it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it

Right, that way everybody can argue until the Cow's come home who's doing more for BOINC or argue that their Holier than you because they run only Supposedly Scientific Projects ...

I am not sure there is an 'ideal' way other then no credits, and we are waaaay past that fork in the road. Way back before Boinc we got 'credits' for crunching for Seti, when Boinc came along they were persuaded to keep them going, it seemed like a good idea at the time anyway! The problem is now we not only have cpu's but also gpu's and this new thing, an asic box, thrown into the crunching mix. What comes next, I have no clue but you can bet your bottom dollar SOMETHING WILL!! Heck we have even had people using PS3's to crunch with!!

As for what's 'Science' and what isn't...Mathematics is a 'Science' and mathematics is what our cpu's and gpu's, and now miners, are doing, so yes EVERY project is related to 'Science'. What 'kind' of Science is where the debate lies, imho, is finding the best beer recipe 'science', how about finding the best way to win at Sudoku? Is looking for little green men science, or just listening to radio waves? I'm not sure ANY project is about PURE Science as defined by EVERYONE.

it would be a good thing to let people pick and chose from a wide range of options to show the data the way they want to see it

Right, that way everybody can argue until the Cow's come home who's doing more for BOINC or argue that their Holier than you because they run only Supposedly Scientific Projects ...

I am not sure there is an 'ideal' way other then no credits, and we are waaaay past that fork in the road. Way back before Boinc we got 'credits' for crunching for Seti, when Boinc came along they were persuaded to keep them going, it seemed like a good idea at the time anyway! The problem is now we not only have cpu's but also gpu's and this new thing, an asic box, thrown into the crunching mix. What comes next, I have no clue but you can bet your bottom dollar SOMETHING WILL!! Heck we have even had people using PS3's to crunch with!!

As for what's 'Science' and what isn't...Mathematics is a 'Science' and mathematics is what our cpu's and gpu's, and now miners, are doing, so yes EVERY project is related to 'Science'. What 'kind' of Science is where the debate lies, imho, is finding the best beer recipe 'science', how about finding the best way to win at Sudoku? Is looking for little green men science, or just listening to radio waves? I'm not sure ANY project is about PURE Science as defined by EVERYONE.

To you and everyone else " Get over yourself" you either donate to the science or projects that you want or you don't. Cobblestones mean NOTHING.

---

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Cobblestones mean NOTHING.

This is true only in the sense of you can't exchange your BOINC credits (=cobblestones) to anything in the real world.
But within the BOINC world Cobblestones have meaning and also have purpose.
This is very easy to see. Just take a look at this "Number crunching" topic sorted by most views first.

           topic                        views
BitCoin Utopia went crazy credit-wise   28489
ATI vs NVIDIA GPUs                      25508
Milkyway@home on ATI cards              23329
Specs of the GPUGRID 4x GPU lab machine 17388
Credit per € / $                        17082
BOINC 6.12.26 released                  11324
CUDA Benchmark tool                     10467

Change in the credits awarded for whatever reason trigger events in the real world. This is not a problem until the change in the credits awarded aligns with the aim of the credit system, that is to motivate crunchers to support science. But in my opinion Bitcoin Utopia f**ked up the whole credit system in exchange of $4210,4 (see the pictures I've attached at the bottom). As this project awards credit for BitCoin (not for crunching power - which is I think in "violation" of present BOINC "rules") and they awarded 543,960,595,953 credits so far for that amount of money, anyone can calculate an exchange rate between real world currency and BOINC credits (which is insane). With that exchange rate, anyone can make a "reverse" calculation of how much money their credits worth in the real world (very very little). So BitCoin Utopia broke the rule of "you can't exchange your BOINC credits (=cobblestones) to anything in the real world." aka

Cobblestones mean NOTHING.

However - after all - it is our fault, as most of the crunchers won't donate money directly to their favorite project.
It would be fair if the money donations would be kept apart from BOINC credits, as they were kept apart until BitCoin Utopia showed up, so BitCoin Utopia should not award any credits, but their miners should be showed as money donors at the project's homepages. Moreover as this project is a BOINC project, it would be fair if they would give money to all active BOINC projects, however to agree in the proportion of this money between the projects would be a much harder debate.

