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Distributed computing has many real-world applications. In this section you
will learn how distributed computing can be used to solve tough mathematical
problems, create 3-dimensional movies, and search for extraterrestrial life.
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SETI@home is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence at home. Using
the world’s largest radio telescope, three servers, and two million users,
the SETI@home project hopes to listen-in on some alien signals.
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The RC5-64 project is similar to searching for a needle in a haystack —
removing hay piece by piece until the needle is found. Users’ computers
process blocks of encrypted data, hoping to find the one key that will
unlock the encrypted message.
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Huge prime numbers are the bounty of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime
Search. The search has been going on for four years now, and each year a
record-breaking prime is found. Discover what makes Mersenne primes so
special and why people are eager to find them.
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Golomb Rulers. Find out how Golomb rulers are quickly become staples in the
mathematical world after only having been in existence for less than fifty
years!
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While companies can get processing power for free from interested users,
that may change if distributed computing goes commercial. Read about some
start-up companies that hope to create a new business industry using d.c.,
and how you could get paid for your CPU cycles.
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Tired of waiting for a website to load? Wonder how some websites load very
quickly while others seem to take forever? Find out about content delivery,
the new distributed computing way for slow, graphics-filled websites to
become as quick as their static counterparts.
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Learn about the various ways distributed computing can be used in
mathematics, and how distributed computing is helping to prove some
mathematicians of the past right (or wrong!).
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There are numerous new projects on the horizon. Someday distributed
computing projects may help save the world- read about new projects to find
out more.
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