article for Science about distributed computing

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
7,199
128
106
Hi John!

1. GLeeM
2. Gary Maki - guess my middle name :)
3. NE Minnesota
4. Hard Rock (Taconite) Miner
5. PIII laptop, P4 3.0c@3.3, Dual Xeon 1.6@2.5. My kids and I built the two desktops.
6. Recruiting thread on front page almost a year ago.
7. Another way to help humanity! I prefer medical cure projects, family or friends might get what we are looking for a cure for. Some TeAmmates DO have these diseases!
Also, it doesn't make sense to have this computer doing nothing 99% of the time.
I have coded some programs at work, one that did in three minutes what would have taken weeks to do with a keyboard and mouse. So I have an idea of the computing power of a newer PC.

"What does your computer do with the other 99% of its power while you type 120 words per minute or surf the web?"
 

ssvegeta1010

Platinum Member
Nov 13, 2004
2,192
0
0
1. ssvegeta1010

2. Tom Nason

3. New Hampshire, USA

4. Student

5. I use 2 computers. My own laptop, a Mobile P4 @ 3.06 Ghz w/ HT, and my familys desktop, a 2.0 Ghz P4, part time.

6. I recently (December 30, 2004) started running Seventeen or Bust. It basically coincided with my interest in computers (I just really started learning last July). I just saw the links on this site, and picked a project I was interested in.

7. The pay-off for me is that I am doing something useful with my computer time. My taking part in a project to better the community, is the pay-off for me.
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
Moderator
Dec 11, 1999
16,837
4,817
75
Originally posted by: GeoffS
Geeze Ken... he said he only had a couple of pages! :roll:
I think I've been in DC longer than anyone else here. So I had more to say. ;)

And his article is only a couple of pages. If he finds any of that interesting, he can use it, or not.
 

GeoffS

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
11,583
0
71
Originally posted by: Ken_g6
Originally posted by: GeoffS
Geeze Ken... he said he only had a couple of pages! :roll:
I think I've been in DC longer than anyone else here. So I had more to say. ;)

And his article is only a couple of pages. If he finds any of that interesting, he can use it, or not.

:p Just pullin' your leg :p
 

RandomFool

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2001
3,913
0
71
www.loofmodnar.com
1. RandomFool
2. Ryan Taylor
3. RI, USA
4. Student
5. Three, 750 p3 laptop, 1.2ghz duron desktop, 2ghz athlon desktop both built by me!
6. I found them through these forums after seeing it in someone's sig line decided to install seti and ran it for awhile and then stopped after formatting. A few years later i found it again, now i'm alot more active just because I'm a stat hoe and it gives me another place to waste my time...namely here posting random reply.
7. I do it because i figure i'm not using the processor time so it might as well go to a good cause and who knows maybe someday it'll help.
 

natethegreat

Senior member
Dec 5, 2004
899
0
0
1. natethegreat
2. Nathan Ruhlig
3. South Central Minnesota, USA
4. Street/Highway repair
5. Family computer= AMD XP 3200+

6. I found Anandtech while shopping for computer hardware around Dec. of 2004, and quickly became a regular reader of the "general Hardware" and the "CPU/Processors and Overclocking" forums. While reading various threads on these forums I kept reading references to S@H and F@H and became curious as to what these projects were and why people were involved in them. One day I decided to reasearch both projects and was immediately interested in F@H. I have been F@H for TeAm AnandTech since that day:)

7. I was actually excited that I would be able to use my own personal property to possibly make a differece in someones life, even if I never met that someone. Once I joined the TeAm I was immeditely supported by lots of friendly people and impressed by the ammount of active interest in the various DC projects. I would eventually become addicted to the stats and enjoy seeing my contribution quantified as points:D The points made F@H a new hobby for me instead of jsut helping a good cause. To simplify my answer to this question I will say this: To me, DC is fun:D
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,189
529
126
Originally posted by: bohannon
I hope so! Team Anandtech caught my eye because it is listed as having done an unbelievable amount of computing for several projects.

