Here's the latest email from this project:

Hello


You're receiving this email because you've pre-registered for an account on the DepSpid project site.
I'm happy to announce that the alpha phase of the project started yesterday and you'll be soon one of the alpha testers, too. You'll receive an account email from the server as soon as your account is created. This email contains the account key which is needed to log into your account and set the account password. Once you've set the password for your account, you'll be able to attach to the project with your BOINC clients.



You may already have participated in many BOINC projects but this project is very different in many ways as it doesn't depend much on cpu time but on network (internet) time.
If you have not done it already, please read the rules and policies at http://depspid.bjoernhenke.de/rules.php and don't participate if you can't accept them.


Here are a few things which are different from other projects and need additional attention from the testers:

1) As stated before, the DepSpid project doesn't depend on cpu time but on network (internet) time. Please read the following forum post http://www.bjoernhenke.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=375 and don't forget to recognize the bold note under phase two.

2) As a result of the internet based kind of the DepSpid project, the DepSpid application needs connection to the internet. If you're using a personal firewall you'll have to give the DepSpid application access to the internet. Depending on the type of the personal firewall used, this may be either an easy or a hard task. Please share your experiences with personal firewalls in the DepSpid message boards (no matter if it was an easy or a hard task for you). The current version of the DepSpid application doesn't support non-transparent proxys. If you're using a non-transparent proxy, please post in the message boards what happens after the DepSpid task has been started (this is unsure at the moment) and stop DepSpid from getting additional tasks. Proxy support will be introduced in one of the next versions.

3) The special kind of the DepSpid project leads to a special kind of credit system, too. You can read more about it here: http://www.bjoernhenke.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=374.

4) DepSpid uses phpBB for the message boards instead of the BOINC message board system. This currently requires to create an additional phpBB account for postings. Solutions to get phpBB and BOINC to work together will be made in the future.

4) DepSpid uses PerlBOINC instead of the default BOINC server system and runs under windows. Many thanks to Rytis Slatkevičius for his great work at PerlBOINC. DepSpid uses a modified version of PerlBOINC to better fit some of its special requirements and additional modifications are supposed to be made in the future.

5) The DepSpid application is the first BOINC application compiled with FreePascal/Lazarus. The BOINC stuff is linked into it with an external DLL. The source is structured to be compilable alternatively with Delphi, too.

6) The DepSpid server will (at least in the first months) only run around half a day and will be completly offline every second or third weekend. The DepSpid tasks are supposed to run over a few days in most cases and therefore this should be no problem and most clients should not run out of DepSpid tasks.

7) The DepSpid server uses a dynamic IP address. This is a known problem for BOINC clients running 24/7 which will hopefully be fixed or at least work-arounded soon.

...and most likely some more things I forgot.



Thanks for your interest to participate in the alpha test of the DepSpid project.

- Björn Henke -