Day 34: Donate your computer's idle time

This one is way over my head, so I'll give you the details and you can check it out for yourself. But, apparently, you can donate your computer's idle time to scientists, who use it to "cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars" and conduct other types of research. This is called volunteer computing.

The grid computing software only uses idle CPU cycles, and when your computer needs more processor cycles, the software automatically turns those resources back over to the program you are using. It starts automatically when you open your computer and runs quietly in the background. You just download the software, install it and forget it. You can use grid computing applications on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Click here to link to Berkeley's volunteer computing site, boinc.