With scepticism? That's because I am sceptic. All they do is publish papers, yet try to convince us that we should all increase our energy usage in a time when we should be doing all we can to save energy... and despite all this, have nothing to show for the research in terms of real, tangible progress towards curing cancer. That's just a logical, reasonable counter-argument. Damn it... stop editing your posts so fast. yes, I did call it ludicrous that we are expected to burn huge amounts of electricity on their behalf considering the size of their research grants, and I also think it's irresponsible to do so seeing as oil and gas supplies are becoming harder to find and more expensive by the year... all with no practical alternative. Does thinking it's ludicrous give me a bad attitude in your opinion?
See edit above. And thats a fair enough stance, although then suggesting giving money instead confuses me?
Oh could someone please tell me what happens if the F@H does happen to come across something actually significant? i.e. cure for something/viable medicine? My guess is that some drug company will get filthy rich, and that's it.
Because I wouldn't be donating as much as I would be spending on electricity every year, that's why. Plus.. a world wide appeal to give money directly to the research project would target more people instead of only computer geeks, and therefore generate FAR more money to the cause.
TBH I don't know much about this, but someone I know does and is interested in the subject, and as others have said in here anyone can comment. Stanford will be REQUIRED to publish papers to continue getting grants so the quantity in a sense is irrelevant. They only become relevant when they show real potential/real results. I've read some of the posts and there seems to me to be real pressure as opposed to an invitation for the interested to get involved. That surely can't be right. Excuse me for daring to butt in
Lets keep the post in context, this is an invitation for those that may be interested / not heard of F@H before. Lets be honest its a bit like this So hows about those not wanting to join, dont join/post, those wanting to joint sjump over to the other forum, and those wanting everyone to join respect others choices not to join. Everyone happy?!
Thats fair enough, this being a computer forum Ph4ZeD thought it would be quiet a sensible suggestion. And I'm obviously biased, so maybe that's why I read the first post differently to others.
If the first post said that, I'd have kept my mouth shut.. but it didn't. I'm out of here. I did ask in this thread is there was a way to limit folding to one core, or limit the amount of CPU usage.. but no one replied to give me an answer... they were faster to defend the "cause" than to actually give me any useful advice however. Thanks, but no thanks. I'm outa here.
Fair enough, just for the record: Ofcourse you can, you limit the client to use as much or as little as you want.
One point I'll make is that with folding you're directly contributing to the research, whereas with donating money to charities you don't really know where your money is going (granted there will probably be exceptions.) I don't have the slightest grounding in biochemistry at all but I like the fact that you can look into the specifics of each work unit your machine is crunching, and presumably if you have the applicable knowledge understand the relevence of that research. Philanthropy is good whichever way you contribute, though.
OK... well that was productive. The arguments for and against Folding posited here are all as lame as a one-legged duck. I'm kind of disappointed in you guys. I thought you were geeks, darnit! What's the point of Folding? The point is that it enables studying how complex proteins fold. This has all sorts of benefits in terms of developing treatments for bothersome conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Hungtington's etc. OK, nice. But doesn't Stanford have big enough grants? With the exception of cancer, these are not conditions most people want to think about. They'd much rather spend their money on Viagra or mood-enhancing substances such as SSRIs. So Big Pharma does not necessarily see it as a priority cash cow. And in case you did not notice, there's a recession going on. Even health research is feeling the pinch. Now don't get me wrong: Stanford still wields a $1 billion+ in grants. But this is not about funding Stanford: this is about funding research into conditions that you and I could suffer from one day (cancer: one in three people during their lifetime, remember?). And the contribution would be in good hands: Stanford's list of achievements includes: * 1956 - First use in Western hemisphere of linear accelerator to treat cancer * 1960 - First kidney transplant in California * 1964 - Demonstration of electrical stimulation of auditory nerve in deaf patients, paving the way for cochlear implants * 1968 - First adult human heart transplant in the United States * 1970 - Leonard Herzenberg develops the fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) which revolutionizes the study of cancer cells and will be essential for purification of adult stem cells * 1974 - Isolation of genome of a virus that causes hepatitis B and a common form of liver cancer * 1979 - Discovery of dynorphin, a brain chemical 200 times more powerful than morphine * 1981 - First successful human combined heart/lung transplant in the world (fourth attempted worldwide) * 1984 - Isolation of a gene coding for part of the T-cell receptor, a key to the immune system’s function * 1988 - Isolation of pure hematopoietic stem cells from mice * 1993 - First clinical trial testing methods for preventing eating disorders in adolescents * 1996 - Discovery that the p53 protein, known to be involved in controlling cancerous tumors, works as an “emergency brake” on cancer development * 2000 - Solution of the structure of the RNA polymerase protein, a pivotal molecule that copies genes from DNA to RNA So don't see it as charity: see it as an investment in the future health and wellbeing of you and yours. Yeah, but it costs me electricity! Sure. But it costs you electricity to let your PC run idle (because shutting down and booting up is, like, such a drag), and those pretty screen savers consume electricity-sucking CPU cycles too. That idle time could be used by Folding. In fact, even while you are working any CPU cycles going spare can be used by Folding. Still, seems like a waste of electricity... Yeah, because we all know that playing Crysis or Black Ops on an SLI'd set of GPUs (total load: 500 Watts+) for eight hours a day is, like, a totally useful and productive use of electricity. Still, using all that electricity is bad for the environment... I refer you to the above answer. I'd rather give to charity. At least I know the money is well-spent. Well, that depends. If you sign up to commit to a monthly donation of, say, £10,-- on your doorstep with one of those friendly charity fund raisers, it will take about 10 months before the charity actually sees any money. Because that friendly fund raiser is not a volunteer. They are an employee working for a fund raising company commissioned by the charity. And for every signature they gather, they charge the charity £100,-- commission. Always make sure your money follows the shortest, most direct path to your chosen charity (sign up on their own web page). By doing Folding@Home, you create a very direct path: electricity goes into your PC; useful data comes out and goes straight to Stanford. No commission; no middle men. I want to see a tangible reward for my charitable donation. Apart from the fact that the whole concept of wanting a reward for charity is way ****ed-up, if it were true you'd be manning the soup kitchen at the Crisis Homeless Shelter during Christmas. OK, carry on.
