I think economic reality is not some people's strong point. That was not sarcasm at all. You aren't looking at shrink-wrap software here, but a research project. Did you ever do one in graduate school yourself? How much did you pay for the software? How much support can you expect for that? I don't think you are looking at my words, but at your preconceptions.

Too funny, Sek!! How about a trip to Sister Mary Elephant SSSHHHUUUTTTT UUUPPPP!

Thank You.

Hi Kremmen,



There are several fundamental operational guidelines we employ when taking a project live:

First, going live is not just our decision. It is a joint decision between our team and the research team. Our role is to provide IT support for the researchers. World Community Grid exists, so that researchers from not-for-profit organizations, with limit budgets and limited IT support, can run research.

Second, with billions of computers in the world potentially accessing World Community Grid, it's impossible to fix the research apps to work on all computers, especially older ones. If we did that, then we would only be able to run one research project on World Community Grid and we would spend our time fixing the app so that it ran on all computers. Instead, we have decided to establish a reasonable error threshold rate so that we can invest our time toward running multiple research projects simultaneously.

The error threshold we have established for World Community Grid is 5%. During Alpha and Beta testing we work on getting the error rate to be below 5%. If it's not less than 5%. it would be a tough call to launch. That's why some launches have to be rescheduled. And when we decide to launch, it's a joint decision between the researchers and the World Community Grid support team.

BTW, after a project goes live, we continue to monitor the error rate on a monthly basis. If the error rate exceeds 5% for a research project, then we investigate and make corrections if we are able.




We took a close look at your post and the thread it is in and discovered that (1) your computer was in the 5% threshold group (so we weren't going to fix it anyway), and (2) the answers that were provided by the CA's and other members were very good and there's really nothing we could have added to those.

Having said that, we are sorry that you felt your request was ignored. We do not have the resources to respond to every post. What we do have is the utmost confidence in replies from the CAs and from other experienced members. I would suggest that in the future, when you get to a point of uncertainty about an error on your computer, that you send an email to the support desk using the Contact Us feature.

Thanks for keeping us on our toes!! And thanks for crunching on World Community Grid.

Error is such an inspecific word, and it means a lot of things. Your statement doesn't make any sense to me.

Of course an error in medical treatment could have fatal consequences, and everything needs to be done to get the error rate down to about zero.

One other extreme example: Consider the gold rush, people standing in a river and try to get some gold out of the stones and sand. An error rate of 99% would have been considered an absolutely terrific result, meaning that within 100 washing exercises they would have found one gold nugget.

In WCG, if an error occurs, that particular work done on a computer will be lost. Noone will be injured or have damage. It's a matter of statistics - only 95% of the work is really useful, up to 5% are overhead. It means 95% efficiency - not that bad. There are industries that have a lot more overhead. Carbon power plants, to mention one.

Regards,
Martin