Hi Mohan (and thread),
Have you seen distributed.net ? (I mentioned it to nihil earlier, but I rarely read the whole thread any more -- it just takes too much time, so I miss a lot and am guessing that you're busy too. ;-)
They make a client program that you install on your machine, and it only runs while the machine is idle. (So you should set your screen saver to the blank screen, to let the client have more cycles.)
Right now they're cracking an encrypted string, as part of a contest. The client receives a number of "blocks" from the server, and then chews through them, and reports the findings back to the server. Very compute-intensive, so there is no added wear and tear to your hard drive.
There are other projects scheduled. The coolest of these is the SETI@Home project, which will take idle computer time around the globe and use it to search for other intelligent globes.
I have three machines (p2s: 333, 350, 450) all spending their idle time thinking for the hive mind. ;-)
They're releasing an API soon with which you can code your own distributed programs. That's great news -- we could make our own neural net stock picking program that runs through the distributed protocol, and if we needed to add more processing power, it's as simple as adding a computer to the network and installing the client!
Not all problems will be solvable with this approach, of course, but it's a big step toward modular computing.
I believe technologies like this will help to sell a lot more computers than anybody is estimating. Computers can help you do more with less, and with a distributed protocol the more computers you have, the faster you can get to your answer.
But this neural net has a simple solution to picking the stock market: just buy Dell. Not to be blind -- but because they have an excellent management team that is negotiating the bumps successfully, and being rewarded for it (every employee getting 200 shares recently). They will help lead us into a new era -- one in which the tools do all the work. I'm happy to ride Mikey's train into that new world.
Enjoy the next couple weeks -- I predict 80 by options expiration, Nov 20.
Cheers,
KenB |
