Rules and policies

License Agreement

To participate in the experiment you must agree to abide by the license agreement.

Run Ralph@home only on authorized computers

Run Ralph@home only on computers that you own, or for which you have obtained the owner's permission. Some companies and schools have policies that prohibit using their computers for projects such as Ralph@home.

How Ralph@home will use your computer

When you run Ralph@home on your computer, it will use part of the computer's CPU power, disk space, and network bandwidth. You can control how much of your resources are used by Ralph@home, and when it uses them.

The work done by your computer contributes to the goals of Ralph@home, as described on its web site. The application programs may change from time to time.

Privacy policy

Your account on Ralph@home is identified by a name that you choose. This name may be shown on the Ralph@home web site, along with a summary of the work your computer has done for Ralph@home. If you want to be anonymous, choose a name that doesn't reveal your identity.

If you participate in Ralph@home, information about your computer (such as its processor type, amount of memory, etc.) will be recorded by Ralph@home and used to decide what type of work to assign to your computer. This information will also be shown on Ralph@home's web site. Nothing that reveals your computer's location (e.g. its domain name or network address) will be shown.

To participate in Ralph@home, you must give an address where you receive email. This address will not be shown on the Ralph@home web site or shared with organizations. Ralph@home may send you periodic newsletters; however, you can opt out at any time.

Private messages sent on the Ralph@home web site are visible only to the sender and recipient. Ralph@home does not examine or police the content of private messages. If you receive unwanted private messages from another Ralph@home user, you may add them to your message filter. This will prevent you from seeing any public or private messages from that user.

If you use our web site forums you must follow the posting guidelines. Messages posted to the Ralph@home forums are visible to everyone, including non-members. By posting to the forums, you are granting irrevocable license for anyone to view and copy your posts.

Is it safe to run Ralph@home?

Any time you download a program through the Internet you are taking a chance: the program might have dangerous errors, or the download server might have been hacked. Ralph@home has made efforts to minimize these risks. We have tested our applications carefully. Our servers are behind a firewall and are configured for high security. To ensure the integrity of program downloads, all executable files are digitally signed on a secure computer not connected to the Internet.

The applications run by Ralph@home may cause some computers to overheat. If this happens, stop running Ralph@home or use a utility program that limits CPU usage.

Ralph@home was developed by University of Washington. BOINC was developed at the University of California.

Liability

Ralph@home and University of Washington assume no liability for damage to your computer, loss of data, or any other event or condition that may occur as a result of participating in Ralph@home.

Other BOINC projects

Other projects use the same platform, BOINC, as Ralph@home. You may want to consider participating in one or more of these projects. By doing so, your computer will do useful work even when Ralph@home has no work available for it.

These other projects are not associated with Ralph@home, and we cannot vouch for their security practices or the nature of their research. Join them at your own risk.