The Scottish Boinc Team

I'm [always] interested in your thoughts on how you decide what project/s path to take ..

I'm at the stage of almost reaching my goal of a million points for yoyo@home and am wondering what project/s to crunch next .

a few ramblin' ponderings ...

• Is it being loyal to the team goal of WCG to reaching a team top 100
  
  Is it maxing the points per WU, some projects are more generous with credit, points per CPU hour
  
  Is it about the points or the science or a happy combination
  
  Is it about team loyalty/friendly rivalry
  
  Is it variety perhaps - variety is the spice of life
  
  Is it the pretty colors produced by the wunderful stats site http://ubt-seti.dyndns.org/tsbt/ubt_gra ... &seg=11111
  
  Is it about team position .. boincstats gives that
  http://boincstats.com/search/all_projec ... ype=inteam
  reach top 10 for all projects ..
  
  Is it focus on new projects, the alpha ones .. cutting edge and all that ..
  
  Is it on a project that is 'close to heart' climate prediction or what ever
  
  many other that you ill hopefully list -
  ..

too many choices but not back to Folding@home

so how do you decide ??

for myself it started out way back in seti days as a bit of science. then met the team and it became a bit compedative.

took a sebatical really when boinc started and then got a random email from mega one day so decided to look at what there was. i took a keen intrest in the medical ones due to ilnesses that had affected the family and focused on those. It was originally predictor and now rosetta.

When i crunched more seriously (and had a good crunching battle with snowdog and flyingfocrs) and had multiple machines at my disposal i did help out more with the whole team spirit "this campaign needs help" ethos and would love to again but untill my processing power reaches a decent level again i'm quite happy just to let rosetta tick along and help it stay where it is.

so for now i guess its about the science again for me... one day it will again be all about the points but with the team goals always being more important than single battles.

It seems to vary from week to week with me.

All the projects seem to have valid objectives, and everyone chooses which is more important.

Team goals are good, and if you're near a milestone, credit can be important.

I suppose what I'm saying is, each to their own at their own time.

At the moment I'm trying to raise our position in the UK rankings for a few projects... why? Good question, seems like fun :)

I started out with Seti back in 1999 because it was the only program of it's kind back then and it's an area of personal interest to me. So when I started using BOINC it was natural to continue with that.

My other project Rosetta I run because I believe the goals of the project can potentially help millions of people in the future.

FWIW my priorities are determined thus:
1. Team Priorities: To some extent I help set these so it's not as altruistic as it sounds. Also once WCG hits the top 100 the pressure will be off: Maintainance is much easier than catch up!
2. My Personal Project Targets. I really want to be a millionaire for as many projects as possible: Megacruncher. Geddit?
3. Scientific Worth/Validity Who is to judge this? If SETI did establish that somewhere out there folks -a bit, maybe, like us- were existent and intelligent enough to discover radio it would be the biggest poke in the eye for the humanocentric brands of theism curently just holding on to human gullability, since Copernicus. On the other hand the chances of intercepting their random, or less likely still, targetted broadcasts are slim to sod all.
CPDN is one of the worthier projects, but I for one consider the global warming via CO2 emissions theory to be proven beyond all reasonable doubt so, now I've clocked a million, why bother?
Sudoko & Chess960 seen relativly frivolous but who knows what other wisdom might come from them?
4. Credits/Hour This is a factor we ignore at our peril. However for me it matters less now that I know that my place in the top 1000 is safe but that top 100 is totally unreallistic. Similarly if we were struggling to keep TSBT top 100 then this would be a big factor in the teams interests.

Basically, whatever.

So long as your PC is doing something useful that is good. If it's useful and for TSBT then that is perfect!

Well for me I again started way back in the CLassic days.
More recently I've been more team oriented although I do tend to drift off a bit now and again and focus on a few personal goals.
Although I do try to have a few credits in every project so that I can crunch them if team objectives require it.

What motivates me?.......read my profile

Seriously now, like most, I started off on Seti. After a while I became disillusioned with filling a database and not doing any science with it (though that may change if/when nrtpckr gets off the ground), so I looked elsewhere.

Family illness gave me a huge incentive to crunch bio-science projects such as Rosetta, Simap and led me to run Folding for a while too - it also helped nudge me to WCG.

High hitting projects like 64bit ABC help boost the ego a little, spice up the Mega chase and make up for poor paying projects.

Team goals - of course, personal goals - definitely