It doesnt screw with your computer; it lets us generate some money from your CPU slices that means I don't have to pay for this server myself, without having annoying advertisements or begging for donations

Are some unused CPU slices really a big ask? If you can keep this server and the code-base afloat at the cost of having your CPU temp increase don't you think that's worthwhile?

@ kestas

Can you tell how much money an individual account generates?

Personally, I'd rather donate — though I understand that this would be an additional burden to those running the site. How much would hosting cost, anyway? About $5/month, I'd think.

It depends on the amount of viewers and how many are willing to run the applet, and how long people spend looking at it. Back when FB phpDip also ran Plura it brought in ~$50 in a successful month, now that Chris has moved to regular ads because he needs more money I expect to get ~$25 in a successful month (successful meaning no downtime, which Plura isn't so great with)

It isn't much, but it's enough to support the hosting fees without ads, I think it's win-win :-)
Thanks to everyone who isn't blocking the applet; you're the ones keeping this place going

With all due respect, I stand by my comment that Plura were "screwing with my computer". As in they were doing something with my computer that I hadn't allowed them to. The fact that this was intentional "screwing" and not just some out of control applet only makes it worse in my opinion.

Static adverts are one thing, you can see them and ignore them or block them if you don't like them but this is somewhat different. Instead of annoying people directly like advertisement this annoys them by slowing down there computer without them knowing the source of it.

"Are some unused CPU slices really a big ask?"
- first of all you're not asking, you're taking and not even telling that you're taking. (the faq doesn't mention plura at all)
- the cpu slices are hardly unused otherwise I wouldn't have notices my computer slowing down so significantly to check it out.

Please don't take these criticisms personally, your intentions of keeping this page advertisement free are commendable.

What's your solution sceptic_ka?

a) Have a 6 monthly beg-for-money thread, hoping that people will be continually generous?
b) Use a hard to notice background Java applet to use 70% of players' otherwise unused CPU cycles
c) Have obnoxious ads at the top of pages, bugging people to buy products?
d) Pay out of your own pocket, as well as do the coding, as a student in full-time study? (This student likes to spend his money on beer, games, and gas :-)

Kestas, perhaps it would be good to inform users that this is happening? I know that you did have a long discussion when plura processing was introduced, with comments from many users. But people who have joined since then might not be aware of this, and so an FAQ entry might be useful, particularly for those users who notice it and suspect some illegitimate activity.

Anyway, I'd like to reiterate my thanks for your creating this site, and keeping it ad-free.

It may well be hard to notice that this page is using up a persons cpu cycles but it is very easy to notice that something is slowing your computer down.
That's my main criticism, not that your using up people cpu cycles but that you're doing it without informing them.
It may well seem harmless to you but I find it quite rude, worse even than pop-ups were, because at least I knew where the pop up were coming from.

I agree with Nitish. I had no idea that this was happening until it was mentioned in another thread, then went and looked at the Plura link at the bottom of every page.

I generally run on a fairly low spec machine, and it genuinely does slow response time and similar for me, a lot more than my over addoned Fx normally does (my /good/ desktop is currently a virus infested heap and fixing it will take time I can't spare currently.

Consequently, I now run PHPdip ins a separate window, and shut it down when I'm not waiting for a turn.

I think it's, overall, a good way to pay for the site. But it's also a hidden way that /is/ causing problems for some of us. Clearly marking it's happening, and why, would be good, I reckon most players will, like me, accept it as a good compromise solutiion, but would like to be warned our PC will be slightly slower, etc.

You asked for some suggestions, not more moaning so here they are:
0. at the very least please inform users that their cpu cycles will be used.
1. Plura with Adsence, I personally don't mind a discrete Adsence advert
2. allow logged in users to switch off plura or switch between plura and Adsence
3. have a donate drive once a year, including a pre-set goal and a "reward" for everyone who donates. Say a little red/bronze/silver/gold star beside their names. $1 gets you a red star, $5 a bronze star, $10 a silver star and $20 a gold star.
Taking your stated server costs of $25 per month gives us the following:
$25*12 = $300 per year costs. That's 60 people chipping in $5 each or 30 at $10 each.

Personally I would favour my option number 3.

Or allow people to bet real money not just diplomacy daggers and take a 1% cut. :-)

Can you please explain your computer jargon, especially the cpu cycle part please. Also how does it use these "cycles" and what does it do with them? Secondly, how do you know that 70% go unused?

