Hey Guys, Let's Cure Cancer!

[Blitzzo]

I'd say it's about high-time we all start doing some good for the world. And we're going to help cure Cancer! How? It's simple. By downloading Folding@Home, we can donate by having our computers process seemingly impossible calculations related to protein folding, and similar diseases.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

When you get the client, it will connect to the internet, then download the information for a random project. It will then proceed to calculate several thousand frames. As they are calculated, our tallies will add up, and we will feel pride in the fact that we have helped find ways to defeat these horrible maladies. With our horsepower combined, we will do amazing things.

If you're interested in joining our Team, the number is: 53261

SRB2Fun Team Stats Page

 

[crazyhedgehog]

*reads topic*
Ok!
Where do I check to see how long it will take total?

 

[Blitzzo]

In the display, the WU End should give you an estimate of when it will finish calculating the current workunit. Within the configuration dialog, there are buttons that let you see your personal and team statistics, but those are only updated for each workunit, so for now you won't really see anything.

 

[Luke The Hedgehog]

Fox, make a team list :]

 

[Shu]

How did an advertising bot become a mod?*stop-signed*

But being serious, I'm not so sure about this.

 

[Shuffle]

By the way, this will take up all of your CPU if you allow it to, but it's at the lowest priority, so you won't see any hit to performance. It's basically working in the background and gets out of the way when you need your CPU for other things.

 

[Blitzzo]

Folding@Home is hosted by a university, and has partnerships with the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health. I don't see why you should be paranoid about that.

 

[Shuffle]

Yeah, my Dad was a little paranoid as well, but I told him that it's been in newspapers 'n stuff and that it's on the PS3. Now why would Sony put malicious software on their machine? ;)

 

[JJames19119]

I'm not too worried about the CPU usage since Shuffle's post but what about connection usage? I have high broadband but I'm prone to slow spurts and many disconnections; would that effect the program in any bad way?

 

[Luke The Hedgehog]

When its downloaded the Core, it wont connect other than to send it back.

 

[Ritz]

Now why would Sony put malicious software on their machine? ;)

Cough CD rootkits cough.

 

[JJames19119]

When its downloaded the Core, it wont connect other than to send it back.

Question is, WHEN does it send it back?

 

[Shuffle]

I'd imagine every time it completes a frame. If it waited too long, you'd have quite a bit to upload at once.

 

[Blitzzo]

I'm guessing it'd send data after completing an entire workunit. After all, that's when it downloads another workunit, and it would make sense to pair the two together.

 

[Cue]

Hmm...

Ah what the heck. *downloads*

It'd be nice if it didn't clutter my task bar though...

 

[Blitzzo]

It only clutters your system tray. If you click the close button on the Display, it will still run in the background. And if you're on XP, you can hide the system tray icon by right-clicking the clock and choosing Customize Notifications.

 

[Tets]

How did an advertising bot become a mod?*stop-signed*

But being serious, I'm not so sure about this.

A bit late on this, I am, but it's just a distributed computing project. There are thousands of them, and they've been going on for years. Perfectly legitimate use of spare CPU time. I've involved myself in multitudes of them over the last few years.

The GUI client kept crashing my video card driver by forcing it into an infinite loop, so I'm settling with the text-only version.

 

[Eidolon]

Uh, hey, wtf.

It says my WU ends in 2008. lawl.

 

[Blitzzo]

Yeah, it says crazy stuff like that at first. After it completes the first frame or so, it will begin to speed up. The workunits I've been getting so far take three days for me to complete. Though, some workunits are larger or smaller than others. Shuffle's on his fourth workunit already, and I'm still on my second. I have more points than he does though. Mwa ha ha.

 

[Cue]

Yeah, it says crazy stuff like that at first. After it completes the first frame or so, it will begin to speed up. The workunits I've been getting so far take three days for me to complete. Though, some workunits are larger or smaller than others. Shuffle's on his fourth workunit already, and I'm still on my second. I have more points than he does though. Mwa ha ha.

Let's do some comparing...

I have a WU that'll take 20,000 frames to do...
Each one seems to take about 10-20 minutes... right?


What about you?