In response to my request for endorsement or other assistance from the U.S. Dept. of Education, Deputy Director Ray Simon (2nd in command) sent me an email which indicates that he has received some clearly inaccurate information from his staff or others who conducted research for him; I am posting that portion of the email that Raymond sent to me, below. Part of that misinformation is no doubt based on a news report about WCG at this link. The inaccurate portion of that article is where it states: "the World Community Grid, an IBM-supported network that senses when private computers are sitting idle, then taps the machines to perform complicated calculations ordinarily performed on expensive supercomputers". Because it states that the 'network' senses when computers are idle, rather than the agent software that the computer is running, it leads one to the logical conclusion expressed in the research opinion provided to Raymond -- "that being always on the internet with an open link to an outside server could open up a computer to hackers or inadvertently support spyware and virus distribution and other nefarious activities." That, of course, is not true as I have ever understood it; rather, a user's computer is linked to another computer ONLY when it is uploading results or downloading a new task, and there is NO WAY for another computer to couple with a user's computer on its own initiative, ... and certainly no 'open connection' is ever maintained. I'd appreciate any professional resource that can confirm and/or document that fact so that I can reply to Raymond. Here is the advice that Raymond received:

****** Excerpt from his email to me ******
Essentially grid computing is a way to link together multiple computers to work on a single large computing task - like running billions of permutations a second of a formula to look for a match, or complex simulations. Typically this involves extremely large tasks that historically required massive supercomputers to do. Astrophysics, weather and medicine are some common areas, and NASA Energy and DOD are each engaged in grid computing.

Because of the increased power and relatively low cost of today's personal computers, it is now possible to link them together to mirror the computing power of these large and costly supercomputers.

Until recently this was done only in academic or research settings, but in the last year or so an increasing number of projects have reached out to schools and the general public to enable the use of the vast amount of idle computer time that is available on these machines. In this scenario, individuals or in some limited cases institutions like schools sign up with a researcher and agree to allow software to run on their machines when they are otherwise idle.

(Follow this link to see a recent story on grid computing in schools and colleges - http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6588).

As you might imagine, this can provide a boon to the researcher, but it could also be abused by unscrupulous individuals. The down side is that being always on the internet with an open link to an outside server could open up a computer to hackers or inadvertently support spyware and virus distribution and other nefarious activities.

As such, I think grid computing is certainly something that schools could make students aware of through a computer science or technology class, but hardly something that, at this point, deserves to be part of the general curriculum. It may also be something they could engage in on a limited basis with their local university for example where trust is already established.

That being said, as technology develops and computer security evolves public participation in grid computing could one day approach the impact that your friend envisions. I would expect we are still several years from that point however.

As far as ED or state interest, I think we are in a 'wait and see' mode and can best benefit by keeping abreast of the results and evolution of this type of computing in the other government agencies mentioned above.
****** End of excerpt from email to me ******

Getting some degree of endorsement or other assistance from the U.S. Dept. of Education would have propelled 'Project 2plus2is4 ' more than any of us probably realize or can appreciate; instead of getting some national exposure and a warm reception in many states based on such an endorsement, it will now be a long hard struggle from state to state. But I am going to try to persuade Raymond to take another look at this. Any advice or suggestions will be appreciated. Meanwhile, I am persisting in my attempts at the state level here in Arkansas.

In a nutshell, it is precisely this type of suspicion caused by misinformation that we see as an obstacle with the U.S. Dept of Education that is also the cause of much of our recruitment problems. Massive education is the obvious solution. If you haven't investigated my project, please do so.

Thanks.

Bill Velek