Philanthropy Redefined

The world is abuzz - thanks to a huge spew of press releases - about a "philanthropic" effort to "cure cancer". Just download the screen saver, which will cheerfully suck up your spare cycles and get to work eliminating the evil scourge - actually, doing a brute-force chemical interaction model which is one teeny-tiny part of the overall effort to fight cancer. What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.

United Devices is running the effort. All you have to do is download their closed-source, restrictive-licensed client program and install it on your PC (you also have to agree to their website license to even download the program, of course). You take all risks of installing the program - if the program deletes every file on your computer, too bad. If it downloads some kiddie porn and emails [e-mail] confessing to the crime, too bad. And I hope you don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, because their main commercial effort seems to be stress-testing websites for Exodus. You do read those license agreements, don't you?

Here's UD's business model in a nutshell:

"Get people to give us computing power and bandwidth for free and sell it to other people."

A nice gig, if you can get it. UD's primary business is selling computing cycles to corporations. As it turns out, they were having a hard time with the first part of the business model, so they came up with a scheme to get people to install their client: we'll do philanthropic work! And what could be more philanthropic than curing cancer?

Who else can we get on board? How about Intel? They're always willing to sponsor anything that promises to burn a lot of CPU cycles. In fact, they're willing to put up a disgusting website that totally misuses the term "peer-to-peer" to achieve an alliterative buzzphrase.

So, the stage is set. Now, read through the site that UD set up for this effort. Try to find in it any mention of anything other than philanthropy and cancer curing. You won't be able to. Why, you might even start to believe all this client does is work on curing cancer. Now go back to UD's main web site and read through it, noting how your computer will be sold to any corporation willing to pay for it. The task your computer runs is determined by UD, not by you.

Even the cancer research isn't philanthropic in the usual sense. Say that your machine discovers the drug that cures cancer. Who benefits? Well, Oxford University will patent it and sell the rights to produce it at some extortionate price, the name-brand drug will be hideously expensive, and 20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.

That's "philanthropy" in the digital age - agreeing to a restrictive license and running a program which can do anything it wants with your computer system or network including destroying it or committing crimes with it or running up your phone bill, all the while doing free work for a for-profit corporation so that a drug company can get a patent on a life-saving drug and charge outrageous prices to pay back the "research costs".

I think I'll stick with xscreensaver.

The bullshit that Michael spews...

The anti-market screed that was posted seems to ignore several important facts that should be brought to light. An article [yahoo.com] from CNET points out that:

"Oxford will own the intellectual property developed under the program, but the university will license it relatively freely."

That means that the big bad corporate nasty that Micahel is complaining about is Oxford University and the American Cancer Society, not quite in the same league as the evil pharmaceutical companies that can do no good in Michael's eyes. Perhaps he would rather that millions of people continue to suffer and die from cancer for the sake of his cynicism and moral outrage.

Medical research costs money

Here are your choices:

(1) Medical research is required by law to immediately enter the public domain. All for-profit efforts to perform medical research immediately grind to a halt. The cures for cancer, MS, diabetes, AIDS come in 500 years instead of 15 years.

(2) Medical research is patentable. Companies scramble to find cures for all those diseases, because they know they will have proprietary rights to them for 20 years. After the 15 years of research and the 20 years under patent, it enters the public domain.

So, which scenario do you prefer? (1), in which people die for the next 500 years from these diseases? Or (2), in which most get to benefit in 15 years, and the rest in 35? Being that I'll be around 60 in 35 years, I know which one I prefer.

Don't devalue patents. Although the terms may be inappropriate in some fields (20 years for a software patent? Sheesh...), the intent is to increase public knowledge by leveraging free-market demands. It's a good system, and it has been proven to work time and time again.

Kyle

I'll tell you if I ever see one that's not. :)

Allow me to use this response to reply also to the others in this thread who have asked why United Devices does not release the source code to the agent software. After addressing this more general question, I'll try to respond to your other, more specific, statements.

If you are asking why the THINK code is not available...

The primary reason that United Devices does not release the source code to the THINK application is because it is not our code to release. The THINK application is the brainchild of Keith Davies of Treweren Consultants Ltd. and has been developed with the possibility of being released as a commercial product. In acknowledgement of the non-profit motives of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project and in return for the valuable feedback provided by such a massive deployment, Treweren has allowed the use of their code for this project.

