Noted... I will join ASAP.
Thanx CHSI
Peace
WE WILL NOT FAIL
T.E.A.M. “Together Everyone Accomplishes Miracles!”
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UPDATE As of April '08:
Please study this link for
Folding-at-Home it is for a great cause to help humanity
If you leave your PC on all the time
this link has a software you can install to have it use the idle_CPU time to crunch WUs (Work Units) helping Stanford University research to try to find cures to diseases like Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Lou Gehrigs
You will note that Big Compaies like Dell, Apple, Intel and Google have endorsed this project.
if you have any questions please ask. The project currently runs in 98 countries, has over 100,000 Teams consisting of Millions of CPUs. Team_XPS currently has a few International members too!!!
Our Team_XPS started in September 2007 at the bottom and has since moved in the Top-100 Rank. We have well Over 100 registered members of which more than 50 are active. We have been able to compete with and take over teams much larger in size. :smileyhappy:
We are now in the Top-100 Ranks as of Spring '08 :smileyvery-happy:
A Note: there are no monetary compensations; just a chance to be part of a great team with diverse and knowledgable background(s); You could use your current DCF IDs for cross_reference or create a new one. A few folks are doing just that and staying anonymous. Either way it is for a great cause and who knows, a small WU one day may sew the seeds for a final cure for a deadly or disabaling disease that haunts humans. You will get rewarded in the project with points and soon will be able to use those points for bragging rights and as some say 'trash talking' :smileytongue: The point system earns a WU anywhere from low_100 to 1760 Points on the SMP_Client. {Now there is one WU with over 2500 Points :smileysurprised:}
The regular graphic_client can be installed on any PC. If you own a Quad or Core2_Duo, you could opt for the SMP_Clients. The Text_Client is a good medium too.
Thanx in advance TIA
Peace
10K+_V
THANX ... Update above made for new members and Potential New Members
Here are a few sites for all/new members to keep track of Personal & Team statistics:
Update as of November 17, 2007 3052_V
http://forums.rampantspeculation.com/viewtopic.php?p=1736#1736
"FOLDING@HOME 4 DUMMIES"
This article is intended to:
- Show you why Folding@Home is something you too can do!
- Consolidate important information about “Folding Proteins” in one place, without the necessity of combing through all the posts, looking for answers.
It is still worthwhile to check us out by clicking this.
OK! So why should I do this?
If I may speak as a non-techie what you really need to do is convince folks that F@H is something they can do. I read the forum topic but had no idea what it meant to run a distributed computing client. I didn't realize it took so little input from me other than downloading the software. Since I was able to get it up and running, anybody could.
In a nutshell: It sounds scientific and it is; it sounds difficult, but it’s not.
THE BASICS:
The only skills, you as an end-user need, are ones you’ve used many times on the internet. If you’ve ever downloaded and installed a screensaver, or instant messenger, you have all the skills and knowledge you need to “fold” and join our team, “Team_XPS” over at Folding@Home in the fight to find a cure for many complex diseases; Cancers, Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS), Mad Cow or Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE), and it's human form Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), to name some that acutely affect a great many people .
We are simply trying to bring this marvelous program to everyone’s attention. The main objective is the DESIRE to do something for the benefit of humankind. Joining our team would show your appreciation for the help you’ve received by the dedicated staff and volunteers here at DCF and also here at RSF.
In fact, you could set up your own team! But we are not encouraging you to do that!
PLACES TO GO; THINGS TO DO:
To download the program and get started, quick jump to here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html
For more information about folding, this is the home page:
http://folding.stanford.edu/
Download the client, and/or run it from Stanford. There are different versions available. For Windows users, new version 5 can be run as a graphical client or screensaver. The graphic version will always run in the background; it sits in the system tray down by the clock, uses very little resources, and releases them WHEN YOU NEED TO USE THEM. There is also the client version, and versions for Macintosh and Linux and SP3.
When setting up, you will be asked for a user name and a password. When you are asked for a team number, Team_XPS is 80856. If the option isn’t there, or you miss it, fear not.
When finished installing. and running, an icon resembling a red atom (or an ICQ icon) will be in the system tray. Right-click this for a menu, then choose “Configure”. Under the “User” tab, you should see the user name you chose. Under that is where you would enter 80856 for the Team_XPS.
These two settings can be changed at anytime and apply to work units in progress and any future ones as well. To maximize the Graphic Client's production Click Here.
Huh? Run That By Me Again!
