Fifty Years of Computing
 

While this is completely unrelated to firearms, I thought I'd share a bit about a charity I have participated in since 2004.

The "World Community Grid" is a voluntary computing project (supported by sponsorship by IBM, the Berkeley Computing Lab and others) that provides free supercomputer class processing to a variety of research projects targeting cures for Cancer, Aids, and a number of other diseases.

You load an application called BOINC onto your Windows, Linux, or Mac computer or your Android phone or tablet. It can be configured to only activate when your machine has been idle for a period of time, and then only use a percentage of processor power.

The BOINC system downloads small discrete computing tasks and then processes them while the machine would normally be idle. When the work unit is complete, the results are sent back to the research project and the next one is started.

By using this distributed computing world network of donated computing time, breakthroughs in gene sequencing and the identification of specific cancer markers have been delivered in record time.

Take a look at the project, and consider signing up. As of this month, I have accumulated the donation of over 50 years of computer processing time!!!!!

IBM World Community Grid

Marc

Very interesting.
Thanks.
Mauro

Good idea, for sure! I've been running climate predication models and SETI for a goodly number of years, perhaps 15 or 20, under BOINC. Makes me feel I'm doing something good for the world when I go to bed a night while my computer munches steadily along.

David