If you are asking why none of the code is available...

Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of this issue is the opecodeauth white paper [distributed.net] written by distributed.net's Jeff Lawson (also a United Devices employee). As most are aware, distributed.net only releases 99% of its code, and withholds the critical protocol and buffer format code as a supplement to the security of the system. Until someone solves the dilemma of trusting work performed by an untrusted machine, obscurity will always be a desirable component of any internet-based distributed computing effort.

In the absence of open source, United Devices is relying on other factors to influence the internet community to trust its motives. In the general sense, we hope that the combined SETI@home and distributed.net pedigree might encourage you to trust that we're doing things the right way. In the more specific sense of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project, we trust that the endorsement and support of our partners speaks volumes on the integrity of this project.

The bottom line is, there are a great number of indicators which you should use to evaluate the integrity and sincerity of an organization, for-profit or not. While open source is a virtually unassailable endorsement, it is not the only tool at your disposal as you try to detect if UD is trying to do something illicit. Heck, perhaps it's naive of me, but I like to think that my presence and attention in this forum (and my leet, low user ID #) supplement UD's image in some small, geeky, inconsequential way.

As to your rephrasing of today's exchange on slashdot, I must respectfully disagree. Michael's comments in the article body were far more inflammatory than your simple condensation indicates. Moreover, there was no justification or corroboration for the claims that UD was poised to violate the trust and agreements contained in the description of the project as provided by both Intel and United Devices. The license on the UD software is nothing noteworthy, and is the normal fare for any organization trying to conduct business with the benefit of legal input. I think it's quite clear that Michael's opinion of the project existed prior to his creative and conspiratorial interpretation of the license agreement.

I also think that my response can be more accurately summarized as "No, no, UD can certainly be trusted because it has done nothing to invoke suspicion. Moreover, its founders and core staff have established a respectable reputation and history in the net community, and within slashdot as well, both in the form of distributed.net and SETI@home. If you're going to accuse United Devices of ill intent, you should be prepared to back those accusations with something more substantive than 'it is possible that they are bad'".

You may feel that my response did "little or nothing to address [the questions raised]", but I would argue that my previous response, as well as this one, not to mention the FAQ and information published in relation to this project have provided considerably more supporting evidence and information that we've seen provided by michael to substantiate his accusations in this article. It's hard to provide less support than the "none" that he was satisfied with providing.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond, and for the lucid response to my earlier post.

Where is the main editor/redactor/director/master?

Here we see one thing that /. lacks and refuses to accept: an editorial board. Yes, editorial boards are bad as they are a base for censorship, trade-offs, mob headlines, Pentagon infos and TASS statements...

But having the lack of an editorial board is no better than having a bad one. And besides /. is not obliged to have an editorial board in the traditional sense of the word. I think /. team could think on something original... As usual... and you are good on this.

Really I'm only waiting for the moment X when someone says "enough is enough", sues Rob down to the socks and lows Cmd Taco to deliver boy of tacos/pizzas... One day that will happen.

Sorta like Entropia

Entropia [entropia.com] does a similar thing with "FightAIDSatHome". You have to read kinda carefully to catch this:

Entropia is a for-profit corporation. From time to time Entropia 2000 will run commercial applications for our customers on your computer, then resume work on the non-profit projects of your choice. How much time goes to non-profit research is reflected by our project statistics.

Note that their "project statistics" reflect work to date and there's no hint of the fact that the stats could change drastically once the paying customers line up.

I got nothing against a little Benevolent Self-Interest, but being disingenuous about the set-up strikes me as slimy.

ONCE WE FIND THE ALIENS....

...they will either GIVE us a cure for cancer or blow us to smithereens and take off with all of the oil.

So. I say SETI@Home is the only worthwhile distro computing application.

Re:Wow, enjoy your rant, you moralistic bastard.

Rant, Rant, Karma Whore, Karma Whore. (Oh yay, another moron insulting the editors. That's insightful. Yawn.)

If you want to help, run Folding@Home. It's a much more open process (the results and the license) and stands to benefit us in many ways, not just cancer. (CJD, Mad Cow Disease, is caused by a protein folding into a different shape, and causing a cascade.)

