Free associating for the win.

jasong · 2012-02-18, 01:41

This thread was originally intended to ask George Woltman how much he thought his volunteer time for the Prime95 program was worth, and then my ADD kicked in. I realized this in the middle of the Iran topic and therefore finished the topic, added a bit, changed the title and posted.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sorry if this thread offends anyone, specifically the user Prime95. But I'm curious how much the expertise is worth if it were done as a job. I'm almost 100% sure I can't afford it, but, as with any volunteer venture, it's interesting to know how much has been volunteered.

With things like food distribution and volunteer work on houses, I believe it's possible to Google estimates of the value of the work. With missionary work, there's obviously the cost of training and transportation, but the volunteer work is something separate which is never actually calculated by the person, except possibly through vanity.

With distributed computing projects, even the ones viewed as worthless by a good chunk of the population tend to have a huge amount of work dedicated to them. And the volunteer crunchers, even if they have no clue how the science works, are willing to put their hardware and pocketbook on the line, paying for electricity and potentially killing their hardware prematurely by doing the extra processing.

Different people have different hobbies, and in the case of distributed computing, there's a million different reasons we do it. To earn respect, to support a worthy project, as a fun thing to do, to help along the science, to speed up getting an answer to a question we're curious about(like with the Odd Perfect Number project), all sorts of reasons.

I think a large amount of respect is deserved for people willing to sink thousands of dollars into a simple hobby, even if I may not understand the appeal of the hobby itself.

It's been said, I forget by who, that if you enjoy wasting your own time, then it's not truly wasted. That's kind of a rude way of putting it, but sometimes that's the most respectful thing possible for hobbies we don't understand ourselves. When I first discovered binary numbers, I sat down, started with 1, and manually(this was about '85 or so) doubled them 50-100 times. I was proud of my achievement, so the teacher put it up on the bulletin board. Since it was grade school, I had a few people make fun of my work, and one student double-checked it and discovered I was wrong from about the 60-th number onward.

The point of this exercise was simply my own enjoyment, I also enjoyed the fact that I took to algebra like a fish to water, I was years ahead of my peers until I got sick and had to be hospitalized with my schizophrenia. I still tend to impress non-college people with my mathematical abilities. There have been one or two people that actually got a bit offended when they tried to explain a mathematical concept to me and I understood it a bit too quickly for their ego.

Okay, now I'm sounding conceited. As a Christian, I believe everyone on the planet is as deserving of respect as anyone else. I'm not talking about respect for intelligence or expertise, like with Rod Silverman's very appropriate knowledge for this particular forum. Rather, it's more from a civil rights-type perspective. When we talk about places like Iran, we(the non-Iranians who care about politics) tend to view Iranians as if they're simply a problem that needs to be dealt with. Nobody seems to care that the Iranians might actually only want electricity for their homes. As Americans, we are the biggest hypocrites on the planet when it comes to nuclear bombs.

Okay, that's enough free-associating for now, plus Fringe is about to come on.

only_human · 2012-02-18, 03:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasong

This thread was originally intended to ask George Woltman how much he thought his volunteer time for the Prime95 program was worth, and then my ADD kicked in. I realized this in the middle of the Iran topic and therefore finished the topic, added a bit, changed the title and posted.

[tl;dr]

Okay, that's enough free-associating for now, plus Fringe is about to come on.

Hey, don't taze the Fun Stuff > Lounge, bro!

Ok, I was kidding about the tl;dr. I did read it. I hear you; you are talking about respect and value of time. Lot's of opinions on that stuff; we're all caring, feeling crustaceans (or even better!). Also, best I can tell, Google's first hit for Rod Silverman is an Anesthesiologist. Let me shout some props for those who provide that essential service.

Got something on your chest hereabouts though, it ain't surgery, it's Soapbox -- especially with that political and bomb stuff. Peace out and don't taze the lounge, bro!

cheesehead · 2012-02-18, 04:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by only_human

Also, best I can tell, Google's first hit for Rod Silverman is an Anesthesiologist. Let me shout some props for those who provide that essential service.

Perhaps Rod Silverman is a misnomer for Rod Serling. Silver(man) -> Sterling -> Serling)

Christenson · 2012-02-18, 04:58

Estimating JasonG's problem, the value of Prime95's time on this project quite roughly

5 years time * 150K/year salary * 100% overhead = 1.5 million bucks....

only_human · 2012-02-18, 05:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christenson

Estimating JasonG's problem, the value of Prime95's time on this project quite roughly

5 years time * 150K/year salary * 100% overhead = 1.5 million bucks....

Then after all that generosity, the gummint stole his poker winnings. Sheesh, some things really suck.

