Donate your extra CPU cycles to a worthy cause!
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distributed.net started in 1997 as a project whose purpose was to win a
series of contests sponsored by RSA Data Security Inc., to crack their RC5
encryption by brute-force methods. These contests were meant to show
governments of nations such as the United States, who limit exports or
use of cryptography, that the standards allowed are too weak for general
use.
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Since this time, distributed.net has changed their focus from solely
cracking RSA's RC5 and DES projects to working on more diverse
distributed computing problems.
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The ongoing projects are RC5-72 and Optimal Golomb Rulers (25-mark), the
latter of which has practical applications in science. There are also a
number of other projects which are either periodic or upcoming. You may
choose which project you wish to participate in.
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By installing this package, unused CPU cycles on your computer will be used
to work on cracking the code. There should be no noticeable slowdown of
your system, since the client runs niced, and only uses CPU time when
your computer would otherwise be idle.
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For more information, see http://www.distributed.net/
