Comments on: Yochai Benkler: Open-source economics

By: Paladin

Paladin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:36:01 +0000

Sorry, links weren’t posted as i expected, just go to boincstats.com , see the full list of projects, select a few that seem interesting and active, and check out the minimum requirements.

By: Paladin

Paladin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:22:20 +0000

MikeMemory requirements vary with the project, it was not a boinc problem. Most of the projects have minimum requirements posted, visit the site and check them.For example, i have an old P3 with 256 MB RAM that runs Debian and is used as a router and printserver, and it crunches happily WCG’s Help Conquer Cancer project. But there are others much more memory intensive.See [link:http://boincstats.com/index.php?list=full&or=0%5Dhere%5B/link%5D and [link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Distributed_computing_projects%5Dhere%5B/link%5D lists with most of the projects.

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:10:32 +0000

Mike, I’d say it’s a mixed bag on improvement. The PS3 needs rebooting; the Mac doesn’t. I don’t know whether the difference is in platform or project, since they’re running different ones.

By: Mike Haubrich, FCD

Mike Haubrich, FCD — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:45:48 +0000

Paladin -I used the BOINC software/screen saver for a long time to run calculations for a project measuring proteome folding, and was happy to lend a hand for it; the problem was that the resources were so memory intensive that I often had to re-boot my pc in order to come out of it. Unless they have improved it, I am hesitant to load it again.One of the things I feel a bit guilty about is that I leave my computers running so that they can perform their maintenance routines while I am not using the computer (a good concept for a Mac Vs PC commercial?) and I would like to at least have it be productive.Let me know if BOINC has been fixed.

By: Paladin

Paladin — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:43:34 +0000

He mentions seti@home as a supercomputer, but actually seti is less than half the total BOINC projects. And there are over a hundred distributed computing projects.Greg, since you like open source and news about robots so much, i’m surprised that you don’t mention BOINC more often. Since there are only a few million computers participating, from the estimated total of over two billions computers connected to the internet, the distributed computing projects could always use a little more publicity.I haven’t found a project that’s directly related to anthropology, but you could try looking at MindModeling@home or ArtificialInteligence@home. Hope you post something about the boinc system and some projects.