Tuesday 17 April 2012

TPR

Hi Damski ! :)


Damski is a resident genius at TPR, Team Phoenix Rising. TPR are a team of crunchers. That's not a load of people who come and trash your flower bed if you don't pay your bills.


Crunchers are people who use the excess power of their computer(s) as part of a wider internet network, often many thousands of people and sometimes millions, to problem solve. Everyone has a little unused power in their computers.


That can cover a cure for cancer or malaria, climate change, protein synthesis, or a search for evidence of extraterrestrial  life. The concept behind it all is if lots of home computers using their idle time to do a tiny bit of work, an organisation doesn't have to spend millions on a super computer. 


It's free, you can run it in the background when you use it or not at all, and on most computers, and your system can do something useful if you have it switched on. 


It gets a little deeper in that people form teams and communities and compete :) Some people are so into it that they rope in old and otherwise unused computers, or even build them just for the purpose. As an added bonus, people in their teams have forums where they share their hobbies, interests, buy and sell equipment and advise each other. Often they hold events and gatherings.  It's great fun. 


Though I'm not around that much at the mo, I'm into TPR, and I have made some wonderful friends.


The crunching? Seti, and protein folding, which is looking for cures for diseases, a very popular 'crunch' called Folding. On Seti I've racked up about 3,290,000 hours over the years.


Even if you don't crunch, click here at Team Phoenix Rising, register, and feel free to ask any questions of how you can help out.







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