What is Digg?71 Comments
- 81v3d07g0d, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28what an ignorant comment. This is the thing I have almost no use for a screen saver, if I am not looking at my monitor its off. But I love electric sheep, there is no screen saver that is cooler, much less for free.
And here is the real testament to whether or not electric sheep is cool. If I am sitting there at the computer and someone comes to talk to me, if the screen saver comes on they have a really really hard time keeping eye contact. Everyone that's ever seen the sheep gets mesmerized, and cant look away. I think that is pretty cool.
By the way if I can recomend, I download sheep via bittorrent so I dont have to wait so long. - Eaglefire, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18If you have a CPU temperature monitoring utility, have you ever noticed how the temperature goes up when you're doing something CPU intensive?
Unfortunately those cycles are not as "spare" as you might think. Modern processors scale their power usage down when they're not in use - so when you're putting all those "wasted" CPU cycles to work, you're actually spending money in terms of the power consumed and reducing the usable life of the processor through higher running temperatures. - thetheaterimp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I have had the screensaver for a long time now and I never get tired of it. Its always changing! Best screensaver out there.
- njbair, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Yeah I know. Why WOULDN'T you pick the sheep?
- vraa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I wouldn't say Web2.0 version, it's been out for a long long time. I use it, I think it's pretty cool.
- Sp0rAdiC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Original link is dead >.>
http://www.electricsheep.org/ - nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Hmm, Electric Sheep pictures, or finding the cure for [insert name of very nasty disorder] via protein folding.
Decisions, Decisions. - fifty50, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Indeed. I've also used it for many months. Just the other day, it caught the attention and imagination of a colleague's 2 year-old son who peeked into my office. I had to practically wave candy in front of his face to get him away from my computer ^_^
- robertgilbert86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8By far the most interesting screensaver I've come accross, it is years old though, this story is still relevent though because not everyone knows about it.
Btw you can digg up/down the visulisations!
Also make sure you give it a chance to get going: for the first few hours you won't get many patterns. - Lazyboy0172, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9yes. old stuff, but maybe new to digg, never seen it here before anyway. Love it though! the everchanging screensaver.
oh and for those who dont know, you can "digg" animations in the screensaver by pressing the up or down arrows while its playing, a rightside up sheep or an upside down sheep will confirm that you like or dont like the animation, and it will change the screensaver accordingly - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7This is exactly the same idea I've had for computer game AI. You could give up-or-down votes to whether it was a good AI or not. It'd be the ultimate genetically evolving Digged AI!
- Linkage155, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Love these apps where it "uses spare processing power" makes it feel like I'm squeezing all the juice out of the processor :D
- indicas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7so androids do dream of electric sheep!
- SoulMaster2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7The best screensaver is your monitor's sleep mode...
- Hydroxyl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@RandomSkratch:
"This program is recommended only if you have a high-bandwidth, always-on connection to the internet such as DSL or cable modem. For best results, let it run overnight to collect a whole flock."
That's taken from the website so it does download other screensavers. - ash211, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It does download new stuff from the internet, but not a new program. Just new mpegs (videos) to play in the screensaver. Individual clients create still-frames, which are combined into the videos at the server. No new programs are downloaded, just content.
- samadam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If the site is going slowly, here is a mirror of the windows client:
http://www.bigupload.com/d=B950C9C4 - thefinalruin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Thank-you sir!
- ShrimpCrackers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4He won't link to the main site because its a dupe, but he wants to post anyway.
- SOAB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As you may have read above, their servers are not the fastest. :( It can take as long as over night sometimes. Be patient. HTH
- Magistrate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I found this last summer, but it is definitely a cool idea. Read the back story on what 'electric sheep' is referring too. My girlfriend loves it. (she loves anything with lots of colors!)
- Bradzor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've been using this for a while, it's really cool.
- erkokite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Interesting, about 30 seconds ago somebody mentioned this on gamedev.net. Apparently it uses something called ifs fractals. Here is the page: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=406372
- jbus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3apt-get install electricsheep
- Ascendant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3or, just manually download them with bittorrent and throw them in your cache folder. It's much faster, and plus you'll get lots more fluid transitions.
- extant59, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2dude.. this was one of sarahs download of the day on the screen savers when it was still on.. i've had it that long.. but its rad.. just takes awhile to set up. it is nice to see something different all the time.. even my non techie girlfriend loves it.
- RandomSkratch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is a very well done screensaver. It has never failed to amuse people that come over for at least 10 minutes.. But doesn't it just download new ones from the net? I never read anything about creating it's own from your spare processes as I believe it takes quite the time to create one.
