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Whilst browsing (boredom is a terrible thing), I opened the page "sign up for projects".  At the top were a list of bullet points the last of which reads- "It is advised not to participate in alpha or beta projects. Participation is at your own risk"
Discuss
Meanwhile I'll contemplate several Tanglefoots later on (I'm off work for a few days  :occasion5:  )

To the best of my knowledge none of the Alpha or Beta projects will either blow up your PC nor send the Boys round if you get something wrong.

Obviously they are not fully tested so the is a chance you may crunch away on WUs and have them fail on you at some point giving you no credits for your time.

I myself have had few problems and have had WUs fail on some of the stable projects.

Some of the more seasoned crunchers may be able to advise you more but the main thing is to check your system meets the minimum requirements for any project you want to sign up for.


Gary.

Agreed Froggi, there will always be problems here and there (over the years grid had it's fair share).  It's just that the wording makes it all sound so sinister, or is this just another case of "no blame society".  :shock:

ghosttrain wrote:Whilst browsing (boredom is a terrible thing), I opened the page "sign up for projects".  At the top were a list of bullet points the last of which reads- "It is advised not to participate in alpha or beta projects. Participation is at your own risk"

The issue really boils down to why you are crunching...

If it's for credits only, then crunching for alpha or beta projects may not be a good idea, as you may not receive any credits for work done.

I speak from "current" experience here, as I have 45 Zivis WUs that won't upload back to their server and they are now "overdue" - hence I've wasted around 40 hours crunching, which could have been spent on a different project. (And they are totally wasted, because the result files didn't get uploaded, so the project gained absolutely nothing from my PC's contribution).

On the other hand, in the early stages of most (all?) BOINC projects "lives", testers are required to prove that the results received are valid. And without said alpha and beta stages, and the resulting "issues" that may arise, the project might not mature and lessons might not be learned.

So, if you have spare crunching capacity, crunching for an alpha or beta project can be beneficial to both the project and yourself, as you will be helping them, and you can feel better about your contribution to helping the project work better.

But then you run the risk of not getting anything in return, if the results cause errors.

So far, it's very rare for an alpha or beta project to cause a problem with the machine running it...but this can also happen...so, you wouldn't want to run said projects on a mission critical server, for instance.

And again, you need to consider this when signing up for such a project.

Hope this helps,

regards,

Tim

Thanks for that Timbo.  For me it wasn't about credits but, originally, to try as hard as possible to help find a cure for cancer.  As there is not a particular project that "grabs" me at the moment I'm crunching mainly biological research projects.  I would hate to waste computing time because this is the whole reason for leaving my computer running but as you say it probably serves a purpose in the long run and it's happened before and is bound to happen again  :(