Posts by Pofi

1) Message boards : News : NSF funds new model for BOINC (Message 78806)
Posted 8 Jun 2017 by Pofi
Post:
First of all:
Smart phones may have free cycles, but they already have, at best, enough battery to last through the workday. Using their free cycles is not going to make anyone happy.
Second:
Yes, people are motivated by science goals, not credit, that seems like a very fair statement, BUT... The key point here is that they're motivated by concrete goals. Here's an example:

I'm very much interested in space and our universe, as such im in LHC@Home and Cosmology@Home. Now this is all good, if i selected my goals then your algorithm would likely donate my computing power to those two along with other things. Problem here though is that I don't actually want to donate ANY of my cycles to other projects. Lets take Milkyway@Home as an example (this will be a long example, sorry for that, but i hope it clears up the thought process here). I loved Milkyway@Home description, all keywords match, even goal is great, etc. After searching through their site though - it appears that their "Science" page which is meant to explain what calculations they're performing is incredibly outdated. To the point that there's a quote in there about a paper 'to be published soon in 2013'. The only other link they have there is to their YouTube page, which unsurprisingly has about 6-8 very short very seemingly low quality/scale simulations that I'm certain my computer alone could simulate in real-time. All those videos are 3+ years old. After that the only posts from the project are random nonsense and self-praise for the " only black girl that got a degree in [somthing bla bla] at our university". This is NOT what i care about. I don't want to give a single cycle to people who try to sell themselves through some cheap advertisements and give no apparent results. Speaking of the results and goal. Their description is "Milkyway@Home uses the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources, creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy". There is no three dimensional model that i can find anywhere, maybe it's not accessible, maybe not complete, maybe not even visual, but either way there does not seem to be any relevant communication from the projects owners. Anyways, enough rambling.

Most importantly:

My point here is that volunteering is like donating. I may support a certain cause, but not all organizations that claim to work towards it. I like technology, but i don't support Apple, i simply don't like their products. Same applies to science, I might have scientific goals in mind, but that does not in any way mean that I will give my cpu cycles to any organization that happens to relate to my interests. I hope this makes everyone's view a bit clearer.




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