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Now that RC5-64 is complete, please consider installing the distributed client from UD which aims to cure cancer. If you're going to donate your space CPU cycles to a project, I'd challenge you to find any other distributed computing project with as much meaning and benefit to mankind.

More information can be found here

In United Devices Public Good Projects, rights to the research results remain with non-profit or government organizations that are dedicated to disease-fighting research.

However, for those who need some motivation for running SETI@Home, the following quote from Carl Sagan's Contact is a bit inspiring:

"We're just beginning SETI. You know how many possibilities there are. This is the time to leave every option open. This is the time to be optimistic. If we lived in any previous time in human history, we could wonder about this all our lives, and we couldn't do a thing to find the answer. But this time is unique. This is the first time when anybody's been able to look for extraterrestrial intelligence... Nobody's guaranteeing success... Imagine them out there sending us signals, and nobody on Earth is listening. That would be a joke, a travesty. Wouldn't you be ashamed of your civilization if we were able to listen and didn't have the gumption to do it?"

Yup, find the cure for cancer.

b) It seems like a waste of elecricity to leave it on when I'm not using it

P.S.: Your computer's not wasting electriticy if it's researching a cure for cancer. :)

Please, everyone stop looking for ET or cures for cancerand instead use distributed network computing power to search for a cure for stupidity!!!

United Devices along with Intel have designed a clustering program where they use PCs from finding a cure to cancer to modeling the climate..

Only thing that sucks is that they don't have a linux distribution available.. yet

Well then, are about Curing Cancer or fighting Aids. You can't get much worthier than that.

...is United Devices cancer research.

SETI@Home and DNet are both interesting, but I think UD is a lot more constructive. There is a great potential in harboring this kind of computing power and directing it towards something like cancer research.

Don't get me wrong, it would be great if SETI@Home got something back from god knows where, but it would be even better if clients like UD aided in finding the right mixes of drugs that could, one day, cure cancer.

I agree. I switched to a different background app to donate my spare MIPS. Check them out: Projects: Cancer Home - United Devices, Inc.

Afterall, there's always Extraterrestrial life to search for, encryption to break, or maybe even a cure for cancer. Do we all really need to re-compile rsync?

You can calculate what ever interactions a protein or whatever molecules have on the growth of cancer. Check out They have distributed program sort of like SETI@Home

In other words, they could try to get their users to share a distributed computing project working towards, say, the cure of a deadly disease or other medical project, then give ( or sell, which would be more likely) the results to whatever foundation would actually be able to use the data?

Not trying to stray offtopic, but United Devices does something like this with cancer research.

Then again, _you_ download the client, and they don't sell the results to anyone; as i understand it they collaborate with the Dept. of Chemistry @ the University of Oxford.

Kazaa using this technology (with the consent of the user, of course :) would be a great idea, IMO. They could stick it in there with all the extra third-party partner software that the installer prompts you for. Combine that (the UD client) with Kazaa's user base, and that's something worthwhile.

Number of aliens contacted by SETI@Home: 0

Except for the ``paying people'' part, United Devices does just that.

The downside of distributed computing is figuring out how to split a given problem into pieces that can be processed separately. Not all problems can be split up, and for those that can be split, figuring out the best way to do so isn't always trivial.

Cancer.

Actually, Intel is a sponser. The provider of the service is United Devices.

I always thought SETI@Home was cool, from a technical point of view, but I couldn't get very excited about analyzing random noise from space.

THINK ABOUT THIS: With the proliferation of encryption and compression technology, would we even be able to detect our own data? Ok, sure, it's may be on a carrier signal, blah blah blah, but once we gathered the data, what would we make of it? I think we are boldly assuming that alien transmissions are cleartext. :-)

Anyhow, back to United Devices distributed cancer research...

In 1999, my 3 year old daughter died of a brain tumor. In the process of her treatment I was exposed to the world of cancer research and discovered how little we actually know. After a biospy, they couldn't even classify her tumor. It didn't fit the classification system, which means many of our assumptions are fundamentally flawed.

Most of the cancer "treatments" are just blind guesses as to what might work. Clinical research shows that some treatments have a statistically better effect and are thus put into use.

What appeals to me about the distributed computer research is that it accelerates the whole process of guessing and helps target specific treatments that have a higher chance of working. Thus, the clinical research can spend more time testing better-than-average treatments.

Please consider participating in a truly useful project. Here is the site for my daughter with a link to the UD site:
In Memory of Abby and Kevin

I agree that the medical research might be more worthwhile to support, but AFAIK there are only Wintel clients available. (Case in point, United Devices and even your own link to Intel.)

