FR Folding@Home Project Update -- We're Now # 57 of all teams with 18,000,000 Points

Stanford University Folding@Home Distributed Computing Project ^ | 01/07/2007 | Stanford University

[texas booster]

Time for a new Free Republic Folding@home thread.

Our Free Republic team of 416 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their 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 1,032 active CPUs - 92,150 completed Work Units and 18.0 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)

[texas booster]

Celebrating the start of a new year with several new folders!

Welcome and PLEASE ask question so that your folding experience is as pleasant as possible.

[texas booster]

A Happy New Year to all current and future folders.

And for those souls who are finished with pro football (well, maybe paid amatuerish football), we can all get onto the business of naking our computers fold as fast as possible!

[GoldCountryRedneck]

we can all get onto the business of naking our computers fold...

Here's to raw nakey folding power!!!!!

[contrarian]

Hurray,, first day of folding and have about 4,600 frames so far if I am reading this thing right...Small start, but feel like I am doing SOMETHING.

[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.

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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 #22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27 #28 #29

[texas booster]

New Folding thread.

Please tell your friends that they can make a difference with F@H!

[Paladin2]

17+ million folding points is a ton'o-points. Now the climb is steeper.

[Delta 21]

Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan

[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

[texas booster]

Are you running F@H as a GUI, with the little red flower in the system tray, or are you running F@H as a console?

TB

[Delta 21]

The GUI. I like it as my screen saver. Is the console faster?

[texas booster]

The console is faster, and if you use a login screen (different names for each user) then the console is the way to go.

If your system is fast enough, you can run both like I do.

AMD Sempron 3000+ and 768 MB RAM are fast enough that I can run a console in the background all the time.

I keep a GUI F@H running as the screensaver, so I can see progress and show off to my family and friends what is really meant by "folding proteins". You would be surprised by the wide-eyed looks that I get when my wife mentions that I can spend all night folding proteins on the Internet.

I keep a shortcut to the GUI folder so I can restart the GUI F@H. It needs to be turned off for many games that used OpenGL. That is purely a M$ problem.

I can count on 100 - 150 ppd off this system between both F@H cores. I started running both when the kids would reboot and leave the system at the login prompt - the GUI would never start until someone logged in.

[texas booster]

We will pass one or two teams in January. That will leave only 55 teams to catch.

We consistently add 6 to 8 new folders every month, which about replaces those that quit folding or get banned from FR.

If we can grow to about 1,500 active systems, or if we can increase the ppd average of current folders then we will be able to settle well into the top 25 of all team worldwide.

Of course there is the scary chance that the DUmmies could fire up again and catch us like they have always threatened, but ...

Nahh. No chance for those demented losers.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Egon]

Nahh. No chance for those demented losers.

Team Free Republic: Folding to cure Liberalism.

[houeto]

Looking for 80,000 points BUMP!

[texas booster]

Pretty neat.

Remember the days when no one had even hit 100,000 points? We have 24 folks that already have that many points and four more that will join them in a week:

smith288............ 99,585
zeugma ............. 98,938
MrBlueSky2005...98,682
greenbo............ 98,424

You will make it to 100,000 points by Feb, it looks like.

Who was the first to hit 100,000 points? Klutz? Malsua?

[HKMk23]

Well, Happy Saddam-less New Year, and thanks for the Folding ping.

Both of my machines are keeping fairly steady running the 5.02 console -- 'bout time to upgrade the 5.03, I guess. The offic box has had a couple of instances where it failed to connect to the assignment server; had to stop/restart it to make it happy again.

I broke into our Top 100 over the Christmas Holidays and it looks like I'll be in the top 90 in less than 2 weeks.

Nice to see more folks joining up; it's worth noting that, even if you get yourself banned from FR, it doesn't kill off your machine's work for F@H. It's a real shame to see people quit folding just because they get excommunicated by JR & the Mods. I'd hope that they're just changing their team number, not quitting altogether.

[processing please hold]

it's worth noting that, even if you get yourself banned from FR, it doesn't kill off your machine's work for F@H.

That's good to know....encase. lol

[houeto]

Who was the first to hit 100,000 points? Klutz? Malsua?

I didn't research it, but my money is on Klutz.