Participating in Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity

Quote from fspeculator:

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I've finally finished the HowTo at http://www.hyper.net/dc-howto.html

If anyone is considering offering his PCs' idle time to help change the world for the better, I think it'll help you save lots of time (and perhaps even convice those who haven't joined in yet).

:)
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You did a nice job. Congratulations.

One comment: The site is "dense", meaning that you provide way too much information on the home page. Imo, make it one or maybe two more leves deep, so that people are not intimidated or overwhelmed when they see the home page. Also, don't advertise on the (simplified) home page - only when you provide content.

I realize this is an early iteration for you, but imo a sites success is directionally proportional to the ease of browsing it.

nitro
 
Quote from nitro:

You did a nice job. Congratulations.

One comment: The site is "dense", meaning that you provide way too much information on the home page. Imo, make it one or maybe two more leves deep, so that people are not intimidated or overwhelmed when they see the home page.
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Thx for the feedback. I am thinking about adding a "table of contents" and then maybe breaking up some parts and moving them to their own pages.

As for success (=popularity), fun facts:

Looking at the referrer logs just one (1) person visited the page via ET (probably it was you) during the 3 days and five (5) more since I first mentioned it 2 weeks ago.

Apparently this is how the majority goes about this stuff. Mostly indifferent, until some unfortunate wakeup event strikes and then you see people setup 10-20 PC "farms" at home, "crunching for a cure" (judging from what I've read in forums and contributor profiles).
 
DC is becoming more mainstream:

Ten days ago, BBC (UK) sponsored "Climate Change Experiment" was launched and over 80.000 new participants joined it already.

<img src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/images/aboutexperiment_small.gif">

More info at project's URL
http://bbc.cpdn.org/

and
http://bbc.co.uk/climatechange
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4702636.stm

<img src="http://www.climateprediction.net/images/bbc_promo2.jpg">

Total computers running BOINC are increasing with double-digit rates every month, e.g. from 700,000 (Jan06) to 850,000 (Feb06).

PS: I've updated the summary page How-To: Join Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity with latest info.
 
Regarding SETI. It’s better to look for Earth worlds (i.e. “class-M planets”) than aliens who can tweak with radio.

So, is it possible to use distributed computing to find extra-stellar earth-like worlds?
 
sorry for being ignorant on this topic but...


You donate idle CPU time from your own computer so hackers could come in and use your avaiable memory for projects??


How exactly is this safe?
 
Quote from Sam123:

So, is it possible to use distributed computing to find extra-stellar earth-like worlds?
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There isn't any project on "finding new earths", as far as I know. There are some new alpha-test projects, like Stardust, but I'm not familiar with them.

But then, we'd have to solve the problem of transporting outselves there etc before taking the step. So one could argue that physics DC projects like LHC and Einstein have some indirect relevancy (if you fancy an anti-gravity vehicle :) ).

Right now, the most rapidly evolving projects are in life sciences: about understanding and fighting human diseases (cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's etc) and the climate prediction project.
 
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