quote:
Originally posted by Puke:
i always liked the molecular analysis program that is akin to SETI@HOME. its sponsored by cisco and intel and friends and uses the same parallel processing technology to search for cures to cancer and other ailments by using peoples CPU cycles to look for matches between different molecules and.. well, whatever the hell they match up with. amino acids or something i would suppose.
the fineprint is that the sponsors rent out a few of the cpu cycles to crunch numbers for corporate financed private research projects, which is a pretty clever way of squeezing some profitibility out of bleeding-heart types. wish i thought of it myself. of course if you get down to the nitty gritty, most cancer research is done by profiteers anyhow, so i guess its hard to draw a line one way or the other.
there are also things like distributed.net and such that use your processor time to crack ungodly long encryption algorythms and to perform other such tasks. there enough projects out there to donate your CPU cycles to that you can pick and choose fairly freely. now if it was just tax deductable..
It's mind-boggling to think of the computing power in the hands of the general public. Look at the numbers on the SETI site and then look at the Users. Only 3.5 million or so and only about 1/2 million really active. There are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PCS OUT THERE... Even all of the known distributed computing projects combined have barely begun to tap this power.
Yes, private enterprise is trying desperately to find ways to exploit this. I think the govt. is too, but they have even more troubles than business. Tampering has been a problem for SETI@HOME all along, and National Security projects are not something you want to hand over to millions of potential hackers.
[ 13 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]