Okay, this version is much less junky, a lot cleaner. The old one was a mess. I'm embarrassed, and I sincerely apologize if V.1 offended anybody's eyeballs.
Distributed Programming is the main reason I wanted a new computer which has so much speed and memory and raw brute savage power that it is now the envy of every small dental practice and real-estate and insurance agency and small Presbyterian church on Earth. (My brother and S.W.M.B.O. have informed me that they may be buying the Extreme Gamer Alienware 1 Kilowatt red monster that I let Tek Todd talk me out of.)
Anyway, I want to join the Dutch Power Cows and I want STATS! STATS! I'll start with Folding_at_Home, but I'm interested in computing Seventeen_or_Bust -- that's a Pure Math / Number Theory problem that's pretty fucking obscure -- and -- oh Lord this recent explosion in Distributed / Cooperative / Network Computing is tempting me with scores of very interesting projects.
The ones that have captured my attention most startlingly are the ones, like MalariaControl.net , which actually let dweebs like me save lives and cure diseases. Imagine -- teenage boys who SHOULD be wasting 3/5 of their waking lives playing GTA and FPS will actually be saving lives and curing diseases. Cyberspace is evolving in curioser and curioser directions.
But here's BOINC, which has become the global clearing house for all these new Distributed Computing projects, the coordinating center and Big Mother Central of D.C. located at the University of California at Berkeley. (When I was a college kid, all Berkeley students were naked and ate LSD for breakfast. A generation earlier, a little lab at UC Berkeley invented the Atomic Bomb.)
While Tek Todd was installing Vista (stop badmouthing Vista, it works, and pretty smoothly), he demanded that I give my new computer a Name. He caught me by surprise, but I thought real hard, and the name of my new Supercomputer is
Powercow
Oh, the new BOINC logo/poster/t-shirt ... it's pretty simple.
Boys, girls, women, men, sentients of indeterminate gender, yellows, greens, reds, blues, plaids, Walloons, Spanish-speakers, Urdu and Pushtu speakers, English-speakers on itty-bitty Personal Computers all over Planets Earth, Vleeptron, Yobbo, Hoon and Mollyringwald all want to solve an Enormous Question. (See the little ? above each of their heads?)
Each by him/her/itself has no possible chance to Solve The Question. But all automagically linked together through the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing eventually GET THE BIG ANSWER!!! (See the enormous ! at the top?)
So screw big-ass secret government mega-expensive supercomputers. Decent ordinary human beings on budgets Just Do Not Need Them Anymore. We can model Global Climate Change (a very big and wildly popular BBC-sponsored project), and save lives in sub-Saharan Africa from malaria and cure Alzheimer's and Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis and Huntington's Disease by donating the unused idle CPU time on our personal computers. AND we can break bizarrely difficult Prime Number codes. AND we can find world-record humongous new Prime Numbers themselves. And we can microfocus the big-ass new electromagnets in C.E.R.N.'s new particle accellerator which will find the Higgs/Vector Boson.
And get STATS! STATS! Exactly like the big 50-cent video game at the pizza parlor which forever displays DCM as the highest-scoring teenager who ever ever played Alien Death Blaster while waiting for his/her/its pizza.
You know that Sony Playstation PS3 has partnered with Folding_at_Home so every PS3 folds proteins with its superpowerful chips whenever it's powered on but you're not playing Kill 3D Saturn Worms.
So what thrilling and exciting thing have I actually done with Powercow in the week since Tek Todd installed it?
1. I just figured out why the printer wasn't working. The cable was hooked up wrong. The printer works now. I ran into TT downtown a few days ago and thanked him profusely for all his help but told him about the printer. He recommended I buy a new printer. He went to Hampshire College, but he's not so smart. He's the guy who plugged the printer cable in wrong.
How many Hampshire College students does it take to change a light bulb?Nineteen. One to change the bulb and eighteen to make a multi-media videodocumentary of it.
2. I just downloaded Paint.net !!! And it's FABULOUS!!! I've wanted it for YEARS but it wouldn't run under WindowsME (Miserable Excrement). But it hums like a champ under Vista! Stop sending money to Adobe to buy PhotoShop! Paint.net is FREEEEEE!!!
3. My office is now clean enough for me and Powercow. It's so clean you can see large parts of the floor, and I keep the door open, so if Uwe and S. ever come visit again, the door won't be locked with a big
RADIOAKTIV
VERBOTEN
sign on it.
4 comments:
I've seen your office at its worst.
No promises -- usually after one of these Cleaning Episodes I try to keep the place clean. But Order and Tidiness are just not very big aspects of my Astrological sign (Aquarius). So the Big Mess may come back again.
There's something wrong with anyone who believes Order and Tidiness are virtues, and messiness is a vice. These things have utterly nothing to do with Good or Bad or Virtue or Evil.
Cleanliness is next to godliness. I always tidy before the cleaning lady comes.
Cleanliness is next to godliness, and the Public Health Department is grateful to everyone who accepts this virtue.
But Orderliness and Tidiness are not the same as Cleanliness, and they are not virtues, and they may be next to somebody, but I can't believe it's der Herr Lieber Gott. I don't think He cares in the slightest about who's tidy and who's disorderly. He MUST have more important things on His mind.
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