February 21, 2008

• Spare Cycles?

  I was happily reading the Ryan MacMillan feed, and realised that, once upon a time, when I was a history student and had very cheap access to JANET, I had something sitting, running on my desktop, trying to find a cure for cancer.  I took it off when I went back to my parents, and was on dial up - and, after that, I was on dial up for my Masters, and, eventually, I just forgot about it.

  Fortunately, the rest of the world has not forgotten about it.  Moreover, since my desktop is now on all the time as it's quite simply a nightmare trying to remote in to work if it isn't, I may as well use those spare cycles when I'm not in and get back to trying to find a cure for cancer.  Don't worry.  I do switch the monitor off, as a paen to the envrionmentalists.  Not a terribly good paen, I know, but I'm trying.

  So.  I googled 'social computing cancer cure', found someone's blog, wandered over to the World Community Grid and I'm now contributing to some sort of cure for cancer, and also something to help stop the spread of dengue.  Yes, dengue.  The Anthropologist's had dengue twice, and if he gets it a third time could well end up completely gaga.  Fortunately, the slow completion of his PhD will prevent this danger for quite a while... as I'm sure he wouldn't be half so amusing.

  I've yet to work out if this is going to be a memory suck... but I think it's a terrifically good idea.

  xxx

   

  • 8:06 am
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