Use the idle time on your computer to cure diseases

BOINC

Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Can you please give more information on this software because i dont want to risk my computer with unknown programes

Its just like SETI@home project : http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

And as far as I know both are safe.

I do not understand as to how can it cure diseases?

They do by the following use three methods :

1.Volunteer computing

Volunteer computing is an arrangement in which people (volunteers) provide computing resources to projects, which use the resources to do distributed computing and/or storage.

* Volunteers are typically members of the general public who own Internet-connected PCs. Organizations such as schools and businesses may also volunteer the use of their computers.
* Projects are typically academic (university-based) and do scientific research. But there are exceptions; for example, GIMPS and distributed.net (two major projects) are not academic.

Several aspects of the project/volunteer relationship are worth noting:

* Volunteers are effectively anonymous; although they may be required to register and supply email address or other information, they are not linked to a real-world identity.
* Because of their anonymity, volunteers are not accountable to projects. If a volunteer misbehaves in some way (for example, by intentionally returning incorrect computational results) the project cannot prosecute or discipline the volunteer.
* Volunteers must trust projects in several ways:
o The volunteer trusts the project to provide applications that don't damage their computer or invade their privacy.
o The volunteer trusts that the project is truthful about what work is being done by its applications, and how the resulting intellectual property will be used.
o The volunteer trusts the project to follow proper security practices, so that hackers cannot use the project as a vehicle for malicious activities.

The first volunteer computing project was GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), which started in 1995. Other early projects include distributed.net, SETI@home, and Folding@home. Today there are over 50 active projects.

Why is volunteer computing important?

It's important for several reasons:

* Because of the huge number (> 1 billion) of PCs in the world, volunteer computing supplies more computing power to science than does any other type of computing. This computing power enables scientific research that could not be done otherwise. This advantage will increase over time, because the laws of economics dictate that consumer products such as PCs and game consoles will advance faster than more specialized products, and that there will be more of them.
* Volunteer computing power can't be bought; it must be earned. A research project that has limited funding but large public appeal can get huge computing power. In contrast, traditional supercomputers are extremely expensive, and are available only for applications that can afford them (for example, nuclear weapon design and espionage).
* Volunteer computing encourages public interest in science, and provides the public with voice in determining the directions of scientific research.

How does it compare to 'Grid computing'?

It depends on how you define 'Grid computing'. The term generally refers to the sharing of computing resources within and between organizations, with the following properties:

* Each organization can act as either producer or consumer of resources (hence the analogy with the electrical power grid, in which electric companies can buy and sell power to/from other companies, according to fluctuating demand).
* The organizations are mutually accountable. If one organization misbehaves, the others can respond by suing them or refusing to share resources with them.

This is different from volunteer computing. 'Desktop grid' computing - which uses desktop PCs within an organization - is superficially similar to volunteer computing, but because it has accountability and lacks anonymity, it is significantly different.

If your definition of 'Grid computing' encompasses all distributed computing (which is silly - there's already a perfectly good term for that) then volunteer computing is a type of Grid computing.

For more information about Grid computing, visit CERN's Grid Café.
Is it the same as 'peer-to-peer computing'?

No. 'Peer-to-peer computing' describes systems such as Napster, Gnutella, and Freenet, in which files and other data are exchanged between 'peers' (i.e. PCs) without the involvement of a central server. This differs in several ways from volunteer computing:

* Volunteer computing uses central servers. There is typically no peer-to-peer communication.
* Peer-to-peer computing benefits the participants (i.e. the people sharing files). There's no notion of a 'project' to which resources are donated.
* Peer-to-peer computing usually involves storage and retrieval, not computing.

2. Create a Virtual Campus Supercomputing Center (VCSC)

Universities can use BOINC to create a 'Virtual Campus Supercomputing Center' (VCSC). A VCSC can provide researchers with the computational power of a large cluster or supercomputer, for a small fraction of the cost. A VCSC is a BOINC project whose applications are supplied by campus researchers. The computing power is supplied by campus PCs - computing lab machines, desktop and laptops belonging to faculty, staff, and students, and home PCs belonging to university alumni and the public.

