Posted on 02/21/2006 10:13:18 AM PST by soccer_maniac
Time for a new FreeRepublic folding@home thread.
While this folding@home team is not officially sanctioned by Free Republic, it's 250+ members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE).
Currently, the team is in 204th place, having reached more than 2,000,000 points!
This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please see the links posted below (or read one of the previous 8 folding threads)
WHOO! Way to go Freeper Folders! Wish I had more Computers I could hook up!
Folding@Home FAQ for new users:
What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.
Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don’t, into their predestined shapes — and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.
How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.
Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.
How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?: 1.)Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (see link below). Type in your desired username. 2) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic! 3) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.
How can my computer help? Even if he were given exclusive access to all of the world’s supercomputers, Standford still wouldn’t have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people’s desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.
There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.
Yesterday I completely deleted the program and reinstalled it, but still the same thing.
I'm baffled.
BTTT
Mine shuts off my PCMCIA slot presumably because the CPU is running too hot. I tried to lower it but it continues. I decided to just live with it.
Ok, I just installed this on my office computer. . . Still not quite sure what it is all about but it looks pretty cool. Can I download it and put it on the one at home too with the same username?
All right! This has been fun watching us climb. And its for a good thing...I recommend it to anyone.
Thanks for the thread.
You sure can. It's how you build up a stable :). I've got 17, Irenh has 30+ and klutz, well, lots.
In case you are interested.
I am running the Folding@Home app on two machines, including a venerable win98/Celeron 400, with no "issues" and no noticable perfomance decrease.
Replies #3 and #4 have a good description of Folding@Home and our "friendly" competition with DU, KOS etc.
[ "Please Join the Team" ... bump ]
Thanks... I'll put it on the rest of my machines. . . .
I see I'm falling backwards in ranking within the team.
But I'll be bringing the multi-proc box on line later this week.
Ok, I just put it on the other office computer. It is running the same project. Is that ok?
Yeah, each project has a bazillion parts so it's quite common.
Bazillion?
That's a lot.. . :-)
I put it on my elderly laptop, too, even though I don't use it much each day. I figured it would squeeze out a work unit eventually. The very first task they gave me would take TWELVE DAYS running 24/7 to complete. Sheesh! I'm about a quarter of the way through. Is there a switch I can use in the console version to keep gigantic tasks from hitting that machine?
We will add your computing power to the 36120 collective. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
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