The World Community Grid is a project to use spare CPU cycles to help the world. The Grid is Windows only, but Folding@Home is a cross-platform way to spend your extra CPU cycles, in an effortless (for you) quest to cure disease. And of course there's the original donated cycle project, SETI@home.
posted by mosch on Dec 31, 2004 - 12 comments

Apparently monkeys cannot write Shakespeare.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood on May 9, 2003 - 69 comments

this childs game (java applet) is so complex you could use it to construct a computer. the original paper (postscript), is heavy going - if you're not a compter science student but would like to understand more try this wonderful book by one of the authors (example pictures).
posted by andrew cooke on Oct 7, 2002 - 7 comments

MIT's Erotic Computation Group. "By developing advanced sexual appliances and techniques, we seek to broaden the range of human amative expression and heighten our potential for sexual gratification." Good to see that at least some people are doing research that will benefit all mankind.
posted by Eloquence on Nov 25, 2001 - 22 comments

Two months from illiterate to MP3 trading hax0rz. Very cool social experiment showing how easy today's GUIs are to use, especially for kids.
posted by skallas on Aug 27, 2001 - 12 comments

Lynn Conway is one of the major talents in the history of the development of computers, responsible for major advances without which computers we buy now would be much different. She's also a transsexual, born physically male. While working for IBM she had her sex-change operation, and IBM immediately fired her for it.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Dec 10, 2000 - 7 comments

Clicking for consciousness Depressingly reductionist. It is wrong to think that if we can't tell the difference between a binary machine in a box and a person in a box we should behave as if there were no difference.
posted by scum on Sep 1, 2000 - 3 comments