue' for 13 years, I could elaborate on this 'quite considerably'), then decisions need to be taken. Whether we like those decisions or not, as to where to prioritise those limited resources, is 'up for debate'.

So, the crux of my point, is that I still think/believe it's worth contributing, even if 'we' (i.e., everyone involved in the wider DC world), doesn't get the glory for doing so.

Hello I must be forgetting but could you give a link to the page in which feeder status is shown? Since there is no traditional Server Status page

I'd love to know about this as well. Any type of server status would be very much appreciated.

I think that the massive cuts I'm seeing in any type of research is going to wipe out all funding for DC. There is a big trickle down effect where the larger groups get funding and small things like DC eventually get a very small piece of the pie, and under our new administration, that pie is gone.