Benutzer:Rdiez/DonatingIdleComputerTime

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Donating your idle computer time to a good cause

I have been feeling altruist again, so I thought I could donate my spare computing power to some scientific project with a laudable goal.

I have tried the BOINC platform in the past and got disappointed, and this time was no different, except that I decided to write an article about it.

Is it worth contributing now?

Probably not.

Computing power is still exponentially increasing all the time, and most importantly, efficiency is still increasing at a great rate. That means that you are constantly getting more processing speed for less money and with a lower electricity consumption. Therefore, year 2014 is not the most efficient point in time to get started, at least if you consider the current environmental impact of producing energy.

Contributing now helps some project of your choice be the first to achieve its goals. Being the first does have some value, especially for the researcher. For some biological projects, having the results earlier could mean new treatments are available faster, which may be crucial for potential patients. However, this kind of computing-intensive projects are becoming easier all the time, so getting there is just a matter of time.

An increasing number of contributors should raise the general perception that distributed computing is important, which should make funding platform software improvements easier. However, it does not look like BOINC has been improving much in the past years (see below for more information on this). Therefore, participating now probably does not make a difference anymore, at least for that platform.

At a personal level, contributing is going to cost you some time. You will have to install software, choose a worthy project, create an account somewhere (yet another password to remember), and maybe ask your employer for permission first. You will have to learn a new program and, at least when using a PC, deal with the quirks described below. And there is also the increased electricity bill.

Does it make sense to use volunteered distributed computing?

This is a human organisational issue. For most projects, the most economical solution at a global level would be to design hardware specifically for the task at hand. This does not have to be completely new hardware (ASICs), as FPGAs will often suffice.

Even if a project uses commodity hardware, a centralised computing centre that buys CPUs (or graphics cards with computational functions) in bulk will probably achieve a much better value for money overall, especially regarding the electricity consumption. With the advent of cloud computing, this is getting easier and cheaper all the time.

The problem is getting the necessary funding. Society does not think as a whole, but each nation, goverment, institution and so on has a separate budget. Using volunteered processing power may help an individual project overcome funding difficulties. It is probably not efficient in global terms, but it does get the job done. After all, there is no good solution in sight for this kind of organisational problem.

Choosing your good cause

There are many projects available on the BOINC platform, but little help about choosing one. The website only mentions what hardware and software platforms a project can run on, which falls short in my opinion.

You will be giving your processing time for free, so I would choose a project that makes its computing results public. I would also favour those projects with open source computing software. Finally, I would also favor non-profit institutions.

For example, the Folding@home project run by the Stanford University states in their FAQ page "following the publications of these scientific articles, we will make the raw data of the folding runs will be available to other researchers upon request" [sic]. They also have a "Why don’t you post the source code?" FAQ entry which states "we stress that the vast majority of our code is already open source". Personally, I would expect all data to be public for everybody to use freely and all the code to be open-sourced from the start. Therefore, I would NOT choose a project with such restrictions.

If a project is listed in BOINC, it probably has passed some selection criteria, so it should be trustworthy. This is important, because you will be installing a managament software on your PC that automatically downloads binary executables from the Internet.

There are of course other distributed computing projects that do not use the BOINC infrastructure. In fact, Folding@home is one of them.

I went for SETI@home, which is what got BOINC started. It may not be the best use of your computing time though.

First impressions with BOINC

I tested version 7.2.42 (latest as of october 2014) under Kubuntu Linux 14.04 and under Microsoft Windows 7.

You need to accept a software license

The first thing you'll notice when installing BOINC is that you need to accept the LGPL license. As a anonymous volunteer, you are probably not in the mood to accept any license. In fact, you do not actually need to accept this license in order to use the software. Section "9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies" of the GPL (which the LGPL is based on) starts with "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it".

I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that the additional clause "Restrictions: You may use this software on a computer system only if you own the system or have the permission of the owner", while a valid warning about a potential, common-sense issue, is probably formally incompatible with the GPL, which admits no additional restrictions about how the software may be used. I guess the BOINC project could place this kind of restriction in their service usage policy, but if you think about it, it does not actually make sense.

Replacing your screensaver by default

On Windows, the default installation will replace your screensaver. The BOINC markerting department is probably hoping to get some free advertisement space on your PC monitor. They could just suggest that you use the BOINC screensaver, because it is cool, or mention that it is "good" advertising and you may want to help spread the platform too. But making it the default, and having to press the "Advanced" button first so that you can untick that option, is rather cheeky. Definitely not the right way to treat your volunteers.

Unnecessary system restart under Windows

On Ubuntu Linux, you do not need to restart your PC after installing BOINC. On Windows, restarting the PC should not be necessary either. Nowadays you can install and remove Windows services without a restart.

Why you need a user account

The first time BOINC starts, you are given the chance to add a computing project. I selected SETI@home, and I was prompted to create a new account or use an existing one for that particular project. I do not know yet whether this applies to all projects, or if it is specific to SETI@home, but the log-in dialog box looked generic to all BOINC projects.

True altruism ist anonymous. Besides, I do not want to remember yet another login and password, and give my e-mail address away in the process. My guess is, once more, that this "requirement" is mainly for marketing purposes.

There is virtually no user-identification mechanism in place, so you can make up your name etc. when creating an account. The BONIC infrastructure does not really trust you anyway. Every piece of data is computed twice on separate volunteer computers, effectively halving the available processing power. This way, faulty computers or even malicious participants stand out quickly.

Account scoring

Distributed computing platforms tend to implement some sort of scoring, so that your own contributions are visibly acknowledged. Some platforms are trying to promote a sense of "community" and offer different rewards as an incentive, like your name appearing on the "top 100" contributors list, or some special mention or price if your computer happens to be the one that finds some interesting computational result. When SETI@home introduced a competitive aspect, it even prompted attempts to 'cheat' the system.

There usually are statistics per hardware and software platform. Some companies have used this in the past in order to advertise their hardware, according to the motto "look at BOINC's statistics, we sell the fastest and most reliable computers". I would not trust this data anyway. These projects tend to be starved of money, and it must be hard to resist the temptation to cook the books in order to favour in the statistics some particularly-generous hardware manufacturer.

While I do not mind this kind of corporate marketing, I do not see the need to participate myself. The computing software could just create some random ID on each PC, and display a message window if it really needs the user's attention. Having a user account and playing such social games should be entirely optional.

TODO

TODO: Write the rest of the article.