Donating computer power

[Raynt]

I recently learned about a rather interesting computer program, World Community Grid - Home. What it does is when your computer is not doing anything else it works on calculating things for various projects, such as decoding the human genome.

[Brutha]

I thought the human genome project was succesful in recording the human genome?

[Raynt]

My bad, genome comparison project. What, do I look like an expert?

[skinnyninja]

Most of those grid projects are for medical research and protein folding experiments. I personally run Folding@Home, which simulates the folding of proteins. I guess they are trying to learn a couple of medical things with this--they think it will lead to discoveries about Alzheimer's especially.

Unfortunately, most people who are donating their CPU cycles are doing it for SETI, which searches the cosmos for intelligent life (I personally think the medical cause is more important, but I am in the minority).

It's a good excuse for me to overclock my computer, anyway. Brings out the geek in me.

My computer is trying to cure cancer right now. What is yours doing at night? If you leave it on all the time but don't participate in folding, some would see this as a crime!

But interestingly, my friends who leave their computers on all the time refused to install Folding@home. Huh.

Anyway, if you're interested in helping medical research: Folding@Home Distributed Computing

[Jerigan]

I run both the World Community Grid and Folding@Home constantly. My computer is never turned off so it might as well be doing something. The idea that I could be helping in some way to help others makes me happy. It's the only way that I can really help at this stage of my life (broke and busy university student), so I'm glad to do what I can.