For the full story HereLabour targets Distributed Computing
Minister warns of surge in computers running 24 hours a day.
Patrick Wintour: Political editor
Thursday March 29, 2007
The government has launched an outspoken attack on the distributed computing community and it's various projects.
Environment Minister Ian Pearson warned yesterday that at the current rate of growth this phenomenon will, by the year 2010 be unsustainable and will have increased the demand on our National Grid by upto one third.
For the time being, said the minister we are hoping participants will be sensible and limit the time these projects run to the normal working day.
Though tougher measures are not expected to be implemented at once it was hinted that if there is not a significant improvement in the situation by the end of the year then further action could be taken.
When pressed for information as to what form this action might take the minister read the following statement.
'As this is a world wide phenomena and most of the projects do not fall within UK jurisdiction we will be looking at limiting team memberships to a maximum of one hundred members. This we feel would even out the competition and encourage the less devoted members to abandon the projects altogether.
As it would be impossible to target individual members we are looking to make team founders responsible for their members actions by encouraging them to limit their activity to eight hours a day.
Fines could be issued to founders unwilling to enforce these rules.
Gary.