There are many useful projects out there, and they aren't hard to find. From Medical research to complex mathematical problems. Its up to you to decide what you want to do. For myself, I stayed away from SETI, basically because it was worthless. They really weren't doing anything. I also stay away from the for profit organizations, or project's that claim to be not-for-profit but retain the rights to the results, to sell at a latter date as they see fit. That tends to eliminate most of the medical research programs.
I like distributed.net myself, their client is easily the best and least invasive I've found. I like the way their individual and team stats are managed (I just wish they had a better record of keeping stats up and available). They choose the encryption projects with a cash reward, and a large portion of that reward going to a charity that is 'voted' on by the participants, they keep a portion to help fund Distributed.net. They will have a new encryption project, RC5-72 shortly, and are currently working on OGR. The framework of Distributed.net allows for them to work on many different projects at once. What they can do is almost limitless. Distributed.net is the organization that has proven the value and practicality of distributed computing. Until I find something better, more useful, with a quality non-invasive client, I'm sticking with D.net.
But, here are some other projects:
Protein folding (predicting protein interactions): http://folding.stanford.edu/
Genome prediction (learning about the genetic map): http://gah.stanford.edu/
Cure for cancer (maps molecules against cancer): http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html
Cure for anthrax (maps molecules against anthrax): http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/anthrax/
Fight influenza (a very prolific virus): http://www.popularpower.com/applications/influenza.html
Calculate pi (3.1415927...): http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/projects/pihex/pihex.html
GIMPS (finding Merseinne prime numbers): http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Proth Project (find Proth prime numbers): http://vamri.xray.ufl.edu/proths/index.html
Fermat factors (another "large numbers" project): http://www.fermatsearch.org/
Verify the Reimann hypothesis (an "extremely important" problem in modern math, trust me): http://www.zetagrid.net/
other miscellaneous "math" projects: http://www.mersenne.org/projects.htm
United Devices for profit Cancer research:
http://www.ud.com
Slashdot Mirror
There are many useful projects out there, and they aren't hard to find. From Medical research to complex mathematical problems. Its up to you to decide what you want to do. For myself, I stayed away from SETI, basically because it was worthless. They really weren't doing anything. I also stay away from the for profit organizations, or project's that claim to be not-for-profit but retain the rights to the results, to sell at a latter date as they see fit. That tends to eliminate most of the medical research programs. I like distributed.net myself, their client is easily the best and least invasive I've found. I like the way their individual and team stats are managed (I just wish they had a better record of keeping stats up and available). They choose the encryption projects with a cash reward, and a large portion of that reward going to a charity that is 'voted' on by the participants, they keep a portion to help fund Distributed.net. They will have a new encryption project, RC5-72 shortly, and are currently working on OGR. The framework of Distributed.net allows for them to work on many different projects at once. What they can do is almost limitless. Distributed.net is the organization that has proven the value and practicality of distributed computing. Until I find something better, more useful, with a quality non-invasive client, I'm sticking with D.net. But, here are some other projects: Protein folding (predicting protein interactions): http://folding.stanford.edu/ Genome prediction (learning about the genetic map): http://gah.stanford.edu/ Cure for cancer (maps molecules against cancer): http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html Cure for anthrax (maps molecules against anthrax): http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/anthrax/ Fight influenza (a very prolific virus): http://www.popularpower.com/applications/influenza .html
Calculate pi (3.1415927...): http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/projects/pihex/pihex.html
GIMPS (finding Merseinne prime numbers): http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Proth Project (find Proth prime numbers): http://vamri.xray.ufl.edu/proths/index.html
Fermat factors (another "large numbers" project): http://www.fermatsearch.org/
Verify the Reimann hypothesis (an "extremely important" problem in modern math, trust me): http://www.zetagrid.net/
other miscellaneous "math" projects: http://www.mersenne.org/projects.htm
United Devices for profit Cancer research:
http://www.ud.com