A great many are concerned about global warming and other weather related issues and our project has about 7800 active users with one or more systems available, but we don't have enough work available to keep all of the 7800 active users with one or more work units.

Seems we have an issue here somewhere.

I have heard the "just wait work will come" line and it does not satisfy my PC. Sure I also look for cures for cancer and do other work but why can't we get enough work to keep this "small" project active ?

Thanks
Bill F

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In October 1969 I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
There was no expiration date.

While there are only 7800 users there appear to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 cores attached to this project. They scarf down a whole lot of tasks.

Tasks are created as needed to support the research. Once run and the results returned, the data have to analyzed. There would be no points in creating tasks faster than the researchers could be analyzed the results. These tasks cost the researchers money, something they do not have unlimited amounts of.

The researchers don’t create tasks just to keep our computers fed. Try running Seti if you want endless work.

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Jim .. I am sorry my understanding of the Project is lacking it seems. As I volunteer and all I was not aware that the researchers had to pay for the processing that the Project does for them. Of course it makes sense that they would only buy what they need. Since I am in the learning mode do they have to pay a lot and who gets the money ?

I had the "Warm Fuzzies" that this was a good for Earth and Scientific advancement project not a for Profit project.

Bill

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In October 1969 I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
There was no expiration date.

Bill,

This is not a for-profit project, but those organisations that use the resources of the project can be responsible for storage, servers and staff - it isn't all done at Oxford. There have, for example, been some significant delays in some regional models as the responsible institutions set up their budgets, networks and presumably staff.

It should also not be forgotten that we volunteers incur energy costs in running the models. The project has quite a few reasons to only distribute work that is useful. Without any particular knowledge I would guess that the principal constraint is staff.

Iain

As I volunteer and all I was not aware that the researchers had to pay for the processing that the Project does for them.

I was not aware of that either. Who do the researchers pay? They certainly do not pay me. Do you mean they pay IBM for the WCG stuff? University of California for Seti@home? Oxford U for ClimatePrediction?

I always imagined that I gave the machine time and the researchers provided the data and analysis of the results. Could you be mistaken?

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If anyone can't wait to crunch something climate related then there's also the recently launched Climate@Home 2.0 based on the other side of the pond.

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If anyone can't wait to crunch something climate related then there's also the recently launched Climate@Home 2.0 based on the other side of the pond.

Thanks, it looks however running VirtualBox is a must.

I always imagined that I gave the machine time and the researchers provided the data and analysis of the results. Could you be mistaken?

Yes, the researchers (or I would imagine the universities where they are based) pay for the computer time and staff at Oxford. Who pays for the staff and infrastructure of other projects I have no Idea, though I imagine the information is in the public domain.

Thanks, it looks however running VirtualBox is a must.

Just attached, when you run a task it says it is downloading a virtual box wrapper but I have just downloaded two tasks which seem to be running fine. Unsurprisingly for a new project time estimate seems to be way out. About double what I think it will take calculating on 8 minutes. This may well be a better option for those who don't want tasks that will mostly take days or weeks. I haven't gotten round to looking at their science pages yet.

Edit:

after a while I get a message about computation postponed, 
communication with vm failed. Installing VB has got tasks to restart from 
scratch. Will report back when it has been running long enough to be sure what
 is happening.Only one task restarted, the other has errored.
May be other will error out as well

I notice my computer on there is only no147 so I would be surprised if there aren't some teething problems. VB seems to be so hungry that I can only run one out of two cores at a time if I want to use the computer at the same time.

Given the recent computing problems and the lack of communication with the number crunchers on this project if I were one of the staff/researchers I would seriously be wondering what I was paying for.

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