FREE (and
totally useless!) POINTS!
OK, now that I have your attention... Maybe there's interest, maybe not... but so many FTers seem involved with forces to do good I thought I'd float this out:
United Devices, as "the Grid" at
www.grid.org operates a distributed computer system to help solve things like cancer, human genome issues, etc. etc. in collaboration with organizations like IBM. My participation has included the Cancer Research Project sponsored by Intel and the University of Oxford to the Anthrax Research Project sponsored by Intel and Microsoft.
What did I do? Nothing! I "volunteered"
my desktop computer, installing simple software that, when I am not utilizing the full capacity of my computer's resources diverts those resources to communal distributed computing (like SETI@home) to bring the power of parallel / distributed computing to bear on some of the nasty issues like cancer.
Of course, I have a fairly decent firewall, but my ADSL connection allows fulltime connection to the Intnernet. My computer is rated at 170% of the average computer (of 3 million working on the grid,) so it is considered fairly useful - and as of yesterday, my computer has given 2 years full time operation (equivalent to 3.4 years of the average GRID computer's full-time computing.) Cost? Pennies of electricity. Effort? None! What happens? My computer gets a bit of a problem to solve, when it is done it sends the results back to combine with others' and it gets some new work to do.
Participants can form and join teams - if anyone is interested, it would be easy to form a FlyerTalk team, comprised of thsoe who "volunteer" their computers. We earn points!!! Totally USELESS points you can not exhange or spend on anything, but hey, IT'S POINTS, and you can hoard them! We
can "compete" with other teams (I am currently on the Vietnam Veterans team, but for FT, I'd perform the ultimate sacrifice and switch if there was an FT team...)
OK, there's probably some FTnerd or guru or fundi out there who can explain these things better than I can. But IS ANYONE INTERESTED? Thoroughly check it out at
www.grid.org first, includng terms and conditions, and drop me a PM (or I'll check back here) to see if there's any / sufficient interest for a FT team.
Mods, if this is in violation of anything, send it to the Bermuda Triangle and give me a PM.