Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects updates for August 24, 2004

[Kirk Pearson]

The following updates are from the Internet-based Distributed Computing
Projects website ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ ). These updates
cover public distributed computing projects (projects in which anyone can
participate).

August 24, 2004

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-human.html#proofreaders )
Distributed Proofreaders processed its 5,000th book on August 21

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-math.html#rieselsieve ) Riesel
Sieve found prime 412717*2^1084409 - 1 (326,446 digits) today. Also, a
new riesel.dat is available today.

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-math.html#nfsnet ) NFSNET began
sieving 11^199 - 1 on August 22

- the ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-math.html#multifactorial )
Search for Multifactorial Primes found prime 173648!18 + 1 (46361 digits)
on August 17

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-lsciences.html#dfolding )
Distributed Folding achieved a best RMSD of 0.24 on its CASP T0227 target.
It released its next protein target, CASP T0277, today.

- official versions 2.9008.492 and 2.9008.493 of the
( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-crypto.html#distributeddotnet )
distributed.net client are available for Mac OSX, Solaris, AmigaOS, NetBSD,
Acorn RISC OS and MorphOS as of August 17. Prerelease version 2.9009.494
is available for many platforms (including 64-bit Solaris for the first
time) as of August 19: this version contains the new GARSP 6.0 core for
OGR-P2. For 64-bit Solaris users, 2.9009.494 is at least 50% faster on
OGR-P2 than previous versions.

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-lsciences.html#foldingathome )
***@home began new P130x projects on August 20. These projects have
work units much larger than the normal size, and users who want to process
them must have hundreds of MB of RAM and be able to transfer 5 MB of data
for each work unit, but they are worth 50% more in the stats. These work
units are also more likely to EARLY_END, but users will get partial credit
for the part of a work unit they complete.

- version 1.24g of the
( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-lsciences.html#findadrug )
Find-a-Drug client is available as of August 19

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-art.html#imp ) IMP completed
job #43 and began job #44 today

- as of August 20, the new
( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-science.html#setiathome )
***@home project is processing backlogged results, getting the alpha/beta
test projects running again, and generating new work units to send out when
the project restarts

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ap-lsciences.html#predictor )
***@home is having problems with FastCGI on Linux (these problems are
preventing the project from running), and would like the help of any FastCGI
experts to resolve them. Please contact them if you can help.

- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/distrib-recent.html#md5crk ) MD5CRK
made its database available yesterday. Links for accessing and viewing the
database are listed in the project entry.

[Martin 53N 1W]

Post by Kirk Pearson
The following updates are from the Internet-based Distributed Computing
Projects website ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/ ). These updates

[...]

Post by Kirk Pearson
- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/distrib-recent.html#md5crk ) MD5CRK
made its database available yesterday. Links for accessing and viewing the
database are listed in the project entry.

Of special interest is:
###
MD5CRK was the first project to enable website owners to configure their
web pages to link to a MD5CRK distributed Java applet. This feature
allowed users to participate in the project just by viewing a web page.
174 websites participated in the project. The project also provided a
standalone client.
###

A very nice idea, but I for one would be rather annoyed about a website
arbitrarily stealing CPU time from the various other background tasks
that I have running.

There is also the significant news of the MD5 collision generation...


Regards,
Martin

[Kirk Pearson]

Hello Martin,

Post by Martin 53N 1W

Post by Kirk Pearson
- ( http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/distrib-recent.html#md5crk ) MD5CRK
made its database available yesterday. Links for accessing and viewing the
database are listed in the project entry.

###
MD5CRK was the first project to enable website owners to configure their
web pages to link to a MD5CRK distributed Java applet. This feature
allowed users to participate in the project just by viewing a web page.
174 websites participated in the project. The project also provided a
standalone client.
###
A very nice idea, but I for one would be rather annoyed about a website
arbitrarily stealing CPU time from the various other background tasks
that I have running.

I didn't mention it, but the applet had a button to allow a user to disable
and enable it, which allowed the user to decide whether or not he or she
wanted it to run on his or her system.

Post by Martin 53N 1W
There is also the significant news of the MD5 collision generation...

I refered to that news in my August 18 update. At the time there were no news
articles to link to, but here is one from August 25 with a good summary of
the discovery and its implications:

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1503863220;fp;16;fpid;0