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Perhaps this would be a good place to mention FightAIDS@Home, which is a distributed computing project like SETI@Home. It is used for research into newer drugs to keep up with the mutability of the HIV virus, which has been termed computational co-evolution. It only runs on Windows so far. OS X and Linux versions are supposedly in the works, but they've been taking ages.

Seriously, not to be critical or anything, but I'm just curious:

Why would you spend your spare CPU cycles on something like this? Why not put them more towards protein folding or an AIDS cure or even evolutionary research... something that would/might benefit humanity? Or is finding a proof/disproof to this hypothesis going to benefit us somehow?

Maybe you should do a little research before spouting off about how there are no useful distributed computing projects out there.

AIDS:
FightAids@Home

Cancer:
United Devices
Find-a-Drug
Distributed Folding
Parabon Computation

Bioterrorism Antodotes:
Find-a-Drug
Drug Design Optimization Lab

Other Diseases:
Folding@Home
Genome@Home
Community TSC

Every other distributed computing project that's currently available for you to participate in:
Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects - Active Projects

Kirk
Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects

Well then, are about Curing Cancer or fighting Aids. You can't get much worthier than that.

• United Devices -- (Alzheimer's & Cancer; recently finished Anthrax)
  
• Fight AIDS@home

Both are non-profit (or not-for-profit) endeavors, as far as I can ascertain, but I haven't done too much digging...

cheers,
t.

Oh, you mean RC5's not frivolous? There are people dying in the world due to our continued lack of scientific knowledge regarding various diseases and our own gene structures.

Try one of these instead, please...

Genome@Home: gene structure
Folding@Home: protein folding
United Devices: cancer and anthrax
Parabon Pioneer: cancer
Entropia's FightAIDS@Home: AIDS

I prefer projects with a higher probability to make an actual differene to how people live, like the (already named) Folding@Home, Genome@Home, or FightAIDSatHome. The last one may not appeal to many here as Entropia, the distributed computing network behind it, apparantly insists in throwing in some commercial work packets to the clients. Finding a cure for AIDS sounds like a splendid idea, otoh.
My personal favorite is GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, discoverers of the four largest explicitly known prime numbers. I like them because you actually have a chance to understand what the program is doing (if number theory is for you, that is). IMHO better than looking at some blinking lights of a screen saver that looks for ET.

Alex

I got a lot of fascination and fun out of SETI for a couple of years, and even burned my fingers a couple of times on the vent of my laptop (I swear you could fry eggs on that thing when it was looking for green men in SETI packets). There came a point, however, when it dawned that SETI had enough momentum to continue without me should I wish to look at other distributed processing projects.

Then I came across the Olson laboratory's FightAIDS@home project, and decided to take a look. And now I'm crunching HIV Research units, something which though arguably less spectacular/glamorous than looking for aliens, certainly deserves our more immediate (collective) attention.

So if you're casting around for something worthy to occupy your idle CPU, or even if you're just curious, why not take a look?

I got a lot of fascination and fun out of SETI for a couple of years, and even burned my fingers a couple of times on the vent of my laptop (I swear you could fry eggs on that thing when it was looking for green men in SETI packets). There came a point, however, when it dawned that SETI had enough momentum to continue without me should I wish to look at other distributed processing projects.

Then I came across the Olson laboratory's FightAIDS@home project, and decided to take a look. And now I'm crunching HIV Research units, something which though arguably less spectacular/glamorous than looking for aliens, certainly deserves our more immediate (collective) attention.

So if you're casting around for something worthy to occupy your idle CPU, or even if you're just curious, why not take a look?

I am absolutely amazed that employers do not use the power of their idle PCs THEMSELVES!

There are so many applications out there already - SETI@home being one, others include a few at distributed.net, FightAids@Home.org, and there are others cropping up, supporting cancer research, some commercial projects, code-cracking. Many many popular (in a geeky or tear-jerky way) projects that interest us enough to donate our unused cycles.

Now, a company such as TVA - that would rather its employees does NOT use their cycles for such tasks - would do well to provide some other diversion to occupy the screens of its employees. Hey, they could even license the software from SETI, Entropia, or some other vendor of distributed computing solutions, tart it up to look nice with their logo, and plug in some of their own research models. I'm sure their scientists have some energy calculations that could benefit from massively parallel computing.

And what of the rest of the world's processors? In a large customer service department in any medium-large sized company - even one with no real scientific research needs - there will be many PCs available for many hours. It would be a simple matter for such a company to rent out its spare cycles, again using the same software, with suitable logos. Except this time it would be managed internally, with no risk of external network corruption. The information server could be housed safely with the rest of the company's servers, making a quiet buck in the background, with everyone happy.

Ah, but that would be too sensible, wouldn't it?

/prak
--
We may be human, but we're still animals.

The FightAIDSatHome project seems like a good candidate, inasmuch as there are millions of lives at stake. Yes, it is one of the Entropia projects, but I think it deserves its own recognition.

I go for this one because it seems the most useful and important one out there. At the moment, it's Windows-only, but it shouldn't be too hard to find a Windows computer somewhere that the app can reside on. :)

Entropia 2000 is designed to support multiple P2P projects for charities. Currently FightAIDS@HOME, a P2P to search for new AIDS drugs, is up and running for users with a non-dial-up connection to the Internet.