Folding Forum

Adak, Thanks for the summery ... Easy to agree to all of them.

Just two remarks.
Ad 1) maybe a kind of "rolling forecast" would be ok; first 6 or 9 month firm; second 6 or 3 month with a 75% confidence to reflect outside effects from technology jumps (e.g. AVX, JIT, ...)

Ad 4 and 5) more or less the same

Looking forward to some comments from Vijay

The confidence level will naturally decline as the number of months increase, but folders wanted a firm 12 month road map. So if the road map ran with the calendar year, and Intel released a 48 core cpu in June - the BA threshold would be kept unchanged at 32, until December 31st of that year.

Although some asked for a longer road map, I kept it at only one year. I didn't believe PG could provide a longer road map than one year.

"Looking forward to some comments from Vijay", yes, and actions.

Adak wrote:"Looking forward to some comments from Vijay", yes, and actions.

With a to indicate it's partly sarcastic but certainly close enough to truth to be seriously considered: If comments and actions take no additional though, answers would be easy and they'd come quickly. If some/all of the issues involve some additional considerations/though, it will take longer.

He's human, too, and I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.

bruce wrote:He's human, too, and I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.

True. It's a bumpy start into 2014 for him. But I hope he knows that we are all here to eventually support him and his great project.

Like to see (no, I love to see) this example: http://folding.stanford.edu/home/workin ... u-support/

Understand timelines are open, but glad to hear (as Apple Fanboy) things are moving !

+1 for heads-up communication please come back in a trimester with some update

Adak wrote:As a group, and individually, we'll have to let that frustration from the past, go. We need to be calm, and focus on the problem, or the discussion will go straight off the tracks, and be useless to PG or anyone else.

Excuse me while I watch from the sidelines. If you need me, you know where to find me. Good luck to you. Seriously.

k1wi wrote:It's academia, wheels always move slower than everyone desires.

Universities in the US are commercial enterprises. You snooze, you lose!

kerryd wrote: WCG sent out a poll asking how they could make it better for donors and what they mite need to change ,They email out xmass cards saying thanks. If I do not crunch for them for a month or so they ask where I am.In other words they at least make it look like they care.

Oh yes, Folding@Home has a LOT to learn from World Community Grid.

Adak wrote:

mdk777 wrote:Again adak,
please feel free to draw me or others into a discussion of our personal opinions.

As you know by now, I can certainly debate as well, and as long as you.
However, it remains for PG to explain their rationale.

They have explained it.

Kasson posted it.

You read it.

You said it hadn't been posted.

7im then re-posted it.

Now you say "it remains for PG to explain their rationale".

And I'm telling you AGAIN, that PG is not under any obligation to "explain their rationale" further. There are things we could improve on here, but your demands are not reasonable, and imo, they will not be met; not here, and not in any other research DC project.

The coaches call the plays, the players execute them - they don't demand further explanations of the coaches rationale. If you don't like the way the coach calls the plays, you go to another school.

This is quite poor analogy.

Players, as you call them, are playing for the team out of sympathy, not due to contract
and are at liberty to play for any other team. The moment the sympathy is gone, they leave.
In snap of a finger.

They are not obligated to anything nor they owe the team anything.

So... yeah, they are entitled to have a say on how the team is run, after all.
Simply because, if the team does not address players' concerns to their satisfaction,
their sympathy may just run out and they may leave to a place where grass is greener
or where they think the grass is greener.
It doesn't matter which one it is, they will be gone from your team.

You may call players' demands unreasonable, sure. But think about it, if other teams
don't suffer from the problems your team does... perhaps there's actually something
they have been doing better? Perhaps your players' demands aren't as crazy
and unreasonable as you perceive them?

One thing everyone needs to realize that Folding@Home isn't the best team to play for
and stop making excuses.

Peter's announcement gave no rationale. Sure, he said they wanted the resources in SMP area.
Duh! Where else? If a machine cannot fold bigadv any more what could it possibly do!?
It was just softening the blow done in a politically correct way.

The rumor of SMP backlog was created in this thread.

Anyone can keep calling me and all who feel the same way crazy and unreasonable, for how long though?

And one more afterthought --

The coaches call the plays, the players execute them - they don't demand further explanations of the coaches rationale. If you don't like the way the coach calls the plays, you go to another school.

Well played. You've just positioned the coach as the one "who knows better" and players
are just tools who know nothing nor are entitled to anything. They are here just to execute
coach's plan, right?

This kind of nonchalance and arrogance are reasons for current state of affairs in both Folding@Home and Folding Forum.

