I have always wondered how much more energy you consume. I agree it's probably less than what CPU/hardware "power-saving" features suggest. Especially when you are using your PC for office/browsing activity, most of the CPU(s) time is wasted.
The big question though is how effective is a project. It's not only about the "most important to humanity". One project might sound less important but it might require much less computation than a project that sounds more important. Just look at ClimatePrediction.com, it takes months to compute a single unit, whereas you can complete several Seti@home or IBM's World Community Grid units in a single day. In a sense, the winner is the project that provides the more benefit to society per CPU cycle spent. My only worry is that the benefit might still be so low that you do more harm than good by using a little extra energy on it...
Boinc is a nice manager software to share your cycles among several projects and even use each CPU core you have. Why doesn't folding@home have a Boinc link? Is it just competition/jealousy between Stanford and Berkeley?
The impact probability does not *have* to increase just because the asteroid moves on and more data is available. There is no reason why the cone has to magically center on Mars so that Mars takes a bigger and bigger part of it. Mars could have as well "moved" outside the cone in the last prediction adjustment. If chances raised to 3.9% that Mars is hit, it is not because "inevitably" Mars consumes more and more of the cone's space. It means that it is truly more likely that Mars is hit according to new data, than expected initially. The initial estimate was just an estimate (as the current one is also an estimate), not something necessarily doomed to grow.
Slashdot Mirror
My granma's spectacles!
Steve Fosset, trying to call 911.
... after the cloud passes by. Hydrogen bad for health.
I have always wondered how much more energy you consume. I agree it's probably less than what CPU/hardware "power-saving" features suggest. Especially when you are using your PC for office/browsing activity, most of the CPU(s) time is wasted. The big question though is how effective is a project. It's not only about the "most important to humanity". One project might sound less important but it might require much less computation than a project that sounds more important. Just look at ClimatePrediction.com, it takes months to compute a single unit, whereas you can complete several Seti@home or IBM's World Community Grid units in a single day. In a sense, the winner is the project that provides the more benefit to society per CPU cycle spent. My only worry is that the benefit might still be so low that you do more harm than good by using a little extra energy on it... Boinc is a nice manager software to share your cycles among several projects and even use each CPU core you have. Why doesn't folding@home have a Boinc link? Is it just competition/jealousy between Stanford and Berkeley?
The impact probability does not *have* to increase just because the asteroid moves on and more data is available. There is no reason why the cone has to magically center on Mars so that Mars takes a bigger and bigger part of it. Mars could have as well "moved" outside the cone in the last prediction adjustment. If chances raised to 3.9% that Mars is hit, it is not because "inevitably" Mars consumes more and more of the cone's space. It means that it is truly more likely that Mars is hit according to new data, than expected initially. The initial estimate was just an estimate (as the current one is also an estimate), not something necessarily doomed to grow.