That's good info - thanks.


Right, and that's fine. I guess what I'm talking about is not sanctioning/advertising for projects with intentions that don't meet certain standards. Maybe it would be a good idea to have some sort of charter for those standards, as a previous poster suggested. Or does BOINC have one already?


And again, people are totally free to do that. But without being listed on the official BOINC site and major stats sites, I doubt that kind of traffic would amount to much, and it would be difficult to corrupt the main system.

That and the news. Eternity was listed there...

You don't appear to be listening. There are no "powers".



Each stat site (being completely independent of BOINC) chooses which projects to list.

Sure, Willy could choose to exclude certain projects. It is completely up to him, and no one else.

However, it would be counter-productive, IMO. He needs traffic to fund the site. If he excludes projects, people will go elsewhere to get their stats.

Oh, I'm listening very closely, so let's ease up on the condescending tone down a bit, shall we? I'm just disagreeing with what you're saying, and I said so in my last response to you. I think there clearly ARE powers - Willy being one of many. He and others have the power to exclude projects from getting exposure. Yes, as POV said, anyone can start a project - but a project with no exposure isn't going anywhere. THAT is power, in my book.



Says you. If Willy wants to help preserve the integrity of BOINC and maintain long-term participation, then I think it would be highly productive for him to keep out whatever he deems to be detrimental to the system as a whole. And all ass-kissing aside, I think this is the premier stats site, so I don't think many will be running to other sites just for having lost eternity in the project list.

To quote from the BOINC projects page:

"When you participate in a project, you entrust it with the health of your computer and the privacy of your data. In deciding whether to participate in a project, read its web site and consider the following questions:

* Does it clearly describe its goals, and are these goals important and beneficial?
* Do you trust that its applications won't damage your computer or violate your privacy?
* Do you trust it to use proper security practices on its servers?
* Who owns the results of the computation? Will they be freely available to the public or will they belong to a for-profit business?"

[emphasis mine]

I don't see anything in there about jackpots or terrorist activities. Yes, people can join whatever they want. But I think it might be somewhat of a responsibility of the stat site admins to uphold the principles that BOINC has laid out. Whether they actually do that or not is their call.

No, BOINC hasn't expressly forbidden anything here, but is it really wise to have NO standards for inclusion? Really? I'm just saying I think it devalues the whole system to let any and every project that comes along looking to make a buck to be given the same ideological status as projects whose intentions are primarily to benefit the greater good or contribute to academia. Site admins will do what they want, and they may not give a damn about my opinions on all this. But I hope they would at least consider the question for themselves before opening the floodgates to anyone who comes along looking to exploit the system.

Willy decided not to add Belgian Beer@Home to stats because they're wasting CPU cycles with tests and not doing any real work. How many people have you seen asking why it's not there? A few, not really many. Was the project added after that? Nope. Did people drop BOINCstats and go to other stats sites because of that? I really doubt it.

Sure Eternity.net may get more "famous" than Belgian Beer, but still, each stats site admin can choose what projects he wants to add or not.

I have no problem with this project listed here, but it is not good that you can attach to the project via BAM! that easily.

I think that some users of BAM! will just attach to it, without reading this thread or the project's homepage. And then they'll start wondering why they don't get any workunit. Then they'll read that they have to buy that puzzle game and after that they'll end up as a "zero-credit-forever" participant of that project.

So it would be great if there was some kind of note included in the sign-up list or if the create account box was greyed out.

Yes, that is what I said. Willy decides which projects are on his web site. That is clear to everyone.

When I said there are "no powers", it was in response to your statement "If the project is deemed to be an abuse of the system and not for the common good, then I personally feel that the "powers" that be have a right to restrict projects from participating." I'll say it again, there are no powers that be, with the ability or the authority to do any such thing.

There is the BOINC SW development team (funded by the US government)

There are the Projects.

There are the stat sites.

