| Info | Message |
|---|---|
| 21) Message boards : Questions and problems : What is BOINC -- Software or Middleware?
Message 83706 Posted 8 Dec 2017 by jringo |
If you had to choose 1, what would you choose? Or is it different for each project, and if so, should it be called software for umbrella purposes? Or other? Computing Management System CMS SCaDeS - scientific calculations deployment system BOINC is a software platform for volunteer computing. It includes client, server, and web components, and APIs for connecting other components. -BOINC website The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced /bɔɪŋk/ – rhymes with "oink"[2]), an open-source middleware system, supports volunteer and grid computing.[3] -BOINC wiki Thanks! |
| 22) Message boards : The Lounge : Recent Gridcoin Developments
Message 83199 Posted 24 Nov 2017 by jringo |
We're moving forward! Check out the latest progress report and audio recording here: https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@jringo/gridcoin-research-4-0-2018-roadmap-progress-report-and-november-18th-discussion-recording |
| 23) Message boards : The Lounge : Recent Gridcoin Developments
Message 82724 Posted 7 Nov 2017 by jringo |
We're chugging along getting our codebase and backend processes in order. Expect the release of an updated whitepaper, mission, and vision for Gridcoin to coincide with the release of the Gridcoin 2018 Roadmap. Now's your chance to get your thoughts regarding Gridcoin into the conversations which will define the coming years of development! For science! To get started, here is the springboard for the discussions which will inform our 2018 roadmap. Original Article: https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@jringo/gridcoin-research-4-0-proposals-and-preliminary-polls Other resources including links to edited recordings of our discussions: https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@jringo/gridcoin-4-0-roadmap-edited-discussion-november-4th Please feel free to reach out if you would like to get involved! -j |
| 24) Message boards : The Lounge : Hello! An introduction to a new contributor: Me.
Message 80731 Posted 3 Sep 2017 by jringo |
I hope to become a more active contributor to BOINC development, so I thought a quick introduction might be nice = ) I grew up in a medical practice and research environment -- Many people I looked up to growing up worked, successfully I might add, at the medical research university near me, or running their own practice. I remember my parents having the SETI screensaver. That is my first experience with that idea that would evolve into BOINC, and also an indicator of my age. Yes, I am a late 20 something full of hope and dreams and some might say, inexperience. I am also on the board of an investment company (since ~2013) which focuses on building communities in my city, and I personally own and run a second (since ~2010) which is researching how to use existing and future technologies to reduce the cost of living for those renting their homes (ideally, to 0). I am also developing a modular vertical farming system. If anyone is interested in any of these topics and wants to chat please feel free to reach out. They are parts of what I love to do and am always happy to explore ideas and discussions. Another passion of mine is science and the technology behind it. After all, I am currently using physical technology to develop a way to feed people by using the idle space potential (empty warehouses, etc.) which already exists in the world. In terms of decentralized housing ownership, I am looking into blockchain technology. WAIT! Don't run just yet. I understand there is a stigma related to blockchain technology. Give me the chance to explain that stigma, please. Most people see "Blockchain" and think "Bitcoin" or "cryptocurrency." This is akin to how many people see "Climate Change" and think "Global Warming" and then become confused when told that climate change means climate change, not global warming. Bitcoin and other coins called cryptocurrencies play a noncritical role within the blockchain technology and ecosystem. A blockchain is simply a shared ledger of any type of digital information. This ledger is held by those who use the ledger instead of by a centralized 3rd party institution, such as Visa, Mastercard, a hospital, or in the case of housing, the city authority. Imagine a world where patients have access to their own medical records, can see at any time the changes made to these records, and can transfer them at the push of a button to another medical professional (instead of having to call and have documents faxed/e-mailed over or instead of relying on a 3rd party holder and distributor of medical records). This structure of an open and shared ledger creates opportunities which would otherwise never exist due to bureaucratic idiosyncrasies -- consider shared community ownership of a house. As this ledger is secured by running a computer on a network (much like grid computing), it costs energy to maintain. Energy, with its current production model and delivery infrastructure, costs money to use. For this reason, Satoshi Nakamoto created an incentive structure which encourages people to use energy in order to secure the blockchain. This incentive structure can be built out of any material and in any way, or, most importantly, left out completely. Nakamoto explains this in the bitcoin whitepaper, along with several other aspects of blockchain technology which have become lost in the deluge of money unleashed into the blockchain ecosystem since 2014. So, how do I plan to contribute to BOINC? There are dozens of ways to use the blockchain to create a dynamic ecosystem in which BOINC users give value to a project based on which project resonates best with them. In other words, the project which is best able to educate and convince users of its real world value would attract the most Idle Processing Potential to its work. In the coming months, I look forward to exploring with all of you as many of these possibilities as possible, along with the possible benefits and dangers of an added incentive structure. How do I currently contribute to BOINC? Like it or not, Gridcoin has brought a massive volume of processing power to BOINC. Yes, there have been hiccups, untowardly projects and people, and arguments between community members, but for the most part, Gridcoin has gone undeveloped for several years and still contributes massive volumes of processing to BOINC projects. I got involved with Gridcoin back when it was released, but only recently became an active contributor to the project. My personal goal, and I think this is a goal shared among much of the Gridcoin community, is to clarify our purpose, our drive. Do we exist to profit off of BOINC and the blockchain? Or are we here to help BOINC, and volunteer based grid computing in general, break into the mainstream and explore how to utilize the rapid development of The Internet of Things? There are several visions regarding our purpose among the Gridcoin community. I hope to make a post containing my vision sometime in the coming days. To spark the discussion around our purpose, I have begun or contributed to campaigns seeking