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Philanthropy Redefined
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 (you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program - 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. 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?
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."
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?
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.
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.
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'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".
I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.
>"Oxford will own the intellectual property developed under the program, but the university will license it relatively freely."
/2 of 1% of all cpu cycles well where is my 5 million dolar check
Key word is "relatively freely"
who knows what that value is. Could it be 2% of the market value, that sound cheap to me ( as close free if you ask me ) and the cure is worth about 1 trillion US dollars over 20 years.
so if that's the case then those 2 points are worth 20 billion dollars or a billion per year and if I'm the guy that did 1
Screw these people...We want companies that make no profits. Yeah right. Where are people coming up with the idea that anything is free in life. Everything that you could possibly imagine has a price. Get used to it. The day of "everything free" business model is dead.
What a typical /. immature, mypoic, pig-headed response. Something isn't perfect, so you'll pick up all your marbles and walk off in a huff. I hope you never have to watch any of your loved ones die a lingering death of cancer. The change in attitude it triggers might cause you brain damage.
... then someone would hook up generators to stationary bikes, provide power to poor-wittle Californians, and put fat-assed people on them to pump off the ugly pounds, which would work off their fat fucking asses that make them vulnerable to cancer and heart disease. It's pathetic to walk down the street and see the average person waddling along like a pig, puffing on a cigarette. No wonder they get sick, they don't need CPU-cycles, they need bicycles.
I'm afraid you will have to leave now.
The Uptime Gestapo will escort you out.
That actually is UD's business model (it's there on their website). They mention things like frequent flyer miles and what not. In fact, they have two categories of projects: for-pay projects and free projects (like this one).
Ok, I know, there are 200+ other comments here about how this story pretty much blows, but I couldn't help but pitch in my two cents. There have been a shitload of these pseudo-conspiracy stories in the past few months here, and frankly I'm not impressed. I've been reading slashdot for a while (check out my user number) and there was non of this anti-this or anti-that crap until recently. If you're gonna throw around accusations, could you at least spend more than five minutes fact checking? This article looks like something that was fed to you by a slashdot article engine or something. Lets count the ways:
closed source
making a profit
snooping on your computer
Intel
Patents
So where's microsoft and BSD? too bad you didn't mention them, or you would have covered every damn story slashdot has been doing lately. ARGH!
The only unethical behavior I see is Michael's disregard for journalistic integrity in his choice to accuse Intel, United Devices, Oxford University, and the National Foundation for Cancer Research of dishonesty without even attempting to support his claims.
In this way, the two are entwined and interrelated. United Devices' heritage is both distributed.net, as well as SETI@home. United Devices' CTO is Dr. David Anderson, the founder of the SETI@home project.
There will always be a need for noncommercial distributed computing, and distributed.net will continue to push in that direction. However, there is a demand for commercial distributed computing, and United Devices is well-poised to contribute to that enterprise.
See the very first line of my post, that begins "Full Disclosure..."
Actually, Intel and United Devices do promise exactly that. If you download the agent from the Intel site, it will only participate in the Think cancer app. The FAQ explains this.
Yes, you did imagine it... actually I implanted the image in your mind using an experimental version of 802.11b (called 802.11bs)... but I was unaware of the newly found WEP bugs, and some script kiddie hacked my mental web page. I did a ctrl-alt-del and reset the page but my synaptic allocation table (SAT) was corrupted, so it looks like I'll have to reinstall Braindows 98. Damn... so much for mind control over IP.
*ahem*
No, UD.com did not get the core d.net guys. Far from it.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
,
?ch as I'd like to brag to my friends about how I am personally helping combat cancer, I just don't think that letting someone else use my spare CPU cycles for a noble cause while I sit on my fat ass in the other room watching Star Trek reruns constitutes any sort of humanitarian act.
Assume that "letting someone else use" your spare CPU cycles will, in fact, make a positive contribution to an effort to find a cure for cancer.
Notwithstanding the fact that you're paying for electricity, as noted in the previous comment, you paid for the computer in the first place; you're letting others benefit from that investment by doing this. If we go by the dictionary definition of "humanitarian," i.e. someone who puts forth effort for the "promotion of human welfare," I'd say this is a humanitarian act--and a very easy one at that.
Again, I assume here that this distributed number-crunching is going to be beneficial in the search for a cure for cancer, but I think it makes sense. Maybe I'm biased, since my mom was recently diagnosed with cancer, but I would have a hard time making a comment like the above--even offhandedly.
"Interesting side note: as a head without a body, I envy the dead."
I've been running the Folding@Home console (text) version under Windows for the past couple months with no problems. So this is pretty much a "me too" post.
Work is for people who lack the imagination to play.
It's not evil that they're for profit. It's evil that they claim to be doing real philanthropy to trojan horse their client onto your system.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
The Invisible Hand has been stomped on so many times, there's nothing left but a blood stain.
AOL got sued because they promised their volunteers benefits, which they later decided they didn't want to provide. If they hadn't promised the benefits in the first place, there wouldn't have been a problem.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I don't know what is sadder...the amount of people that will unknowingly do this or the negative impact this could have on such things as Seti@home.
I happened to be thinking about something like this the other day. Why doesn't somebody set up a distributed.net like system which resells users unused computer resources but then pays the users for their trouble?
You could have a payment structure that pays based on CPU time (measured in a unit independent of CPU type or speed), RAM use, network utilization, storage space, and storage activity (I would expect to be paid more for drive activity than CPU time since drive lifetime is more affected by activity than a CPU).
In fact, the user could even specify how much they want to be paid for each type of resource. The managing server would chose how many and which computers to utilize depending on how much the client (business client, not network client) would be willing to pay. Of course users would also be able to specify the limit of each resource which the (network) client could use.
All jobs would be crytographically signed by the managing company. For the paranoid among us, the daemon could run in a chrooted environment as user nobody (although the server and all the jobs would have to be statically linked binaries). There isn't a good way to provide such security on Windows, although if you're paranoid, you shouldn't be running an MS operating system anyhow.
Also, this would be an interesting economic experiment, with real time statistics available for a large market practicing good ol' supply and demand.
If somebody's up to the task of setting this up, I'd be happy to spare some cycles for a few bucks a month.
The point is that you can choose which category of projects you want to run. If you don't want to run any commercial projects, that's fine! Gee, I guess I'm just biased because I've been running the client for a month and I've had plenty of time to go through the site and the message boards to get a real feel for the project instead of posting some poorly researched rant as Michael did.
I personally have no problem with what UD is doing. What!? You mean there's a company that's trying to make a profit! Those bastards! How dare they try to make money from what they love to do?!
They are not currently running commercial projects, hell they just came out of beta with the cancer project. They're already awarding money, both in contests for computing power and random drawings. Whenever they start doing commercial projects, I'm confident that I'll be adequately compensated if I choose to run them. If I feel shafted, then I'll go elsewhere, but really, Michael has no excuse here. He obviously has not talked to anyone from the company, and he is spreading some major FUD.
I don't really see how this is different from another closed source project, Seti@home. In the end you're choosing to trust that you're working on what they say you're working on. All the pretty screensavers in the world don't mean squat.
I like UD because they at least give you a shot at making money on the nonprofit projects, and whenever they start doing commercial projects (because they are not currently, they just came out of beta for THINK today), they'll give adequate compensation then. I've been on the message boards, the people there are great, UD employees post regularly (even Moose of D.net fame). All in all, I think it's a cool company to be involved with.
I have to believe that UD was taken by surpise by all this. I sure was... I just run the client, I don't work for UD, though. But if you notice, Michael got his info from the UD web site. I signed up for UD a little over a month ago, and before I even downloaded the client, I made sure to read everything, and I knew that they were going to try to get commercial projects. I think that qualifies as being upfront about it's business strategy.
and b) not providing along some reassuring terms in the contract saying that those cpu cycles will not be used for anything else (there is anyway a contract with the code saying you may not reverse engineer the code, why not put something in there to the effect that the Program will only work on the cure for cancer Project?)
But you can choose what category of projects you want to run, I think that qualifies as a reassurance. You don't want to run commercial projects? Hey, that's great! Don't! They knew that not everyone would want to, so they let you choose.
About the reverse engineering clause... The point is that the client is supposed to be a platform. That means that you can do lots of different types of projects with the same client, yes, even commercial ones. If someone fooled around with it, they could artificially inflate their stats by returning bogus data. Even in nonprofit projects, where no money is involved, this is a problem, what happens when you throw money in the mix? People trying to make a quick buck, thus they have more incentive than just the envy of a few geeks.
depends on the translation....how's your aramiac?
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
It's a lot more 31337 to have your computer work on hax0r-made problems like RC5. What does cancer have to do with 31337?
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
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.
They are claiming that all of the promises made by Intel and UD are complete lies, and that they will hijack our processors, and then sell the research.
They are making this claim with zero evidence.
Its as if I said Amnesty international is actually taking my money I donate and using it to torture people! without having a shred of evidence.
If they wanted to make a point about it being corporate backed, and how corporations might benefit (via public relations), that'd be fine. If they had some evidence that the whol eproject was a sham, they should post it for sure.
But they didn't, and they don't, so what they did was really downright evil, and deserves whatever venom people direct at them.
My mother died of cancer, yet I can still recognize a bad license agreement. I think I'll donate my spare cycles to a project that:
- shows me what I will be executing on my machine
- takes responsobility for what the program does on or to my machine
- Doesn't tie my machine's work up in its own patents
Just because they claim to be fighting cancer doesn't mean you should give up your sense of reason.I wish I had mod points to mod this up. Humor and good point in one response.
;)
California should enact this. "turn off your computers when you leave for work!" Wonder how much that would save californians
Humanity has so much more potential, but we'll happily squander it to see our sitcoms, eat our plastic food, drink our caffiene and play our video games...and consume the pablum-sacrament of corporatized news. What about ranting? Ranting has to be in there someplace? Oh. . .and I assume you are running your machine that you used to type this on solar power and it was manufactured out of materials that you found in your yard, right?
But what about my uptime, dude!
Yes, but that doesn't count the thousands (mostly black) who were mistakenly disenfranchised due to the state erroneously thinking they were convicted felons, and also a couple more thousand college students who registered during a voter registration drive that were incorrectly prevented from voting... there's no saying what those votes may have been (though college students and blacks percentage-wise are highly democratic).
Things are as they are right now... the country gets another chance in four years to make sure that we get everything and everyone counted properly and on time, regardless of the outcome.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
>Why, they're not wasted anymore because everybody now uses Rain, Waterfall, CPUidle or powersaving features on their computers.
...or distributed.net or even (gasp) SETI@Home (not affilated with Charter Communications or any other cable modem provider).
(for home users)
(or at work) Either that, or the real workstations are doing far more complex simulations than either of these, and helping make money for the company that bought them.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
In the charity business a common metric is "administrative costs". If a person wants to give to a benevolent organization that, say, feeds hungry children, the charity that has the lowest administrative costs per child will use the money most effectively. An organization that spends 90% of its received donations on salaries probably shouldn't get your dollar.
By the same token, it does not make sense to donate my CPU cycles to a company that spends most of them for its own benefit. Don't throw your resources at anybody claiming to be "researching cancer". Do research and put your resources where they will be most effective.
SETI@home, a cool, but completely useless endevour
Scanning for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is hardly useless....
Because some corporation is involved in coordinating the compute time to be used, and the prevailing attitude among the /. staff appears to be that Corporations Are Evil (TM). Sometimes I wonder if Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin haven't come back from the dead and gotten jobs as /. editors.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Now YOU disgust me.
You are not supposed to use your work computer for anything else than business activities.
You haven't told us anything about your home power consumption...
