Spare time (CPU time that is)

[Gindipple]

I used to run SETI@Home on my PC but had some technical problems with it.
Also I'll admit I was skeptical it would ever amount to anything worth while.
Was a neat idea though.

I think I fianlly found something worthy of my CPU's spare cycles though.
Folding@Home

They have a way for people to form teams too which is kinda neat
Anyone else run a distributed computing client?
Would people here want to make a team?
If so someone set it up and post the team name or number here.

Personally this type of thing really excites me, it's taking computers around the world and putting them to a great use.

My wife has a genetic disease (SLE or Lupus) and so for me this is a very unique way that I feel I can play a part in what may one day be a cure for hers and many other diseases.


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Gindipple (Gnome) stands here.

[Daz]

Thank you for your enthusiasm in supporting Google Compute. To activate it on your machine please follow the steps below:

1. Please make sure the machine you intend to run Google Compute has at minimum the Windows 98 operating system with 64 MB RAM or higher. 2. Go to http://toolbar.google.com/dc/enable_enthusiasts.html
3. Please make sure you have read and understood the Google Toolbar Terms of Service. 4. Click on the "Enable Google Compute" button to start Google Compute

After these steps Google Compute should have been successfully installed and running. If you have any additional questions, please see the FAQ page at http://toolbar.google.com/dc/faq_dc.html

Welcome to the Google Compute community!

Regards,
The Google Team


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Gormal group-says 'shut up before i stab you in the face with my cock'

[Daz]

1. What is Google Compute?

Google Compute is a new feature of the Google Toolbar. The goal of Google Compute is to make a contribution to science by enabling Google Toolbar users to easily donate their idle computer time to worthwhile causes. The Google Compute version of the Google Toolbar detects when a computer is idle and puts it to work on complex mathematical problem from such fields as drug design and global climate modeling.

2. What are the minimum system requirements needed to run Google Compute?

Google Compute is currently supported on Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. We recommend at least 64Mb of memory and 20Mb of available disk space. A high-bandwidth permanently on network connection is not required, as long as the machine is connected to the internet every few days.

3. How much bandwidth does Google Compute require?

Google Compute is designed to run even on low-bandwidth connections such as modems. The total amount of data transferred per month is generally under 20Mb. In more detail: Each work unit and corresponding result totals approximately a megabyte in size and typically takes two to three days to complete. The files that need to be downloaded at install time are around 1Mb in size. Updates to the Folding@Home client and scientific core occur generally every few months, and are around 500Kb-750Kb.

4. Will running this application interfere with any of my other applications?

Google Compute is designed to be completely non-intrusive, and will not have a significant impact on your computing environment. In Standard mode it uses the idle time on your processor, i.e. the processing power that would have otherwise gone unused by the system, and does not compete with other programs for the processor. In Conservative mode (selectable from the menu) it is even more cautious, waiting until the user is not actively using the system before beginning work.

5. I thought Google was a search engine. Why are you introducing a function that's not related to search?

The Google search engine uses more than 10,000 networked computers to deliver results to millions of users worldwide, making it one of the largest distributed computing systems in existence. In addition to providing leading search technology, we are also interested in solving other important computationally intense problems. While we're not experts on protein folding, we do know quite a bit about using networked computers to solve difficult problems involving terabytes of data.

6. Who will ultimately benefit from this?

With the Folding@home project the results and analysis will be submitted to scientific journals for publication. Google will publish links to these articles on its website. After the publication the raw data will be made available to the public on the Folding@home website.

7. Why should I participate in this program?

Many important scientific problems such as protein folding are computationally intense. The more computers scientists have working on these problems, the faster they will be able to develop solutions. For example, understanding the structure of proteins will enable scientists to make progress in the areas of molecular biology and drug design.

8. What exactly are you going to do with my unused computer time?

If you enable Google Compute on your Google Toolbar your unused computing time will at the moment be contributed to the nonprofit Folding@home project at Stanford University. The goal of Folding@home is to model the fundamental processes of life itself - the geometric structure of proteins. You can learn more at http://folding.stanford.edu/.

