Just throwing this out there if anyone is interested.
I'm a member of the World Community Grid (WCG). It is a "charity" type computer grid used to help "crunch" the problems of today. It's like Folding@Home or Seti@Home if you have heard of those. It is supported by IBM and currently they are crunching projects like Help Conquer Cancer, Fight AIDS, Nutritious Rice For The World, Clean Energy, and Discovering Dengue Drug.
It's a small client that runs on your computer and uses your idle computer time to help crunch work units so researchers don't have to pay for expensive super computing time.
I've started a Team on WCG called NicoClub. Please join if you are interested...especially if you have a computer or 2 that you leave on 24 hours a day. Thank of all that electricity it is using and not really being put to good use.
Go to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org and you can read up on it.
If you want to join, (it's free of course), click on this link and when you sign up you'll automatically be added to the Nico team. http://www.worldcommunitygrid....ZVBV1
Spread the word! I've only posted this in the Versa forum since it is really the only forum I use on this site.
Modified by Knightro2 at 12:50 PM 1/30/2009
World Community Grid
Re: World Community Grid (Knightro2)
That sounds great if that is what they are actually working on. But how do I know if I can trust them? How would I know if they are trying to access my banking information? Or even more serious...trying to steal my lengthy collection of forwarded email jokes.
Re: World Community Grid (matt_a)
LOL, you're trust can be with them. IBM has donated staff and hardware. They actually just moved their data center to a new facility with faster hardware to keep up with the demand. It is in a hardened facility. All projects accepted by WCG from researchers are for non-profit only and after they compile all the results it must be made available to the public so other researchers can use it as well.
All communications are initiated by the client. Meaning nothing can get the servers to contact your PC to send information to. All transmissions are encrypted and everything is scanned for viruses and malware (coming from and going to your PC). I've run WCG since 2004 with no problems.
After long conversations with the WCG techs by myself and my network/security engineer at my last shop...we put WCG on all of our training PCs. There were about 200 of them which were rarely used but were left on all the time.
The nice thing about WCG versus going with a SETI@home or a Folding@Home is that WCG doesn't actually run the research. Their only tie to it is they offer certain ones that qualify to the WCG grid volunteers. This means only the projects that meet their criteria (mainly..non-profit and helps humanity) are offered. Once a project is accepted. They work closely with the researchers for that project to make sure their data work units meet their levels of security.
WCG runs the BOINC software which has come to be the industry standard for grid computing. WCG just has their own version which they have hardened a little more in terms of security. So you're safe.
All communications are initiated by the client. Meaning nothing can get the servers to contact your PC to send information to. All transmissions are encrypted and everything is scanned for viruses and malware (coming from and going to your PC). I've run WCG since 2004 with no problems.
After long conversations with the WCG techs by myself and my network/security engineer at my last shop...we put WCG on all of our training PCs. There were about 200 of them which were rarely used but were left on all the time.
The nice thing about WCG versus going with a SETI@home or a Folding@Home is that WCG doesn't actually run the research. Their only tie to it is they offer certain ones that qualify to the WCG grid volunteers. This means only the projects that meet their criteria (mainly..non-profit and helps humanity) are offered. Once a project is accepted. They work closely with the researchers for that project to make sure their data work units meet their levels of security.
WCG runs the BOINC software which has come to be the industry standard for grid computing. WCG just has their own version which they have hardened a little more in terms of security. So you're safe.
Re: World Community Grid (Knightro2)
That sounds really cool. I'm going to do a little reading and look into this.
Re: World Community Grid (Knightro2)
**Updated original post with new URL link for the team.