HELP PLEASE.
I got a message to upgrade to BOINC 7.4.42
The only problem is, I don't understand anything it says about this upgrade and if what it says is as I suspect, I may have to quit doing volunteer computing.

All the windows "stuff" in this upgrade is N/A.
I run Mac OS X 10.9.5 & BOINC Manager 7.4.36. Soon will be upgrading my OS & as I understand it, I'll have to upgrade BOINC at that point anyway. However, I’m not sure I want to continue volunteering because of the peripheral things being added to it.

First question is: Can I continue to help without upgrading BOINC Manager with my present OS?

I'm sorry. I’m not technologically knowledgeable. I’m just someone who allows Rosetta@Home and a couple World Community Grid projects to use some of my excess processor power when I give it permission to.

This upgrade talks about Bitcoins and Bitcoin miners. ??? Don't use bitcoins; don't care to use. Don't want anything to do with them!

One of the features highlighted in this upgrade says "Suspending GPUs should not suspend Bitcoin Miners". I don't know what it means but don't like what it sounds like.

I googled ”Bitcoin Miners” and it sounds like you get paid Bitcoins for allowing your computer to be used and then it wastes time & energy locating and recording these Bitcoins. ?? I see no reason to clutter up my computer with anything to do with them and I don’t want any app/program to be searching/mining(?) my computer.

When I suspend projects and quit the BOINC Manager, I don't want BOINC to do anything on or with my computer until I give it my permission by resuming projects. My permission is to work on tasks for the specific projects I signed up to work on only - not to add a screen saver, I have one thank you very much, and definitely not to mine for Bitcoins.

Put simply, as I understood it, BOINC Manager would connect to the project’s computer and download some tasks. Then it would go offline. My computer would work on computing those tasks. When a task is completed, BOINC Manager connects online to upload the results of that task to the project’s computer.

That's it. Nothing more. I want to keep it clean and simple. I'm more than happy to help, but I don't want anything other than this.

I need to know if I upgrade, will I be able to disable or not install any of the Bitcoin functions?

I don’t want to be paid with Bitcoins or any other currency. If Rosetta@Home and World Community Grid want to assign my account some brownie points for the computing hours I’ve contributed that’s fine..they can record and compute that themselves when a completed task is uploaded.

If I can continue just working on computing tasks for specified projects only, as I originally volunteered— great!

If I can’t isolate myself from all this other “stuff”, then my volunteer computing has come to the end of it’s course.

I’ll keep going without upgrading until I can’t or until someone explains how I can do it without downloading all these peripheral functions.

Thank you.

HELP PLEASE.
I got a message to upgrade to BOINC 7.4.42 ...

DON'T PANIC!!!

None of those things get installed. It's only saying that <if> you <did> chose to run those projects (which you definitely don't) then Boinc would handle it in a slightly improved way.

Seeing as there's no specific mention of Mac changes it doesn't sound like it's a must-upgrade version for you, though it may have some minor non platform-specific improvements behind the scenes.

I wouldn't touch bitcoin mining with a bargepole either. It only runs the projects you allow it to run and starts & stops when you tell it to, just as it has before.

And relax... ;)

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Yes, BOINC is the manager that supports a number of projects (about 100 projects actually). Often when you try to do such things, the various projects have diverse requirements on the manager. So the references you cited are changes that were made to resolve requests made by specific projects, or that will relieve some common problems specific projects were having running in the manager.

The new version of the manager better supports a diverse set of projects. But it is only going to mine bitcoins if you attach to a project that does that.

And many of the supported projects can be used as a screen saver. It was found to be an easy way to explain to people that you can set things up to only run when your computer is not in use. So you've had screensavers all along. But you'd have to select BOINC as your designated screensaver to see them. They do not help the project nor the processing, other than to perhaps pique the interest of an onlooker and result in them helping the project as well.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense