[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
huh? what?

If I'm reading things right, it's a matter of simulating protiens. Even the simplest life form on earth is extremely complex on a molecular level; for the cancer research, they need to simulate zillions of different protiens. To do that, they need computer power, and lots of it. If you download the client, it will chat with the research computer, get a piece of the puzzle to simulate, and use your spare processor cycles to simulate it. Specifically, they are simulating a particular portion of protienes' life: the folding process, where the protiene takes on it's shape.

SETI does something similar for analyzing interstellar signals. The folding group has wrapped a competition around it to try and garner more PC power.

If you have a permanent net connection with no limitations on badwidth useage, it's not a bad idea.

As it's usually a good idea to list the potential risks involved along with the potential benifits, so here's one: Trust issue: you are deliberatly installing a piece of software on your machine designed to give others remote access to your processor, run by people you haven't met, designed by programmers who you've never met, with the source code for the client unavailable for your review. You have to trust that they won't deliberatly harm your machine, and that there aren't any problems with the program which would allow others to sneak in and do stuff to your machine.