I am not trying to stir the pot. But I felt it important to share my own experience, so here goes.

I recently purchased a YellowJacket 2.2GH/s USB ASIC miner.
- http://www.asicrunner.com/Yellowjacket--2Gh-USB-Stick-Miner_p_8.html
- Total cost, including international shipping from London, was something like $45
- Quality is fragile (could easily snap USB port off it if I tried), but durable (can crunch very hard with no hardware errors using stock settings).

My motives were, ordered by what mattered most to me listed first,
1) I wanted to learn how coin mining works
2) As a BOINC Alpha tester, I wanted to make this odd resource type, work better with BOINC
3) I wanted to see how it would affect my credits (I enjoy large numbers, like many others).

Here is what I've learned about mining, as it relates to BOINC:
- I've learned quite a bit about mining, and about the MultiPool mining group
- I've learned quite a bit about how BitCoin Utopia is trying to manage this resource
- I believe I've calculated that my USB stick gets about $0.04 per day. Pretty crummy, I know.
- Mining coins with an ASIC, feels very non-sciency to me. But again, my motives were not profit. My motives were to improve BOINC.
- When running in BOINC, it gets CRAZY stats. Something on the order of 5 times the stats of my GPUs and CPUs combined.
- There are some glaring problems, in the BOINC client software. It is not detected as a resource, and has to be specified as a "miner_asic" "coprocessor" in the cc_config.xml file. It is erroneously susceptible to things like "Suspend GPU", since BOINC treats all coprocessors as GPUs. And, there are bugs in how it requests work, such that anything before 7.4.14 requires you to also be in a situation where you need regular-CPU work, for it to ask projects for asic work. So, the miner can easily get stuck in a situation where it's idle, and BOINC doesn't get new tasks for it. We're in bad shape for this resource, in my opinion.
- There are some glaring problems, in the BOINC scheduler software. I believe that, currently, it only looks at the "CPU requested instances" and "CPU requested seconds", instead of the "miner_asic" values. So the scheduler might not issue tasks, if the client is correctly asking for miner-only work. I'm not sure if it's fixed yet, but this too indicates that we are in bad shape for this resource.

Here is what I think I've learned about BitCoin Utopia:
- They have an interesting setup, in terms of different applications for different campaigns (your choice of applications determines which campaign you mine for), as well as platforms (CPUs, CUDA GPUs, AMD GPUs, and ASICs), where different ASIC applications are also split by speeds (so you can get small BOINC tasks for your tiny USB stick, or massive BOINC tasks for your rocketbox).
- They've got 3 campaigns, and I think 2 of them are pretty much wrapped up. Their aquaponics campaign sounds very interesting, though it feels very homegrown and possibly not very big-world applicable. Not sure.
- The MilkyWay campaign is their big focus now, with a target of $20,000. Some say that target is unreachable.
- They use MultiPool to do their mining, and have their tasks attach to 4-10 different servers to share the load. This is a pretty respected pool, quite popular I think, and does a great job of keeping work flowing smoothly.
- BitCoin Utopia takes a 12% cut of the value mined. That's pretty significant.
- They have used cgminer quota values to control that "cut", but now I think they're transitioning to setup the tasks such that each task mines solely either for the 88% campaign or for the 12% BU cut.
- There is a current problem, quite troubling, where it appears that USB devices will "stop responding properly" when a task completes. This means that, when the new task tries to get started, it can't, and it just stalls until the task's time limit. Then the next one also stalls, etc. Leaving the entire resource wasted doing nothing.

I absolutely DETEST any wasted resources. I keep my 3 GPUs, my quad-core hyperthreaded CPU, and now my miner, completely busy doing work, 24/7. It is that philosophy that made me such a great helper, when David Anderson and I tackled many work fetch issues several months back.

