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Do something useful with your PC
fatboy - December 31st, 2003 at 02:14 PM

Hey guys I have found a way to actually do something useful with my PC(s).


http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ 

If you download the software from this site and let it run on your PC you can help find a cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's.

It is a just like the SETI@Home project where your PC will download small chunks of data / process it and upload the results

I have taken the liberty of starting a team called Aussieveedubers and the team number is 13078 which you can add in the config section of the software.

Their are 2 downloads - a screen saver which processes only when your screensaver is active or the program which runs all the time (Only uses idle cpu time so it doesn't affect your PC too much)

I would only run one as I had some trouble when setting them both up.

dodge - December 31st, 2003 at 04:31 PM

what the? how does that program work? :)

fatboy - December 31st, 2003 at 05:42 PM

It downloads a tiny bit their data and then runs a simulation on your PC of genes folding, when the data is processed the results are uploaded and the next lot of data is downloaded.

Even though the data is physically small the amount of processing is huge, but with over 280,000 ppl worldwide taking part you can imagine how much number crunching is going on.

The first stage of the project to "simulate the folding dynamics of proteins and make quantitative predictions for how [protein folding] works". Apparently this has been a 'holy grail' of computational biology and was acheived October 21, 2002

So come on guys you get lots of options about whether you want it to ask permission to connect to the internet and stuff like that so their really isn't any excuse for not letting your PC help out.

BTW the Aussieveedubbers Team Ranking is currently 7783

fatboy - December 31st, 2003 at 05:48 PM

The program looks good too.

It usually runs in the task bar - but you can open it have a look at whats going on
This is windowed mode but you can leave it running full screen.

The screensaver version runs full screen of course.:thumb

The blobby thing is the gene being folded

lulu94 - January 1st, 2004 at 08:10 PM

does sound good although im not online or have my pc on long enought to do much.

someone i know does the same thing with a space program, so his computer searches for anything ion the data from way out there.

thorgin - January 3rd, 2004 at 12:49 AM

Yeh sounds good, ive downloaded it and got it running, been running for a while but still on 0% how long does it take to process these things? it seems to be taking forever

fatboy - January 3rd, 2004 at 12:59 AM

:thumb

It depend on the specs of your machine.

My "Server" is only a celeron 1.7ghz with 512 meg of RAM and as it is a server it is usually doing other things as well will take 24+ hours to process

Whilst my laptop which is p4 2.4 also with 512 meg ram will do it in about 5 hours.

You really see why they need so much help - they are looking at decades of computing time.

BTW Stanford Uni is non-profit and all the results from this gets released into the public domain.

Thanks for your help Thorgin

thorgin - January 3rd, 2004 at 01:06 AM

oh ok, i was thinking like a couple of minutes per process, but thats cool with me, my computer is pretty much constanly on so ill just leave it running, plus, it looks cool :)