ProcessTree Gets Its First (Paying) Client

myosin writes: "ProcessTree (sell your unused cycles for $$$) will soon announce it has its first paying client. Here's the [preliminary] announcement :) From their site: 'The good news is that as soon as the end of the month, some of the suppliers of ProcessTree will be able to earn money with their computers. The bad news is that this only applies to a limited number of participants that will be hand-picked according to the requirements of the project.'" And joe points out (from that same announcement) that "The job is a quality-of-service monitoring system that allows real-time checking on the performance and availability of Web sites. We will initially start with 25 locations, for each of which we plan to have a number of suppliers to provide a 24/7 coverage from each location. Each such group in a location we call an 'ideal machine.'" However, they prefer to trade shekels only for cycles on your permanently connected Windows-based machines for now, thanks.

Comments

Another dot bomb

[micromoog]

This is a failure waiting to happen. Sorry Armin Lenz, but this idea will not work.

From a technical standpoint, distributed computing is damn cool. I don't think anyone here would dispute the technical brilliance of not-for-profit projects such as the SETI network. However, this will not make money.

ProcessTree has a client on-board, but have not yet decided on the compensation rate for the "suppliers". This is where the problem starts. There is not a rate that will work.

If the rate is too high (which it inevitably will be in the beginning, to get "suppliers"), the company will be quickly drained of resources. Whatever ProcessTree is planning to charge the client (can't be much, with the price of processing power these days) will not cover "supplier" compensation, project development time, network bandwidth, administrative overhead, etc.

The only solution to this problem will be to reduce the rate paid to "suppliers". This reduction will continue as ProcessTree attempts to refine their cost structure. Eventually, it will get to the point that "suppliers" don't think maintaining the ProcessTree client is worth the hassle, for a mere buck and a quarter a month. Goodbye, ProcessTree.

To make money, a business must be able to solve an existing problem better than existing means. This project will fail because 1) it will be cheaper and easier for clients to maintain their own Beowulf cluster of monkey brains and 2) the rate paid to "suppliers" will be too low to matter. CPU time is cheap. There is not a significant problem to be solved.

now cracking can pay!

[QuantumG]

wow.. so all those windoze boxen that I have owned can earn me dollars? Cool.

Why Windows

[addaon]

I'm wondering why they're choosing windows-based machines for this task. I agree that it makes a lot of sense to hand-pick computers depending on the requirements of the job, and I understand that this job requires 24/7 connections and all. However, it seems to me that it's easier to find a *nix machine that's truly on and connected all the time than a windows machine... especially in the realm of home computers, their target audience, most windows machines will be running 9x, which simply can't be considered 24/7. Is it because they have more development time invested in / more control over the windows software? Or is it just because that's what most of the people signed up for the service have?

the reason they are only using windows for now

[Elby 23]

Since I know lots of you will be whining about this, I thought I'd toss in my two cents.

The reason they are only using Windows seems pretty obvious to me. Windows has the largest desktop marketshare, and I'm willing to bet that the majority of people who have signed up at that site are actually running Windows.

So, logistically, if they really intend to be churning out projects in the future, it makes sense. It takes much less time to develop for a single platform per project.

What this also means to me is that depending on the size of the project, different pools of machines will be used.

-lb

Re:the reason they are only using windows for now

[Elby 23]

I think you're making some claims that don't seem to be backed by common knowledge. I'd like to be the first to welcome you to the year 2000, where 24/7 internet connections are not that rare in the US.

Yes, perhaps the percentage of unix users that have a 24/7 connection and leave their machines on all day is larger than the percentage of windows users, but the total number of unix users versus the total number of windows users that do so is still going to be smaller.

Companies like @Home and all the major DSL providers have the majority of their customers as windows users.

If you think I'm wrong, find some numbers, I'd love to see them.

-lb

Couldn't pay me enough...

[SuiteSisterMary]

Couldn't pay me enough to run arbitrary code for anonymous third parties.

Design decisions

[Armin Lenz]

Hello there, Armin Lenz from Distributed Science here.

Our decisions to launch with Windows client software first is a simple one: Linux clients are in the works but are under a contractual deadline, which is hard to meet by itself. As we provide updates, Linux clients will be rolled out as well, in particular because Linux boxes are considered 24/7 reliable (unless they are dial-up, of course).

A large number of the locations chosen for the first run are in Asia and South Africa. If you have a suitable machine and were not called upon directly, don't worry, the project is supposed to expand to several hundred locations over time and if you are in a sizeable city, chances are good that we'll have use for you there.

All this is independent of processing jobs that require computing time or storage capacity. Projects of this kind will be rolled out later, we are responding to customer demand first and try to get as much of the ProcessTree network utilized so the suppliers can earn some money.