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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 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.

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


Another Folding Clip


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


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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 #17 #18 #19 #20#21

1 posted on 09/28/2006 11:45:32 PM PDT by soccer_maniac
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To: 1066AD; 11Bush; A.Hun; abner; AbsoluteGrace; Advil; aft_lizard; ahayes; Alexander Rubin; ...
FR Folding Ping !

Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan

Date of last work unit 2006-09-28 23:15:20
Active CPUs within 50 days 1020
Team Id 36120
Grand Score 12788349 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 70485 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 67 of 45639
Home Page http://www.freerepublic.com

2 posted on 09/28/2006 11:47:59 PM PDT by soccer_maniac (My new blog: http://capitalistpundit.blogspot.com/)
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To: soccer_maniac

ummm.. might want to worry about the possibility that it could be a password thief or a creditcard/bank info thief. no idea who wrote it, except for some students.


5 posted on 09/29/2006 12:09:34 AM PDT by sten
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To: soccer_maniac

We are closing in on the 1 year anniversary of FReeper folding.

So are we going to have a party or what???


10 posted on 09/29/2006 12:40:57 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
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To: soccer_maniac
I went ahead and hooked up with the project..

A Question:
I want to attach this project to my BOINC manager..
It (BOINC) asks for a URL..
Would that be "http://folding.stanford.edu" or do I need to add the team # on there or something??

11 posted on 09/29/2006 12:41:31 AM PDT by Drammach (Freedom... Not just a job, it's an adventure..)
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To: soccer_maniac

The #1 Team: [H]ardOCP


18 posted on 09/29/2006 3:23:11 AM PDT by Echo Talon
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To: soccer_maniac

Proud to b "folding".


20 posted on 09/29/2006 5:42:09 AM PDT by Drango (Born free, now expensive.)
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To: soccer_maniac

I'm rapidly approaching Top 50 for FR. :-) If I knew for sure how to get >8 CPUs registered, I could probably add more.


23 posted on 09/29/2006 6:42:23 AM PDT by TChris (The United Nations is suffering from delusions of relevance.)
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To: soccer_maniac
We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

But Windows doesn't need to be rebooted very often. </sarcasm>

My second WU was recently completed. Thanks for bringing this worthwile cause to my attention!

27 posted on 09/29/2006 8:15:28 AM PDT by wysiwyg (What parts of "right of the people" and "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?)
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To: All
My shameless self-promotion for this thread:

If you're interested in tracking your folding machine(s) over the web, please Freepmail me.

Available features include:


30 posted on 09/29/2006 9:46:25 AM PDT by Egon (We are number one! All others are number two... or lower.)
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To: soccer_maniac

Bump for later read.


31 posted on 09/29/2006 10:43:38 AM PDT by TexanToTheCore (This space for hire...)
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To: GoLightly

Self ping


33 posted on 09/29/2006 12:44:11 PM PDT by GoLightly
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To: soccer_maniac
*** BREAKING NEWS TO FELLOW FREEPER FOLDERS ***

http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=6491&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

ATI pioneers new Stream Computing technology Uses processing technology to go beyond graphics, working with leading academic institutions and software developers to build a stream computing ecosystem

MARKHAM, ONTARIO, Sep 29, 2006 (CCNMatthews via COMTEX News Network) -- Today ATI (TSX:ATY)(NASDAQ:ATYT) announced that it is pioneering a new technology known as Stream Computing, that has the potential to dramatically impact almost every sector of the market. Along with leading companies and academic institutions worldwide, ATI is working to build a stream computing ecosystem, one that delivers the performance, applications, software and tools necessary to turn ATI's vision into reality.

Stream computing allows ATI graphics processors (GPUs) to work in concert with today's high-performance, low-latency computer processors (CPUs) to solve complex computational problems. Using stream computing, in simulations today processing of risk assessment models similar to those used by financial institutions' were completed 16 times faster than traditional methods(1), oil and gas companies are seeing seismic model processing increased by more than 20 times(1), and Stanford University is seeing disease research accelerated by as much as 40 times, giving them the ability to process three years worth of research data in just one month(2).

Stream computing makes use of ATI's sophisticated graphics processors (GPUs) that have until now, been used solely to calculate and render millions of pixels onto computer monitors, hundreds of times each second. Stream computing harnesses that tremendous processing power for a wide range of scientific, business and consumer computing applications, providing organizations the ability to process incredible amounts of information in significantly less time.

"ATI processors are some of the most technologically advanced computing architectures on the planet," said Dave Orton, president and CEO, ATI Technologies Inc. "They were designed with more than just graphics in mind, and today we're seeing the initial fruits of those labors with the introduction of our stream computing initiatives. Fortune 1000 companies, leading software developers, and academic institutions are demonstrating today that stream computing is they key to tremendous performance in a number of applications. Today's announcement is part of our vision of becoming a processing powerhouse in the months and years to come - we're beginning to build the stream computing platform today."

"Stream computing is a great representation of the vision of AMD's Torrenza platform strategy - bringing the unique capabilities of two heterogeneous processing solutions together to solve complex problem sets and change the game," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Combining AMD64 with stream computing from ATI to address specific application workloads will open up new innovation possibilities in markets such as high-performance computing environments. Torrenza-based technologies have the potential to enable information to flow seamlessly between them in order to solve problems in the most cost-effective and timely manner. We see the potential over time for these two processing elements to become even more tightly coupled."

