Used to run SETI@Home alot on my computer as a way of having it be busy while I was sleeping :) - that, and Folding@Home too (protein 3-dimensional structure calculation while-you-work...) and GIMPS (the Great International Mersenne Prime project - something like that - prove large numbers are prime while you nap ;^) - it's produced among the largest known primes, truly, which has applications outside pure math in producing rather difficult-to-break codes)... - computers' downtime is very useful for participation in other peoples' mathematics projects: they send raw data, your computer processes it and sends them the results. So long as you're working with someone reputable- oy, a catch. (I gather some other people with distributed computation projects to hawk were not.) So...
The latest software for
SETI@Home (extraterrestial intelligence, anyone? the possibility seems more and more unlikely but interests) requires, for Macintosh, OS 10.4. So, my new computer can use it, my last one couldn't. Just installed it, and today the status page at UC Berkeley says that some of their machines and/or software are down- they can't send units out right now.
Ah, I'll wait :)
(apparently, I started in June of 2000, and have worked on 323 "units" amounting to 7,146 hours of processing time between then and now.)