> > A week or so back, someone (Manuel? someone else?) said on this mailing
> > list that he was going to get in touch with them about having a NetBSD
> > user port it for them, if they'd agree to send a copy of the source.  I
> 
> Strange ... I thought it was *you* who wanted to contact the SETI crew
> ...

I believe that I first suggested it on the list.  But as I'm not part of
the NetBSD foundation/developers/whatnot, I felt that it was better to let
someone else do it.  If memory serves, someone (I think that it was
Manuel) said that he was contacting them.

(If no one has/will contact them, I'm willing to do so, and offer to
recompile the sources for them on NetBSD/i386, plus whatever
cross-platform NetBSD systems I can readily target.  I did say that
much.  I have not yet contacted SETI@Home, however.  Not yet.)


> > like.  I still like the idea of a distributed render-farm.  (^&
> 
> Maybe we should concentrate on this. Not only that it's the "NetBSD way"
> to create something "unique" instead of just trying to be part of
> whatever the masses just happen to regard as "cool", but also this is a
> thing a particular user can probably really benefit from. (I don't say
> this now because I just got a new network card for one of my boxes and I
> know that it's going to take another 45 mins to compile a new kernel
> with the required driver ... and as far as I remember you also brought
> up the idea of some kind of distributed kernel compiling facility ...

Yeah, there's that too, or distributed package building.  Building
software is more productive; probably there's a deeper CPU-hole for
distributed rendering, though.  Rendering also will probably be easier to
manage.  (It's relatively easy to break the work of rendering image (or
animation!) into many smaller parts and stitch the results together.)

I'm willing to put my spare CPU time on the table for this (PII233MHz,
lots of RAM, many spare cycles---but relatively slow connection).  
Assuming for the moment that this comes to pass, who else is up for
it?  (Or is there already a free, distributed rendering project running
that might be open to having/sharing more spare cycles?)

I know that there are some TCL scripts for distributing POV-Ray rendering.
I don't know how effective they are.  Nor do I know if they are designed
for, say, LAN's (relatively fast, short connections to trusted machines)
as opposed to the Internet.  In any case I don't see much by way of groups
offering free rendering services...


> Thiesi@I.am * Powered by NetBSD! * Amiga: Alive and Kicking!
  ^^^^^^^^^^^

Is that a real address?  It's what comes up as the return address when I
reply, but I'd never heard of a .am address before.


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@rkr.kcnet.com