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?

Comments

Echelon? Carnivore? Distributed?

[devphil]

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 ----------

One Idea...DivX

[nebby]

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?

What else?

[TBHiX]

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-