I recently came across this, the World Community Grid. Basically, it uses idle processing time on volunteers' computers to work on various projects benefiting humanity.

I made a team for IRE players (rather than resurrect an old Lusternia team I found). Yes, they even managed to make this competitive.

Click here to join if you already have an account, or click here to make an account and join our team.

I do this with my ps3 already >_>

Don't do it. Skynet. Ring a bell?

They WANT you to think its helping the world, but it's only linking all the pc's together, with a backdoor program.

/sarcasm

I had my computer wired up for the SETI program to parse information on it, but I found that they were a little overambitious with what qualified as "idle" computing time. Needless to say, it didn't last lon.