Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Is Distributed Computing Being Distributed Badly?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the making-up-new-words dept.

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Distributed computing could help researchers studying climate change or Alzheimer's, but SETI@home's search for extra-terrestrial intelligence continues to dominate. Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes says that's a big waste, especially because SETI doesn't seem likely to yield results: 'This continued fascination with living-room SETI comes as professional setiologists concede that early assumptions about the search for intelligent life -- notably those popularized by astronomer Carl Sagan -- have proven naively optimistic. For instance, it's now conceded there is little chance of detecting the "leaking" transmissions of another planet -- its version of "I Love Lucy" broadcasts. Those signals are too weak to stand out from the universe's background noise.' Gomes also traces the origins of SETI@home to Berkeley computer scientist David P. Anderson, and explains that users stuck with the ET search rather than medical investigations in part because of nationalistic competition. Yet Anderson no longer runs SETI@home. 'Instead, he donates his spare computer power to a global warming project. But he doesn't presume to tell others what they ought to be doing with their CPU cycles.'"

5 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Crunching for their profit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting


    of course the WSJ would much rather you where crunching numbers for their drugs companies under the guise of "fighting cancer" or "protein folding" so your results can be turned into their profit (you didnt think that cure/treatment would be free like your CPU did you?)
    searching for ET is not profitable so it must be bad

    1. Re:Crunching for their profit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'd rather contribute my cycles to a treatment that I have to pay for rather than no treatment at all.

  2. Global Warming by Chinthe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Instead, he donates his spare computer power to a global warming project"
    Does this attempt to determine how much global warming is being caused by donating CPU cycles.

  3. Crunching for their lives by andrewman327 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "I think his point was that since pharmas make billions of dollars in pure profit, they can afford to invest some of it in highpowered computing clusters."


    I currently work for a pharmaceutical company, and in a visit to a research lab I learned just how much computing power they throw at these problems. They do have supercomputers, intranet clusters, etc. to try to solve these problems. They are so incredibly complex, however, that those are not enough.

    --
    Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
    1. Re:Crunching for their lives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      2 reasons.

      1) A lot of the basic research is paid for with my tax dollars and tax breaks for researching. It's therefore ridiculous to be paying the most for these drugs (compared to say Canada). I also don't think that the money needs to be spent on advertising. If a drug is good and worth while, then tell the doctors and they will use it.

      2) I'm one of those crazies who thinks that this kind of research should be done in spite of the costs. Because of this, I think that the majority (80-90%) of the profits should be put back into R&D. I don't buy into the argument that the only reason we have all this research is because people can get rich from it. I think if you gave most researchers a decent salary they would be more than happy to continue researching.

      I wonder if we need to break medical research into 2 categories.... Life-saving medicine and cosmetic medicine. Let's find a good way to provide enough resources to get the 1st group done, and let the pharms do "whatever they want (tm)" with the 2nd group.