:D:cool:

1.Assimilator1
2.Mark
3.UK,Surrey,Nr Guildford
4.Mechanic
5.2 of my own PCs.XP2400 SDR RAM & XPM @2510MHz DDR RAM.(how much spec do you want here?;)).I also have friends & family run SETI for me too.Totaling about 8 people & about 12 PCs.
6.October 1999 ,after reading about S@H on the Star Trek website, it reminded of it having previously heard about it from BBCs tommorows world over a year before (didnt have the net then).
7.Re S@H ,Its a small way I can contribute to exploring space for new life etc.I'm in it for mankinds ultimate search.stats are secondary but still important.
For the other projects I do its again primarily for the science.
The community here at Team Anandtech is great too :D

I'll expand on the above if you want me too
Btw I think you'll get more answers here than you can deal with! ;)
 

Slatzman

Golden Member
Sep 23, 2002
1,838
0
0
1: Slatzman, aka ta_slatz on several projects

2: Adam Masek

3: Houston TX

4: Chemical Engineer

5: Three computers, a Pent M 1.3 ghz laptop, a P4 3 ghz and a p2 700 mhz

6: Got into Team Anandtech distributed computing from a Seti front page recruiting ad almost three years ago. SETI didn't do it for me so I moved to D2OL, I have since done SOB and now FAD.

7: The payoff is three fold for me, of course there is the doing something for humanity bit, which is of course true for every single one of us, but I am also driven by the human need to win, thus the stats and being on a great team. Lastly is the great team atmosphere around here, it is something that you don't find on a lot of forums.

Slatz
 

GeoffS

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
11,583
0
71
lol... it's only 5:24 here, but what the hell! Our basketball team won its first ever NCAA tourney game yesterday! w00t! :p
 

TAandy

Diamond Member
Oct 24, 2002
3,218
0
0
Originally posted by: GeoffS
lol... it's only 5:24 here, but what the hell! Our basketball team won its first ever NCAA tourney game yesterday! w00t! :p

am or pm?
winning a first tourney game at 5 in the morning is NO bad thing :D
edit:
ps
it's 10 pm here, in case you were wondering :roll:
 

TAandy

Diamond Member
Oct 24, 2002
3,218
0
0
Originally posted by: GeoffS
5pm :p

10pm sounds like happy hour... any pm after 5pm sounds like happy hour! :p

every hour with a bottle is happy :D :beer:
 

Spacehead

Lifer
Jun 2, 2002
13,067
9,858
136
1. Username
Spacehead

2. Real name
Tim

3. Location on earth
PA, USA

4. Occupation
Tool & die manufacturing

5. What kind/how many computers do you use for distributed computing?
Currently 3 at home & i set up SETI on my parents PC too.

6. How and when did you first get involved with distributed computing for scientific projects?
I first read of S@H in a Sky & Telescope article. At the time i wasn't connected to the internet but knew as soon as i was i'd like to try this project out. On January 20, 2001 i registered with S@H.

7. What's the pay-off for you?
There are several "pay-offs":
- Learning about the science of different projects is interesting.
- Learning about computers in general. As a by-product of running DC projects i've learned so much about computers, from small trouble shooting fixes to setting up a home network.
- Almost 3 years ago i joined the AnandTech S@H team & these forums. What a great bunch of people! Some of the friendliest, generous people on the net. If it weren't for DC i probably wouldn't have ever come to this site
- Stats! Watching you team rise in the standing or youself rise within the team standings is alot of fun.
 

mondobyte

Senior member
Jun 28, 2004
918
0
71
First off, welcome to Anandtech John!

1. mondobyte (primary at present), colossus, guardian, Forbin, Candles R US, others ..., Toctamesh, Temujin, Jemuga, etc., ad nauseum. I call myself the Khan of the FaD hordes but that is just because I don't like calling computers cows. (I think cows are much more intelligent than computers)

2. Steven

3. Saint Charles, MO, United States (Across the BIG river from St. Louis)

4. Systems Engineer / Developer

5. I use as many computers I can get access to for any kind of project.

Hmmm ... about 120-150 computers loosely organized into about 3 hordes. Sometimes more, sometimes a bit less. There is the Blue Horde (Illinois), the White Horde (Saint Louis), and the Golden Horde (Saint Charles) plus a few stand-alones. I haven't done a good head count recently but my dc production speaks for itself.

