Don't let that computer idle... put it to work for the greater good!

When I was a child, growing up in the rural West Virginia community where I was born, I learned that resources aren't limitless, and the smartest thing a person can do is use everything they have wisely and efficiently. This conservation ethic likewise served me well during my time in the United States Army. As a scout, I needed to be able to carry around anything I might need on my back. Wasting space wasn't an option. Reusing tools was a necessity.

Most of us aren't Army scouts, but that doesn't mean we have to be wasteful. Especially when it comes to our gadgets, which we own an increasing number of. A few folks are good at turning off their computers when they're not using them. But I suspect far more people just leave their computers on in an idle state when they're doing something else, like answering the phone or fixing a meal.

If you're somebody who falls into the latter group, there's something easy you can do to avoid wasting the energy your computer is consuming while it's idle.

First, a little background.

As many readers are aware, scientific funding in our country (whether public or private) can unfortunately be very limited and hard to find, especially during a recession. What a funding shortfall often results in is a lot of data without enough computers to process the information. This is where BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) comes in.

The program, started at the University of California, Berkley's Space Sciences Laboratory, is designed to tap the unused power of a personal computer.

What BOINC does is make use of your computer while it is idle to process through the backlog of scientific data. You can come back to your computer at any time and BOINC will stand down so you can resume whatever you were doing or start a new task. BOINC has already helped make possible several Pulsar discoveries important to the science of astrophysics.

Readers concerned about user privacy and the security of their computer need not worry about losing peace of mind by participating in this project, because BOINC is free software (free as in free speech, not free beer). That means it doesn't have any proprietary blobs of code "phoning home" to the likes of Google or Facebook.

I am fan of the Einstein@home project (which focuses on astrophysics) but there are many other projects out there that you can participate in which make use of the BOINC network. The UW runs such a project... Rosetta@home.

You can see a full list at BOINC's website.

The software can be downloaded from this page. Those who use any of the popular GNU/Linux distributions (like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, or Gentoo) should be able to grab the software out of their distro's repositories.

Chances are, if you've got a computer, there's going to be times when it's powered on and running, but you're busy, away, or relaxing, as I noted earlier. Why not set up your computer to serve the greater good during those times?