(Vanity) FreeRepublic Folding@Home Project Update (We're in the Top 1,200!)

Free Republic Folders Stats Page ^ | 12/25/2005 | me

[texas booster]

OK, new thread for the next week.

First, a big shout out to the SETI members who have added CPUs to the effort. Remember, its Team 36120, NOT Team 0.

Next, congrats to all for bumping our team up to 104 processors and 76 users. We have a number of new users in the team, with Clara Lou, fzx12345, SamfromLivingston, brityank, manwiththehands and Tami all popping onto the hit list this week.

Malsua, uriah and Ken in Texas are solidly in the top 10. Malsua is continuing to add systems and now accounts for 10% of the FR total. Great job!

Free Republic Folding@Home Stats Page

On the global front, Free Republic Folders is now listed at # 1196. We are poised to overtake (today):

carletonu (maybe in MN?)
Helms-Deep
2*ian
Dynadues
Soluchis
Greece and soon the
University of Pennsylvania!

We were passed by one team, SISD. My guess is that this team really is the computers of an Independent School District that were all "volunteered" to fold over the holidays. They are producing points at a rate of 37,000 points per day. As we gain members from the 100,000 FReepers that visit JimRob's place I expect that we will have a much greater long term growth than them.

[texas booster]

Thanks again to all that are helping us advance science and promote the peaceful use of computers.

Extreme Overclockers Stats for Free Republic ^

We expect to pass 200,000 total points on New Years Eve!

We have a chance to pop into the Top 1000 Teams by Saturday if we can have a few more systems added to the pack.

[SteveMcKing]

Still moaning for a suitable client, am I....

[Mount Athos]

i joined also, am at middle of pack of freepers

[Red Badger]

All that computing power and STILL no free weekend minutes!.........

[texas booster]

New Folding @ Home ping.

Please let me know if you want -on- or -off- the F@H ping list!

[MarkeyD]

I have an extra box doing nothing, I'll join.

[texas booster]

We have been watching your progress.

7 work units in your first week is impressive. As your system keeps crunching work units you'll continue to climb.

Thanks for all of your help!

[aliquando]

Just joined in with my one measly little unit.

[Mount Athos]

I only got one single core CPU system but I overclocked it a little (20%). I love my AMD64 cpu, if I knew I was going to be folding I would have got a dual core one though. Guess I could upgrade some day. Nah not worth the cash. :)

[texas booster]

Well, we can't do much for BeOS ...

F@H can run alongside of BOINC, but you've noted how troublesome that project can be. Would you consider downloading the console version and running it as a service? That one seems very stable.

http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

Third and fourth items on the download page may do you some good ...

[MarkeyD]

I just bought a dual core AMD 64, but I have to use it for work so I can't really spare it. I just added a spare machine, but it's old and slow.

[texas booster]

You can run this on your main systems also. It does not need to be dedicated to F@H.

Go into the configuration tab and set the % of CPU available to around 75% or so. Excellent response and you get decent work accomplished.

You can also name more than one machine with your user name. I have four systems, three at home and one at work. Malsua currently is running with 10 CPUs on his user name.

[MarkeyD]

I'll think about it, I run datbases and compiles all day long on my other machines, and I don't really want to slow that down.

[texas booster]

Thanks for your support! You do not need a supercomputer to help out, just a willingness to help.

Looking forward to seeing you on the charts in a day or so.

[texas booster]

Once I buy a motherboard I spend my next upgrades on memory and faster video.

After all I run Windoze ...

[texas booster]

mmm... dual core 64!

I really like the new AMD processors and have dropped off the Intel bandwagon completely. They have decent motherboards and support chips but I am not impressed with the price/performance of their latest products.

[umbagi]

Please let me know if you want -on- or -off- the F@H ping list!

On, please.

Thanks for helping get/keep this going.

u

[uglybiker]

Add one more SETI cruncher to the mix....

[Seamoth]

Just joined. Looks like my first box picked a tough one--3750 frames, ECD March 13th (!!). My laptop got an ECD of 10 days. Will be a while before I show up on your stats.

