For those of you who don't know, folding@home is a program that runs on your computer.  It uses the processor to run a bunch of calculations, then returns this data back to stanford university.  This data is used to research common diseases like cancer, Alzheimers and many more.  

I've recently established a team, ID# 191350.  I had to pick something innocuous for the name, so I chose something moderately fitting (ArmedElectronix).  If anyone has some spare computers around, or even those who leave their computers on overnight, then feel free to donate the computers to science!

You must go to folding.stanford.edu

From there, download the software most fitting to your machine, and install it.  For the team number, use 191350.  You can choose whatever display name you like, but if you plan on running more than one machine, I recommend my naming scheme: First name-Computer name.  Of course, you can use your internet name instead of your first name.  The software will utilize the CPU as much as possible, then whenever you need to use your computer, you can pause it almost instantly.  I talked about this with Vesp, and he suggested I make a thread on it.  

The ultimate goal is to bring this team into competition with Google.  They are currently ranked #2, preceeded only by those users who do not wish to join a team.  Google obviously has a pretty fair head start, but if you notice, they're not using any of their servers.  They are only using office computers of most (if not all) of their employees.  I currently have 6 computers cranking away at this, and I'm working out a deal with some local schools to take 10 to 20 or so computers off their hands each time they recycle them (about twice a year combined).  This will put us at a bit of an advantage, but I can only build so many shelves, and my dedicated air conditioner can only be cranked up so much further.  Please return with any comments or questions you like.

Agreed.  I also like google, but it would be quite funny to get an international corporation competing with a bunch of people who have too many computers.  The team is currently in the top 32.12% of all teams.  Lets see if we can get above the top 25% by the weekend Might need your help, Vesp.

Just say 8.5gb.  1gb is 1024MB.  The memory will most likely not limit it, unless you have less than 512mb.  The processor is almost always the limiting factor.

How slow is slow? I have an athlon XP 2800 crankin at it as one of my computers.  It's so slow that it's been running for 24 hours and hasn't completed one unit.  However, it will be contributing none the less. I wouldn't use the quad core.  Right now, their multicore program doesn't actually work that well.  On my dual core, it limits itself to one core.  That's why Primary, my fastest computer, is the lowest ranked one.  Each individual core is only worth 2.8GHz

You get to say you're curing cancer and alzheimers in your spare time! That, and if everyone globally folds enough (not just my team) we'll start seeing some real progression from stanford.  Cancer is one of those things that no one cares about until they have it lol... let's change that.  If I got paid, you'd get paid, but this is volunteer work haha.

BTW, we're in the top 21% now.  Hopefully below top 20% by friday

SETI has been doing this for years. For anyone who doesn't know already, SETI is Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence, IIRC. They use all the computing power to go through all the radio noise their worldwide network of antennas capture. They haven't found anything yet, unfortunately.

This sounds like a much more practical project.

PP

D-man, you probably heard about the discovery of a very unusual dwarf star by this group. The story ran on NPR yesterday or today.

Sorry, it's getting late, and I can't remember at the moment what made the dwarf unusual at the moment. But I thought you'd be interested to know if you missed it.

PP

I will join,  send me a PM friday to remind me or I will forget.

I think my total cable bill is about 80 usd a month which includes Internet access (it's only about 10 Mbits/s, but that's as good as home lines get here in the boondocks.)

Usage is uncapped, but when you are using several times that of the average consumer they send letters about ways you can reduce your bandwidth consumption.  I'm not really sure why they think I'd be concerned with it since I pay the same regardless.  I throw them in the trash.

Apparently Comcast limits its users to 300 GB/month, which is ridiculous considering that they often offer 20 Mb/s lines and 300 GB is around 2.5 hours at 20Mb/s.

Usage is uncapped, but when you are using several times that of the average consumer they send letters about ways you can reduce your bandwidth consumption

LOL

upload and download isn't much of an issue here though, is it? It is the actual computing that is needed, which once sent back to the F@H servers, doesn't use that much, does it?

ok...

what kind of amounts you talkin about there ?vesp 

its a good idea for a good purpose so when I do get a better connection I will seriously consider it