Re: ::scr Seti@Home & Global Warming

[Simon Wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 11:54:01AM +0100, Dave Turner said:
> Is someone good at maths?  I was just wondering if it's possible to
> work out how energy consumption has been 'wasted' on the Seti@Home
> project?  There's a lot of computers out there that never idle,
> continually sucking up electricity and leading to depletion of
> various fuel resources.


Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design list are interested in this sort of
thing.

>From their about page ...

"Why does every Viridian Note end with those O=c=O marks?"

Those are carbon dioxide molecules. They're meant to remind us that the
Internet still runs on fossil fuels. The fossil fuel vice is so deeply
embedded that even our email discussions haplessly contribute to the
Greenhouse Effect. The reminder helps keep us focussed on our central
concern: we're wrecking the sky.

                            - http://www.viridiandesign.org/About.htm



Some of those sigs can be seen here 
http://www.mcelhearn.com/viridian.html :

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
MY EMAIL BURNS OIL AND DAMAGES YOUR CLIMATE 
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

The Seti@Home principle has just been applied to a new MIT initiative
called ThinkCycle ...

http://www.thinkcycle.org/

The logo of which is eerily similar to Earle's Viridian design ...

http://www.downlode.org/viridian/index.html
http://www.downlode.org/viridian/switchplate.html

(for various values of similar) which proves that there is a circle of
life. Hakuma Matata and all that.

I also notice that Sony has conveniently cranked up the ol' overhype
machine for the vapourware PS3 which will apparently will use some sort
of distributed 'Grid' computing to make it 6 Gazillion times faster than
anything else on the market and also able to make your tea and bath the
children.


Distributed computing is a very lazy, inefficent way of doing massive
calculations and only works as long as there's only few calculations
being done.

Cheap though.


-- 
: it's not the heat, it's the humanity