That leaves an awful lot of non-intel boxes, and even non-windows intel boxes with spare cycles that can't participate. Until they have the option to do so, I anticipate a lot of cycles going to 'less worthy' causes...

I always figured dnet was on the way to UD anyway. This seemed to imply that, but I guess it was just people they took, noth the project. I guess there's no money in cracking crypto ;) The idea of distributed computing has been proven, and I think the original goal of allowing stronger crypto standards in the US has been achieved as well(?), so now it's on to more useflul tasks.

I still like seing my clients from my first job 4 years ago still submitting packets, gives me a nice feeling ;) Wish I never used my real email address though.

• United Devices -- (Alzheimer's & Cancer; recently finished Anthrax)
  
• Fight AIDS@home

Both are non-profit (or not-for-profit) endeavors, as far as I can ascertain, but I haven't done too much digging...

cheers,
t.

dude, having supercomputers build bombs is a GOOD thing. remember that the alternative is to test bombs in the real world. SETI@home is a very nice proof of concept, not much more. United devices is where it's at. distributed cancer drug testing. boo-yah!

Currently, the UD molecule screener uses as much as 375 CPU-years per day.

On that network you could run this nuke simulation twice a week. Without building a billion-dollar computer.

Of course, you're probably not going to get the same amount of participation with ATOM BOMB research as you are with CURING CANCER research (Do you know what that cute little screen saver is really doing? Bwa-ha-ha-haaa! -Erris). But overt ANTHRAX VACCINE research got a decent fraction of the way there, and is closer to the former than the latter, in practical terms.

--Blair

I second that. Not that one is necessarily more useful than the other but perhaps there should be more... distrobution... of computing power to different causes. United Devices seems to be a worthy alternative to SETI@Home.

Another solution to Seti@home's bandwidth problems is for the clients to do something more useful. Like cure cancer.

"You have to do something with all those spare cycles and I could really care less about finding alien signals from noise, cracking the latest DES, or factoring the largest mersine (sic) primes."

Well how about finding a cure for cancer? It used to be Windows only, but I think there is a linux console version now, or if not, there at least is for some of the other worthy causes to crunch numbers for.

I run the cancer one on 3 of my boxes at home; I guarantee you will get more of a genuine "warm, fuzzy feeling" from helping cancer research than you will knowing you compiled all your own source.

graspee

Oh, you mean RC5's not frivolous? There are people dying in the world due to our continued lack of scientific knowledge regarding various diseases and our own gene structures.

Try one of these instead, please...

Genome@Home: gene structure
Folding@Home: protein folding
United Devices: cancer and anthrax
Parabon Pioneer: cancer
Entropia's FightAIDS@Home: AIDS

But being 16, that's not going to happen. I got my first check Friday, and if all goes well I should be able to at least get the new computer by July. Yeah. Christmas in July.

But for now, I just want to be with my closest friends. I need a little bit of holiday cheer. When I'm with them I'd like my computer to do its part in finding the cure for cancer, but it's only avalible for Windows. Too bad it hasn't been ported to MacOS or Linux. I'd ditch SETI and use that in a heartbeat.

Cancer drug research
Gene research
Protein folding

All of these distributed projects reach into medical research and are as such a bit more useful than searching for ET or cracking RC-5.

Why are there more of these projects? I myself, am participating in this one, or rather this.

I used to run moo! (distributed.net) - then SETI@Home, then back to distributed.net. But now I am glad I found this one, makes me feel good to know that I could help cure cancer! I know a few people that could have used one :(

Why not use your spare processing power for something that actually *matters* like cure for cancer? IMHO that's much more important than whether we are alone in the universe or not or if we can crack some encryption codes.

You can download the (Windows only, sigh) clients from http://members.ud.com/vypc/.

I have run both SETI and the Think program for cancer research on my laptop (not at the same time) and both of these programs almost immediately cause the cooling fan to turn on. When I stop the program, the fan goes off within 2 seconds. That heat does not come for free, so more power must be being used.

Why not be a real altruist and fight cancer with your spare cycles? The United Devices project does what I consider the most useful work of any distributed computing effort:it simulates interactions between thousands of molecules and cancer causing proteins to try to find possible cancer treatments and/or cures. The only real downside to it is that the client is Windows only, which means there is a lot of untapped computing power from other operating systems. Still, I'm disapointed that more people want to look for ET than to fight one of the worst illnesses on our own planet.

The cancer drug client is Windows only, but I'd hazard a guess that at least half of the CPU cycles donated to the encryption contest come from Windows machines. Use your machine for a good, useful purpose!

