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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.
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?
Poster, cont: However, since we have no proof that you are in fact affiliated in any way with United Devices, and in fact that the /. user who goes by "Uncle Fluffy" is not in fact a 13-yo alligator in the Everglades whose owner is out on the bayou, we have no way of knowing whether ripping *you*, personally, a new asshole will have anything to do with the price of tea in China. Furthermore, the entire /. community collectively sticking out their tongues and saying "Neener, neener, neener" to you will do exactly shit to rectify the outrage felt by anyone who thought their cycles were going to a cancer cure, when in reality they were testing out MBNA's new online credit card application, in the event that UD does, in fact, default on their assurances that they will not use those cycles for anything but cancer, since their licensing argreement does not in any way bind them to it.
I'm not really so much taking sides here, as I enjoy pointing out holes in people's arguments.
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
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
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