As an example, suppose that a VSCS recruits the participation of 10,000 PCs, running an average of 50% of the time. In terms of computing power, this is roughly equivalent to a 5,000-node cluster, for which the initial hardware cost is roughly $5 million, with ongoing yearly energy and maintenance costs of at least $1 million. The VSCS, in contrast, has hardware costs of about $10K.
Creating a VCSC

A VCSC is typically created by a campus unit involved in computing and information technology, by a research unit, or as a collaboration between such units. It involves the following functions, which typically would be carried out by different personnel:

* Application identification and porting: This involves canvassing campus researchers, identifying those with computationally-intensive problems that map well to volunteer computing. The applications used by those researchers are then ported to BOINC, and mechanisms set up for the researchers to submit jobs and get results.
* Server setup and maintenance. This involves setting up BOINC software, and other required open-source software, on a Linux computer. A low-end server (~$10K) is typically sufficient even for large numbers (tens of thousands) of participating nodes.
* Resource recruitment and client deployment. This involves several activities: working with the campus IT department, and with other units that manage campus desktops and PC labs, to install BOINC on as many PCs as possible; working with dormitory IT management to encourage its deployment on student PCs; creating PR events, such as competitions between student groups to contribute the most computing power; and working with alumni organizations to publicize the project and encourage the participation of alumni home PCs. This function also includes publicity, via mass media, campus media, and Internet channels such as periodic emails to volunteer participants.



Benefits of a VCSC

The benefits of creating a VCSC include:

* It creates a new pool of computing power, available at little or no cost to campus researchers. This resource enables previously infeasible research, and may attract prospective faculty.
* It creates a path by which computational scientists can use distributed computing; many of these scientists lack the expertise and resources to do it themselves.
* It creates a new outlet for 'school spirit' which directly contributes to the primary mission of the university.
* It generates publicity for the university and its research.

3. Grid computing with BOINC

Grid versus volunteer computing ¶

Grid computing is a form of distributed computing in which an organization (business, university, etc.) uses its existing computers (desktop and/or cluster nodes) to handle its own long-running computational tasks. This differs from volunteer computing in several ways:

* The computing resources can be trusted; i.e. one can assume that the PCs don't return results that are intentionally wrong, and that they don't falsify credit. Hence there is typically no need for replication.
* There is no need for screensaver graphics; in fact it may be desirable to have the computation be completely invisible and out of the control of the PC user.
* Client deployment is typically automated.

Using BOINC as a grid platform

Although it was originally designed for volunteer computing, BOINC works very well for grid computing. The steps in creating a BOINC-based grid are:

* Set up a BOINC server, develop or port applications, and test them. Set workunit parameters to disable redundancy.
* Create an account with the general preferences that you want enforced on your desktop grid.
* Configure your project to disable account creation.
* Create a custom installer that includes the desired configuration files. Typically, this would include an account file that would attach each client to the account on your project. You might also want to include files that allow clients to be remotely monitored and controlled.
* Deploy your installer; on Windows networks this can be done using Active Directories.

To ensure that outside hosts can't participate in your project or access its files, configure your firewall to prevent HTTP access to your BOINC server.

So basically it's Folding@Home?
http://folding.stanford.edu/

They have this on PS3 and I've downloaded it on to mine, and it's safe as well

Ya it looks the same alright Silverfin. By the way Hawkeye dude , you could still do with explaining it in Simple English. Your explanation was just ultra complicated for me. Could you please brief all that in one paragraph or so?

Ya i agree with eye can you just brief it out??
All i asked was 1 question and you wrote an essay in reply

@ stormgrab and The Eye

BIONIC project will help in decoding the human genome. The human genome contains 3164.7 million chemical nucleotide bases (A, C, T, and G). By decoding we will be able to find cures for many disease specially genetic diseases. But to decode 3164.7 million chemical nucleotide bases, it requires the help of a supercomputer which would cost millions. Here is where the BIONIC project plays an important role.

Quote :

Universities can use BOINC to create a 'Virtual Campus Supercomputing Center' (VCSC). A VCSC can provide researchers with the computational power of a large cluster or supercomputer, for a small fraction of the cost. A VCSC is a BOINC project whose applications are supplied by campus researchers. The computing power is supplied by campus PCs - computing lab machines, desktop and laptops belonging to faculty, staff, and students, and home PCs belonging to university alumni and the public.

As an example, suppose that a VSCS recruits the participation of 10,000 PCs, running an average of 50% of the time. In terms of computing power, this is roughly equivalent to a 5,000-node cluster, for which the initial hardware cost is roughly $5 million, with ongoing yearly energy and maintenance costs of at least $1 million. The VSCS, in contrast, has hardware costs of about $10K.

Hope this clears all your doubts . For more on Human Genome please visit : http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/info.shtml.
It provides a clear cut explanation about human genomes.


@Silverfin

Thanks for sharing the info.... Never knew about the Folding@Home project.

Thank you for your pains.

No problem mate...Thats what friends do.

How do they decode the genome can you please explain?

I think that is really high fi stuff and we can't understand it unless we do our Phds
Correct me if im wrong hawk.