On
this site there's a program that you can have running in the background on your computer that helps cure cancer and alzheimer and stuff. The program gets information about different types of molecules and somehow your computer do something with them and send them back. I think the process of knowing what the hell is going on there is a lot more difficult than the fact that it's great.
Just hear me: "Wohoo it's great."
Go Download!
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html
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This is taken from some website, about the program:
Distributed computing really made a name for itself with SETI@home. In this system, users anywhere could download a small screensaver program that would crunch data from radio observatories, looking for signs of extraterrestrial life. As you’ve probably figured, we haven’t found any extraterrestrials yet, but the project proved a valid point: Distributed computing does in fact work.
This point became the foundation for another grid computing project, distributed.net, the first program to truly realize success. Its major accomplishment was successfully cracking RSA Laboratories’ RC5 64-bit encryption algorithm in 1,757 days utilizing more than 300,000 machines. This announcement brought about even more hope for the distributed computing world, along with the next great challenge for the world.
So began Folding@Home, an internet brain child from Stanford University. Folding@Home’s mission was to create a system that would study how proteins "fold." Why proteins? The fundamental processes of biology are based on how proteins fold. Once in a while, a protein folds incorrectly, causing any slew of biological disorders ranging from Parkinson’s disease to cancer. Through distributed computing, scientists are able to crunch data on how a protein folds by breaking up the different parts of the process and dividing the task among the group of CPUs available. Currently, more than 100,000 machines are helping "unlock the mystery of how proteins fold."
Distributed computing is helping make a difference in research that can affect the lives of everyone for the first time. Once scientists have enough data on how and why proteins fold, they’ll be able to use this data to search for cures for the most devastating diseases. The sooner this data is collected, the sooner we’ll be able to see tangible results really take effect. The tech community has always supported these efforts, but it’s time distributed computing moved out into the rest of the world. Imagine the possibilities of millions of gaming consoles (Sony has sold more than 70 million PlayStation 2s) contributing to a community previously limited to thousands of capable processors.