to update the website, whitepaper, and governance structure of Gridcoin. My latest contribution is updating the copy on the index page of our website. I have also rewritten and updated the "Introduction" section of our whitepaper. I continue to add to both the website and the whitepaper. Governance is a much larger issue. The recent, in my opinion productive, release of Governance/Contribution drafts for BOINC have forced me back to the drawing board... again and for the better. Should you want to glimpse my vision before I put it in detail, you can also find some of my writing on the community forum "steemit", but as much of that writing is meant to spark discussion as opposed to production, it might not be the best and most detailed/properly edited version of what I have written. If you would like to learn more about what I am thinking, it would be better to PM me or to respond on the BOINC forum or on Github should I post a proposal on there. Thank you for taking the time to read my little introduction and I look forward to enlightening and productive discussions focusing on making BOINC more accessible to researchers, universities, schools and teachers, and volunteers. You can find my updated website copy at: www.gridcoin.us (work in progress) You can find my writing in the Gridcoin whitepaper in the “Introduction” section at: https://github.com/gridcoin-community/Whitepaper/blob/master/gridcoin-research-whitepaper.pdf (work in progress) My steemit blog can be found at: https://steemit.com/@jringo The Blockchain Whitepaper can be found at: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Only steemit posts on my blog that don't say "resteemed" in gray letters above them are written by me. The whitepaper section I have updated is only "Introduction", the rest is under production by several contributors including myself. |
| 25) Message boards : Projects : For the betterment of BOINC
Message 79797 Posted 26 Jul 2017 by jringo |
Hi there, long time user, first time caller. I have been a Gridcoin participant since 2013/2014 and am beyond excited for all the upgrades coming to both Gridcoin and BOINC. I have some input I'd like to share. First, I want to explain why Gridcoin is not something that should be feared by the BOINC community. Please do not take it as an advertisement. I simply feel there is a lot of hesitation regarding using Gridcoin with BOINC and would like to address that hesitation. WHAT IS GRIDCOIN Gridcoin is a transparent, decentralized community which has developed a blockchain based incentive and reward structure for distributed processing via BOINC. Gridcoin developed a Distributed Proof of Research protocol (DPoR), also known as Proof of BOINC (PoB). DPoR rewards those contributing their processing power to BOINC projects with GRC. This uses a decentralized currency to incentivize the decentralized processing of the troves of data collected and created every day -- from scientific, to mathematics, to social, to political. It encourages the creation of more BOINC projects. It encourages investment in processing hardware. It encourages the expansion of BOINC itself. Gridcoin is a good thing for BOINC, and we need input from users who are against it so we can make it the best it can be because like it or not, we're not going anywhere. SOCIAL MEDIA In terms of adding social media to the BOINC client in the way described by CM, I believe that this will do far more harm than good. Social media, while at one time useful, is now commonly known as an echo-chamber. It does nothing but verify a user's own beliefs. It also does nothing to produce meaningful interactions. Just look around at the quantity of content on redd/steem-it (or Facebook, if you dare) and look for good quality. It is rare. Telegram in particular is destructive (a troll box) unless it is a closed channel where only admins can speak -- but this isn't social media anymore, it's a media outlet. SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE Instead of using social media, I propose that a Social Infrastructure be built into BOINC. For inspiration and example, I will look at three programs which people already leave running all day: Steem/Reddit Spotify Blizzard The entities behind these programs developed in client identifying, messaging, and interaction UX infrastructures which have been critical to the success of their product. Steem/reddit, while difficult to sort through in general, allows users to post and follow content which is judged by the community and voted on by each individual: What if BOINC had a semi-regulated process for submitting content to a BOINC home page? This content would then be "upvoted" or "downvoted" by the community. I envision this infrastructure as making visible content from project leaders and very active community members. Spotify can make playlists -- What if BOINC had some sort of playlist with the aggregated stats of the projects a user is working on? That data could then be shared with friends,family, or made public. Spotify also lets users "follow" those they deem worth following. What if BOINC did the same? -- A user is notified if someone they follow posts an article, shares a project they're working on, shares hardware info, etc. Blizzard lets you form parties, clans, make favorite users -- What if BOINC let users make and dismantle teams with ease? What if BOINC let users favorite those who do spread quality information? Overall, I think the best improvement would be a switch from inter-team competition to inter-user competition -- something similar to Blizzard, Steam, and most other wildly successful games: You "level up" as a user instead of competing for RAC among teams. This mitigates the "Mob Mentality" of team sports while still encouraging the formation of teams to complete objectives. Which brings me to my last suggestion: instead of team competitions, what if BOINC ran simple objectives, much like most successful games that already exist? These objectives could be completed as a single user, but are easier to complete if you join a team or a party. After the completion of the objective, a user either leaves the team or party, stays in the team or party, or leaves the team or party but has made some new friends from the endeavor. Finally, I think it is important to recognize that BOINC is currently a platform of enthusiasts. Look at the number of people signed up vs. the number of active participants. The gap between those numbers means that average users get BOINC set up and find it too much of a hassle to continue using. If we want to change this, something like this TBD project is required. Once we begin to retain non-enthusiasts, the overall atmosphere of BOINC is going to change. The space for enthusiasts will never go away, but overall, enthusiasts will become the honored minority. This seems to be inevitable. Each of us has to choose how we are going to react to the coming change. Personally, I can't wait and would love to help in any way I can. Anyone, please feel free to reach out to me to challenge these ideas or to discuss other ideas you are considering. Thank you for taking the time! -j |
Copyright © 2025 University of California.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.