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Oh yea, I'm going there. So you're curing cancer? You're not entering a contest or showing off what your computer can do? Hmmm... proof?

While currently you could call me a hyprocite, I've set World Community Grid to quit asking for work. See, while I don't get into contests or belonging to a team or bragging about how many points or badges I have, it still irritates me to be a part of it. Here's a couple of reasons why:

While I don't know the exact figures, I would wager that a low percentage of computers that fold/crunch are run on renewable energy sources. This is a problem because most energy is created by burning a fuel. Maybe you're not aware of it but there's a fun little chemical compound called Benzene. In the northwestern states where gasoline fuel can come from Alaska, it's added to the fuel (it's also added for other reasons). Benzene isn't only a problem in cars, it's a problem in toxic waste areas and industry emissions.
Some fun links:
http://www.benzeneleukemialawblog.com/2009/07/articles/benzene/informationnews/benzene-in-fuel-is-harmful-to-humans/
http://scorecard.org/chemical-profiles/html/benzene.html

So what do cars have to do with running a program on your computer? Not much. I'm saying this because although Benzene is hazardous, we have no problem adding it to fuel and creating it either to burn or by burning fossil fuels. This transfers over into other means of energy by burning fuels. While there are greener ways to burn fuels, there's no convincing that you can burn something for energy and have no ill effects. There's plenty of human (and animal) health issues (cancer included) caused by burning of fuels. I could use more dramatic wording and say that energy consumption by computers (including those folding) causes cancer, not cures it. I don't have the time, means or knowledge to go out and prove and link computers to causing cancer but I do know that my computer uses energy, so does yours. Do you know that you're curing cancer? How much have you cured? How much safer are we from cancer than before folding/crunching? Computers consuming energy by returning work that either eliminates or highlights a possibility that might help cancer research. There's just too many if's and variables. Until alternative clean energy solutions are put in place for computers folding/crunching (this includes production of energy sources such as solar panels), this is going to be a problem.

But wait! That's not all! Look at an average computer power supply. At best you can see 10% power wasted (90% efficiency) but these numbers can easily be 15-20% waste. Not only that, these computers are built with end-user parts that aren't meant to be run 100% load for 24/7 for their whole life (looking at you Knight). Servers are built with better built parts with better features meant for reliability with 100% load, combined with multiple CPU's with multiple cores, they're much better fitted for this kind of task. If that's not bad enough, people's hard earned money is wasted even faster with building dedicated computers that are overclocked and overvolted and run 100% 24/7.

For a closing paragraph, I would like to talk about the uselessness that are teams, competitions and ranking. What's the point? Yea I do see that making competitions can get people more involved but for fucks sake, do you really need a better reason than "curing cancer"? All this does is make people that only care about points and showing off. The whole concept is forgotten with these people. The only thing it shows is that people with more expendable money are the ones returning more points. Big fucking deal. So, I'm going to do my part to prevent cancer and environmental destruction, I'm going to stop folding/crunching. Also, sorry about the swear words but sometimes they just drive the point home.

Yea, 85% of Benzene is from vehicle emissions. It was just 1 example. I don't believe that coal is dug up and burned, it has to go through processing and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was processed with chemicals or have things added to it to burn better. Benzene is an anti-knock agent, thats one of the larger reasons it's used. It doesn't really matter what you're burning, nothing is clean. Let's make a progressive movement to remove cancer-causing chemicals and compounds from daily life before we start trying to solve it by doing more damage. There's PLENTY other ways to contribute positively or contribute less negatively, me, I'm doing the latter.

I'm not even going to comment on the nuclear power aside from saying that people who are for it aren't thinking about the future.

I'm not even going to comment on the nuclear power aside from saying that people who are for it aren't thinking about the future.

Nuclear fusion is the future. Nuclear fission will just keep us going until we get there.

Heres something interesting to think about. We've gone so far into "technology" that we can't really go back. The only way we can improve renewable energy creation is by still using the hazardous shit we use today. Sure, its possible to drop everything and go to renewable energy that doesn't take R&D heavy amounts of coal/gas/fuel burning to produce the parts, such as geothermal and wind energy's, but thats not really enough to keep the entire world going especially since theres a lot of people who arn't going to just stop using computers/etc. Right now we kind of need to keep using this hazardous shit to produce very efficient sources or renewable energy such as solar and even something as epic as changing magnetic flux energy. After we get there, we throw away all of the previous sources of energy and put the new sources in the spot light. I envision many, many large stretches of vibrant green grass fields; very beautiful.

While this has nothing to do with crunching, I think this is more important to read than what Stanford has to say.

Also, I dislike nuclear energy.


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I also think it's unfortunate how WCG and other groups hook people in by saying "our program uses your unused CPU cycles" as if to say, there's no difference in power usage.

That means they've done their job even if all of these CPU cycles don't do shit.

Fission is what we use now. Fusion is much safer but we do not have the means to collect the energy produced from fusion. Some say that if we find a way to get the energy from fusion then all of our energy problems will be solved.