Which bit about the "Full disclosure: I'm a United Device employee, a SETI@home enthusiast, distributed computing fanatic, and co-founding board member of distributed.net. " Didn't you read or understand.
Lying about a cure right now is different than hope for a cure in the future.
One in nine South Africans have AIDS. South africa has a budget of no more than $50 per person alotted for healthcare. $20,000 per person per year was the going rate.
It's so true what they say in commercials about how Glaxo is working towards saving lives! I'm so glad I live in a society where 'people matter'.
Wah!
It's amazing. The trolls have actually finally worn off on the slashdot editors. What an amazing, lame write up on a non-story. Hurray for slashdot it's fallen just a bit further down the shitter.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
However, since we have no proof that you are in fact affiliated in any way with United Devices
</yoink>
Well, you could email him at his distributed.net email address mailto:nugget@distributed.net, where, according to the site, he's listed as the President, and also according to the site, they've joined forces with United Devices.
For my sanity, and the sanity of the rest of the silent majority, it would be nice if people would do at least a little research before jumping up and down screaming.
Joe
Wow. A well-constructed, well-written, level-headed response... that unfortunately tells us nothing and is essentially useless.
</yoink>
Why are people so eager to write up a derisive, ugly post that they completely ignore the facts? The guy gave several examples as to why Michael's remarks where unfounded.
Next time, read the post. When you're done, count to ten before hitting the "Reply" link. Give it some time to sink in.
Joe
Kudos to you sir. I was going to write a similar post, but mine would not have been nearly as well worded.
Sig:
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
It seems you might sign-up for cancer research and your CPU's might end up sumulating nuclear explosions. The problem is that you sign-up for cancer but have no insurance of what will be done with yoru computer. Like democracy in America, you vote but quite don't know what your vote will decide, depends who offers the most money to your representatives.
Quick comment:
I think that this type of business model has the potential of being revolutionary. Do you fully understand the implications of this type of effort? If United Devices succeeds, they will be creating a commodity market for processing power. Its difficult to under estimate the potential.
In many cases, supply creates its own demand. In this case, the existence of low cost processing power will enable any number of new projects ranging from weather modeling to video imaging.
Do I believe that it will be possible to popularize a business model based completely on philanthropy? Probably not. [If it were my company I build in a lottery system. Kick back 1% of revenue to a prize pool. Weight the lottery based on the number of work units contributed. This should create a good incentive for end users.] However, I think the UD has some real potential and I wish them a lot of luck.
This is a really great point, and I'm not contradicting it at all here.
Note that the scenario where the drug costs too much and people can't afford it until the patent runs out is still quite likely. However, this is going to happen no matter what, because, as the article points out, this is just a small part of the cancer-curing problem. Some pharmaceuticals company will have to shell out the dough and spend the time to create an actual drug to cure cancer, as well as go through clinical trials, FDA approval, etc. They are the ones who will cause this scenario, and its an open debate whether or not this is fair.
However, contributing to an academic effort to generate more public information about cancer does not benefit any particular pharmaceuticals company, and only brings the day when an affordable cure for cancer is available closer. So don't let this article stop you.
-Puk
That's all very good and well, but you didn't address his point at all. He's talking about the scenario where this distributed project does find the cure now, and, since it is owned by a for-profit organization and gets patented, no one can afford to buy that cure (name-brand "Advil") until the patent runs out and any company can produce it ("Motrin IB", or any other generic "ibuprofin" product).
So it doesn't matter that it will be calculable by anyone within 20 years -- the people who did this first and found it first still have the rights to it, and plenty of people couldn't afford it in the meantime.
-Puk
Don't accuse Slashdot of integrity, or burden them with expectations of accuracy. They only claim to be anything other than an entertainment site when it suits their purposes.
The simple fact of the matter is that the people who approve stories on /. do so with a highly editorial slant. For a "serious" story to be approved it must have one of the following elements:
If you see /.'s editors as anything more than a clique with greater than average social power, welcome to sad reality. This is a commercial enterprise run by a close-knit group of people who share common ideologies. The boat rocks when they want it to, in the fashion they dictate, and the seas are only as stormy as finances allow.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
I would love to be proven wrong, but I suspect the lack of correction is about the vanity for /.'s 37337 few, not lives ...
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Keep in mind, however, that this university patent is sold to a pharmecuetical manufacturer. This manufacturer is than free to price the product as they choose, and use the profits according to their shareholders' best interest.
And, as per standard procedure in the world of academic biosciences, any useful findings will certainly be patented prior to disclosure in the peer-reviewed literature. Note that the questions answered above refer only to the publication of the results--publication is perfectly consistent with a patent application, which involves mandatory public disclosure. In fact, UD notes specifically that the results will remain the intellectual property of Oxford, allowing them to license any inventions to a manufacturer. This is simply the way things are done.
I just thought I'd ask because I thought I finally filtered all thethe Drivel from my Slashdot.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
At least it isn't "F*ck Microsoft" or "F*ck Intel". Going after a startup is a little off the beaten track, though.
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
Quantum entangled photons.
What about the Protein folding screensaver / CPU cycle user folding@home. Some Stanford geeks want your help to fold protein strings. Works for me. SETI is lame and overrated. I might as well start watching X-Files again...
Keine eier
Modern pharmaceutical compounds may require lengthy and finely-specified synthesis procedures, but they hardly require multi-billion dollar fabs, as Athlon-complexity general purpose microprocessors do!
"I have no way of controlling what UD runs on my machines." Did you RTFD? Or did you have some other security hole in mind?
You do realize that the cancer-related client and UD's generic client are different programs, don't you? Why did basic fact checking (e.g. reading the linked articles, contacting the parties involved for comment) not inform you of this? Is it because you don't _do_ basic fact checking? You may think that standard journalistic practices aren't important to slashdot readers. Think again.
You're risking becoming one of two slashdot editors who, having so little respect for fact-checking and avoiding double posts, get their articles filtered from my profile-generated slashdot main page. (The other one is Timothy, in case you're wondering. =)
In case there's any doubt, your article was fit for The Pit.*
* Yes, I've watched a few too many episodes of (infamous teen-oriented Canadian consumer affairs show) Street Cents.
It seems people, especially those involved in open source software, have a tendancy to be distrustful of corporations in general: take Michael for example (albeit an extreme one). Opening at least selected parts of the code could alleviate a lot of concern, and potentially get you more support (and therein, more cycles).
Perhaps you could read the FAQ and see that what you say is totally not the case.
--
Free Mac Mini
I took the main accusation to be that the company was misrepresenting their status, the problems being worked on by the distributed clients, and the eventual goals of the cancer research. Being for-profit is not, in itself, bad; being for-profit while waving a non-profit banner, though, is.
Stress testing for Exodus? Stress testing for everyone!
-- Bird in the Bush: The Renewable Energy Blog http://www.birdinthebush.org
No you're not. I'm pretty sure this was a view held by the Nazi party too!
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Michael did not say it would take 20 years to calculate the cure, he said it will take 20 years for the patent taken out on the "philanthopically" calculated cure to expire.
dumbass...
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fair enough. Intel's web site does say no other projects will be run, but that of course depends on you trusting Intel...
you can probably trust Berkley and SETI to keep it clean
Why can you trust Berkeley and SETI, but not trust Oxford University and NFCR?
Disclaimer: I am a student at the University of Oxford.
I've worked for large pharmaceutical companies doing research. I'm now sysadmin for a research group in a large cancer charity in the UK, but have also done research in the university sector.
Yes, Oxford and the NFCR will own the results. Yes, they will probably profit from them. But I'm not too worried about that because of a couple of points:
Having said that, I'm not going to take part in this project because I have no way of controlling what UD runs on my machines. Folding@Home sounds far better to me.
--
foop
Oh, and university research has never found its way into corporate cash machines...
Mosaic comes to mind. Akamai too. Not that there is anything wrong with it. They weren't using other people's processing power for free while selling them alturistic fables.
But all this is mute.
Who would exactly produce these miracle drugs once they were found? Someone would have to pay for testing and manufacturing. This sounds suspiciously like a pharmaceutical company to me. Also, let's not forget the royalties Oxford would demand. All this from other people's computers...
"What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.
Those beads would be small potatoes compared to the untold billions a pharmaceutical company would generate from selling the publicly number crunched drug at outrageous prices. I'm sure the company would not fail to patent the drug completely disregarding the fact that people volunteered their computing power to the task of finding it. Not only would the company reap huge profits from such a drug, they would potentially outprice and kill untold thousands of cancer patients...
As noble as the idea of finding a cure for cancer is, I don't think pharmaceutical companies need public computer cycle subsidies. Especially when one considers that the return on the investment is in question.
btw many ppl dont know that pandegroup at stanford is running 2 projects, folding@home and genome@home. imo second one is much more interessting than the first one.....
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
distributed.net has 95% of their clients as open source.
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
pandegroup is actually running 2 projects, folding@home & genome@home
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
At least let it work on something worthwhile, like the SETI@Home project.
Still Intel will be embrassed by the fact that AMDzone is currently in third place in the UD teams rating while the intel group is fourth.
Actually their business model is NOT about selling consumer CPU cycles en masse. IIRC, they test the commercial apps performance, parallelization, etc. for their corporate clients. The for-profit bit comes from parallelizing problems for the clients which are then run on the corporation's workstations, not on public machines. Just like you might be paranoid about strangers running code on your machine, those companies are paranoid about strangers crunching on their data.
Where is the linux client? Cmon guys, if you want to prove your intentions, please put up a linux based client. I can understand making it binary only to keep dickheads from claiming to have foudn the cure and screwing up the project as they have with distributed.net. But PLEASE, provide the client for everyone. Then ill join the race. For now i'm on processtree.com.
What? me have a sig? don't be ridiculous.
I still say, search for the aliens! They will cure all our diseases! All your CPU cycles are belong to SETI.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
The posibility of finding life in the next 6 months is theoretically greater than finding that damn key. But the aliens jsut know how to hide well!
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
more information here the information you want is near the end of the video . recently this information was also discoverd in spain but for some odd reason the press supressed it . it is disgusting and unjust but it does not suprise me. also, fuck slashdot
Capitalism is good.
I do not see anything wrong with selling the research results to some drug company.
However, I feel it's dubious to claim it will _not_ be sold while it will be.
If they'd like to get my CPU cycles for some free R&D horsepower, at the very least they ought to commit to selling the results to several drug companies instead of giving exclusive rights to just one.
That would drive the costs of end product down quickly.
Sure, SETI is really kind of a lost cause, it will behighly unlikely for it to find any ET. But you can probably trust Berkley and SETI to keep it clean. As for the extra 25 a month - look at the EnergyStar website for ways to make your home more energy efficient, and you'll save more than enough to make up for it. Hell, turning your monitor off when not in use should save you more than that.
The difference is that SETI@Home results go straight to SETI. The results for Oxford are sent, along with other results for programs the user has no idea what they are doing (could be designing nuclear weapons for all we know hehe) go to UD, who splits them up and then sends them to Oxford. If Oxford made the complete distributed cancer research project, including distribution and collection (like SETI) then trust wouldn't be a problem for most people.
Yeah.
Cure your cancer with MS DeCancer 2004.
You'll just need the costly upgrades and to reboot yourself once in a while.
"cure this"
13-4=54/6
I tried to try it out. During the registration process the program just sort of dies. Oh well, guess I'm not able to help even if I want too.
No, its very true. Read the EULA for NetZero.
Yes, they do. I cleared it with the company president first, and there's about a dozen of us here doing it.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
I would say that 80% of the time I've logged on UD has been cancer research related, at least if 10 hours at my machine a day at random times can be considered statistically useful. Oh, and, by the way, IMO I did not, in fact jump to conclusions. Opinions vary.
