Ewart,

The FAAH project is neatly split up into phases. They know almost exactly what they are doing in the short term. In the long term, they may negotiate further phases with WCG. For now, though, they have progress reports on the project site. We are working on phase 2 at the moment. We are over half way through the entire project.

The HPF1 project is a little different, because new genes are always being found, and new organisms being suggested as relevant to some particular disease. WCG have allowed the scope of the project to be expanded to include this new data, so there isn't a firm end point. However, the project scientists completed the original part of their work some months ago, and are working on publishing it. Dr Bonneau explained much of this in his latest update.

There will be a second HPF project focussing in detail on some of the more important parts of the first project. Watch this space. :-)

As for the progress of Fight Aids At Home, right now we have processed about 3,000 years of Phase 2. From the amount of data that Phase 2 is expected to process my best guess is that it will take somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 years of processing to complete. At 14,400 years it was announced that Phase 1b was completed and Phase 2 has started. At this time we should be at almost 25% complete at 17,400 years. At the present rate of processing completion should occur sometime in either late August or September.

There are pros and cons to this one.

A minority of people get really antsy about progress bars that suddenly jump backwards (one assumes there would be an explanation, but it's not going to satisfy everyone).

The WCG isn't just about individual projects. There will be more projects in the future, and as WCG's reputation grows, there will be increasing demand for our volunteer services. I don't see us running out of work now or ever. So a progress bar may give a false impression that we are almost finished.

On the other hand, it's a useful feature. It has been requested a few times, and hopefully we can find a compromise.

Are you talking about the grid client? Features like this are more likely to be implemented on the website.

The United Devices client is proprietary, and the WCG can't modify it easily. The BOINC client can be modified, but it would take months (maybe a year or more) for the change to be accepted into the official version, and for everyone to upgrade.

Besides, a feature like this really belongs on the WCG website, together with the project information. I'll raise the issue for you again next time that part of the website gets updated.

Oh, and just a heads up: the FAAH progress meter isn't updated very often. Our actual progress is estimated at closer to 20%.