Sim, existe. Existem muitos projetos que usam computadores ociosos para pesquisa científica, os mais famosos (pelo menos os que eu sei) são:
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SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.
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Help Stanford University scientists studying Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers by simply running a piece of software on your computer.
The problems we are trying to solve require so many calculations, we ask people to donate their unused computer power to crunch some of the numbers.
Se você estiver interessado apenas em tarefas administrativas, também poderá considerar a execução de itens como updatedb
para atualizar o banco de dados do locate
.