Distributed Climate Prediction For Linux: Pending

saintp writes "Inspired by earlier discussions about distributed computing initiatives, I emailed the good folks at Climateprediction.net to inquire about a linux client. And, the good news: There will be one. No update yet to their system requirements, but here's what they told me: 'There is certainly a Linux version planned (in fact, already existing), but we are a small team and can only set up the infrastructure to support distributed experiments under one O/S at a time. Running climate models is substantially more ambitious in terms of machine requirements, data generated, security headaches etc than any other distributed computing project we know of, so developing a generic O/S independent client is simply not feasible. As soon as the Windows version is safely launched, the Linux version will be our next priority.' Hopefully, we'll see it sometime in November or December."

Comments

Distributed computing...

[His Excellency]

...irks me a little. When I give away my CPU cycles what do I get in return? I get a product that I helped bring to life, but I also have to pay for it.

Weather reports are not bad though, I just pay for them by viewing annoying advertizing. The projects that really annoy me are the ones used to design drugs to fight cancer or some other like disease, because the information from these projects will be used by pharmaceutical companies to sell me drugs!

If we are going to use ditributed computing to solve problems, the solutions should really be free or discounted for the general public, because they donated their computers cycles, and shouldn't be forced to "pay" twice.

Re:Distributed computing...

[kippy]

The projects that really annoy me are the ones used to design drugs to fight cancer or some other like disease, because the information from these projects will be used by pharmaceutical companies to sell me drugs!

as you can tell from my sig, I disagree with your stance.

I'm participating in United Devices to help find a cure for cancer.

Am I paying for it? Sure, but the electricity that I'm using is probably less costly then when I forget to shut off the bathroom light when I leave for work. It's trivial, it's pennies, get over the cost issue.

Will I pay for the cure once it's found? Could be. UD is giving their results to Oxford if I'm not mistaken. From there it might get patented and sold by big industry. So what? What medicine do you currently get for free? except for laughter, none. if you participate in such a project, do you expect the cure to be free for you or do you just want a 0.000000000012% discount for the 0.000000000012% work that you put forth to help find the cure.

Also, if cancer is curable, the drug will probably be found eventually. I have a friend with skin cancer and my grandfather died of cancer. I smoked so that puts me at a higher risk. I'd rather the cure be found sooner than later.

Just because something has to be paid for doesn't mean it's a bad thing or that the little guy is getting screwed.

I'm probably going to get a bunch of responses to this from the "knowledge is free" crowd. Fuck that. If I spend $6 for my energy bill and have to pay $1000 for some magic cancer pill down the road, I'll have a magic cancer pill when all is said and done. If distributed drug simulation isn't done, there's a chance that I or a loved one might die at 80 lbs with no hair. I'd like to know that I did all I could to prevent that situation.

in any case, it sure beats spinning my wheels looking for ET.

Re:Why?

[MindStalker]

Basically it boiles down to the fact that mallicious users sending false data would completly destroy this project. In Seti, if some mallicious user sends a I have found ET packet, it can easily be checked and confermed (which I believe is automated even) same with all the other distributed systems so far, a user sending back important info is rare enough that it can be checked. While in weather predictions each user will probably be solving a piece of a puzzle so each users will be sending back significant amounts of info not just occasiall rare users. So each user can't be checked. So the checking mechanism has to be done client side, a virtual impossibility if you ask me.

Re:Whither Java?

[Omegalomaniac]

I'm guessing they are not using java because distributed computing is very much about speed. A few distributed computing clients have hand written (or hand optimized) assembly code running the bulk of the computation. Java would be a serios step backwords.