Quality post I bet none of the above research projects were done in a few months I never give money to the 'door knockers' , but I have tried to give direct to charities (web, phone or even head office) F@H is definitely an investment for the future, but on a side note I think something similar should be done with alternative fuels etc aswell. Arguments for and against could go on for miles! So going back to the OP - I dont know anything about F@H setup, Im going over to the folders section to ask for a 'How to' sticky
This. whether or not you choose to fold for bit-tech or someone else doesn't matter, but your "charity" is targetted, unlike randomly giving money to one of the various cancer research organisations (I refused to collectively call them charities), especially since some of the people working for these organisations figure they are worth £1m salaries for their individual contribution. I can't imagine vijay pande is earning that much, but even if he is it's not because you contribute 1 work unit a year/month/day/hour. The research is targetting conditions which have at least a 30% chance of affecting everyone, not just michael j fox, christopher reeve, terry pratchett and some distant relative's friend's 3rd cousin. the thing about cells, we all have them, and understanding how they behave is fundamental to preventative healthcare. For the casual reader, with the basic cpu client it operates on one core only and you can choose to utilise 1% to 100% of that core, or there are multicore clients and GPU clients. running a CPU client at 10% while gaming you won't notice any impact on your leccy bill nor really impact your gaming experience. for those of us who do other stuff than gaming, the same applies.
Even tho the "small" version of F@H doesn't really lay some heavy strains on my energy-bill, it still does use more energy while running, then when my PC is totally idle or even in suspend-mode, which would only add to the energy-problems we allready have these days. Additionally, the medicine of today is good enough to have the average of people in western countries get some 75-80 years old and I do have to ask myself if this isn't allready enough, when looking at the overpopulation of the world in general and the conflict of generations in the western industrialized countries in specific. Sorry, but no thanks. Call me again when I can solve the real urgent problems like world-hunger, overpopulation, energy, waste of ressources, climatic-changes etc... @ home.
My issue with this is, if any spare CPU cycles are utilised by F@H, then effectively, when my PC is on, it's pretty much working hard all the time, whereas when I'm not gaming, and just working in Word, or browsing, it all clocks down and runs pretty lean. During those times, I don't want anything running in the background sucking more power than I need. Nexxo.. there's no way around this, folding WILL increase my electricity bill, and I can't afford to pay any more than I already do. It's as simple as that. I think it's also pretty immature of you to belittle us for playing games that require powerful GPUs as if it's not a noble enough pass time, or a productive use of electricity, but you forget that is WHY we bought our computers in the first place. I also know of no one who games for 8 hours straight. I'm sure there are people who do, but I know none of them. So.. I can't afford to increase my electricity bill.. so what do you suggest? That I game less in order to allow me to fold? So.. let's all stop doing stuff that's not productive shall we? Off with your TVs everyone. Turn that HiFi off. Get rid of that 42" plasma... not useful enough... how frivolous of you all to waste power so unproductively. (sigh) How the hell do you know that I don't! You have no idea what I do, or do not do for charity, so stop being so damned presumptuous. If the OP of this thread wants to get people folding, then he should create a FAQ based on people's concerns so far in this thread, and post up links to get information. HE wants ME to start folding, so I'll be damned if I'm going to waste my time trawling for information over something I have no great desire to do. It's incumbent upon him to do that. 1. Is it a simple matter to tell f@hmon to use one core, and not all? 2. Can it be scheduled? 3. Can priorities be assigned to the processes running from the software itself and not from task manager? 4. Does it have to use the GPU? 5. Does anyone have any real data on electricity costs for various types of rig for comparison (without folding, and with folding)? If someone can answer those, and not keep evangelising about how noble it will be of me to pay more for my electricity bill, and being dismissive of those who are sceptical of it's usefulness, I may actually consider it. So far though.... you're all a little evangelical about it.. as if it's the single most important thing I could be doing with my time and money. I'm not convinced that it is. Oh.. and why is my argument lame? Considering that my only real objection to folding is the damned cost of it, if you think it's lame.. pay my electricity bill for me. See if you think it's lame then. I'm baffled why all us sceptics are being treated as if we've been biting the heads off babies though. I put it to you this debate IS productive. If all of us just kept quiet, or didn't post in this thread, then a great deal of the facts and figures already posted in here wouldn't have seen the light of day. If anyone is interested in folding, they'll fold, or at least visit the folding forum. You're all here to convert us non believers, hence posting in the hardware forum ( I still maintain this is NOT the right sub-forum for this thread), so instead of bitching that we are raising concerns, fears, and genuine problems you should be thankful it's generating the interest it is! After all, all publicity is good publicity and all that.
