SETI@home is actually a fantastic program for "burning in" new machines that aren't ready for prime time yet. In a large server farm composed of several dozen machines, the laws of probability dictate that some piece of hardware is faulty. SETI@home is a great way to let new servers run with a full processor load for a while to see if anything goes wrong before loading the boxes with whatever production code will eventually run on them.
I do agree, though, that setting this up on corporate machines is an amazing waste of time. Then again, so is posting comments on Slashdot from work, but that doesn't seem to stop very many people.
Slashdot Mirror
With the Ole Eichhorn's permission, I've mirrored his article at the following URL:
n y_of_email.html
http://tribble.dreamhost.com/mirrors/030308-tyran
If you are having a hard time getting to the article at Ole's server, please feel free to use this link instead. Thank you.
SETI@home is actually a fantastic program for "burning in" new machines that aren't ready for prime time yet. In a large server farm composed of several dozen machines, the laws of probability dictate that some piece of hardware is faulty. SETI@home is a great way to let new servers run with a full processor load for a while to see if anything goes wrong before loading the boxes with whatever production code will eventually run on them.
I do agree, though, that setting this up on corporate machines is an amazing waste of time. Then again, so is posting comments on Slashdot from work, but that doesn't seem to stop very many people.