What a good idea. How many decimal places did you have in mind? A million? A billion? 200 billion?

And there are many, many distributed prime searches already searching. One recently found a new record prime number.

Just tell me one thing: how does this all benefit humanity?

I think it is good to publicise and encourage all grid computing projects - keeping people interested in crunching benefits all projects.

I have just finished crunching a Climate Prediction Unit - (these are huge). My dual core machine was crunching this with one core and WCG Folding/FAA with the other. Now the CP sulphur cycle unit is over, I have given both cores to WCG for the moment.

I am looking for something else as well now. Some of the Maths ones are a bit dry and quirky though - and my preference is for ones like WCG, which have such a direct benefit.

One that really appeals to me next is http://www.malariacontrol.net
This is still in Beta - so it is not yet in the BOINC list of projects. This project will model the epidemiology of Malaria and prevention/treatment strategies. Malaria kills millions, and this is a very worthy project of huge immediate benefit. I think this project was considered for WCG, but missed a time deadline or something. This is a shame - it would have made a great addition to WCG.