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Donate Spare Cycles for Climate Prediction
gampid writes "The BBC has a story about the Casino-21 project which is running a SETI@home type program for climate prediction. " I'm a booster of Distributed.net, but this looks pretty cool as well. I dunno global warming just gives me the creeps anyway and I'd like to know if my house will be underwater.
I dunno -- as inherently INTERESTING as the subject is, I suspect it'll be nothing more than a huge waste of processor cycles.
I mean, essentially we're starting out with random parameters (guided by what they offer as "realistic") and project forward with hypothetical rules on behavior to an unknown point in the future where we'll calculate the probability of a particular outcome?
Seriously, there's so much speculation and guesswork in even building the system to time-progress the ecological model that it seems unrealistic. Add on top of that the fact that no valid data at all will be used in the calculation, and of course the obvious limitation on the possibel number of factors we'll be calculating (as opposed to the huge number of factors that really exist) and you're pretty much pissing in the wind.
think about it this way -- assume everything in the simulation is perfect, including all the data it starts out with (two major assumptions) EXCEPT that a year from now we find out the reproductive cycle of the lungfish plays a greater than anticipated role in the production of kelp, which in turn is respoonsible for generating a large portion of the atmospheric oxygen. Every calculation done will be a complete waste of cycles and you'll have to start all over with the new ecological model.
or am i missing something?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
We're above 4 trillion dollars and the computers designed to consistently add US$0.01 to the total were built back in 198x, so they must be having problems. A few more CPU cycles and our deficit counter can go up faster than ever!
Ever notice how Slashdot slows down sometimes? Ever think to yourself, "Man, if my spare CPU could go to speeding this bad puppy up"? Well, now you can speed up the experience with the only distributed client that actually sends CPU processing to Slashdot (warning: still in beta, no ETA).
Ever wonder how much consumable energy we have left? Well, with the World Resources Destructo-meter, you can help keep track of how many of our precious resources are left! As an added bonus, the more and more computers use this program, the more and more energy is used and thus, the program counts down faster and faster. It's fun for the whole family!
Ever given something you don't want to the Salvation Army? Ever wondered how anyone could use whatever it was you gave them? Now you can do the same thing with your CPU cycles! (NOTE: the Salvation Army is also selling used CPU cycles in their thrift stores for older computers).
NASA may not seem like it needs more CPU cycles, but, as current events recently showed, the CPU-intensive conversions from standard to metric and back again sometimes hit a brick wall. Donate CPU to NASA and make sure that we don't lose anymore multi-million dollar probes!
Brought to you by The Computer(tm), now with new games that you play when you're not using your computer.