All are completely independent. None have any say over any of the others. There is no central control of any kind. It's like OpenOffice.org. They provide a SW tool. They have no control over what you decide to do with it. Same thing here. (However, if there is any illegal activity, then the governments are obligated to enforce their laws. But that is not what we are talking about here.)



And that is because there is no such person or group called "BOINC", to do any kind of forbidding/allowing.

Right, the "powers" I was referring to at that point (at least in my own head) are the stat site admins and, apparently, this David Anderson chap. Sorry for the confusion. Point taken. I think a lot of the restriction, via lack of exposure, could take place there. I know you don't agree with that - I'm just saying that's what I meant.

@POV: Good point about BelgianBeer - a perfect example of what I'm talking about as far as Willy's right to restrict, and I don't think many are crying in their beer (pun intended) over it.

For myself, I've hashed this out enough, and there are clearly differing opinions, which is great. The debate is healthy and, I think, needs to be had. IMO eternity is the beginning of a very slippery slope for future projects and whether they bring value or not. But it's all up to the admins. Or perhaps, in the interest of democracy, we put it up for a vote, and then let Willy decide based on the numbers? Any way you slice it, it seems to me that eternity is a fool's project.

Dr David Anderson came to England and spoke at a CPDN Open Day in Oxford 3 summers ago. At that time I knew almost nothing about boinc, so at the end of his talk I asked 'How is boinc funded?'. I can't remember all the details of his answer - I'd need to find the recording of the talks - but essentially he said by the National Science Foundation and elaborated on this. I think he said the money ultimately comes from the US Congress. Anyway, I asked 'You mean that the US government funds the running of boinc?', to which he answered 'Yes'.

As far as I know the boinc software is available for anyone to freely download and use. Assuming that this is the case, the software has already been released into the wild and any use, including nefarious use, could be made of it perhaps without the public ever knowing.

But the issue here is which project links are included on the boinc website. The inclusion of a link implies a certain level of approval or permission. The same links are frequently copied to project and team websites, and reach a wide audience.

The boinc website doesn't write itself. As far as I know, there are paid members of core boinc staff in Berkeley (as well as large numbers of volunteers who contribute to everything).

I cannot imagine that the US Congress or the National Science Foundation would be so enthusiastic or generous about funding boinc if it thought that part of the annual contribution was being used to support a gambling enterprise. The funds come of course from US taxpayers.

I imagine that the security of future funding depends on the good reputation of boinc. The reputation of boinc depends on a) the certainty that boinc itself will not damage computer hardware or software and b) the reputations of the projects using it as a platform.

If anything I have said is not entirely accurate, I welcome corrections and clarifications.

Hmmm....that adds a whole new angle to the debate about eternity. Perhaps the entire future of BOINC rests on preserving its integrity? Are we really willing to risk this wonderful system for junk projects like eternity? Really?

I don't suppose that anyone at boinc in Berkeley has given any real thought to this. But the funding is there at the bottom of the boinc main page:

http://boinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/

On the same page one sees the inclusion of this project in the boinc news and announcements, which to me constitutes an endorsement. I also wonder how enthusiastic the University of California would be about this sort of project.

On the other hand, on the boinc 'Choosing projects' page, it is clearly stated that none of the projects are endorsed by boinc or UC Berkeley. Crunchers are warned to investigate projects before attaching to them:

http://boinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/projects.php

On one of the CPDN forums we investigated Christopher Monckton's ideas some time ago when he published some real rubbish about climate change:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

Some crunchers may of course hope that by solving Eternity2 even more quickly than Eternity, they may be able to force the Viscount to sell another stately home to pay the prize money:

http://showcase.posiweb.net/property/editorial_main_article_01.html

My advice to anyone considering buying the game and crunching this project would be to first read some background information on the Viscount provided by Peter Tatchell who is a prominent gay rights activist in the UK. They could then decide whether Monckton would be a worthy recipient of their money:

http://www.petertatchell.net/discrimination/boycott.htm

The entire situation is preposterous. Boinc in Berkeley can't stop their software being used for this, but they certainly shouldn't be effectively advertising this project on their front page.

