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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 14:29:52
Message: <49b6b1a0@news.povray.org>
somebody wrote:
> Drugs will be priced "accordingly" (i.e. outrageously) no matter what.

That's kind of my problem with it. :-)

> Often, it's the case that the cost function is asymmetrical, i.e. it
> may take 20 CPU years to find a solution, a millisecond to verify it. And
> those are the type of problems most suitable for distributed computing
> anyway.

For searches (like SETI, say), it's easiest that when you get a hit, you 
farm the same raw data out to a dozen other people and see if you get the 
same answer back. If not, you stop serving jobs to the guy giving you crap 
answers. If you really need all the answers from all the parts, you do the 
Byzantine General bit. It's a solved problem that just takes more overhead.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 14:57:33
Message: <49b6b81d@news.povray.org>
Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Computers use more electricity while they are in use. But when they are not
> in use (but turned on), they still use electricity, and almost of it could
> be considered "wasted".

  But that "base" power consumption, ie. the minimum amount of electricity
a PC consumes when idle, cannot be utilized eg. for calculations.
Immediately when you start doing calculations, the CPU will start
consuming more energy, and thus basically you are now consuming additional
energy to perform calculations.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: feet1st
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 15:00:00
Message: <web.49b6b793e57dbb08a45f86ff0@news.povray.org>
@"somebody", it wasn't intended to be a challenge. Simply a discussion of some
alternatives to your point of view.

You are absolutely correct that distributed computing projects need failsafes
and checks on results. And, with a volunteer system, these checks don't cost
much to create, enforce, and run. But, if you're out there paying for each and
every result, and then trying to enforce such protections against those
attempting to cheat you out of your 10 bucks, you have a LOT of effort expended
in things that do not contribute to science.

It is inteteresting to note that you trust universities... but not the public
projects initiated by the universities. Rosetta@home and the rice project of
WCG are run by the University of Washington, WCG's clean energy project is run
by Harvard, WCG's conquer cancer project is run by researchers at Ontario
Cancer Institute and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, the WCG
dengue fever project is run by The University of Texas, WCG's Human Proteome
Folding Project is run by New York University, WCG's FightAIDS@Home is run by
The Scripps Research Institute, WCG's AfricanClimate@Home is run by University
of Cape Town, and the WCG Muscular Dystrophy project is a collaboration
launched by AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association), CNRS (French National
Center for Scientific Research) and IBM, Einstein@home is run by the University
of Wisconsin and universities in Germany, Climateprediction.net is run by
Oxford, the researchers at CERN have the LHC project, Docking@home is run by
the University of Deleware, SIMAP is run by the University of Munich...

the question should be WHICH project you will help, not whether or not you
should run a background program on your computer when it's doing nothing else.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php


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From: Saul Luizaga
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 15:36:36
Message: <49b6c144@news.povray.org>
Your doubts are perfectly reasonable, logicals, even I had them 
when I firs saw FightAIDS@Home website, but, those doubts have no bases 
when you refer to the WCG: you project gets evaluated before adding it 
to the grid and I'm sure The WCG has some requirements for a project to 
be valid.

      Besides you can check this yourself, the very first link I posted 
in this thread leads you to the active projects with brief explanation, 
with another click to the detailed explanation and with another one to 
the website of the project, all project have their own website AFAIK. 
There you can see that serious and with a career of trajectory the 
professionals that form a project, sometimes large organizations like 
the Scribbs Institute for FightAIDS@Home project, that excels in 
biomolecular 3D modeling (and other genetic studies, they even have a 
periodic newsletter for free that even I can understand (yeah, I'm 
subscribed)) with patented software DONATED to The Grid to work on the 
WCG client. You don't put 248.879 TeraFLOPS on a dumbass or mediocre 
project, I imagine many complain with WCG that reject their projects.

      That is why I was angry before, because if people would visit the 
links I provided, with a few clicks and 20 mins. tops you could 
self-answer any and all question you can have about WCG projects and 
grid computing.

      Plus, the WCG has DETAILED stats by any criterion (by devices (WCG 
clients), by project, by team, by perior of time, etc.) individual and 
global; profile, device and team managers (configurators). Also 
concluded projects and future additions, each with detailed info about 
the projects.

