Donate your PC
I love technology. Especially when it works.
Distributed technology is just such a technology.
What it means is something like this...

Some clever clogs wants to find, for example, a drug that will bind with a cancer cell and stop it misbehaving and being cancerous.
Easy enough - in theory. We know the structure of a target molecule on the surface of the cell we just have to try other molecules to see if they will bind and then we can build the drug.

Any ideas on the number of possible molecules we could try?
No problem - use a computer.

Nope, the number is too big for a computer. Truly. The cost of a computer to do such a gob-smackingly huge and useful project far exceeds the research funding.

But Clever Clogs isn't beat.
What if, he muses, instead of using one super-computer with a super price tag, we use several ordinary computers which are already paid for (ie, free)?
You see, you and I are sitting at computers that are not using all their smarts. So, if we "donate" our spare processing capacity, together we all, worldwide, make up some humungous amount of processing power.

That's distributed processing.
I'm working with two organisations - one from my work PC (shhh!) and one from the PC at home. These two organisations send down "work" to my PC and the PC processes it and, when finished, sends it back. The impact on my PC speed is zero (or closer to zero than matters), and the dowload / return results time is also absorbed into other connection time such as when I download my email.

Good stuff.

Why do I use two different companies?
Simple - United Devices expect a smarter PC than the one I have at home, so they get to use my work PC. However, my older, slower PC at home is working away for Folding@home.

United Devices / Grid.org are at the University of Oxford. Currently we are working one two project lines - cancer and smallpox. (They "did" anthrax last year)

Folding@home however is on the other side of the pond at Stanford University. This is an interesting one as the research is to do with a family of diseases which includes Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease.
What these diseases have in common is that all of them are the result of some important molecule getting bent. Literally.
If a dopamine derivative folds the wrong way, it can't bind correctly to its target site, and the result is Parkinson's disease. By running Folding@home we hope to learn more about these folding errors and maybe...

My Dad died of Parkinson's in March this year. We miss him massively - but I pray that someday, either through Folding@home or some other research, someone else will be spared the pain as their Dad is spared the horrors.

Meantime, I donate my PCs to the cause, and my knees to praying that those who do die in these horrible ways are ready to die.
Jesus said "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." Dad lived in Christ and believed in Him. Even though he is dead, I know he, along with Lazarus and many others will live. Can I say the same for you?
Donate your PC - yes. But give Jesus your life as well. It's even more important!

And the rewards are better too!