12 Worthy Causes Seek Your Spare PC Cycles You can contribute to a variety of scientific research an

[parasearchers]

and charities by donating your system's idle process

So you'd like to do more volunteering but can't find the time? Here's an easy way to do it: Donate the spare processing power on your computer via one of the dozens of ongoing volunteer computing projects, many based on open source software called BOINC. You know, like SETI@home, the well-documented project that uses otherwise idle computing cycles to help "search for extraterrestrial intelligence."

Here's a look at 12 cool projects, with thanks to volunteer computing enthusiast Jonathan Brier and UC Berkeley's David Anderson for their insights. The Web sites for the various projects typically include stats on how much processing power they're using, who is volunteering their processors, and so on.

http://parasearcher.blogspot.com/2009/09/12-worthy-causes-seek-your-spare-pc.html

[BlooInBloo]

1. I used to donate spare cpu time to some project-clearinghouse thru uc berkely...

can't recall the name of it now...

[parasearchers]

2. Was it this?

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse

A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics.

Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.

Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we've noticed that not everyone feels the same way. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to "chill" legitimate activity.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/

[bananas]

3. BOINC: Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

[BlooInBloo]

4. That's what it was! Thanks!

[MrMonk]

5. Folding@Home

The article omitted http://folding.stanford.edu/

The "computing cycles" support research into protein folding that helps in understanding various human diseases. There is a team of DUers at that site: "democraticunderground" (Team # 48157).