So, with the "miner_asic" Client problems, the "miner_asic" scheduler problems, and the Bitcoin Utopia USB Hub problems, all resulting in the resource being WASTED... I have been mining outside of BOINC for a while now. I've configured my own .bat file with my own cgminer parameters, to mine directly toward MilkyWay's account, in an attempt to sidestep Bitcoin Utopia's 12% fee, since I'm not using BOINC to mine. It's working quite well for me.

Now I all know you want to hear my take on stats. And I've avoided that in this post, so far. But I will now tell you my take.
- BitCoin Utopia tried to do things right, in my opinion. According to my discussions with others, they attributed "reasonable" stat values for their CPU and GPU applications. And when it came to their ASICs, they used those "normalized" CPU/GPU values to determine how much the ASICs were worth.
- I too am at odds with the disparity in the credits. In fact, I relayed this very thread to David Anderson, as a concern that I and others shared. It's quite probable that he already knew of the issue, but this thread exemplified the concerns that some users have for the community. They are valid concerns.
- David documents the policies, pitfalls, concerns, and even a proposed solution... in this article: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized. It is being discussed on the boinc_projects mailing list, and so far as I know, constructive feedback is welcomed there. I think the future is still being discussed, even if implementation has begun.
- I like his idea, really. An ASIC mining coins really is "related" to a seismometer. They both achieve something from a "specific" resource that lacks the "generality" to be applicable to all projects.
- I know a lot, but I don't know enough to know the best approach here. I think that, ideally, it'd be great for a user to select "what stats they want to see". If they want to exclude GPU stats, allow them. If they want to exclude ASIC stats, allow them. And yes, by default, I think stats sites should exclude ASICs, since they lack that "generality"... while still allowing users to include them in the stats if they'd like that.

I told you I'm not trying to stir the pot. I'm really not. But I offer one example that is a little funny/strange, and worth thinking about. Suppose a new project comes along, that uses only CPU and GPU, to calculate the best cooking recipe based on combining ingredients and analyzing the "savorability" of the combinations. 1) Is it science? [I say yes.] 2) Should that project be listed alongside other more heavy-science projects? [I say yes.] 3) Why? [I say: Because, ANY BOINC project, should be listed in a BOINC stats listing.] 4) Should its stats be included in the general status totals? [I say: Yes.] 5) Why? [I say: Because those GPUs and CPUs could have been just as effectively used on other projects.] I challenge you to think of your own examples, to see if/how they fit into David's proposal. Consider: Project that tries to prove that random numbers are truly random? Project that simply counts upward forever? Project that capitalizes text? With ASIC? Project that continuously shifts bits to see if bit rot exists in registers? Project that copies the same file over and over, to test hard drive durability? Project that measures how fast pop tarts can be shot out of toasters? Project that scours YouTube videos to help determine popularity? You get the idea.

Regards,
Jacob

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

If people are so inclined to crunch for bitcoins and use an amount of any real world monies they are able to make to donate to BOINC projects, then that is their option to do so, but in no way whatsoever should there actually be a BOINC project for it that increases any BOINC ranking scores since no real work for scientific/humanitarian research is actually being done. It also devalues the ranking and point system for legitimate work that is being done.

Sorry if this offends or belittles anyone, as that is not my intent in making these statements. Regardless, this is my sincere and strongly held moral view on the whole matter.

Best regards.

---

My BOINC Cruncher, Minecraft Multiserver, Mobile Device Mainframe, and Home Entertainment System/Workstation: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4678036#

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

Best regards.

Two thing first Dr David Anderson has already agreed that Bitcoin Utopia is NOT giving out too many credits for thw work it is doing, in fact it is underpaying for the amount of work being done. That being said he also has some concerns and is reviewing the situation and until he and his 'posse' make a decision none of us have an say in the matter. He IS taking input from us on the Boinc Mailing List though.

