Slashdot Mirror
Distributed Computing Attacking SARS
fwc writes "D2OL has added a SARS Target to it's distributed computing project which locates potential drug candidates for several viruses. At this point, I've replaced SETI@Home at least temporarily on all of my Boxen. There are clients available for Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and of course Windows."
Unfortunately, finding a target binding site for a potential drug is years away from actually having a useful cure...
Except that seti@home does not analyse signals in real time, they've got a huge evergrowing database of signals recieved and we're analyzing that... we aren't going to miss a signal, we're just going to find it few hours later.
AFAIK.
Actually, the way SETI works allows for any workload over an extended period of time. The samples that your computer is analysing have been around for quite some time; they are transmitted from regions that are light years away! In addition, it is only once every year or so that they have a real chance to look for anything interesting that they find. As far as a cure for SARS goes, I have an elderly grandmother who was rushed to the hospital for unrelated reasons shortly after the start of the SARS scare in Ontario. She was taken into an ambulance by men and women wearing full environmental suits. She has since been released, quite possibly too early (they still don't know what was wrong with her), so I'm anxious for the world to just deal with SARS. This is a prime example of the Fear Consumption Model brought to us by Marilyn Manson and Michael Moore. The more we fear, the more we consume. As a whole our society has seen millions of dollars spent on research on a disease that has only killed 295 people out of over six billion. When diseases were feared in the past it was worth fearing them: Justinian's Plague (541-544AD) killed 40% of the population of Constantinople; In the 14th Century we saw as many as 800 people a day dying of the Bubonic Plague -- 30% of Normandy's population was decimated. By comparison, SARS has managed to destroy less than 0.0000005% of the world's population, infecting a mere 0.000077% of the population.
In order to be immortal you must be organize
Download the SARS genetic sequence here.