Panther Software and Research Company

Panther Software and Research Company (psr.com), located in South Carolina (U.S.) mainly does software R&D (i.e., "services", not "retail products"). For now, we choose to use this web page to assist other worthwhile and interesting projects.

Distributed computing projects your computer could help

If there will be times when your computer is waiting for you to type or click something, and it has an Internet connection at least once in a while, you could donate that idle time to a distributed computing project. Their software runs at low priority, so that your work always comes first and only the time your computer would have been idle is donated.

Many of the distributed computing projects below use Berkeley's BOINC management software. Projects using it benefit from having a standardized way of managing work units among a large number of computers. Volunteers get the ability to participate in multiple projects if they wish, and can limit run times, resource use, etc. BOINC software is available for MS Windows/x86, Mac OS X (PPC and Intel), Linux/x86, and Solaris/SPARC. However, each project's software may have its own limitations as to which systems it runs on.

Here are just a few of the many distributed computing projects looking for donated computer time:

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, uses BOINC and can still use volunteers to process radio telescope data from Arecibo.
The All-sky pulsar search, Einstein@Home, uses BOINC and is searching data gathered at Arecibo for both radio pulsars in binary systems and proof of gravity waves. E@H software is available for all the BOINC platforms listed above and can use NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPUs to get a 20X boost in performance.
AIDS: FightAIDS@Home is run by The (non-profit) Scripps Research Institute. The project uses the World Community Grid and has software for MS Windows, Mac OS/X, and Linux/x86.
Mersenne.org is the home for GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. On January 25, 2013, GIMPS member Dr. Curtis Cooper, a professor at the University of Central Missouri, discovered the 48th known Mersenne prime, 2^57,885,161 - 1. GIMPS volunteers have also won the Electronic Frontier Foundation's $100,000 award for discovery of the first 10 million digit prime number.
For a good list of other projects, check http://www.distributedcomputing.info/projects.html.
Openmacgrid allows users running Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 or later to donate their computer's spare CPU cycles with no software installation needed (since the Grid software comes with the O/S).

Volunteer work (U.S.)

www.volunteermatch.org has been named as one of the best Activist sites for matching people willing to volunteer with organizations looking for volunteers. Enter your Zip code and/or interests and get a list of organizations near you.

Challenges that pay

Are you an inventor or problem solver? Have a look at the U.S. Government's www.challenge.gov. NASA press release 10-211 described challenge.gov this way: "This new online platform empowers the federal government to bring the best ideas and top talent to bear on the nation's most pressing problems. On this site, entrepreneurs, innovators and citizen solvers can compete for prizes by providing novel solutions to tough problems."

There's also a startup company, CPUsage, that sells idle time to clients and, in turn, pays you for compute resources used, in points redeemable for cash, goods, or services. As of October, 2012, they only have a Microsoft Windows client, but appear to be planning OS/X and Linux clients.

Also: from Groklaw.net on June, 2009: The Case Against Software Patents - Red Hat's EPO-G3/08 Amicus Brief

Many other companies, universities, and organizations around the world have the acronym P.S.R. and/or have an Internet domain name containing the string "psr". None of them have any affiliation with psr.com, which is solely in the U.S. For their domain names (if they have one), please refer to their publications or advertising.