Second you are trying to say that this kind of Science is not equal to that kind of Science, and that is a bad argument for Boinc. Boinc is designed as an open infrastructure networked computing project, not JUST for this or that kind of Science. It is, or was, about finding the best grasses to grow to regrow Americas prairies of the 1800's, it was also about finding the best beer making recipe for some guy, or for finding the fastest way to solve a Sudoku puzzle, or mapping the Milky Way, of finding a treatment for Malaria, or even finding the right process for how to do medical research, etc, etc. The idea behind Boinc is NOT just Science, it is getting many little computers to all work on a single project, each of their users choosing, instead of the researchers paying for time on a super computer. It has NOTHING to do with 'Science' as 'Science' is defined in the dictionary. If YOU come up with an idea that could use many pc's to help solve it, the Boinc is the way to make that happen. Is it easy and a breeze, not even close, just look at all the projects that have problems or end up closing because of them!!

Yes, I am personally making the distinction between crunching for scientific and humanitarian research in any form it might take and mining for bitcoins. While obviously I do not dictate what BOINC projects should and shouldn't exist, nor should I be able to, that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion on their relative merits and BOINC-worthy-ness.

I do not feel that mining for bitcoins falls under the same apparent spirit and intent of BOINC overall, regardless of any specific mission statement or lack there of. If for some reason having and expressing this opinion is deemed to be a "bad argument," then so be it.

I'm also not saying that other people's opinions on the matter are any more or less valid than my own. I'm just expressing my opinion and the reasons for it.

Hope that helps clarify what I'm trying to get across.

In the end, it likely still just comes down to what we as a whole and as individuals decide we want to crunch for or not.

Best regards.

---

My BOINC Cruncher, Minecraft Multiserver, Mobile Device Mainframe, and Home Entertainment System/Workstation: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4678036#

Wrend wrote:

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

It's not nefarious, it's necessary. Projects do need funding.

Mikey wrote:

Dr David Anderson has already agreed that Bitcoin Utopia is NOT giving out too many credits for the work it is doing, in fact it is underpaying for the amount of work being done.

What kind work is being done exactly? I think you refer generating money as work being done. I think this is not scientific work, however the way this kind of money is generated is based on mathematics, which is a science in deed. It's just like in real life: to mine gold is not a scientific work, but to build a gold mine, you need certain scientific knowledge. But if I accept that generating money equals work being done (therefore awarded with BOINC credits), then real world money donors should also receive BOINC credits for they money donations (in astronomical amounts), as earning real money in the real world is usually a result of doing real work.

What if someone starts a BOINC project, which does the following:
1. gives 130 million BOINC credits for each USD its users donate for the project
2. keeps the 12% of the donated money for itself
3. sends the rest of the money for projects which apply for it
4. decreases the amount of BOINC credits awarded per USD on a regular basis

Does it sound like a project which should be among the other BOINC projects? As you've guessed it, BitCoin Utopia does this, while making everyone blind with that bullshit of generating BitCoin is the same work the other projects are doing because they are using the same infrastructure (BOINC) and similar technology (ASICs), while it's not. It's just donating money. Why don't you see that as it is? Could someone please explain to me why donations made in BitCoins are awarded in BOINC credits, while donations made in any other currencies are not? (that's just a rhetorical question as I think there's no such explanation, but you can have a try...)

So, the present situation is unfair in two ways:
BitCoin donations through the Bitcoin Utopia project ...
1. make projects doing directly scientific calculations less attractive by over awarding them by two orders of magnitude (regardless that this project is not giving out too many credits for the "work" being done), while no scientific work is done.
2. are awarded with BOINC credits, while direct money donations are not.

That being said he also has some concerns and is reviewing the situation and until he and his 'posse' make a decision none of us have an say in the matter. He IS taking input from us on the Boinc Mailing List though.

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Second you are trying to say that this kind of Science is not equal to that kind of Science, and that is a bad argument for Boinc.

I think too that this kind of science is not equal to that kind of science, and I don't think this is a bad argument, because:

Boinc is designed as an open infrastructure networked computing project, not JUST for this or that kind of Science.

So it can be easily abused for doing something what sounds like doing science, because doing it is based on some kind of science, right?

It is, or was, about finding the best grasses to grow to regrow Americas prairies of the 1800's, it was also about finding the best beer making recipe for some guy, or for finding the fastest way to solve a Sudoku puzzle, or mapping the Milky Way, of finding a treatment for Malaria, or even finding the right process for how to do medical research, etc, etc. The idea behind Boinc is NOT just Science, it is getting many little computers to all work on a single project, each of their users choosing, instead of the researchers paying for time on a super computer.

