Projects

Another thing that I need to mention sooner or later is regarding software projects I am running; namely I am talking about the so-called DC projects in particular (where "DC" stands for Distributed Computing project); click over to this website: http://www.distributedcomputing.info that nicely list most (if not all) projects, current and past ones. Distributed computing is a technique which tries to solve problems by splitting the task between different computers (usually its volunteer-based); when each such sub-task is solved, the results/solutions are gathered and compiled together to provide the answer to the original problem. The thing is that most computers use only between 5% and 10% of their CPU capacity with the rest of the time CPU sitting idle. If you are running Windows operating-system, open the Task Manager program and see for yourself. In general, typical participation in most of them involves downloading and installing a client programs on your home/business or whatever computer. This client programs then fetches WUs from a centralized server. Once the WU is processed by the client machine, the result is then returned to the server in exchange for a new Work Unit. But the most important thing is that distributed computing projects are designed to harvest only the unused CPU-cycles to perform the mentioned useful computational tasks, i.e. they do their work only when the computer's CPU is IDLE (in other words, they make use of the so-called IDLE CPU-cycles), i.e. when computer doesn't use almost any power at all, so they have no impact on overall system's performance whatsoever. Oh, and also see the Distributed-Computing.doc (which is a nicely-written proposal that you can make to your boss, your company in general etc.), and Folding-FAQ.pdf files with even more info related to all this distributed computing stuff.

First one is a BeWeS MouseTracker, which is a small program that keeps track of your mouse actions (like the distance your arrow travels across your screen, the amount of mouse clicks and in the future probably other actions too), and which is not actually a "real" DC project in the strict sense of the meaning of this phrase. It's too a community-oriented project (similar to the actual DC projects, see below), i.e. you need to create an account (and there are also groups, teams etc.), there are statistics, and similarly you need to send the results to a central server (the results being centimeters/meters of mouse-movements and left/right clicks) etc. The total team distance was 17488 km 574 m 25 cm on late afternoon on 27.2.05.

The main BeWeS MouseTracker project site: http://bmt.bewes.be, the crucials with listed Countries: http://bmt.bewes.be/stats/country, then main Users statisics page: http://bmt.bewes.be/stats/users and Teams statisics page: http://bmt.bewes.be/stats/teams, but also see the statistics page for my first-ever account, now used by friend of mine (user-name is satyr): http://bmt.bewes.be/stats/users/5872, my actual-current account (user-name is shirker): http://bmt.bewes.be/stats/users/5876, the statistic page of our Ars Technica team Ars Technica Team Fried Mice): http://bmt.bewes.be/stats/teams/148, and finally our team's own homepage: http://www.vankalker.no-ip.com/ars.

Then the second one is a Berkeley's SETI@Home DC project software (btw., I started participating in this one first), that I am running on my single-user computer. Its main priciple is that it calculates "through" the work-units that you download from SETI server, work-units contain signals gathered with the radio-telescope located in Arecibo Radio Observatory. Note that the SETI acronym stands for "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence", and guess what - @Home stands for at Home.

The absolutely main SETI@Home project site: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu, the Boinc website of SETI@Home "future going-on": http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu, and the main Boinc website (the principle is more DC projects in one software package): http://boinc.berkeley.edu. Here is the main-site of our group (I am listed as user with name Tadej~): http://uros.homeip.net/seti, and the statistic of our group (how many work-units were processed by who): http://uros.homeip.net/seti/statistika.php. Btw., I'm really not sure if I should say "team" (and not a group), but it is surely true that all users send results, i.e. processed work-units with the same e-mail address.

The third one is a Just For Fun software's GIMPS DC project. It is more or less the same as SAH and FAH projects in its basic principle, but it doesn't calculate the data gathered with radio-telescope or study proteins' folding simulations, but it rather hunts the numbers called "Mersenne primes". Additionally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $100,000 award to the first person or group to discover a ten million-digit prime number; if you find such a prime with the software provided, the award will be distributed to you according to the rules. Sounds great, doesn't it??

The absolutely main GIMPS project site: http://www.mersenne.org, then the second main page: http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm, the page explaining the prize: http://www.mersenne.org/prize.htm, the forum: http://www.mersenneforum.org, and the page with a good description of Mersenne primes: http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/mersenne.shtml, then the main GIMPS project page: http://www.teamprimerib.com/rr1 at the ArsFoodCourt site: http://www.arsfoodcourt.com, and finally various pages with my own stats: http://www.teamprimerib.com/rr1/bin/current_user.php?u=shirker, http://www.teamprimerib.com/rr1/bin/current_id.php?id=shirker_ai13.

