Proposal for BOINC wide teams mechanism

[ChristianB]

Hi to all,

I mailed this proposal to the boinc_dev mailing list on Dec 9th but
there was just one response so I thought of sending it to you also.

Problem: Everyone can create teams at new BOINC Projects and can use
a
name that's already used at another project. As a team founder I want
to
probably have control over all the teams in the different projects.

Solution: There has to be some mechanism to reserve team names that
become very popular. There should be a central place where a team
founder can register a team name and block its further usage. The
privacy of the team founder has to be preserved, so no email
addresses
should be shown to the public.

Implementation #1: If someone wants to create a team at some new
BOINC
project, this project has to ask the central team database (CTDB) if
the
desired team name is reserved or not. If not this team can be
created.
If it is reserved the project has to send the hashed email address of
the creator to the CTDB. The CTDB now has to check if the founder's
email address for this team matches with the one supplied by the
project. If it matches the team can be created (success reply)
otherwise
it is rejected (error reply). The communication between projects and
CTDB can be done via web RPC's.

Implementation #2: Works like the above but instead of the web RPC's
we
can use a hashed table that can be imported by new projects. This
table
"team_reservations" holds the team name in plain text and the hashed
email-address of the founder. To check if a user is authorized to use
the desired team name the project has to look into this DB and
compare
the hashed email addresses.

In both implementations no one except the team founder and the owner
of
the CTDB can see the email address of the founder. For #1 you have to
change the team creation scripts and the code at the CTDB and #2
involves some changes to the projects DB, team creation scripts and
CTDB
also. The question is: Do you want to use web RPC's that can
overwhelm
the CTDB or import xml-data scripts as it is now.

Could you please comment to this and show where I could have missed
something. The main reason behind this is to preserve privacy of
founder's mail addresses.

Regards
Christian

[Knightmare]

Christian. I think the problem has been solved by the ability to create
a " BOINC Wide " team.

All that will happen now is that when you create a team, you can go to a
website ( sorry, I forget the address for it but I think you can get
there through your Team Administration area ) and create the team as "
BOINC Wide ". That means that the team will be created on all existing
and future BOINC projects.

[ChristianB]

I'm aware of this feature, but as it works now the founders email
address is revealed to everyone who creates a BOINC project and/or
retrieves the whole list from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/boinc_teams.xml
That's a good source for spammers to gather some hundreds of
addresses. There are also some other flaws in the system that are
pointed out in the boinc_dev mailing list.

The main reason why I wrote this proposal was that there was no
discussion prior the implementation of this feature and therefore
nobody explained what this feature should and shouldn't do. This
release of email addresses is a huge break into the privacy of the
team founders not only in my eyes.

What I propose are mainly changes to the actual system to make it more
secure for both the projects and the team founders.

Regards
Christian

On 24 Dez., 03:08, Knightmare <knightmare.at.calm.ch...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[David Anderson]

One of the goals of the BOINC-wide teams (BWT) design
is that team founders don't have to discover new projects
and create instances of the team on them;
it happens automatically when new projects are created.

An additional design goal is to avoid relying on high-availability
servers here at Berkeley, since we can't provide them.

The email address used for BWT founder accounts
need not, and should not, be their founder's primary email address.
Its only use is the handling of confirmation emails,
and spam doesn't interfere with this.

-- David

[Michael Buckingham]

I use this account for all my seti related stuff, and besides, this email address has been in the open
since 1997.  I use it for all my BOINC stuff...and I consider this my public email address.  So , I see no privacy breach here.
 
Whatever email account you use, if you use it somewhere, sign up for something, or even share it with your friends..guess what..it is no longer private.  That's why we all get spam email.
 
Also, folks email me all the time with BOINC questions from the BOINC helpers page....I always respond...even further propagating my email address to total strangers.
 
It should be assumed that you need to compartment your email address(s)


 

Michael Buckingham

 

"No trees were killed in the making of this email, however, a large

number of Electrons were terribly inconvenienced."

> Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 13:39:25 -0800
> Subject: [boinc-team-founders] Re: Proposal for BOINC wide teams mechanism
> From: open.sou...@googlemail.com
> To: boinc-tea...@googlegroups.com

[Angus]

You created the password problem by your usual hasty, ill-conceived
implementation.

Every one of the founder emails in that first export should have been
contacted about your plan, and had the option to either opt out or
change the team founder email on SETI to a throw-away email.

Instead, you just burned all those emails for everyone. Maybe you
don't care how often you change email accounts, but just perhaps
others do.

[Angus]

David just emailed me that my post was rude.

I don't think so. It's just not one of those sugar-coated, everything-
is-rosy posts.

It's just honest, and it's not being rude to be honest.

How many other bad ideas have you tested on the unsuspecting lately?
How about the profile picture fiasco on SETI a day or so ago?

[John 37309]

I agree with David.

 

If i were David i would ban you from this forum for not having anything usefull or positive to say to anyone. Angus you are rude!

 

Christian B has put forward a very useful method of dealing with boinc wide teams. He put forward his ideas for open discussion.

 

I think Christion's idea is very good.

 

John.

[Angus]

I never said or implied that Christian's plan was not good.

I do have an issue with the exposure of team founders' emails without
notice to the world at large, and then dismissing it by saying they
should have known use to throw-away email accounts when they created
their teams. How were they to know that when they registered those
SETI accounts as long ago as 1999 that this would be a requirement 8
years later?

When those accounts were created, the email of account holders were
considered private.

I'm still astounded and very concerned that David still doesn't think
he did a bad thing.

On Dec 26, 3:47 pm, "John 37309" <paddysinsp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with David.
>
> If i were David i would ban you from this forum for not having anything
> usefull or positive to say to anyone. Angus you are rude!
>
> Christian B has put forward a very useful method of dealing with boinc wide
> teams. He put forward his ideas for open discussion.
>
> I think Christion's idea is very good.
>
> John.
>

[Angus]

On Dec 26, 3:47 pm, "John 37309" <paddysinsp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If i were David i would ban you from this forum for not having anything
> usefull or positive to say to anyone. Angus you are rude!

If the entire reason for this "forum" is just to make David Anderson
think he's so wonderful, it needs to be renamed.
Pointing out faults and mistakes is not rude.

> Christian B has put forward a very useful method of dealing with boinc wide
> teams. He put forward his ideas for open discussion.
>

So your idea of "open discussion" is just agreeing with every last
word David writes?
Where I come from, there's another term that describes that behavior,
but I would be rude to use it in public.

[Pawly]

If changing an email address is to confusing for you or others Anus,
then participating in BOINC projects will probably be far too
complicated and I would suggest you or others take up Bird Watching or
Checkers.

I hope you don't think that was rude.

[Angus]

If you were paying attention, the issue is David exposing email
addresses before warning the SETIU founders that he was going to do
so, and giving them a chance to change them.

But you would rather be insulting and rude by intentionally mis-
spelling my screen name. How adult of you.

[Michael Buckingham]

Perhaps it would better serve all of us (and your team) to be just a tad bit more professional
in the manner in which you convey your opinions.

 

Michael Buckingham

 

"No trees were killed in the making of this email, however, a large

number of Electrons were terribly inconvenienced."

> Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:52:01 -0800

> Subject: [boinc-team-founders] Re: Proposal for BOINC wide teams mechanism

> From: micro...@gmail.com
> To: boinc-tea...@googlegroups.com