All of the projects you've listed are scientific projects in their own way, still you are trying to convince your readers with this list that BOINC isn't a tool for doing science.

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Your opinion is unique, and others don't speak for you. So far as I know, your thoughts are underrepresented.

If you'd like your voice to be better heard, please bring constructive ideas to the BOINC "Projects" (boinc_projects) email list.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/email_lists.php
Please read through the recent archives, before joining the list.

Thanks,
Jacob

Wrend wrote:

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

It's not nefarious, it's necessary. Projects do need funding.

Mikey wrote:

Dr David Anderson has already agreed that Bitcoin Utopia is NOT giving out too many credits for the work it is doing, in fact it is underpaying for the amount of work being done.

What kind work is being done exactly?

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern. You too are thinking of the end result, not the process of how we get there. Bitcoin Utopia, MilkyWay, Einstein GpuGrid all use a specified process of how we use our cpu's, gpu's or asic machines to crunch numbers, THAT is what he has agreed is similar. BU uses all of those things, cpu's, gpu's and asic machines to crunch with, right now every other Boinc project uses some combination of the other two, with some using both the cpu and gpu and still others using only the cpu OR gpu.

We seem to be hung up on what they DO with our crunching resources, not THAT they can use them. I think that has sent this whole conversation into a different track then it should be. WE can't decide how a particular Boinc Project uses the resources we give to it, WE can only support it or not support it. What it does with our resources is not within our control as WE are not the Admins of that Project. It's alot like America making the atomic bomb, WE didn't have a choice, WE were just along for the ride as others made the choices to do it or not to do it. WE got to chose which President got to be the one to chose whether to use it or not though!

Dr David Anderson will be the one in the end making this decision, Boinc is his 'baby' as he was the one who got the first grant to bring it about, and he is STILL in charge of its current direction and scope. He has the info and the opinions of some very trusted people who HAVE been listening to all of us voice our opinions. He will make his decision, when he is ready, and we will live with it! Obviously I for one think the door is open and there is NO sense closing it now, the horses are gone!! Some projects STILL do not have a gpu application, they say it won't work for them, some don't have a cpu application as they say it's too slow for them. I think the same thing will happen with the asic machines, some projects will figure out how to make it work, and others won't.

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).

You too are thinking of the end result, not the process of how we get there.

Well, this is (the end result, or research area) what differentiates one project from another. This is (or should be) the basis of the donor's decision on which of the projects they will support.

Some projects STILL do not have a gpu application, they say it won't work for them, some don't have a cpu application as they say it's too slow for them. I think the same thing will happen with the asic machines, some projects will figure out how to make it work, and others won't.

Here we go again. These mining-ASICs are designed and manufactured to do hashing for BitCoin, and they can't do anything else. Think of them like a digital jackhammer. There's no way other projects can use them. That is the main difference between ASICs and CPUs or GPUs. In the beginning GPUs were ASICs for a couple of years, but then NVida made the G80, which changed the role and the purpose of the GPUs, as it was the first "programmable" GPU. ASICs are not (re)programmable after they manufactured. However, it is possible to to design and manufacture a different ASIC for any research, but it takes a lot of money and time, what BOINC projects are always lacking (so it's very unlikely to happen).

Wrend wrote:

Just my take here, but to me it seems as though bitcoin mining and BOINC should have nothing to do with each other as they are conflicting interests, that is, crunching for scientific and humanitarian research versus crunching to generate a speculative amount of nefarious wealth... and unfortunately apparently to try and rack up easy points in BOINC while doing so.

It's not nefarious, it's necessary. Projects do need funding.

I meant with the use of bitcoins specifically, as they are often used for black market purposes, and seem as they're (at least to some extent) specifically designed to do so - a bartering method to evade laws and oversight that real money might otherwise not be able to as easily do.

I would rather BOINC and BOINC projects deal in real money than pirate money. I understand of course that you can't crunch for real money, well... generally speaking, at least.

