We astound each other :) So if a PGA golfer finished a round and reported his score as 17 (you keep your own score in golf), the rest of the players have to accept it even though obviously false? Everyone who uses optimized clients are raising their credit claims to levels not based on the properties of their hardware. It's not a fair system when you have to use modified software (or subtract 60 from your golf score) to stay competitive.

First, a question - I must say, DeKim (david?) I really, honestly think that you are going the wrong direction here.

I am just adding more info for user's for now. If you want to know how much actual work you've done compared to others, look at the new info once it's up. If not, just ignore it. My goal in response to users and just plain old logic is to offer a more fair credit system. -- David K

...I understand that you want to change the existing credit system, and because of that it is safe to infer that you felt the existing system wasn't working. Why?

The reasons why are numerous and sprawled throughout the Rosetta boards, including the infamous (and deleted) cheating thread.

I you were not aware of it... the current BOINC implementation allows a user to basically modify a simple file with notepad and claim their machine is 10x (or 1000x) faster then it really is. That's the basic premise of the need for change. And that's why many of the BOINC projects are changing in ways appropriate for each project's work.

In the end, the new system will still equate back to the FLOPS that BOINC proports to measure. But it will be much more difficult to modify your results and try to claim more credits.

The current system places credits in the hands of individual particpants. . you essentially keep your own score. Want more credits? Just claim more credits by making your benchmarks higher than possible (some computers claim 15+ Gflops per cpu. . even at 4ghz and running two floating point calculations a cycle, that's 8 Gflops. . and cpu's don't get near theoretical). Don't get too greedy or you'll get zerod out. It's like speeding, if you go the same speed as everyone else in the left lane, even if 10 over, you're not likely to get in trouble. . . if you're going 40 over in the median, you'll get busted. Not a very good system imo.

The new system is taking the law of averages to make the playing field more fair. It's taking the average credit claim from hundreds of machines and applying the same score to each.

We can limit the number of wu you can abort. We can change the work unit distribution to be more homogenous. We can update the credit/model values. We can penalize people trying to cherry pick. It seems easy enough to me if it becomes a problem. just some ideas off the top of my head.

Hi,

i have been looking on their pages but i wasnt able to figure out what the differences are.

Seems to me that both have same aims...
isnt it a waste to do this in 2 seperate projects?

Yes, I updated the news. Thanks for catching this.

depends on what you have set in your ralph@home preferences under target cpu time, unless something is wrong with that WU it should run close to whatever you set there. and you should not be repeating anything, each model is a new try as far as i know :)