Let’s try an analogy.The Pharaoh of Egypt wants to build this giant monument/tomb (working title: Giant Triangle). It is huge, bigger than anything else the Earth has ever seen. There is one drawback though. The Pharaoh cannot father enough children, let alone, enough sons to help him in this quest! He finds the concept intriguing, but it is not practical.
Upon consulting his High Priest, he learns there are many unemployed Egyptians that can be called upon to help with the task at hand. The High Priest also suggests calling this marvel a Pyramid, but that is another story.
Basically, what would have taken a worn out Pharaoh, and his ever growing family, a very long time to build, can now be achieved in a single generation!
The High Priest was later sacrificed to the god RA.
HOW IT WORKS:
Normally speaking, if you are not doing any thing on your computer it is basically idle and has what is called unused clock cycles. When you are doing something, your PC still has unused clock cycles, (unless your task is CPU intensive, like converting video), mainly because humans are not capable of inputting information quickly enough for the computer. When you run Folding@Home, it becomes active when there are "unused clock cycles” (unemployed Egyptians) on your machine! It releases them when YOU need them. It is designed to not interfere with what you normally would do on your PC.
Now, please, just don’t ask me to explain how it does this.
Imagine!
No washing, no ironing! No experience needed!
IT’S EASY !!!
Come join us.
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Will F@H not reduce the security of my computer?
The Folding@home client and distributed computing service is no less safe than other programs that you can download from the internet and run on your computer. Because security of the FAH client is very important to the Pande Group, they have designed the FAH to be as secure as feasible through encrypted downloads/uploads, file checksums, etc. FAH should not reduce the security of your computer.
Can’t they just use a Supercomputer?
F@H is more than twice as powerful as the world’s current most powerful supercomputer, in terms of operations per second. Even then, the project is still restricted by the power available to it and needs all the extra silicon it can get.
Screensavers can help cancer/protein research? What?
It’s not the screensaver that matters, it’s the “Core” that runs while the screensaver runs which does the processing.
I’m worried about the environment, won’t running this program increase greenhouse gas emissions?/ Won’t running my computer at full or near full usage all the time make my bill skyrocket?
F@H needs only to be run when your computer is running. The average system uses 150-200W (will someone please give me better figures, idk what usage is like) at idle, and 200-250W (figures again) fully loaded. An extra 50W per hour will not have a significant impact on either the environment or your electricity bill.
Won’t running my computer at full usage all the time damage it?
Modern computer chips are precision instruments, they are designed to be able to operate continuously at full speed without degrading. A typical example of this would be the humble web server. These serve thousands, maybe tens of thousands of connections a minute and are fully loaded for long periods at a time, yet hardly ever fail due to hardware faults.
This is pointless; you can’t solve something like this without lab work!
This is correct, however Folding@Home uses independently tested and proven techniques to advance and work alongside the work done in laboratories across the planet.
F@H is irrelevant now due to [Company X]’s research. Why bother?
As long as we lack complete knowledge about how and why proteins misfold, the work of the Folding@Home project will remain relevant. Maybe the project will render itself irrelevant by solving these problems, we don’t know. But for the foreseeable future, the project will not be rendered irrelevant by the research of any one company or group of companies.
It's not much, but it's a start, and I will admit the first one is ripped straight out of the Wiki, but if we could get all of these answers on one page (for now, here) then it would make a lot of people's lives a lot easier. The Wiki can be daunting when people are just presented with a link to its homepage. Oh, and please feel free to tell me where I have gone wrong or the answers could be improved... unless you're a mod, in which case go ahead and do it yourself!
Any more reasons, type them up and I/we will try and counter them here
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Folding@Home is based on donations, not "gifts" or "purchases." Whether you donate with a PC or a PS3 or ATi's GPUs, you gain a sense of accomplishment knowing that you have contributed to an important cause. There is also a sense of competition between individuals and between teams.
Do you gain anything when your favorite sports team wins? :smileywink:
Here's Team_XPS' Weekly Report:
Once you Stay Active with 10000 Points you will be added to the report. 
"We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try." Tom Clancy
*** Once you post your first WU, you can use the following in your DCF signature:
MoneyGuyBK&t=80856">
That's what you copy and paste to put into your DCF Signature... just change my ID to yours
*** Make certain you copy the entire line from [Including ]
If you like the more colorful Logo Above.... Click Here. [With Thanx to Rafa_Polit] Message Edited by MoneyGuyBK on 10-25-2008 10:12 PM