Reading so much lately about clouds etc. I started thinking a bit about it and remembered something not too unlike – grids.
I remembered how it used to be cool a few years ago to be the part of a huge network of computers that were together contributing to a better cause. So I decided to install BOINC and reactivate my old World Community Grid account.
A tip for Gentoo users:
If you get a SSL connection error, you can solve this by remerging curl with gnutls USE flag disabbled. So just:
echo "net-misc/curl -gnutls" >> /etc/portage/package.use
emerge -1 net-misc/curl
…and after you restart the BOINC daemon it should work just fine.
For now I'm still (only) hanging out on (all) of World Community Grid's projects, but when I find more time I might take a bigger look at what's out there to contribute to and make a better selection. On BOINC's site there's a nice list of projects you can contribute your computing time to.
Hmmmmm, maybe when I'm big and wealthy and will have my own law firm, I'll have a central server/mainframe which will be up 24/7 and by day it would serve the thin clients of the office, while at night crunching numbers in the grid for the public good …I'd like that :]
hook out → late at night hanging out on IRC, reading articles on IT and law, sipping tea and watching my CPU crunch those BOINC tasks