[lit-ideas] Re: This is actually the link I intended to send first...

  • From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 19:40:03 -0700

Well... 256 KB of RAM is really old.

To use them for the Stanford project, you only need to connect them to the web. But... an old computer probably won't have a network card in it. It probably uses an modem, which means a dialup connection. And that means the computer is simply too slow. In theory, it would work, but in practice, it'd be slow. And you'd have to buy network cards, etc.

So... just throw them away. They have zero value.

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com


----- Original Message ----- From: <JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 9:32 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: This is actually the link I intended to send first...


I have a couple old computers  that are repairable but I don't want to  put
the money/energy into them to fix them -- they have low memory (256K), I  think
and small fixed disks.  The article implied that older computers that  are
not currently very functional for today's software could be used. Is that  the
case?  If I wanted to donate one to this medical project how would I go  about
it?

I'll take a look at the Stanford link.

Julie Krueger

========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: This is actually
the link I intended to send  first...  Date: 6/5/06 12:40:01 A.M. Central
Daylight Time  From: _andreas@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx)   To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:
From: <JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx>

_Click here: Researcher looks to PCs for medical cures - Yahoo! News_ 

Yes, that works. It's possible to take a task, break it up into  smaller
tasks, and then use
tens of thousands of volunteer computers to  solve the task. The computers do
this when
they're not doing anything else.  For example, when a screensaver comes up,
the computer
switches in the  background to the task and works on it.

This is called distributed  computering.

I've been participating in the SETI project since 1999. It  was the first
distributed
computering project.

Often at various  dotcoms, I set all of the computers to the SETI project, so
at night, when
everyone went home, the entire dotcom's computers were working on the
problem.

I just checked my account; it shows 23,286 hours of computer  time.

Google is sponsoring a project to process the gene folding problem.  Various
universities are
sponsoring distributed computering projects.  See
http://folding.stanford.edu/  There's a
very good FAQ  there.

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com


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