Well, I usually have phpDip opened always, as I know this can be useful to keep the site going. In my Macbook when I'm on it, or on my office computer (dual core, linux), while I run really cpu intensive calculations (on both cores at the same time, 100% load). And I have noticed no "slow down" ever. But they are two pretty fast computers, I know.

WhiteSammy, usually a computer is doing nothing. A cpu can work almost full time without problems... but browsing, writing doc's, even listening music doesn't really get the cpu going. It is just about 10% (like our brain, as they say). More or less.

@sceptic - You can donate through Paypal anytime you like and kestas or the mods can disable Plura from running on your account.

In the admin control panel disabling Plura is actually labeled "Give donor benefits"

Allow people to bet real money: Great, pay for a license too...

sceptic_ka, this only takes if you want to visit the site. You have no god-given right to log onto this site without having processor cycles used. This is the most discrete (I never notice a difference) way of getting money to pay for the site, and gives those under 18 in particular a way of helping Kestas when we can't actually donate directly.

In old fashion computers the cpu (central processing unit) would do the following:
- fetch the instruction from memory (e.g. add 1 to a save to b)
- decode the instruction
- fetch the instruction input data (get a)
- execute the instruction (r = a +1)
- store the result data (save r in b)
- increment the instruction pointer

each one of these points is called a cycle. An operation like adding or multiplying requires several cpu cycles. A 100MHz CPU could do 100 million cycles per second but that would only equate to about 30 million operations per second.
Modern computers use something called a pipeline that does these thing in parallel, cache fetched data and instructions and a lot of other neat stuff.

Anyway:
What it means in this context is that while this website is open a java programme from Plura is started on your computer. This program continually downloads instructions and data from Plura's servers does some calculations on them and sends back the results.
This can make your computer slow and sluggish.

I don't know about the 70% unused stuff.
I just tested it on an old single core Athlon XP 2400 and while the java applet constantly had a cpu usage of <70%, total cpu usage was between 85% and 100%. Anybody using linux can confirm this by opening a terminal and typing in "top".
I haven't checked but I suspect it also uses up some bandwidth.
As for power usage, while phpdiplomacy.net was open my room was using 420 watts after closing, it went down to 380 watts (all else equal). If you left phpdiplomacy open constantly it would work out at roughly 1kWh per day.
I pay 14.33 ct/kWh (Euro cents) which would equate to €52.30 a year just to have phpdiplomacy.net constantly open in the background.

More realistically, having it open for 2 to 3 hours a day would equate to €5 a year.

skeptic, mods and Kestas have the ability to opt you out of plura processing. I've been opting out anyone who's asked politely.

I admit that users should be informed of the plura processing, but is it really such a huge deal? I find it far less intrusive than ads or donation drives, and it's a much easier way for me, and most people, to contribute. In my residence my electric bills are included, so I have no problem with keeping phpDip running.

Users always have the choice to donate if they would like, and be opted out of plura processing.

I guess the main issue is transparency here. Something that might be considered minor out in the open takes on a more nefarious tone when it is not mentioned at all. On principle, I dislike the idea of something like Plura using my computer without my knowledge. While I completely understand the financial challenges of running this site, I think it would be common courtesy to inform its users. It is just bad form otherwise.

On the topic of donations, I really think that option should be much more prominent on the header. I had to dig through the FAQs to find the link. Put it out in the open right next to the "Help" link. This site probably has an above-average proportion of conscientious people who would be willing to contribute to someone's work that has brought so much enjoyment to their lives.

@dangermouse: as I pointed out in my first post disabling Plura isn't a problem for most users once they know where it's coming from. So having that as a donor benefit is pretty useless. Ditto with deactivating adds, since people can block them.

@TheGhostmaker: the real money thing was a jest.

"You have no god-given right to log onto this site without having processor cycles used."
I would say you have no right you use my processor without asking. Imagine if all websites did this.

"This is the most discrete way of getting money to pay for the site"
I disagree, I find it much worse than pop-ups ever were because many people do seem to notice a slowdown in their computer and because it is not obvious that this website is the source of that slowdown.

"and gives those under 18 in particular a way of helping Kestas when we can't actually donate directly."
Have it set so that people can opt-in if they want to. I don't want to stop anyone using it if they want to.

@Chrispminis
"I admit that users should be informed of the plura processing, but is it really such a huge deal?"
Yes, I like phpdiplomacy.net a lot, it's one of my favourite sites and I trusted it. Whenever I noticed that it was some website that was slowing down my PC I felt violated (and immediately blamed digg.com). This is the type of thing I expected from some dubious porn or warez site. Or at the very least some corny website crawling with flash and java but not phpdiplomacy.net.

