pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) (11/09/88)
I've been thinging about how many CPU cycles the worm used in its
short but sweet rampage. People have been tossing around the number
6000 for systems infected. (Where did this number come from?) Let's
say these machines averaged 2 MIPS each, and wildly guess that the
average length of infection was a day. That comes out to (kachunk
kachunk) one quadrillion instructions. This may well be the most CPU
power expended so far on a single problem.
Now, if we could harness that kind of power for useful work... Imagine
a net-wide distributed ray-tracing service. If you want something traced,
you send the NFF to a central clearinghouse. All over the net, people
start ray tracing servers when they leave for the day. These servers
connect up to the clearinghouse and fetch the scene description, and a
list of pixels to trace. By morning, hundreds of scenes have been traced
and returned to their senders. (Close your mouth, you're drooling.)
By the way, I spent Sunday doing the PostScript artwork for a worm
t-shirt. Anyone interested in ordering one?
---
Jef
Jef Poskanzer jef@rtsg.ee.lbl.gov ...well!pokey
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" -- Ronald Reagandesnoyer@Apple.COM (Peter Desnoyers) (11/10/88)
In article <7600@well.UUCP> pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) writes: > [estimate of CPU cycles used by virus] > >Now, if we could harness that kind of power for useful work... Already been done. DEC just factored a huge number this way in the last month or two. Made the papers and everything. Peter Desnoyers
clb@loci.UUCP (Charles Brunow) (11/11/88)
In article <7600@well.UUCP>, pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) writes: > I've been thinging about how many CPU cycles the worm used in its > short but sweet rampage. How about the bandwidth, time lost and disk space used by all the chatter? I haven't seen any new ideas in at least 100 postings and it's beginning to look like a conspiracy to bring all computers to their knees with volume. Isn't this the kind of drivel that moderating groups was supposed to cure? -- CLBrunow - KA5SOF clb@loci.uucp, loci@csccat.uucp, loci@killer.dallas.tx.us Loci Products, POB 833846-131, Richardson, Texas 75083