For great justice

November 4, 2007 3:08 PM

Do you have a computer? Do you sometimes use less than 100% of your computer's resources? Does human suffering and death irk you? If you answered 'Yes' or 'Meh' to the above questions, join World Community Grid and Team Metafilter!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 to MetaFilter-Related at 3:08 PM (33 comments total)

Sorry, my computer's looking for aliens. Priorities.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 3:12 PM on November 4, 2007 [5 favorites]

Really, my computer's looking for porn. Priorities.
posted by jonmc at 3:17 PM on November 4, 2007 [3 favorites]

Does human suffering and death irk you?

Which humans?
posted by dhammond at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2007 [5 favorites]

Those first three answers are why I love this place.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:25 PM on November 4, 2007 [7 favorites]

Wow, team metafilter is weak. Jumped over anyway. Goodbye team TribalWar, maybe I'll come back to your team if they ever make a decent tribes game again.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:25 PM on November 4, 2007

So how much do they pay me for this?
posted by blue_beetle at 3:28 PM on November 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

In case anyone is wondering about performance, I haven't noticed any performance problems even with a heavy WoW addiction and constant torrent use. This project is for a good cause, so you should sign up if you can.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:55 PM on November 4, 2007

"Message
The page you requested is currently unavailable because the statistics are being updated.
The statistics update will finish in about 21:49 minutes."

It does seem like they need a little extra capacity...
posted by AwkwardPause at 4:25 PM on November 4, 2007

Hey, thanks for posting this, East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94. I've been wanting to join one of these efforts since first hearing about them, and you have handily provided me not only with an effortless way to do it but also with another opportunity to say "East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94," which, as we know, is my raison d'etre.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:32 PM on November 4, 2007

or
posted by jmd82 at 4:35 PM on November 4, 2007

I've been donating my spare cycles to BOINC for quite a while now; it's another distributed-volunteer-computing broker. (I'm not sure how it compares to WCG, though my immediate impression is that BOINC spends comparitively more effort on actual computation instead of displaying stock photos of African children.)
posted by hattifattener at 4:40 PM on November 4, 2007

Sorry, I'd rather not have my computer's fan be going at full blast all of the time.
posted by zsazsa at 4:40 PM on November 4, 2007

Is there any way to do this without giving them my name and email address? I don't see any reason they would need this information and the privacy policy appears to allow them to share it with anyone they want. I've had bad experience in the past with non-profit spam.
posted by scottreynen at 4:46 PM on November 4, 2007

Scott, they don't ask for your name. "Member name" is like a username. I'm confident they won't spam, but you can always make a throwaway Gmail account or something.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:54 PM on November 4, 2007

Scratch that, you don't even need to give a genuine email address.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:04 PM on November 4, 2007

hattifattener, WGC uses BOINC.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:05 PM on November 4, 2007

The page is down! That's so lame.
posted by thirteenkiller at 5:11 PM on November 4, 2007

I've been donating my spare cycles to BOINC for quite a while now; it's another distributed-volunteer-computing broker.

This system acutally runs on BOINC too- BOINC is a generic framework for writing distributed computing applications, a library for developers to make projects, not a project itself. I've spent many, many hours working with the BOINC code and setting up systems like this. Whether or not each individual application uses CPU while your system is busy kinda depends on whether the app writer did his job right, but I expect all these are fine.
posted by gsteff at 5:13 PM on November 4, 2007 [2 favorites]

Thanks EMRJKC. I guess I was reading more suspiciously than carefully after the initial "download now" link didn't fulfill its promise. Mailinator.com worked fine, so they can send whatever spam they want there.

Unfortunately the software doesn't seem to behave very well on my computer (OS X 10.5), and since I rely on my computer for my livelihood, I don't think I can risk using it. Specifically it sucked up every CPU cycle available, forcing my fan to run full blast and even interfering with its own interface process so I couldn't even get the "manager" to come up to see if there's any way to throttle it. Even force quitting was difficult because the various independent processes kept restarting each other. Sorry, I'm not doing this.
posted by scottreynen at 5:25 PM on November 4, 2007

That sounds lame. The Windows version works fine for me.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:29 PM on November 4, 2007

So is there a MeFi Team for Folding@Home?
posted by IndigoRain at 6:09 PM on November 4, 2007

Ah, thank you, Manitoba, gsteff — I didn't know that WGC uses BOINC.
posted by hattifattener at 7:19 PM on November 4, 2007

You know, if my macbook pro didn't get hot enough to cook eggs sometimes already, I might sign up for one of these things.
posted by blacklite at 8:24 PM on November 4, 2007

another opportunity to say "East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94," which, as we know, is my raison d'etre.

Are you trying to steal my schtick, FelliniBlank? Don't make me add you to the Undesirables List....
posted by dersins at 11:17 PM on November 4, 2007

Sorry, dersins. Maybe we need to have a Team Compulsive East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 Sayers.

Also, scottreynen, did you try changing your preferences? The BOINC defaults are to use as much processor as is available and to run all the time, but you have lots of other options. I've got mine using no more than 40% and only when the machine has been idle for more than a minute.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:54 AM on November 5, 2007

So is there a MeFi Team for Folding@Home?

aye
posted by jmd82 at 6:51 AM on November 5, 2007

I think it's interesting how the top scoring teams in these contests are always from computer enthusiast groups and websites, who probably don't care about the problem, but just want to show off how bad-ass their computers are :P
posted by delmoi at 7:45 AM on November 5, 2007

I've joined the F@H group as my Team 0 is doing well enough not to miss me, I think...
posted by benzo8 at 10:42 AM on November 5, 2007

I suppose it was time I updated BOINC anyway. You get a third of my idle time...I'm also looking for aliens and gravitational waves (no MeFi teams for seti@home or einstein@home?).
posted by solotoro at 11:05 AM on November 5, 2007

*boinc boinc boinc*

I just like saying boink ..er.. boinc.
posted by deborah at 11:18 AM on November 5, 2007

I do einstein@home via boinc. I'd join a mefi team for that project if there were one.

... Okay, I just created one. Join away!

boinc boinc boinc
posted by hattifattener at 7:58 PM on November 5, 2007

Joined!

boinc boinc boinc
posted by solotoro at 10:50 AM on November 6, 2007

Hmmm - joining a new F@H team wipes your personal statistics too. That's crap.
posted by benzo8 at 10:01 PM on November 6, 2007