A Mersenne prime is a prime of the form 2P-1, while the first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127, etc. There are only 40 known Mersenne primes. Prime numbers have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians. An integer greater than one is called a prime number if its only divisors are one and itself. The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. For example, the number 10 is not prime because it is divisible by 2 and 5. GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, was formed in January 1996 to discover new world-record-size Mersenne primes; and it found eight Mersenne primes already. Mersenne numbers can be proved composite (not prime) by either finding a factor or by running a Lucas-Lehmer primality test. GIMPS harnesses the power of thousands of small computers like yours to search for these "needles in a haystack"; all you need is a personal computer, patience, and a lot of luck.

And the fourt one is a Stanford's Folding@Home DC project software. It is more or less same as SETI project, although it doesn't calculate data gathered with radio-telescope in search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, but it rather studies complex proteins in theory and simulations of how proteins, RNA, and nanoscale synthetic polymers fold, reporting on the folding of proteins on the microsecond timescale, including BBA5, the villin headpiece, Trp Cage, among others. The project-staff has put a great effort into studying proteins relevant for diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Hunntington's, and Osteogenesis Imperfecta etc.

The absolutely main Folding@Home project site: http://folding.stanford.edu, main statistic page: http://folding.stanford.edu/stats.html, main "teams statistic" page: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teamstats.

Check this graph that represents number of active Folding@Home CPUs: http://folding.stanford.edu/FAHactiveCPUsMay2004.gif, as you can clearly see, the number increased dramaticly from year 2002 to 2005. While here is a link to my personal statistic page (for my nick/account shirker): http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=shirker&teamnum=14 (or the statistic page: http://kakaostats.com/usum.php?u=726882 on "Kakaostats" portal), a quick link to page with statistics of Ars Technica Team Egg Roll (team number is 14): http://vspx27.stanford.edu/teamstats/team14.html, a non-quick link to page with statistics of our Ars Technica Team Egg Roll team: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=14 (or the statistic page: http://kakaostats.com/t.php?t=14 on "Kakaostats"), and finally a homepage of our Ars Technica Team Egg Roll team: http://www.teameggroll.com, http://ter.arsfoodcourt.com. And well, it happened once on my friend's computer that the Client.cfg file was somehow modified, so he (we) folded also few WUs for the account with nick y. It probably occured, when I started the service for the first time with "-config" or "-configonly" (or whatever switch it is), or when I was reconfiguring it later. If started that way, you need to enter few things, for instance, you need to choose between yes or no for "asknet" setting and that's probably why the "y" letter. http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=y&teamnum=14.

Then another Folding@Home account's personal statistic page (nick/account is satyr_CCSP): http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=satyr_CCSP&teamnum=35586 (the statistic page: http://kakaostats.com/usum.php?u=752805 on "Kakaostats"), then same as above, here is also a quick link to page with statistics of our CastleCops ComputerCops Team (team number is 35586): http://vspx27.stanford.edu/teamstats/team35586.html (and again, here: http://kakaostats.com/t.php?t=35586 is also the statistic page on "Kakaostats"), and finally a non-quick link to page with statistics of CastleCops ComputerCops Team: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=35586. But also see the "certs" page with my personal certificates of completed WUs and collected.

