World AIDS Day
If you didn't know it yet (you should!) today it's december 1st; World AIDS Day. That one day in a year where we should look a bit further then our noses are long (sounds better in Dutch). It's about people getting the real facts about AIDS and HIV. It's a day for people to get involved and that's why I posted this. There's a way to help people with HIV and AIDS or at least future victims of this terrible virus. It's a very simple way, I'm already doing it right now when typing this post.
Remember a couple of years ago when there was a lot to do about SETI@Home? Or something similar namely RC5 from Distributed.net? Nifty little programs that sit in your system tray, calculating stuff using your idle CPU cycles. Replacing your screensaver with nice 3D views of how much was calculated. Down- and uploading blocks of data using your internet connection. The whole idea behind those programs is to use a huge grid of home computers around the world which together form one giant super computer. Often the individual results of persons or results of a group of people together are logged and sort of competitions arise. Who processes the most blocks of data? The Dutch Power Cows for instance are one of those 'groups' and are active in a lot more projects, that popped up during the years, then the two mentioned above.
Well a new project can be added to the ones already there. It's called FightAIDS@Home (how original) and uses distributed computing (that's how you call using a worldwide grid of computers to calculate stuff) to contribute your computer's idle resources to accelerate research into new drug therapies for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That's basically it. So go download it right here, install it, simply make an account and help! You'll get a nifty free screensaver, that will look 'scientific', with it too ;-)