Change in BA requirements

[Viper97]

If we had the funds to build what they (Facebook and Google -- ed.) do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.

This says it all... they would if they could drop donors like hot potatoes.

[ChristianVirtual]

Yup. There's another quote that clearly shows where Folding@Home's special spot for donors is:

If we had the funds to build what they (Facebook and Google -- ed.) do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.

Reference: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25495&start=105#p255912

Yes, that original quote and reference to Google was not helping ...


Vijay, please talk with us and share your thoughts !

[Bill1024]

Yup. There's another quote that clearly shows where Folding@Home's special spot for donors is:

If we had the funds to build what they (Facebook and Google -- ed.) do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.

Reference: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25495&start=105#p255912

Yes, that original quote and reference to Google was not helping ...


Vijay, please talk with us and share your thoughts !

I think he did. It speaks volumes to me.

[Adak]

If we had the funds to build what they (Facebook and Google -- ed.) do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.

This says it all... they would if they could drop donors like hot potatoes.

Wow!
Viper, if you can afford a Ferrari, and you're about to drive in a road race, you don''t take a Chevy Nova to the starting line. (btw, "No va" means "I don't go" in Spanish).

This sentiment is true for EVERY DC project, not just FAH! It has nothing to do with how Vijay thinks about the donors. It has EVERYTHING to do with getting the studies further ahead, in the shortest amount of time.

[sbinh]

And Kasson reassured the message is clear to donors :

We understand that donors may decide to redirect their priorities. We are thankful for all donations that people have made in the past.
.....

They don't need your - donors' - help from now on ..

[Adak]

And Kasson reassured the message is clear to donors :

We understand that donors may decide to redirect their priorities. We are thankful for all donations that people have made in the past.
.....

They don't need your - donors' - help from now on ..

Now, you're going to pick apart Kasson's syntax, and infer to it some meaning it never had? I'm SURE that will help unite the donors and PG!

[Grandpa_01]

If we had the funds to build what they (Facebook and Google -- ed.) do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.

Reference: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25495&start=105#p255912

Yes, that original quote and reference to Google was not helping ...


Vijay, please talk with us and share your thoughts !

I think he did. It speaks volumes to me.

Vijay is being slammed pretty hard right now and I see quite a bit of frustration in that post. Yes by our thoughts and wants he should have posted something by now and many have been asking / demanding that he give us some kind of indication of a plan. In his way he did that early on in describing what he felt and used as a guide.

Donor communications. Finally, we had an external group come in and ask donors what they thought could be best improved in FAH and donor communications came up strongly. I've been thinking about what we can do to help improve that in a sustainable way. We've had many attempts but keeping the communication going is probably only possible with us having someone who's primary job is donor relations and communications -- the science and development team are as it is overloaded with the tasks of keeping FAH running. So, I have been looking into hiring (into a part time role) someone who's sole job is donor relations and communications. Hopefully that will help communication in both directions. If not, we'll hopefully learn from that and continue to see what we can do to get better.

Sorry for the long post and for all the grief here for the bigadv issue. We're continuing to talk internally to see how we can improve things based on your comments.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=25411&start=75#p253960

He says he is working on getting a PR person (Part Time) and that they are continuing to talk internally and are listening to our comments and looking for improvements based upon them. Well that was a bit short of what was asked for by many but it was a response and was fairly informative. That was posted on Friday, Dec 20, 2013 right before Holiday break and yes it had been a while since we have heard anything else from him before his last post which can be interpreted as a negative by many donors as a negative response to the situation.

Has anybody thought that it could have been a positive response.

Finally, while I appreciate the comparisons to Google and Facebook, we're running on a dramatically smaller hardware and personnel budget than they are. If we had the funds to build what they do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.

It could mean that we would like to be able to have a set up like Google there would be far fewer problems but we do not (which lets face it, it is true). We realize that we need the donors and do care about the concerns of the donors and are working on it.
As I said before I see some frustration on Vijay's part in the post when I saw the post initially I thought O-crap this could be bad. I prefer to not think that his intention was to tell people to take a hike, I think it was just the opposite. As I have said before I have had conversations with Vijay and some fairly recently, I know he is deeply concerned and does care about both us the donors and the program. I also believe he might be a little frustrated and maybe even a little frightened of what can happen if he does the wrong thing. After all his chosen career is based on this program and donor support. He is risking allot more here than what we as donors are.

Any way try not to read to much into what was said we all know sometimes he is not the best communicator, I prefer to try and look at the whole picture, part of which for me is personal knowledge of the man himself.

Grandpa

[Bill1024]

Grandpa, if you're going to quote me, please post the whole thing in context. Those are not all my words.