- somerandomnerd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How exactly does not using a screensaver help global warming?
- SOAB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Use it on my media machine. Great while just streaming music into the stereo. Makes for a nice display on the 32" along with tunes. Sarah showed this on TSS years back. Been using it ever since. Thanks again Sarah. :)
- dizzledaking, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I really do love the idea, however, it's somewhat puzzling to distribute the sheep in MPEG2 format. I would have thought divx or xvid at the high end, or some sort of low bandwidth video format (flv comes to mind) at the low end.
Unless someone can explain the reason for MPEG2, I'm afraid the sheep are just too fat to keep in my pen. - tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have been using this for about a year. The only downside to it that I have seen, is it doesn't work well with multiple monitors, although that could very well be the way I set them up. Either way, there is no better screensaver than this. I'm glad more people know about it now.
- jasonsfakename, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have had this for over a year and can't find anything better to replace it with. Being able to vote for the ones you like and don't like is a nice feature too.
- ilopez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I believe its easier to gather everyone elses MPEG2 frames together and splice a new full video.
I woulnt mind having an even higher resolution video though, maybe the full 1280x1024 would be good :) - Recluse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2From the video of the screensaver, it looks like a visualization plugin for winamp e.g. Milkdrop.
But if its always changing then I'll give it a shot. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I believe that with the addition of digg effect, screen savers will get even more beautiful :).
- noseeme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use this screensaver on all of my computers, I love it! I also like setting it to "Save all rendered frames" so that I can see how much my computer has contributed to the community. Some of them are in a widescreen format, which makes me think that some of them are going to the publicly available screensaver, and some of them are going to Scott Draves' "Dreams in High Fidelity" project, which is actually mentioned in the section of text that the Windows install displays after the main EULA.
I've used Electric Sheep on Windows and Linux (I prefer the linux version because it has more configuration options form the command line), and it works perfectly on both. - noseeme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It uses pretty much as much bandwidth as possible for all HTTP transactions and uploading (from your end) on the integrated bittorrent client.
- hackershandbook, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For once old news is interesting.
I love the Electric Sheep project but when I looked last time I needed more bandwidth than I had.
Now I've been reminded - I'm off over there to sign up ... - Flump5000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2mine still says its recieving sheep even after 15 mins after it turns on. can someone help plz?
- tico24, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@superphly & Flump5000
Back in the day when I got this, I found the first few sheep can take ages but they seem to get quicker after that.
Just be patient, it will come. - Yetimon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There's a setting in the options for the amount of disk space to fence off for the flock.
- Bonzodog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yup, this is cool. I use it through xscreensaver on my 64 bit Zenwalk box. Wouldn't it be possible to run both BOINC AND Electric Sheep. Contribute to both causes. Just renice them to make sure they get equal CPU space.
- modcam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I actually saw dreams in high fidelity, the dedicated computer that does high definition visuals all morphing into each other. it is continuous and lasts for hours, and it's designed to be used on hi-fi projectors. seriously cool stuff. i sat in front of that projection for hours just staring. i want it!
- xswag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Some of you may have to just give it the night to get running. Somewhere on the page it said to wait overnight before you ditch it. I had to foward the bittorrent ports on my router to get it working fast.
- superphly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1how long does it take to download a sheep? i've had it running for 30 minutes now and it won't quit saying "dowloading first sheep"
- bsingin64, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've used this for quite a while. really trippy when projected on a wall. Its great for parties... jus leave it goin on the wall from across the room. Frippin beautiful. Best damn trip I've ever had smoking and watching this. ha!
- er0k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1electric sheep has been around for quite a while, but still worth the digg imo
- nasalexportbeta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Im there too. Im on OSX and im waiting at the screensaver prefs. been 30 min so far. I bet its real busy since this made digg and delicious
- Yetimon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been using Sheep in my VJ sets for some time now - they're ideal for mixing to music due to the way they loop, and the predominately black backgrounds make them great for luma-keying over the top of one another. The mpeg format they use is a bit of a pig to work with however - the best tool for working with them I've found thus far is an MPEG2 version of VirtualDub, at http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/.
The sheep are also released under the Creative Commons license, so you're free to do what you wish to them. - poopsmith, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Seems like a waste of time. If you run BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) you can pick and choose between project that find UFO's, fold proteins, predict weather, etc. You can run one or all of them in the proportions you choose. Pretty cool, I think.
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