Now I'm putting all my CPU time towards finding a cure for cancer. IMO, United Devices' client is much better, too.

http://members.ud.com/home.htm
I'm a member of the Sitepoint team.

Dnetc didn't seem to run on my computer very well, and it didn't provide tangible results. With this, it shows you what you're working on in a lot of detail.
------------

I don't know how far-fetched this is, but given that they're going to rename themselves United Online, and given that Juno has this distributed-app thing going on, is it likely that this will have anything to do with United Devices, a distributed computing company with several of the key players from distributed.net?

-Nev

Another point to consider are the rapidly emerging companies involved in distributes computing. Fine, I will admit that there is a nuance between this thread and setups like Seti@Home, but what about other companies, for example the much spoken of as of late United Devices. In some cases, a large number of people have downloaded the client numbercrunchers (be it to search for aliens or to fight cancer), unaware that a portion of the time spent is used on for-profit processing. In effect, there are undeniable similarities between these two situations, don't you think?

• Distributed.Net, OGR project: Our current combined OGR network speed is 182.49 Giga-nodes per second
• UD Cancer Research Project: 609,178 devices, 104,791,203 hours total CPU time
• Seti@home: 3044035 users, 673412.833 years of computer time

• restricted access to the communication medium
• the need to filter out the relevant communication from a huge mass of communications taking place at the same time."

OK, I keep reading all these flames about how Michael spouts his mouth off, how he doesn't read, and I gave him the chance. But if you aren't even going to read about something that has been out for months, then you need to stop talking/typing/contributing.

Places where you're wrong:

• UD isn't new, PCWorld mentioned them in an article about free stuff a few months ago.
• It's rather plainly stated on their page here, right off the front page, thay they sell their service.

  United Devices supplies customers such as corporations and research facilities with the computing resources required to solve large computational problems, run financial analyses, or find cures for diseases. United Devices makes access to teraflops of power available at a fraction of the traditional cost, making previously impossible projects possible.

• They haven't had a hard time getting people to install the client, they haven't tried yet. Technically, the service is still in beta. Or was until a few days ago
• There are currently 4 projects in the UD queue, the other big one of which is Genetic research, looking for gene sequences.
• You're not stuck doing the Cancer research project - each device you have running the UD agent can chose any or all of the projects available to run.
• The agent will run disconnected from the network, and either connect only when it needs to upload results and download data, or will watch your connection state and only send info when you connect yourself.
• They run prize promotions fairly frequently. These are also listed just off their main page
• So what if it's closed source. So it the UOLinux client. So is Everquest. So is WordPerfect. Wah, get over it, everything needs not be open-source to be good. Why do you need the source code for the client anyway, they don't want you running altered clients.

OK, go back to your XScreensaver. At least this is a little more interesting than watching my computer try to decode Signals from Aliens, or wondering how many keyblocks are left until I actually get a message.

Right now, the THINK process is the only plugin available for the UD Agent. So, for now, if you download their software and run the application, you'll only be working on the Cancer project. If you do join, you can select which projects your machines work on by modifying settings in your Device Profile page (membership required). The Device Profiles are also robust enough that you can create several profiles, and assign different profiles to different machines. UD has been pretty forthcoming in releasing information on what their Agent does. A quick check in Member News on their forums is fairly revealing. UD will have to keep their member base informed on what they're doing to members' computers, or they would lose a lot of people quickly. -Tex

Right now, the THINK process is the only plugin available for the UD Agent. So, for now, if you download their software and run the application, you'll only be working on the Cancer project. If you do join, you can select which projects your machines work on by modifying settings in your Device Profile page (membership required). The Device Profiles are also robust enough that you can create several profiles, and assign different profiles to different machines. UD has been pretty forthcoming in releasing information on what their Agent does. A quick check in Member News on their forums is fairly revealing. UD will have to keep their member base informed on what they're doing to members' computers, or they would lose a lot of people quickly. -Tex

Right now, the THINK process is the only plugin available for the UD Agent. So, for now, if you download their software and run the application, you'll only be working on the Cancer project. If you do join, you can select which projects your machines work on by modifying settings in your Device Profile page (membership required). The Device Profiles are also robust enough that you can create several profiles, and assign different profiles to different machines. UD has been pretty forthcoming in releasing information on what their Agent does. A quick check in Member News on their forums is fairly revealing. UD will have to keep their member base informed on what they're doing to members' computers, or they would lose a lot of people quickly. -Tex

OK, let's go through this line by line, nice and slowly...

Warning... long comment ahead...

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer.

