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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Teams
Thread: Computing for Good being phased out |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 45
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branjo
Master Cruncher Slovakia Joined: Jun 29, 2012 Post Count: 1892 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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mvsb wrote: Adding to my previous comment, I sometimes had the impression that Ripple Labs team members seemed to be viewed by other teams as opportunistic money makers and donating only for the reward. Speaking for myself, and I believe for many other of our group members, this surely is not the case. I even think that my energy bill growth is above the XRP/USD reward that I earned. Is was clearly cheaper just to buy those 2500 XRP for under 25$. The combination of WCG and Ripple gave me rather the feeling that I was "Computing on 2 bodies for good". And on top of that the earned XRP/USD might have been useful for other donations. By not accepting the XRPs, it's just the electric facility to profit yet? Reusing the reward makes their energy less wasted too ... Are you surprised mvsb? People have been always afraid of mercenaries, who has always joined the war just because of money, not because they have believed in a "Good Thing". When war has finished, mercenaries have moved to another one. Again, solely for money. In the better scenario. In the worse, they have started to milk their yesterdays brothers in arm, their families and their land... They have never been the part of community for which they have been "fighting" in wars/battles. If, on the other hand, they have taken the decision to join such community and be a part of it, they used to be welcomed there, but after some period of time. Without a questions about their past.  I can't speak for whole community here, but I welcomed RL as a project who helped to boost "Good Thing" performances and I welcome all of you who take decision to continue with us. And I will do my best to support you with insights/knowledge I have learned here from other, more experienced members of this community  So, welcome mvsb and all others who came to stay and I hope it will be a long ride  Cheers   Crunching@Home since January 13 2000. Shrubbing@Home since January 5 2006  [Edit 5 times, last edit by branjo at Apr 4, 2014 8:10:32 PM] |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Personally, I'm interested in seeing how many people stay after the giveaway ends. Because if it's a substantial number, that will prove only one thing - that WCG doesn't do much to promote itself. IOW, if a lot of people stay, that will just mean that there are a lot more people out there who have the same altruistic motivations that most people here do and who might have joined long before now if they'd only known about WCG.
----------------------------------------After all, it's not like RL spend a lot of money advertising the giveaway on network television. People found out about it via word of mouth or posting on cryptocurrency sites. So how hard would it really be for WCG to do a bit more in the way of recruiting via similar FREE media? edit: btw, I should mention that I have a google alert set to let me know whenever there is any news about World Community Grid and I haven't gotten such an alert in months. So obviously very little is being done to promote this place.   [Edit 1 times, last edit by twilyth at Apr 4, 2014 11:31:05 PM] |
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Sabrina Tarson
Advanced Cruncher United States Joined: Jun 27, 2012 Post Count: 149 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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mvsb wrote: Adding to my previous comment, I sometimes had the impression that Ripple Labs team members seemed to be viewed by other teams as opportunistic money makers and donating only for the reward. Speaking for myself, and I believe for many other of our group members, this surely is not the case. I even think that my energy bill growth is above the XRP/USD reward that I earned. Is was clearly cheaper just to buy those 2500 XRP for under 25$. The combination of WCG and Ripple gave me rather the feeling that I was "Computing on 2 bodies for good". And on top of that the earned XRP/USD might have been useful for other donations. By not accepting the XRPs, it's just the electric facility to profit yet? Reusing the reward makes their energy less wasted too ... Are you surprised mvsb? People have been always afraid of mercenaries, who has always joined the war just because of money, not because they have believed in a "Good Thing". When war has finished, mercenaries have moved to another one. Again, solely for money. In the better scenario. In the worse, they have started to milk their yesterdays brothers in arm, their families and their land... They have never been the part of community for which they have been "fighting" in wars/battles. If, on the other hand, they have taken the decision to join such community and be a part of it, they used to be welcomed there, but after some period of time. Without a questions about their past. I can't speak for whole community here, but I welcomed RL as a project who helped to boost "Good Thing" performances and I welcome all of you who take decision to continue with us. And I will do my best to support you with insights/knowledge I have learned here from other, more experienced members of this community So, welcome mvsb and all others who came to stay and I hope it will be a long ride Cheers I'd also like to add that it doesn't really matter if their intentions were to make money or save the world...the work still got done one way or another, all bettering the cause. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
really sound like issues that WCG had, not RL. How could that be a problem with WCG? RL do the payouts, not WCG Number 2 seems especially bogus since that was nothing new and something that could easily be remedied by just putting a cap on payouts per person per day. Of course there are ways around that but alternatively they could just reduce the payout rate to a level that makes it unprofitable to rent cloud computing time.  |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Oh you're right, in the sense that it's not a problem for WCG, I just think that it was a made-up reason.
