Terry's Guide
to Internet Distributed
Computing Activites


The World as a Computer


One of the newest phemomena of the Internet is the growth of distributed computing. There are an increasing number of projects to harness the surplus cpu cycles of computers through out the world. This page is a listing of the ones I know about in the order I found them.


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Distributed.Net

The first distributed comuting project that I found. It was started in 1997 as a way of showing how useless allowable encryption codes limits were, by showing how easy they are to crack.

Since then it has had a number of similar projects/competitions where the winning team gets a bit of the prize money and the rest goes to a computing related charity.

I was participating in the RC5 contest, but stopped when purpose built cracking machines started to appear, as I could not see the point of using a generic computer, when purpose built stuff would obviously be faster.


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Seti@Home

Started in 1998 to harness the unused cpu cycles to process radio signals picked up in space as a search for extraterrestial intelligent life.

Yep, the obvious response is would any intelligent extraterrestrial life really want to communicate with us after viewing a couple of centries electromagnetic pollution of space with radio, tv and other assorted transmissions? However, as at 6/6/2000, 2,056,599 people are processing data for this project.

I've also documented a number of linux clients and hardware, that the linux Setiathome client has trouble working properly on. The Seti@Home technical team are aware of the page, but are unable to explain the problem, so if you join and your linux client has problems, you are not alone {:-).


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Casino 21 Climate Model

Funny, Seti@Home can get piles of cash and hardware to search for extraterrestials but a project to look at problems closer to home is still struggling to get started. Hmm, the nimby effect is global!.

Essentially, these people hope to use distributed computing to run global weather simulations and thus predict the weather. There is a clear to follow explanation on the top of the webpage. Don't be put off from the scientific summary at the bottom of the webpage. This seems the most real world useful distributed computing project that I've yet found and I will be very happy when they start.

Perhaps a touch of greenhouse warming that catostrophically affects food supplies to developed nations might clearly show the need for this to get going.


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Other Commercial One

Somewhere I've come across a commercial distributed computing project and filed the URL in a "safe" place. Well, it doesn't seem that way at first reading, but it does become clear that these guys expect the projects they carry out computing for to pay them for the efforts and they in turn will distribute a few trinkets to the natives in return.

The second thing that really pissed me off about these jerks is that their first project was to calculate shielding requirements for nuclear fusion reactors, but they said it was for a safer environmental project to study gamma radiation shielding.

So if you are a gullible redneck, you might be interested in these guys.


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ProcessTree

These people are another commercial company distributing trinkets to the natives, but they also seem to have pyramid scheme on the go that pays you benefits for recruiting other people, but not if you or they spam.

So, if you click on their URL above, I'm listed as the referring agent. Drop in some time for a jelly bean as I've asked for a cheque for my work {:-).

I'm not however planning to retire as these guys don't have any projects on the go at the moment and you don't have to be too good at mathematics to realise that you are most probably going to be paying more for computers, electricity, internet access, etc than these guys are going to pay out.

I might change my mind when the cheques/checks start rolling in {:-), but at this stage I'm more inclined to support non-profit activities as I know I'm going to be paying for everything anyway and that no-one is getting an exhorbitant wage from my efforts.

In years to come, the distributed style of computing may be seriously considered by companies as an alternative to in-house machinery, but I think the lack of ethics generally displayed by managers and corporations throughout the world will always mean that you and I will only ever get trinkets and not a reasonable living income.


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Mersenne

Phrakman gave me GIMPs - Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, which lead me to Mersenne in general. If your interest is matters mathematical, then this will interest you as it lists a number of distributed computing projects, mostly mathematical, but also a few crypto projects as well, and some others. So, if none of the above interest you, perhaps one there will.


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Information on other projects are most welcome.
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