On Mon, 16 Apr 2001 14:24:23 -0400, [log in to unmask] wrote: >X-no-Archive:yes >At the risk of seeming to be an apologist for UD (United Devices) Agent, >Glenn's post got me wondering about the behavior of their agent, so I did a >bit of digging. [...] >I must also wonder out loud about Wirt's questions. Can we trust the gringos >who are offering us some shiny beads for something we have willingly shared? >Also, is a "big lottery" approach better or worse than a flat but low fee >paid for each unit of work? Who we would trust, and what efforts we would >willingly share in, has all the makings of an OT thread that could take on a >life of its own, [... too late :)] Well, I'll throw my 2 cents into the bucket on this one -- I for one would NOT trust any form of "lottery" as payment. 1) there is no guarantee that the "winners" are actual people [i.e., it would be very difficult to track down the so-called "winners" to see that they really exist...] 2) as the number of users goes up, the chances of receiving the prize [if truly legit] goes down. (because) 2a) Greg mentioned something to the effect that the "pool" of participants was those that completed a work-unit in the previous 24 hours; as the number of people "doing the work" increases, the number of units completed increases BUT [it appears] they are only paying $100 for the whole lot -- their "cost per unit" drops dramatically... OTOH: if they paid a $100 prize per 100 units completed, it would be a little more palatable [there being an upper limit to the number of participants per prize] Of course, if this were the case I'd like to arrange it so that all 100 "participants" for a particular drawing were myself [i.e., hold onto the results until ready to dump 100 "results" back into the system at once...] but I imagine this is "not possible..." :) Tom * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *