World Community Grid

The World Community Grid has brought hundreds of thousands of people and millions of computers together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power from users’ PCs. Although the PC will be the minority participant in the networked world, there are millions of them out there and most of them are utilized a very small percentage of the time. Don’t throw any PC’s away — connect them to the World Community Grid, and let your spare computational capacity be deployed toward finding a cure for cancer and other diseases.

Grid computing has been around longer than cloud computing. It joins together many individual computers using the Internet, creating a large system with massive computational power that far surpasses the power of a handful of supercomputers. Because the work is split into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously, research time is reduced from decades to months. It is very easy to get involved in this–its very similar to installing a screensaver. Just visit worldcommunitygrid.org and in a few minutes you will be helping the world. When your PC is idle, the unused computing capacity is used by the World Community Grid to work on difficult computational problems. Here is a list of the projects you can choose from when you donate the idle time of your PC.

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2

The Clean Energy Project – Phase 2

Computing for Clean Water

FightAIDS@Home

Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2

Help Conquer Cancer

Tags: cancer, cloud computing, grid computing, world community grid

Why Not Mailing IRS Forms is a Good Move

Bill Bischoff’s article in the Wall Street Journal, Why Not Mailing Paper Forms is a Dumb IRS Move, misses the mark of common sense. The IRS plans to save $10 million a year in printing and mailing costs by not filling our mailboxes with forms that more than 90% of us will not use. Mr. Bischoff acknowledges that only about 8% of tax returns are self-prepared on paper, as the rest are prepared by professionals or filed electronically.  His concern is that 11 million taxpayers will be “left out in the cold” with no forms. He feels it is unreasonable that the IRS advises people to get any forms they may need online at irs.gov. For those with no computer or Internet access they can call the IRS at 800-829-3676 and get all the forms they want. If they would like to use the Internet to do their taxes but have no access they can visit their local library. Almost 100% of academic, public, and school libraries in the U.S. are connected to the Internet and available for public access. I did not anticipate that I would be defending the IRS, but how can we complain about government deficits and spending, and then turn around and complain when an agency tries to save taxpayer money? Mr. Bischoff should look for something more constructive to write about.

Tags: filing, forms, internet, irs, library, paper, tax return

patrickWeb Store – Books John has read

I have been experimenting with the Amazon aStore and decided to add books that I have read. After I complete a book, I will add it to the patrickWeb aStore so to make it easy for followers of my blog to buy books I have enjoyed, if they choose to. The first book I will add is Bill Bryson’s At Home. Like all Bryson books, it is extraordinary. Bryson takes you on a tour of his home in England room by room–living room, dining room, basement, kitchen, etc. and in each room he delves deeply into the history of things. For example, reading the dining room chapter you end up learning about the history of food, cooking, servants, and many other things in incredible detail just like all his books. I can highly recommend this latest one. Feel free to visit the patrickWeb aStore and take a look. Feedback welcome.

Tags: amazon, astore, book, books, bryson, john patrick

SIIA Conference – Buzz on the Panels

John Blossom took pictures and notes at the SIIA Conference last week. He did a really good job at it! If you want to get more insight to what some really smart panelists had to say, you can get it at John’s Buzz. He covered two panels.
Jim Kollegger’s panel
CEO Outlook: Winning the Platform Wars – Betting on the Next Digital Wave

John Patrick’s panel
Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target


Other patrickWeb conference related stories

Tags: adobe, bloomberg, broadband, elsevier, fcc, flash, Healthcare, html5, IBM, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, Jim Kollegger, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, time magazine, WiFi