Distributed computing lost its luster.

[VirtualLarry]

Don't know why, but I'm just a lot less interested in DC than I used to me. I missed the F@H race this past december, my quad-gpu rig sits unconnected in the corner (mostly due to lack of space, but I'm curious how much it would up my electric bill by).

The only regular cruncher that I have is an E2140 @ 2.8Ghz, that I leave running 24x7 for my magicjack. It runs the SoB classic client (never upgraded to the prime95 client).

I haven't checked my stats in months, although I used to be in 10th place for the team in SoB.

Anyone else feel this way? Do I just have the DC blahs? I bought parts to build more machines (for gaming too), but I haven't played any PC games in over two years, don't MMORPG anymore. I have been selling off the parts that I bought.

Thinking of selling my quad-GPU rig, maybe, even.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I think I know what you mean. I'm a lot less involved than I used to be, and I don't have a choice. It's hard to be excited about things you don't have time to do. I ahven't played a game on my machine in I don't know how long, even though I have a few new games. They are there when I get the time though.

On the other hand, I'm "blah" about a lot of things these days. Between trying to sleep, work, school, and the desperate attempt to act like I have a life, it's hard to give a damn about anything other than trying to sleep sometimes. And even that I'm failing at. LOL

For me, I can say that I love being apart of the community and talking to the folks here. Machines, electric bills, etc all don't matter--I keep coming back for the people. If you can't find the thing that does it for you... Then again, there is never anything wrong with taking a hiatus.

 

[dajeepster]

I think I know what you mean. I'm a lot less involved than I used to be, and I don't have a choice. It's hard to be excited about things you don't have time to do. I ahven't played a game on my machine in I don't know how long, even though I have a few new games. They are there when I get the time though.

On the other hand, I'm "blah" about a lot of things these days. Between trying to sleep, work, school, and the desperate attempt to act like I have a life, it's hard to give a damn about anything other than trying to sleep sometimes. And even that I'm failing at. LOL

For me, I can say that I love being apart of the community and talking to the folks here. Machines, electric bills, etc all don't matter--I keep coming back for the people. If you can't find the thing that does it for you... Then again, there is never anything wrong with taking a hiatus.

I second that... and i still come back.. i just don't say much

 

[rabrittain]

VirtualLarry, you seem like a nice enough guy -- so I am resisting the urge to say nasty, rude, and sarcastic things to you. Also, I'm mentally ill, and I have to be careful that my (twisted) sense of homor doesn't offend other people.

There have been times that my affection for distributed computing has been lower then at other times. It really picked up recently when Rudy Toody brought a few spare parts down from Seattle, and we were able to build a pretty nice quad cruncher. My enthusiasm has been renewed.

The economy isn't good and it has affected all of us. I identify with your concern regarding the power bill.

My best advice is for you to find a way to be able to afford the increase and put that quad gpu unit to work -- I would love to see the pictures. You may be really pleased with the numbers.

 

[Neurodog]

I'm feeling the same way. I'll be taking a break soon as the temp. goes up.

 

[petrusbroder]

DC has its ups and downs too. As have other areas in life.

Until the beginning of 2009 I was very active and quite enthusiastic abouty DC and stats and so on and I have been that from my start in december 2001.
Then something happened - all the stats became a burden, the expectations of my TeAm-mates were suddenly just somewhat too heavy to bear, until I realized, that it was my own expections, my own ambition. I almost quit crunching, sold my computers and ... but I continued crunching, not doing stats because ity was no fun ... Some times I feel that I have let down the team mates, but quite a few of them assure me that I did not. Now the fun is coming back; slowly, but it is. I'll probably never will do as much stats as I did before, but I will do them more or less.

I asked myself: why?
Well, I do not have an answer which is valid for all. One part is that it is quite a lot of work, and there may not be enough time. Stress in RL (work, family) contributed in my case a lot.