[rogue yam]

Is it okay that I don't have any idea what this thread is about?

[Klutz Dohanger]

put me on the ping list.

I'm going to add a few systems on monday, to see what kind of "bump" I can add to the stats..

[WVNan]

LOL. I was thinking the same thing. I was wondering if I had dropped in on a thread written in a foreign language.

[texas booster]

You are both on the ping list.

Thanks for helping!

[prophetic]

ping me too.

Btw, I've still not in the team YET!!!

Still in the top 10 in team 36837 though....

[texas booster]

Hey it's only geekspeak! Of course my head spins when I read about the results posted on the Stanford U Folding @ Home pages, such as here:

http://folding.stanford.edu/results.html

Basically we have all teamed together to run a "screensaver" that spends idle time on our computers folding protiens. On one hands we get to help out the world by advancing medecine. On the other hand we compete to see who is #1 in folding protiens.

Kinda neat thing to do when the average system runs at idle over half of the time.

[texas booster]

Let the computers run overnight. If the results still seem wacky then reboot. The internal clock will then adjust the estimated completion date.

F@H work units are set to all complete within a week. Too hard to maintain valid science when the results are too spread out.

[texas booster]

Top 10 on a big team like that ... We would love to have you but I certainly understand. Still ...

Brother, could ya' spare an Opteron or two?

[Seamoth]

Thanks all for your help. My CPUs showing more reasonable ECDs of 1.8 days & 13 hours.

[Uriah_lost]

Just stare at the screen for a while and it will all make sense or you could read some of the links....but what fun is that?
Welcome all!!
We're doing good works here.

[texas booster]

Thanks! It will be good to add to the systems that are turned off all week at work.

When next week rolls around I hope that everyone's new Christmas presents start cranking out the workunits!

[KarinG1]

Dern, I felt sure this was true.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1542570/posts

Live and learn.

[ican'tbelieveit]

keep me on. I am up to 19 units complete now, should have another over night. The next set of units my computers have downloaded appear to take 2 days. Should see updates some time Tuesday.

[texas booster]

The SETI project as currently constructed is being absorbed into a new distributed client called BOINC. BOINC clients will be able to run more than one distrubuted project at a time, and most expect that SETI users will migrate over to BOINC eventually.

We are hoping to pick up a few new F@H users from among the ranks of former (and current) SETI seekers.

SETI, much like the Genome@Home project that I started on years ago, is freezing the lists of contributors and basically starting the point totals over on BOINC.

Folding@Home may once day run under BOINC but the network is not stable enough for them to bless it.

Or maybe the various professors don't want to support another university's research. It's all about grant money.

[texas booster]

You are on the ping list.

Thanks!

[Glenn]

Why are we shown as '1210' rank on the folding@home stats page?

(Jinx on folding@home)

[RebelTex]

"Basically we have all teamed together to run a "screensaver" that spends idle time on our computers folding protiens. On one hands we get to help out the world by advancing medecine. On the other hand we compete to see who is #1 in folding protiens."

Questions:

1. How is security handled so as to prevent hackers and invasion of privacy, ID theft, etc.?
2. What safeguards are in place to prevent the data generated from falling into the wrong hands, say terrorists?
3. How will the generated data ultimately be used?
4. Can military (either ours or theirs) applications be developed from this?
5. Can participation be controlled and/or terminated by end-user at any time?

Just wondering.

RT

[texas booster]

I pull my stats from the ExtremeOverclockers F@H stats page. The stats are pulled directly from Stanford's databases.

I feel that I have more flexibility when searching for interesting items in postings when using their pages. They also update quicker than the text files that Stanford uses.

See:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120

[texas booster]

All answers pulled from Stanford's FAQ about Folding@Home, or my personal experience running the program.

Questions:

How is security handled so as to prevent hackers and invasion of privacy, ID theft, etc.?

{Stanford} We have worked very hard to maintain the best security possible with modern computer science methodology. Our software will upload and download data only from our data server here at Stanford. The Cores are also digitally signed (see below) to make sure that you're getting the true Stanford cores and nothing else.

