World Community Grid

[joannes3000]

About Us

Our Mission, Our Work and You

World Community Grid's mission is to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.

Our work has developed the technical infrastructure that serves as the grid's foundation for scientific research. Our success depends upon individuals collectively contributing their unused computer time to change the world for the better.

World Community Grid is making technology available only to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of the computer infrastructure required in the absence of a public grid. As part of our commitment to advancing human welfare, all results will be in the public domain and made public to the global research community.

Our Sponsor

IBM Corporation, a leader in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry's most advanced information technologies, has donated the hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build the infrastructure for World Community Grid and provides free hosting, maintenance and support.

How Grid Technology Works

Making a difference has never been easier! Grid technology is simple and safe to use. To start, you register, then download and install a small program or "agent" onto your computer.

When idle, your computer will request data on a specific project from World Community Grid's server. It will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work. Each computation that your computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research!

To learn more about World Community Grid's current research, please link to our Research area.

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Check out the website here. I've had it up and running on my computer for a week, just crunching away data even while I'm typing this message. You can customize how much of your comp's resources are allotted, both while you're active and inactive. Be sure to check out the research link I posted earlier, and if you're interested, I've started a Hawksquawk.net team.

[frosgrim]

what is the security risk for this sort of client running? It seems that a hacker could get into the network and cause major damage. I like the idea a lot, but the security issue is a MAJOR concern for me.

[joannes3000]

From the website:

"There are security risks in every application downloaded from the Internet, period. However, we take security very seriously at World Community Grid. We have a comprehensive system of technology and policies to protect you, your computer, and the data running on it. The measures that we use include, but are not limited to, virus scanning all of our build environments, digitally signing information sent to the World Community Grid Agent, encryption both of locally stored files and files sent to the World Community Grid Agent, and biometric access control to the World Community Grid servers. We do everything we can to keep both the World Community Grid Agent and our server systems as secure as possible."

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In the end, I don't see it as any more of a danger than connecting to various P2P filesharing networks. The only time your computer interacts with the agent is when it is downloading or uploading the packets of information; with the data-crunching phase done wholly offline. I've had the client running for nearly 2 weeks straight with no issues whatsoever.

[joannes3000]

Weekly bump. 17 days of crunching down with no issues.

[DrReality]

Can it help us get a for real GM????

[joannes3000]

Quote:

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Can it help us get a for real GM????

Lol. I don't know if all the computing power in the world could manage that for the Hawks. I saw that we hired Sund today as GM and wasn't terribly moved. Glad we don't have a vacant GM position at the very least.

[joannes3000]

Bump. 32 days and counting.

[joannes3000]

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