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I'm very sorry but the answer is "no". You can't get any source code until this project ends, so the project won't be spoilt by invalid data. But if you are just interested in how to develop a distributed computing project, you can pay attention to the Research page as we will release some documents on this subject now and then. As a matter of fact, these documents really helps better than the source code.

Don't worry, it's OK. It's the very signal that your computational resources are made full used of. When designing Pi Segment, we've fully considered its compatibility with other applications. First of all, its priority is set to the lowest in order to guarantee that it would automatically slow down and give way to other applications when other applications need CPU time. Also, it has a low demand of memory, only 10MB or so. So you don't have to worry about your computer when running Pi Segment. But it's worthy noting that Pi Segment will read and write on the hard disk every several minutes in order to save checkpoints. Of course it isn't a heavy burden on the disk, but it may slow down some of your operations, such as defragging, manual virus scanning and CD-burning. So we suggest that when doing this kind of operations, you can pause Pi Segment for a while to obtain that best performance. As a matter of fact, all operations, even stop using for a long time, can do harm to a computer. The point is, if you use your machine properly, it would bring you the greatest possible value. In fact, it won't cause any problem running any ordinary PC on full load, as long as that PC has passed fine quality check. When testing Pi Segment, one of my PC had run on full load for 20 days or so for some test, and now it is all OK. Of course, it is not recommended to lengthen the running time of your machine only for Pi Segment. You should use your computer as usual, so that the computational resources would be used in the most proper way.

First of all, you won't get any financial reward through participating in this project. This may discourage you as there are projects that actually pay participants for their contribution to the project. But as a non-profit project, we hope that participants would join us only for making full use of their computational power. But that doesn't mean you will get nothing at all. At least you will share the glory of this project and be proud of your spirit of dedication. We are also planning to provide souvenirs for some participants, but it depends on the financial condition of cooperators and sponsors.

The main purpose of Pi Segment is to propagandize distributed computing in China and to try to encourage making full use of computational resources on personal computers. China has started researches in distributed computing long before and has obtained some achievement, for example the China Grid. But so far, there isn't any formal distributed projects for the public to join in. Obviously, that's really a waste of computational resources. We hope that the public would get to know about and join in distributed computing, through the propaganda of this project.

Distributed computing is a way of computing. In general, any type of computation which includes several computers communicating and cooperating via a network to accomplish one task can be called distributed computing. In a simpler way, distributed computing means to use a lot of computers, in order to obtain faster speed and higher stability, to accomplish a task.

Pi Segment is a distributed computing project held by a university student. It aims to propagandize distributed computing, encourage people to make full use of their computational power and challenge the world record of calculating Pi. There are many popular distributed computing projects in other countries, but there's none in China. We hope that Pi Segment can change this situation. For more information, please visit the Introduction page of the project.