What are credits used for?
3 Jan 2006 8:47:01 UTC
Topic 190503
(moderation:
I'm pretty new into this and have noticed that i get credits for done work. Are these credits used for anything and what would that be or is it just for comparing your work with other users?
"The world is a fine place and worth figthing for." (Ernest Hemmingway)
"Non progredi est regredi
What are credits used for?
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It's just an incentive and to brag with. Look here.
Although someone tried to set up a web site where it would be possible to exchange credits into real life money or services.
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
Ok, thx. That was what i
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Ok, thx. That was what i thought.
"The world is a fine place and worth figthing for." (Ernest Hemmingway)
"Non progredi est regredi
They also let you monitor
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They also let you monitor your contributions to projects to decide what you want to do, and if you are meeting that goal.
SO, for example, I want to have Einstein@Home, doing "real" science with more of my total commitment than SETI@Home (which is really doing exploration, needed, but, more or less "who cares").
So, I can look at the numbers and say that I need to put more effort into EAH.
Once I get there, I will likely concentrate on either Rosetta@Home or WCG to at least get them over PPAH (which project I have given up on for the moment as being completely unresponsive to their participant community).
I use the relative RAC numbers to check if my resource shares are really doing what I want ... this is complicated as not all projects run on all platforms, so, the numbers on 9 computers is not as easy as it might look at first ...
so, it is not all selfish and bragging ...
==== edit
on the other hand, I have 1,400,000+ Cobblestones and most people don't .... :)
RE: I want to have
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I've seen a variety of such negative attitudes toward SETI here recently. May I ask why that is?
Is it just that SETI has done so much searching that success now seems hopeless?
Or do you really attribute no significance to a possible discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, as compared to verifying the existence of gravitational waves, which most people probably think exist regardless of whether E@H is able to find them?
ADDMP
RE: I've seen a variety of
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Nothing against SETI@Home. You read something into me there.
I do NOT have a negative attitude towards the project, the people, or the goals.
The odds are against the search ... but, you have to take that first step even if it is hopeless. We cover less than half the sky. We cover very little of the possible frequencies, and in theory we do not have a sophisticated enough seach algorithm. For example, many scrambling systems sound very much like noise... and what do we see a lot of? Noise. Is it really noise? Or is it a signal that we have not yet learned to decode yet?
I have to admit that the wild entheusiasm for SETI@Home has always puzzled me. Up to and including the insistance that there can be no other conceivable project to be run. As a low priority background search, sure. But, lets be a little, um, more practical.
If we discover ET is out there and talking. So what? What practical difference will it make? If they have FLT drive they would be here by now. If they don't, well, by the time we send a signal and they get it we may be drown in global warmings after-effects. Or wiped out by a plague we cannot control or treat.
I am actually fairly project agnostic if you look at my stats. I just think that science projects that have real potential to make a difference in the near term should be given priority in people thoughts over low payoff flights of fancy.
The understanding we are likely to get from projects like LHC@Home and Einstein@Home have the long term potential to allow us to go out and LOOK for ET. Rosetta@Home, Predictor@ Home, and WCG have the potential to allow us to react to a disease effectively. Other projects in the wings are just as near term practical; Orbit@Home, Malaria Control, etc.
So, nope, sorry, not negative ... :)
And we have not even begun to look ... when we do all sky, multi-frequency, multi-band, THEN it is time to get interested. We are just playing now.
RE: I've seen a variety of
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I can't answer for Paul, but I'll answer for myself, since I've made the same decisions. There are a number of reasons I prefer to donate time to other projects besides SETI. The main one for me is that there are several other projects that are much "better run"; I have lost confidence in the UCB folks, that the work done is actually accomplishing anything. Not that they don't _want_ it to, but that they have the staff and funds and such to actually do any analysis on any "candidates" that are found. The lack of communications is another part of it. They have an excuse; the same lack of funds/staff. Having an excuse still doesn't mean they should be let off the hook, however.
Second is the actual "utility" of the work. If SETI finds a signal that is eighty light-years from us, it will obviously cause tremendous social upheaval (or should...) and improve the chances of our species survival by increasing interest in space travel. My great-grandkids may someday meet an alien. This is, as Paul says, "exploration" but not "science". The benefits may be just as great, but they aren't as immediate. Einstein is a "raw science" project - as with all such science, we simply don't know how much the results will impact us. Rosetta and CPDN are "applied science" projects (or working towards that point) - I personally think global warming is bunk, but enough people believe it, that it can't hurt for some of my CPU cycles to go towards either proving or disproving it; if a good weather model can be made, either way, it will benefit everyone. And Protein Folding is something that can have almost _immediate_ benefits. Maybe not in the next year or two or ten, but certainly in the next twenty or fifty; soon enough for my immediate family to gain some benefit. My CPDN share went to Protein Predictor until they started treating participants far worse than SETI does, then I cut them off.
