Making A Difference

I like to think that I am fortunate in this life to have shelter, food, education, healthy children and the opportunity to see the wonders in the world around me. When I found out about BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), I discovered that my humble computer could combine with others around the world to provide "Combined computing power". What's that all about? Well, to quote Wikipedia:

"The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a non-commercial middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world."

Now, I'm no computer programmer, I like and use computers for many reasons, though I feel being able to use my computer to help scientists around the world with anything from cures for cancer, to understanding the Universe around us or climate prediction has to be more worthwhile than having a screen saver turning over. The best bit about all this - you don't have to be an expert in computing, your computer does that for you!

Check out BOINC.