"Depending on the results of this program, the time required to develop a new treatment and drugs could be cut from twelve years to as little as five years."

What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX

(my emphasis)

http://members.ud.com/membership/howitworks/faq.ht m

Yes, they do get some benefit (and are upfront about it), but "primarily" is a very harsh assessment based on the information available.

which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

and more importantly:

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC

Given that it currently only runs on Windows, it's targeted at people who are happy running closed-source restrictive-licensed software. Besides, the millions of current Setiathome users don't seem to have a problem with closed-source restrictive-licensed software, and Setiathome never got this kind of treatment from /.

(you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program

Show me one piece of software - free or otherwise - today that doesn't require the installer to take responsibility for all risks.

- if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails fbi@fbi.gov confessing to the crime, too bad.

Exactly the same applies to every piece of software distributed in binary form. Why highlight it in this manner for this particular case ?

And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

"Members will be able to control how much of their system resources are used by United Devices. "

"Members will be given user preference options on a wide range of factors, including: whether the program runs as a screensaver or an application when computation and communication can be done whether connections should be made automatically which proxies and firewall settings to use"

Although the license agreement is pretty general, the above statements are very specific, and if they did not comply with them, then (IANAL but I have some in the family) it would look very much like false advertising.

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell: "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

My reading of the above would be "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for prizes and the chance to help people, then sell it or give it away (depending on user preferences) to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Yup, they're getting a lot of publicity from this. Big deal. As long as the client tells people what's going on (which it does, see above), what is the problem ?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

Dunno why Michael calls the Intel site "disgusting" maybe it's the colour scheme or something... but, yes, I'd agree that they are abusing the term "peer-to-peer" to mean its complete opposite. Mind you, you see idiocies like that daily on /. by both posters and editorial staff. I expect marketers to be idiots and not understand basic English. Journalists are generally expected to be at least reasonably literate.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

To repeat a quote given above:

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

"That is, the rights to the research results remain with non-profit organizations that are dedicated to cancer research."

So, if they do sell the rights (as Michael claims they intend to do, without any evidence) rather than give them away, the proceeds from these sales gets reinvested in more cancer research. And the problem with this is ... ?

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

A nice summary of Michael's accusations (or misinterpretations ... I believe firmly in the principle of "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence." It's just a pity that I've had to waste an hour of my time doing his research for him so that this worthwhile project doesn't lose out on potential helpers.

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

Feel free. (There's no X client right now, anyway... hurry up UD, I've got another 6 CPUs ready for you when you get it done...)

As stated in a previous post, my younger brother died of cancer when he was 28. My girlfriend is at the hospital right now, as I'm typing this, with her father where he is having a biopsy to tell if he has prostate cancer or not. Two other members of my family have cancer. I know what it does to both the victims and their families.

If a couple of mouse-clicks can help take that pain away from just one family, it's worthwhile. Surely.

And if lazy journalism means that the cure arrives one day later than it could have, what is that worth ?

OK, let's go through this line by line, nice and slowly...

Warning... long comment ahead...

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer.

"Depending on the results of this program, the time required to develop a new treatment and drugs could be cut from twelve years to as little as five years."

What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX

(my emphasis)

http://members.ud.com/membership/howitworks/faq.ht m

Yes, they do get some benefit (and are upfront about it), but "primarily" is a very harsh assessment based on the information available.

which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

and more importantly:

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC

Given that it currently only runs on Windows, it's targeted at people who are happy running closed-source restrictive-licensed software. Besides, the millions of current Setiathome users don't seem to have a problem with closed-source restrictive-licensed software, and Setiathome never got this kind of treatment from /.

(you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program

Show me one piece of software - free or otherwise - today that doesn't require the installer to take responsibility for all risks.

- if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails fbi@fbi.gov confessing to the crime, too bad.

Exactly the same applies to every piece of software distributed in binary form. Why highlight it in this manner for this particular case ?

And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

"Members will be able to control how much of their system resources are used by United Devices. "

"Members will be given user preference options on a wide range of factors, including: whether the program runs as a screensaver or an application when computation and communication can be done whether connections should be made automatically which proxies and firewall settings to use"

Although the license agreement is pretty general, the above statements are very specific, and if they did not comply with them, then (IANAL but I have some in the family) it would look very much like false advertising.