Additionally, if you've read some of the other posts, you'll realize that the research does not, in fact, go directly to a corp, it goes to a cancer research institute, who may or may not choose to patent it and/or sell it to a corporation. Whether they do or not, I'llsleep better knowing that I've done what I can, no matter how meager that may be, to fight cancer. How bout you?
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Dealt with my own mortality a long time ago, thanks. And, actually, I'm not that bitter anymore. :)
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Perhaps this particular project is somewhat worthwhile. The critique of the business model, though, seems valid to me. Maybe the "tasks" actually carried out could go either way, but alerting people that this is potentially just a leach company is good. Note that in their description of what programs might run on your computer in "how it works", "run through an algorithm" is mentioned, which covers anything. Sounds shady to me. I think this was a valuable article and certainly shouldn't be retracted.
But then....I'm so happy I have my own staker.
E-mail me! get creative, death threats are fun, virii are good, make me your hobby, oh the fun we will have....... even better, Post signed in! or just let me troll.....
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Why was Nugget's reply considered a Troll???? Slashdot never fails to amaze me. :(
I'm not a molecular biologist (or biophysicist), so I have a question for someone who is and keeps up with these computational methods. How have the techniques of the group at Stanford (folding@home) been received? Have they published anything useful yet? Is their method as robust as the ones traditionally used? In short, is folding@home worth my cycles?
If anyone can answer these questions about other biology-related clients as well, please do.
Just because I use a computer doesn't mean I'm rich, it doesn't place me firmly in the hipocrisy camp. I can't help it that the goddists are all happy to rape anything to obtain whatever sham of happiness they idealize at any moment. I'm just happy to be a minimal contributor to the problem in the big scheme of things.
If you're independently wealthy, at least not being in denial is a good step.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
And btw...life is the only self-sustaining technology I know about...everything else is flawed.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Period.
Sure they can keep you alive, but what kind of life is it? It's a joke. How many $$$ per stint is acceptable? How valuable is your life to the world--so much so that people refuse to accept that they are going to die and selfishly take themselves and their families through the butchery and half-assed farce of staving off the inevitable. It's sad that people view death in such a poor light...there are worse things than death.
Face it, in our world anyone who is willing to take your money will tell you excactly what you want to hear. In this case, someone has their hand out for a distributed computing project that in the end has the potential to do _something_. It may be a step towards something, but the only sure thing it's going to do is serve as a "proof of concept" for a business model. Nobody is going to cure "cancer"...not in our world, and not in our lifetimes without the goddists going nuts. When people understand and accept that nothing short of changing how we exist is going to make a difference (it's going to take hundreds, maybe thousands of generations) then and only then are we going to make progress.
Of course, we could always alter the germline...but then all the goddists would loose their minds and start slitting throats.
It's kinda fun to watch, but it's really quite sad after a while.
Almost like trying to crowbar sense into tiny minds.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
This sounds like market-speak, or the kind of divisiveness which leads to "us vs. them" situations. I would like to think that letting the terminally ill die without waiting for them to simply "run out of steam" reduces pain and suffering. But for many goddists this is just wrong. Where's the compassion? Well, it's cleverly hidden behind morbid curiosity and the societal acceptance that predestination is something real. I would rather be shot than have to starve to death in order to die. Go hang out at a hospice. Make sure to bring some jerky. Nothing like a meaty-oily film on the roof of your mouth while you're looking at the dying. Yum.
I guess either no-one you love has died of cancer, or you're in the middle of the bereavement process right now. If the latter, my heart goes out to you, but your view of reality will probably change over the next twelve months - I certainly hope it does. If the former, well, I hope you never have to experience it.
I know and have known several people with various forms of cancer. Some of them are/were friends. Some of them suffered tremendous denial, made heroic attempts to believe that what was being done for them/ to them, was helping in some way.
I am not grieving, and I have been to many funerals. I expect to see many more before I'm reduced to a waning shadow of my current self by some meat-defect.
My brother died of a brain tumour at the age of 28. Do you want to stand in front of his wife and repeat your words above to her face ?
Hmmm...you first. After all, she's _your_ sister-in-law. Besides, she would have had to deal with the loss later on when he developed age-related illnessess like stroke, urinary tract problems, and possibly worse. If women weren't strong, the species wouldn't have flourished.
Three other members of my extended family have (or are suspected of having) cancer right now - 1 x breast cancer, 2 x prostate cancer. None of them are people I would term "weak" - by any stretch of the imagination.
Not to play up the role of "heartless bastard", but I'd say that as a species, fitness can be defined like the solution set for a calculus problem...fitness for procreation was a baseline that our ancestors met and that many still meet today, but fitness within a toxic environment, well, that's a horse of a different color.
Looking on the bright side, as long as they don't die before they have another generation, I'd say they're not in too much danger of dying out. Have lotsa fun while you can. And remember, just because a program doesn't have any _noticable_ flaws, doesn't mean it's not going to have problems later on.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Party on...but we can't resequence people or their parts (yet). Whatever caused the mutational defect, producing the cancerous tissue, just didn't simply go away. It's still there. Short of complete removal of differentiated tissue which is prone to said genetic mutation, the condition is probably recurring. I guess a butchered existence is still an existence. Let's hear it for the spirit of life! [appy-poly-ologies, it's a geocities link, please ignore the eye-ball sale marque and proceed down the page to the moving lyrics of the song "Spirit". It's worth it, getting the CD is worth it too--a very cathartic work that Passage of Time, is.]
How many humans are on the planet...billions. We're a pretty tough lot...even through abulia and ennui, not to mention a few outrageous laws and all the toxic crap we deluge the world with all the time, I'd say that we're probably breeding towards cancer-resistance in humans, based on the numbers that procreate successfully before their lives are destroyed by the toxic side-effects of their environment. Humanity will survive, and hell, we may even get a few nifty quilts/parades/marches/laws out of the whole affair.
BTW...I didn't make up the word "goddist", I came across it, and for me it made sense--isn't a living language cool!. It's a macro-term which basically describes a huge swath of semi-hairless/hairy homids who actually believe in mythology and the supernatural--with an unshakeable conviction that there has to be _something_ out there that's omniscient and omnipotent. Wouldn't it be a riot if there actually was, and it thought we'd make a good snack?!. That's pretty much how life works, but then this all subjective. YMMV.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Western culture, specifically the kind found in the United States, combined with the Big Polluters, like GE, and a army of thousands of corporate entities along with a burgeoning planetary population are the real reason.
Throw all the CPU against that problem that you want but it's going to take something serious decisions on a global scale, sans big-money/politics.
Personally, I'm waiting for someone to invent those wonderful nanites that Bill Joy was flapping about. I want to see the population of monsters with SUV's and cell phones tore down. Sometimes I can't help but feel that as a species are too stupid, too trained to accumulate CRAP to ever really understand how much we're going to have to sacrifice our luxury in order to recover from the mistakes of the idiots who saw us to this untenable position. Humanity has so much more potential, but we'll happily squander it to see our sitcoms, eat our plastic food, drink our caffiene and play our video games...and consume the pablum-sacrament of corporatized news.
I can't be the only bastard who sees cancer for what it is...it's a wolf, it kills the weak. If I get it, I'm not flawed, it's just time to make room for the next mewling consumer. It serves a purpose, and if you think you're supposed to live forever, wake the fu*k up while you still have time and get a clue.
We don't need a risk-free world. We are the monsters, we are the artists and lovers. We need pain and suffering as much as we need air, as much as we need each other. Without life, we're just cattle, slaughtered by the mintue for our eyeballs, spammed into oblivion by fools, and placated and kicked in the head by a system which happily creates a utopia for itself.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Well, I'm persuaded, at least. If it's non-profit, then I'll run it (no need for the offer in my post earlier).
/. owes you guys - and its readers - an apology.
I think
What would Lemmy do?
You should be concerned with adults who have cancer; they're far more valuable than the children.
1. If you bothered to read a little more before posting, you would have seen that the initial research is into leukemia, the #1 killer disease of children.
2. Valuable according to what criteria ?
3. I am concerned with adults who have cancer - again, if you had bothered to read instead of skim, I had already stated that two of my adult relatives and two other relatives (age unspecified, but actually adults as well) had been hit by cancer.
Hmmm... you've just given me a .sig idea... thanks.
----This is /. not Quake ... use your brain not your spinal cord
What would Lemmy do?
(comment about s/Uncle Fluffy/nugget/ noted)
/. has server logs a-plenty.
/. - and what would that do to the share price ?
Although the licensing agreement does not bind them to "play nice," anyone who signs up after reading the statement by nugget could shout "false advertising" very loudly and justifiably. I get and accept your point about verification of identity - always difficult online, though I expect
Even if not useful in a legal sense, the damage to both the company's and individual's reputation if UD go against what has been stated above would be immense. It would be more NYT material than
What would Lemmy do?
Poster: UD claims to be doing philanthropic work, but actually, their licensing and legalese appears to give them many options to distort or abrogate the implied responsibilities.
UD employee: No, no, UD can certainly be trusted. After all, we say we can be trusted.
Poster: Oh, then everything's hunk-dory then
Well, personally I interpreted this as:
Poster: UD claims to be doing philanthropic work, but actually, their licensing and legalese appears to give them many options to distort or abrogate the implied responsibilities.
UD employee: No, no, UD can certainly be trusted. After all, we say we can be trusted.
Poster: Ok, so you've told me that the allegations are unfounded, you've done so in writing (well, almost), this statement will be permanently archived, and you've done so in front of a whole Slashdot-full of witnesses, so I will trust you, but will hold you to your word. If you break your word, your statement will be used to rip you a new asshole.
What would Lemmy do?
That is very cool. Thanks for the link.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Point of fact, there is no cure for AIDS.
There are some treatments for AIDS that are remarkably effective in some patients. Those treatements are still very expensive even w/o considering the patent markup. (Difficult to produce and all).
Posting false information about AIDS will lead people to take uninformed and stupid risks, so be careful what you post.
(Just look at the recent rise in hiv infection among San Fransisco's gay male population). It is a DIRECT result of increased risk-taking on the part of young gay men who are convinced a cure is immiment.
...
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
The 1.34 screensaver still crashes every once in a while. Annoying.
-----
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Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness. -- Bertrand Russell
"The Burzynski Breakthrough" Is a book that I suggest anyone interested in cancer reads. It is about D. Burzynski (yes, he is polish) who has basically (IMHO) found a cure for cancer. The only problem is that he is trying to go through the burocracy of the US. His "cure" are protein naturally produced in human being which prevent cancer. Sometimes people stop producing these proteins for unknown reasons, and they get cancer. Dr. Burzynski first isolated these proteins in human urine, which makes perfect sense, if you understand how kidneys work. They can now be synthesized for those of us who are squeamish. :P
The ONLY problem is that Burzynski's proteins are NOT artifically produced in such a way they can be PATENTED as a drug and used to make money. Using herbal or plant based treatements has the same problem. Anytime something COULD be used to cure something, but CANNOT be used to make money, the "scientific community" refuses to accept any data.
A Quote:
"What made Dr Burzynski a threat to the cancer industry from the beginning was the prospect that antineoplaston therapy represented a successful alternative to toxic and dangerous chemotherapy drugs, upon which most of the cancer industry's profits depend. Did the NCI pick up the tab for completing his research? Did the ACS help with favourable publicity? Of course not. The minute NCI saw evidence of antineoplastons working they distorted the data by withdrawing the 2 successful patients and thus the evidence. NCI's conduct towards him is a striking example of how an agency presumed to be objective can set up a study that will either prove or disprove anything it wants. In this case, there is clear evidence that NCI wanted to prove antineoplastons didn't work."--John Diamond, M.D. & Lee Cowden, M.D.
I have to agree that chemotherapy is quite expensive (not to mention dangerous) and that by having a cheap cure for cancer one would strike a blow to cost the medical profession billions of dollars every year.
