Fardringle hat geschrieben: ↑03.12.2022 20:20
I agree. We let our computers run for MANY months on these tasks, with no credit for doing them, and apparently no interest from the project developer(s) to get these final tasks completed and validated properly. It's frustrating and feels like a waste of time and of money (power bills).
Indeed: "
...apparently".
People who follow the project for a while, will have noticed that just at the beginning of this year we have
moved the RNA World system to a new, powerfult (and costly) server.
So, I don't see any indication at our side to not have an interest in this project anymore.
What we lack for quite a while now is man/womenpower.
Background information:
I am really a bit sad about being asked the same topic over and over again.
I don't remember how many times I have communicated that, without our colleague, I can't access the system to validate the tasks.
Dozens of PMs have been exchanged regarding this problem with Jacob as well.
Unfortunately, as said before, there is nothing I can do about it right now.
But your credits don't go down depending on the time point when tasks are validated. And: They WILL be validated at some point and I think we are well-known for granting credits generously - especially for those taking on the monster tasks which undoubtedly are the most demanding tasks regarding runtime requirements among all distributed computing projects worldwide.
(And by the way, we will never re-do this again as long as we don't have any full-time employees to take care of these; that's at least one lesson learned for sure...).
Importantly, you should note one marked difference between us and other DC projects:
Whatever you find on the Rechenkraft.net website, the Yoyo@home project, the YAFU project and of course also the RNA World project sites is ENTIRELY operated on a SPARE TIME BASIS by people who are fully employed elsewhere, have families, multiple other duties, etc.
No one here receives a salary or other type of compensation for whatever we have done so far.
It is a community project and particularly RNA World has involved quite a number of former participants in contributing parts to the project. Including serious programming.
By contrast I remember multiple American projects who shut down operation IMMEDIATELY once funding expired. If we acted like this...
I will never forget a story regarding NanoHive: After funding of their project expired, I had contacted the main programmer behind the project asking whether we could help continuing this interesting project by e.g. offering free server space and help with administration. We even offered taking over operation of the entire project provided that the scientists behind it would continue to develop it, evaluate results, etc. While the main programmer was very helpful and interested, the professor in charge was not. When I asked him whether he could at least publish the results the project had achieved so far, he even asked for payment from us (!) to sit down and do that! Plain ridiculous to say the least.
As the only DC enthusiast community worldwide, Rechenkraft.net put into practice the transition from a loose DC-interested community to a registered organization in 2004 with the core intention in mind to lay the formal basis for funding aquisition and finally the employment of people interested in making their hobby (DC, programming) a job.
To my personal disappointment, so far we failed in the latter - despite
all our efforts and engagement since more than 20 years now.
Even a two year's effort to help setup the now established fist Citzen Science fund of the German Government's Research Ministry (BMBF) wasn't helpful to acquire idependent funding and the Google Impact Challenge funds which we successfully acquired in 2016 were just enough to setup a small local MakerSpace.
What we need is a Citizen Science "interface" lab e.g. at some university where a few people are steadily employed to routinely setup and administer DC projetcs on demand for research groups world wide. In my opinion only this will foster DC longterm in a sustainable way.
We do have principal support here at Marburgs university from the director of the botanical garden, but - as ususal - funding is lacking.
Our next step is trying to look for international support instead of just national funding.
Michael.
P.S.: If this "hitting" on us with regard to the WU validation topic continues, I might consider to close a thread for the first time on this board. So, please don't do that. We do think and won't forget our to do list. We just can't act timely enough at this point - which is uncomfortable enough for us...