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Distribute Stuff: Cosm Project's CS-SDK
Duncan3 writes: "After almost 3 months of public testing the Mithral Client-Server Software Development Kit is now officially out. The Mithral CS-SDK is a part of the Cosm Project which longtime slashdot readers will remember, and is fully buzzword-compliant with "distributed computing", "peer-to-peer", "file-sharing", and "cycle-sharing" - meaning you can easily build any of those types of applications in a weekend. So I expect to see slashdot readers put out at least 20 projects by next Thursday.
The Folding@home project based at Stanford has been running for a couple months now doing protein folding and uses the CS-SDK. You can visit them at and download their client software or OpenGL screensaver for Linux x86/Alpha, Tru64, and Win32." Interesting to see how mainstream distributed computing has become even in just the past 12 or so months. Fold proteins, find aliens, break crypto ... what else?
Maybe some of you will remember this article, reposted on alt.humor.best-of-usenet...
---------------
You may have heard or Echelon, the worldwide computer system that
monitors all electronic communications.
Well, don't believe what the conspiracy crackpots tell you - it does not
automatically detect messages containing sensitive keywords. Using voice
recognition software on all the data that's been recorded needs a lot of
computing power.
But now you can help. Download the new Echelon@Home screensaver - it
regularly retrieves recorded conversations from the archives at Menwith
Hill and, while your computer is idle, scans them for keywords.
If you want a copy of the screensaver, simply send a message with the
subject line "Echelon Wiretap" and you will be emailed a copy.
It doesn't matter who you send it to, we'll get the message.
----#('!(- ECHELON AUTOMAILER ----------
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I run LARGE analysis jobs on my workstation, which I would dearly love to foist on the other several hundred computers on our companies network. However, I am using canned stress analysis code (writing my own is not a true option) which I can not modify to take advantage of distributed computing techniques. I propose a program which emulates the hardware and allows NT or Linux or WHATEVER to be installed on it and then goes ahead and distributes work out to other computers as if they were merely more cpu's in parallel with the servers own... Can the boys and girls say 'cluster'? But this time only one cpu is always there, the others check in and out as their screen-savers switch on. Someone just go ahead and write this, I and many others would pay money for this sort of thing!!
"That's all well and good, but searching ads doesn't require distributed computing. It requires 10 seconds on a 386."
There are other concerns where the distribution might help. For example, how many ad sites are out there with stale ads? By maintaining your own ad on your own "servlet" app, ads should be better maintained. If you don't want people looking for that used TV you were offering because you sold it, you nuke the ad on your machine. Presto! No more appearing in search results! Compare this with the week or so worth of phone calls in a paper after a sale, or the tendency for people to convieniently "forget" to delete an ad at, say, Excite after it has served its purpose.
Use of an appropriately flexible format (I work with XML, so I'm biased as some have noted, but whatever works...) can make this a reasonably effective "distributed classifieds", IMUO.
-TBHiX-
How about exploring the fundamental forces of nature and structure of the universe? That's what the GriPhyN project (Grid Physics Network) will be supporting. Some other related grid projects and forums can be found on the Links page.
Another good description of GriPhyN, maintained by one of the principle investigators, is here.
It's called electricsheep - a distributed screensaver.
anyone wanna take john and build a distributed password cracker from it ? john's still single threaded and single cpu based...and the hacks that turn it into distributed are fairly shitty and crash a lot.
A classified advertising system might work nicely like this, where you post your interests, and while your system is idle it sifts through all of the items listed by other users to seek your objective.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
How about someone coming up with a decent distributed development environment. I mostly work on fairly large software systems (100's of source files) and there is no reason I should have to wait for more than a few seconds for a project to compile and link, especially when I have a largely untapped 100 megabit network and numerous computers setting around doing nothing 99% of the time. There's no reason source files couldn't be replicated over an entire compilation farm every time they are saved to disk and then when I kick off a build, I could have everything compiled almost immediately.
How about using some of that untapped processing power to help me develop code faster. It wouldn't be easy, but some real time code analysis tools might be pretty handy too.
Calculate Pi, of course!
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Thanks. Sometimes I and my fingers don't agree as to what to type. ;) Note also that I didn't properly close those tags (shout be </...>).
-TBHiX-
A distributed screen-saver! All these monitors that auto-power-off don't need to spend their precious CPU cycles on a screensaver for themselves, so use them to run a screensaver on another computer! Imagine how fluid a single screensaver coudl be if it has the processing power of twenty CPUs behind it? Imagine, real-time-rendered flying toasters! Video-quality fish! You could fly through space just like you see on Star Trek!
In addition to seeing a rise in internet-based distributed computing projects, Cosm (as I understand it) will enable companies to use their vast internal network for real-world business applications. This is pretty exciting stuff.
Now, if I could only convince my PHB...
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
The Internet 2000 Sept 21 - In a bold move toward a new economy, Everquest has declared that they are releasing a new Distributed computing component, where-by those who wish can log-in and help the company make money at home, by racking up huge on-line times.
When asked for comment those ISPs and local connection carriers responded favoriably with AOL even going so far as to commit to include the component in their new release "AOL 6.6.6", Codenamed 'The Beast' and due out October 31st.
