I was wondering if you have ever heard of "Folding @ Home"? A few of the other forums i am on do this and i think it would be a cool idea for us to start also. I've taken the liberty of copy and pasting the FAQ on overclock.net about folding @ home so that you guys could learn more about it. Ive been doing it for a couple years now.

What, how, and why?
[ul][*]What is folding? Folding is a worldwide distributed computing effort conducted by Stanford University to understand how proteins assemble themselves. The real world applications of this research includes potential cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, and Parkinson's. Nearly everyone's life has been touched by someone who has had one of these diseases or one of the many other diseases this research is aiming to cure. For more information, please see Stanford's Folding@Home website.[*]How can I join Overclock.net's team? Simply go here, download the program, and enter team number 37726 to start folding for our team. Post your folding name in this thread to receive the nifty folding icon in your postbit. This icon will appear approximately 24 hours after you have both completed your first work unit and have posted in that thread. Please do not post in this thread until your name appears on Stanford's site as it will cause potentially significant delays in getting your postbit info.[*]Why should I fold? What's in it for me? In addition to the knowledge that you're contributing to a very good cause, we offer contests and prizes to our folding team members.[*]I don't have a high powered folding farm. Can I still win prizes? Absolutely! We offer a team competition that's perfect for non-power folders. The folding power of each four person team is limited so no individual folder is too small to contribute.[*]What does it cost? The software is free, and there are no fees of any kind for participating in folding. If you fold 24/7 and/or have several computers folding, you will likely notice a small increase in your electric bill.[/ul]
Folding@Home software
[ul][*]Should I download the graphical client or the console version? That is entirely up to you. In my experience, both versions of the program fold at the same rate. The graphical client will use a bit more RAM than the console, but it provides more information as to your folding progress (and a nifty rendering of the proteins being studied). Folders with high end multi-core systems may be able to take advantage of the SMP client. For more information on SMP, see bdatillo's SMP Guide.[*]Which operating systems can I use to fold? Windows (98SE through Vista), Linux, and Mac OS X[*]Will folding slow my computer down? The folding application only uses idle clock cycles, meaning that if another application has need of the CPU, the folding application will decrease its usage until the other application's needs have been satisfied. The only drain on system resources is the RAM that's utilized, which remains utilized even when other applications are using the CPU.[*]Why do I keep getting the same WU? Is it normal to get the same WU as someone else? Is project is comprised of thousands of WUs, so it is absolutely normal to get the same WU repeatedly on one or more computers. Each WU is a small piece of a much larger puzzle.[/ul]
Ways to improve folding speed and your folding experience
[ul][*]SMP. SMP. SMP. If your system can run the SMP client, it is by far the best way to improve folding performance often by a factor of five or more. Most mutli-core systems can run the SMP client on a Linux OS, and multi-core systems that support virtualization technology can run the SMP client in Windows using a program called VMWare (see guide.[*]How do I increase the efficiency of my folding? Check out this FAQ by Stainless. In particular, the -forceasm and -advmethods flags are very beneficial on many comptuers.[*]Are there any tools to help me manage my folding farm? Check here for many third party tools, including ones that help to monitor folding progress on groups of computers (many work great on single computers as well). My personal favorite is FahMon.[/ul]
How am I doing? What are other people using to fold?
[ul][*]How can I keep track of my folding progress? F@H statistics can be found on our site (updated daily), on the EXTREME Folding site (updated every three hours), and on the Stanford site (updated hourly).[*]The estimated time to complete my current work unit is 23 years. Is that right? For the first set of frames, the folding application estimates 30 minutes per frame, regardless of how fast your computer is. On work units with very large numbers of frames, this results in a very unrealistic completion estimate. Once approximately 1% of the work unit is complete, the estimated time to complete will be fairly accurate.[*]How long should this work unit take to complete? Work units (WUs) vary greatly as does the time it takes to complete them on different computers. Some WUs will take only a few hours on high end computers while some low end computers may take a month or longer to complete a WU. Generally, faster computers will take between a day and a week to complete a large WU.[*]What do other members' farms look like, and how do I show off my folding farm? Check out other folders' farms and share you own in the Overclock.Net Folding Rig Showcase/Database.[/ul]
Help!
[ul][*]I'm having problems with folding. How can I get help? Check the Folding@Home Forum to see if others have had similar problems, and feel free to post any questions you may have as well.[/ul]
Who's in charge?
[ul][*]Who runs our folding team? Day to day operation of our folding tea

 

This is also a neat little way for forum members to compete in something and actually cause some good in the process.

 

Sounds like another SETI program... Supposedly you're DLing bits of sound from a deep space recording device and analyzing it for patterns and definable sources. I spent YEARS letting seti run day and night and nothing ever came of it.