SillyDog701

[richard mitnick]

Hey you Aussies, check this out:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/new-he ... -elsd.html

You can form a team, a SillyDog team, or some other team, or hey, you could join my team, HPCTC-CAE.

Whatever, but please take a look.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[iJohnE]

Richard, could you please explain to be what this BIONIC is?

UserAgent: Opera/9.64 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.1.1

[richard mitnick]

John, thanks for asking.

BTW, it is BOINC:

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

Dave Anderson, at the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley, developed the software used for the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, SETI@home. He attracted people to become "crunchers' on the project by putting it up in a really dazzling screen saver. Several Hundred thousand people over time have "crunched" for SETI@home.

You can look at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ProjectPeople to see the list of people who worked on developing the software.

Dave and his team, probably looking for grant money, made ther software package such that any person or group with a project that demanded thousands of hours of data processing time could put their project into BOINC software and get listed at the BOINC web site, http://boinc.berkeley.edu. There are probably about 25 projects, with many more in beta and also alpha stages.

If you visit the BOINC web site, you can look at the projects, got to their home pages, see what might interest you.

If you decide to try it, you download and install a small piece of software, the BOINC agent. Then, you attach to a project or projects. The projects send down a work unit, data to be "crunched". BOINC does not interfere with anytjig else you are doing on your computer. It takes practically no resources. If necessary, it will give up any resources to a more intensive activity you are doing.

Another organization, World Community Grid http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org uses BOINC software for about ten projects listed at their site. WCG is backed by IBM.

You can, if you wish, join an existing team, start a team - John, you could start a team in your school. This stuff is loved by scientifically and computer minded kids in many many schools and colleges.

Every BOINC project has forums in which you can participate.

Each of my Vista machines is crunching on about a dozen projects, mostly the smae projects, but one or two unique to each computer. My PIII is limited to several projects with short work units. My netbook, with the Atom N270 hyperthreaded CPU is a bit more capable. It is twice as fast as the PIII, but one one -eleventh as fast as the Vista machines. I verified these time differences by the time it took each computer to complete the same exact work unit (work units are sent out to m ore than one machine so that there is verification of results.

BOINC runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

This is the single most satisfying thing i have ever done in my computing life. I have contributed to four successful cancer projects. I have contributed to the Large Hadron Collider project for CERN (we run simulations).

The projects are non-profit, at some of the most august institutions and universities around the globe.

Please take a look.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[iJohnE]

So basically Richard, what I am doing is offering up some of my computer resources to help different projects complete work?

That doesn't seem hard to do at all.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2

[richard mitnick]

Hey, John-

Yes. But what you are offering is idle CPU cycles. BOINC never gets in the way of anything else that you are doing.

BOINC is unbelievably cool. The software agent that you install on your computer figures out what your machine is capable of. When you attach to a project or projects, you will only get work units that your machine can successfully complete. It may take a wee bit of time for BOINC to figure out each machine.

Each project to which you are attached will send you "work units" (WU's), which consist of data to be "crunched". Each work unit has a time limitation of a number of days, which can actually be weeks or months. If my Vista machines will process a work unit in 3 days, then my netbook will take 33 days, my PIII 66 days. So, depending on the completion requirement, the Vista machines may get WU's that the others just don't get.

You get credits for each completed work unit.

There are folks building super fast machinery, water-cooled, etc. They will use BOINC to race their machines, the credits achieved being the measure of speed. Most of these guys are fixated on projects under the umbrella of World Community Grid [WCG] ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org ), which has about ten projects of its own, and which uses the BOINC software. If you have a couple of BOINC projects and a couple of WCG projects, BOINC will see WCG as one project. In WCG, you can have four profiles, each profile setting what projects you pick. On my Vista machines, I have a profile for all projects. But on the netbook and the PIII, I use a profile with two projects. You can visit the WCG web site to see what is there. WCG is "powered" by IBM.

You attach to each project independently. You should use the same email address and password for each project. Then, BOINC figures out who you are and assigns a "CPID', cross project identifier. You can then go to sights like BOINC Stats, or BOINC Synergy, or All Project Stats, and see how you are doing. You can get a BOINC icon to display on your web site. There is just no end to how much really cool stuff is going on here.

Why not just give it a try? You can get out any time you wish. Just install the software from http://boinc.berkeley.edu , and pick one or two projects. Visit their web sites. Make sure that they have ongoing work. Some projects quiet down for periods of time.