Not everything done by a corporation is evil. Sure, nobody said it was. What is 'evil' is essentially lying to people about what the client is doing. There's an expectation (it's a law as well, just ask AOL who got sued over it.) that if you help someone with something in a volunteer basis, that you will be paid for your efforts if it's a for-profit business. I'll bet their 'license' disclaims this though.

You're just a troll, one who discovered the latest fad. Bash editors, gain karma. It's as old as "You slashdotters as so hypocritical..." or "Microsoft is just misunderstood..."

Oh yes, how horribly, horribly evil!

Let's lynch doctors for wanting a high salary, too!

What, you volunteer at a for-profit hospital? What a sucker you are!

Refuse to help treat cancer, and the world will be a better place!
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Re:Computing power

Patents expire in 20 years. If the cure for cancer is found using this method, it will take 20 years for any patent to expire. It has nothing to do with Moore's law. Please moderate Dillon's mistake down. However, I think academic institutions like Oxford are less prone to patent abuse than if it was a private research company.

Damn...

What a harsh article. Let's see, I had cousin that died of cancer at 32, and my best friend's wife had breast cancer and had to have one of them removed. I think I'll start looking for a cure with my spare cycles.

Would help if I could connect to the freakin' UD server. :(
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folding@home

So I might as well to:

Folding@Home (foldingathome.stanford.edu) is a distributed computing effort to understand protein folding. It will possibly increase our understanding of medicine & nanotechnology. (I'm an idiot, yes, go read the site for more details plz.)

They offer Windows, Linux, & Solaris clients, you can offer to help them with the other OSes they're working on (OSX, OS9, BSD, and IRIX).

You know damn well and good that distributed.net will eventually crack whatever key they're working on. I question the usefulness, technique, and search space of seti@home. Folding@Home has actual implications for us right here, right now. If you don't trust this United Devices people, but you'd like to put your spare CPU cycles to good use, please check out Folding@Home. It has to be better than just "sticking with xscreensaver".

Notes for Windows users: The screen saver is pretty but the console version will run while you're doing work (not just while you're sleeping) with no performance hit (lowest priority possible process). The screen saver also had some stability issues when I first checked it out (1.2something). Supposedly they've been fixed now (1.34) but I haven't had a chance to check on it.

Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057

When is a response not a response?

Wow. A well-constructed, well-written, level-headed response... that unfortunately tells us nothing and is essentially useless. Apparently the intended flow of conversation is,

Poster: UD claims to be doing philanthropic work, but actually, their licensing and legalese appears to give them many options to distort or abrogate the implied responsibilities.
UD employee: No, no, UD can certainly be trusted. After all, we say we can be trusted.
Poster: Oh, then everything's hunk-dory then.

I am put in mind of those old Joe Isuzu commericials.

I don't want to malign UD, who might very well be intending to benefit all humankind out of the goodness of their hearts. But the fact of the matter is, legitimate questions were raised about the apparently shady way things are structured, and this "response" does little or nothing to address them.

As for the kiddie-porn comment, the gist is this: It's not that anyone expects UD to actually do this. It's that the license propagated by UD reserves the right to do, by abnegating any responsibility for what their program does... even though they will not open the source and let the user decided if the code is safe.

STI

I'm running STI, the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence. 500000 cpu years and no luck yet!

Re:STI

I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

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The ratio matters

Depending on the ratio of cpu cycles spent on cancer vs their bank account, I could care very much. Let's say they use 99.9% for themselves and the rest for the research. That qualifies as a scam in my book.

Organizations that trick people into giving to "charities" are one of the world's greater evils in my book, because they eventually turn most people into cynics who look warily upon anyone asking for help.

Bleah.

Err, scientific research is sold.

I'm taking no sides. Nor am I claiming that this is what they do or don't do...

But, most drugs I've seen have public research, and the rights are sold off.... Oxford *is* claiming 'intellectual property' rights on anything that is discovered. So... They publish research results it as a scientific study (as they must if they wish to actually get the drug past the FDA), then they charge some random drug-company through the nose for exclusive rights to their 'intellectual property', which passes on those costs to the people.

While it is true that a lot of academic research used to be public and distributed and used freely, in the modern age of software, thats becoming less and less true... Where is google's codebase? What about the patents Lycos got on their search engine years ago?

Publicly published results != public domain; useable by anyone.

Given this new modern regime, I'd believe the origional author of the rant, barring clear evidence to the contrary. What you've held up as evidence does not pass any such standard; about hte only thing that would would be `we will claim no intellectual property righs upon any discovered drug and any results will be available in the public domain'.. Which I'm not hearing.

