pball1224.. yes you're right it does cost a lot for electricity for a company to run computers at 100% 24/7, but if BOINC is only running during it's idle time during the day when the computer is on anyway, the power consumption isn't going to be significantly different. Especially if electricity is saved in other ways like turning off lights, printers, ect at night (a cpu doesn't use any more power then 2 light bulbs). Crunching on 1500 machines would add up to be a lot of extra power required, but still to have 0 crunching is just sad.

Watching posts trying to justify what was essentially stealing is funny.

Would you feel the same way if someone hacked your electricity supply/meter to feed their house???

Ir's "stealing" because it's convenient to define it that way today.

Had the research been on something less "geeky" and something significant was discovered, the selfsame professional redefiners would be frantically crawling all over themselves to grab all the votes kudos.

In a similar vein, our federal government has been subsidising the installation of solar generators. Consequently, the state authorities, not understanding the issue, have reacted by gouging for an inspection fee and trying to beat the monster to death with their only weapon - regulation. Like the newly-thought-up instant regulation that the conversion box has to have THREE isolators installed - in addition to the one designed into the unit by the manufacturers which completely isolates everything.

Luddites and their zombie-army of excuse-seeking regulation-quoting paper-waving supporters...