Anyway, just my two bits!
Don't flip out at michael, i think he's just trying to show that everything just isn't as peachy as it seems in the news articles. From the Reuters article it explains, "Researchers estimate one million people will participate in the program at least once, making it possible to complete the screening of the 250 million molecules in a year." (250 million to scan through) This makes it sound like it's going to be a year before we cure cancer. And besides how many times has science been wrong before? I'm not trying to get anyones hopes down just don't look at this as "the cure for cancer that will be out in one year" solution.
Bush would have 3x his lead had the recounts continued - read about it in today's CNN article.
A close friend has gone into complete remission of a cancer of which there is only a single (disputed) remission in the medical literature? How? By being treated with a device set up by a retired electrical engineer based on a Tesla design. It's not the first cancer cured by the device either, by a long shot. So how do we support real research into real cures that won't enrich the drug companies at all - in fact will impoverish them? This is a serious question; people are dying.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Grow up, editors.
Bingo Foo
---
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Erm...good point. Now that you mention it, I had forgotten about the UD deal.
Correction: All your CPU cycles are belong to obscure corporations...
Seriously...logic dictates that you must use availible ressources as efficiently as possible to attain the most probable goal. What are the probabilities of finding alien life within the next 6 months? Ok...now after you've spent time figuring that out: What are the possibilities of breaking an RC5 key within the next 6 months?...
Insert shameless advertising: http://www.distributed.net/
I think it is more interresting to see that there is a rather fascination new area of competition forming: "Leeching user ressources". Why waste thousands of dollars developing one's own supercomputing systems when one can use the fact that everybody is willing to "show off their CPU strength" to their advantage? Companies are venturing slowly into this field because of the fear that people might realize something is getting flaky...that maybe they're being scratched a little too well on the back...
Your shameless advertisee has been working with this EVIL (and as you put it) obscure corporation.
2 7. html
<sarcasm> Sorry to burst your bubble, but i dont think that you will be breaking RC5 keys anymore. </sarcasm>
http://www.distributed.net/pressroom/nws-200011
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
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
Actually, I have read that it is better for the bearings in your hard drive to be running constantly than to frequently start and stop them. Besides, if you turn of your computer, then you have to wait for it to boot up every time you want to use it. I use to do that, and never want to again.
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
at first i thought, ok, help them out, but then it felt kinda like a scam. sending them my email address so they could get more memory? that's quite odd. most other folks are just asking the hw companies to donate (xcdroast for a good example). additionally, at the cost of memory these day (40$ for 128MB), i find it all kinda odd. who knows, maybe i'm just being a little paranoid.
Although this is absolutely misrepresentation, it is unclear whether it deserves the beating.
Searching for ET is one thing. The job is massively parallalisable as one work unit does not really depend on another. It is also low bandwidth, because you have a large amount of analysis to do on a small amount of data. And finally the data is pretty much all the same. You can easily define one set of algorithms to all the data.
Now none of this is true with a biological problem. Parallalisable? Maybe. Low bandwidth? Definately not. Generally speaking computational biologists spend there time doing a relatively small amount of analysis (is this sequence the same or similar to this one?) over relatively large data sets. And easily defined algorithms? Well again no. One of the key issues with biology is the massive amount of heterogeneity involved in the data set. I would think that you would spend large amounts of time downloading the next set of algorithms.
It may be that this is the way forward, but I am not convinced at the moment. Yes there is a enourmous amount of untapped computing resources around the world, but the effort in tapping it is probably greater than the rewards you get from it, except for a very few problems. Seti was one of them. Curing cancer? Probably not.
Phil
United Devices or Juno?
I am currently not obliged to divulge that information as it might compromise the agents in the field
uh what does open source have anything to do with some company's business model? You mean to say that Opera or Netscape has a conspiracy up its sleeves because their software aren't open source? COME ON.
"You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding."
I suppose that was a little bit too preachy, but I was really annoyed that a high traffic site like this would post an artical that gives such a terribly wrong impression of such a worthwhile project and the companies who gave their name and resources to help promote it. Who knows, maybe a little guilt trip will make the editors realise that they do wield a lot of power on this site and try not to keep making the same stupid mistakes.
Decado
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
RH: (Attempts to) make a profit off of the philanthropic efforts of thousands of developers.
UD: Attempts to make a profit off of the philanthropic efforts of thousands of screensaver-runners.
all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation
That sounds like many of the Linux developers in the world. Some people want to give away their code, and it doesn't bother them that others might get rich off of it. Perhaps some people might want to give away their CPU cycles, and it doesn't bother them that others might get rich off of it?
I guess the main difference is that this company is not being entirely upfront about their intentions, and are using deliberately misleading marketing to trick people into using the software. This seems to be a general thing with American (US) companies though. Myself I can't stand it.
You could always uninstall their software if you don't want others to make money off your CPU cycles (or if you're afraid that it's going to damage your computer). If your computer isn't busy working on curing cancer anymore, uninstall the software.
Quite frankly I think you're being a little ridiculous - almost every piece of software I've ever installed has disclaimed that the producers are not responsible for damage it might cause to me or my PC. Why should this piece of software suddenly come under fire? Is there something about it that makes it more likely than others to damage stuff? Really. A linux distro is probably equally likely to cause damage to a system (if not more so given the nature of the system, its an OS), and you won't be able to hold anyone responsible either. Be fair; if you're going to complain about UD's software, complain about Linux too. Or almost any software for that matter which could "destroy your computer". Myself, I can't see that UD would want to destroy any computers. That just doesn't sound like a sustainable business model (i.e. it would be fucking stupid).
... as long as there's a cure.
Do you really think that the buggest discovery of the century would be kept private and sold only to rich people?
This is ridiculous!
Think only to the mess that Napster is causing, and we are talking about the right to save some bucks instead of buying cd.(no flames, please)
If a cure for the cancer is found, and someone wants to keep it close, half of the people in this world will insurrect and make this change.
Anyone know of some open source distributed processing software?
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
One cannot be BOTH a liar and a good man.
Don't know if you read the thing about Passport and thier TOS, but someone stated that a FAQ isn't binding where as if they say something in the License agreement or TOS, they have the right to do it even if it contridicts the FAQ
I say, good work michael!
Michael, where did you get the information that Oxford University will charge an extortionate price, and that the drug will be hideously expensive?
If your main gripe is the non-GPL license of the software, there are betters way to bring up that issue. Attacking a university for something that they haven't done yet, and for which you have no proof that they will do is very unprofessional. Don't even get me started about the "kiddieporn"-angle, that part was even worse...
Just more proof that Intel REALLY wants you to believe that GHZ is everything. My 900 MHZ Athlon is "only" 60% as fast as the 1.5 GHZ pentium 4 they benchmarked. Actually, what it does is just a simple calculation... 900/1500 Hmmm...
But, it's all about mega/gigahertz, right?
-=Lothsahn=-
Michael, did you start out as a flaming asshole, or was it something that happened after you started working for slashdot?
Seriously, these companies need to find something beneficial (and not simply profitable) to do with people's time, money, and CPU cycles.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Well, maybe we can make this article useful then. Now that you have set the record straight, can you comments on why the source is closed? As you can see, opening the source would have alleviated many fears.
The license on the UD software is nothing noteworthy, and is the normal fare for any organization trying to conduct business with the benefit of legal input.
If you have faith in your client being good and nice, you don't need the legalese. Maybe you caved in to your lawyers too quickly, but it is never too late tp rethink that. If you want us to accept your client based on trust and faith, you have to show some trust and faith yourself in your client.
Me too. I have 42 of them.
I'd rather contribute to something that's concentrating on the skies and can't generate revenue than something that is being twisted into something that it's not, in this case the whole side use the company has for their daemon. All of the things people consider problems with SETI@home aside, its still a free project, and they don't make it very hard to participate at all. I'm lazy, and I like that.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Wasn't the whole rationale of the distributed.net project to develop a distributed computing client? I don't think it's hypocritical to attack this falsely-philanthropic company, since they don't have anything to do with the RC5-DES project. I mean, the crypto breaking thing is nice, but their mission statement says nothing about crypto or non-profitness. Distributed.net has a distributed computing client for twenty or thirty different operating systems.
Cheerleading?
The story is in everyday language
The companys website is in marketing language
(marketing language is a subgroup of legal language not to be confused with everyday language)
blablabla...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...blablabla
"I'd give CPU cycles to a bunch of researchers who will publicly publish their results and make them available royalty-free to the world, but not to people like these."
Me too.
Yeah, It's getting weird
starting to feel the stress?
please stop
Though in a community setting like Slashdot, this really falls in a gray area. Would a prepared speech be more slanderous than this off-the-cuff written article? The US court system really needs to rethink the different ways it approaches slander and libel cases (slander is way easier to sue for because of protection of the press) now that we have instant publication. Before newspapers had a bit of a buffer from factual innacuracy (thus considered more reliable than citizen speech), but with the Internet, a relatively unresearched article like this can be produced and distributed instantly. Clearly, the company in question would fail in a libel suit because the knowledge posted wasn't knowingly faulty - though it does fall to the second libel standard of hurting the target. I'd tend to think of this as just as much a spoken work as a written one. By your definition, is a mute capable of slander? The standard you go by was forged more than 100 years ago and will definitely be revisited in the future.
s/UncleFluffy/Nugget...
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Next time, try thinking before you spew, moron.
You might try taking some of your own advice, IMO you jumped to conclusions here.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
It's kind of a parallel with the whole anti-corporations bias on slashdot. Berkeley is a very liberal state college, while Oxford is a very conservative, Ivy League private school.
Well, if we discover alien life then there's no need to research cures for cancer - the aliens will already have that technology and give it us for free ;-)
This is my World Wide Web of Whatever
I am not anti AMD. I supported AMD as soon as they did better than Intel while maintaining lower prices.
Just found it not appropriate and/or journalistically serious to criticize INTC on an AMD sponsored page.
But I do wish you much fun with your 400 millihertz AMD. You should trade with a UNIVAC, they're great.
(Hey, it's what we do here in .us and it seems to be working... :) )
--Jo Hunter
--Jo Hunter
Smile! It makes them wonder what you're up to.
Agreed
uh, what the hell do they use for transmission of data through air and space? A big wire and fiber optic cable? How do you think that television feed from across the world gets to you? Or DirecTv comes from? Or how ships/planes/virtually everything military keeps in contact?
-
sure. for point to point. ever heard of a laser broadcast? Neither have I. Hm, dont think that would work.
-
DataSynapse are paying Flooz in blocks of five bucks for the use of your spare cycles. it only operates in idle time. I have it running on my work machines and home machines and so far I've been able to go on a mini CD spree on it. Currently Windows Only, I think.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
They didn't say how. No people means no cancer, right?
-Jason-
...to what we call a Free Market Economy.
With the freedom we are given in our Democratic Republic to run business models such as this, we also have the freedom so that people such as yourself can point out the big bad evils of corporations trying to make money.
Get out of your utopian dreamworld, the invisible hand is what's spurning on our advances in technology and medicine.
We've been using the radio for 100 years, and it's starting to be replaced. What makes you think that they're piping on the radio? I mean it is such a shortlived thing.
Let's get real, ET is probably out there, but we aren't going to find him anytime soon. Put your cycles to good use and crack RSA.
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
No need to mod, move along.. If you didn't know, laser communication is possible.
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
But of course you cannot buy a super computer with any where near the power of the distrubuted net. Bysides, the project is exactly what drug companies do try to do. The molecule dooking software fo rthe this part of the ud.com project is writen by someone who develops software for drug companies. However, it takes them years to come up with a few target molecules because they cannot throw enough CPU power at the screening..... so again this is a good idea.