In my opinion, blood stained (or soon to be blood stained) money is still blood stained money, even if it's possible to use it for what we would deem to be good purposes. It's just harder to see the blood stains on bitcoins because they aren't real. It seems to me that the more legitimate uses of bitcoins there are the easier it will be for their nefarious uses to hide.

This is more than somewhat off topic though, so it might not be entirely relevant to this discussion.

---

My BOINC Cruncher, Minecraft Multiserver, Mobile Device Mainframe, and Home Entertainment System/Workstation: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4678036#

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

But... you didn't play the game. You used your computer to try and solve Sudoku. These are different things. One is playing a game, the other is trying to solve the game "for science," similarly to how checkers was solved. There is a clear distinction there, though you might not choose to acknowledge it.

Regardless, bitcoin mining isn't playing nor solving a game either, so if being a game for some reason entitles something to be a BOINC project, that still doesn't entitle bitcoin mining to be one (not that I think being a game actually does entitle anything to be a BOINC project).

At the heart of the matter though, what you seem to really be arguing overall is that anything can and should be a BOINC project and award BOINC points regardless of what it does or doesn't do; I suppose as long as it can use distributed computing in some way. That's fine if that's your opinion. I (and Retvari Zoltan*, it would seem) just don't agree with it. There's no need to dwell on and debate the minutia of our differences of opinion.

---

My BOINC Cruncher, Minecraft Multiserver, Mobile Device Mainframe, and Home Entertainment System/Workstation: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4678036#

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

Here, take a closer look at what you yourself said: "The purpose was to figure out..." Now, can you recognize the general differences between bitcoin mining and other BOINC projects and why some of us think bitcoin mining shouldn't be a BOINC project?

---

My BOINC Cruncher, Minecraft Multiserver, Mobile Device Mainframe, and Home Entertainment System/Workstation: http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/4678036#

The exact same kind our cpu's and gpu's are doing at every other Boinc project, crunching numbers in a specified pattern.

"crunching numbers in a specified pattern" is all that computers can do, no matter for what end they do it. So when I'm playing my favorite game, my computer is "crunching numbers in a specified pattern", so if this argument was valid, then I should receive BOINC credits while I play (if this game was a BOINC project).

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

You imply that I'm playing on my PC for the same purpose as that Sudoku project does, in order to justify your point of view. But when I'm playing on my PC I do it solely to be entertained, therefore it doesn't serve as a research thus I don't deserve any BOINC credits for playing to be entertained. On the other hand, a PC can't entertain itself by playing some sort of logic game, so when someone makes a PC to do that, its purpose is to learn something, i.e. it's a research (its scientific value can be argued, but it doesn't matter). Therefore the users of this project deserve BOINC credits for their efforts. So it's not the crunching, nor the numbers, nor the pattern what matters, but its purpose does matter only.

The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

What is the purpose of the BitCoin utopia project? To generate and give funding to projects. (I do appreciate that.) It is a research? No. If it's not a research, then no BOINC credits should be awarded. BOINC credits shouldn't be awarded especially in exchange of money donations, as every project has a special place for their money donors on their homepages, still none of them gives BOINC credits for money. I my opinion that would be a shame if they would. Now the BitCoin Utopia project made that shame routine. Would it be okay, if the GPUGrid project gave Hypernova 426.8 billion credits for his 2500EUR donation? Does the BOINC community want to change its moral that way?

Truth is, that I wouldn't have noticed the BitCoin Utopia project, if they didn't award so much credit that makes the participants of all other projects look stupid (that is 13~15 times more credit than the other projects combined). BitCoin Utopia is a turning point in BOINC history, but not the way GPU crunching was, that is not because these ASICs can do so much more "work" than GPUs and CPUs, but the purpose of the "work" they are doing. So much of the argument of the times when GPU crunching began are not applicable now. If the "work" they do (that is the amount of money they generate) gets awarded in the future with the same BOINC credits as other projects award (which I'm against), the amount of that credit should be in relation to the expenses of the science related cobblestones (which is quite different between projects, especially when comparing GPU projects to CPU projects). It seems to be impossible to agree a single "exchange rate" of cobblestones to USD. That's why I'm against selling BOINC credits.

