I've just attached to World Community Grid and picked a few projects to work on (nutritious rice, flu drug search, cure muscular dystrophy). The solar energy project sounds good too - but they are all great research.
So how do you choose your projects, and can you recommend any?
Is credit common across all, or do any pay generously?
Does or should the team have a pet project?
Should I concentrate on one, to get a badge sooner?
I know a few people work on some for specific personal reasons (eg http://forum.boinc-australia.net/index.php?topic=532.msg9524#msg9524) but none of the projects really stand out for me.
They all pay about the same. Some are shorter work units than others but on typical machines they all take between about 3 hours at the lower end to about 9-10 hours at the upper end. You need to do 14 days CPU time on any one project for a bronze badge or 45 days CPU time to get a silver badge. I currently have 6 gold badges, 2 silver and 2 bronze ones so am directing my CPU time to the four projects that are not gold. Once they are all gold I will probably do a bit of all of them. I have no particular favourite amongst them.
ive prettymuch selected all of them and let boinc decide which one it collects and runs.. :)
You will probably find that Clean Energy Project tasks are a little thin on the ground, so you might need to run at least 2 subprojects to keep consistent work.
Thanks for the feedback. I've added Clean Energy to my list and already seen one WU.
I had a slight setback. Thinking it would be a good start, I booted my two spare machines last night from Ubuntu install disks and ran them live from the CDs, then installed BOINC from USB. However I forgot they would both have the same name, and they are identical architecture, and it looks like WCG thought they were the same machine. They connect and download work, the crunch it ok, but next time they contact the server it aborts the WUs and they show in the results as "detached". I didn't find out until this morning :hbang:
Anyway, I have 8 valid results returned now and I'm on my way :cheer1:
I just started running everything then turned projects off when they got the gold badge (there's an option to process other work if there isn't any available for the selected project(s) so shouldn't ever run out of work)
Except that now Gold is no longer the top badge - they have introduced Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire above that. Sapphire takes 2 years of crunching time to reach. I now have one sapphire, 2 emerald, one ruby, 2 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze, and 2 that are no longer around and for which I never made a badge.
big achievements. i might jump back to wcg soon too, try get some of that saphire lovin hahaa
*Edit
Just checked back into wcg, ive got 3 rubys already :)
i love the idea they tell you how many days/months/years of cpu power uve contributed to each project, is there anything like that around for the other projects?? would be awsome to have along with ur 'total boinc score' the 'total years/decades/centuries' worth of cpu power crunched for the boinc cause!
Quote from: Wang Solutions on July 16, 2009, 06:36:45 PM
Except that now Gold is no longer the top badge - they have introduced Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire above that. Sapphire takes 2 years of crunching time to reach. I now have one sapphire, 2 emerald, one ruby, 2 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze, and 2 that are no longer around and for which I never made a badge.
Well I missed that one - sure makes for more difficult choices ???
I have started up one of my Q6600's to run WCG. There are four projects that I do not have a badge on at all !!! It is a worthwhile project and great science.
Quote from: Dingo on July 27, 2009, 01:00:13 AM
I have started up one of my Q6600's to run WCG.
:cool: he he he ... told you we could get him to turn some of his farm back on....
For what it's worth, why waste your resources, time, money (running a computer isn't free) on projects that aren't going to really show a proper benfit to humanity. Prime numbers, really? Who cares? SETI, yeh, let's wait a thousand years while they travel at the speed of light to get here. Come on, let's find a cure for cancer or somesuch with tangible benefits. Who knows, maybe 1 in 5 of us will get cancer and be greatful.
Jokemeister
Quote from: Jokemeister on September 07, 2009, 07:21:57 PMWho knows, maybe 1 in 5 of us will get cancer and be grateful.
Isn't that number two in every three Australians will develop some form of skin cancer? I know I've had mine(1), perhaps we are becoming complacent now that so many different types can be excised or cured. A sister-in-law has had so many skin caners removed she has lost count.
