Thread 'Bitcoin Utopia not science project'

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Coleslaw
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Joined: 23 Feb 12
Posts: 198
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Message 56063 - Posted: 16 Sep 2014, 14:19:48 UTC - in response to Message 56060.  
Last modified: 16 Sep 2014, 14:24:02 UTC

BOINC is, by design, a distributed loosely coupled network. This applies not only to the hosts that do the crunching but also to the projects that run the server software. Each project is a project on it's own. There is no authority that must or can authorize new projects. The success of a project is only derived from the number of users it can gather to crunch for it. So if someone is not interested in a specific kind of "science" don't attach to a project that does this.

The DRTG project is also highly disputed because it is no "science" and the output can be used to hack passwords. In my opinion the same applies to Bitcoin Utopia. If you don't like it don't crunch it.

Regarding the Credits issue with BU: There is currently a new design under discussion that should fix the problems that came with the advent of BU.
I would therefore like to point your attention to this page: CreditGeneralized in the developer wiki. If you have further comments on this new design please do so. You can do this here in this forum or via email.


That proposal sounds like a step in the right direction for some, but doesn't address one of the big concerns. That is whether credit for science apps should be tallied with those that contribute nothing to science directly. I personally don't feel that work from an ASIC at BU is any different than work from a GPU/CPU at BU. Those points shouldn't be split just because of the hardware.
Similarly, BU could grant computing credit for mining jobs done by CPU or GPU; but for ASIC jobs it would grant only project-defined credit.
That is like saying you can't drink from this fountain because you are black. The issue with FLOPs being the measure is probably more of the problem if you are going to alienate capable hardware that don't use FLOPs. Though I'm not sure it is worth the effort, I think you would find more people interested in a system that splits CPU from GPU from ASICs from Other (such as sensors) as the four categories. I don't think the masses are really demanding points based on the other categories as of yet.
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yo2013

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Message 56108 - Posted: 18 Sep 2014, 20:46:13 UTC - in response to Message 56060.  
Last modified: 18 Sep 2014, 20:51:31 UTC

Regarding the Credits issue with BU: There is currently a new design under discussion that should fix the problems that came with the advent of BU.
I would therefore like to point your attention to this page: CreditGeneralized in the developer wiki. If you have further comments on this new design please do so. You can do this here in this forum or via email.


I like that design!

I don't agree with users that say that credit doesn't mean anything. If credits were meaningless, why are they implemented in BOINC? Credits are computed and saved because they are useful for many people. With the advent of BU, they have become rather useless for many of these people. I think any new system should be designed so that that usefulness is maintained.

I mostly use credits for two purposes:

(1) Compare my contribution to that of other users/hosts and also to my previous contributions. Even whithout BU, this has some problems, because different projects grant different amounts of credits for the same time computing (for example, SETI grants less credit than other projects on my computer for the same time). Yeah, science is more important than credits, but most people (and I) like competition. Also, credit is useful when I buy new hardware and want to compare it to the old one.

(2) Compare different projects globally. I allocate more time/resources to projects with lower total RAC. Those projects need more help, so I contribute more crunching power to them.

BU's enormous RAC makes (2) more difficult. For example, the pie charts here are completely useless.
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Message boards : Projects : Bitcoin Utopia not science project

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