Slashdot Mirror

But as for me and my spare CPU cycles, we go www.distributed.net.

• SETI@home : a neat, geek-friendly, worthy cause, but hardly practical, and they have plenty of CPU - they don't need mine. This project is currently running, and while they had growing pains a while ago, they have been solved. One problem remains (as far as I know); they client still slows to 1/3 speed if you have the visuals turned on.
• distributed.net encryption cracks : for a long time, the most practical distributed computing projects around, and certainly the most advanced, but I think that they (and others) have clearly proven the point re: encryption (i.e. that we need access to stronger encryption), and while we don't have perfect regulations, one more crack ain't gonna do it. These are also running, and have been for years now. They had some problems with stats a while ago, but they haven't had a problem of not sending out new work in a long time (if ever).
• d.net's OGR project : good scientific research, certainly, but really, just giving some grad student thesis fodder. You're not gonna solve world hunger or anything. Also, it isn't running yet.
• Casino-21 Project : wow, some practical application. Also very different from other projects, because it is devoted not to "solving a riddle", but to predicting a complex system. Of course, it's not running yet, either.

-Yoshi

• SETI@home : a neat, geek-friendly, worthy cause, but hardly practical, and they have plenty of CPU - they don't need mine. This project is currently running, and while they had growing pains a while ago, they have been solved. One problem remains (as far as I know); they client still slows to 1/3 speed if you have the visuals turned on.
• distributed.net encryption cracks : for a long time, the most practical distributed computing projects around, and certainly the most advanced, but I think that they (and others) have clearly proven the point re: encryption (i.e. that we need access to stronger encryption), and while we don't have perfect regulations, one more crack ain't gonna do it. These are also running, and have been for years now. They had some problems with stats a while ago, but they haven't had a problem of not sending out new work in a long time (if ever).
• d.net's OGR project : good scientific research, certainly, but really, just giving some grad student thesis fodder. You're not gonna solve world hunger or anything. Also, it isn't running yet.
• Casino-21 Project : wow, some practical application. Also very different from other projects, because it is devoted not to "solving a riddle", but to predicting a complex system. Of course, it's not running yet, either.

-Yoshi

that I don't see mentioned much yet... DB2 and Sybase. For a functional example of Sybase in serious action check out Distributed.net's Statistics.
DISCLAIMER: I work for IBM, but not on Linux or DB2.

RC5 is an encryption algorithm from RSA Labs. A RC5 'key' is a specific decryption code that might decrypt an encrypted message. RSA is sponsoring a contest to see if anyone can crack a message encrypted with RC5.

The reason this is even mentioned is because there is a group that is working on this contest using a 'brute force' attack. distributed.net has a client you can download that will allow you to participate in this contest, along with thousands of other people.

This client is designed to use all CPU time that would otherwise be 'wasted'. People tend to use it as a benchmark, even though it's not very representative of actual computing power, since it uses a small number of instructions repeatedly.

If you have more questions, feel free to email me at decibel@distributed.net

dB!
distributed.net Human Interface

RC5 is an encryption algorithm from RSA Labs. A RC5 'key' is a specific decryption code that might decrypt an encrypted message. RSA is sponsoring a contest to see if anyone can crack a message encrypted with RC5.

The reason this is even mentioned is because there is a group that is working on this contest using a 'brute force' attack. distributed.net has a client you can download that will allow you to participate in this contest, along with thousands of other people.

This client is designed to use all CPU time that would otherwise be 'wasted'. People tend to use it as a benchmark, even though it's not very representative of actual computing power, since it uses a small number of instructions repeatedly.

If you have more questions, feel free to email me at decibel@distributed.net

dB!
distributed.net Human Interface

RC5 is an encryption algorithm from RSA Labs. A RC5 'key' is a specific decryption code that might decrypt an encrypted message. RSA is sponsoring a contest to see if anyone can crack a message encrypted with RC5.

The reason this is even mentioned is because there is a group that is working on this contest using a 'brute force' attack. distributed.net has a client you can download that will allow you to participate in this contest, along with thousands of other people.

