I'm no techie, I programmed some in basic as a kid thanks to 321 contact, and the last thing I did of note was to put a girl I liked in math's TI on an infinite loop printing 'I got drunk last weekend and couldn't derive' or some such. Been running linux because I inherited a netbook with no disc drive and couldn't get windows to install from USB and I can't afford a new computer, and I've been reading slash for years and read about USB installs.
My question is, is there any movement to use compute cycles at publicly funded data centers like the one going up in utah to crunch big data like this that would benefit the public? Is that even possible in the current vitriolic environment regarding data?
I am young but old enough to remember people fighting over access to processing power just so they could try out new ideas. Often when someone had an idea good enogh to warrant investigation, their colleagues would go above and beyond to make a run happen.