Again I'm not saying that Kestas should pay for the server costs himself, just that I think running plura without asking people is very rude.

Not just rude, but theft.
Once my last game is done, I won't miss this place at all.

...a little drastic in my opinion

also can someone help me figure out why my browser is using up so much memory? When i open up IE it starts at like 19K(thats opening to igoogle as my home page). but whenever i go to other websites like bungie.net and this site the amount of memory jumps to around 80K. the more websites i visit the higher it goes. A while ago i checked using the task manager and i discovered that IE was using around 80% of my cpu and had over 300K of memory. ***no im not downloading porn***
also when i go to look at movies on sites like bungie.com(the ones featured in the mini story page) or youtube.com they load/buffer just fine but are extremely choppy(music is consistent but the image looks like a stop-motion movie).

i have tried finding programs and processes that either shouldnt be running or that dont need to be running but nothing helps. i have defragmented my computer, cleared the cache and cookies, and i have even tried other browsers but its always the same story.


since this is a thread about computer performance i figured that this is somewhat appropriate.

I admire Kestas for being tough enough to run this site.

The main complaint is "I didn't realize this was going on"

This is great right? So what's the problem?

The ad does appear at the bottom of the page, and an explanation has been added to the next version of the FAQ, but it's not going to ask permission to run it because that implies it's doing something malicious, which it isn't
No site asks permission to show ads, and your computer uses processing power and screen real estate to render and display those ads, so what's the difference?

I have a feeling sceptic is used to disabling all the ads he sees, so he'd much rather we displayed easily blockable ads rather than something which runs in the background. Ads don't generate revenue if they're blocked, so just because ads are easier for you to block doesn't mean they're a better solution

Also I noticed that when i asked which you would choose you basically said "all of the above; plura, ads and donations". I don't see how that improves the situation
If all you can do is say "this method of keeping the site afloat sucks" without saying how you would do it I'm not sure what feedback you expect to get

Ultimately if no-one notices it then I think that shows that it's a good choice. When Chris introduced ads to Facebook phpDip a lot more people were pissed off about it than here, and they're used to ads on every page

usal; So you hadn't noticed this until now after being here for half a year? That's an interesting form of theft

@sceptic_ka:
As in they were doing something with my computer that I hadn't allowed them to.

Well, that's debatable. I think you said you're using Firefox? In the menu under Edit -> Preferences or Tools -> Options (whichever you have), under the Content tab, there should be a checkbox Enable Java. Do you have that checked? Then you've told Firefox to allow web sites to run Java programs on your computer. If you uncheck it, then Firefox will know not to allow this.

I'm giving the argument that you did allow this, but as I said before, it's debatable. These are default settings (on Firefox, also on Internet Explorer and probably most other modern browsers) and most users don't really understand them. So maybe it's Mozilla's fault … but if they set the default the other way, then users would complain that various websites don't work, so maybe it's Sun Microsystems' fault for inventing an inherently corruptable system, or Plura's fault for taking advantage of something that they should know is broken. Or you might make the case that there's an etiquette observed on the web, which you know porn sites ignore but which you reasonably expected phpDiplomacy to keep, and this has violated that. So it's not clear cut that you allowed it, but it's not clear cut that you didn't either.

Personally, I surf with Java off (in Firefox, turned off as I described, but one can do that in Internet Explorer too in much the same way). I'll say more about that in my next comment, addressed to Kestas et al.

Ah, so this explains it. I know next to nothing about computers but I have noticed the correlation between me being on this site, my browser crashing and me seeing a "plura" in the bottom of my browser screen, saying that it is trying desperately to load (this all happens while its crashing, usually). May I please opt out of this Plura-scam?

@kestasjk:
Thanks to everyone who isn't blocking the applet; you're the ones keeping this place going

As I said in my previous comment, addressed to the Sceptic, I usually surf with Java entirely off. If I have a good reason, I turn it on. So if I knew more about this, I wouldn't simply be happier about it (since it obviously doesn't hurt me now) as many others would, but I would be more willing to actually allow it to run.

Ideally, I'd like to know how much money you get from this for running the site per user-hour on average. (I think you said $25 per month when there's no downtime, but I don't know how my usage fits into that.) If you don't know that, then anything you can say would help; I'm not asking you to do any hard work estimating numbers you don't already know. Also it might be nice to know what Plura would be using my CPU cycles to do, but maybe I should just Google them for that.

