I'm not really a 3D person, and I've only used shaders a little in some Three.js examples, and so far I've got an impression that they are only being used for the graphical part of the equation.

Although, the (quite cryptic) Wikipedia article and some other sources lead me to believe that they can be used for more than just graphical effects, ie, to program the GPU (Wikipedia).

So, the GPU is still a processor, right? With a larger and a different instruction set for easier and faster vector manipulation, but still a processor. Can I use shaders to make regular programs (provided I've got access to the video memory, which is probable)?

Edit: regular programs == "Applications", ie create windows/console programs, or at least have some way of drawing things on the screen, maybe even taking user input.