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell: "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

My reading of the above would be "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for prizes and the chance to help people, then sell it or give it away (depending on user preferences) to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Yup, they're getting a lot of publicity from this. Big deal. As long as the client tells people what's going on (which it does, see above), what is the problem ?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

Dunno why Michael calls the Intel site "disgusting" maybe it's the colour scheme or something... but, yes, I'd agree that they are abusing the term "peer-to-peer" to mean its complete opposite. Mind you, you see idiocies like that daily on /. by both posters and editorial staff. I expect marketers to be idiots and not understand basic English. Journalists are generally expected to be at least reasonably literate.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

To repeat a quote given above:

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

"That is, the rights to the research results remain with non-profit organizations that are dedicated to cancer research."

So, if they do sell the rights (as Michael claims they intend to do, without any evidence) rather than give them away, the proceeds from these sales gets reinvested in more cancer research. And the problem with this is ... ?

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

A nice summary of Michael's accusations (or misinterpretations ... I believe firmly in the principle of "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence." It's just a pity that I've had to waste an hour of my time doing his research for him so that this worthwhile project doesn't lose out on potential helpers.

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

Feel free. (There's no X client right now, anyway... hurry up UD, I've got another 6 CPUs ready for you when you get it done...)

As stated in a previous post, my younger brother died of cancer when he was 28. My girlfriend is at the hospital right now, as I'm typing this, with her father where he is having a biopsy to tell if he has prostate cancer or not. Two other members of my family have cancer. I know what it does to both the victims and their families.

If a couple of mouse-clicks can help take that pain away from just one family, it's worthwhile. Surely.

And if lazy journalism means that the cure arrives one day later than it could have, what is that worth ?

OK, let's go through this line by line, nice and slowly...

Warning... long comment ahead...

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer.

"Depending on the results of this program, the time required to develop a new treatment and drugs could be cut from twelve years to as little as five years."

What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX

(my emphasis)

http://members.ud.com/membership/howitworks/faq.ht m

Yes, they do get some benefit (and are upfront about it), but "primarily" is a very harsh assessment based on the information available.

which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

and more importantly:

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC

Given that it currently only runs on Windows, it's targeted at people who are happy running closed-source restrictive-licensed software. Besides, the millions of current Setiathome users don't seem to have a problem with closed-source restrictive-licensed software, and Setiathome never got this kind of treatment from /.

(you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program

Show me one piece of software - free or otherwise - today that doesn't require the installer to take responsibility for all risks.

- if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails fbi@fbi.gov confessing to the crime, too bad.

Exactly the same applies to every piece of software distributed in binary form. Why highlight it in this manner for this particular case ?

And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

"Members will be able to control how much of their system resources are used by United Devices. "

"Members will be given user preference options on a wide range of factors, including: whether the program runs as a screensaver or an application when computation and communication can be done whether connections should be made automatically which proxies and firewall settings to use"

Although the license agreement is pretty general, the above statements are very specific, and if they did not comply with them, then (IANAL but I have some in the family) it would look very much like false advertising.

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell: "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

My reading of the above would be "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for prizes and the chance to help people, then sell it or give it away (depending on user preferences) to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Yup, they're getting a lot of publicity from this. Big deal. As long as the client tells people what's going on (which it does, see above), what is the problem ?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

Dunno why Michael calls the Intel site "disgusting" maybe it's the colour scheme or something... but, yes, I'd agree that they are abusing the term "peer-to-peer" to mean its complete opposite. Mind you, you see idiocies like that daily on /. by both posters and editorial staff. I expect marketers to be idiots and not understand basic English. Journalists are generally expected to be at least reasonably literate.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

To repeat a quote given above:

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

"That is, the rights to the research results remain with non-profit organizations that are dedicated to cancer research."

So, if they do sell the rights (as Michael claims they intend to do, without any evidence) rather than give them away, the proceeds from these sales gets reinvested in more cancer research. And the problem with this is ... ?

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

A nice summary of Michael's accusations (or misinterpretations ... I believe firmly in the principle of "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence." It's just a pity that I've had to waste an hour of my time doing his research for him so that this worthwhile project doesn't lose out on potential helpers.

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

Feel free. (There's no X client right now, anyway... hurry up UD, I've got another 6 CPUs ready for you when you get it done...)

As stated in a previous post, my younger brother died of cancer when he was 28. My girlfriend is at the hospital right now, as I'm typing this, with her father where he is having a biopsy to tell if he has prostate cancer or not. Two other members of my family have cancer. I know what it does to both the victims and their families.

If a couple of mouse-clicks can help take that pain away from just one family, it's worthwhile. Surely.

And if lazy journalism means that the cure arrives one day later than it could have, what is that worth ?

OK, let's go through this line by line, nice and slowly...

Warning... long comment ahead...

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer.