Anyway, if you tell me that sort of thing, then I'll either turn on Java when I visit (I already turn on Javascript to use the forum and read press easily, so this will be easy to remember) or make a Paypal donation to compensate.

And I forgot: Thanks, Kestas! For giving us this thing. I do want to help pay for it.

Well.

This was explicitly mentioned a few months ago when Kestas first introduced Plura, nearly everyone agreed.

And now you're moaning? You were here a few months ago...

sceptic_ka and others: I can understand how one would feel like something underhanded was being done here, not having been around for the discussion of Plura when it was first introduced. It's not described or explained anywhere on the site, so it could seem like it was being snuck in.

That being said, let me assure you, nothing sinister is going on here. When Kestas first was looking at using Plura to offset fees for phpdip, he brought it to the forum, explained everything and invited discourse with the community. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and those that had issue with it or had problems as a result of it were opted out without any major to do.

Now since then, there has been very little discussion of Plura...frankly I think this is because on the whole it's unobtrusive and supports a site we all love. Clearly there has been some amount of oversight in that new members haven't been directly informed of this mechanism for defraying the costs of hosting phpdip, but this was: 1) unintentional and 2) already dealt with for the next release. And if that weren't enough, it's not as if the Plura logo on the bottom of every page is hidden. It's there with Plura's name spelled out in the footer of every page. Out of the way but out in the open.

If your concern is that you would like to be opted out, ask, and it can be taken care of. If your concern is that phpdip is betraying your trust, I urge you to reconsider the facts. Please understand that neither Kestas, nor the phpdip community as a whole, have any desire of backstabbing you in real life...just in a game. :)

I also DO have an old Athlon, in my case, 3200. And it is slow per se, nothing to do with Plura. As I'm writing this on my Macbook, "top" shows Firefox ranging from 6% to peaks of 20% cpu usage. I have also Facebook and Gmail open. So I think... let's close them. Now, 0%. With some small peak to 6, and one to 20, in the minute I've been bored watching.

Also, it's not like you couldn't realize Plura was going on. If you scroll down, you find it, and I was curious enough to learn what it was, maybe I could use "what it was" for "something".

WS, as for the memory usage in browsers... in particular, IE, all browsers eat a lot of memory. And usually gets worse over "opened time". Also... well, if you are a seasoned windows user, you may know about formatting and reinstalling? Windows (and not only Windows) performance (usually) degrades over time.

Hi,

First off, thanks Kestas for this excellent free site. I really enjoy it a lot!

I just wanted to add that I also play phpDiplomacy on pretty old machines (Pentium 4 at home) and I do notice that this site does slow things down a bit. If I do notice things slowing down then I log out and close the page rather than leave it running in the background while I do other things... Not sure how many other people do this... Just wanted to let you know that it can become a burden when working on a PC and isn't just something that uses idle CPU.

I'm also glad to hear info will be added to the new FAQs page, as I also am only aware of this through the forum when it was implemented.

I think the main concern people have is not knowing about this. I know there is an ad at the bottom of the page, but you can be forgiven for not really noticing this...

Keep up the good work Kestas and look forward to the updates you have planned for the FAQs.

Maybe there could be an option to opt out if you pay your donation?

Jerkface, I've opted you out of the "scam".

Seriously, I had no idea that anyone would ever construe this is sinister or as a scam. I thought it was a fantastic idea, and there was such overwhelming support for it in the public discussion. It didn't even occur to me that it might be seen in such a radically different light. =/

Is it possible that Plura could affect me logging on to phpDiplomacy on a public (school) computer? I've found that, at school, I can only follow a link on phpDiplomacy by opening it in a new tab - if I just click on a link normally nothing happens. That means I can't enter orders or send messages on the school computers - however, my computer at home is fine. Is there anything I can do about this?

texasdeluxe, the original idea, as I remember it, was that those who donate are offered the option of opting out of Plura. It was suggested as a donator benefit. I believe Chrisp even mentioned something about that above. Perhaps that should end up in the FAQ too.

Oh dont mind me, I'm just a curmudgeon. But thanks for opting me out. I appreciate it.

It really should be in the FAQ. I don't mind for the most part, especially now that the typing and jumping around issues seem to have been cleane dup, but there should be a EULA kind of thing that tells the end user that their spare processes will be used to make the site money. I tend to run grid computing software in the background anyhow, particularly the SETI program, but I CHOOSE to do this, not have it thrust upon me without warning.