Distributed computing is a method of using many computers processor resources together over a network to bring about power that is similar to, or greater than, the power of a conventional super computer. In class we learned about the SETI@home project, which uses peoples computers to search for extraterrestrial life. This was the first time that I had heard of the concept of using people’s home computers in this manner, although I have read about Google’s “cloud computing” data center which uses a concept similar to distributed computing.
Being business minded, I suddenly had a spark go off in my mind, I thought if organizations need my processor then they have to pay me for it, I thought that this would be a great way to earn a little passive income, enough to pay for my coffee habit. I thought that there would be a ton of places capitalizing on this so I Googled it. Sure enough there were many results so I started going through my results and quickly realized that none of them were paying for this service. I also noticed that most of the information that I found was pretty old, from 2001, and that the new stuff was all by volunteer only. I emailed a few places and they all told me that they would pay me if I had 25 or more computers. Since I am a business minded individual, I was not easily discouraged, I searched various combinations of ‘distributed computed’ and ‘earn money’ together. I found a website that seemed promising called ‘ubero.com’ but could not register due to problems with their website. I eventually decided to donate my processing power to a good cause…
I ended up choosing a site called ‘Gstock.com’ they use my processing power to analyze the stock market and decide when the best time is to buy and sell selected stocks. I receive an email every time the status of a stock in my portfolio changes from buy to sell. In the end I hope to make a little bit of money with this system although it is not really passive income, the earning potential is endless. The fact that none of the other sites were paying now seems like a blessing in disguise.