But one part is also the development in the DC-community. Quite a few of my really close friends are much less active now than they were before - and I miss them a lot. Some have disappeared totally. And it takes time to make new friends - and that has happened. Some "adversaries" have disapeared too, and it takes at least two to have some good exchanges of friendly banter in a forum. We also had a slump in activity in this forum, for some (small?) part due to my inactivity, but also due to the disappearence of other valued members. The change of a guard is not easy, a change of generation has quite some impact on productivity.

An othe part adding is the growth of DC. Whern I started we were some 100 000 crunchers around the globe, probably less. Now we more than 1.9 million, I think, and almost 5 million hosts. That takes a lot of growing pain. Then the nature of the teams has changed: quite a few do it for the competion, the stats, and less for the science. Now some teams have 10 - 20 thousand members - which was unthinkable before. Our team has less than 2000. Similar fate has hit many of the other "old teams": the Cows, Team Starfire (our old competitor), just to name two ...

One other point is the ease of BOINC. Before BOINC, and when BOINC was young, you needed a lot of skill and knowledge to run the applications, which often were "command line". There were switches, batch files, tweaks and twists. Now only Folding@home is such an application, and that one has grown very complicated --- if you want to squeese out the most. And because BOINC is so easy more people crunch ... which makes us more anonymous ...

So: to make it short: there are many causes for feeling the DC-blues. Some of the personal, some of them relational, others systemic.

I think we need challenges to get forward. Races among our selves but better against other teams. We need to mobilize the TeAm-spirit and we need to reconquer our self esteem as one of the nicest and best teams in this universe.

 

[filibusterman]

DC has its ups and downs too. As have other areas in life.

Until the beginning of 2009 I was very active and quite enthusiastic abouty DC and stats and so on and I have been that from my start in december 2001.
Then something happened - all the stats became a burden, the expectations of my TeAm-mates were suddenly just somewhat too heavy to bear, until I realized, that it was my own expections, my own ambition. I almost quit crunching, sold my computers and ... but I continued crunching, not doing stats because ity was no fun ... Some times I feel that I have let down the team mates, but quite a few of them assure me that I did not. Now the fun is coming back; slowly, but it is. I'll probably never will do as much stats as I did before, but I will do them more or less.

I asked myself: why?
Well, I do not have an answer which is valid for all. One part is that it is quite a lot of work, and there may not be enough time. Stress in RL (work, family) contributed in my case a lot.

But one part is also the development in the DC-community. Quite a few of my really close friends are much less active now than they were before - and I miss them a lot. Some have disappeared totally. And it takes time to make new friends - and that has happened. Some "adversaries" have disapeared too, and it takes at least two to have some good exchanges of friendly banter in a forum. We also had a slump in activity in this forum, for some (small?) part due to my inactivity, but also due to the disappearence of other valued members. The change of a guard is not easy, a change of generation has quite some impact on productivity.

An othe part adding is the growth of DC. Whern I started we were some 100 000 crunchers around the globe, probably less. Now we more than 1.9 million, I think, and almost 5 million hosts. That takes a lot of growing pain. Then the nature of the teams has changed: quite a few do it for the competion, the stats, and less for the science. Now some teams have 10 - 20 thousand members - which was unthinkable before. Our team has less than 2000. Similar fate has hit many of the other "old teams": the Cows, Team Starfire (our old competitor), just to name two ...

One other point is the ease of BOINC. Before BOINC, and when BOINC was young, you needed a lot of skill and knowledge to run the applications, which often were "command line". There were switches, batch files, tweaks and twists. Now only Folding@home is such an application, and that one has grown very complicated --- if you want to squeese out the most. And because BOINC is so easy more people crunch ... which makes us more anonymous ...

So: to make it short: there are many causes for feeling the DC-blues. Some of the personal, some of them relational, others systemic.

I think we need challenges to get forward. Races among our selves but better against other teams. We need to mobilize the TeAm-spirit and we need to reconquer our self esteem as one of the nicest and best teams in this universe.

That's the thing I love most about you Petrusbroder, I learn something new about dc and the TeAm every time you post!! Stay long enough and you will eventually become a mentor I suppose.