"Depending on the results of this program, the time required to develop a new treatment and drugs could be cut from twelve years to as little as five years."

What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX

(my emphasis)

http://members.ud.com/membership/howitworks/faq.ht m

Yes, they do get some benefit (and are upfront about it), but "primarily" is a very harsh assessment based on the information available.

which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

and more importantly:

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC

Given that it currently only runs on Windows, it's targeted at people who are happy running closed-source restrictive-licensed software. Besides, the millions of current Setiathome users don't seem to have a problem with closed-source restrictive-licensed software, and Setiathome never got this kind of treatment from /.

(you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program

Show me one piece of software - free or otherwise - today that doesn't require the installer to take responsibility for all risks.

- if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails fbi@fbi.gov confessing to the crime, too bad.

Exactly the same applies to every piece of software distributed in binary form. Why highlight it in this manner for this particular case ?

And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

"Members will be able to control how much of their system resources are used by United Devices. "

"Members will be given user preference options on a wide range of factors, including: whether the program runs as a screensaver or an application when computation and communication can be done whether connections should be made automatically which proxies and firewall settings to use"

Although the license agreement is pretty general, the above statements are very specific, and if they did not comply with them, then (IANAL but I have some in the family) it would look very much like false advertising.

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell: "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

My reading of the above would be "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for prizes and the chance to help people, then sell it or give it away (depending on user preferences) to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Yup, they're getting a lot of publicity from this. Big deal. As long as the client tells people what's going on (which it does, see above), what is the problem ?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

Dunno why Michael calls the Intel site "disgusting" maybe it's the colour scheme or something... but, yes, I'd agree that they are abusing the term "peer-to-peer" to mean its complete opposite. Mind you, you see idiocies like that daily on /. by both posters and editorial staff. I expect marketers to be idiots and not understand basic English. Journalists are generally expected to be at least reasonably literate.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

To repeat a quote given above:

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

"That is, the rights to the research results remain with non-profit organizations that are dedicated to cancer research."

So, if they do sell the rights (as Michael claims they intend to do, without any evidence) rather than give them away, the proceeds from these sales gets reinvested in more cancer research. And the problem with this is ... ?

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

A nice summary of Michael's accusations (or misinterpretations ... I believe firmly in the principle of "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence." It's just a pity that I've had to waste an hour of my time doing his research for him so that this worthwhile project doesn't lose out on potential helpers.

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

Feel free. (There's no X client right now, anyway... hurry up UD, I've got another 6 CPUs ready for you when you get it done...)

As stated in a previous post, my younger brother died of cancer when he was 28. My girlfriend is at the hospital right now, as I'm typing this, with her father where he is having a biopsy to tell if he has prostate cancer or not. Two other members of my family have cancer. I know what it does to both the victims and their families.

If a couple of mouse-clicks can help take that pain away from just one family, it's worthwhile. Surely.

And if lazy journalism means that the cure arrives one day later than it could have, what is that worth ?

OK, let's go through this line by line, nice and slowly...

Warning... long comment ahead...

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer.

"Depending on the results of this program, the time required to develop a new treatment and drugs could be cut from twelve years to as little as five years."

What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX

(my emphasis)

http://members.ud.com/membership/howitworks/faq.ht m

Yes, they do get some benefit (and are upfront about it), but "primarily" is a very harsh assessment based on the information available.

which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

and more importantly:

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC

Given that it currently only runs on Windows, it's targeted at people who are happy running closed-source restrictive-licensed software. Besides, the millions of current Setiathome users don't seem to have a problem with closed-source restrictive-licensed software, and Setiathome never got this kind of treatment from /.

(you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program

Show me one piece of software - free or otherwise - today that doesn't require the installer to take responsibility for all risks.

- if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails fbi@fbi.gov confessing to the crime, too bad.

Exactly the same applies to every piece of software distributed in binary form. Why highlight it in this manner for this particular case ?

And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

"Members will be able to control how much of their system resources are used by United Devices. "

"Members will be given user preference options on a wide range of factors, including: whether the program runs as a screensaver or an application when computation and communication can be done whether connections should be made automatically which proxies and firewall settings to use"

Although the license agreement is pretty general, the above statements are very specific, and if they did not comply with them, then (IANAL but I have some in the family) it would look very much like false advertising.