Tear, there are things that donors need to know about FAH, but there are many details that we do not need to know. Word Community Grid is one example that has a good balance of this, imo. Rosetta on the other hand, has an administrator who is most difficult to work with. I would like FAH to find that good balance that WCG appears to have found.

You're obviously skeptical that PG will work this out well, and you could be right. Re-hashing old posts and pointing out their errors in logical inferences is a waste of time. If you have something positive to offer, something that can help PG to work through this, then by all means, post it. I know the vast majority of the BA folders, want the BA projects to continue, and FAH to continue it's search for knowledge.

"Just tools?" I love my tool.

Adak wrote:(...) there are things that donors need to know about FAH, but there are many details that we do not need to know.

Evidently, whoever has been deciding on the scope of "need to know" isn't exactly succeeding... LOL.

Adak wrote:Re-hashing old posts and pointing out their errors in logical inferences is a waste of time.

You should actually be thankful for that, had people not cared, they'd not bother to comment here any more.

Adak wrote:I know the vast majority of the BA folders, want the BA projects to continue.

The horizon is already changing, check top 20s of the top teams.

tear wrote:

Adak wrote:(...) there are things that donors need to know about FAH, but there are many details that we do not need to know.

Evidently, whoever has been deciding on the scope of "need to know" isn't exactly succeeding... LOL.

We know, PG are not Ph.D's of media communications - got it!

Adak wrote:Re-hashing old posts and pointing out their errors in logical inferences is a waste of time.

tear wrote: You should actually be thankful for that, had people not cared, they'd not bother to comment here any more.

Pointing out errors in off-the-cuff analogies, isn't going to help solve anything.

Adak wrote:I know the vast majority of the BA folders, want the BA projects to continue.

tear wrote:The horizon is already changing, check top 20s of the top teams.

Stats are largely missing today, but I have noticed the serious decline in the number of reported computers active in FAH in the last 50 days. I suspect, but don't have any data, that the decrease is due to:

1) Alternate coin mining is attracting a lot of people to use their computers on it.

2) The big race in December on World Community Grid.

3) The higher cost of electricity.

4) The BA / FAH problem we see here.

5) Folders shutting down rigs as they traveled over the Winter school shutdown and holidays.

tear wrote: This kind of nonchalance and arrogance are reasons for current state of affairs in both Folding@Home and Folding Forum.

Just this sentence explains the whole issue that is under discussion here! And I must also say that I am pretty much agree with that other statements tear wrote about.

And another important thing, when something goes wrong then one have to almost tail information from PG. For example, the server that supplies statistics have been down for almost 24 hours without no given information other than the one I asked about yesterday here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25540

Yeah, there has been a good bit of news on the new AS for GPUs (that is hurting everyone, researchers and us, so that is not a surprise). I think the stats server doesn't get quite as much respect as a) the stats are not lost and b) (short term) failures don't effect the science. I think though with as much as it has been down this week we need some bit of official update on it.

F@H can do what they want with their systems. if you don't like it ...

actions speak louder then words.

I turned off my folding rigs. The house is nice and quite at night when I go to sleep now.

I just spent time over the last two days reading all 36 pages of this thread. I am no way affected by the changes by the Big Advantage changes since I fold with a i5-3570k and a GTX 680. But I can understand some of the feelings from the BA camp. Some things jump out at me after reading all this.

1. Yes, PG decided to change the core requirements for BA WU's, that's their prerogative. But they never ever explained WHY the change is being made to any ones satisfaction, except maybe Bruce and 7im.

2. Any posts made by the PG are a lot of repetition that a change is being made with no clear answers to why.

3. There has been a need for a PR position for F@H for years yet nothing ever gets done about it.

4. SMP WU's have been way under valued points wise for ages and are past due for a boost of any kind. Yet they get ignored and no one wants to run them. Then PG wonders why there is a back log piling up.

5. I rarely visit these forums so I don't know any of you at all. That being said, as a out side observer, Adak just what is your goal here? You looking for a job or something? Because from what I have read you come across as a PG apologist/fan boy. Maybe that's not what you are aiming for but that's what it looks like.

That's what I am seeing. The lack of clear, concise answers to the other donors questions in the last three weeks have made me re evaluate my donation of my computer time and electrical costs to this project. There are plenty of other projects out there that deal with the science of curing diseases just like this one. I am giving those a look now. Seems like a lot of other people are as well since the current donor computer count has dropped to 196,445 at the time of this post.

+1 ^^^^^^