This client is designed to use all CPU time that would otherwise be 'wasted'. People tend to use it as a benchmark, even though it's not very representative of actual computing power, since it uses a small number of instructions repeatedly.

If you have more questions, feel free to email me at decibel@distributed.net

dB!
distributed.net Human Interface

I know this is kinda' mean, but...er...this isn't such a big deal. I work for Chipzilla and people here were playing with processors over a year ago that did well over 1GHz without too much extra cooling. More than the usual amount, of course, but nothing supercooled. The systems were slightly unstable, though, and they were purely for testing new manufacturing processes. More than that I can't say, since I wasn't directly involved in the usage of the machines. All I know is, I'd have loved to put a distributed.net client on one of those babies...

Well, mind you I spent NO TIME AT ALL tuning this: I just installed Slackware (because I think it is the most difficult to setup, and wanted to show them it's better even worst case), configured X, added and configured WINE, and ran Word 2000. It came up. I didn't even TRY to make it do anything, I just wanted to prove it would launch! HOWEVER: I did get the Rc5 client (the GUI) from distributed.net to run in this exact same setup for an entire weekend, and it didn't crash! This got the attention of the other techs. :-)
"I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain

Greg Pfister's book is good -- the details are somewhat dated, though the conceptual portion appears to be aging well.

Distributed net has a page with references for other texts on clustering. `Course, you can always check out the related book purchases links at Amazon.

"strong encryption most likely cannot be broken even by the NSA, in any amount of time, no matter how many computers they throw at it, unless they've made some fundamental breakthrough like quantum computers." This is incorrect... For reference, please view the following: www.distributed.net. The problem with current encryption is that it can be broken through brute force, given that enough time and computing power is thrown at it. Furthermore, current encryption techniques have not been proven (nor will they likely ever be proven) to be NP complete, so its always possible that someone will discover a shortcut through current encryption that reduces the problems to polynomial time. (Or worse, constant time.)
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."

it took the combined resources of the Internet something like 9 months to crack one simple text blurb with 32-bit encryption.

I believe you're referring to a 56-bit RC5 key. You can check the distributed.net archives to find the details.

It would be cool to get the various distributed computing initiatives (d.net's RC5, SETI, OGR, etc.) together onto one CD image to burn and run on Dreamcasts. Just pop the disc in when you're done playing and let it crack/spook/compute... It might be a good first step before tackling getting to the onboard 3D.

Cracking the 56bit DES challenge took a few days last time

Less than 24 hours, actually. See the distributed.net press release.

I'm one of the handful of elected local officials and I'm also from Vermont where we elected a Libertarian to the Vermont House last year. We ran 40 candidates last year and we hope to run 100 in 200 in VT. Hopefully, we'll elect more people to the VT House then. What it takes is people who are interested in freedom to step forward and get involved.

Even on the internet you can get involved without much work. If you are working the RC5-64 contest and are on the Slashdot.org team think about switching to the Libertarians for Privacy team.

Also, if you want to see someone stand up for more freedom in the 2000 Presidential election then we need to start now. We could start a new party, but the LP is already organized in all 50 states and you probably agree with 80-95% of what the LP is pushing for anyway. We need to increase the size to become more of a player. Join the LP today.

Hardy Macia
politics@catamount.com
Vermont LP

My boss at work has a Mac at home, and he keeps complaining about MacOS's shortcomings. He would switch to Linux, except that he mainly uses his machine for email, web-browsing, word processing, and Quicken. Linux has #1, 2, and 3, but not Quicken.

Really, Linux won't become immensly popular to Joe Average User until it can boast the same number of applications and games as Windows. The reason that the IBM PC took off in the first place was because IBM developed relatively large selection of good software. The reason that Wintel clone machines managed to outcompete Apple's products is that the system was open to allow anybody to develop software for, while Apple didn't encourage such development. Should Linux replace Wintel, it will be because of a better selection of better software than Wintel.

It used to be fine.. I notice the Japanese typically at these occasions:

• japanese activity in the ports tree.

• The FreeBSD Japan team on distributed.net scores high.

