To many people, the sight of a smiling child who just recovered from a serious ailment is enough to melt hearts. Many wish they could donate to the cure for Aids or Cancer, or help eradicate World Hunger once and for all.
The problem? Most of us who find ourselves outside of the World's elite 5% simply don't have the resources to do significant change.
Many give up, and retreat to the ethical cave of "I'll just look after myself and my loved ones"
But what if there was a way? What if I told you that you could help stop Cancer from the comfort of your home without spending a buck(well apart from your internet subscription)?
I'd like to introduce you to BOINC.
So what is Boinc?
Simply put,
Boinc is an open-source, middleware software platform for computing using volunteered resources and supporting grid computing.
Wiki
This platform is dynamic and can be utilized and contributed to by just about anyone.
If you're reading this you probably have access to Internet and a good smartphone and/or computer.
It's also very likely you don't use all of your computer's RAM power... You can therefore decide to contribute this extra memory to projects that benefit humanity using Boinc(Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing). You simply choose which projects to support, connect your system to the network, and your computer does the work and sends the results to the researchers whenever it has spare processing power.
Boinc goes way further than just medical research! It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project, but soon became generalized as a platform for other distributed applications covering diverse fields ranging from mathematics to astrophysics. Boinc allows approved researchers to tap into the enormous processing resources of multiple personal computers around the world.
Under the Boinc platform you will find projects ranging from mathematical problems to quantum physics to DNA extrapolation.
Scientists can use Boinc to create volunteer computing projects
Which will be displayed for the potential input of the power of thousands of CPUs and GPUs.
Universities can use Boinc to create Virtual Campus Supercomputing Centers
Companies can use Boinc for desktop Grid computing
So there you have it, a simple platform that allows you to help the world solve major problems.
Gridcoin rewards participants for Boinc contributions(as if the feeling of being an angel wasn't good enough).
So feel free to use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or even your Android device to assist in working on the cure for diseases, study and predict global warming variables, and do many other types of scientific research.
As the time of writing this article, Boinc currently has 164,244 active volunteers and 849,803 connected computers. The Platform is safe, secure, and user friendly. There is also a plethora of material and tutorials online to help you setup your system.
You can
Learn How to use Boinc here
Join the network today and be a part of a global movement to make our planet a utopia.