http://www.ud.com/home.htm Does that site check out? I’m running the program and doing some protein strands or something. I just felt like helping out seeing as how my friend’s mom just died (funeral today) of Cancer.
Dopers, am I an idiot that just joined a Gator twin or am I doing the right thing?
These guys are legitimate. They’re employing engineers who also work(ed) on the distributed.net project.
It is big, and reputable.
Also, these guys got a link directly from the front page on Intel.com. That adds more credibility.
Yep! It is 100% legit.
You are using your unused CPU cycles to help mankind. Be proud! 
I used to work at Entropia.com which is slowly going out of business and we had the exact same business model as United Devices. In fact, we were their biggest competitor. The idea is you have a cause that would benefit from distributed computing (like virtual drug screening) which both our companies did. They did cancer, we did HIV (http://www.fightaidsathome.org). Both work the same, they send a molecular design and receptor model to your computer, and test how well they would theoretically interact. Those that do well get turned into real chemicals and tested against real receptors and MAY help find cures for drugs faster.
This is basically a way to provide a virtual supercomputer to a university for drug research who otherwise couldn’t afford it. That’s the theory anyway. In practice, some of the time your computer is working on commercial projects for paying customers, though you won’t know when that’s happening.
That was the problem, however, since there are very few paying customers. Intel was one of them, and United Devices got that hook because the CEO and CFO are both former Intel executives.
Entropia and United Devices have both had a number of layoffs, with both companies going from about 120 people in 2000/ 2001 down to about 20-30 now.
Everyone had high hopes for distributed computing as the next ‘big thing’ because it can provide enormous amounts of power to individuals at very low prices since it uses the excess power of your processor. In reality, very few applications can be distributed OTHER than drug screening, and while that’s of real value to pharmaceutical companies, most of which are testing the technology now, they can’t and won’t use the public Internet to test their private data so they are setting up distributed networks behind their firewalls.
Ultimately, the UD and the Entropia projects are both proof-of-concept marketing tools to sell computing grids to pharmaceutical companies
And yes, I am a little bitter, having left a good, stable defense company job to join Entropia only to get laid off in May 2001 (8 months after being hired) when all the dotcoms came crashing down.