Build Date: Sat Mar 15 11:01:18 2025 UTC
Subliminal messages inserted into Muzak may not work, but they've cranked them up at a couple of local stores in my area. I walk in the door and my head starts to buzz and my skin starts to crawl. Then again, maybe that's just my reaction to American consumer culture.
-- Baron Earl
Out-Geek the Geeks
2001-02-01 22:31:19
First there was distributed.net and their successful attempts to crack encrypted data with the power of thousands of idle CPUs. Then came SETI@HOME, which attempts to find extraterrestrial radio stations using the power of thousands of idle CPUs. Now we have Folding at Home, which attempts to increase our understanding of how proteins self-assemble using, you guessed it, the power of thousands of idle CPUs.
I'm not going to try to explain just what protein folding is or why understanding it is such a hot topic in biological circles. If you're really curious, go to the Folding at Home web site and read their explanation.
What I am going to say is that if you're going to donate your extra CPU cycles to a distributed processing project, why not pick one that is so strangely esoteric that you will completely baffle most people?
I'm not talking about the usual lunkheads that are easily baffable either, the ones who stare at the FAX machine wondering how the paper manages to be both here and somewhere else at the same time, but people who actually understand why breaking low-bit RSA is a worthwhile exercise and how the SETI project needs more CPU cycles. These people are HARD to baffle, and this project is just what you need to confuse and astound them. Aside from a few people who actually read Engines of Creation, no one will understand what it is you're doing with your computer, and that's what's really important, right?
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
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The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
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Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
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In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
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C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Paranoid Strippers & Psychotic Crack Dealers (Tales of Christmas Eve)
Christmas day, for the last 17 or so years has bored me. I find that the real fun and excitement always takes place on Christmas Eve. Every other year, it's the excitement of the metaphorical hunt instead of the kill. Otherwise, it's just plain bad craziness. (More...)
Three Days and 25 Spocktails: A Cautionary Tale
Johnnie Royale picked me up from the dental surgery. I felt warm, safe, cradled in the anathesia's loving embrace. The pharmacy downstairs gave me a bottle of Vicodin and a few instructions: take it with food, don't mix with alcohol, don't operate heavy machinery. I put it in my pocket and we left. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to a bar?" asked Johnnie. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
It's not like I have a heroin problem, see. I'm just a self-indulgent brat who likes to live beyond her means. When I zip down to my corner Money Mart for a little cash-till-payday loan, I'm really not planning to spend it on drugs. I'll spend it on sushi. Seventy bucks of interest for a two-week $400 loan is perfectly reasonable, if you really need that hamachi. (More...)
