So, anybody over here at IW do folding@home? For those that don't know, it's a distributed computing project from Stanford wherein you can contribute processing cycles to protein-simulation.
Why do this? It helps aid researchers in cancer research, as well as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cystic fibrosis, mad cow disease...well, it's a long list of major diseases.
I got involved a couple of years back, when I first heard about it, but trying out on my Pentium 4 machine, couldn't really notice tangible results.
These days, though, in the era of multiple core processors, and unified-shader (DX10-capable) graphics cards, you can finish a work-unit in easily under a day, and noticeably help the cause...especially with high end gaming computers, as the graphics card clients are especially fast, thanks to having in some cases hundreds of separate processors to work with.
If anyone is interested, just let me know, I could even give you pretty good instructions on how to set it up on your computer.
Now, as for more depth, and how it's become my hobby? The real answer is that I'm a computer enthusiast, who loves hardware, and making computers run as fast as possible...and folding@home, ultimately, is a fantastic burn-in program, a good benchmark one, and, as a male, something to compete with, since Stanford University awards points based upon the amount of work you do for them.
They're not used for anything other than bragging rights, but I have to say...it's pretty cool to be able to say that I personally am in the top 1500 producers in the world...and soon to break the top 10,000 on the basis of total points.
There are stats pages where you can track your progress, like
here, which contains my stats.
If anyone else on this forum is folding, please, share your EOC stats page.