Distributed.net Joins United Devices

Nugget94M writes "distributed.net announced today that it is joining forces with United Devices, a commercial distributed computing company. Several of the distributed.net volunteers are trading in their old, boring day jobs for new jobs working on distributed computing with United Devices. The agreement between the two organizations provides for ports of current and future distributed.net projects to run on the United Devices commercial network, and provides distributed.net with server hardware (new stasbox!) and hosting services."

Comments

Complementary Press Release

[Malicose]

United Devices has posted its own press release covering the same arrangement but with new quotes and details.

Competition with ProcessTree?

[Geek Dash Boy]

With ProcessTree getting their first paying client, is the timing of this annoucement a coincidence?

The annoucement claims that they'll distributed.net will continue on with non-profit biz as usual, but that could change at anytime.

The field of for-pay dist. computing is going to see some competition in the near future, methinks.

New projects

[SeanCier]

Others are doing new projects: for instance, Parabon (disclaimer: my employer) is doing cancer research, 3d rendering, bioinformatics (e.g. gene sequencing), et cetera (and anything you code up and run: our SDK is available).

-spc

Oxymoron?

[Stott]

Distriduted and United kind of like Postal and worker?

Just a thought.

Re: reimbursement

[James Manning]

Not at the present time, although Porivo Technologies has a sweepstakes running. This sweepstakes is currently a $2000 shopping spree from buy.com! Also, better than other sweepstakes that I've heard about, the second and third place winners even get $1000 themselves! I love great prizes :)

One of the nicest things I've noticed is that Porivo's client doesn't actually nail your CPU (and subsequently your power bill :) like other clients. Their main focus appears to be on Web site performance testing. Since I'm a big-time gamer that's much more interested in keeping my CPU free and latencies low, the very slight amount of bandwidth needed doesn't affect me. Combined with the bonus of a nicer sweepstakes prize, they've got me hooked :)

You may remember Porivo from their earlier coverage, here on Slashdot

Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good. If it boots up it is perfect -- Linus Torvalds

Re:Another 'good' np org sells out...

[American AC in Paris]

I gotta think long and hard about contributing to online projects nowadays. In the 'good old days', before the web and before script kiddies, the 'net was a place where it was more rewarding to give than receive, and people respected and appreciated the contributions of other, and the DIDN'T SELL OUT AND USE THE GIFT FOR PERSONAL FINANCIAL GAME! Make no mistake, the good old days are VERY over.

I don't know that I've ever seen somebody so angry at a group of people for trying to make a living out of what they do. It's not like they came to your house and shat on your doorstep; they're taking their own work and trying to get something more tangible than props from the geek community.

In the 'good old days' of the Internet, a good job meant a long term position at the local university helping to maintain their systems--the pay was OK, and it meant you got to play with the Internet, which was fun, seeing as you could talk to all the other sysops at the other universities on LambdaMOO. Stock options? Six-figure salaries? The ability to dictate terms to your employer at will? Bwa-hahahaha! Aww, that's cute. Now go over to the science building--the circuit breaker probably got tripped again...

But hey, don't let me stop you gnawing on that hand you got there...

$ man reality