Horvat
No answer but one from 70 viewers. That pretty much says it all. And you all wonder why you are going to lose your number one status.
I didn't post anything because you expressed your own opinion, and while I completely disagree with it there isn't anything I can say that would suddenly make someone that apparently feels so strongly about this issue change their mind.
I have to agree with a few of the others here that said Stanford / Pande Group could have and I believe should have done a much, much better job organizing, then managing the huge resource that people have given them to put to scientific endeavors out of the goodness of their own hearts, and whom also have to "give" more out of their wallets to pay for the electricity costs to run their equipment. Too many of their forum mods come across as abrasive or even rude, however unintentional or intentional it may be. Yet some of the scientists in the same forum I've briefly traded posts with were nothing but courteous and pleasant to chat with.
It is easy to read into things too far, and that's where my difference of opinion begins. On one hand early return bonuses were needed to help insure the right people were folding the right projects best suited for their particular machine, and it was another way to reward those that frequently return the WU's in a timely fashion. When bigadv started back in 2006, Pande Group was pretty unhappy quad-core systems were running projects designed for eight+ core systems. Although a highly overclocked Core i7 920 could turn in projects competitively with AMD systems, there were almost as many regular people already trying and failing to even complete bigadv projects before the final deadline. I'd see them posting in the Pande forum asking where their points went, or why they never got bonus points all the time.
Frankly 5-6 years is a hell of a long time in the computer industry. I feel they had to change the bigadv project to keep the idea current because these days almost any system capable of folding could run them and that wasn't what these projects were about. Regular clients & projects exist for a reason, the entire Folding@home system is not about Bigadv. So the line had to be drawn in the sand somewhere, and regardless of where there are always going to be people that get the short end of the stick. It's unfortunate, and it definitely sucks, but there isn't any other way to do it. They had to update the bigadv requirements to fit the times, and they chose what they think best helps the project as a whole.
As for your number one status comment, being spiteful won't get you anywhere. I have been a member of more than a few Folding teams since 2003 long before bigadv even existed, and I helped revive one dead team that was at the bottom of the entire pile and bring it back to life directly. When I joined them in 2006 they were ranked 503 and had 3 people even turning in projects. Today that team is ranked 57 and is still going strong even without me. Folding for points makes it fun and keeps the competitive folk like me tuning their machines for best performance, but the F@H project ultimately isn't about points, or ranking, or even EVGA bucks. It's about donating some computer power to a good cause that ultimately benefits everyone. Bigadv was always supposed to be just a small portion of the F@H workload, not the largest slice of it. They had to make changes to maintain the integrity of the project, and some people were just going to get the short end of the stick. It doesn't matter if you donate your computer power to F@H or some other distributed computing project that aims to figure out and cure some disease, it's all for a good cause. As long as you're still crunching something for a good cause and happy doing so, then that's what matters.
<message edited by kougar on Tuesday, May 08, 2012 4:36 PM>