More news from the Cern Café (link to good site).

Someone on the radio was saying today that The Grid, developed at Cern for work on the Hadron collider, is a new system that can share information 10,000 times faster than the net.

Quote :

whereas the Web is a service for sharing information over the Internet, the Grid is a service for sharing computer power and data storage capacity over the Internet. The Grid goes well beyond simple communication between computers, and aims ultimately to turn the global network of computers into one vast computational resource.

That is the dream. But the reality is that today, the Grid is a "work in progress", with the underlying technology still in a prototype phase, and being developed by hundreds of researchers and software engineers around the world.

The Grid is attracting a lot of interest because its future, even if still uncertain,is potentially revolutionary.

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

I'm no tekkie so have no understanding but surely then each of us would be handing over part of our computers for use by everyone else. Sounds powerful but slightly dodgy as you wouldn't know what was being stored on your computer

I'm a technology lagger.

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

That might be because it's not very new if you're a techie - and particularly if you read New Scientist...I have at least four bits of grid software on my computer - SETI, a climate simulator, and two protein structure calculations.

johnfás wrote:

I'm no tekkie so have no understanding but surely then each of us would be handing over part of our computers for use by everyone else. Sounds powerful but slightly dodgy as you wouldn't know what was being stored on your computer

Good question johnfás: it is already happening on a voluntary basis for some time and I know people donating computer space to various projects, in fact now I come to think about it I am doing so myself.

Here is a link about the type of research projects going on.link

Sadly, I think I also heard the other day about someone in Ireland who is setting up a commercial trading site through which computer capacity (night time or unused) can be sold on.

This development, if it remains mainly on a donation basis, has the potential to speed up research and communications enabling research that could otherwise not possibly have taken place. Climate change is one area to which this applies.

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

That might be because it's not very new if you're a techie - and particularly if you read New Scientist...I have at least four bits of grid software on my computer - SETI, a climate simulator, and two protein structure calculations.

Do you see the Grid as staying as a research tool, or like the Internet moving out into much wider applications?

My CAD package doesn't get on very well with SETI. I have to stop it occasionally. How long have you been running SETI ibis. I think mine is on about 2 years now. Found nothing though that I'm aware of.

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

That might be because it's not very new if you're a techie - and particularly if you read New Scientist...I have at least four bits of grid software on my computer - SETI, a climate simulator, and two protein structure calculations.

Do you see the Grid as staying as a research tool, or like the Internet moving out into much wider applications?

Well, not all applications benefit from being "gridded" - and corporate applications may be commercially sensitive. Having said that, yes, it probably will expand, but take over the Internet...not in the next 5 years anyway. Beyond that I wouldn't venture a guess, although I don't see any major drivers for it...immersive multiperson VR, maybe.

We'll soon be able to calculate the answer to the universe.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

We'll soon be able to calculate the answer to the universe.

Isn't that what they are trying to do in Cern come this May?

Press Release - Reuters

Statement by the Head of Research of Sub Atomic Physics at CERN, Switzerland
9 May 2008 11:08 AM

"42"

----ENDS.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Press Release - Reuters

Statement by the Head of Research of Sub Atomic Physics at CERN, Switzerland
9 May 2008 11:08 AM

"42"

----ENDS.

Ps As far as we can tell and within defined boundaries......

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

I'm more interested in how the post of yours above appears to have been posted before the title post - look at the times...

I've no voluntary grid programs as you call them unless you number linux as one; the OS updates happen extraordinarily quickly compared to the Vista updates - so much so that it's as if the program which intends to come down to my computer is on a hard-drive inside my computer itself, not in America.

We already have programs where I can use YOUR computer as though it was just another drive attached to mine... even though it was halfway around the world. I can even move stuff around on your desktop. Cool eh?

Distributed computing etc..

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

I'm more interested in how the post of yours above appears to have been posted before the title post - look at the times...
I've no voluntary grid programs as you call them unless you number linux as one; the OS updates happen extraordinarily quickly compared to the Vista updates - so much so that it's as if the program which intends to come down to my computer is on a hard-drive inside my computer itself, not in America.

We already have programs where I can use YOUR computer as though it was just another drive attached to mine... even though it was halfway around the world. I can even move stuff around on your desktop. Cool eh?

Distributed computing etc..

Thread must have come down a wormhole, Auditor.

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

That might be because it's not very new if you're a techie - and particularly if you read New Scientist...I have at least four bits of grid software on my computer - SETI, a climate simulator, and two protein structure calculations.

Do you see the Grid as staying as a research tool, or like the Internet moving out into much wider applications?

By "wider applications"... you mean porn, right?

Conor wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Jaysus, I thought one of you tekkies might take a bit of interest in this

That might be because it's not very new if you're a techie - and particularly if you read New Scientist...I have at least four bits of grid software on my computer - SETI, a climate simulator, and two protein structure calculations.

Do you see the Grid as staying as a research tool, or like the Internet moving out into much wider applications?

By "wider applications"... you mean porn, right?

Was not exactly what was on my mind, Conor; perhaps you were confusing ibis's climate simulator with something else.

Article on Morning Ireland this morning (it will be up later) about TV over the internet. If we saw the end of the tv licence inspectors then wouldn't that be good? I'd miss the tv licence inspector ads though.

http://www.rte.ie/news/morningireland/

The grid will be based on IP6 as far as I am aware. Effectively it is a middleware application on top of the internet protocol from a quick glance at their site. This suggests it is one application of the internet rather than a replacement of it to my basic mind.

Did anyone go to see the guy from D-Ream talking in Trinity - I think his name is Professor Brian Cox. He said the talk of creating black-holes at CERN was total boll_ox. He said there almost no chance of that happening. "ALMOST" - WTF???

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

The grid will be based on IP6 as far as I am aware. Effectively it is a middleware application on top of the internet protocol from a quick glance at their site. This suggests it is one application of the internet rather than a replacement of it to my basic mind.

Did anyone go to see the guy from D-Ream talking in Trinity - I think his name is Professor Brian Cox. He said the talk of creating black-holes at CERN was total boll_ox. He said there almost no chance of that happening. "ALMOST" - WTF???

Yes, this seems to be the point that the cautious science groups are making. In terms of risk assessment, it is important to take into account the seriousness of possible impacts as well as the probability of them occurring.