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell: "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

My reading of the above would be "Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for prizes and the chance to help people, then sell it or give it away (depending on user preferences) to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Yup, they're getting a lot of publicity from this. Big deal. As long as the client tells people what's going on (which it does, see above), what is the problem ?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

Dunno why Michael calls the Intel site "disgusting" maybe it's the colour scheme or something... but, yes, I'd agree that they are abusing the term "peer-to-peer" to mean its complete opposite. Mind you, you see idiocies like that daily on /. by both posters and editorial staff. I expect marketers to be idiots and not understand basic English. Journalists are generally expected to be at least reasonably literate.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

To repeat a quote given above:

"Members will always be told which applications (including commercial ones) are running on their computers. They also will have access to Web pages outlining which organizations are providing the applications and explaining projects that Member computers are working on."

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

"That is, the rights to the research results remain with non-profit organizations that are dedicated to cancer research."

So, if they do sell the rights (as Michael claims they intend to do, without any evidence) rather than give them away, the proceeds from these sales gets reinvested in more cancer research. And the problem with this is ... ?

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

A nice summary of Michael's accusations (or misinterpretations ... I believe firmly in the principle of "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence." It's just a pity that I've had to waste an hour of my time doing his research for him so that this worthwhile project doesn't lose out on potential helpers.

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

Feel free. (There's no X client right now, anyway... hurry up UD, I've got another 6 CPUs ready for you when you get it done...)

As stated in a previous post, my younger brother died of cancer when he was 28. My girlfriend is at the hospital right now, as I'm typing this, with her father where he is having a biopsy to tell if he has prostate cancer or not. Two other members of my family have cancer. I know what it does to both the victims and their families.

If a couple of mouse-clicks can help take that pain away from just one family, it's worthwhile. Surely.

And if lazy journalism means that the cure arrives one day later than it could have, what is that worth ?

But why don't we get the source code to the client? This would alleviate one concern right away, in that we'd be able to check what kinds of work are being done.

Before branding me a source code zealot, ask yourself this simple question: why aren't they releasing the source? Because it's proprietary? Erm... I thought they were claiming to be not for profit, and philanthropic. What, is a non-profit worried about "competitive advantage?" Or is this non-profit planning on selling the program for a profit at a later date? Something doesn't add up here. Philanthropic endeavors are generally based on cooperation, and closed source is nothing but competitive.

I'd like to believe all of the protestations of innocence, but it's a little too sketchy. If they're truly philanthropic, they should have nothing to hide.

And the way they spin "publication", intimating that all of humanity will benefit from the findings, all the while conveniently ignoring the issue of about patents and other use rights.

And what's with the lack of disclosure here? Wouldn't it be in simple good taste to disclose that United Devices is a for profit company?

I'd love to believe them, and I'd love to participate in a project like this, but there are just too many small things that add up to say "you're being deceived."

This is, without a doubt, downright evil.

Slashdot has made posting without any foundations that UD and Intel are lying, and so doing is actively opposing efforts to help cure cancer. Baseless, stupid, irresponsible, self-righteous, and typical of the petulant children who run this site.

They might try showing evidence before spewing this crap.

Christ, even the most crack-addled conspiracy theorists need a motivation, why the hell would intel engage in the potential PR nightmare of making specific promises and then overturning them? Oh, that's right, your conception of corporations here goes no further than Darth Vader? They're just evil! They don't have reasons!

Read the damn FAQ: http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/faq_proj.htm

The results will be published publically, your CPU cycles will only be used for what you sign up for.

Intel gets a REAL benefit from this sort of thing (generally good PR, demo of CPU power, tax write off), but I guess its more fun to come up with fantastic conspiracy theories. (How much you wanna bet someone follows up saying I work for one of these companies?)

I'm completely stunned that slashdot would be this irresponsible, they've effectively scared off a ton of processing power that, now, instead of helping people, will remain devoting to code breaking or searching for little green men.

Ok, as none of the slashdot editors seem to be able to do any editing here are a couple of excerpts from various faqs and information services describing how this stuff work.

From http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/faq_proj.htm

Are you going to sell the results to large pharmaceutical companies?

--No. The results of this study are the intellectual property of the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research, who will make the scientific findings of this project available to the greater scientific community.

Are the results going to be made public?

Yes. Prof. Graham Richards' research group, the project coordinators, will publish the results. This group originally designed the project and is currently orchestrating the study. Scientific interpretation of the results from this study will take some time. Results and scientific findings will be published in the usual manner through a peer-reviewed process.

So the results are going to the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford. The National Foundation for Cancer Research are not the type of body to charge for commercial development of this work

From http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/index.htm

The project software cannot detect or transfer anything on your machine but project-specific information. It just allows your computer to screen molecules that may be developed into drugs to fight cancer. Each individual computer analyzes a few molecules and then sends the results back over the Internet for further research.