I think what could keep the flame alive would be random or relatively random announcements of short and sweet competitions. Also, maybe specific restrictions such as specific type of cpu or vid card ranges could add to competitions and mix things up a bit. I don't know if this has been done before as I am pretty new but to those who love competition, as I do, this seems like an intriguing concept.

 

[Jonesy_2010]

I am also very new to the DC community, but I wholeheartedly support the concept of friendly competition amongst team members. Maybe bracketed races by cpu/gpu quantity and type, or just by average ppd contributions of past stats.

Competition against other teams would be fun too, but would that be more difficult to organize? Also, someone who is not a DC all-star might feel less involved if the whole team was competing against another team of similar caliber, considering there are ~2000 TeAm members.

 

[petrusbroder]

Talking about competitions - there is a thread about strategy in PrimeGrid - and that is a nice project to compete in ... and some of those are short and tough ... When was the next one??

 

[Rudy Toody]

Maybe we could revive the belts! If we can figure out where they are!

That little challenge we had a while back on Ibercivis where everyone ran one quad was fun. We could do something like that again.

 

[PCTC2]

Petrus puts everything so well. But....

I think it's time for a TeAm BBQ. Grab your SO and revive some old friendships, and forge some new friendships with some of the newer guys. If a TeAm BBQ is too much to coordinate, then we should do regional BBQ's. Get you out of your house for a bit.

I think this is one of the last TeAms with some umppph in projects to have character and individuality. You still get to know the majority of the major players, and some of the minor guys, and just sometimes NEF. This forum just needs a little boost in interest, but the guys that have been here for years still come back. Sure, the forum is slow now, but maybe we can rev ourselves back up and do another challenge. I think I could afford a month or two soon. I know how most of you feel with the power bill. I can't afford to turn on the Farm but one or two months a year now.

Also, :beer;

We should update the ATDC members page and refresh things around here. I am volunteering my resources to host any pages (and domains) that could be used for a Active TeAm member page (like FMC's blog) and anything else you guys want. I have 3 root servers doing pretty much nothing now. PM me if you want.

 

[Ken g6]

Talking about competitions - there is a thread about strategy in PrimeGrid - and that is a nice project to compete in ... and some of those are short and tough ... When was the next one??

Peter...Beware the Ides of March!

Because that's when the next challenge is, March 15. (And bring a 64-bit OS if you really want to compete - the strategy thread has details.)

When I'm working hard, I find I don't have much time for DC. I've found that projects where I can improve their code tend to keep my interest level high. But that's not for everyone.

 

[petrusbroder]

LoL, I was thinking of Ceasar, Brutus and Antony ...

Yeah, I'll compete on some challenges - especially if it is a team race ...

 

[Wiz]

I miss Smokeball...

Greg, if you are listening you can call me anytime!

 

[petrusbroder]

... and Wolfraider ...
Mike, I know you are lurking around some times, as the real wolf, unseen but still there.

 

[RobertE]

For me, a lot of it is the results, or more specificly the lack of.

I'll use SETI as an example.

I'm fully aware that the odds of finding ET are crazy small. But, if you look at the issues that seti faces today and compare them to the issues faced 10 years ago, they are very very close to being the same issues. Granted, Rome wasn't built in a day, but come on. Same server side issues, same lack of developemnt in the app, same cries for lack of fund, etc, etc, etc. Where's the progress? The results?

For the most part, I've mainly been doing Rosetta & Einstein. Those I can see the results. I can see the progression of the rosetta app and how it aids in prediction. With Einstein, I can see that detects pulsars and such. Others, not so much.

Show my some progress & results, and I'll do what I can. Blow me off (Orbit I'm looking at you) and you won't see a single cpu cycle.

 

[biodoc]

For me, I can say that I love being apart of the community and talking to the folks here. Machines, electric bills, etc all don't matter--I keep coming back for the people. If you can't find the thing that does it for you... Then again, there is never anything wrong with taking a hiatus.

This is what brought me back last year after a few months off.

I do like the competition though, especially Team type races. I don't mind keeping stats for short term races, etc.