----------------------------------------Having a small group of people dominate the output of the Ripple team was a problem from the beginning. Just look at the top 5 people in total points in the Ripple Team. Four of the 5 joined in November or December of last year. So this was nothing new that Ripple Labs would legitimately offer as a "reason" for terminating their involvement with WCG. I mean were it really important enough to scare them away, why weren't they scared back in January? My main point is that the whole list is bogus - at least from RL's perspective. But if you look at from WCG's, it makes a lot more sense. The items in the list are framed as being reasons for RL but it seems much more likely to me that they were reasons for WCG - WCG didn't want to come off as the heavy so rather than be kicked off the project, RL agreed to leave "on their own." It's like when someone "tenders their resignation" but what it really means is that they were fired. I expect this post to be deleted shortly Alan, so I hope you get the chance to see it.  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
.................seen it
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7668 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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My main point is that the whole list is bogus - at least from RL's perspective. But if you look at from WCG's, it makes a lot more sense. The items in the list are framed as being reasons for RL but it seems much more likely to me that they were reasons for WCG - WCG didn't want to come off as the heavy so rather than be kicked off the project, RL agreed to leave "on their own." I disagree. It makes no sense that WCG would want to get rid of a huge resource for getting the research done. WCG dealt with the hacking accounts issue, which turned out to be a singular instance. It was not a reflection of the Ripple labs team, but probably of a lone individual. Therefore it appears to this is purely a Ripple Labs decision. I thought we would be seeing an exodus of the Ripple Labs members already, but so far that has not happened. I applaud those who are staying as the XRP payment is being phased out. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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You're assuming that WCG has a vested interest in trying to expand its reach, but does that really make sense from an economic point of view?
----------------------------------------Think about it. WCG is a charity for IBM. Essentially a money pit. They get absolutely nothing from it - not even good press. And since the main complaint from the staff is that they never have the people and resources to do all of the things they themselves recognize as being important, does it really sound to you like WCG is a priority for them? It certainly doesn't seem that way to me. Besides that, if the reasons don't make sense from WCG's point of view, how much less sense does it make for RL? They go through all of the effort of creating Computing for Good and decide to chuck all of that for the 4 reasons listed? Come on. CfG didn't even last for 6 months. Do you really think they did all of that just to run for a few months? So what really makes more sense? |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7668 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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You're assuming that WCG has a vested interest in trying to expand its reach, but does that really make sense from an economic point of view? Absolutely. IBM and its staff are learning every day about how to manage a a far flung network based on an architecture which is constantly changing. I am quite sure they are using this knowledge to improve their own products and services. I am sure the Watson project was a money pit which consumed a large amount of resources. They did not do that project merely to win at Jeopardy. They have taken what they learned from that project and are now using that basic framework to market the "Watson" solution to businesses which need to make some sense out of mountains of data. Insurance companies, medical diagnostics, and petrology are some which immediately come to mind. WCG not only performs a charitable function, but also serves as a research vehicle for the company. IBM invests in projects for the long term, not just the next quarter. For IBM this is at least a two pronged approach: Use the company resources for good and learn something while you're doing it. As a side effect you also get some favorable PR for it. Win, win,win as I see it. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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That's a nice try at putting a positive spin on WCG as it relates to IBM, but it's just spin and I think you know that. BOINC is hardly cutting edge technology and the real work is done by the applications that are written by underfunded researchers who can't afford the supercomputer time that they need for their work. Give me one concrete example of how IBM benefits from being the hardware side of the process when all the actual innovation, whatever little there may be, comes from the software side - with which it has no appreciable connection?
----------------------------------------As for the comparison to Watson, that's simply ridiculous. Watson is a cutting edge software product that has nothing at all to do with what WCG does and isn't even remotely similar. To quote a recent article , "Watson is an amalgamation of artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language technologies." To compare that to BOINC is like comparing an amoeba to a primate. Maybe there are some hardware management applications that IBM has developed as a result of WCG, but I have a hard time imagining anything more substantial than that - although I'm sure the staff will be along to correct me if I'm wrong, since it seems to be the only time they ever respond to any issues I raise. |
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