Have you been BOINC'd yet? Maybe it's time.

Would you like to help cure cancer? Sounds hard, but it's really not. Simply download this program called BOINC, then select a project. I chose Rosetta because it computes the geometry of protein folding for disease research.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

The BOINC program is very good at remaining in the background, out of your way. I have seen no performance penalties after running BOINC for the past several days. My computers (3 of them) seem unaffected, except that the processor, when I'm not using it, is calculating cures for cancer.

I like that idea.

What are these computers supposed to be for, anyway? We surf, we blog, we email, we chat, we talk to strangers thousands of miles away, we listen to music, we watch little videos. Yet 99 percent of the time what we do with these amazing machines is trivial to the point of shame.

I have sometimes wondered what it would be like if my computers, with all their gigahertz of processing power, could do something beneficial for me on a continuous basis.

Well, that ain't gonna happen, if what I wanted was a genie to pick stocks for me or a RoboBuddy to keep me company with clever banter. Computers just don't do that. But what computers can do very well is rotate a noodly mess of protein strands and find out how they fit best into a target molecule's binding site. Later, researchers can use those results to help find good candidates for drugs that treat or cure various diseases, like cancer.

If you ever find out that you or someone you love has cancer, then every minute your computers have spent finding helpful drugs will seem like the Best. Investment. Ever.

A POLITICAL SUGGESTION: THE 'PUT COMPUTERS TO WORK' ACT (PC2W)

I propose a national initiative to make community computing practically ubiquitous. I propose exchanging participation in BOINC (or something similar) with free high-speed internet access.

Furthermore, I propose a government initiative to encourage PC makers to incorporate community computing technologies into their future hardware and software.

The benefits of PC2W would be enormous. Researchers would be collecting valuable molecular modeling data much sooner, allowing them to advance the process of drug discovery. For consumers, free high-speed internet access would stimulate the economy and help to spread other benefits of computer use.

Over the next ten years, computers will continue to get faster, lighter, use less power, etc. Same goes for your connection to the internet - it will get faster, and probably cheaper, too.

Unfortunately, some people face a deadline that is not ten years away. For them, the best bet is for their fellow citizens to join forces and pool our computing power to find answers as fast as we can with today's technology.

A poll from my previous diary at DKos revealed that many of my readers (I have readers? Fascinating...) have computers that run for many hours per day with nothing running but their fans and a few blinking LED's. To me, knowing what I know, having seen what cancer and other diseases do to my friends and family, I beseech you with all my heart to download and install BOINC. Run the Rosetta project. Please. Yes, it will cost a little more on your monthly electricity bill, like leaving a light on.

Let us leave that one light burning.