I wouldn't open my CPU to anyone. Have no idea what this is all about, but doesn't pass the smell test. CPU power is cheap.
Jim- The Folding @ Home project is a well known and well established program. It passes the "smell test" by the company it keeps. Might I suggest a short tour an overview of their home page? http://folding.stanford.edu/
CPU power's cheap, but add them up... a hundred thousand CPUs there, another hundred thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. And, indeed, there are over a million CPUs involved here, which is why it is impressive that we've gotten into the top 850.
Think of it as SETI, except it actually does something worthwhile. It's a Stanford project that seeks to simulate protein behavior, in hopes of knowing the dynamics of mutation (such as in Alzheimer's and Mad Cow Disease) in hopes of developing a way to arrest it. http://folding.stanford.edu
It's legit and I'll place my computer science education, and far more importantly, my word behind this.
Oh, and by the way... no one's asking you to open up your CPUs; Malsua was just asking about the appropriateness of these threads for certain forum topics. Some of us have offered suggestions like in #179 and #194. :o)
Jim, this no different that SETI@HOME that's been running for years. It's simply FOLDING@HOME. There's no risk. Specifically to you, there's nothing you would particularly have to do. We FreeRepublic folders aren't asking you specificially to to anything.
What we are asking is that you let us FR folders just let our threads live in the technical forum. A mod spiked our thread in the technial forum. I can't imagine a more appropriate forum than that.
That's all. We're ROCKING! We've got enough power to hit the top 100 in this distributed computing project. In fact, we're likely to hit the top 50 in about 6 months. That's a pretty big deal, all things considered.