If a cure is found via this method they should reward those crunching their data with free treatment should they ever develop cancer. I'd be willing to donate a few CPU cycles for that.
I'll bet that as altruistic as curing cancer sounds, many of those signing up will be doing so for the same reason they use Iwon.com as a search engine/home page. :-)
>>An expensive cure is better than no cure.
>A cure that's so expensive that only the top 1% can afford to pay for it might as well be no cure. But it sure makes for big profits for the drug companies.
I do not mean to troll!
But the first statement is true and is the way it happens ( at least in the USA )
We develope drugs and market them at very high prices in the USA. The same drugs can be bought in Canada at reduced rates. I believe that the same happens with alot of other products. In Japan it was cheaper (1988) to import a washing machine (same type and manufacture locally) than to buy it locally.
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Can somebody confirm who owns the results of this?
It would be absolutely unacceptable that Oxford University became the sole IP owner given the fact that they would be benefitting from CPU power from computers form all around the world.
Do they know about Public Domain????
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I wish the team at Oxford University would have more information about how it is going to be copyrighted, patented or licensed any posible medicamente, cure, medicine, vaccination or whatever they find based on this effort.
One would say for the lack of information in their website that this is completely unimportant for the team and for the University, or not as important as it would appear to be to the lay person.
I wish they would say where we can all see how the IP is going to be released and shared all in writing and signed....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't agree.
If the resources of this effort are contributed by people from all around the world then no corporation should be able to be the only profiter from the results.
I want to see where it is clearly stated that once the results are out, then company X in the Republic of Poorland can use this information to create drugs to fight cancer without paying royalties to anybody.
If bright people want to use other people's resources there should be a tangible banefit to all the participants.
As far as I can see that little very important detail of who owns the results and how they could be used without asking permission to anybody is nowhere to be found.
More clarity and everything would be OK.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Go to foldingathome.stanford.edu /. a while ago I think.
They are in the process of folding the different protiens to see how they interact. The raw data and results will eventually be published on their site.
Though not exactly open source, there is talk of allowing developers to work on it.
Windows and Linux currently, more ports planned for the future, and they could use your help.
This was stuck up here on
If the mainstream media gets ahold of this story, I'll bet this would really take off. I could just imagine the CNN interview with the company CEO saying, "We're just trying to help people, blah blah..." That would in turn cause everybody who has a computer sitting at home (and who doesn't realize this is a for profit company), like my Mom, Grandma, etc. to go and download this thing. I'll bet that's what the company is counting on.
Civ 2. I ALWAYS build the Great Library, it lets me focus on building an army while not falling behind in research. You can then mop up nearby cities.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
FYI: A Few dubious links to the "the National Foundation for Cancer Research" - they don't generally get high marks by independent organizations designed to oversee "charitable" orginazations. In most cases the National Foundation for Cancer Research refused to answer watchdog requests for information.
t ml
Check it out for yourselves:
http://www.give.org/cancer.cfm
http://www.charitywatch.org/list.html#n
Here an interesting link and a quote from that link, "Among recent flops, according to the spring edition of the NCIB Wise Giving Guide, are the American Institute for Cancer Research, the National Foundation for Cancer Research and the U.S. Committee for UNICEF."
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag97/oct-cover97.h
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
I suspect they took a look at similar projects, like SETI@home. That project has had people trying to hack their clients without the benefit of source code; why make it easy for them? Is it truely necessary?
Supposedly some of the hacks weren't intended to make false posatives, but to change the method in which they are processed to increase the rate at which they can process packets. So we have people trying to claim finding aliens, people trying to raise their stats and people genuinly trying to help(but missing the point of doing a standardized calculation).
I bet there are people who would want to do the same hacks for the same reasons (as unreasonable as it may be) with this project.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
If it makes big $ for companies, then it means someone is getting the cure, right? There is a thing called 'insurance' that will pay at least part of the fees. It is all part of living in our (deteriorating?) market system.
.05% of the cpu time on the cancer problem and ~99% of it doing website stress tests, then I would not be happy.
To me, the question is whether they are or aren't spending the cpu cycles on a cancer cure. I would rather there be a cure that isn't free (is there such thing as a free cure?) than none at all. OTOH if they are spending
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I'd give CPU cycles to a bunch of researchers who will publicly publish their results and make them available royalty-free to the world, but not to people like these.
--
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Gee, I'd be all for UD if they were looking for a cure for cancer, but they are not. They are looking for a treatment for cancer. In fact, no one looks for a cure. There's no money in a cure. The only money is in the treatment.
How do I know they are looking for a treatment and not a cure. Think hard, in the last 30 - 40 years, what has science cured? Polio, that's about it. Everything else is just a treatment.
Just my two cents.
--
He had come like a thief in the night,
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
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."
An expensive cure is better than no cure.
A cure that's so expensive that only the top 1% can afford to pay for it might as well be no cure. But it sure makes for big profits for the drug companies.
Besides, there are corporations (yes I said corporations) in other countries that are breaking patents that other corporations have on cures for the aids virus so that they can produce a cheaper cure.
Your point being? Last I heard, patent laws only apply in the country of their jurisdiction. So a company in Zimbabwe is producing an AIDS drug that's patented in the US so they can provide relief that the many many people in Zimbabwe with AIDS can afford. That US patent doesn't exist in Zimbabwe, so they can hardly be "breaking" it.
What we have here in this distributed computing system is hardly "philanthropy". It's a for-profit scam, and has less ethical integrity than those "donate your car" or "save the children charities" where the charity managers all have seven figure salaries. At least most of those "charities" can offer you a tax write off. How do you write off CPU cycles?
If we really want to do this thing correctly, an open client could be created that would only work on cancer cures or other actual philanthropic causes. Then guaranteed CPU time could be donated freely to colleges and universities for their medical research, but only if those researchers agree to place all their findings and inventions into the public domain for everyone's benefit. This way, instead of just the paltry amount that squeezes in with all the "for profit computing projects" being sold by United Devices, more CPU cycles would go towards actual philanthropic causes, and the results truly benefit everyone.
If such a system were created, I'd probably install and run it. Until then, though, I'll just leave my box off and do more good by saving electricity so hospitals might not have to worry so much about blackouts this summer.
hehee :D "wasted computer cycles".. bwaahaha! Why, they're not wasted anymore because everybody now uses Rain, Waterfall, CPUidle or powersaving features on their computers.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
No offense or anything but that sounded like a corperate denial.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
They may be making themselves filthy rich and taking advantage of the masses but they are doing for a good cause. Hey does anyone know of a corporation that is willing to pay me for the use of my clock cycles? Like these guys but actually paying me for my clock cycles. I am all for saving the world and all but I can't go broke doing it.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
Good rant yourself. Long, lots of big words, you even did research by picking up a dictionary. But you are willing to "cozy up" to a corporation if it helps. How do you know that the application is doing what it claims? I have done lots of programming in both networking and front end work. In a corp I worked for we devised a Seti@home like app that was required to be installed on most peoples computers in the office. The only thing was that what the user thought our app did was nothing like what it actually did. Given that I am still under a NDA(nondisclosure agreement) I can't say anything more about that but still I don't trust the people. Given they way phrase the license I am not convinced that they have to tell you what they are working on or respect you wishes on what you want you clock cycles to go to.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
I believe that we should process the data right now, together. If UD is finding a treatment or cure it is still will be better than what we have right now. So what if pharm company will get the patent. So what if we have to wait 20 years for it. If no one contributes it just might turn out to be 21, 22, or 23 years. This is because someone will discover and is definently going to sell the patent to the drug companies if it isn't the drug companies that get the cure first.
---------------
Hurlin Feces
What a wonderful idea! Nothing like selling other folk's bandwidth and CPU cycles to the highest bidder... I just thought this sort of computer hardware prostitution would have been made illegal...
He who has no
It seems to me that those people criticizing the project are doing so because a company is making money for doing it. Has anyone thought that someone has to do it sometime, and that it is more than likely going to be the pharmaceutical company anyway? So it either gets done now, and gets out faster, or later, and gets out anyway by the same set of companies? It seems that everyone is taking the easy road, oh don't support the project because someone is doing it for profit. Fine. Show me someone who is doing it for free (and not that protein bending site, 'cause that is totally unrelated) and I'll go there instead.
Although I'm not 100% thrilled with their client, I think it's the same thing ("compute against cancer"). Parabon is one of those "pay for spare cycles" wanna-bes that currently award prizes, but don't pay cash.
Phandel, as to the CNN article, not so fast -- for one thing, the article had this to say: "The Herald's review also discovered that canvassing boards in Palm Beach and Broward counties threw out hundreds of ballots that had marks that were no different from ballots deemed to be valid. The paper concluded that Gore would be in the White House today if those ballots had been counted." More importantly though, this newspaper, the Miami Herald, broke off amid much criticism from the main consortium that's been doing a recount. That consortium includes the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc; this is the one most people are waiting for. Why did the Miami Herald go off and do their own? They cut corners to finish the recount faster, quite simply, cause they wanted to scoop the other newspapers, results be damned (this is basically according to their own comments). So, wait until that other recount is completed first, it will be much more credible. -- And, hey, by asserting Bush would've won anyway, isn't that kind of admitting he acted like a weasel through the whole recount thing? It's hard to imagine McCain trying to confuse and politicize the simple issue of getting the vote counting straight. Wouldn't you think Bush's professed mantra would be something like "take it like a man"?
Hey ncc74656, entirely off topic, but as to your tag line (Bush won, Gore lost, get over it) -- if Bush asked his friends on the Supreme Court to stop the count, how can we know who really won? That's the whole point, of course. And, as for the getting over it part -- you know, Clinton's out of office now, it's been 8 years since he was legitimately elected, and Republicans are *still* trying to impeach him, again... as if the first time weren't enough for them. Seriously, when those guys get over it, *then* maybe we can talk about the pro-Gore people getting over it. What do you think? -- srmclellan@yahoo.com if you want to reply off topic...
You might want to check some of your information Michael.... According to TechEncyclopedia, peer-to-peer computing is: Sharing the CPU resources across a network so that all machines function as one large supercomputer. It allows unused CPU capacity in any of the machines to be allocated to the total processing job required. In a large enterprise, hundreds of desktop machines are often sitting idle at any given time. The goal is to use this processing potential more efficiently.r m=PEER%2DTO%2DPEERCOMPUTING&exact=1
It looks like that is the way that Intel is using it.
I have to say that it seems that you are awfully cynical about a good program. I read on their site:
The results from the computing in this program {THINK} will be compiled by United Devices* and subsequently delivered to the University of Oxford* and the National Foundation for Cancer Research* for additional study. These are both non-profit organizations. The University of Oxford* will own the intellectual property associated with any discovery they find and the resulting data will be made available to the public, at no cost, sometime after their initial research is completed.
and it was also said:
The use of your processors is only being used for the cancer research program. The processor speed and/or capacity is not being sold/traded/given to any other company for any other purpose.
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm?te
slashdot: Proof that some people can do research before they write something
"I completely agree. How can Slashdot so vocally support SETI@home, a cool, but completely useless endevour, but badmouth a project that aims to save lives? Protein folding and protein chemistry simulations have applications that could and probably will save your life at some point in time. Even if the project did make money for someone, somewhere, so what? What is so wrong with making a profit? Is robbing someone of their right to make earn a living a cause worth sacrificing lives to?"
Well there's no problem in making money. The point is, they may be using your cicles to make atomic simulations & stuff like that. Stuff that would not be as good for manking as a cure for cancer (or other diseases).
If they make money finding the cure, that's good, they found the cure.. we just expect that they will share that cure with the world: the same world that provided free computer cicles.