After using Wate and Predictor as the subjects of my April 1 post this year, I was idly wondering the other day whether such rich material would ever present itself again. Here it is, on a silver platter.

Mo

Hi

To clarify the tax payers of the United States pay for it . The government has no money that it earns by producing things of value,

thank you

As a taxpayer I would appreciate if Willy kicks this, lets not name it project, out of Boincstats.
Other stuff is way more important than this Eternity scam.

I agree. Taxpayers in every country hope that their contributions to public funds will be distributed and used for the common good.

In addition, in view of the need to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions, I don't think that anyone involved with boinc should be encouraging crunching for projects or workunits with no positive value (except perhaps the financial gain of two crunchers and the funding of the Viscount's lifestyle).

In a day or two I may email David Anderson and Rom Walton in Berkeley with links to this thread and the one on the boinc_dev forum so that they have a chance to read crunchers' concerns.

Exactly. They aren't in the business of screening projects. If the developers were to start screening projects, they would open themselves to legal action.

Their job is to develop the SW, and put it out there for use by *anyone*. And so long as that "anyone" follow the laws, there is no recourse for the government (or anyone else for that matter) to take action of any kind, other than perhaps removing funding.

You say "other than perhaps removing funding" like it's trivial! I'd say that's the ultimate recourse, and one I'm not willing to risk. And I doubt many would be, just for the sake of some silly gambling venture. The U.S. government's funding priorities are extremely fickle, as I'm sure you know, so why tempt fate by allowing garbage to pollute an otherwise admirable cause? If they remove funding, then we ALL lose, and so does humanity. And BTW, you mentioned in an earlier post that there are "no powers." I'd say the people holding the purse strings have PLENTY of power to end this whole project. I can just see the headline now: U.S. GOVERNMENT UNWITTINGLY FUNDING GAMBLING ENTERPRISE. For the sake of PR, I think it would take about 6 minutes for some publicity-hungry politician to take this on as their pet cause and move to terminate the whole project, regardless of the benefits that may be coming out of it. We all know politics is completely irrational at times, and often primarily reacting to sound bytes. So if you're really saying that eternity is worth risking the entire future of BOINC, then I think that position is completely untenable.

I'm not saying that at all.

I am saying that the BOINC developers have no choice in the matter. It's an all-or-nothing deal.

(paraphrasing)

"Here is the money to develop BOINC, with the requirement that it is put into the public domain (open source) for anyone's use."

Now, if the BOINC developers were to try to limit who has access to that publicly funded SW, it would likely result in law suits against the developers, and removal of funding. The end result would probably as BOINC development getting shut down. Do you want that?

Just FYI: Reference of BOINC (originally BIDC) funding:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0221529
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0438443
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0506411

Boinc is, as you say, already in the public domain and its creators and developers have no choice about which projects use it because it's a freely-available platform. That was David Anderson's original vision and he has implemented it. Most of us are glad that he did things this way and grateful to the National Science Foundation for funding the development.

What many of us object to is boinc offering this dubious new project free publicity in the news blog of its front web page.

From what Carl (one of the cpdn programmers and developers) has said in a thread on the same subject of the Eternity project on the boinc_dev forum here, graduate students are already setting up small boinc projects to get data for their research crunched.

Have we ever seen any of these student projects publicized on the boinc front page in the news blog? Never. I cannot recall a single one.

So boinc can choose what to include in its news thread and what to exclude. To that extent, inclusion of the Eternity announcement looks like an encouragement to crunch. This is what many of us object to.

And they remove Eternity from BOINC official website news? Sounds good to me.

Technical note: gotta be careful to avoid shifting all following news' IDs, that causes problems with the RSS feed and especially Willy would hate that.

Sure, and I have no argument with that. IMO, the developers should be able to exclude them from the web site listing if they so choose.

