what exactly is the deal with folding? i was reading some tutorial the other day and the author mentioned that he uses his scheduler to run programs at night
Yes, that is Folding at Home...............some sort of genetics research, looking into diseases like altzheimer's and such?

You run these things when your computer is not doing much. I would run it during the day but this guy is probably running heavy duty stuff at that time?

Maybe he only lets it "phone home" at night?