IBM Sponsors Humanitarian Grid Computing Project

BrianWCarver writes "Reuters reports that IBM and top scientific research organizations are joining forces in a humanitarian effort to tap the unused power of millions of computers and help solve complex social problems. Following the example of SETI@home, the project, dubbed The World Community Grid, will seek to tap the vast underutilized power of computers belonging to individuals and businesses worldwide and channel it into selected medical and environmental research programs. The first project to benefit will be Human Proteome Folding, an effort to identify the genetic structure of proteins that can cause diseases. The client is currently available for Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98."

Comments

IP rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are they doing with the data they process? I don't see anything on the site that says. I can't say I'm very impressed if this project isn't using OSS and releasing their processed data into the public domain, especially since they're relying on volunteers for their processing.

Hate to be a nay sayer..

[StikyPad]

But this is run by United Devices, the same people who brought us the Cancer cure. Or did they? If you glance at the forums, you might notice one of the biggest gripes is that UD provides a minimal amount of feedback and status updates. They do little to nothing to promote the projects they have running, although they let you think there are some sort of prizes to be had by amassing the most points.

The truth is, I don't care whether they're in it for a profit or for posterity, but if someone's using my resources, I'd at least like to know how they're being used, and what effect, if any, it has had. The SETI project might be futile, but at least someone lets us know what's going on occasionally, which is far more than I can say for the UD projects thus far. For all I know, the cancer distributed computing project has been abandoned in favor of more promising avenues of research. Personally I'll stick with SETI.