*But* I can see real trouble if one of the excluded sites demanded to be included. I am not a lawyer, but I bet they could force it since the servers are probably also funded with the same money from the NSF, and they may be required to provide equal access. I would not want to be in David Anderson's shoes. It's a no-win situation.

In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the early days of the internet. When the first for-profit sites started popping up, folks on USENET were up in arms about how the altruistic internet shouldn't allow that kind of stuff, and it would doom the internet. Sure there is a lot of SPAM and p0rn now, but the benefits have been ginormous.

That's all I was saying. I totally understand that you can't prevent BOINC from being used by whomever. And maybe there are legal implications to restricting projects from getting exposure, but I don't think that should deter admins from making judgment calls on what's beneficial to humanity and what's clearly not. The flip side of that question is, just because someone develops a "project" for BOINC, does that mean they have an inalienable right to free exposure? I think not, especially if they're not complying with the admittedly loose guidelines BOINC has set forth.

Just as you say, the Internet has turned into a huge medium for some seedy purposes, and a similar fate might await BOINC if unchallenged. But technically the U.S. government doesn't really "fund" (i.e., control) the entire Internet. If it does in fact fund BOINC, then wouldn't it then be up to the government's designees (I'm thinking of David Anderson and company here) to decide what's worthy? Just as the government can say they don't want DoD computers being used to download porn, can't they say the same for their BOINC system (from an advertising/exposure standpoint - NOT a usage standpoint - please let's not go there again)? Maybe a formal standard for what's worthy of inclusion needs to be put together by BOINC, to be followed voluntarily or not by sites like BOINCstats. I still think site admins should be free to decide this, since they own their respective sites. And I think it would be very difficult for someone to sue Willy for not including their project. If that were the case, what's next? Paris Hilton sues CNN for failing to broadcast a story about her that would've given her some good publicity?? Just as news organizations have the right to restrict content that is un-newsworthy, I think stat site admins should have the right to deny exposure to projects that they deem un-BOINC-worthy.

Okay, I think I see where the confusion is coming from. When I say "BOINC developer", I am *not* talking about stat sites (BOINCstats), *nor* am I talking about the various project sites (SETI@Home). Those sites can do whatever they want (within their own rules and laws).

When I talked about the potential for getting sued, I *am* talking about the BOINC site. That site is funded by the NSF (US government). If someone were to complain about various projects not getting equal access/listing/exposure/whatever at that site, I think the likely outcome would be that all references to any projects would be removed. Doing anything less would be an easy target for litigation.

As I said before, judging by what Carl said on the boinc_dev thread, there appear to be boinc projects that are never ever mentioned on the boinc front page in the news blog. Eg students' research projects. I don't see how boinc, being independent from the projects, can be under any obligation to mention any of them.

And on the boinc website page listing projects, by no means all are listed. I think they only include the projects whose workunits they reckon run stably. So the people at boinc already make judgments about projects (fortunately for newbies) and are already selective.

They know as well as we do that whatever caveats they print about the projects being independent etc, the inclusion of a project on the boinc web pages will encourage people to crunch it.

But I think they now need to start applying wider criteria than just the stability and availability of projects' workunits.

Maybe, although the gov't has deep pockets and busloads of lawyers, so I'm not sure a project would really want to take on that kind of battle. I'm having a hard time visualizing them caving to something like that, and I think on principle the gov't would have a very good case: our system, our rules. Just in the same way they can turn down requests for NSF grants based on whatever criteria they feel like, I don't think they'd have a hard time "booting" a sketchy project like a gambling enterprise from being sanctioned/recommended/advertised by BOINC. I could be wrong, but that's for the lawyers to decide (hopefully it never comes to that).

So it sounds like we at least partly agree then, in that Willy et al should be able to do as they please as far as including and excluding projects.

Absolutely. I said exactly that back on the 25th. However, I said even earlier that I thought all projects should be listed. All IMO, of course. Willy can (and does) do what ever he wants. There are already two projects I participate in that are not listed on BOINCstats, at least not yet.