So your computer is only allowed to scan molecules

From Intels criteria for Philantropic projectshttp://www.intel.com/cure/criteria.htm

A. 100% Philanthropic:
The programs and, more specifically, workloads should be 100% philanthropic. Being a 100% philanthropic program means that that the program(s) run non-profit projects all of the time. Programs that run commercial projects "from time to time" are NOT considered 100% philanthropic.

B. No Cost to the Public:
The program should be completely "free" to the public. This means that there should be no cost to the public to download any of the software applications needed to run the workloads.

C. Complete Disclosure to User:
The programs should allow complete disclosure of information to the user about the workloads running on the user's machine (including, but not limited to, the type of data being processed), without giving away proprietary information.

D. Complete Disclosure to the Public:
The programs should allow all results obtained from processed workloads to be completely disclosed to the public within approximately 12 months of receiving the results.

So thank you michael for allowing your cynicism and laziness in research to potentially take a lot of computing resources away from an important project. Yes it is getting attention for all the parties involved but it is not a cheap trick to steal our computer cycles for commercial interests, if you join for the cancer project then that is all you will work on

So when you go home to bed tonight make sure and think about how much extra suffering your lack of editorial integrity may have caused cancer sufferers due to lost computing resources for this project. When will the slashdot editors learn that they can't just post any old crap, slashdot is not a small site where a mistake has no affect, it has a huge readership and needs to start taking some responsibility for the integrity of the stories it posts.

Thank you, I expect to see the front page updated with a retraction of these false allegations soon to try and repair some of the damage your laziness has done. For the first time since I started posted here I have finally found something important enough to use my +1 bonus. I hope it is the last time this is needed.

Decado

Ok, as none of the slashdot editors seem to be able to do any editing here are a couple of excerpts from various faqs and information services describing how this stuff work.

From http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/faq_proj.htm

Are you going to sell the results to large pharmaceutical companies?

--No. The results of this study are the intellectual property of the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research, who will make the scientific findings of this project available to the greater scientific community.

Are the results going to be made public?

Yes. Prof. Graham Richards' research group, the project coordinators, will publish the results. This group originally designed the project and is currently orchestrating the study. Scientific interpretation of the results from this study will take some time. Results and scientific findings will be published in the usual manner through a peer-reviewed process.

So the results are going to the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford. The National Foundation for Cancer Research are not the type of body to charge for commercial development of this work

From http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/index.htm

The project software cannot detect or transfer anything on your machine but project-specific information. It just allows your computer to screen molecules that may be developed into drugs to fight cancer. Each individual computer analyzes a few molecules and then sends the results back over the Internet for further research.

So your computer is only allowed to scan molecules

From Intels criteria for Philantropic projectshttp://www.intel.com/cure/criteria.htm

A. 100% Philanthropic:
The programs and, more specifically, workloads should be 100% philanthropic. Being a 100% philanthropic program means that that the program(s) run non-profit projects all of the time. Programs that run commercial projects "from time to time" are NOT considered 100% philanthropic.

B. No Cost to the Public:
The program should be completely "free" to the public. This means that there should be no cost to the public to download any of the software applications needed to run the workloads.

C. Complete Disclosure to User:
The programs should allow complete disclosure of information to the user about the workloads running on the user's machine (including, but not limited to, the type of data being processed), without giving away proprietary information.

D. Complete Disclosure to the Public:
The programs should allow all results obtained from processed workloads to be completely disclosed to the public within approximately 12 months of receiving the results.

So thank you michael for allowing your cynicism and laziness in research to potentially take a lot of computing resources away from an important project. Yes it is getting attention for all the parties involved but it is not a cheap trick to steal our computer cycles for commercial interests, if you join for the cancer project then that is all you will work on

So when you go home to bed tonight make sure and think about how much extra suffering your lack of editorial integrity may have caused cancer sufferers due to lost computing resources for this project. When will the slashdot editors learn that they can't just post any old crap, slashdot is not a small site where a mistake has no affect, it has a huge readership and needs to start taking some responsibility for the integrity of the stories it posts.

Thank you, I expect to see the front page updated with a retraction of these false allegations soon to try and repair some of the damage your laziness has done. For the first time since I started posted here I have finally found something important enough to use my +1 bonus. I hope it is the last time this is needed.

Decado

Like I've posted elsewere, look here, and you'll see that the IP goes to Oxford, which will publish the results to the scientific community. UD's involvement seems to be related to building the application and handling the ongoing computing process.

Head over to the UD website, and you'll see that the results of this research WILL be published and made available to the wider scientific community. The original poster has grossly misrepresented the situation, it appears.