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Have you ever lost a loved one to (or been diagnosed yourself with) cancer? AIDS? Do you or anyone you know have muscular distrophy? Maybe you can make a difference.
There is a distributed computing project called World Community Grid (WCG), which is a smattering of all kinds of projects that work to cure the ailments I listed above, and it also does much more. The program runs on your computer, eating up idle CPU time that would otherwise be wasted. Most machines run in this idle state most of thier life, under very basic load imposed by things such as a web browser, media player and so on. There is still a lot of grunt that sits unused. WCG uses resources when nothing else is using them. The program runs on a low priority, so anything else you do comes first, including playing a game, running your web browser and so on, so there's virtually no impact on performance.
If you would like to give running this program, and helping make one step closer to the cure for cancer, AIDS and other things, here's what you need to do:
1. Download the program here. You will need to log in to do this. The username is Quakeone, and the password is quakeone (Yes, capital Q in the username, lowercase in the password).
2. Install the program. You might want to click on the Advanced button when you get to the "BOINC Configuration" screen to un-tick the "Use BOINC Screensaver" box.
3. Once you've got the program running, you'll need to attatch to a project. Scroll down the list and select World Community Grid. Again, the username is Quakeone, and the password is quakeone.
4. You're all set. Click finish. It will take some time to download the work units, but after a few seconds you should be running.
5. (optional) You can go to the preferences, and set how much cpu TIME (it won't be a constant load precentage, it will spike up and down) the program will use, how much disk space you want to make available to it, the time of day it uses the internet, the time of day the program will run (again, it's a low priority task, so everything else will get resources first), whether or not to run while on battery, and set it up so that the program only runs after the computer's been idle for a defined amount of time (I assume it works based on mouse movement).
There is a distributed computing project called World Community Grid (WCG), which is a smattering of all kinds of projects that work to cure the ailments I listed above, and it also does much more. The program runs on your computer, eating up idle CPU time that would otherwise be wasted. Most machines run in this idle state most of thier life, under very basic load imposed by things such as a web browser, media player and so on. There is still a lot of grunt that sits unused. WCG uses resources when nothing else is using them. The program runs on a low priority, so anything else you do comes first, including playing a game, running your web browser and so on, so there's virtually no impact on performance.
If you would like to give running this program, and helping make one step closer to the cure for cancer, AIDS and other things, here's what you need to do:
1. Download the program here. You will need to log in to do this. The username is Quakeone, and the password is quakeone (Yes, capital Q in the username, lowercase in the password).
2. Install the program. You might want to click on the Advanced button when you get to the "BOINC Configuration" screen to un-tick the "Use BOINC Screensaver" box.
3. Once you've got the program running, you'll need to attatch to a project. Scroll down the list and select World Community Grid. Again, the username is Quakeone, and the password is quakeone.
4. You're all set. Click finish. It will take some time to download the work units, but after a few seconds you should be running.
5. (optional) You can go to the preferences, and set how much cpu TIME (it won't be a constant load precentage, it will spike up and down) the program will use, how much disk space you want to make available to it, the time of day it uses the internet, the time of day the program will run (again, it's a low priority task, so everything else will get resources first), whether or not to run while on battery, and set it up so that the program only runs after the computer's been idle for a defined amount of time (I assume it works based on mouse movement).
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