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by Jared Richardson.
Original Post: Do Computers Dream?
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The web site was created after the launch of the book "Ship It!" and discusses issues from Continuous Integration to web hosting providers.
If they do, these guys may have figured out what they dream about! ElectricSheep.org. Electric Sheep is a really cool screen saver that's been around for a while, but I finally saw it in action this week. It looked incredible, and then when I heard more of the story behind it, I had to install it. :)
I've shown it to a few people and everyone has been impressed. Several have already installed it themselves! So what's the big deal?
Electric Sheep is more than just a screen saver. Here's a blurb from their website:
Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver run by thousands of people all over the world. It can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep", the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience.
Wow! Each computer running the screen saver helps to compute the next generation! So instead of running some CPU intensive OpenGL screensaver that won't render smoothly on your lowly video card, you run MPEGs! And you only have to generate a fraction of what you display.
So you get a free, open source even, gorgeuos screen saver that's also a distributed application. How cool is that? It may not be quite as useful as participating in some of the other distributed applications... but still it's very cool to watch!
Check out their samples page even if you don't plan on participating and picture this image, rotating and morphing, as ~your~ screensaver.
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