Posted on 01/02/2006 9:53:26 AM PST by systematic
New thread for this week.
Congrats to all new members who joined this week!
We've made excellent progress so far and have smoked the DUmmies and Kossacks. Let's keep folding!
Win3.1 came on five floppies.
I'll just go along with damn near anything, as long as 36120 hangs together, and cast my 1 vote, in with everyone elses..
I don't get it.
Is that a PC in your pocket or are you just glad to see us?
Thirty-eight floppies? LOL
Thirty-seven of which are useless if one fails? LOLOLOL
From what I've read of the many, many posts of this, you are helping Stanford.
The cause is a good one. We donate our excess CPU cycles, to perform complex mathematical calculations, which furthers research into mutant proteins, such as those believed to cause Alzheimers, various forms of cancer, Mad cow disease, and others.
Stanford University, are the ones who set his up as a competition, to encourage rivalry, and it was a great idea. Not only do you contribute to science, but you can measure your efforts, against those around the world, in an almost real time fashion.
We are NOT competing with DU and KOS... they think that they're competing with us. We're trying to get to the top 100, they're still muddling about around #6000, and think that we're just a bunch of befuddled old conservatives, who accidentally found computers, and a worthwhile program.
Exactly what benefit is Stanford University getting out of this .. except riding piggy back on other peoples computers and IP addresses??
I don't get this thread
Plus your link in #2 for the DU thread is no longer working
Stanford can't afford to buy their own computers?
That makes it even more sleezy. This must be fun for the lefties at Stanford, they can use CPU time and meanwhile pit left against right. Lovely.
Why do they need us? Because it's a massive project, much too massive for even the largest supercomputers to do much with. So, what they've done is split the work up into bite-sized pieces, and asked for volunteers to help with the project. Basically, what we all do is set our computers to work on these bite-sized chunks during the time that they'd otherwise be idle - idle time, because that way it doesn't really cost you anything or interfere with your normal computing. Then, after processing these chunks, your computer sends the results back to Stanford, and fetches another piece to work on.
But, in the spirit of friendly competition, the project creators at Stanford have created a point system, for users to track how much they've contributed to the project. The more computing time you allow them to borrow, the more points you can collect. Also, they've allowed users to form "teams" of contributors, where the team collects all the points for each of its members, and teams can compete as well. DU has a team, DKos has a team, and so forth.
It's really not about "helping Stanford" - except maybe in the same sense that donating time to the local soup kitchen or sending a check to the Red Cross is "helping" the soup kitchen or the Red Cross. The point is not to do it for Stanford, but to do it because this project has the possibility of yielding real medical benefits for people down the road.
Hope that helps! :)
Solving protein folding problems requires MASSIVE computer power. This project assigns small bits of the project to over 350,000 computers world wide (like mine), which make the calculations and send back the completed result.
It's an old technique. During the hydrogen bomb project, Ulam and Bethe and Teller would tweak their formula a bit and send instructions to "computers" (women with mechanical calculators) who would slave away through the night, having the mathematical results back to Los Alamos in the morning.
As for the IP addresses... if you've ever visited Stanford's home page, you've given them your IP address.
The link was updated in post #71
As for what benefit Stanford University is getting, perhaps it would be better, to think it in terms of what benefit is science getting.
Stanford, is not only pushing the envelope in protein research, but is pioneering a new level in distributed computing.
Perhaps you're not familar with the architecture of "super computers", but 10,000 PC's, working on bits and pieces of a model, are much more efficient that one "super computer", and do the work much faster.
And, the program is "voluntary", so there is no issue of "piggy back".
No, that is not my problem with this. People are sharing cpu usage with Stanford and many understand what they're doing but many don't. Why should Freepers donate cpu usage to a pricy, liberal college?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.