Third is the "need" for CPU cycles. SETI has an embarassment of riches at the moment. Yes, it will take "more" to really do the job well, but their servers are overwhelmed, so unless/until the "back end" issues are resolved, my 0.000001% contribution is effectively nothing. They won't "miss" my contribution, any more than they'd miss the contribution of any other single participant. Meanwhile, Rosetta is a startup project. For a long time, I was, with my measly 5-600 RAC, even divided across multiple projects, in the "top 500" there. I'm still in the top 97%, with 10K credits, where 20K credits for SETI only puts me in the top 90%. Rosetta could easily use 10x the current number of hosts (although I don't think they'd like them all to show up tomorrow...), and HAS THE FUNDING to be able to deal with the load, as long as it ramps up slowly.
Tying back in to the thread topic: To me, as to Paul, the credits have become just a way to track which project I've done the most work for, and RAC just a way to track which one I'm currently doing the most for. I've gotten Einstein "over" SETI in total credit, and now my goal is to keep Einstein there (I still have a couple of iBooks doing part-time SETI work, so it's a moving target) while getting Rosetta also "over" SETI, and getting CPDN "over" Predictor. Once I've done that? Who knows.
RE: RE: I want to have
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In my home city we have two footbal teams (ie soccer), United and City.
If you visit the City ground you are going to find people who think United is less interesting than City. On the other hand, if you visit Man Utd their fans will hardly acknowledge than Man City exists...
Of course if you come here from the SETI boards you are going to find more people here than there don't rate SETI so highly as the people there do.
I don't think anyone here intends to knock SETI (except perhaps some of the ex-SETI-classic folk, and their gripe is with UCB not the project goal). It is more that is does not attract us so much as the pure physics does. Matter of taste.
For Columbus, exploration was more exiting than science - he'd have been right behind SETI. Newton, on the other hand, was more interested in understanding how the physical universe is put together. He'd have been more behind Einstein@home. In that sense, SETI is more like exploration than science. Doesn't mean its better or worse, it means it is different.
And where there are differences, tastes vary. Go over to the Rosetta board and you will find posts that say "It's got to be medical science or it's not worth doing". Same thing - that cpu donor is expressing *his* personal priorities, not attacking ours or yours.
Of course, what really matters is saving the planet from rogue meteors. As soon as Orbit goes mainstream there will be no reason to support any other project. I hope I can express that opinion, which genuinely is my view, without offending people whose priorities differ. As I am sure Paul never meant to offend any SETI supporter.
River~~
~~gravywavy
RE: [Of course, what
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This I take it was with tonugue firmly in cheek. :)
Yes. No offense was intended. I manage to offend anyway, but it is not intended.
And Bill and River/gravywavy (I wish you would make up your mind ...) probably said it better than I did ... they usually do ... :)
RE: RE: [Of course, what
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watch where my credits go when orbit goes mainstream...
edit: & see my Orbit profile - not science but personallyfelt even more strongly than my interest in science.
River is my name; on this project gravywavy is my 'handle'. Like someone else uses 'Keck Computers' as a handle but sometimes signs his posts 'John'
R~~
~~gravywavy
Hi Bill, I am neutral on
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Hi Bill,
I am neutral on your first point (attitude of UCB) and strongly agree with your third (SETI being over-supplied with volunteers at present).
The utility of SETI may be indirect.
For example the discovery of the cosmic microwave background was made not by scientists (as we are using the term here) but by telecoms engineers who were testing a new design of microwave antenna. They found that their antenna was noisier than they thought it should be, and after a lot of false leads changed their mind and realised the noise was not from the electronics but truly extra-terrestrial.
One possible outcome of SETI is that they stumble across some astronomical object rather than an ETI. There is history for this.
When the first pulsar was discovered, at first it was ignored as being human-generated noise, until Jocelyn Bell noticed that it was fixed in the sky not fixed to the ground. While there was only one known pulsar, one theory was that it was a signal from LGM ('little green men') a deliberate 'hi folks we are here' signal. By the time three or four pulsars were discovered, in different directions in the sky, this became a less likely explanation - why would several alien civilisations all choose the same signalling method.
Likewise, the first thing SETI will do after finding a candidate signal that does not fit known astronomical objects should be to look for similar signals in other parts of the sky. If many over-similar candidates are found then SETI will have started a new branch of astronomy - a disappointment for *them* and a setback for their goals, goals but a free gift those of us who are interested in pure science.
It is of course therefore ironic that E@h is both using software that came out of the original SETI project (BOINC) and also using it to look for GW signals from objects once suspected of being ETI (pulsars).
And that links nicely with the one huge scientific benefit UCB / SETI have already had. Whatever the clusiness of UCB at talking to their own participants, what UCB have done is to create a tool for other branches of science to use, whether it be in screening results (E@h), theoretical modelling (Rosetta), or experimental design (LHC).
My taste remains to be involved closer to the science until we get Orbit online. But it is just as well that others in the past had differing tastes from mine, or E@h, Rosetta, and Orbit would all have been much further down the line.
R~~
~~gravywavy