(True, I'm not sure that this is a good idea. Without some carrot, who will spend the billion dollars it may take to get a wonder-drug approved for use by humans? An expensive cure is ALWAYS preverable to no cure at all.)

Come on, Editors...

You might want to do some checking before posting stories like this. Here's an excerpt from the United Devices website:

Are you going to sell the results to large pharmaceutical companies?--No. The results of this study are the intellectual property of the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research, who will make the scientific findings of this project available to the greater scientific community.

Are the results going to be made public?--Yes. Prof. Graham Richards' research group, the project coordinators, will publish the results. This group originally designed the project and is currently orchestrating the study. Scientific interpretation of the results from this study will take some time. Results and scientific findings will be published in the usual manner through a peer-reviewed process.

When are you going to publish the results of the Project?--It is hard to tell what will be published with the research still underway, but a mixture of technical and results papers are envisaged over the next 2-3 years.

It would appear that the results of this research are intended to be released to the scientific community at large, rather than ransomed off. It would appear the UD's role in this endeavor was to develop the application and coordinate the data and computation - for which they deserve to be compensated. So what's the problem???

Re:Unfounded accusations!

Having recently gone through a number (3) of patent applications in the past 18 months, I can readily assure you that public disclosure in no way directly implies public domain. As long as a patent application is filed within 12 months (in the US) of initial public disclosure -- including peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations -- the inventors own all rights to the claims covered.

Don't be fooled: if a cure for cancer is discovered, Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research will own the results. Period (depending of course, on the IP negotiations between them which we are not privvy to). I don't know about NFCS, but Oxford will most certainly look to profit from it, by, for example, licensing the rights to a biotech firm who is in a position to manufacture and distribute tons of the stuff, at profit.

-- pz.

Use Folding@Home instead

http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/Cosm/ [stanford.edu]

I'm pretty sure they're clean.

--

so that leaves me where?

Do I still look for ET, or shall I try folding some protens ? Or should I try breaking some useles crypto message, or do I sell my cpu time to someone else for 0.25 a month? I want to do something with my computer when i'm not at home ( no I will not serve up Pr0n for you) but I don't think we can ever trust any person/company that has a lawyer, or even talks to one. So what do I do with it?

________

Re:When is a response not a response?

Poster: Ok, so you've told me that the allegations are unfounded, you've done so in writing (well, almost), this statement will be permanently archived, and you've done so in front of a whole Slashdot-full of witnesses, so I will trust you, but will hold you to your word. If you break your word, your statement will be used to rip you a new asshole.

Poster, cont: However, since we have no proof that you are in fact affiliated in any way with United Devices, and in fact that the /. user who goes by "Uncle Fluffy" is not in fact a 13-yo alligator in the Everglades whose owner is out on the bayou, we have no way of knowing whether ripping *you*, personally, a new asshole will have anything to do with the price of tea in China. Furthermore, the entire /. community collectively sticking out their tongues and saying "Neener, neener, neener" to you will do exactly shit to rectify the outrage felt by anyone who thought their cycles were going to a cancer cure, when in reality they were testing out MBNA's new online credit card application, in the event that UD does, in fact, default on their assurances that they will not use those cycles for anything but cancer, since their licensing argreement does not in any way bind them to it.

I'm not really so much taking sides here, as I enjoy pointing out holes in people's arguments.

Cyclopatra

"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore

United Devices & distributed.net working together

This article at distributed.net DISTRIBUTED.NET AND UNITED DEVICES JOIN FORCES [distributed.net] tells how most of the distributed.net team are now working for United Devices. Not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the scope of UD's future projects. I'm all for a simple distributed client that can handle multiple projects - as long as you can elect which ones you take part in. I'll give United Devices the benefit of the doubt for now.

Somehow I don't see this as philanthropic

As much as I'd like to brag to my friends about how I am personally helping combat cancer, I just don't think that letting someone else use my spare CPU cycles for a noble cause while I sit on my fat ass in the other room watching Star Trek reruns constitutes any sort of humanitarian act. This more accentuated by the fact that there is a for-profit organization behind this. Sorry, but my spare CPC cycles are not to be worshipped.

Er...

Michael, you do know that United Devices hired the distributed.net guys, right?