"The raw computational power of these DirectX-based processors is incredible and harnessing those capabilities for general purpose applications makes a lot of sense," said Dean Lester, general manager of the Graphics Platforms Unit, Microsoft Corp. "Stream computing has the potential to positively impact how organizations analyze data by improving the accuracy and efficiency with which critical business decisions are made, as well as enhancing the overall consumer experience by enabling compelling, high-fidelity environments to gamers today. Microsoft is working closely with ATI towards a future where all of our customers can experience the benefits that stream computing has to offer."

"The combined power of ATI processors and Havok FX enables physical realism only dreamed of by today's game designers," said Jeff Yates, vice president, product management, Havok. "Realistic physics is the future of videogames and together we're making it possible. Just as real-time lighting and shadows are standard in today's games, there will come a time when no game is without this level of immersive, true-to-life physics."

ATI's high-end processor today makes use of 48 compute cores that results in an order of magnitude processing speed-up. In certain applications(3), ATI processors perform up to 40 times faster than competing processors. The accelerated processing associated with stream computing has implications for a number of fields now and in the future, as the ecosystem around stream computing matures:

Scientific research - Today ATI's stream computing efforts are helping to save lives by driving life sciences to produce results faster in areas such as disease research, giving organizations the option to do more granular studies in the same amount of time as in the past(4). ATI announced today that Stanford University will make available a new distributed computing application that takes advantage of ATI processors for disease research. In the future, climate research may also benefit from stream computing as analysis of large data sets for storm and hurricane forecasting can be done faster or in more detail, potentially resulting in the issuing of warnings longer in advance of severe weather, and ultimately a better understanding of the world's climate.

Homeland security - Communications analysis and facial recognition can be drastically improved using stream computing, with implications for airport security, as well as photograph and video analysis.

Financial forecasting - Major institutions have been using server farms to do risk assessment using Monte Carlo simulations, and for derivatives pricing using models like Black-Scholes. Simulations conducted by PeakStream, Inc. using ATI hardware shows that stream computing can provide these companies with more detailed answers in significantly less time, letting them make the business decisions they need to faster, and giving them a leg up on their competition.

Oil and gas - Companies are using stream computing to analyze more data in shorter periods of time to more quickly and reliably discover where resources lie, speeding discoveries of crude oil deposits. ATI graphic processors in concert with PeakStream's software platform are allowing oil and gas companies to achieve significantly faster seismic data modeling.

Database searching - For search companies with incredibly large databases to organize and sort through, stream computing may offer a compelling business case providing increased processing power in less space.

Consumer applications - Software used by millions of people around the world, such as operating systems, office applications, and graphics applications, can benefit from stream computing. Any graphics-laden software that requires heavy processing can be accelerated.

Videogames - An area where ATI processors are already heavily used for graphics purposes, working with Havok, premier provider of software and services to interactive digital media creators, stream computing is resulting in life-like modeling of hair, cloth, smoke, liquid, and the physics behind them, giving gamers the most immersive experience possible.

Other areas that stream computing has the potential to impact in the future include enterprise software, product design and manufacturing, and digital media encoding among others.

With this new opportunity, ATI is also announcing a specific focus on enterprise stream computing in an effort to drive commercial adoption of stream computing with the help of its partners. For more information on ATI's stream computing initiatives, please see related company announcements made today on the topics of enterprise stream computing, and Stanford University's Folding@home program. About ATI Technologies ATI Technologies Inc. is a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative 3D graphics, PC platform technologies and digital media silicon solutions. An industry pioneer since 1985, ATI is the world's foremost graphics processor unit (GPU) provider and is dedicated to deliver leading-edge performance solutions for the full range of PC and Mac desktop and notebook platforms, workstation, set-top and digital television, game console and handheld device markets. With fiscal 2005 revenues of US $2.22 billion, ATI has more than 4,000 employees in the Americas, Europe and Asia. ATI common shares trade on NASDAQ (ATYT) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ATY).

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WOW A 40X increase in processing time!!

37 posted on 09/29/2006 10:51:19 PM PDT by prophetic
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To: soccer_maniac

99,944!!!

Looks like I will go over 100k tonight or early in the morning!


43 posted on 10/05/2006 7:18:07 PM PDT by FreeAtlanta (Search for Folding Project - Join FR Team 36120)
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To: LonePalm
Self Ping for later.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)

LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

48 posted on 10/06/2006 4:57:54 AM PDT by LonePalm (Commander and Chef)
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To: soccer_maniac
I just joined and it's working on something.

Is there any way to turn off the display while it's working?

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)

LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

51 posted on 10/06/2006 5:08:17 AM PDT by LonePalm (Commander and Chef)
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To: soccer_maniac

Just got stuck with p1862. It's going to take 10 days to complete and worth 500+ points. Wow, that works out to 50pts/day. I'm sooooo happy /s.

I've dropped 6 places over the past 2 months or so. I might even get bumped from the top 50 in the next few weeks.

I wouldn't be happy any other place.....Colin


57 posted on 10/09/2006 8:47:06 AM PDT by colinhester
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To: soccer_maniac

I just made it into the top 50! Woohoo! :-)


76 posted on 10/20/2006 8:35:20 AM PDT by TChris (The United Nations is suffering from delusions of relevance.)
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