How would BuRay mining work?  Are the drives programmable enough to do that?

Yes.  Mining bitcoins is the only productive thing you can do with your computer.  If you're not mining there's nothing left but LOLCats and porn.

Hi.  My name is Gunny, and I'm a bitcoin addict.

You can download the blockchain fast from here: http://eu1.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/

While you wait for the download go to a KNOWN CLEAN computer (use a Linux boot CD) and make a paper wallet here: https://www.bitaddress.org/

PRINT IT OUT.  DO NOT LOSE IT.

Then restore your wallet.dat and you should see your coins.  Immediately transfer them to the paper wallet.  That will make your coins safe until you are sure your computer is clean.

CPU mining became worthless after GPU mining took off.  You need to mine with your GPU.  NVidia cards are worthless.  You need a modern mid-high end Radeon.  http://bitminer.info/

GPU has average MH/watt and good MH/$.  FPGA has good MH/watt but bad MH/$.  This is an attempt to improve the MH/$ by making the hardware cheaper.

They've succeeded making the MH/$ better but still not as good as GPU.  Currently GPU mining is break-even due to power cost and FPGA mining is profitable.  It will take a while to pay off the $50/175MH hardware but it will eventually happen unless mining profitability falls lower.

It is an interesting hobby project if you want to try it.

Linux:  rm ~/.bitcoin/wallet.dat

The processing power is used for security.  It makes it very expensive for someone to undo previous transactions.

You need a problem that is very hard to solve but very easy to verify that it was solved correctly.  This is called "proof of work".  SHA256 works well for this but the work isn't otherwise useful.  Folding@home, SETI@home etc don't have the right properties.  They're hard to solve but it's hard to prove they were solved correctly without doing all the work over again.  Most if not all research problems will be this way.