Well, even if each task is sent to multiple computers (2?), in case we have limited amount of tasks (as it seems to be happening now), machines that pull a lot of tasks and then vanish after processing few of them are blocking the rest of the reasearchers until the tasks time out.
I'm currently processing tasks that time out on 4th April, so the timeout seems to be about 1 week?
I think the deadline is based on the urgency of the task. I understand what you guys are saying but I don't think it is the main factor in causing the task shortage. Either Rosetta needs to have enough of a buffer or we need to have a backup project. In the most recent case I waited until all the tasks were finished and uploaded before I shut the VM down. I'm guessing most people would probably let most of them finish before shutting down if it was running out of tasks.