User Name
Password

Go Back   Planetarion Forums > Non Planetarion Discussions > General Discussions

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Unread 21 Mar 2006, 02:53   #1
DrNick
Land Based Biped
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Moon
Posts: 113
DrNick is infamous around these partsDrNick is infamous around these partsDrNick is infamous around these parts
BBC climate change

HI EVERYBODY!

Appologies for the loud call there but habit preceeds thought in that respect. Anyways I'm running the BBC climate change experiment. The basis of this experiment is to utilise the power of distributed computing, that is use loads of spare joe bloggs computer time to run cpu heavy scientific models, to predict climate change.

I've been running the model for nearly a week solid now on a dual core 4200+ and I'm 4.11% in. This worries me because the deadline for each submission is 1 year from now. After a few quick sums on calculator I figure it will take be roughly 1/3 of a year to complete my model. This is with me leaving my computer on 24/7 and I have a pretty high spec comp.

My problem is that the average person wont have their computer on every hour of every day, or even a third of that. It seems a bit of a fool-hardy experiment. Also the model seems quite random. In the year 1925 most of the northern hemisphere of my model was covered in ice and now in 1927 it seems like it's back to normal. I know their models will be subject to errors i'm not aware of but surely they will be itterating though a set of environmental factors they are unsure of. In this case what kind of models are they running if the world is surrounded in ice one year and blissfully warm the next.

My major problem is that i doubt more than 5% of users who download the program will run it to completion. They don't seems to have anticipated the level of dedication the average user will have in terms of running their models. If i leave my computer on for the next 5 months without using it I will finish my model. Like I said I'm running a dual core 4200+ and I assume that's above average.

I'm not sure what I hope to achieve by posting this but I just had to say that I'm beginning to feel like I'm running a public awareness experiment rather than an actual experiment.
__________________
/me spins
DrNick is offline   Reply With Quote
 


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 14:20.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2002 - 2018