2002 4

Distributed computing grows

Oh, so Sam Palmisano made CEO of IBM. Guess that was expected. He wants to focus on on-demand computing (his word for corporatising distributed computing projects). Shortly, there will be companies creating this [distributed computing] market – focusing on aggregating the retail computing power, and using them across several projects. (Google is already trying to do that through its toolbar, and so is Intel.) – S Anand, 29 Sep 2002 And now, IBM. I was prophetic :-)

Distributed computing projects

Bottomquark’s review of distributed computing projects. What’s striking is that there are commercial distributed projects – where companies pay for the use of your idle time. That’s a powerful concept. Instead of buying computers from a vendor, or even computing time from a vendor, these projects are buying computing time retail. The reason I guess this works is the dis-aggregation of computing time. When I buy a computer, I need its use for about 12 hours a day. But I’m paying for its availability 24 hours a day. Since I have that spare power, I can sell it as long as there’s a liquid market for such power. ...

Distributed.net cracked RC5-64

distributed.net cracked RC5-64. RC5-64 is an encryption algorithm developed by RSA. It took 4 years. It looks long. But the big deal is, the algorithm therefore can’t be used for long-term security. More importantly, it’s becoming practical to use distributed computing on a massive scale.

Daypop is out of disk space

Daypop is out of disk space. Poor thing! Could we lend it some? I mean, could sites like Daypop work out a distributed architecture, using web services? Or using things like space drives? via Scripting News

2001 3

CERN distributed computing

Following SETI, CERN is using distributed computing.

REBOL

REBOL: new file-sharing technology on the rise.

California power crisis is not due to computers

The California power crisis is not due to computers. So distributed projects like Seti@home and RC5 are not to blame.

2000 1

Golem project

The Golem project is rather like SETI@Home, except that your screensaver builds ‘physical locomoting machines’. Neat.