And David Anderson, the guy behind seti@home?

Isn't it a bit hypocritical to attack them while you're running dnet at the same time?

Unfounded accusations!

http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/faq_proj.htm

The above FAQ completely contradicts what you said, Michael. The results of the study will be made public. The results are the property of the University and the National Foundation for Cancer Research. The results will not be sold.

Why are you slandering them without foundation? Do you really get off on making new enemies? Do you have to create enemies if you cannot actually find them?

Journalisim Redefined

Full disclosure: I'm a United Device employee, a SETI@home enthusiast, distributed computing fanatic, and co-founding board member of distributed.net.

This is certainly an unfortunate editorial, mainly because it's being presented as news. The suspicions and accusations are quite unwarranted. At least now I know why my original submission of this news, with facts instead of rantings, was rejected this morning.

I'm not sure if Michael's bile is targeted at Intel (for their "disgusting" website?) or at United Devices. I doubt he's upset at Oxford University or the National Foundation for Cancer Research, he's certainly thrown them into the mix as well.

The UD/Intel project is a genuine, noble attempt to cure cancer, and to try to spin it as anything else is a misrepresentation of the facts.

If you download the UD agent from the Intel site [intel.com], your cycles will only be used on the Think application. United Devices will not claim any cycles or bandwidth on your machine for any commercial tasks. Users may, at their option, choose to participate in United Devices commercial tasks, and in return they'll be elgible for whatever compensation and remuneration that commercial work brings with it. There are a variety of promotions at present, although none that I'm aware of involve beads. The way I see it, getting paid for a resource I'd otherwise waste is a good deal, no matter what the compensation. Sure beats the alternative.

The speculation about UD's motives for participating in this project are also quite sketchy. I would have hoped that the SETI@home and distributed.net heritage might have given United Devices the benefit of the doubt here, but in case that's not sufficient there are a number of plausible and compelling reasons why United Devices might wish to participate in finding the cure for cancer that don't involve the conspiracy and speculation offered by slashdot.

We anticipate this project quickly growing to become the largest distributed computing project ever. As wildly popular as SETI@home and distributed.net have been, the number of people whose lives have been affected by cancer is daunting. For United Devices, this represents an ideal proof of concept and validation of distributed computing technology.

Intel's arguable misuse of the phrase "peer-to-peer" is, while technically inaccurate, certainly with common usage. United Devices was present, along with all the other commercial distributed computing companies, at the recent O'Reilly Peer to Peer conference where CmdrTaco and Hemos spoke. The "P2P space" is broadly defined at present, mainly because nobody's quite sure how all these quasi-related technologies will take hold in the coming months. Bundled together with Napster, Mojo Nation, Freenet, and even the groove.net folks isn't all that bad a place to be. Regardless, calling this project "P2P" is certainly acceptable current usage of the term. I have no idea how it qualifies as "disgusting".

If you choose not to read the documentation, it's still quite safe to assume that "all this client does is work on curing cancer" because that's indeed what it does. We (at United Devices) hope that some people will choose to also work on other United Devices projects, commercial or not, but we benefit greatly regardless.

I can assure you, the United Devices agent will never download kiddie porn or get you in trouble with the FBI. I feel silly having to explain this, though. I mean, honestly. Is it possible that someone was genuinely worried that this might be the case? As for the rest, I'll let Oxford University's reputation as an honorable and worthy organization and the National Foundation for Cancer Research's endorsement speak for themselves. Oh, that and the fact that Oxford has stated that they'll be making the results of the research available to anyone who wants it.

What an embarassment for slashdot.

PUBLIC DISCLOSURE != FREE PUBLIC USE!!!!

Sorry about the caps lock, but none of the outraged posters here seem to understand that the dedication to public disclosure embraced in the UD FAQ is NOT equivilent to the free public license of the research results. Public disclosure is part of the patent process, and it would be expected that any patentable results of this work would be patented, disclosed, licensed, and turned into drug company profits. The FAQ does a very good job of eluding this reality.

Also, I didn't want to say it, but some of these outraged comments seem a little astroturf, if you know what I mean.

Re:so that leaves me where?

So what do I do with it?

Well, you could always just turn it off. The resulting energy conservation wouldn't go to any corporation, it wouldn't be put towards some point of geeky minutia, and it would do just as much good, if not more, than your machine could do otherwise.

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