Most projects have really cool screen savers, which can let you know what's running and how far you have gotten. You can go into BOINC Manager and check Messages to see the current history of what's happening.

For starters, because I know they have work, if you decide to do this, try Docking@home at SETI@home.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you (but, with your skills, you probably will not need anything from me). Let me know how you make out.

Wow- that was a lot of typing!

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[iJohnE]

Yeah, that was a lot of typing.

With my skills? Why I'm honored that you think so highly of myself. I installed the software from http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/. Currently I think I only have one project going, but I will do more research on different projects, and see what I can find. This all seems very cool.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2

[iJohnE]

Okay, currently my projects are:

World Community Gird, Rosetta@home and SETI@home.

I don't know how much they're getting out of my right now, as I have Photoshop CS4, Dreamweaver CS4 and Illustrator CS4 open right now. But they'll be closed soon, and that just leaves Firefox, so there'll be plenty of my Core 2 Duo CPU to go round!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2

[richard mitnick]

John- You are the Man!!

Rosetta is extremely important because other science projects use the software for protein 3-dimensional shapes in folding projects. Protein folding is one of the biggest factors in disease. So, that is a great one for you to run.

SETI is the Big Dog of all projects, about the oldest in the USA ( I did a cancer project from Oxford University befrore I did BOINC and WCG). But, I must say, SETI has the lowest probability of actually finding anything.

Remember that WCG is seen by BOINC as one project, but there are about ten separate projects at WCG. So depending on what you did in your profile, you may want to "weight" WCG a bit higher in BOINC Manager. In my netbook and PIII, where I am running very little, I just left things alone, all weighted at 100. But in my Vista machines, running 10-12 BOINC projects and all WCG projects, I weighted WCG 200. I am happy with that. I get plenty of work for WCG projects, along with the BOINC.

Now, as you gain experience, do things like checking the Messages in BOINC Manager. You can move in and out of projects. If a WU goes past it's expiration date, do not hesitate to kill it (just the WU, not detaching from the project, if you like the project).

You can visit the forums with questions. You can go to http://boincstats.com, and/or http://www.boincsynergy.com, , check your details (wait a few days, for them to synchronize anything you have into one CPID (cross project identifier). You can get a signature bloc to use in forums. At WCG and BOINC, you can get icon images (WCG calls it a widget and you select its features). The more you do, the more you will see that this stuff just kicks ass.

By the time you get back to school, in a couple of weeks, if you are still with it, you will have enough to go asking around to see if anyone in the computer or science areas are already into crunching. You can get a team up, in your school. I started a team for my local religious organization. Lots of folks like a local touchstone.

And, last, don't have any worries that you need to keep the computer clear to do this stuff. Do whatever, BOINC will work it out and not bother you.

Thanks so much. You are helping all of mankind to a better world.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[iJohnE]

I think I may start a SillyDog701 team. I'm going to a completely different school this year, so I'm hoping that there may be people there that do the same.

I'm def going to keep with it, it's so cool to be able to do something, even if it's something as simple as letting a project use my CPU during idle cycles.

As for the weighting, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2

[richard mitnick]

John-

Open BOINC manager by right clicking the icon in the systray.

Select the projects tab. Then, look at the column headed Resource share.

You can adjust the share value.

It is a while since I did it. I think I actually did it in WCG's profile page.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[Antony]

Sorry that I haven't inputted on this thread.

I haven't joined any other distributed computing besides Folding@home. My main iMac is pretty heavily used during the day for all sorts of tasks.

My PlayStation 3 is running Folding@home almost 24/7 (sans the time when I am watching Bluray/DVD). And to be honest, I haven't played a game on PS3 for at least 2+ months.

I am quite interested in contributing to the distributed computing network, as I don't really mind a bit electricity being used (as long as they do not generate too much heat). I really have to re-organise all my computers first.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.13) Gecko/2009073021 Firefox/3.0.13

[richard mitnick]

Hey, Dude-

Folding@home is a totally worthwhile endeavor. No one would ask you to leave it for another process.

My problem with it is that it is just one practice. There is protein research. But there is no cosmology, no physics, no mathematics. We even have an earthquake sensing project at BOINC. It uses the motion sensors in laptops. It picked up the last quake in Los Angeles in seven seconds and sent alerts to emergency organizations.

At WCG, we are doing Nutritious Rice for the World, we are doing Clean Energy.

It is the diversity at BOINC and WCG which make them so attractive.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)