In the future Google may work with other research teams on similarly complex problems, or use the network to help improve Google and its services. The third party projects we choose to help out will be carefully selected charitable projects, with the guiding principle being to help humanity and advance scientific knowledge. Users will be clearly notified of any such projects when they are introduced, and will maintain at all times the ability to disable or uninstall Google Compute for any reason.

9. I already get enough protein in my diet... why should I care?

Proteins, in addition to being an important dietary component, are also fundamental to almost all processes in cells. Understanding and modeling how proteins fold into specific shapes could lead to the development of cures for Alzheimer's, cancer, AIDS and other diseases. By pooling together a large number of processors, scientists can understand the shapes of new proteins faster.

10. Protein folding simulations are interesting, but what about other important problems?

In the future Google Compute will tackle other similarly important applications. When new projects are added, they will appear in the Google Compute menu.

11. Is this distributed computing? How does distributed computing work?

Yes. Distributed computing works by dividing up a large computational problem into many small work units. Each computer is sent one work unit at a time. When the computer completes the work unit, the processed unit is then sent back to researchers to be integrated into the larger computational problem. You can find more about distributed computing through a Google web search for distributed computing.

12. I already run a distributed computing program. How will this affect it?

Depending on the distributed computing programs you are running Google Compute will either share the idle time with them or allow them to use all of the idle time. If you are running the Folding@Home stand-alone client in normal mode the two will end up sharing. If the stand-alone client is in "Higher priority" mode it will end up getting all of the processor when the two are run simultaneously.

Google Compute also works successfully alongside SETI@Home. When the SETI@Home screensaver is active it will use all of the idle processor time, as it runs at a higher priority than Google Compute. At times when the screensaver is not active Google Compute will work as normal.

Some constantly running distributed computing programs will utilize all of the processor, leaving Google Compute with little or no processor time. This is probably the case if Google Compute stays at 0% complete for a long time. In these cases it is preferable to choose either one program or the other to be run exclusively.

13. How come I have this Google Toolbar feature but my friend doesn't?

Google is gradually releasing Google Compute to its users, so it is possible that your computer received the invitation but another computer you know of did not. This feature will eventually be released to all toolbar users. If you want to try it out beforehand please contact us at compute-support@google.com, and we will send you instructions on how to enable it on your machine.

14. Whom do I contact if I have questions about Google Compute?

If you have checked this FAQ and can't find the answer to your question, you can e-mail us at compute-support@google.com.



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Gormal group-says 'shut up before i stab you in the face with my cock'

[Iktar]

is this for fact that they like use it for benefits of mankind or they just stating it?
for all we know, they could be using our idel time for purpose of designing weapons of mass destruction! im just being cynical at the moment, but like how do we know?

[Daz]

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Source: Stanford University (http://www.stanford.edu/)


Date: Posted 10/22/2002

Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success

As you read this sentence, millions of personal computers around the world are working overtime – performing complex computations on their screensavers in the name of science. This growing Internet phenomenon, known as "distributed computing," is being used for everything from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to the design of new therapeutic drugs.
Now, for the first time, a distributed computing experiment has produced significant results that have been published in a scientific journal. Writing in the advanced online edition of Nature magazine, Stanford University scientists Christopher D. Snow and Vijay S. Pande describe how they – with the help of 30,000 personal computers – successfully simulated part of the complex folding process that a typical protein molecule undergoes to achieve its unique, three-dimensional shape. Their findings were confirmed in the laboratory of Houbi Nguyen and Martin Gruebele – scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who co-authored the Nature study.

Understanding disease

Every protein molecule consists of a chain of amino acids that must assume a specific three-dimensional shape to function normally.

"The process of protein folding remains a mystery," said Pande, assistant professor of chemistry and of structural biology at Stanford. "When proteins misfold, they sometimes clump together, forming aggregates in the brain that have been observed in patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases."

How proteins fold into their ideal conformation is a question that has tantalized scientists for decades. To solve the problem, researchers have turned to computer simulation – a process that requires an enormous amount of computing power.

