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IBM Grid Near 50,000 machines - Slashdot Users #13
another similar writes "IBM's World Community Grid is off to a roaring start. Since kicking off six weeks ago (original Slashdot story), the grid has grown to almost 36,000 users with almost 50,000 machines. Growth continues as more media coverage hits.
There is a team of Slashdot users - currently ranked 13th in points with only 79 members. If you have spare cycles, download the software, join us and crank for medicine. For those of you with dual processor systems, you'll have to use a homebrewed tool - beyond two is not supported yet. Alas, you also have to be running Redmond's finest. According to their FAQ, a Linux client is slated for development in 2005."
There can't be a beowulf cluster because it doesn't run on linux.
thisnukes4u.net
That's hilariously wrong.
The vast majority of Slashdotters use Windows. That's the dirty secret around here. Nobody wants to admit they're all using windows.
This requires two computers, one "fast" and one "slow," to work, but you can get a massive number of points. Run the WCG client on your slow computer for up to 12-13 days (the limit is two weeks per unit) or until its almost done, then run it (over a network or whatever) on your fast computer. The result is a work unit that took a long long time with a fast machine's speed rating. BAM! HUGE POINTS.
They should really fix it and record the machine speed every few %.
... that for a company that touted to spend a billion dollars on Linux for R&D in a year (in 2001), and have a large Linux on-line material, when it comes to show off their expertise, with all the media attention and hype they hope to produce with such an announcement, they favor starting off with Windows clients.
Am I missing something ?
http://www.distributed.net/ Been around forever, have done far more impressive work than Big Blue . . . and I think they've had Linux clients for a little while.
You choose to use his resources, you can't complain when he uses information you're volunteering. If you don't want him to know, stop the referer response! If you can't do that, that's the fault of your gear, not his.
If you walk by my house to look at my garden, and I ask "hey, can I have a key to your house?" If you give it to me, am I violating your privacy? No.
I don't think so. Not if the current shrinkwrap agreement stays in force. The way I read it, the project can do whatever it wants with my cpu and bandwidth and memory. IBM can transfer control of the project to anyone else without prior notice. I'm responsible for any viruses on my system if the sever feeding me updates or data gets hacked. And on and on. Somehow, distributed.net's agreement seemed nicer.
Ah, but most of us would browse slashdot from work (slackers :), where we are probably not allowed to run linux or we have to support / develop for windows, but obviously we have (mostly) converted to firefox.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
To bad folding@home can't seem to do more than 1 job without requiring manual intervention these days..
Just out of curiosity, what problems do you encounter with it? I've been running the windows version for a couple of months, and haven't had any problems with it getting it's work done - though I have found it doesn't play nice with any programs that run full screen - keeps trying to take the screen back, even if it's just running in the tray.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
This is a great and wonderful idea. Its really been a long time in coming with SETI@home having done something like this for so long.
But I'm very concerned about the ownership of the resulting research. There appears to be no mention anywhere on this site about who owns the data crunched by this grid. Theres a whole forum of posts on this site and not a single unambigous reference to who owns the resulting research and apparently no response from IBM or the grid operators. There are a few people who mentioned the ownership of the grid technology and application, someone quoting IBM's "Philanthropy is good" slogan, but no one ever mentions the research. I guess I still have a bad feeling from the IBM open-source license -- "You may freely distribute or modify this code, but any changes you make become the property of IBM"
I would gladly contribute lot of horse power to this project (4 CPU machines at work and 4 CPU from home), if I saw an explicit statement about the research results becoming public domain. But I until I see an explicit statement in this regards I'm not sure how I can justify contributing to patents be filed by IBM or some pharma company.