6. I first got involved with United Devices Antrax Project in 2000 Jan 22 after I saw an article on CNN.com. I had several computers running 24x7 and thought it would be a great use for the unused cycles. I've also participated in D2OL (Drug Designer Online), Grid, SETI, FaD (Find-a-Drug) and a few others

7. (I'm plagiarizing here a bit but it fits well) The pay-off for me depends on which projects I'm involved in. For SETI, I have always been fascinated with LGM (little green/gray men) and firmly believe we are not alone in the universe, so if I can contribute to proving that my suspicions are right, I would find that extremely gratifying. For projects like Find-A-Drug I would like to help find cures to diseases and if my crunching can help find a cure for something as terrible as AIDS or Cancer, it would make all of this worth while. I've had many family members and friends die from Cancer and if I can in some way help someone else from having to deal with the pain and suffering of losing someone they love and/or alleviate the pain and suffering of the afflicted person then this is all worth it. I am not so altruistic as to believe that the projects we crunch for won't make a buck or two off our efforts but I hope that the big winner, in the long run, is mankind. I have so many computers that have a reason to run 24x7 but are barely used that it seems such a shame to waste the electricity on just generating useless heat. My overall motivation is some of the examples listed above, but I gotta admit that I'm a stats junkie and I love numbers and pushing computers to their absolute limits. I mean, why let a computer sit idle and waste electricity when you could be contributing to a greater cause!?! When you think about it, DC just make sense!

I also feel that this is one way that I can make a lasting contribution to mankind and, perhaps, make my life a bit more worthwhile while I am here. I do the best I can with what I have. Although I have been a leader on several of the projects, I would be happy making any contribution to them.

Again welcome to Anandtech and I hope we can provide some quality feedback for you :beer:[/quote]

 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
54,889
47
91
www.alienbabeltech.com
Hi John,

Welcome to the AT DC Family and I mean that.

I owe my life to not only the folks here but from many other DC Communities around the world espescially the Netherlands.

I don't want to any more take time up here on it. Just a gentle reminder that it would be a good idea to mention to your readers if they are new to DC that they make sure they have written permission to run DC on any PC's if they do not personally belong to them.

The website that was turned over to me after my ordeal is below in my sig.

I thank God no one has ever had to go through what I did since then and hope that no one ever faces what I did ever in the future.

PS - This thread should be stickied for the Family, Community and Science.
 

winr

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2001
6,081
56
91
Hi bohannon.:D

1.winr

2.Richard Winters

3.Houston, Texas-USA

4.Extended vacation

5.4

6.A couple of years ago I joined seti@home to help TeamAnandtech out.

7.I like the team effort of People all over the world doing something positive together, especially TeamAnandtech members.


:)


 

superkdogg

Senior member
Jul 9, 2004
640
0
0
1. Superkdogg
2.Raider_Zero
3. Central Wisconsin
4. Social Worker
5. 7-9 at any given time
6. About 5 months ago. I had accumulated a decent little fleet of computers and I wanted to contribute their unused time to something since at most 2 of them have a user on them at any given time. I looked up the DC forum here and the rest is history....
7. I love the statistics that people keep. It's incredibly addictive for many of us to see our names climbing various boards and gaining a small amount of undergroundish recognition. It's also nice to know that we're contributing to a worthy project that may someday be remembered as a major breakthrough for mankind. Thirdly, it's a social outlet for some people.

Take a look @ this:
 

amdxborg

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2002
6,790
23
81
Well, I've been putting this off for a while, so here goes...

1. amdxborg
2. Johan Steyn
3. South Africa
4. Pc tech

5. Well, as many as I can find. If they're able to run a dc project, then they do. For me a pc just sitting there doin nothin is just not right! ;) Currently I've got about 100 pcs doin dc.

6. That would be Fri Sep 6 21:24:29 2002 when I registered with SETI@home. I remembered a friend once told me about this in 2000 and I can't remember what got me thinkin about it again, but I joined the AnandTech forums and saw some SETI here somehere and just started running it! Since then I've done more projects like the ones in my sig.

7. Well, firstly I think I like how competitive it all is. Seeing myself and my TeAm move up in the ranks really does it for me! Then comes the friends I make here in the DC forum. Everybody here is really just so great and I've truly met some amazing people here that I'm proud to call my friends! That's why returning to the forum always feels like I'm coming home! The science behind a project it also very important to me and if something good comes from all this then that's awesome! :D