[texas booster]

Our Free Republic team of 415 members is comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing. We have banded together to donate our excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE).

Currently, the team is in 57th place (with 1,050 active CPUs - 89,000 completed Work Units and 17.10 million points).

This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please see the links posted below (or read one of the previous 20+ folding threads).

Thank you and a very Merry Christmas to you and your families!

[texas booster]

Pinging over to a new thread. We will be looking back at what we have accomplished the last year and Howdying out to friends that we have made.

Keep on folding!

[texas booster]

Pinging over to a new thread. We will be looking back at what we have accomplished the last year and Howdying out to friends that we have made.

Keep on folding!

[texas booster]

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 they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford 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.

*******************************************

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

*******************************************
Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos

Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12

**************************************************
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

**************************************
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#22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27

[processing please hold]

Bumpity bump.

[Egon]

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:

• Timely snapshot of each machine's progress on it's current project
• Point values for project
• Estimated completion dates/times
• Warning indicators for machines that appear to have stopped communicating or folding
• Warnings for machines that won't make their deadline
• Team ranking status box (courtesy of EOC)
• Machine stats like PPD (points per day)
• Project comparison stats: PPD, average time taken to completion, etc.
• It's free-- and always will be
• ...other features as time permits, and people request

[txroadkill]

OK, I joined and I guess it's working because I got pictures of silver, blue and pink popcorn balls on my screen that keep changing shape.

[DocRock]

Merry Christmas Folding Bump!

[mschalock]

For the last couple days my folding@home protein says "Could not connect to Work Server." My husband is connected on two other computers and his says the same. Is this a problem with our computers or is everyone else getting the same message? It has been working well up until a couple days ago when my protein finished.

[Professional Engineer]

Lately most of my WUs have been 20K frame units, with some up to 50K. Today the new one is 25 frames. Hmmm

[papasmurf]

As always, thanks for the ping!

I'm home for the celebration of Our Lord's birth, so I pulled "Big Unit" out of the truck and added it back. :) She already gave us 130 points in less than 8 hours, not bad for laptop.

Coming up on my one year anniversary in about 4 days, I'll have over 78k by then. I'm now in 16960th place!

Thanks ever so much, Texas Booster, for inviting me and allowing me to be a part of something so great this year.

In case I get busy and don't post on Christmas...


Merry Christmas to you and yours! (that's for ALL FReepers, especially the folders)


:O)

P

[papasmurf]

Oops! My bad. I just read through my log. It was 11 hours 55 minutes. {blush-blush}

:O)

P

[dfwddr]

Here is a screen shot of what our team looked like on 11/28/06, right after my first WU posted.

I would dare say, our progress is a testimony to the power of the wonderful people on FR.

[houeto]

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Thanks for the invite many moons ago. Thanks for all your (and others) hard work on this program. I'd name them all but, alas, I've had too much eggnog this night.

[Mount Athos]

I am going to upgrade to a dual processor CPU soon, see how it goes. Might upgrade video card in 2-6 months, I heard the fancy ATI ones are fantastic for folding.