Yes you should and that's EXACTLY what the Boinc Sudoku Project did!! You 'played' a game with the computer doing all the moves at it's max speed with no user input involved. The purpose was to figure out how best to solve the puzzles.

Here, take a closer look at what you yourself said: "The purpose was to figure out..." Now, can you recognize the general differences between bitcoin mining and other BOINC projects and why some of us think bitcoin mining shouldn't be a BOINC project?

In one message you say this "At the heart of the matter though, what you seem to really be arguing overall is that anything can and should be a BOINC project and award BOINC points regardless of what it does or doesn't do; I suppose as long as it can use distributed computing in some way. That's fine if that's your opinion. I (and Retvari Zoltan*, it would seem) just don't agree with it. There's no need to dwell on and debate the minutia of our differences of opinion."

And now in this message you seem to be going back to trying to argue what is or isn't a valid Boinc Project. I guess the key here is they NEITHER your nor I get to decide what does and what does not become a Boinc Project. Bitcoin Utopia IS a Boinc Project, there is no going back and undoing that or total chaos will consume the whole thing and the writing will be on the wall for the end of Boinc. Could other choices have been...woulda, coulda, shoulda, you cannot rewrite the past!!

What is the purpose of the BitCoin utopia project? To generate and give funding to projects. (I do appreciate that.) It is a research? No.

I happen to disagree with this...Bitcoin miners ARE doing math to discover the key to the current formula and get a part of a bitcoin. They don't hand those out like candy and they are therefore valuable, which is how they are helpful to Boinc. MilkyWay is doing 'math' to figure out the map of the MilkyWay, Asteroids is doing 'math' to map Asteroids, Rosetta is doing 'math' to figure out how to better solve medical things. The different Malaria project are all using 'math' to find a cure for Malaria, or at least a treatment that works. Bicoin is doing 'math' also, we may disagree on the 'scientific' value of that 'math', but it is still 'math' and that is what Boinc is all about.

Boinc is providing a framework, much like Microsoft provides a framework of Excel is a 'spreadsheet'. It is all in how it is used that makes it valuable. Some people use Excel for illegal purposes, does that mean that they should not be allowed to use Excel, WE don't get to make that choice, someone else does. Boinc is free for anyone to use, how it is used is not up to people like you and I. Sure Dr A could have, and probably still could, put some limits on who and how it's used, but I do not believe he has yet. Has EVERY project that has been submitted to Dr A been approved as a Boinc Project, not even close, some are just not viable or robust enough to handle people like you and I, and all the other people who chose to crunch. Open up a new project and you can get anyone from the guy with a single core pc to someone like you with 10 dozen pc's and 40 dozen gpu's, I exaggerate for effect. But's let's face it you are NOT a typical Boinc user, nor am I with my own resources. Either one of us could crash a poorly run Boinc project in a very short amount of time, and probably have!

Could Dr A have told Bitcoin 'yes but...', sure he could have, but he didn't at the time and is now rethinking that position. Until he is done NOTHING we say will change anything he is doing, or not doing.

I hope that some of my thoughts went through that mailing list.

Your opinion is unique, and others don't speak for you. So far as I know, your thoughts are underrepresented.

If you'd like your voice to be better heard, please bring constructive ideas to the BOINC "Projects" (boinc_projects) email list.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/email_lists.php
Please read through the recent archives, before joining the list.

Thanks,
Jacob

For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

The BitCoin Utopia phenomenon

I’m new to this list so this post could be a bit unusual, just as its subject.

We’re discussing this subject for two months on my main project’s forum, and Jacob Klein advised there that I should post my point of view to this list.

Currently there are two indices of the contribution:
1. Computational (Cobblestones)
2. Monetary (USD, EUR, …)

The computational index has two purpose:
1. to measure the throughput of a project, or a given set of projects
2. to motivate donors to support their chosen project(s)

The monetary contributions are handled separately by the projects.