• you will find many japanese FreeBSD CDs/books at www.freebsd.org

One must state albeit, that there is a language barrier. Most of us Non-Japanese don't speak Japanese and the other way round English seems to be hard for the Nihonjin too. If they cross it, interesting things get revealed often, like a cute new mp3 encode (gogo), last week.

However this company, under its old name Pacific HiTech used to be the Japanese FreeBSD distributor, might be that this has changed.

This is why most people are in here...

It turned out that the incredibly high key-rates were generated by a bogus client. Read what happened in Dave McNett's .plan or read how the mystery was revealed by Maxxim Kochegarov from Russian Team.

It turned out that the incredibly high key-rates were generated by a bogus client. Read what happened in Dave McNett's .plan or read how the mystery was revealed by Maxxim Kochegarov from Russian Team.

Can anybody make anything of this? "Ðåáÿòà, à ÷î ýòî âû òóò äåëàåòå? - Êèíî-òî óæå çàêîí÷èëîñü..." My guess is that it would look more like human writing if I switched to the cyrillic font. Go here for the original.

So i'm guessing rc5whs@chat.ru is nothing to do with large LAN anyway, it's an anonymous mail account, to avoid spam.

Maybe we should ask distributed.net guys to clarify this issue a bit? they definitely know what client and how many CPUs are making million blocks a day.

I certainly hope this thing is real, the RC5 project needs as much CPU power as it can get. A lot of people switched their computers over to the SETI project and I think it's impacting RC5 a lot, which is a shame. At yesterday's block rate the last RC5 block will be cracked on January 4, 2007! But of course, the secret key could be found at any time....

I certainly hope this thing is real, the RC5 project needs as much CPU power as it can get. A lot of people switched their computers over to the SETI project and I think it's impacting RC5 a lot, which is a shame. At yesterday's block rate the last RC5 block will be cracked on January 4, 2007! But of course, the secret key could be found at any time....

distributed.net don't have a separate intel/amd/cyrix client too... they have OS clients


AMD and Cyrix are both x86 clones, so they run the same kinds of instructions as the intel procs. there ARE multiple clients for Linux on distributed.net, for procs that are not x86-compatible .. check out the rc5-client download page at
http://www.distributed.net/cgi/select.cgi

they've got clients for linux-alpha, linux-ppc, linux-sparc, etc. etc. etc.

But still it looks highly unlikely to me that this chip can run at these speeds, unless they've built a couple of multi-processor machines

--

I agree with rjh...thank you for including the excellent, yet still fairly succinct version of PKI. I will also back his challenge with an additional $ 500 bucks if they can crack the message in a week. Project Bovine ( http://www.distributed.net) has been trying to crack RC-5-64 for 624 days now, and their odds are still only 1 in 2,529 of cracking it in 24 hours.

Duh ... look it up. http://www.distributed.net

What's the point of those mirrors ...
The site still displays Alf, so all of you, go there and say hello :)
I really doubt this is a real hack (crack), because they could really have putten back the index page.
Also, i liked it :))))

Long life Distributed.net. Will they hack them too ?
:))


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Belgium HyperBanner
http://belgium.hyperbanner.net

-B

That too is covered in a FAQ. To be exact, it's covered in the StatsFAQ

Is it really that hard to just go to the main distributed.net page, and type "change email" in the search box on the bottom-left? First result that popped up. Took me about 10 seconds to find it.

Really... READ those FAQ's please people. USE the search engines. It makes life so much easier. Cheers.
----------
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
----------

I'm losing my old email! Will all my stats be lost?

eh.

even though due to poor documentation here and at the FAQ. I managaed it.
first make sure you have at least run the distributed.net client at least once, and useing the email u setup in ur client. goto stats page
goto view stats. and in the participant search box, insert the same email u used in ur client, go though that, and at the bottom click on mail me my password...
then check ur mail. get ur password, go back to the site, and now in ur username use ur email and for the password use the password that was in the email sent to u


BTW I find this to be an extremely ODD login process. does anyone else think so?

