Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Software: Changing the World with Your Screen Saver

Do you want to help cure cancer and other diseases? By installing special screen savers on your computer, you can donate your spare computing cycles to cure AIDS, cancer and solve other more complex problems.

The screen saver utilizes the unused processing power of your computer, as a part of a large distributed computing cluster. These clusters can be composed of thousands (or more) of computers working together for a common goal. The way these large clusters work is each computer downloads a small part of a larger problem, and computes the data and sends the results back to the master computer.

Below is a list of some of the projects that are available:
  • boinc.berkeley.edu: Stands for 'Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing', here is a brief list of some of the current projects: Climateprediction.net, Seasonal Attribution Project, BBC Climate Change Experiment.
  • folding.stanford.edu: Searches for treatments for Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and other related diseases.
  • grid.org: Searches for treatments for cancers, and other diseases.
  • SETI@home: Analyze radio telescope data in the search for extraterrestrial life.
  • www.worldcommunitygrid.org: Searches for treatments for cancers, and other diseases.
To donate your spare computing cycles. All you have to do is download the software, set how much of your systems resources that you want to donate, then leave your computer alone.

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