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You don't seem to get the point at all. Prehaps Psyhic didn't explain it in the right way. Some US Goverment authorities have programs set up where you "Fold". Folding is where you run a program in the background of your computer and you have a set topic and a set little bit of calculating to do. You have about 300 bits of these little calculating to do in a topic and once you have done each little bit, it gets uploaded to a server. So your using computers across the world to become a computer more powerful than a supercomputer ever. The point is we can use this to research difficult things that require alot of computing power and the goverment doesn't give them the funding/they don't get enough donations to rent/buy a supercomputer. An example is Folding@Home. Google it.
It won't make your computer super slow either, as in options you usually only set it to start computing and processing after you've been idle for five minutes or such.
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The amazing thing about distributed computing is that it uses the spare power of all the millions of personal (yes, that's right personal) computers that are usually not doing anything. I know so many of my friends that leave their computer on while going off to lectures and others who leave them on to download stuff. DOn't worry, they just download anime, it's perfectly legal.
Andrew Northall is perfectly right in that it wont slow your computer down. It'll only run in the background or when you're not using the computer. I.e. it uses the parts of the computer that you don't use. The information that's usually processed by distributed computing consists of raw data that only needs to be processed through some simple steps. However, because of such a huge collection of data, it's hard for a few computers to process no matter how fast they are. So instead of consistently repeating these simple steps a billion or so times, they give out tiny programs (yes, tiny) that everyday people like us can use. Our computers than happily go through these tiny steps.
Why would we do this? I saw a lotta people ask this just now. Well, for one, you have a chance of being part of something big. If the problem gets solved and your computer was the one who processed the data, your name will be up there in the stars! Imagine if it was YOUR computer that processed data that showed that intelligent life existed somewhere in the deep bowels of space? Cool, eh? Otherwise, you can still at least brag about having helped mathematically hack into a system. Your friends will definitely go
o.O
Second, it doesn't cost much. It won't take up much from you to install it and leave it running apart from a few volts of cheap electricity. Heck, look at the lottery. For a small chance of winning, people actually PAY good money to get in. Relatively, this is pretty cheap to be a part of.
That said, im not into it myself. I dont personally see the worth of frying my chips (yeah, im exaggerating) just to get to know a few aliens. Heck, I barely know one percent of the people on my OWN planet.
Neway, Ciao
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