BitCoin, and the BitCoin Utopia project linked these two indices together, as this project is awarding BOINC credits for BitCoins mined by the project’s participants.
The amount of BOINC credits awarded by the BU project is reduced on a regular basis as the hashing difficulty rises. This practice confirms this project’s commercial attitude, as otherwise the credits awarded should be in direct ratio with computational performance. Regardless of this practice the project made up an exchange rate between real world currencies and BOINC credits (it comes from the nature of this project), which is unprecedented. The current average exchange rate is about 130 million credits per USD. By pronouncing this exchange rate I’d like to express that this project raises much more severe questions than turning the stats’ sites upside down (however that event made most of us notice them).

The way of money donation before the BU project was the following:
1. the donor earns the money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project puts the donor’s name and the amount on their homepage.
In this case value moves only in one direction, so it’s a donation.

The way of money donation through the BU project is the following:
1. the donor earns (mines) money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project awards the donor BOINC credits for the mining.
4. the project takes its share, and sends the rest to the destination project
In this case value moves in both directions, so it’s commerce.

Fund raising is a very sensitive problem for every project, yet none of them sold BOINC credits to collect their funding, until the BU project showed up.
The problem of awarding BOINC credits for mining BitCoins is that the system awards the same thing twice: once for the donor who earns (mines) the money receives credit, second the project which receives the money.
To put it in another way: the award for mining is BitCoin itself, it shouldn’t be awarded again.
The present situation is unfair, as the real money donations are not rewarded like BitCoin donations (i.e. with credits).
The nature of the BU project caused a moral problem by merging BOINC credits with money.

Under the present credit system there are two ways of resolving the change the crypto currencies have brought:
1. accepting it, and let the other projects collect funding by rewarding money donations with BOINC credits
2. denying it, and forbid the BU project to award credits for mining money
If we accept it, then there should be some authority which sets the price of BOINC credits, which is a very difficult and debatable task.
I’m on the side of denying it, but it would be unfair to the participants of BU (and would induce harsh reaction) if the credits they’ve earned would be lost.
However, it would be fair to the other projects, if contributions made through the BU project would be kept in BTC, USD, EUR or whatever convertible currency, as BOINC credits are not such a thing.
In that way the participants of the BU (or any fund raising project) could easily check if the TCO of their mining equipment makes it profitable or not.

I think it wasn’t worth it to turn the cross project stats upside down in exchange of a couple of thousand USD, making years of CPU/GPU crunching look obsolete.
A temporarily solution could be reducing the amount of credits awarded by the BU project – regardless its computational capacity – to a level on which it doesn’t fool common crunchers by acting as the Holy Grail of BOINC.
From the replies on GPUGrid’s forum I can tell that the astronomical amount of BOINC credits the BU project awards made a lot of people blind, and it’s very hard for them to see the BU project as it is: fund raising – not science.
Should the BU project go like this in the long term, their impact could be even adverse on the overall scientific contribution of BOINC, as that much disparity in the awarded credits could make people to sell their expensive crunching hardware to buy more and more cheap hashing ASICs as they might think that they serve better the aim of BOINC when they earn more credits. This is not the same situation as when the GPU crunching caused similar credit shock as there’s much more aspects to consider. Some people think that the other projects could use these minig-ASICs in the future for their own (scientific) purpose.

On the other hand, I do appreciate BU’s effort in gathering funds.

Allowing the BU project to reward BOINC credits in exchange of monetary contributions was a fatal mistake, which couldn’t be seen in advance and it would be very hard to take back. Thus it made the reform of the BOINC credit system more urgent.

I would like to make an addition to the “generalized credit” proposal.
There should be a fifth kind of credit, which is money.
This is viable as a separate resource even for fund-raising projects, because they can’t use only one project defined credit to track the cumulated hashing done, and the total currency collected as the hashing difficulty is continuously rising. Besides, knowing the amount of money generated by others, new donors can make profitability calculations before purchasing and running mining equipment. (This is a very important factor in this case.)
If money would be the fifth resource it could help projects to build their own mining pool, leaving BU (and it’s share) out of the way of donating money.

Zoltan

A veerrryyy good text!

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