To Ben and Faik,

This project has been a rather disappointment for me. I started back in March of 2010. I read the complaints even then about lack of response from the project organizers, but I still decided to give it a chance.

At the time I started with my core i7-920 with 6GB of RAM. I quickly found out that this was not enough RAM as a task could take upto 1GB RAM each while running. With the capability to run 8 tasks at a time, I needed more RAM. I decided to upgrade my computer so that I could offer more CPU time to C@H, upgrading my RAM to 18GB. No other project needed more RAM, nor did I really need more RAM at the time for what I was doing. I did it to help C@H. Over the years, I added more computers making sure they had enough RAM for C@H, which exceeded my RAM requirements for everything else.

I have waited patiently over the years to see a REAL progress report from the project on what my computers that I added over the years were doing, not a two paragraph post buried in the forums responding to user complaints about lack of news. I have waited for the "Featured Concept" to change for as long as I can remember. Have the users seen any REAL progress reports? NO. No News. No Updates to the website. NOTHING.

Cosmology@Home is requesting our help, but in return we the users expect a something in return. That is to be updated and see that our efforts are being put to some use. With no news from the project and no updates to the website or anything, who knows what we are really doing and if all the crunching is really being put to any use. Does anyone at C@H even look at the results that we are crunching?

I understand that it may take more time to generate results from this project versus others. I don't expect to see an update everyday on the website, but changing the featured topic or pointing to some news related to the results being crunched or cosmology in general should not be that hard. I can't believe that you can't find some grad or other student to update the website once every month or so.

Is it any surprise to see all the posts from the users that are disappointed with how the project is running with the lack of response? No. Is it any surprise to see that users are leaving the project? Not really.

I am sure that you can see the effect on crunching speed. while many other projects are seeing increases in performance, Cosmology is relatively flat. This is a result of the significant demands of the applications that turn off many users, the lack of project updates that results in user quiting, and no updates to the applications. The applications have not even been updated since 2009. With all the updates to CPU architecture and GPU capability, it would seem like spending a little time to update the applications would be a good thing. Even if the changes were minor to make a little better use of the hardware that is running Cosmology would be a help to you.

I was an active user that generated over 2.6 Million Credits, reaching a high position of 162, even with only donating ~10% resource share from my multiple systems. However, I have since given up on the project as I just don't see any response from the project.

I hope that you finally start to pay attention to the users and start responding and updating the website, or else I fear that you will loose many users and computing resources that we are offering. This lose of users and computing power effects YOU more than it does us. We will go find some other project that interests us and still gain satisfaction from helping out. However, C@H and you will be the ones not receiving the satisfaction with us leaving as your work will progress more slowly.

I have checked back since I stopped crunching for C@H and will continue to check back every once in a while hoping something will change, so that I might again feel it is worth my while to donate my computers to Cosmology. I do not hold out much hope though based on past experience with the project.

Sincerely,

Disappointed Cruncher

Have run less than a handful of cosmology units - and each one has made me want to chew my keyboard.

I don't like giving up, but would like to retain a few shreds of sanity - so whilst my cursor lurks about the "allow new tasks" button, my brain is saying "then bite the monitor. Its quicker than a nervous breakdown". As a result, I have done neither.

Have ploughed through the message boards - but get the feeling that posting anything there is unlikely to assist me and most likely to irritate others. I became similarly wary of Rosetta at home, but the message boards and the replies users got were so good at explaining why the work units behaved as they did, that I didn't need to post, and immediately downloaded more work and will continue to do so.

I'd like to think that fiddling with my preferences and a few guidelines from others (with some experience of running the project on a similar operating system alongside other boinc projects) - is all I need to prevent launching all my marbles into deep space, killing my cat for moving my mouse, then returning to the trees and hosting fleas instead.

I will give posting that request for assistance a go... perhaps after I've imbibed a vat or ten of wine. I will also have a meat packaging plant on standby - one that supplies zoo animals with ready meals - in case I get minced (because if I have to go, I may as well be lunch) but what I will not be doing with any confidence at all is many more cosmology units. :(

Good this - chatting to oneself! Can almost get a word in edgeways!

Did the post and fortunately didn't hold my breath for a response.

Will solve my issues myself I think. So... computer crash imminent, followed by lovely snug straitjacket.

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. (Hello me! :)) Seem to have had no new problems. As long as I progress like a snail and don't mind being overtaken by pet rocks, I think I won't need to detach!

lightning_anime, you have summarized very well what I, too, miss in this project and what has caused me to discontinue running C@H: I would like an occasional update of what papers have been published based on C@H or what questions have been answered or at least how much closer the contributions of the C@H community have brought us to answering some questions (like: we need to run 10^6 simulations, with your help we've now done 10% of them or whatever).
Until that happens I will run other projects (and occasionally drop in to see what's going on here).

regards
another disappointed cruncher

Hello !

Message sent today to the University of Illinois.

Will see if they wake up and if project still alive.

Kind Regards

Phil1966

There is no reason to be disappointed any longer.

The project is not dying, and there are a lot of information here :

http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_forum.php?id=11

I understand your frustration concerning the lack of reactivity when you post about a specific problem, and I am sure the people in charge of the project will find a solution (and developp new app or optimised apps ;))

Hereafter you wil find Dr Ben Wandelt's very interesting comments about our complaints and about the / his project(s).

Thanks for your message. We are still maintaining the project at Illinois, and I have 2 people working on keeping the project up, and communicating with participants on the forum on a regular basis, so I am a bit surprised that you have the impression that no one is taking care of the project. Faik Bouhrik is updating the message board and responding to user queries. When technical problems arise he forwards them to our administrator.

Planck is entering its most important phase for cosmological parameter analysis since we are now including the polarization information. With the exciting BICEP2 claim it turns out that we need a lot of computing power to run cosmological models at the required level of accuracy since gravitational waves from inflation complicate the numerical calculation of the predicted statistical properties of the CMB sky. So cosmology@home is an important resource for the project and a great way to keep up to date with cosmology and Planck in particular through the message boards. It's true that the extremely full schedule of various aspects of the data analysis have meant that my personal appearances on the forum have become rare, and there are some long-overdue updates, e.g. to the letter of participants.


Regarding your other question - as I have hinted on the forum I am currently developing a new idea for a BOINC project. This is very exciting, and the hard scientific problems have been solved (ie how to turn a problem that's been burning millions of CPU hours on supercomputers and is communication bandwidth limited to something that can run completely in parallel using BOINC without any communication between particpating computers at all), but now it comes down to implementing it on a BOINC platform and putting the infrastructure in place. That will need funding and/or serious community involvement.

Comments welcome!

Best,
Ben