Returning User

[Yavanius]

I'm a returning user and unfortunately your instructions don't really address that.

There's new users and there's your existing users looking to do advanced stuff. There's nothing for users returning after a hiatus.


So it's been a few years since I even touched Folding and things have changed quite a bit. So I did some digging in the forums and I wanted to see if I could clarify some things in regards to user accounts and passkeys.

My initial question was: Can I change my username and preserve my old credits/'s, like on BOINC. Once upon a time you could change your username here, but it seems that there is no way to do that like with BOINC. In fact the username and the passkey are two separate enties and not a username/password combination. (I think I vaguely remember something about this...)

This is based on my reading here:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=26351&p=264512&hilit=change+username#p264512


So, it appears I can't change my username as doing so is akin to create another account. But can I use my old username, get a new passkey (through the client it seems, once again different than BOINC), and then while on the passkey change my username and then my old credit and new credits would be altogether lookup by passkey??

It's all kind of an odd system especially when you are used to traditional systems where you have a username and password and can change your name without affecting the account... O.o

My thanks.

Yavanius (formerly Runestar__PBB)

[davidcoton]

So, it appears I can't change my username as doing so is akin to create another account. But can I use my old username, get a new passkey (through the client it seems, once again different than BOINC), and then while on the passkey change my username and then my old credit and new credits would be altogether lookup by passkey??

You can change username (new account), and you can change passkey, independently. But there is no way to transfer points between different usernames, or different passkeys. You can (AIUI) look up points earned by a passkey independent of username, and vice versa.

Your passkey is tied to the email address used to apply for it, so even if you lose you passkey, if you re-apply (not through the client, it's just a web page IIRC) with the same email you get the old passkey again.

There is no reason why two independent systems (FAH and BOINC) should develop identical or even compatible systems

[Yavanius]

You can change username (new account), and you can change passkey, independently. But there is no way to transfer points between different usernames, or different passkeys. You can (AIUI) look up points earned by a passkey independent of username, and vice versa.

I got the changing them independently, it just was a little fuzzy on the linkage of credits. Rain must have got into the Cable company's lines again.

There is no reason why two independent systems (FAH and BOINC) should develop identical or even compatible systems

Well, SETI Classic was that way and I think Distributed Folding was too... but don't hold me to that on the later. It's been a whiles. I do remember this cool ASCII graphics portion of it for running at the command line. So, that's what I am use to and I don't have FIOS so the former F@H memories aren't in HD.

Plus, we went from buttons to Touch Screens... and what did we do? We put buttons in the display, so now there's even more buttons to randomly push. I either just ordered a 3x3 from In-N-Out or ordered some tactical nuclear warheads for the Ukraine army...

Thanks.

Yavanius

[bruce]

If you change username or team number or passkey, those settings apply to points earned in the future. FAH has never transferred points from one username to another -- or from one team to another, for that matter. Once points are earned, they belong to that username or that team.

In the early days, there was no requirement that the username be unique. (You might find several people contributing points to the same account if you used a common account name, like "John".) Once the concept of passkey was introduced, you could distinguish the points belonging to "john" with "Passkey1" from points belonging to "John" with "Passkey2".

As has already been stated, once you've obtained a passkey, you can keep using it as long as you remember it -- and if you forget it, you can figure it out by reapplying using the same inputs, whether that email is still active or not.

[Yavanius]

In the early days, there was no requirement that the username be unique. (You might find several people contributing points to the same account if you used a common account name, like "John".) Once the concept of passkey was introduced, you could distinguish the points belonging to "john" with "Passkey1" from points belonging to "John" with "Passkey2".

I've been here on and off over the years. Dual cores were all the rage when I first came on. I can't even recall how I got to finding Folding but probably somewhere on the heels of SETI Classic.

It's been mostly BOINC projects as of late for me. The last big non-BOINC project I did was Distributed Folding. The few non-BOINC projects I've seen either seem to involve some kind of mathematics or active participation (such as identification of things). I got a GPU that really doesn't get much use for the projects I've focused currently, so I was thinking of turning it loose on Folding.

I was hoping (as I'm sure others were) that Folding would make it to BOINC. And before you start elaborating on that, I finally read (probably from a post by Vijay himself) about why Folding isn't compatible with BOINC's system. I don't know enough about BOINC to decide if any that is not fully applicable, but overall it registers true to what I have experienced with BOINC. And at any rate, even I knew enough to disagree it wouldn't really make a difference to the admins. Actually, I'll admit BOINC has its flaws too particularly with it's prioritization quarks. But both projects have evolved from their original forms and both will continue to do so...


While I have you, do you have a good link to a discussion of the differences of the different protein folding projects out there? Historical info is also welcome to (such as defunct projects).

Best, Yavanius

[bruce]

Are you sure you used a passkey with RuneStar__(PBB) and/or RuneStar__PBB? Are you sure there were two underscores in each name?

[Yavanius]

Well, it was spaces originally and then you changed the naming system later. At some point I rerequested the Passkey and the system went: Sorry, can't have your username like that, we got to modify it.

And the passkey link is still valid for the non () because I got the e-mail (after I found the old e-mail that had it...). I haven't had a chance to set a client up, partially because I was seeking clarification on name change / passkey / stats linkage. Last time I jumped the gun I ended up with two accounts as you noted. Granted that was probably 10+ years ago, but still a good lesson.

[Yavanius]

Hi Bruce,

*COUGHS* Well I guess 007 does belong to me after all. I'm guessing I couldn't figure out how to recall my username and/or passkey at some point and I created a new one.

Now, I don't know why but I got almost 2 duplicate names but they are different passkeys:

_RuneStar__(PBB) -- This was in an old e-mail
RuneStar__(PBB) -- This I pulled off the stats


I checked the BIG list of users (which does bad things with the memory usage of a web browser so I had to save as a link and view with wordpad) and the first one doesn't appear but the other 3 do.

Apparently I can't search with a "_" as the stats system is treating as a ? wildcard.

Is this "_" in front a bug?? I don't have any other way or seeing if this is possible unless I trying submitting work with it.

[bruce]

"bug"? How could it be a bug? At some point you entered something like that and FAH dutifully accepted whatever you entered. The rules for which characters can be used in a user-name may have substituted the _ for a blank, or something like that.

[Yavanius]

If the system never intended to have a _ or other non alphanumeric char as the first char...

e.g. A stray space got put in front of the name, but at the time it didn't get stripped out. and was stored. Later the name system changed (no spaces) and converted it to an underscore. It doesn't get flagged because it's not a new username, it's an existing entry.