Brian-E · 2012-02-18, 14:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasong

When I first discovered binary numbers, I sat down, started with 1, and manually(this was about '85 or so) doubled them 50-100 times. I was proud of my achievement, so the teacher put it up on the bulletin board. Since it was grade school, I had a few people make fun of my work, and one student double-checked it and discovered I was wrong from about the 60-th number onward.

Perhaps the people making fun of you were only jealous because they didn't have the patience to write down all those zeroes like you did? Actually I think making a mistake at the 60th number is amazingly clever in itself.

Sorry, only joking. I have undoubtedly misunderstood what you were doing.

I identify with this sort of thing, actually. At about the age of 14 I read about an algorithm for calculating square roots one decimal digit at a time, and I spent hours doing ridiculous exercises like finding the square root of my telephone number to 30 decimal places. Maybe most of us here used to do something pointless like that in our youth.

bcp19 · 2012-02-18, 16:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasong

When I first discovered binary numbers, I sat down, started with 1, and manually(this was about '85 or so) doubled them 50-100 times. I was proud of my achievement, so the teacher put it up on the bulletin board. Since it was grade school, I had a few people make fun of my work, and one student double-checked it and discovered I was wrong from about the 60-th number onward.

Maybe I am missing something, but if you start at binary 1 and double it 50-100 times, doesn't it go 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, ..., 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000?

jasong · 2012-02-18, 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcp19

Maybe I am missing something, but if you start at binary 1 and double it 50-100 times, doesn't it go 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, ..., 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000?

I wasn't writing 1,10,100...I was writing 1,2,4...etc. I was calculating the values for the doublings.

lol, sorry for the confusion.

2012-02-18, 01:41	#1
jasong "Jason Goatcher" Mar 2005 3×7×167 Posts	Free associating for the win. This thread was originally intended to ask George Woltman how much he thought his volunteer time for the Prime95 program was worth, and then my ADD kicked in. I realized this in the middle of the Iran topic and therefore finished the topic, added a bit, changed the title and posted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'm sorry if this thread offends anyone, specifically the user Prime95. But I'm curious how much the expertise is worth if it were done as a job. I'm almost 100% sure I can't afford it, but, as with any volunteer venture, it's interesting to know how much has been volunteered. With things like food distribution and volunteer work on houses, I believe it's possible to Google estimates of the value of the work. With missionary work, there's obviously the cost of training and transportation, but the volunteer work is something separate which is never actually calculated by the person, except possibly through vanity. With distributed computing projects, even the ones viewed as worthless by a good chunk of the population tend to have a huge amount of work dedicated to them. And the volunteer crunchers, even if they have no clue how the science works, are willing to put their hardware and pocketbook on the line, paying for electricity and potentially killing their hardware prematurely by doing the extra processing. Different people have different hobbies, and in the case of distributed computing, there's a million different reasons we do it. To earn respect, to support a worthy project, as a fun thing to do, to help along the science, to speed up getting an answer to a question we're curious about(like with the Odd Perfect Number project), all sorts of reasons. I think a large amount of respect is deserved for people willing to sink thousands of dollars into a simple hobby, even if I may not understand the appeal of the hobby itself. It's been said, I forget by who, that if you enjoy wasting your own time, then it's not truly wasted. That's kind of a rude way of putting it, but sometimes that's the most respectful thing possible for hobbies we don't understand ourselves. When I first discovered binary numbers, I sat down, started with 1, and manually(this was about '85 or so) doubled them 50-100 times. I was proud of my achievement, so the teacher put it up on the bulletin board. Since it was grade school, I had a few people make fun of my work, and one student double-checked it and discovered I was wrong from about the 60-th number onward. The point of this exercise was simply my own enjoyment, I also enjoyed the fact that I took to algebra like a fish to water, I was years ahead of my peers until I got sick and had to be hospitalized with my schizophrenia. I still tend to impress non-college people with my mathematical abilities. There have been one or two people that actually got a bit offended when they tried to explain a mathematical concept to me and I understood it a bit too quickly for their ego. Okay, now I'm sounding conceited. As a Christian, I believe everyone on the planet is as deserving of respect as anyone else. I'm not talking about respect for intelligence or expertise, like with Rod Silverman's very appropriate knowledge for this particular forum. Rather, it's more from a civil rights-type perspective. When we talk about places like Iran, we(the non-Iranians who care about politics) tend to view Iranians as if they're simply a problem that needs to be dealt with. Nobody seems to care that the Iranians might actually only want electricity for their homes. As Americans, we are the biggest hypocrites on the planet when it comes to nuclear bombs. Okay, that's enough free-associating for now, plus Fringe is about to come on.

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2012-02-18, 04:58	#4
Christenson Dec 2010 Monticello 703₁₆ Posts	Estimating JasonG's problem, the value of Prime95's time on this project quite roughly 5 years time * 150K/year salary * 100% overhead = 1.5 million bucks....