User talk:RobertLutz

HappyCamper 04:58, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Screensaver Project
Thanks for those links at Screensaver Project. One of the things I would really like for Wikiversity would be a system for tracking which pages at Wikiversity get the most page views. Second, I am told that the database for the "search" function only updates once a week' I do not understand the technical limitations, but I am told that it puts too much burden on Wikimedia servers to keep track of page hits. I think there is a similar argument for not doing daily updates of the database that is used for the "search function". Do you think it would be possible to set up some kind of "@home" that would use personal computers to aid Wikiversity? Besides possibly helping track Wikiversity page use and more frequent updates of the database that is used for searches inside Wikiversity, another possible "at home" project would relate to developing learning resources. There is a lot of interest in possibly using computer-generated videos as a major type of learning resource that would be developed by Wikiversity participants working in all topic areas. Maybe there could be a "wikiversity@home" project that would make personal computer CPU cycles available for a queue of movie-rendering jobs being done by Wikiversity participants. What do you think? --JWSchmidt 13:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

You're very welcome for the screensave links. And thank you for the project idea. I'm really enthusiastic about this form of distributed computing. It's a really clever use of computing resources that would otherwise be sitting around idle. And clearly there are lots of worthy causes that require a great deal of computational power. I'd love to help out as much as I can, but right now I'm pretty far down the learning curve when it comes to networking and internet protocols. I suppose that goes for a lot of the people who are involved or will get involved with Wikiversity projects. If you could give me an idea of what is needed, I will see what I can do. --Robert 17:21, 28 August 2006 (UTC)