How is this possible? We take extensive measures to check all of the data entering your computer and the results we send back to Stanford with 2048 bit digital signatures. If the signatures don't match (on either the input or the output) the client will throw away the data and start again. This ensures, using the best software security measures developed to date (digital signatures and PKI in version 3.0), that we are keeping the tightest possible security. Finally, the client/screen saver are available for download only from this web site, so that we can guarantee the integrity of the software. We do not support Folding@home software obtained elsewhere and prohibit others to distribute the software.

What safeguards are in place to prevent the data generated from falling into the wrong hands, say terrorists?

See above. Data is only pushed to the Stanford servers. It is not polled from them to each team or user.

How will the generated data ultimately be used?

{Stanford} Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them? Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.

Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.

Can military (either ours or theirs) applications be developed from this?

I am sure that the military has already pinpointed applications that could make use of thousands of slower processors. However they have the money to buy thousands of faster processors, and a need to keep that research off the general Internet. We are pretty safe from our guys.

In a similar vein, there was an article years ago about Saddam buying/stealing thousands of Playstations to use their graphics processors to launch missles, etc. I do not know if that has ever been substantiated and it is much easier said than done.

Can participation be controlled and/or terminated by end-user at any time?

The application is completely under your control. Turn the machine off and it stops. Right-click the tray icon and hit Exit and it stops. Take it out of the Startup folder and it will never run again.

This is a very benign application, and only runs when nothing else is running. Your system will ask for a work unit, fold it and then contact the Stanford server to send it the results. If nothing is heard from a system in about a week, then the work unit is given to someone else to complete.

Just wondering.

No prob! This is a very similar project to the SETI@Home project which search radio signals for life from outer space.

[RebelTex]

Thank you for the info. It sounds like a pretty cool project.

If I joined, do you think the program could have a small subroutine to find me a date with my dream woman? Nah, nevermind, that would take over all the processing time and kill the program, LOL.

;^D

[Klutz Dohanger]

Added Laptop, and 10 W2K servers... will add some more tonight, If my VPN comes back up, and then I'll seriously start trying to pad the stats on Monday...

This is more fun than freepin' a CNN poll.... :)

[systematic]

Thanks for the ping.

Just want to point our that libs decided to challenge the mighty FR

DUmmies: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157

dKossacks: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48083

[VeniVidiVici]

They'll lose interest. I'm sure their attention span is quite low.

[texas booster]

Wow the Kossacks actually broke the top 10,000 teams. I'm scared.

Best name I've seen yet for the dull Kos. Can I borrow it?

[texas booster]

You can still FReep CNN polls, flame DUmmies on the board and watch trolls get zottted, while helping to cure cancer.

With 11 systems you have a chance to catch up to Malsua, Ken in Texas and uriah to see who becomes our top producer. We have several new users that are gunning for them.

[prophetic]

Wow the Kossacks actually broke the top 10,000 teams. I'm scared.

And I can swallow them all like a mighty whale ALL BY MYSELF :-) :-)

[prophetic]

what is your name on the team? I dont see you there (yet).

[prophetic]

the best way to MAXIMIZE the amount of work from this project is to have it configured as running as a SERVICE when the computer startup.

Running the client with the icon in the taskbar is very inefficient imho since it will eat video & processing time - which you dont really need unless you wanna watch it processing the work. But that is my preferences personally.

I configure the console client to run at low priority at 30% and the dual cores to run at 60%.

I recently build a AMD 3800 dual core running at 5000 speed with 2GB RAM and bumped the client to run at 60% but in the task mananger it only shows at 30%.
That machine alone is crunching about 10-18 workunits per day!

[Dundee]

I've added my little cog to the FReeper machine. I've been having far too much trouble with SETI@Home now that it has shifted to BIONIC.

[GregB]

Can I go to SETI and download it from there,or where is a link?

[A.Hun]

Thanks for the ping. I've got two boxes on it now! I did drop the processor usage to 75% and it seems to work fine unless I'm gaming with Ghost Recon.