I DO confess to being a total Stats/ppd addict! I limit myself to 3 rigs as a control for this addiction and to reduce power consumption.

The science is important to me too on a few projects, but I'll crunch any project if there is a race or team goal involved. Another exception to the latter is ppd. I got a couple of Radeon HD4870s for $124 each and they are cranking out 80K ppd each on MilkyWay!!

 

[Assimilator1]

I don't have as much spare time to come here as I used to, but I'm also less enthusiastic about DC than I used to be. The lack of interest in my SETI BOINC benchmarking threads a few years ago added to that.
And ironically even though TA SETI still has the biggest number of active crunchers it has the least chatter about it . So once I've hit ~2 million points in SETI I shall be switching my main rig to F@H on a semi-permanent basis for some time (I had originally planned to stay with SETI for much longer), with probably some DPAD on occasions . Although the lack of progress reports & sporadic support from DPAD itself has been somewhat off putting.
Most of my remote crunchers will remain on SETI though.

But I still love a good race (even though I forgot about the recent F@H race! ), & I still checkout my stats daily.

Petrus
You forgot that DPAD is commandline too , although it's easier to setup as you know.

 

[petrusbroder]

Yeah, but DPAD also runs on BOINC (as one of the projects included in YoYo@home) - and I love that one too.
Command line DPAD is quite efficient on older computers (I have a celeron and two PIII running) and it contributes approx 150K each 10 days ... that is good enough, since the PIII are laptops which use less than 30W/h (approx 32 US$/year) each for approx 5 million points/year.

 

[SemperFi]

I signed up for folding about 6 years ago. Probably checked my stats a couple of dozen times over the years. For me it isn't about the stats, just doing my part to help. While my computer runs 24/7 might as well do something good. I remember getting my first dual core processor and running 2 instances of folding. I do remember a couple of years ago checking my stats on the DC forum here. I remember you and I being real close in the standings for a while. My folding name is jtmiller.

Back in December I finally got the multi core up and running thanks to gleem. Seems like I passed your a$$ "virtualLarry" a couple of months ago. Back in December I was around 400,000 points. I have several computers crunching and I have been checking stats once a week or so. I should pass 750,000 points later this week and should break into the anandtech top 100 in another couple weeks. It's still not about the stats for me but it has been cool to see me double in 3 months what took 6 years to achieve. I guess it is all in what you want.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Seems like I passed your a$$ "virtualLarry" a couple of months ago. Back in December I was around 400,000 points. I have several computers crunching and I have been checking stats once a week or so. I should pass 750,000 points later this week and should break into the anandtech top 100 in another couple weeks. It's still not about the stats for me but it has been cool to see me double in 3 months what took 6 years to achieve. I guess it is all in what you want.

hehe. Are you talking about my F@H stats, or my SoB stats? I only had my F@H cruncher running for a few months, so I'm not surprised that you passed it. Maybe if I turn it on again, I can catch up? Hmm.

 

[Insidious]

BOINC ruined most of it for me.

Little project loyalty
Little sense of TeAm
No singularity of purpose

Just people changing projects every week looking for one benchmark or another....

Everything just so watered down, diluted.....





And I got even older....

But I will still check in November to see if F@H will have it's race.

-Sid

 

[Crazee]

Well I don't think one thing did it for me. The main thing has been that my life has gotten much busier with kids and other things, but I think way the scoring changed making it harder to have inter team races, etc. I remember Ohiodude's races in Seti Classic and everyone wanting to be a part of it. Also the mini-team races and the big team races with BBR. Those were fun times.

 

[Pokey]

yep, Seti Classic did get the juices going didn't it............. :thumbsup:

I'm missing the Dec FAH race already............

 

[wischeez]

I miss Smokeball...

Greg, if you are listening you can call me anytime!

... and Wolfraider ...
Mike, I know you are lurking around some times, as the real wolf, unseen but still there.

I also miss talking to both of them. Smoke got me into doing SETI Classic, and Wolfsraider and I ended up being friends and chatting all the time.