Folding @ Home

[Canadian*Sniper]

foqer you have to market your idea better with advertisement, balloons, and cash, beer, and bitches. That's the only way you'll get our attention.

[IEEE 802.11]

Build this into an amazing Quake client, they'll be done in a few weeks. I don't leave my PC on very long these days and for the most part when I'm done I shut it off.

They should put these on gaming consoles, like on the Wii. Give them 10 Wii points per hour (when running idle), so after like 50 hours they can download the original Super Mario Brothers.

[Baker]

it's a dangerous way of thinking about the world--if you think that you can make a difference by sitting on your ass running a computer program. change takes action and determination

Ah, I think there are worse things.

I myself am very disappointed in the presidential election stuff.

Did you know social security is going to have a $45 trillion deficit (yes, that's the real number)?

Meanwhile, vapid arguments ensue over whether Romney's religion is a cult, talk about Obama's muslim ancestry and so forth.

Sometimes I wonder whether or not we think the world culture or just the one here is more advanced than it really is.

Really, the state of the country should be in a 5-alarm financial alert.

And no one cares.

15 years from now, I don't see how we aren't going to be in very deep trouble, considering currency deflation and the fact the USA doesn't manufacture anything.

[foq]

Build this into an amazing Quake client, they'll be done in a few weeks. I don't leave my PC on very long these days and for the most part when I'm done I shut it off.

They should put these on gaming consoles, like on the Wii. Give them 10 Wii points per hour (when running idle), so after like 50 hours they can download the original Super Mario Brothers.

There's no way to combine this with a Quake client... :/
And this will run on the PS3 with it's amazing Cell processor, only you don't get anything for it.

The wii would be too wiik (weak) to run this. It has like 24MB of RAM and a processor probably worse than the one I had in my first x86 computer.

[spooker]

Ah, I think there are worse things.

I myself am very disappointed in the presidential election stuff.

Did you know social security is going to have a $45 trillion deficit (yes, that's the real number)?

Meanwhile, vapid arguments ensue over whether Romney's religion is a cult, talk about Obama's muslim ancestry and so forth.

Sometimes I wonder whether or not we think the world culture or just the one here is more advanced than it really is.

Really, the state of the country should be in a 5-alarm financial alert.

And no one cares.

15 years from now, I don't see how we aren't going to be in very deep trouble, considering currency deflation and the fact the USA doesn't manufacture anything.

45 trillion when? since the social security system is intended to continue indefinitely, if it's losing money, even a penny a year, it's going to be 45 trillion in debt at SOME point in the future. they have enough to fund full planned benefits until 2041 (reading direct from my soc. sec. statement), at which time they will have to go down to 75% of planned benefits. so, at this point, and for many years to come, we're still looking at a minor correction (stitch in time saves 9?). i'm not too alarmed about soc. sec., i don't plan to rely on it at all anyways. main financial problems i see now are the steady devaluation of the dollar, which is bad for everyone if it continues at this pace; and the current credit crisis of course. some people are flipping out about real estate prices, but prices in my state have actually gone UP over the past year. we definitely needed a shakedown in the real estate bubble though--around here, couples who are smart, well-raised, and play their cards right can only just barely afford a house with a 20 year mortgage, and usually with a 30 minute commute minimum. everyone else, forget it. as for manufacturing, one of our prime exports is agricultural products, and prices for food have gone up 25% in the past year due to the distorting subsidies for corn-based ethanol production, consumption of more meat and cheese and less vegetables in china and india, and poor harvests possibly due to global warming. so we're seeing a boost in agribusiness. and the upside to devaluation of the dollar is it makes our exports cheaper. uhoh, you got me going............

[Fuzznut]

Nah, this program is strictly human I believe... although I wouldn't be very suprised if they wrote one for DNA, but work units would take months instead of days, (probably)

thanks for trying fuzz

What I meant was they could decipher the gene sequences of ancient DNA using this networking the world into a giant supercomputer concept. Its the same way the [email protected] program works.

Though noble as it is, a protein folding program isn't very exciting.

Have a post or an advertisement saying 'Want to see a real live Dinosaur? Help us decipher these recovered DNA strands with [email protected] Then just sit back and watch the download count shoot through the roof.

I know I know. It seems callous we'd find more motivation as a society to decipher DNA strands of extinct animals than to help cure diseases. But before you think we are terrible FoQ. Consider this:

Let's say this Folding program you and I are going to run actually helps scientist make huge pharmaceutical breakthroughs. The powers that be, the Cheneys and the Bush's of the world, will take that medicine and through their pharmaceutical companies make you pay through the nose if you ever needed this medicine that your computers calculations helped to discover. They won't give it to you for free, and if you can't afford it, you're out of luck. They won't care one iota. All they will care about is their money that your computer and your electric bill you paid for out of your hard earned money helped to make for them.