~
as for the search for 'et' lives.. hey.. maybe they have the cure for cancer, maybe they have the cure for other stuff, and maybe they have the technologie to help us evolve.. maybe they will kill us, and we won't need cures.. but.. wouldn't be great to have friends in another galaxy ?
If you want to facilitate and accelerate progress towards the kind of future I imagine you are all interested in, then I suggest you stop arguing and find a distributed project which has a greater potential than SETI or this cancer project/scam. Your best bet is folding@home Why? When we solve this problem, we may quickly find a route to full-blown molecular nanotechnology. So what? This will: 1) Cure all diseases including aging (no need to waste time on the distributed cancer project/scam) 2) Launch real space exploration/space industry (then SETI can listen for ET on a receiver the size of the solar system while the rest of us just go find them) 3) Push computers and AI way past Moore's law (haven't you been infected with the Singularity meme yet?) 4) Provide us with (nearly) unlimited wealth of material and energy (then you can do nearly anything you imagine - hey you could even keep arguing and wasting time if you wanted!) For more info just check out Foresight and KurweilAI Net et. al.
As long as Moore's Law is still true, there will be faster computers and more unused cycles. Your computer's computing power will become cheaper and cheaper.
It is a bad business model to collect and resell unused cycles. I have a P2 300 MHz. If my unused cycles worths US$10 this month, the same number of cycles may only worth US$5 in less than two years. People will hate it. Unless I upgrade my computer every year, I will earn less and less money in the long run.
The growth of unused cycle may be even steeper than the Moore's Law predicts as much more computers are built each year. Many server farms without customers may sell their unused cycles to buyers.
So this home computer business can seriously devalue. It's not very efficient on a paid basis. I'd rather donate my free cycles as long as it helps somebody.
The screening of compounds are of little value by itself. We have too many compounds and only so few of them are useful. We didn't do anything. It's those who spend their time in labs who deserve to have the profit. We don't deserve anything.
I don't mind if anybody profits from my unused cycles. It will be even better if they make huge money. I want to see new drugs. Patented ones will be great. If nobody makes money, we will have no drugs at all.
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:
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.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Do you use SETI. You don't? Run for it and you get all your dreams realised!
The day we get a signal from Cosmos we naturally will start building bigger guns, make some more nuclear weapon research and smoke more tobbaco as Earth is a paranoidal hospice that fears any stranger and gets panicked on every ununderstandable event...
Thats just it, according to thier license, the may not be using your cycles to cure cancer. They could be selling it to breakdown models of free nuclear reactions within the atmosphere, which would CAUSE quite a bit of cancer if it were to happen, if we lived through it. What they are saying is they are taking your cycles, not paying you for it, profiting off of it to the highest bidder, regardless of what thier cause is.
That, and if it were to lead to the cure, like they brought up in thae article, it would be 20+ years before a LOT of people would be able to afford it.
You say you want a revolution....
It is who and how they are used that matters.
One can find many examples on both sides of
immense benefits and greed and evil.
I suggest you read this Cyberspace Law Lesson for more background on libel and slander, so you can use the terms properly in the future.
--
Responding to the numerous inane respondents to my original post thread:
There is no single cure for cancer, any more than there is a single cure for heart disease. "Cancer" is a catch-all term that refers to a huge variety of cellular disorders that cause the cells to go out of control. Furthermore, a single computing project cannot hope to find the cure for cancer. Come on, do you really think someone had a blinding flash of the obvious and said "Hey! This code will cure cancer! If only I had a hugely distributed computing network to run it on..." The most such a project can hope to accomplish is to cheaply model folding of proteins and assist in research that could lead to a better understanding of life processes.
...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.
OK, I'm going to shamelessly extrapolate Moore's law: 20 years is approximately 13 iterations of Moore's law. 13 doublings of computer power. A $2000 computer then will be the equivalent of 8,000 computers now.
If this sort of thing is necessary to cure cancer (and I doubt it), then the cure will be within reach well before that 20 years are up.
Many scientific projects that require high levels of computing power have had to decide "Will we buy hardware now and compute for four years, or wait three years, buy the hardware, and compute for one?"
So you build the Cure For Cancer wonder. You only get 1 happy face in each city. Forget that -- switch to Communism, build the Great Library, and mop up the rest of the world while you get their techs. Diplomats too.
:) )
(For those that don't understand -- you've not truly lived
Actually, yeah, I think you'd be a sucker to volunteer at a for-profit hospital. Would you volunteer to flip burgers at a for-profit McDonald's?
If you do something that directly helps patients and doesn't help the hospital (like going to various children's wards and reading to the kids.) then I can see the point. But if you do something the hospital would have had to pay someone to do, yeah, I think you are a sucker.
If someone makes money off of something I do, I want a cut. Otherwise they can go do it themselves. If someone wants my help because they can't get it any other way, instead of just being too greedy to shell out for it, then we'll talk.
...if the drugs had never been developed in the first place.
---
I think I more or less agree with you, but money isn't the root of all evil. "For the love of money is the root of all evil..." (It's in I Timothy 6:10)
--
http://cheeser.blog-city.com
You are associated with UD? Might have been an interesting fact to point out.
Why don't you respond to #151, a post which *seems* to have some valid points, and is not a straw man?
3 42 59&cid=151
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/04/03/16
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
I agree with your argument, however, wouldn't you want the patent for cancer cure to be held at Oxford University or the Cancer Research Charity mentioned instead of some faceless pharmaceutical company?
No patent will mean that some other company will get a patent on their work. You know how knackered patent offices are, it will happen.
Also, I very much doubt that this research will be sold onto the biggest players. Most drugs cost a tonne because of two things - research costs to recoup and "we have 17 years to get our money on this one boys, then we have to find a health hazard with the system so that our competitors can't use it afterwards". When a cancer research charity is funding the research, it is highly likely that licenses for the drugs will be given out for a reasonable fee to all reputable drug companies. Market competition will then ensure low prices, unless they fix the price amongst themselves.
Hey, even AMDZone wanted to get in on the act of having a team for Cancer Curing, and I hope that they continue to do so. Despite it being Intel sponsored, and the guys at AMDZone are pretty much the definition of Anti-Intel. I am surprised they don't use Macs!
If nothing else, at least it may provide some measure of hope to patients. If my uncle (brain cancer, no surgery possible) came to me and asked about this, I don't think I could tell him that it's probably a scam job. And what good would it do if I did? Hope is the best medicine some of these patients have.
As opposed as I am to companies preying on the generous for their own good, there is at least a thin silver lining here.
Something like this would be better placed at the "cure for cancer" site than here. It is irritating to get the connection between that project and the business presented on slashdot, while the "cure for cancer" site doesn't loose a word about it.
Maybe that was a good tactic to avoid people believing their cycles are being misused before the rumors started flying all about the net. But now the rumor is out in the world (and for the people you try to win for the project it can't be more in the world than on slashdot) you should put some reassuring documents up what exactly the client will do, and what those cycles will be used for, and more important, what they will not be used for.
Also someone at UD should contact the slashdot editors ASAP to get an update of that article. While it may be tempting to ask the lawyers first, they will only waste away time. Sorry, but even if things are as you state, UD has to take part of the blame for: a) not being upfront about the rest of it's business and b) not providing along some reassuring terms in the contract saying that those cpu cycles will not be used for anything else (there is anyway a contract with the code saying you may not reverse engineer the code, why not put something in there to the effect that the Program will only work on the cure for cancer Project?)
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Yes, but that's how you get the stuff to the market. I expect the resulting product to be something you can't brew together in your backyard. Publishing the results will also do some good, because if the pricing is too ridiculous someone will just go along, ignore the patents and build a fab Where a government is too happy to get a few dollars into the country to ask what international IP-laws exactly are violated.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Actually i never had any problems with them wanting no reverse engineering (i just mentioned it to point out that there comes a contract with the thing anyway) not only because some of the source might even not be theirs, but because i find it perfectly understandable that they don't want everyone messing with the code. Even if it's wellmeaning it can do damage by sacrificing accuracy for a performance gain.
Anyway, when they come out with a linux client i'll look at it again. Until then i'll dedicate some cycles to Folding@Home.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
The Peer-to-Peer compute-cycle companies have already started folding. (And I don't mean proteins.) The number of commercial businesses that could rake in more dough if they just had more compute cycles (aka a Beowulf cluster or these more loosely coupled P2P variants) is not too many.
For example, Popular Power seems to have closed their company and website sometime in the last few weeks. A shame too, as their UI allowed you to easily choose what percentage of your CPU cycles were for-profit and what were for non-profit projects.
--LP-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
The simple fact that the results will be made public does not preclude the researchers from profiting from them. Publication is an central step in the patent process; all patented biomedical discoveries made in academia are published in the peer-reviewed literature. The faq on the UD website seems to be seeking to dodge this fact by ignoring the patent issue entirely. That the researchers will not be selling the rights to their research does not mean that they won't be licensing any inventions to a manufacturer. That's how it's typically done.
I'm the anti-philanthropist.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
As for the "delete every file on your drive" BS, do you think they'd be around for more than 10 minutes if that happened? It's not like they've got a monopolized grip on the PC desktop or something...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
At least when a university sells a patent, it can go towards further developing research centers, student financial aid, or recruiting genetically-engineered athletes.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Its too late. Microsoft Office 10 is already slated to cure cancer.
-- Freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.
This reminds me a lot of Napster's 60's-style "take back the net" mumbo jumbo. When it comes right down to it, most of the good causes nowadays are stirred up and promoted by one corporation or another. Linux is one of the few good causes left, but even that is starting to get a distinctly corporate feel.
Got Rhinos?
Rich
Rich
RICHMAN1: Hey look at me! I am so humanitarian for giving all my spare change to that beggar over that.
RICHMAN2: You call that humanitarian? You and I were both born with a silver spoon in our mouths. Unlike you, I treasure what I was born with, and see it as my duty to give away money responsibly to the right people. You don't see me giving money to that beggar over there becuase I don't think he deserves it. I donate regularly to charities X, Y, Z, but I choose not to advertise that. And no, I don't consider myself very humanitarian for that. So what's your point?
BEGGAR: Screw you man, I's rather have RICHMAN1!
If a couple of mouse-clicks can help take that pain away from just one family, it's worthwhile. Surely.
Thanks. You helped me make up my mind. I will install the screensaver tonight and add my little bit to the research.
And I too know how it feels. My mother-in-law died from cancer i December last year.
Ebbe
P.S.: My wife (she's a GP) says that the chance of surving prostate cancer is in the upper nineties.
My opinion? See above.
it's not hypocritical to disparage a company for bait-and-switch tactics. Who cares who they hired, and what those people might have been associated with in the past, if what they're doing NOW is unethical?
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Anyone who's spent any considerable amount of time working on radiation and toxic substance issues knows that "finding a cure for cancer" is a public relations tool for diverting public attention from the CAUSES of cancer, which are overwhelming environmental in origin, i.e., radioactive and toxic substances. That's why the American Cancer Society has been regularly taken to task by experts for having a Board stuffed with chemical industry executives. For a superlative, well-reasoned analysis, see Dr. Samuel Epstein's Politics of Cancer. Finding a cure for cancer diverts attention from the biggest battle in the War Against Cancer, eliminating radioactive and carcinogenic chemicals from the environment to the fullest extent possible. It also allows drug companies, many of which are owned by the same chemical companies that create carcinogenic pollutants, to profit from palliative "cures" for symptoms. Kind of like the good doctors who take to drumming up business by shooting people at night. OK, let's assume that someone finally finds a "cure" for some form of cancer. Now how do we distribute that cure to all that need it, including the multitude of animals in the wild that suffer cancer right along with the humans exposed to the same chemicals and radiation sources? Prevention is the only reasonable response to the cancer epidemic (and it is an epidemic that's been on the steady rise for decades). "Finding a cure for cancer" is pure quackery. Put your bucks (and CPU cycles) into a better cause, such as supporting environmental groups that are actually doing something about cancer. Paul Merrell co-author, No Margin of Safety, Politics of Penta pem@casco.net
I wouldn't go so far as to say this is philanthropy in the digital age. In fact, UD is merely abusing the idea of philanthropy to promote itself and make a profit. It is not like this type of thing never happened before the digital age (say, donate your used car to "charity" when only 10% of the proceeds go to charity, and give "to the Lord" by calling a televangalist). We can't let one greedy, cash starved startup give it a bad name.