(1) Lucky for me it was only Basil Cell Carcinoma, which I think is the second least dangerous type of cancer. Unfortunately it was subcutaneous and needed three operations and several assisting surgeons including a micro-surgeon for the second operation. A year or so after the operation the surgeon explained how the tumour had been growing 3 millimetres every two months and was only eight millimetres from the base of my brain (that's twice I should have died). I bought a lottery ticket but I guess you already know the outcome of that. :P
If I thought that the research from WCG's cancer work would end up in the hands of those that would do something realistic I might be more inclined to participate with greater effort but we don't know if they supplied the results to those Australian researchers that created a vaccine for two types of virus that cause cervical cancer and that, they say, is an absolutely amazing 100% successful in stopping the target cancer. Plus it may be useful in preventing Prostate, Testicular and some breast cancers, while have an infinitesimal number of patients with side-effects. Indeed the last arthritidis pain relief drug killed more people with only a tiny fraction of those treated.
Oh, plus one karma for your first post. :thumbsup:
@ jokemeister, some of us find different things important.. some of us find a LOT of the BOINC projects important and as Mike mentioned, do the results of ALL research of those health based programs get sent to all relevant "registered" research facilities around the world ?
anyway, you'll find there's a nice balance of work done across the board here, and when it comes time for us to concentrate on projects such as WCG (during AA's for example)... we band together, no questions asked..
now.... time to call the nurses for more endone... 4 am and I am sore as hell.
Oh, and +1 for posting mate... come on here regularly, we love having more members on here.
The highest paying projects at WCG are Clean Energy, then Muscular Dystrophy, the top two and I add Help Fight Childhood Cancer to that which ranks almost the same as Influenza but is my favored project.
(http://tinyurl.com/WCGCPH)
Quote from: Jokemeister on September 07, 2009, 07:21:57 PM
For what it's worth, why waste your resources, time, money (running a computer isn't free) on projects that aren't going to really show a proper benfit to humanity. Prime numbers, really? Who cares? SETI, yeh, let's wait a thousand years while they travel at the speed of light to get here. Come on, let's find a cure for cancer or somesuch with tangible benefits. Who knows, maybe 1 in 5 of us will get cancer and be greatful.
Jokemeister
I couldn't say it any better myself and feel exactly the same way. +1
It's not up to me to dictate how others run their resources but I prefer to use mine in ways that I hope might actually be beneficial to humanity in my lifetime not to mention against something that I've seen touch too many first hand.
I don't know anyone who's been killed by aliens but I sure have encountered a lot of devastation resulting from cancer.
to be quite honest it surprises me that researchers here, (I imagine there ARE people researching skin cancer here in Oz) haven't found some way to move current "cancer projects" over to suit their work on melanoma....
THAT"S the one that scares the bejeezuz out of me..... I know I would certainly put ALL resources behind such a project.
Quote from: veebee on September 10, 2009, 07:21:39 AM
to be quite honest it surprises me that researchers here, (I imagine there ARE people researching skin cancer here in Oz) haven't found some way to move current "cancer projects" over to suit their work on melanoma....
THAT"S the one that scares the bejeezuz out of me..... I know I would certainly put ALL resources behind such a project.
As one that has had skin cancer, I'd drop all the other projects to follow it 100%!
As one who's 95% likely to get it, I would too! Meanwhile, cancer research generally has to help, I tell myself.
Quote from: veebee on September 10, 2009, 07:21:39 AM(I imagine there ARE people researching skin cancer here in Oz)
That made me think, so I did a Google and there appear to be quite a few research projects and ways of funding.
i had a thought, a boinc project to help cure baldness :)
there are only 2 or 3 privately funded companies that are making leaps n bounds in that area, so when something along the lines of a 'cure' is found, these guys are going to heavily monopolize the niche..
If there was public help in ways of boincing, maybe this info would be considered public knowledge and thus end up being cheaper for the consumers in the long run and more companies to provide the solution?
i dont actually know if there is any crunching involved in such research, but im sure its feasable ahaha
p.s. no i not bald, but i do have a very aero-dynamic widows peak forming hahah