You can try pleading 'but but but...my PC's idle cycles were used to help discover this medicine!' They'll just laugh all the way to the bank.

[Baker]

45 trillion when?

Something like the span of the next 30 years.

i'm not too alarmed about soc. sec., i don't plan to rely on it at all anyways.

Yeah, but that's not the point (I don't either). Do you know what a crushing tax burden it is going to be? It will destroy our economy.

And we have these aloof or callous midgets running for president that don't care about this. All they care about is getting elected.

If they can pass the buck, they will.

The ONLY candidate that I think might actually care is Obama, the other ones are too much of establishment politicians that are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

main financial problems i see now are the steady devaluation of the dollar, which is bad for everyone if it continues at this pace; and the current credit crisis of course.

The devaluation of the dollar is a very bad thing. I personally think the credit crisis might be a very good thing. They were out of their freaking minds, I kid you not.

3 years ago, the "interest only" craze (aka scam) was wildfire.

When I read what an incredible ripoff these were, I knew that they'd close a ton of these loans and if the loans went bad, well, gee the company can just go out of business and leave the mortgages unsecured.

and the upside to devaluation of the dollar is it makes our exports cheaper. uhoh, you got me going............

That's only an upside when the country has a work ethic.

We aren't going to be exporting anything regardless of the fall of the dollar because we still don't manufacture anything.

[foq]

This isn't a political debate.

Fuzz, while I see that the medicine, if any, will most likely be expensive, but things get cheaper over time. Remember the first computers with hard drives much smaller than the common USB thumb drives and cost close if not over $5,000?

As for the program not being very exciting, anyone who thinks that the fact that they have the ability to cure "many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes" isn't exciting needs to get kicked in the testicles. If testicles are not available, a nice steel toe roundhouse kick to the face should suffice.

You can help cure this shit without going through $100k of student lones for the education it takes to get the kind of job working to develop such cures. Sure the only thing you get from it is a larger electricity bill, and possibly a shortened life expectancy of your computer if it is not maintained properly, but the electricity bill thing will most likely cost, what $20? On the side of computer maintenence, all that reuqires is for you to point and fire a can of air on your CPU heatsink to clear out the dust. WOW THAT WAS HARD!!

This is the kind of laziness and selfishness that infects our world today. If you know you can do something that could potentially nullify a GREAT DEAL of pain and suffering for very little cost to you, you should. All it reuires is maybe 100 keystrokes and a few clicks of a mouse, and telling the bank teller to put a number slightly higer than your usual amount for the electricity bill.

As for your dinosaurs, that is a horrible idea... and generally nobody wants to bring back a potentially dangerous animal... and for what? So you can stand there and gawk at it while it bends down so it can swallow you whole?

[Fuzznut]

This isn't a political debate.

Fuzz, while I see that the medicine, if any, will most likely be expensive, but things get cheaper over time. Remember the first computers with hard drives much smaller than the common USB thumb drives and cost close if not over $5,000?

Your analogy is flawed. You are talking about computers. Many things that were expensive you can get for pennies or for free now in the PC world.

Totally different deal than the pharmaceutical world where the market is nowhere near as open. Also valuable medicines never become obsolete.

Perhaps we as a society do need to be kicked in the testicles. All the things in our society that are bad that I described are there because we allow them.

[Fuzznut]

As for your dinosaurs, that is a horrible idea... and generally nobody wants to bring back a potentially dangerous animal... and for what? So you can stand there and gawk at it while it bends down so it can swallow you whole?

Wotta way to go though! Ate by a dinosaur!

[foq]

Your analogy is flawed. You are talking about computers. Many things that were expensive you can get for pennies or for free now in the PC world.

Totally different deal than the pharmaceutical world where the market is nowhere near as open. Also valuable medicines never become obsolete.

Perhaps we as a society do need to be kicked in the testicles. All the things in our society that are bad that I described are there because we allow them.

Not really, it's just on a much larger timescale. What we consider commonplace today (cold medicine anyone? go spend $5 at walmart on some nyquil) was must more expensive (and less effective) when it first came about.

I wish medicine advanced as fast as computers did...
"Order your new-and-improved NyQuil! Now with 10THz of bacteria-killing power!"

[Fuzznut]

Not really, it's just on a much larger timescale. What we consider commonplace today (cold medicine anyone? go spend $5 at walmart on some nyquil) was must more expensive (and less effective) when it first came about.

I wish medicine advanced as fast as computers did...
"Order your new-and-improved NyQuil! Now with 10THz of bacteria-killing power!"

Yes, much like comparing miles to lightyears. That makes your analogy flawed. Yes FoQ you're analogy is flawed. FLAWED.

FLAWED!

[foq]

In your eyes, not mine.

Either way, at least you can do something with your idle CPU cycles.

[Fuzznut]

In your eyes, not mine.

Either way, at least you can do something with your idle CPU cycles.

Well at least its written in assembly.

[foq]

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