This resource is written by David P. Anderson from the University of California, Berkeley, the original founder of the SETI @home Project (Gomes, 2006) and discusses public-resource computing in more detail. It talks about the benefits of it over grid-computing and goes into more detail about the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) Platform for public-resource computing. Public-resource computing (also known as "global computing", "distributed computing" or "peer-to-peer computing") uses available resources on personal computers to do "scientific supercomputing" (Anderson, 2004). It also has the benefit of "encouraging public awareness of current scientific research". SETI @home, one of the most well known forms of public-resource computing, attracts millions of users worldwide and can provide 70 TeraFLOPS of sustained processing, versus approximately 35 TeraFLOPS from the largest conventional supercomputer (Anderson, 2004). The goals of BOINC include: * Reduce the barriers of entry to public-resource computing. * Share resources among autonomous projects * Support diverse applications * Reward participants There are now a number of projects that use BOINC other then SETI@home. These include: * Predictor@home - studies protein behaviour * Folding @home - studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. * Climateprediction.net - quantifies and reduces uncertainties in long-term climate prediction based on computer simulations. * Einstein@home - detects certain types of gravitational waves, such as those from spinning neutron stars, that can be detected only by using highly selective filtering techniques that require extreme computing power.

By participating in these projects members can feel like they are playing a small part in helping with curing disease, solving global warming, and other world issues. Attracting participants is always a goal of these projects so it's important that these computing programs give no real inconvenience to them. BOINC has a general preference option that allows members to set a number of features including how and when their computer resources are used. This includes "whether BOINC can do work while mouse/keyboard input is active", hours of use, how much disk space can be used, and the network bandwidth. BOINC allows for many different projects to use its systems/setup allowing for smaller research projects to take advantage of the greater computing capabilities. This could potentially in the future help out an unknown research make a global scientific discovery. Anderson, D. (2004). BOINC: A System for Public-Resource Computing and Storage. Retrieved from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1032646.1033223 Gomes, L. (2006). How Many Computers Does It Take to Make Contact with E.T.s? Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115145653496392561-3YTEjOQhd0ZilADHfEf8hoK4BhA_20070628.html?mod=blogs

This article talks about SETI @home's "design and implementation and discuss[es] its relevance to future distributed systems" (Anderson, Cobb, Korpela, Lebofsky, & Werthimer, 2002). The authors of this article are all staff of the University of California, Berkeley, in the space sciences laboratory. The University of California, Berkeley is the home of the SETI @home program. This resource gives a more in depth understanding of how the SETI @home program, in particular how public-resource computing works to aid in the processing of the data. All members of the SETI @home program are initially required to download the client program. This program collects a work unit from the main server, computes a result, returns this result to the main server, then gets another work unit. This article also shows the mathematics behind how this system gives so much computing power, but basically the more client programs computing the work units, the faster the data is processed. The stringent safety precautions are why this system is assured as so safe from malicious attacks from hackers and viruses. There is no communication at all between the various client machines, with each computer talking directly to the main server. As discussed within, for this to work public-resource computing projects need to attract users to their program, and keep them interested in remaining members. SETI @home uses word-of-mouth from its members, referral programs and mass-media news coverage to attract members. The client program can run as either a "GUI application or a screensaver", and runs during what is normally computer idling time which means that the impact on the user is minimal.

According to their 2002 poll the SETI @home user base is heavily dominated by males (93% of all users (Anderson et al., 2002)). This information can help them target market to their users. Some of the user benefits include the use of an online community where members can exchange ideas, and a competitive team/individual scoring system. Research is continuing into how to make this, and other forms, of public-resource computing more reliable and efficient in scientific calculations and discovery. Anderson, D., Cobb, J., Korpela, E., Lebofsky, M., & Werthimer, D. (2002). SETI@home: An Experiment in Public-Resource Computing. Communications of the ACM. 45(11), 56-61. doi: 10.1145/581571.581573

This resource, an article from the Wall Street Journal, is a more current take on the SETI @home project. It can be more easily understood by the average reader and gives a summary of both the history of the SETI @home project, and information on where it stands today. It also discusses further details of "distributed computing". According to this resource, late in the 1990s University of California, Berkeley scientist David P. Anderson thought that the millions of "often-idle computers"(Gomes, 2006) could be better utilised in distributed computing. The idea behind distributed computing is to take a scientific problem, and then share out the computations required to millions of computers. To test this theory, Dr. Anderson chose the SETI project, and set up SETI@home. Although the search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was basically an "attention-getting gimic" (Gomes, 2006), it worked better then expected with almost a million users signing up and downloading the required client. Although there are now many other distributed computing projects available, almost akin to choosing which charity to donate to, many users are still loyal to the original SETI @home project. With their accumulated point system, earned by the number of computing hours donated to the project, users are unwilling to move to another project and lose the points they have earned. The current popularity of this project is shown by the 10,000+ members of the SETI @home facebook page (Facebook, 2011), which also demonstrates how many forms of online collaboration often cross paths. This resource describes the SETI @home project in easy to understand language making it a good introduction to the theory of distributed computing (or public-resource sharing) however some of the information seems to contradict that written on the SETI @home about page.

Facebook. (2011). SETI@home Community. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/search.php?q=seti&init=quick&tas=search_preload&search_first_focus#!/pages/SETIhome/16063264533 Gomes, L. (2006). How Many Computers Does It Take to Make Contact with E.T.s? Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115145653496392561-3YTEjOQhd0ZilADHfEf8hoK4BhA_20070628.html?mod=blogs

This resource is the home page for the SETI @home project. First launched in May 1999, as part of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project, SETI@Home's goal is to "detect intelligent life outside Earth". In 1995, David Gedye had a thought that a virtual supercomputer could be developed by joining a large number of internet-connected computers, and from this he organised the SETI @home project to further explore this idea. This concept is now referred to as public-resource computing (University of California, 2011). The whole concept is based on the idea that there are millions of computers connected to the internet that all have downtime that could be utilised. By joining these computers together, a huge amount of computer processing power is derived, the more users involved, the more power that is available. SETI @home uses the computers to listen for unexpected radio noise. This is done by users downloading a small program (available from this website) to their computers. This program then downloads and analyses radio telescope data. The concept only works though if the user population is high, so the SETI @home website provides a number of user incentives to join the program including message boards, a team system, leaderboards based on a unique point system and general information and news about the project. Public-resource computing, is something that can now be taken further afield. It is a great use of online collaboration, particularly seeing the user input required is small, in return for the processing power gained. University of California. (2011). SETI@home. Retrieved from http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/index.php