      At this point you realize that The WCG it's a beautiful place to 
be if you always wanted to be participate in a serious and Humanitarian 
disease-solving projects. I only have 1 PC (P4 HT 3.0 Ghz) but I wish I 
could have another 5 more all doing nothing but running WCG Clients each 
with 4 cores on the CPU at a gozillion Ghz. :-)

      You are right, most people would say no, I tried to get my 
University to participate on it, but they cared little or nothing, no 
WCG was ever installed. At my work some ran it for a few days, but it 
was "too heavy" for P4s, I get to ran it on the File/App Server for 
several months, I haven't received any work unit from it since last 
month, even the server wasn't lagging at all (I installed FreeRAM XP 
Pro, 512 MB DDR2-667), even everyone (11 people) accessed it (DELL 
Server, PC style, no RAID) all day, everyday. Well, at least it was a 
fast Server with Dual Core I got a nice number of results (2-4 per day). 
I ran it also at my work PC and at my home too.

Cheers.


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 18:39:53
Message: <49b6ec38@news.povray.org>
feet1st wrote:
> @"somebody",

In case you are unaware of how newsgroups work: please click the Reply link
on the message you actually want to reply to, not on the last link visible.
This post of yours appears as a reply to Darren New's question about how
compact fluorescent lights warm up.


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 18:47:29
Message: <49b6ee01@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
>   But that "base" power consumption, ie. the minimum amount of electricity
> a PC consumes when idle, cannot be utilized eg. for calculations.
> Immediately when you start doing calculations, the CPU will start
> consuming more energy, and thus basically you are now consuming additional
> energy to perform calculations.

Are you trying to prove using POV-Ray isn't really free? ;-)


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 18:48:51
Message: <49b6ee53@news.povray.org>
Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Are you trying to prove using POV-Ray isn't really free? ;-)

  Nothing is really free in this world. Not even choice or will.
We are all victims of causality.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Mueen Nawaz
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 10 Mar 2009 23:59:42
Message: <49b7372e@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:
>>     Minutes?
>>
>>     I'm not talking about fluorescent tubes...
> 
> I'm talking about things like
> http://www.ipaa.org/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cfl_bulb_mercury3.jpg
> 
> I think it's actually the ballast that has to warm up, not the tube
> itself? Or maybe the mercury has to vaporize?  (The old "Mercury Vapor"
> lights take about 10 or 15 minutes to get fully bright.)

	Yeah - those are the ones. Mine seem to come on within a second.
Perhaps they _do_ get brighter over 10 minutes, but I don't notice it -
they're sufficiently bright when I turn them on.

	Are yours old (as in like a decade)? I only started using them about 6
or so years ago (and frankly, am not sure they're cheaper overall - they
die quicker than expected).

-- 
May your screen live long and phosphor.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl


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From: Mueen Nawaz
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 11 Mar 2009 00:04:22
Message: <49b73846$1@news.povray.org>
feet1st wrote:
> lifetimes to research. For those that believe the government should pay for all
> the research required, I'll just remind you that for every dollar that goes in
> to the government, much of it is consumed in paying interest on debts for past
> grand mistakes and misuse of the money we entrusted them with. It would be MUCH
> more efficient if your dollar went directly to the research of your choice.

	Did you bother reading all of "somebody"'s posts before replying? In
another message (not the one you're replying to), he said:

"In short, just turn off your PC at night and donate part of the savings
to your favourite research. It would probably be more beneficial for all."

	So he's certainly not against donating money. And I snipped some of the
context - but his point was that if all the people running these
software instead donate money to support running a _dedicated_ cluster,
 then the calculations may be more efficient.

	I don't necessarily (dis)agree, and the two aren't mutually exclusive.



-- 
May your screen live long and phosphor.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: World Community Grid
Date: 11 Mar 2009 06:50:21
Message: <kk5fr4te64afl1s967oh25ns7b48f195jh@4ax.com>
On Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:24:18 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>I'd much rather just give the $25 to a homeless person.

That's what I do. At least I know that the homeless person can get a bite to eat
or a drink to help get to sleep.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen


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