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Fun(?) Data Processing Tasks.
Topic Started: Aug 8 2011, 01:05 PM (144 Views)
Fwiss Aug 8 2011, 01:05 PM Post #1
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Sandopolis Act 1
 Recently I've realized that I'm either too lazy to turn off my computer or it is running some kind of torrent that takes days. I now have about 4 computers of my own. One is high-end, another is pretty average, and the other 2 are fairly weak. I usually keep 2 or three of these computers on at one time. This means I usually use my computer only around 20 percent of the time it is on. So what would I do? Add a power-saving plan? Take literally 30 seconds a day at most to turn the computer on and off? NO! That's not what a real American would do!
So I figured out a few things I needed done, did a bit of research, and a few years later, I have a list! These are a few tasks you can set your weak offline computer to do; if you have a stronger computer in your home and you're away for a few days, these may also work for you.

1. Convert video or audio to a better or more preferred format. Good software for this is ffmpeg (or a frontend for ffmpeg such as WinFF) for video and freac for audio. Many media players (such as VideoLAN) support converting video or audio formats along with streaming. If you have FLAC or WAV files that you want to convert, you can convert to OGG or the less preferable MP3 format for a loss of sound quality. You could also convert your video to a lower resolution or bitrate, since many videos are set to a resolution much higher than your computer needs.

2. 'Recover' a password. I won't mention specific software, but password auditing puts your computer to a very demanding use. You could also help out with the distributed hash cracking project.

3. Run a server. If you have any projects or papers you'd like others to see, you could create an HTTP or FTP server. Getting a domain name is easy, and you can use your own computer and internet connection for hosting! (Keep in mind usual upload speeds are significantly slower than usual download speeds.) Keeping flash drives got confusing for me, so I set one up.

4. Contribute to a distributed processing project! You can't go wrong with helping out a distributed project. There are many out there, and some of them are medical and scientific! Your processing power could help find a disease cure or the next scientific breakthrough!

ffmpeg: http://www.ffmpeg.org/
WinFF: http://winff.org/
fre:ac: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonkenc/
VideoLAN: http://www.videolan.org/
Distributed Hash Cracking Project: http://www.freerainbowtables.com/
Apache HTTP Server: http://httpd.apache.org/
FileZilla FTP Server: http://filezilla-project.org/
List of distributed computing projects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

Also, what do you guys like to do with your old or idle computers?
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