To me, philanthropy in the digital age is that I can give to many institutions by going to their website and donating with my credit card online.
An expensive cure is better than no cure. Besides, there are corporations (yes I said corporations) in other countries that are breaking patents that other corporations have on cures for the aids virus so that they can produce a cheaper cure.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Poor person: "May I have a quarter, gov'na, I'm starving to death"
Rich person "Well, I didn't have to work very hard for this money, so it really wouldn't be very 'humanitarian' of me to give you any"
Poor person: "GUHAUAHahhha. *cough*... *THUMP*"
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What the hell kind of action is that? Rather then print a retraction saying 'sorry I'm an idiot' you go and simply erase it from history. How very orwelian of you Michal
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Post to kuro5hin, where stories are peer-reviewed.
Beats slashdot in almost all respects (but, doesn't seem to have quite as much fun, unfortunately)
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You disgust me.
Now, for those of you who want an alternate point of view, here goes. I am not affiliated in any way with UD, other than that I run their client from my work machine. I went into this fully understanding that UD is a for-profit group. But guess what? Unlike what Michael says, you CAN pick what groups you participate in. I choose to ONLY participate in the life sciences group, which includes the cancer research study. Thus far, I have never seen my machine be used for anything outside of that group. Ah, but I guess they could be doing it at night when I'm not around, those corporate bastards, right?
Ultimately, your cpu spends a big chunk of time cooling its heels. You can put it to use trying to cure cancer, which benefits everyone. Alternately, have it try to break encryption, which benefits primarily geeks, or look for aliens, which most likely will do not one damned bit of good. It's your call. But Michael? Before you can have righteous indignation, you've got do have a good reason. Your argument that this "redefines philanthropy" is bullshit. Philanthropy is "The effort or inclination to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid or donations," according to dictionary I had lying around. I choose to donate my cycles to look for a cure for cancer. This is for the betterment of mankind, even if that cure is patented, packaged, and sold by a corporation. The cure still exists, which is a step forward.
Next time, try thinking before you spew, moron.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Yes it's a shame that people will die in the meantime, but how about all those people that would die if the cure was never found? I hate to tell you, but drug companies are businesses . They want to make money. If everyone could use the research that they spent their hard earned money on, they wouldn't do it in the first place. This bait and switch thing is wrong, no doubt, but please leave the communist anti-patent rants to another article.
Who cares if someone is making some money off it? If I can help, even in a very small way, solve one of the worst problems man kind has ever faced I'm happy to do it.. I got plenty of spare cycles hanging out here... I dont care if microsoft finds the cure for cancer... someone needs to... I can help? YAY!
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Whilst I agree that the article is harsh, there's a fundamental truth here.
As the article points out, you're assuming that if you run this screenserver that your computer will even be working on this. They don't promise that.
For all you know the first two computers work on this problem, and the next 20000 computers work on making a buck for someone else. That wouldn't be good at all. Until that is clarified I for one ain't gonna touch it with a bargepole. All charity work (this is a charity work as we are donating bandwidth, our time, processor time and electrical power) has to be as transparent as humanly possible. I don't necessarily mind a small amount of profit. But it had better be small.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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.
www.intel.com/cure/research.htm"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."
In other words, that's up to seven years worth of children who could have died but didn't. Even if running this app only saves one life, it's only "teeny-tiny" in comparison to the vast number of people who die of cancer every year - not to the people who may be saved because of it.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
"Members are rewarded for computer time that normally would go to waste, our customers and project partners can access more computing power to advance their projects, United Devices picks up a fee for building and administering the software that does it all"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.
http://members.ud.com/prizes/and more importantly:
http://members.ud.com/vypc/wish/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?
http://members.ud.com/membership/howitworks/priva"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.
http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/about_picture.h"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 ?
What would Lemmy do?
Sure, Michael shouldn't allow his "moral grandstanding" to get in the way of the cure for cancer! Heck, next he'll be targeting censorware companies for trying to SAVE THE CHILDREN...
In any case, the research is expected to knock years off the process of finding cancer fighting drugs. And isn't an expensive cure better than no cure at all?
The peer-to-peer (P2P) computing scheme, which also involves the US charity National Foundation for Cancer Research, United Devices and Intel, will let surfers worldwide use their computers to test chemicals for future cancer-fighting drugs.
while it's in fact client-server. Sorry to nitpick but this gets on my nerves.
sulli
RTFJ.
My country is under siege! Help us stop them !! It will affect you, as well.
Yes but the Intel requirements for sponsoring such a project require that it be 100% philantropic which they define as meaning totally not for profit. So what if the data gets patented as long as it is made available for free public use.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
I completely agree. How can Slashdot so vocally support SETI@home, a cool, but completely useless endevour, but badmouth a project that aims to save lives? Protein folding and protein chemistry simulations have applications that could and probably will save your life at some point in time. Even if the project did make money for someone, somewhere, so what? What is so wrong with making a profit? Is robbing someone of their right to make earn a living a cause worth sacrificing lives to?
You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding.
IMHO, this is a worthy cause. I choose to run the client, and hopefully contribute to a cure, until I find out that they are not who they claim to be. I have lost family and friends to cancer, and if I am able to help out, that is what I will do.
My $.02.
Although it's not strictly relevant to the current debate--that is, the merits of this distributed computing effort--I'm troubled by both the original post and many of the replies. The original post gripes that this is for a "for-profit" company as if that is some sort of heinous crime. While I admit that there are legitimate and useful debates about the pros and cons of capitalism, last time I checked, most Western nations are, in fact, more-or-less capitalist. I shouldn't have to point this out, but it's OK to make a profit... Secondly, while it is true that some drugs are very expensive, it is useful to look at some of the history. Health care in general has extended lives, has in fact been made accessible to all (OK, there's some debate about how fair it is and how well we are doing, but that's not the point here.) Life spans are increasing, quality of life has increased, and so on. Obviously, we're doing something right. (Maybe we're doing some stuff wrong also, but lets have a little more reasoned debate, please.) I have no particular position on the merits of this particular screen saver, but I'm not sure that bilious rhetoric in the original post was very well founded.
Don't Panic! It's too late for that anyway...
As a UD representative, perhaps you could clear this statement up for us. Does this mean that Oxford will be placing any patents/intellectual property recovered into the public domain? As pointed out in other posts, making results available has nothing to do with giving away the rights to produce/sell/distribute any treatments that come from this project.
Counterpoint:
/. users understand that on scientific projects data is analyzed using the scientific method, where certain outputs will be known and precise measurements are a must. Open source development can not be used in those moments. On the otherhand, O.S. programers can be utilized to refine the code after the first program is completed. This would lead to optimization of the code and of the CPU cycles.
/. community seems to have little or no trust in UD company. Therefore some parties would like to look at the source.
What you are saying is that anybody can select what group your interested in correct. Good, that's understood.
What my beef is that I would like the funds earned (my percentage) donated to XYZ. Now that's not asking for to much, is it. I'm offering my cycles up, and in exchange I would like to be compensated. I don't care if the research is going into cancer or to aids. I just would like to see the return of my TIME.
Now look at it from my point please. For example, if I have 42 SGI O2's doing their animation / rendering work, I am in no position to offer up cpu cycles until the work is done. But I can commit maybe 3% of the cycles per second durring that job. of course that would delay my work. Now if I could get a small tax deduction or a return of some sort then the 3% of the cycle time would be justified. Hell, I would put up all 42 of them, if I knew that I could render on the distributed network. fair exchange of services.
In reference to closed or open source. I would think that most of the
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The problem about solving these unsolved problems in society is the lack of computing resources. One Cray or such supercomputer can only do so much. There is so much computing power in the world that is being wasted on useless screensavers, or comparatively useless tasks like finding artificial intelligence on other planets. If we can combine this wasted computing power into a really worthwhile task, like finding the cure for cancer, we can actually get somewhere. It has been estimated, and unfortunately I can't remember where, that the combined computing power of all these wasted cycles, is equivalent to 1,000,000 personal computers! I repeat, if we can direct this enormous computing power into solving some of today's problems, then we can ACTUALLY change the world!
So I say, spare these unused cycles to save some lives! Even if you do nothing else to change the world, do this.
I have had my say.
Beware The Fox!
People make their livings working for, and operating non-profit organizations. Didn't you ever wonder why people worked full time there? Did you think it was because doing good was payment enough? Well, while some people might believe that, doing good doesn't put food on the table, or electricity into your lights. Non-profit organizations simply operate under the premise that all proceeds which would otherwise be deemed profit, go back into the company in some way(IE buying new equipment, stuff like that). So even if UD is selling SOME CPU cycles, that may just be to cover expenses. As far as other projects go, for the most part even if you're only contributing 1 cycle out of every million, you're still accomplishing more than you ever will at dnet or setiathome(the largest, longest running, and least useful of all distributed computing projects). On the note of patenting the "cure for cancer drug", it simply won't happen. First of all, chances are there won't be some cancer cure that you can buy in little capsules that you take twice daily by mouth (with food). It will simply open up avenues for us to cure cancer, rather than irradiating people. And, even if there WAS some miracle drug, you KNOW the government would step in and force the results out somehow. When the gov't sets their mind on something, they get it done. If they feel like muscling their way into a pharmaceutical company, they will.
I am new here, and was referred by hardocp.com from a new snip they posted.
Three weeks ago my father comes over for this semi monthly free dinner (and red wine). He is 65 this year. After dinner he says (basiclly) he has terminal lung cancer. Shock notwithstanding.... Now What.
So Kyle Bennett of hardocp.com posts something about folding@home.com. blah...blah...blah... and they say they are working on (operative:Working On, better understanding things like, working on a cure for cancer).
At this time I could give a f&*k about my cycles used or not. Unless this is total fraud. I have a vested interest (albeit probably to late for my father) in this process.
So unless you point me to a better place that I can contribute extra cpu time, I am going there.
Thanks for the time/.
"Oxford will own the intellectual property developed under the program, but the university will license it relatively freely."
That means that the big bad corporate nasty that Micahel is complaining about is Oxford University and the American Cancer Society, not quite in the same league as the evil pharmaceutical companies that can do no good in Michael's eyes. Perhaps he would rather that millions of people continue to suffer and die from cancer for the sake of his cynicism and moral outrage.
Here are your choices:
(1) Medical research is required by law to immediately enter the public domain. All for-profit efforts to perform medical research immediately grind to a halt. The cures for cancer, MS, diabetes, AIDS come in 500 years instead of 15 years.
(2) Medical research is patentable. Companies scramble to find cures for all those diseases, because they know they will have proprietary rights to them for 20 years. After the 15 years of research and the 20 years under patent, it enters the public domain.
So, which scenario do you prefer? (1), in which people die for the next 500 years from these diseases? Or (2), in which most get to benefit in 15 years, and the rest in 35? Being that I'll be around 60 in 35 years, I know which one I prefer.
Don't devalue patents. Although the terms may be inappropriate in some fields (20 years for a software patent? Sheesh...), the intent is to increase public knowledge by leveraging free-market demands. It's a good system, and it has been proven to work time and time again.
Kyle
[ home ]
If you are asking why the THINK code is not available...