Most users responded favoriably saying "More Everquest?!? Must play!! Can not sleep!! Food irrelivent!!" before hanging up on this correspondent.
Anallyst agree that it could be a risky move and have docked Sony Entertainment 3 Fig Neutons as collateral, in case they are unable to make this new business model make oodles of money.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
The Folding@home people are "currenty working on" a screensaver for Linux. Right now it's just console.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Render visual effects for cool movies of course!
--
-- SIGFPE
Larger N American farms are increasingly using satellite generated scans of their fields to tweak fertilizer inputs, spot the extent of insect infestation, etc.
A distributed computing application could crunch the data from flybys of developing world farms, and deliver low bandwidth digests to info kiosks.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
It's gonna take a lot more than the world's spare computing cycles to do that for you, buddy...
Hi, Adam!
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
"Fold proteins, find aliens, break crypto ... what else?"
How about a distributed system where a given site is listed at a central site, and then everyone uses their machine to slow it down some with a few to many data requests...
Oh, hang on - I'm already in this project (and so, dear reader, are you ;-)
Regards,
He who takes the time to smell the roses
Hey hey. I just was thinking the other day about how useful a distributed network would be for encoding DivX movies.. those things take FOREVER. We have a bunch of DVDs that we want in DivX so we can chop up the video and play with it (I have a digital camcorder and would love to try to put myself inside of "Die Hard", for example.)
I was going to look into it (just split the job up over my LAN inside my house here with 6 computers) and it seems the solution has come to me.. whoop! Anyone have any specific ideas how to go about making this distributed DivX encoding software quickly, now that this package is out?
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The Mithral Client Server Software Development Kit allows developers to quickly and easily write large scale client-server applications including "distributed computing" and peer-to-peer types. Examples of what this will allow you to build with this technology are distributed.net, SETI@Home, Napster, Gnutella, and hundreds of other applications. The example code is an instance of an application that hands out work for the clients to do, then collects the results.
So will there now be [Number of Projects] * [Number of SETI@home users] users availiable now to run these programs, or will there be [Number of users] / [Number of projects] users, thus giving each project a fraction or the number or distributed computing users?
Or all programmers going to have to build thier own cluster of computers to run thier programs on?
Oh, that reminds me: Imagine a beowulf cluster of these (Or a beowulf cluster of clusters of these)!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Interesting to see how mainstream distributed computing has become even in just the past 12 or so months. Fold proteins, find aliens, break crypto ... what else?
What else?
HOW ABOUT FINDING ME A GOD DAMN DATE?
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Hmmm... good questions. Wanna brainstorm on this thread?
Believe it or not, I'm wondering if you could run a dating service or people-locator using a distibuted approach and, say, XML format. Create a file describing oneself and what/who they are seeking, then let the servers pass your profile around. If your "seeking" tags match someone's "is" tags, that profile is shuffled to you and yours is shuffled to the match.
Man, I've mixed too much coffee and Yahoo Chat to have come up with that little frivolity... ;) Mind you, it doesn't have to be dating... employer/employee matching, activity planning ( seeking=rock concert when=yadda where=New York, etc), and similar things. All you have to agree on is the XML file format. (And the software can always hide the grubby details...)
-TBHiX-
The Answer!
To Life... The Universe.. Everything!
wish
Vote for freedom!
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MPAA lawyers issued a cease-and-desist letter to the makers of the piracy tool Mithral which, it is claimed, allows pirates to encode Divx copies of DVD films in only 20 seconds by using all of the bandwidth of the internet.
In related news, the RIAA has gone after Compaq, Dell, IBM and HP, manufacturers of the widely-used piracy tool the personal computer. Jack Valenti, spokesdroid of the media-industrial complex, said today that 'these cases are another example of our zero-tolerance policy towards anyone threatening our inalienable right to foist N-Sync on an unsuspecting public. Anyone who resists will be ruthlessly crushed. We shall firewall them at the routers, we will firewall them on the servers, we will firewall them on their PCs but we will never, never surrender.....our right to abuse our market-position as we see fit'
Hmmm, maaaaaybe. Rendering a final, finished frame is out of the question. If the scene they're rendering requires, say, 300mb of textures... you'd need to D/L all 300MB in order to render that frame. Also, people would find a way to hack the returned stream to grab screenshots of movies before they're released...
But maybe there's a way to have distributed clients work with some other CPU-intensive aspect of the rendering process. Radiosity calculations would be a good candidate! You wouldn't need to DL all the textures-- just the wireframe models, surface attribute info, and lighting info.
That's still a lot of bandwidth, but it might actually be feasible with broadband connections...whatever... :)
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
He said you should be able to write a program over the weekend. That is assuming you have already written the software, and want to make it client-server. Otherwise, it's going to take you months of design and architecture just like any other program...
If you do convert existing programs to use this software, you better have written it, because it's not compatible with the GPL (yet? They mentioned a dual license in the future):
You may NOT make any change, removal or additions to the Software's underlying protocols or APIs without the prior written permission of Licensor.
You will use your best efforts to discontinue the use and distribution of earlier versions of the Software once a new version, update or upgrade is available. You will also use your best efforts to distribute such new version, update or upgrade to any third party to whom you may have distributed an earlier version.