"One reason that protein folding is so difficult to simulate is that it occurs amazingly fast," Pande explained. "Small proteins have been shown to fold in a timescale of microseconds [millionths of a second], but it takes the average computer one day just to do a one-nanosecond [billionth-of-a-second] folding simulation."

Simulating protein folding is often considered a "holy grail" of computational biology, he added. "This is an area of hot competition that includes a number of heavy weights, such as IBM's $100-million, million-processor Blue Gene supercomputer project."

Folding@home

Two years ago, Pande launched Folding@home – a distributed computing project that so far has enlisted the aid of more than 200,000 PC owners, whose screensavers are dedicated to simulating the protein-folding process.

The Stanford project operates on principles similar to earlier projects, such as SETI@home, which allows anyone with an Internet connection to search for intelligent life in the universe by downloading special data-analysis software. When a SETI@home screensaver is activated, the PC begins processing packets of radio telescope data. Completed packets are sent back to a central computer, and new ones are assigned automatically.

For the Nature study, Pande and Snow – a biophysics graduate student – asked volunteer PCs to resolve the folding dynamics of two mutant forms of a tiny protein called BBA5. Each computer was assigned a specific simulation pattern based on its speed.

With 30,000 computers at their disposal, Pande and Snow were able to perform 32,500 folding simulations and accumulate 700 microseconds of folding data. These simulations tested the folding rate of the protein on a 5-, 10- and 20-nanosecond timescale under different temperatures. Using these data, the scientists were able to predict the folding rate and trajectory of the "average" molecule.

Experimental verification

To confirm their predictions, the Stanford team asked Gruebele and Nguyen to conduct "laser temperature-jump experiments" at their Illinois lab. In this technique, an unfolded protein is pulsed with a laser, which heats the molecule just enough to cause it to bend into its native state. A fluorescent amino acid imbedded inside the molecule grows dimmer as the protein folds. Researchers use the changing fluorescence to measure folding events as they occur.

The results of the laser experiments were in "excellent agreement" with the Folding@home predictions, Pande and his colleagues concluded.

Specifically, the computers predicted that one experimental protein would fold in 6 microseconds, while laboratory observations revealed an actual folding time of 7.5 microseconds.

"These experiments represent a great success for distributed computing," Pande said. "Understanding how proteins fold will likely have a great impact on understanding a wide range of diseases."


The Nature study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Chemical Society, Intel and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.


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Gormal group-says 'shut up before i stab you in the face with my cock'

[moritheil]

Protein folding is fun stuff.

It's also m4dly overlooked.

Hmm.... someone help me write up a Smiting@Home project!

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Daz group-says 'rofl, moritheil is the mcdonald's of death'

[Tasan]

Somehow I have the feeling that people around the world would not want to contribute to the number of players you kill.

But then again, I am fairly pessimistic.

Twinshadow

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Tanji group-says 'Twyl keeps thinkin he rolled a rogue'

[Nekler BlazingWolf]

I used to do the folding@home thing for the [H]ard|ocp team, one of the best ranking teams there are. Unfotunatly, since I'm on a modem connection and limited to 250 hours a month, I had to stop as the cost for more time online kinda killed me money wise, hehe. Darn computer wouldn't always disconnect from the net.
Was fun while I done it though. If I ever get broadband, I'll be doing it again.

[Zellin]

Am I the only one who finds this to be horribly frightening?

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Zellin group says 'I'm still here buddy =)'
Zellin has left the group.

[moritheil]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Tasan:
<B>Somehow I have the feeling that people around the world would not want to contribute to the number of players you kill.

But then again, I am fairly pessimistic.

Twinshadow

</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nono...

Smiting@home would presumably look at crime around the world, and determine which places could most stand to benefit from smiting!

Factors it would have to include would be:
violence of the average crime in each area
-local recidivism rate
-whether or not crimes deserve Smiting
-likelihood of the average criminal being caught and Smote
-proportion of each population likely to be in support of Smiting

I leave the rest to you...

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You tell Ushug 'err... spankmistress??'
Ushug tells you 'you can't help it, I've always thought of mori as a chick'