Week 6 World community grid

I have my laptop on constantly, mostly because I work for a software company....OK, so maybe its also that I'm online wayyyy tooo much! However, for much of this time the heavy duty computation is done by whatever terminal server I'm logged into. My laptop is essentially idle; simply acting as a portal. I'm sure a lot of people are only using a faction of the computational power at their fingertips.

How could this extra computation capacity be put to good use?....Well world community grid from IBM is a pretty awesome way of using that computer power.

From the web page  www.worldcommunitygrid.org

"World Community Grid enables anyone with a computer, smartphone or tablet to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health, poverty and sustainability. Through the contributions of over 650,000 individuals and 460 organizations, World Community Grid has supported 22 research projects to date, including searches for more effective treatments for cancer, HIV/AIDS and neglected tropical diseases. Other projects are looking for low-cost water filtration systems and new materials for capturing solar energy efficiently."

It is free. It is IBM so I trust I'm not going to get some virus or have some other nasty event/blue screen situation.

I installed it earlier this week (it was quite painless) and, up to now, has been looking at potential cure for Aids and markers for cancer. It is nice that they let you know what the computer is looking at.