Wow, I love RC5 trash talk. I think it may be time for me to join a team. Slashdot sounds better and better, especially after these threats from anandtech... :)

-Chris

Lesson #1 in computing: When all else fails, RTFM, or in this case, the FAQ, which, if you bothered to look, is linked from every single stats page right at the top, and contains full instructions for how to join a team. As for the username, you answered your own question. If the only thing it asked for was an e-mail address, then it's a fairly safe guess that your e-mail address is your username, and you have to go fill in a password somewhere (that is answered by the FAQ)

Distributed.net Stats FAQ

You can download the source code for the distributed.net client. Since this is the case, I very much doubt that distributed.net is being used to "chain ourselves unknowingly." It's an interesting idea though. I wonder when the other distributed computing projects will make their source code available for review.

I was thinking the same thing. In fact, I was wondering just how big the key space actually is. Since all one really has to do is figure out which markers are being used, the key space isn't the 30 billion they were talking about, but probably a more reasonable number which it might even be possible to break with distributed processing ala www.distributed.net


As far as the watermarking goes, that is not new technology at all. I remember reading the same stuff many years ago when researchers first started cloning mice. The scary question to me is: how do we know people, plants, animals, etc., aren't already being watermarked?

I should have known something was _VERY_ wrong at S@H when I saw that the client SUCKED !! What did they do? Write it in BASIC? Of course if it were OS I would have to Fix It Or Shut Up.

It is the worst piece_of_crap software that I have ever used... (rest of flame redacted). I wiped it & went back to www.distributed.net where I belong.

If this is any indication of the quality of science being done there "the ET's will never let us find them."

Team Slashdot is also working on RC5-64 at Distributed.net Stats.

For a long time, I thought that what the web really needed was a Differential-HTTP. This makes particular sense with a site like slashdot. I punch in every few hours, but let's face it: 90% of the page is the same. At most, there's a new blurb or two at the top of the page.

The existing standard is horribly inefficient from a bandwidth perspective. It makes a lot of sense, though, from a server load perspective. It's usually easier on a machine to serve the same page 10,000 times than it is to serve 10,000 different updates. (Okay, so /. is cool enough to generate dynaic pages, but think of the poor IIS admins :)

Right now, the web is designed with the assumption that an extra megabyte is free, but an extra CPU cycle isn't, at least, not at the big sites. If you read the HTTP specs, it seems that most of the recent work is designed to shift CPU load from the server to the client.

Even though end users probably won't see a difference (Let's face it, tracking usage on a modem, or even a 10Mbps DSL line isn't worth the paper and trouble -- this is strictly a game for the serious bandwidth consumers.), we're going to see a sudden shift toward minimizing bandwidth from the standards organizations. This might have a negative impact on the hardware budgets of the larger web sites.

I really don't see what you mean by that. As far as I can see, Distributed just keeps gaining speed. The plots show that the curves just go up, up and away.

Acctually there are more 'useful' projects coming up on distributed as well.
The project is about finding 'Optimal Golomb Rulers'. More info can be found here.

Alex Bischoff
---

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Adam Beberg (duncan) wrote:
it has become apparent that the goals of DCTI have changed considerably over the years, and are no longer the same as what they were.

David McNett (nugget) wrote:
It has also become clear to us that Adam's goals for Cosm and distributed.net's vision of its future differ enough to justify this parting of ways. Adam is very motivated about seeing the system he's designed, Cosm, implemented and put into production. True to its name, distributed.net is more focused on seeing what can result from a truly open and distributed continuing development effort. While each of these respective approaches is viable in its own right, attempting to co-mingle them has proven to be counterproductive.

What's the division about? It's clear from these carefully worded pieces that they've decided to split, and they've put an amiable face on it. However, the announcements are so vague I can't tell what the real issues are.

