THE game may be up for people who cheat in “distributed computing” projects,
in which computer owners donate or sell their surplus computer time. Projects
like this include the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), where
participants use their PCs to hunt for intelligent radio transmissions from
outer space.
SETI was the first large-scale distributed-computing project, and it relies
solely on volunteers. But in the past few years, companies have been racing to
capitalise on the idea, paying participants in proportion to the computer
downtime they donate. Instead of searching for ET, these companies tackle giant
number-crunching problems such as identifying…
