Sep 01

Do you boinc?

No, BOINCing isn’t some kind of weird dance move, rather it’s not even a verb at all. Boinc or Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is something I’ve been using for a while now. I first saw it at a lanparty where SETI@HOME was running on someone’s PC. Basically you download a piece of information that needs to be processed, your CPU does the computing and sends it back to the server. So stuff that takes months or even years to get processed by one computer is split into little pieces and massive amounts of computers around the globe all compute their little piece of the puzzle simultaneously. All this is done through BOINC, the software in charge of managing all this.

BOINC

BOINC

So far I contribute to World Community Grid, SETI@HOME and Einstein@Home. I think two to three projects is enough when you have a dual-core processor. If you’ve got a Playstation 3 you can do some computing as well. To be honest I have no idea if it really helps computing for one of those big projects but I guess it doesn’t hurt to donate some of your CPU time to it when it’s just sitting there being idle anyways.

One thing I like about having my CPU run at around 85% usage all the time is the heat, I don’t need to turn on a stove or anything, my laptop heats up my room enough even when there’s a window open. So, since the temperature isn’t as high as 25°C anymore I can finally restart using BOINC.

If you’ve got a computer which is idling a lot, you should give it a try, makes you feel like a better person when you’re contributing to cure cancer or fight AIDS.

UPDATE: I just stumbled upon this article, it gives a short list of BOINC projects and what their cause is.

Aug 29

Quick and EZ money with IMReportCard

As a long time member of bux.to (I signed up somewhere at the end of 2007 or so) and having a cashout pending for over a year now I was really losing faith in all those sites that promise you easy money for doing little to nothing. Then someone on the vbGore forum posted a thread about IMReportcard, a fairly new site that pays people to write comments on reviews made by their editors. I’ve signed up 3 days ago and already reached the $20 cashout minimum today. So I cashed out a few hours ago and the payment arrived just a few minutes ago. That’ s what I call impressive!

Here’s some payment proof (click to enlarge):

Payment Proof Payment Proof 2

That’s some cool stuff, I’m gonna use that site more ;) if you like to give it a shot, why don’t you sign up with my referral link?

If you’ve got any questions about this site, just post in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

Aug 28

Microsoft, stop being stupid

What do I read now? “Microsoft to force MSN Messengers users to upgrade to Windows Live Messenger 2009”. Why?! First of all, WLM2009 sucks in comparison to WLM8.5, the layout sucks, the mem usage sucks, I could go on forever.

It’s already annoying enough to have to say no to the upgrade, every week I get some annoying dialog box with “New version available” and only options are download now or remind me in a week… Why a week? Hell, why no remind me in a thousand years or just don’t remind me anymore? What’s with Microsoft and forcing people to upgrade stuff, and annoy people who could care less of upgrading?

The same has happened to Windows XP users, you want DirectX 10 (and Halo 2)? Go buy Vista (or Windows 7 soon). I don’t get it, all these measures to force people to buy new Microsoft products or upgrade existing and perfectly working software. Haven’t they learned that the more you force people to do something, the more resistance you’ll get? If I’m forced to upgrade the messenger I am sure to be looking for a crack so I can continue using 8.5 instead of version 14.

Another Microfail thing is their browser comparison, just take a look at it, it’s completely subjective. They make IE8 look like it’s the God of webbrowsers. Firefox and Chrome are just puny little browsers with crap compatibility and ease of use. Wrong, MS, wrong! They’ve just slapped the whole opensource community in the face by publicizing that page. Way to get people against you MS, congratulations!