Re: Change in BA requirements

Postby Bill1024 » Today, 9:32 pm

"ChristianVirtual wrote":

"tear wrote":Yup. There's another quote that clearly shows where Folding@Home's special spot for donors is:

VijayPande wrote:If we had the funds to build what they (Facebook and Google -- ed.) do, we wouldn't be running a volunteer distributed computing project, but just computing directly on that infrastructure, as we have done in a recent collaboration with Google.


Reference: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25495&start=105#p255912

"ChristianVirtual wrote"
Yes, that original quote and reference to Google was not helping ...


Vijay, please talk with us and share your thoughts !


"bill1024 wrote":
I think he did. It speaks volumes to me.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=25411&p=256129#p256090

[Grandpa_01]

Actually I tried to use the whole quote but it was limited to 3 quotes, sorry if I offended you but it is a FF limit thing and I wanted all of the comments not just yours. I can edit it if you wish

[Bill1024]

Team owners, players, coaches, team captains, oarsmen and a cox that doesn't know what way to go. Plus a few mad men in the mix too.
High HP motors, cars and trucks, Chevy Novas and Ferraris races. I think we even had a light at the end of the tunnel, but it was a train.
Very interesting thread to say the least.

Maybe it is like a aeroplane flying in to the Bermuda triangle and the plane is going to crash.
The owners wanted to upgrade engines but the passengers did not want to pay any higher airfares for the upgrades.
The Flight Attendant asks everyone would you like coffee or tea, peanuts or a pillow? No thank you, but a nice new AMD 4P 6276 with 128 terabytes of ram would be nice.
I guess there is nothing to do but wait for the planes captain to announce over the intercom what direction we will be heading from here on out.

[Bill1024]

Actually I tried to use the whole quote but it was limited to 3 quotes, sorry if I offended you but it is a FF limit thing and I wanted all of the comments not just yours. I can edit it if you wish

We're good. Maybe you are right and that's not what he meant.

[HaloJones]

I read Vijay's post as saying he wishes he could have the same levels of redundancy and reliability in his server infrastructure; the earlier references to Google and Facebook were complaining that we keep losing stats/assignment/work/entire networks! Cut the guy some slack!

And if I asked anybody if they would like a job as head of innovation at Google on $5m p.a. would anyone say no? Would it mean they hate their current job? No!

So, even if Vijay said he wanted to put all his folding work onto Google's server farms, would that mean he hates us donors? No, that would be a false inference.

[VijayPande]

I'm sorry really sorry about this. What's great to see is how passionate donors are about this and how much they care and want to make things better. My group and I are all really energized by that. What's also clear is that many donors here would like to get more feedback and communication. We've been trying to do that starting with the new year, with a lot more blog posts per week than we've ever done. Clearly more would always help.

In terms of what I said about running on Google -- I didn't ever think that people would take that as we don't care about donors or run FAH and I'm sorry if I communicated that poorly and I can see how that sentiment would make donors very upset. Hopefully our current work can demonstrate how much donors matter, i.e. the fact that we're doing that now and still working hard to continue to push FAH (including work on issues that crop up during the only 2 week vacation most of take all year, pushing more interaction through the blog, bringing up new AS infrastructure to help fix GPU AS issues, pushing out a new client, and more to come) shows our continued commitment here.

I am also very worried about how much unhappiness the Big Adv program has caused. Our goal here is to fight disease and do the best science we can. Our style is to push to new and create approaches. That's how we pioneered FAH in the first place, and GPUs, SMP, PS3, BA, etc. All of these are our attempt to push the science as far as we can. There is a critically important human element to all of this and I don't think that's our strength. I think we're best when we're pushing new algorithms and coming up with new scientific ideas.

We haven't made any decisions about BA, but in terms of recognizing my teams strengths and weaknesses, I think managing something as complex as BA in terms of donors needs and expectations isn't something we've done well at all. That makes me worried and disappointed, since the goal here is for all of us to work together to do some great science, not for us to cause grief and anger amongst donors. My current thinking is that we're doing too much and we need to simplify what we do at FAH so we do less better, and then expand from there. We haven't decided what that means, but what is clear is that this sort of unhappiness amongst donors is a very clear sign that we're doing something very wrong and my team needs to regroup and come up with a plan to avoid this in the future.

[Viper97]

And on that note Dr. Pande I appreciate the candor and frankness exhibited. I'm not against FAH but I am rather adamant about the way things are often projected on forums. The language oft times is terse leading to misinterpretation by all who read this (and other) forums.

Communication as you noted has been a major headwind and as I had written and subsequently deleted I view this as an untreated infection that has resulted in sepsis in the patient. This is the terminal point for many of the donors. Perhaps in time and with good communications (two-way and not just one-way) the wounds might heal.

[orion]

Thank you Dr. Pande for taking time in responding.

Passions run deep on both sides, hopefully all this will bring out a better F@H experience for us all.

Thanks again to bruce and the other admin for letting this all play out, it must have been tuff.