Slashdot Mirror
Distributed Computing "Advances"
Quirk writes "NewScientist is reporting on..."Software to be launched in January will let PC users run as many "distributed computing" projects as they like. The program will let PC users search for aliens, help predict climate change and perform advanced biological research - all at the same time."'It is called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). BOINC acts like a software platform that can run a number of screen-saver style applications on top of the PC's own operating system.'"
Finally, a source for my advanced alien biological climate change program!
The first project underway in BOINC is to have everybody's machine submit news about BOINC to slashdot, which is so far happening succesfully. This is the first dupe of many.
The first and easily the best known is SETI@home, which since 1999 has enlisted half a million people to analyse data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, looking for signs of alien life.
Better than Seti@home and BOINC: Yeti@home.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Even though you *can* do multiple projects at one time, you have to run seperate applications (if I'm correct) so this would be a good integration into one application that handles multiple projects and allows your machine to be used more efficiently.
they have a beta test on their site (http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/ap/). i just downloaded it, setup an account on the site and it works.
Lotas T Smartman www.lotas-smartman.net
Have you ever thought that the internet is just one giant 'distributed computing' effort to find pr0n?
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
typical reporters fscked their facts in the story.
qoute "The first and easily the best known is SETI@home, which since 1999 has enlisted half a million people to analyse data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, looking for signs of alien life."
I believe distributed.net's client was the first program of its type to download information from a remote server, use idle cpu cycles to calculate whatever, then resubmit it back to the central server. I ran distributed.net back in 98, more then a year before seti came out.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
From the Folding@home website FAQ:
g /
"Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them?
Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.
Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site."
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/foldin
Judge: "What do you have to say about the virus you created, young man?"
Virii writer: "It wasn't a virus, your honor. It was really a non-permission-based propagation model for a distributed computing application that involved producing the results of decreased uptime and further propagation of the non-permission-based distributed application."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This really isn't as good as you might think.
Most distributed computing projects are distributed because they need massive amounts of CPU cycles. Running multiple projects on one machine isn't going to make the projects faster since the same amount of CPU cycles are now being divided up amongst the number of projects that you're running. Infact it'll actually be less because now the machine has to deal with the overhead of switching between project processes.
On the other hand it might make sense if you were running a CPU-intensive project and a data-intensive project at the same time (ie projects that will maximize separate non-conflicting resources on the same machine..)
My Folding@Home Team
I'm sure that spammers will be registering their distributed spam/DDoS zombies real soon. Why sneak the software onto machines when you can get people to sign up for it if you provide fancy ratings and team standings? Throw in some t-shirts and blue pills and they're gold!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.