Any BOINC participants here (SETI@home) ??

[culturejam]

Way back in the day, I was pretty active with the SETI@home project. Basically, you volunteer CPU time on your computer(s) to process data take from SETI telescopes. So you're helping search for aliens, essentially.  

Anyway, there are teams who pool their "credits". I created a team called DIY Effects Pedals Community in case anybody who is already running SETI@home could join up, or if you're not running it but would be interested in check it out.

It used to be a standalone application, but the SETI app was bundled with a larger project called BOINC. All the projects under that umbrella use volunteered CPU for research. I also participate in rosetta@home which is dedicated to finding cures for things like cancer.

The cool thing about the software is that if you have a multi-core processor (which most everyone does these days), you can simultaneously contribute to multiple projects or work on multiple "tasks" from the same project. And of course, you can dictate how much CPU time the application gets, make it only turn on when the computer is idle, etc.

So check out BOINC and the SETI@home project and join the team if you're inclined.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/