Folding@home - Make a Diffrence With Those New Computers

Folding@home at Stanford University ^ | 11/23/2007 | Texas Booster

[texas booster]

A plea to all owners of new computers and PS3s this weekend to strongly consider adding the Folding@home program to your new system to run in the background.

Why? Because Alzheimer's Disease, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes are partially or wholly caused by mid-folded proteins.

You can help by simply running a piece of software.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

To start, link over here:

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download

and download the version that best corresponds to your new workhorse. Our team number is 36120 and use your FReepname as your folding user name.

Most folks will use 5.04 console version for Windows, but you may want to start with F@H 5.03 GUI version to watch it fold.

PS3 users will go to the PS3 store and get the latest firmware update, then download the program. Team 36120 and FReepname for the user.

[texas booster]

If you have a dual core cpu ping us and we will help get you running with two kernals on your system. And remember, more than one computer can run F@H under your name.

Thanks very much for your time, and remember, the discoveries you make may one day save your life.

[texas booster]

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 (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired user-name.
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 they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford 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.

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List of Relevant Folding Links
Why Fold - Watch This !!

Another Folding Clip

The Inner Life of a Cell

Folding@home Client Download

FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats

Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic

Another Stats Page

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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos

Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12
Hey DUmmies, can't ya'll post a new thread at least once a year?

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Other Useful Stuff - Links

How much are those work units worth? And what are they?
All Projects Listed
Point Summary for Workunits

Stat Image Generator

Fahmon Third Party Monitoring Software

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Past FreeRepublic Folding threads

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27 #28 #29 #30 #31 #32 #33 #34 #35 #36 #37 #38 #39 #40 #41 #42 #43 #44

[ovrtaxt]

BTTT!

I just noticed, my program isn’t running anymore! I better look into this.

This is a great cause. Everyone should do it- there’s absolutely no downside to it.

[HiTech RedNeck]

They need more irons

[tgusa]

As painless as it gets, despite dealing with fruits’n’nuts at Stanford. :-)

[texas booster]

It has been a few months since you last posted points.

Erase the contents of the directory, reload with your F@H of choice and make sure you use your old folding name and team 36120. You won’t lose any points from the past.

See here:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=180732

[colinhester]

This has been a lot of fun.....Colin (the newest 100k F@H user)

[GBA]

Bump for after vacation. I bought my dad an HP dual processor machine that came with Vista. He never could make friends with Vista, gave the computer back to me and went back to his old machine. When I get back home and get it set up and working, I’ll see if it can be persuaded to work all night on this project.

[ovrtaxt]

I’m back! Just needed to rerun the installer.

[texas booster]

On a dual processor you have the ability to run an SMP client (very, very fast) or two regular clients. Make sure that you watch the team number and the client name on installation.

SMP on Vista is a pain, but there is a Wiki on the subject here:

http://fahwiki.net/index.php/How_do_I_install_the_SMP_Console_client_in_Windows_Vista%3F

It requires you to pay attention, but takes about 15 minutes.

You could always call HP and badger them into providing a copy of XP. Sometimes HP will do that.

[DocRock]

Bookmark

[brityank]

Those PS3's are really kicking the points; pity that more PC makers -- Dell comes to mind -- don't add this to their pre-installed software at the build. God knows they put lots of other worthless junk on them!

Couple of points:

I found out that Microsoft WILL screw up an existing install of F@H when you update Internet Exploder from ver.6 to ver.7. I added a new Dell DC that came with IE6 back in August, and about a month back accepted the IE7 upgrade. At that point the completed Work Units stayed in my upload queue, and I found that was because the F@H Config panel had the "Use Internet Explorer Connection Settings" flag turned on by that upgrade. Do not use that; it doesn't stop the upload of the data and you do get the points, but it does stop the clearance flag from deleting the completed WU's from your queues.

For max points, set your ScreenSaver to 'blank' as that will add it's few CP cycles to the project; every little bit helps.

Also, I pulled the following from the F@H Stats:

Total # F@H Teams: 2000
Rank by Total Points: 52
Rank by Total WU's: 64
Rank by Total Members: 105
Rank by Active Members: 53

Puts Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan in the top three percent of the total teams. Congratulations All.

[Drango]

BUMP for the folders.
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120

[Drango]

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=48936

Someone over at Fermilab must have harnessed their Crays. WOW

[texas booster]

WOW is right. From zero to 650,000 points in one day?

Someone probably got a gov’t grant to study distributed computing, and Beowulf’d a bunch of PS3 together.

Wish I could write grants that good.

[VeniVidiVici]

Anybody having probs with the smp client on a quad core?

Ran fine the first time thru (about three weeks ago) but blew chunks after that. Deleted, reinstalled, blah, blah. Same thing. Dies not long after beginning to process.

I downloaded the regular client and started a couple instances and all is well.

The smp client is still going very, very well on an overclocked dual core.

[texas booster]

Very odd. The SMP client was designed for the quad core in mind.

Overclocking or hardware instability comes to mind. F@H is a serious memory tester at the higher end and will find bad chips.

I suppose that its better to run 4 instances of the regular console and collect points that way rather than an endless series of of EUEs. It is a beta program ...

[EasySt]

I bought my Son a PS3 for his upcoming birthday, and my Brother just got one too, so along with my (2) PS3’s and 2 older machines, and my Dad’s two quad cores, we’re presently challenging 2nd or 3rd place for the most (daily) productive FR folders.

I've shamelessly stolen this cool dual linked Folder's Sig from brityank's fine example. (Thanks brityank!) To easily use it yourself, use your browser's "View Page Source" or "View Source" option to see and copy the underlying code, changing the user number (where mine shows u=185134) to your own. I saved mine to a text file on my desktop, to make it handy to cut and paste into posts. Use Preview before posing to verify your results.

Sig code starts here***
***Sig code ends here

Playstation 3's make great Christmas presents for your friends and family to fold with under your name! Happy Folding!

(Waves in Zeugma's rear view mirror for permission to pass... ;-)

[brityank]

Nice going, got me beat by a mile.     :^)

 

 

[To see current values click on Name]

Top 20 Producers
Rank Team	User Name	Points 24hr Avg	Points Total
1	lrenh	9,334	3,682,696
2	EasySt	5,064	306,729
3	Malsua	4,831	2,160,663
4	Texas_Booster	3,581	958,693
5	josephw	3,164	1,283,213
6	mouser	3,125	509,648
7	andyk	2,999	1,559,914
8	LanPB01	2,775	372,978
9	xeniast	2,757	156,881
10	NAPA_Laurel_MS	2,234	432,367
11	Klutz_dohanger	2,189	6,449,471
12	VeniVidiVici	2,159	149,660
13	PseudoCode	1,838	48,116
14	wysiwyg_FR	1,802	174,409
15	GOPBiker	1,744	465,356
16	dbender5555	1,588	281,600
17	Hagerstrom	1,298	226,313
18	dfwddr	1,115	365,773
19	Chris_Primavera	1,083	850,366
20	mediamole	947	234,670

[SunkenCiv]

A PS3 also offers a Blu-Ray disk player built-in. :’)

Folding@home - The PS3 and Post-PetaFLOP
Folding@home: The Science | 09/18/2007 | PandeGroup
Posted on 10/04/2007 12:20:01 PM EDT by texas booster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1906532/posts

Sony Might Have Gotten It Right with the PS3 from the Beginning
Softpedia | November 5th, 2007 | Filip Truta
Posted on 11/25/2007 1:38:14 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1930299/posts