The primary reason that United Devices does not release the source code to the THINK application is because it is not our code to release. The THINK application is the brainchild of Keith Davies of Treweren Consultants Ltd. and has been developed with the possibility of being released as a commercial product. In acknowledgement of the non-profit motives of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project and in return for the valuable feedback provided by such a massive deployment, Treweren has allowed the use of their code for this project.
If you are asking why none of the code is available...
Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of this issue is the opecodeauth white paper written by distributed.net's Jeff Lawson (also a United Devices employee). As most are aware, distributed.net only releases 99% of its code, and withholds the critical protocol and buffer format code as a supplement to the security of the system. Until someone solves the dilemma of trusting work performed by an untrusted machine, obscurity will always be a desirable component of any internet-based distributed computing effort.
In the absence of open source, United Devices is relying on other factors to influence the internet community to trust its motives. In the general sense, we hope that the combined SETI@home and distributed.net pedigree might encourage you to trust that we're doing things the right way. In the more specific sense of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project, we trust that the endorsement and support of our partners speaks volumes on the integrity of this project.
The bottom line is, there are a great number of indicators which you should use to evaluate the integrity and sincerity of an organization, for-profit or not. While open source is a virtually unassailable endorsement, it is not the only tool at your disposal as you try to detect if UD is trying to do something illicit. Heck, perhaps it's naive of me, but I like to think that my presence and attention in this forum (and my leet, low user ID #) supplement UD's image in some small, geeky, inconsequential way.
As to your rephrasing of today's exchange on slashdot, I must respectfully disagree. Michael's comments in the article body were far more inflammatory than your simple condensation indicates. Moreover, there was no justification or corroboration for the claims that UD was poised to violate the trust and agreements contained in the description of the project as provided by both Intel and United Devices. The license on the UD software is nothing noteworthy, and is the normal fare for any organization trying to conduct business with the benefit of legal input. I think it's quite clear that Michael's opinion of the project existed prior to his creative and conspiratorial interpretation of the license agreement.
I also think that my response can be more accurately summarized as "No, no, UD can certainly be trusted because it has done nothing to invoke suspicion. Moreover, its founders and core staff have established a respectable reputation and history in the net community, and within slashdot as well, both in the form of distributed.net and SETI@home. If you're going to accuse United Devices of ill intent, you should be prepared to back those accusations with something more substantive than 'it is possible that they are bad'".
You may feel that my response did "little or nothing to address [the questions raised]", but I would argue that my previous response, as well as this one, not to mention the FAQ and information published in relation to this project have provided considerably more supporting evidence and information that we've seen provided by michael to substantiate his accusations in this article. It's hard to provide less support than the "none" that he was satisfied with providing.
Thanks for the opportunity to respond, and for the lucid response to my earlier post.
Here we see one thing that /. lacks and refuses to accept: an editorial board. Yes, editorial boards are bad as they are a base for censorship, trade-offs, mob headlines, Pentagon infos and TASS statements...
/. is not obliged to have an editorial board in the traditional sense of the word. I think /. team could think on something original... As usual... and you are good on this.
But having the lack of an editorial board is no better than having a bad one. And besides
Really I'm only waiting for the moment X when someone says "enough is enough", sues Rob down to the socks and lows Cmd Taco to deliver boy of tacos/pizzas... One day that will happen.
Entropia is a for-profit corporation. From time to time Entropia 2000 will run commercial applications for our customers on your computer, then resume work on the non-profit projects of your choice. How much time goes to non-profit research is reflected by our project statistics.
Note that their "project statistics" reflect work to date and there's no hint of the fact that the stats could change drastically once the paying customers line up.
I got nothing against a little Benevolent Self-Interest, but being disingenuous about the set-up strikes me as slimy.
...they will either GIVE us a cure for cancer or blow us to smithereens and take off with all of the oil.
So. I say SETI@Home is the only worthwhile distro computing application.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Let's lynch doctors for wanting a high salary, too!
What, you volunteer at a for-profit hospital? What a sucker you are!
Refuse to help treat cancer, and the world will be a better place!
---
Would help if I could connect to the freakin' UD server. :(
--
Free Mac Mini
So I might as well to:
Folding@Home (foldingathome.stanford.edu) is a distributed computing effort to understand protein folding. It will possibly increase our understanding of medicine & nanotechnology. (I'm an idiot, yes, go read the site for more details plz.)
They offer Windows, Linux, & Solaris clients, you can offer to help them with the other OSes they're working on (OSX, OS9, BSD, and IRIX).
You know damn well and good that distributed.net will eventually crack whatever key they're working on. I question the usefulness, technique, and search space of seti@home. Folding@Home has actual implications for us right here, right now. If you don't trust this United Devices people, but you'd like to put your spare CPU cycles to good use, please check out Folding@Home. It has to be better than just "sticking with xscreensaver".
Notes for Windows users: The screen saver is pretty but the console version will run while you're doing work (not just while you're sleeping) with no performance hit (lowest priority possible process). The screen saver also had some stability issues when I first checked it out (1.2something). Supposedly they've been fixed now (1.34) but I haven't had a chance to check on it.
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
I don't want to malign UD, who might very well be intending to benefit all humankind out of the goodness of their hearts. But the fact of the matter is, legitimate questions were raised about the apparently shady way things are structured, and this "response" does little or nothing to address them.
As for the kiddie-porn comment, the gist is this: It's not that anyone expects UD to actually do this. It's that the license propagated by UD reserves the right to do, by abnegating any responsibility for what their program does... even though they will not open the source and let the user decided if the code is safe.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I'm running STI, the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence. 500000 cpu years and no luck yet!
Depending on the ratio of cpu cycles spent on cancer vs their bank account, I could care very much. Let's say they use 99.9% for themselves and the rest for the research. That qualifies as a scam in my book.
Organizations that trick people into giving to "charities" are one of the world's greater evils in my book, because they eventually turn most people into cynics who look warily upon anyone asking for help.
Bleah.
I'm taking no sides. Nor am I claiming that this is what they do or don't do...
But, most drugs I've seen have public research, and the rights are sold off.... Oxford *is* claiming 'intellectual property' rights on anything that is discovered. So... They publish research results it as a scientific study (as they must if they wish to actually get the drug past the FDA), then they charge some random drug-company through the nose for exclusive rights to their 'intellectual property', which passes on those costs to the people.
While it is true that a lot of academic research used to be public and distributed and used freely, in the modern age of software, thats becoming less and less true... Where is google's codebase? What about the patents Lycos got on their search engine years ago?
Publicly published results != public domain; useable by anyone.
Given this new modern regime, I'd believe the origional author of the rant, barring clear evidence to the contrary. What you've held up as evidence does not pass any such standard; about hte only thing that would would be `we will claim no intellectual property righs upon any discovered drug and any results will be available in the public domain'.. Which I'm not hearing.
(True, I'm not sure that this is a good idea. Without some carrot, who will spend the billion dollars it may take to get a wonder-drug approved for use by humans? An expensive cure is ALWAYS preverable to no cure at all.)
It would appear that the results of this research are intended to be released to the scientific community at large, rather than ransomed off. It would appear the UD's role in this endeavor was to develop the application and coordinate the data and computation - for which they deserve to be compensated. So what's the problem???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Don't be fooled: if a cure for cancer is discovered, Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research will own the results. Period (depending of course, on the IP negotiations between them which we are not privvy to). I don't know about NFCS, but Oxford will most certainly look to profit from it, by, for example, licensing the rights to a biotech firm who is in a position to manufacture and distribute tons of the stuff, at profit.
-- pz.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/Cosm/
I'm pretty sure they're clean.
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
This article at distributed.net DISTRIBUTED.NET AND UNITED DEVICES JOIN FORCES tells how most of the distributed.net team are now working for United Devices. Not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the scope of UD's future projects. I'm all for a simple distributed client that can handle multiple projects - as long as you can elect which ones you take part in. I'll give United Devices the benefit of the doubt for now.
As much as I'd like to brag to my friends about how I am personally helping combat cancer, I just don't think that letting someone else use my spare CPU cycles for a noble cause while I sit on my fat ass in the other room watching Star Trek reruns constitutes any sort of humanitarian act. This more accentuated by the fact that there is a for-profit organization behind this. Sorry, but my spare CPC cycles are not to be worshipped.
I posted to
Michael, you do know that United Devices hired the distributed.net guys, right?
And David Anderson, the guy behind seti@home?
Isn't it a bit hypocritical to attack them while you're running dnet at the same time?
http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/faq_proj.htm
The above FAQ completely contradicts what you said, Michael. The results of the study will be made public. The results are the property of the University and the National Foundation for Cancer Research. The results will not be sold.
Why are you slandering them without foundation? Do you really get off on making new enemies? Do you have to create enemies if you cannot actually find them?
This is certainly an unfortunate editorial, mainly because it's being presented as news. The suspicions and accusations are quite unwarranted. At least now I know why my original submission of this news, with facts instead of rantings, was rejected this morning.
I'm not sure if Michael's bile is targeted at Intel (for their "disgusting" website?) or at United Devices. I doubt he's upset at Oxford University or the National Foundation for Cancer Research, he's certainly thrown them into the mix as well.
The UD/Intel project is a genuine, noble attempt to cure cancer, and to try to spin it as anything else is a misrepresentation of the facts.
If you download the UD agent from the Intel site, your cycles will only be used on the Think application. United Devices will not claim any cycles or bandwidth on your machine for any commercial tasks. Users may, at their option, choose to participate in United Devices commercial tasks, and in return they'll be elgible for whatever compensation and remuneration that commercial work brings with it. There are a variety of promotions at present, although none that I'm aware of involve beads. The way I see it, getting paid for a resource I'd otherwise waste is a good deal, no matter what the compensation. Sure beats the alternative.
The speculation about UD's motives for participating in this project are also quite sketchy. I would have hoped that the SETI@home and distributed.net heritage might have given United Devices the benefit of the doubt here, but in case that's not sufficient there are a number of plausible and compelling reasons why United Devices might wish to participate in finding the cure for cancer that don't involve the conspiracy and speculation offered by slashdot.
We anticipate this project quickly growing to become the largest distributed computing project ever. As wildly popular as SETI@home and distributed.net have been, the number of people whose lives have been affected by cancer is daunting. For United Devices, this represents an ideal proof of concept and validation of distributed computing technology.
Intel's arguable misuse of the phrase "peer-to-peer" is, while technically inaccurate, certainly with common usage. United Devices was present, along with all the other commercial distributed computing companies, at the recent O'Reilly Peer to Peer conference where CmdrTaco and Hemos spoke. The "P2P space" is broadly defined at present, mainly because nobody's quite sure how all these quasi-related technologies will take hold in the coming months. Bundled together with Napster, Mojo Nation, Freenet, and even the groove.net folks isn't all that bad a place to be. Regardless, calling this project "P2P" is certainly acceptable current usage of the term. I have no idea how it qualifies as "disgusting".
If you choose not to read the documentation, it's still quite safe to assume that "all this client does is work on curing cancer" because that's indeed what it does. We (at United Devices) hope that some people will choose to also work on other United Devices projects, commercial or not, but we benefit greatly regardless.
I can assure you, the United Devices agent will never download kiddie porn or get you in trouble with the FBI. I feel silly having to explain this, though. I mean, honestly. Is it possible that someone was genuinely worried that this might be the case? As for the rest, I'll let Oxford University's reputation as an honorable and worthy organization and the National Foundation for Cancer Research's endorsement speak for themselves. Oh, that and the fact that Oxford has stated that they'll be making the results of the research available to anyone who wants it.
What an embarassment for slashdot.
Also, I didn't want to say it, but some of these outraged comments seem a little astroturf, if you know what I mean.
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
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece