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.
To: soccer_maniac; 1066AD; A.Hun; Advil; aft_lizard; ahayes; Alexander Rubin; aliquando; ambrose; ...
2 posted on
02/27/2006 6:45:42 AM PST by
soccer_maniac
(Do some good while browsing FR --> Join our Folding@Home Team# 36120: keyword: folding@home)
To: soccer_maniac
The salad days of quickie 153-point folds are over I think. Both my CPUs have been issued GROMAC 2107s. Sure, they're worth 404 points, but the seem to take a week to calculate.
I think I'll be slipping into the 60s or 70s in the rankings.
It's all good though....except for the competitiveness factors.
26 posted on
02/27/2006 1:47:54 PM PST by
Petronski
(I love Cyborg!)
To: soccer_maniac
Monday afternoon "Hey y'all, come check this out and join us" bump.
30 posted on
02/27/2006 2:18:17 PM PST by
dfwddr
(Join our Folding@Home team (Team# 36120) keyword:folding.)
To: All
My goal is to make the top 10% of folders. Might hit that later this week!
My longterm goal: Beat the great Klutz!
That should happen just about the time monkeys start flying out of my butt...
64 posted on
03/01/2006 4:46:58 AM PST by
Egon
(We are number one! All others are number two... or lower.)
To: soccer_maniac
Weekend folding bump
158 posted on
03/03/2006 5:37:40 PM PST by
Drango
(A liberal's compassion is limited only by the size of someone else's wallet.)
To: soccer_maniac
Finally got my issues sorted out I think...seems my install of AVG had gotten slightly corrupt and was causing conflicts, but the only obvious one was what looked like F@H and Firefox.
I started having some OTHER issues with AVG that ended up being severe enough to warrant uninstalling and reinstalling it. After that, everything seems to be playing together nicely like it should.
168 posted on
03/03/2006 8:35:36 PM PST by
Fire_on_High
(I am so proud of what we were...)
To: All
Woo hoo!
Top 10% of folders!
Now all I need is 300+ more machines, and I'll accomplish my next goal of catching up with Klutz!
Sigh.
212 posted on
03/05/2006 7:54:11 PM PST by
Egon
(We are number one! All others are number two... or lower.)
To: soccer_maniac
I broke into the top 100! I have 5360 points!
What is amazing is that yesterday, I broke 5000 points and ended up sitting at 101. Had I had 5k a week ago, I would have automatically been in the top 100 of our team.
We have over 100 team members with 5,000 points!!! I look forward to when it will take 10,000 points to get into our top 100.
216 posted on
03/06/2006 2:29:08 AM PST by
FreeAtlanta
(Join FR Team 36120 at http://folding.stanford.edu {Protein Folding Project})
To: soccer_maniac
I need to shut down for a month.
I made it to top 40 with one machine, not bad
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