One of the problems I've always had with the d.net project was their closed decision-making style. On the one hand, they've build this wonderful thing for running the DES/rc contests, and made it fun to participate. I think that's really nifty. On the other hand, they've been advertising 'v3' for a over a year now, with its plug-in architecture promising a wide variety of clients to choose from, and an open interface so one may write one's own. But it never arrived, partly, it seemed, because Beberg wouldn't let anyone else work on it. Sometimes I felt like they didn't want to allow any other clients because they'd lose people from the rc effort, which is what they're really interested it. I think this might not be such a problem given rc5's microscopic bandwidth, footprint, and tolerance for latency compared to alot of other distributed computing projects If you think seti@home is bad, try cg rendering, or scientific simulations! Even the Mersenne prime client is more efficient with a large (>~16MB) memory allocation.

Nugget speaks of "a truly open and distributed continuing development effort." Their hot new client is the OGR project, and still closed source. Beberg is at least publishing a programming interface, but hasn't specified a license yet.

I've always been bothered by d.net's interest in using my processor for their particular project, paying only lip service to giving (control) back to the community they created. I've always been bothered by their failure to grok open source development.

I guess what all this boils down to is that I'd like to think that either Beberg or others at d.net have seen some light in this vein, but I can't tell which of them it might be. Comments?

Adam Beberg (duncan) wrote:
it has become apparent that the goals of DCTI have changed considerably over the years, and are no longer the same as what they were.

David McNett (nugget) wrote:
It has also become clear to us that Adam's goals for Cosm and distributed.net's vision of its future differ enough to justify this parting of ways. Adam is very motivated about seeing the system he's designed, Cosm, implemented and put into production. True to its name, distributed.net is more focused on seeing what can result from a truly open and distributed continuing development effort. While each of these respective approaches is viable in its own right, attempting to co-mingle them has proven to be counterproductive.

What's the division about? It's clear from these carefully worded pieces that they've decided to split, and they've put an amiable face on it. However, the announcements are so vague I can't tell what the real issues are.

One of the problems I've always had with the d.net project was their closed decision-making style. On the one hand, they've build this wonderful thing for running the DES/rc contests, and made it fun to participate. I think that's really nifty. On the other hand, they've been advertising 'v3' for a over a year now, with its plug-in architecture promising a wide variety of clients to choose from, and an open interface so one may write one's own. But it never arrived, partly, it seemed, because Beberg wouldn't let anyone else work on it. Sometimes I felt like they didn't want to allow any other clients because they'd lose people from the rc effort, which is what they're really interested it. I think this might not be such a problem given rc5's microscopic bandwidth, footprint, and tolerance for latency compared to alot of other distributed computing projects If you think seti@home is bad, try cg rendering, or scientific simulations! Even the Mersenne prime client is more efficient with a large (>~16MB) memory allocation.

Nugget speaks of "a truly open and distributed continuing development effort." Their hot new client is the OGR project, and still closed source. Beberg is at least publishing a programming interface, but hasn't specified a license yet.

I've always been bothered by d.net's interest in using my processor for their particular project, paying only lip service to giving (control) back to the community they created. I've always been bothered by their failure to grok open source development.

I guess what all this boils down to is that I'd like to think that either Beberg or others at d.net have seen some light in this vein, but I can't tell which of them it might be. Comments?

Man, those Beowulf clusters are FAST. Just think what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of them...

All I have is just a 464 Celeron A.

*sniff*

I'm just a node.

Everyone picks on me.

Just because I'm a little node of a large cluster.

I bend over to crack RC5 and the winbiff team comes up from behind to number two.

Get cracking for the slashdot team and be a part of supercomputing. Do it in init.d. Do it now.

Man, those Beowulf clusters are FAST. Just think what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of them...

All I have is just a 464 Celeron A.

*sniff*

I'm just a node.

Everyone picks on me.

Just because I'm a little node of a large cluster.

I bend over to crack RC5 and the winbiff team comes up from behind to number two.

Get cracking for the slashdot team and be a part of supercomputing. Do it in init.d. Do it now.

You could hook'em up to a network and have them working on a distributed.net project when they're not busy cooking pizza.
--

check out www.distributed.net for more info on the tray bin... It's a contest to beat RC5 at the moment.

Psst...

Since you have so much idle time on your CPU, may I suggest you look at Distributed.Net