WIKIPEDIA AND FORUMS PROJECTS

Well, and to mention these few things *somewhere* at all, I will just do it right here. As first let me inform you, that I am a so-called Wikipedian, i.e. I am a proud member of and a contributor to the Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia project, which means the "original" Wiki and its various clones. Here are the links to my "user-page on those where my user and account name is "Wayfarer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wayfarer (also visit the "My contributions" page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Wayfarer), http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Wayfarer, http://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uporabnik:Wayfarer, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=User:Wayfarer. But on some of these Wiki-type sites I use a nick "Satyr-wayfarer" because my nick-name on the Mozillazine, Lost In The Box, and CastleCops forums is "satyr", while as mentioned above, on all the other Wikis it's Wayfarer, so I've simply combined/merged the two names. Here are the links to my "User pages" on these more or less software-related Wiki-sites: http://wiki.castlecops.com/User:Satyr-wayfarer, http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/User:Satyr-wayfarer, http://wiki.bb4win.org/wiki/User:Satyr-wayfarer, http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Satyr-wayfarer, http://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php/User:Satyr. Further, here is a link to an HTML-document with links to all my contributions made so far: http://esnips.com/doc/ca9afeef-b628-4f89-a834-be200204ca8b/wikipedia.htm, while additonally also check out these few links to pages with articles that I've edited so far, listed separately and sorted by date. The first one was the TP Systems, Inc. page, that I've created myself, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP_Systems%2C_Inc., then the second one was just a minor edit of the Data integrity page, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_integrity, and the next one created by me, was an Arachnophillia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnophillia page, then another edit (not a minor one though) was an edit of Off By One: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_By_One page, and the next page created by me was a DNSKong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSKong page, and finally the last two edits, first the String (computer science): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_string_%28computer_science%29 page, and as second the Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website one. But note that these few links above pointing to articles at Wikipedia are just few of my very first contributions; for a complete list of them, rather see the "wikipedia.html" document (link is above) with all the contributions/entries nicely listed. It includes entries on the main "Wikipedia" and "Wikinews" sites both in English), as well as the contributions on Slovenian "Wikipedija" and few other things, like for instance my contributions for the SourceWatch wiki-clone website, and finally many links to various pages with my comments on IMDb, Kuro5hin, Slashdot and others.

And as second, I need to mention that I am a registered user on many computing/software/internet related forums. But on the very beginning of this section; two important notes regarding the "style" of my writing. As first, I write verbose because my mother-language is not English, and in my opinion for you to understand me better (or at all), it's better to say more than less. And as second, I put my nick below each of posts, because in my opinion in this way the posts look nicer; the last line of the post is clearly visible. OK, back to topic; I will first mention the category GENERAL SYSTEM FORUMS: and as the most important board in this category, I announce that I am a happy and proud member of the best techy-forum ever, an Ars Technica forum (with more than 3300 posts posted currently and many if not most of them in the threads I opened), then Winforums (more than 560 posts currently), CastleCops, formerly ComputerCops (more than 430 posts posted and additionally 1 news submitted/approved, 1 software-review approved/posted, see CastleCops AntiVir PE Review here:  http://castlecops.com/reviews-241.html, and finally 4 programs submitted/uploaded), Broadband Reports (or also called Dsl Reports forum; more than 70 posts at the moment), Computing, TechiWarehouse, Cyber Tech Help, The Geek Culture, Hydrogenaudio, Digital Point (more than 40 posts), Freewebspace, MSFN-forum, WindowsIT Pro forums etc. Next are PRIVACY AND SECURITY FORUMS: a support forums like Wilderssecurity (currently more than 150 posts), Gladiator-antivirus, Antionline, Net-Integration, Spywareinfo and AllNetTools forums. Then there are SINGLE SOFTWARE FORUMS: like for example Soulseek (more than 200 posts with main tayiper account, and 10, 30 and 40 posts with other three accounts with nicks "Cicero_13", "MuSiC_Freak", and "ten-ten"), Dirms (more than 40 posts currently), Winamp, BSPlayer, CrystalPlayer, YahooPOPs, FreeDOS, Adaware and Sygate, Outpost and ZoneAlarm software-firewall support forums. And finally SOFTWARE AUTHORS FORUMS: so forums like Sysinternals (more than 80 posts currently) Mozillazine, Loose-Screws (more than 200 posts currently, recently moved to new server and now called Lost In The Box forum), Pertinax-Securitysoftware, Meesoft, LiveWireDev, Whitsoftdev, Bitsum-Collake and so on and on.

On most of the boards/forums I use the nick "satyr", except for the Ars Technica (and few others) where my nick is "shirker", and Wilderssecurity (and few others) where it is "stalker". Other nicks that I also use (or have used) are "tayiper", "soever", "wayfarer", "tayi177" and "tayi137". Yeah, and actually I am registered to almost 100 separate forums all together, but in the paragraphs above I mentioned only those where I posted at least 10-20 or more posts. So yes, there are many other forums with less than 10 posts posted my be, that aren't listed here. Generally to find my posts on various forums, you can for example search with Google for words like for instance: "Ars Technica, Winforums, Wilderssecurity, or Computercops", and then search for posts from a particular user (in this particular case that "particular user" is me), click on the "collection2.html" file by clicking on this link here: /script/collection2.html (I am not sure if this file is still on the server), or alternatively choose the "forum-posts-1.htm" and/or "forum-posts-2.htm" options in the "OPEN or GET" drop-down/pull-down menu script (it's located under "SOME OF UNSORTED COOL STUFF/SITES" section under the The "drop-down box" menu sub-section) on the "diverse.html" page.