The best and oldest example is the SETI@HOME project, started in 1995, which uses radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial life--yeah, like in Contact. Up until 1995 the SETI project relied on supercomputers to sift through the massive amount of data, most of which was random noise, which created a painstaking process that was slow to yield results. That's when David Gedye decided that it could be better done by linking multiple computers via the internet to function together as a virtual supercomputer, thus eliminating the need for sole reliance on massively expensive time on a real supercomputer. This concept came to form the basis of cloud computing well before anyone even mentioned the words "Web 2.0".
Fast forward to present day. Its now practical and fairly simple to participate in. In addition to SETI@HOME there are many other offshoots, such as Rosetta@HOME, researching protein folding for cancer research, and Eienstein@HOME, which is searching for pulsars.
The reasoning behind doing something like this? I leave my linux-box home server running 24/7, but only use it a few hours a day. The program that manages my @HOME projects, BOINC, only uses processor time when the system is idle, which includes LAN activity, and is set to use only 2gb of disk space at the most. Essentially, it downloads files (big math problems) then uses processor cycles to complete them, uploading the results and deleting the original files.
So, if you have a machine that is on for most of the day that is mostly idle, why not set this up and contribute to some scientific research? It can be a great use for older systems too! If you have a box that's been collecting dust in the basement or garage, just throw a network card into it, install a lightweight Linux distro, like Puppy Linux or Xubunutu, then setup BOINC, pick yr projects and start contributing!
Here's a screengrab of my BOINC Client:
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