Ok, you are back from vacation, did an upgrade, and will have the halting problem and checkpoint interval reduction done by Friday ... so ... what have you done for us lately? :)

Anyway, the server upgrade is cool, but, while you were away, two questions came up that I was told I had to wait till you were back to get an answer ...

1) Work Unit Name, we have a nice Wiki Entry to explain the elements. It would be nice to have the correct explanation for yours ...

2) We have a table with the configuration parameters for a couple of projects that it would be nice to enhance for Rosetta@Home. Can I get the current values?

3) We also have a huge number of interesting nuggets of information from CPDN (as provided by Chris Randles) and it would be nice to start to gather them for Rosetta@Home ... see:

http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Climateprediction.net
http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Climateprediction_Size_Table

4) You can also see additional information in guides like: http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Choosing_a_BOINC_Powered_Project

Ok, I lied ... 4 questions ...

---

Okay let me try to answer these.

halting problem and checkpoint interval reduction fixed by Friday? maybe if I can perform some sort of magic :). The only way to reduce the checkpoint interval is to make the application faster (duh) or implement a checkpoint image to save the current state of the run on disk and do this more frequently than the rate of producing structures. This will take time. I'm looking into the halting problem among other issues.

1. work unit names. The names are fairly arbitrary and will change with different experiments.
The current WU names have some meaning to them though. For example: 1btn__abrelax_32948_0

The first four characters represent the pdbid of the protein being tested. The fifth character is the protein chain id. _abrelax_ signifies that the WU is doing low resolution ab initio prediction followed by high resolution full-atom relax. The following number is the WU specific identifier. And the last number is the BOINC result identifier.

2. values are like climateprediction 1 and 1 (no quorums yet).

3. wow. that's a lot of info. This will take time.

4. wow again.

3. wow. that's a lot of info. This will take time.

4. wow again.

IMHO, I think you have more important things to occupy your time. :)

A lot of excellent project information has been provided already by the links on the Rosetta website. This extra information requested seems to be a bit over the top IMHO, in terms of return on the time it would take you to respond.... Just my opinion! (Let's not kill the goose that laid the golden egg, Paul! ;)

---

Regards,
Bob P.

Not trying to ...

The problem for a new person is that we can send him around the neighborhood a lot ... of we can try to concentrate some of the information.

Not asking him to answer this all by tomorrow... but, ONE of the constant complaints is the lack of information by/from projects. I try to collect as much as I can on my own ... but there is one of me and quite a few programmers/projects that have me chasing moving targets.

So, I agree that there is not a perfect solution to this problem set ... though I have been trying since beta days to come up with a way to centralize BOINC information and then when it is updated for one project it is updated for all ...

But, for one reason or another I have not been able to make it work... :(

I was close again recently, but Dr. Anderson and I fell apart over how much information should be available ... I think I am way under documented, he felt the UCB site was more appropriate ... oh, and he does not like humor in documentation ... I can see the point a little, except if you look around in the SETI@Home background information there is a glimmer here and there ...

I could live with the lowered humor except, one of the big points of BOINC is to have fun ... so, why do we have to pretend it is purely work?

Anyway ... most of the Wiki is written without a single smile ... but, as I said, that was not the deal breaker for me ... I still think we don't explain enough ...

---

David,

Thanks for the information ... you are now defined ... with a note about random changes to the naming ... we can burn that bridge when we get there ...

Oh, and regards the double WOW! :)

That is the work of Chris Randles of CPDN who has made a challenge to us all ... I grant you that a lot of the starting material came from the old CPDN site ... and they built that up over the years ...

Same thing with the rest of the Wiki contents actually ... I have been writing in it since early beta when I joined SETI@Home Powered by BOINC ... (July/August 2000 or so)

---

[quote]
I was close again recently, but Dr. Anderson and I fell apart over how much information should be available ... I think I am way under documented, he felt the UCB site was more appropriate ... oh, and he does not like humor in documentation ... I can see the point a little, except if you look around in the SETI@Home background information there is a glimmer here and there ...

>Anderson doesn't get it. I certainly agree with your take on information/communication AND humour. It creates a sense of community and involvement which is the life blood of volunteer projects like BOINC. IMHO, your efforts and insight on what the WIKI should contain deserve more credit and appreciation. Cheers, Rog.

---

Anderson doesn't get it. I certainly agree with your take on information/communication AND humour. It creates a sense of community and involvement which is the life blood of volunteer projects like BOINC. IMHO, your efforts and insight on what the WIKI should contain deserve more credit and appreciation. Cheers, Rog.

Rog,

Um, yes, well, I was not disparaging his view point. I am not sure I was clear on that. Nor him personnally or professionally. But, yes, I think he is mistaken. In a very early thread there was a discussion about what projects should do ...

And, my Wiki work is an effort along those lines.

But, there is a point to his objection that it is unprofessional to, um, write as I do at times. But, the target audience is also non-professional in the sense we are amatuers in the science "biz".

But, the most important ideal is that BOINC is one of the most complex systems I have been associated with in a very long time. And with each new project, it gets bigger and more complex ... :)

Anyway, we can agree to disagree, and I do wish someone wiser than me could figure out a way we can all "play" nice together ... ah well ...

---