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amphibem
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Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Fri Jul 16, 2010 7:52 pm

Hey all - I have been absent from these parts from a few years but have decided to start folding again so thought I might pop in. Only a small player - few CPU's and 1 GPU for now (FAHmon shows ~1750PPD) but a good bit of fun.

My question is have things dropped off on this effort over the last few years? When I last paid attention drfish and leor where going at each other like ...insert suitable metaphor here... and now I see they have both given up the serious game. TheBank was dragging us all up for a while and he/she is gone too.

As of today we are 13th with a number of teams bearing down and only 137 active users. Technical issues or people just losing interest?
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Dirge
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:42 am

Gday mate, well I have been an on again off again contributor in the past. I stopped because I didn't like running my CPU hot all day and the extra expense of power. But there are lots of dedicated folders and every now and again I check the stats to see if UGN has taken over the world.
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amphibem
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:52 am

Dirge wrote:
Gday mate, well I have been an on again off again contributor in the past. I stopped because I didn't like running my CPU hot all day and the extra expense of power. But there are lots of dedicated folders and every now and again I check the stats to see if UGN has taken over the world.


I am going to assume you make reference to the past and heat - it is pretty cold all over NZ at the moment and my room needs the heat! In all seriousness I am likely to back off or stop as the summer rolls around depending on how well me cooling system copes with 100% CPU and increased ambient temperatures.
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amphibem
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:54 am

Nice to hear from a fellow Kiwi too :) What part of the country you in, I am in Taranaki as previosuly mentioned it is cold right now
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StuG
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:49 am

Has folding accomplished any major milestones? I don't mean to be dissing it at all, I think its a noble cause but I just have never heard about it accomplishing something major.
 
Flying Fox
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 2:21 am

StuG wrote:
Has folding accomplished any major milestones? I don't mean to be dissing it at all, I think its a noble cause but I just have never heard about it accomplishing something major.

Has it done anything that casual people can find on your local 6 o'clock news? No. Even pseudo-mainstream geek sites like Engagdet? No. However, there have been a steady stream of papers being published and presented so the scientific community is well aware of its efforts and the results.
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amphibem
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 2:41 am

Flying Fox wrote:
StuG wrote:
Has folding accomplished any major milestones? I don't mean to be dissing it at all, I think its a noble cause but I just have never heard about it accomplishing something major.

Has it done anything that casual people can find on your local 6 o'clock news? No. Even pseudo-mainstream geek sites like Engagdet? No. However, there have been a steady stream of papers being published and presented so the scientific community is well aware of its efforts and the results.


To be a bit more specific here is the list from Wikipedia of published papers referencing the project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_at_home#Results

Personally I would also expect an academic institution such as Stanford to have high academic standards and such a project would only be done with clearly defined goals and good scientific principles.
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Dirge
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 5:25 am

Still in the game.
Last edited by Dirge on Thu Aug 17, 2017 10:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 8:32 am

Yeah, activity seems to have dropped off a bit. IMO it is a combination of factors. Some people simply lost interest; a few quit in disgust when the SMP client remained unstable for so long (FWIW it is significantly better now); and some have scaled back due to the cost of electricity and/or heat output.

I'm still here. The crate farm has been retired (due to very poor PPD per watt, since they were all old single-core Athlon XPs), but I still run a few Linux SMP clients, with a total output in the ~8K PPD range. A few of the other "regulars" are still going as well, and UGN is doing quite well these days.

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Convert
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:37 am

just brew it! wrote:
a few quit in disgust when the SMP client remained unstable for so long (FWIW it is significantly better now);


How much better? The GPU and SMP client both needed to be removed and reinstalled from scratch every few weeks and the GPU client required constant upkeep just to run from day to day. Do they still expire as well?
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just brew it!
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:50 am

I can't speak to the GPU client, since I don't run it.

The Linux SMP client seems to have been (relatively) smooth sailing since the 6.29 update a few months ago. I think the expiration thing was for the beta clients, because they didn't want people to continue using old betas. AFAIK there's no expiration date on the client now that it has reached "production" status.
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Flying Fox
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 11:04 am

just brew it! wrote:
I can't speak to the GPU client, since I don't run it.
I also can't speak for the GPU client, but may be soon. 8)

just brew it! wrote:
The Linux SMP client seems to have been (relatively) smooth sailing since the 6.29 update a few months ago. I think the expiration thing was for the beta clients, because they didn't want people to continue using old betas. AFAIK there's no expiration date on the client now that it has reached "production" status.
I have been running LinuxSMP 6.29 for months in VMs and for the most part they have been quite set-it-and-forget-it. Sometimes the WU servers went out of units or went down but the built-in retry mechanism pretty much dealt with those. My only problem is when I need to reboot the host (or a long power outage that even my UPS can't cover) then I have some manual babysitting to do.

WinSMP has come a long way. Ever since the A3 core is introduced they have now switched to a thread-based model and it has been more stable than before. However, they are still keeping the A1/A2 cores so the mpiexec/deino crap you still need to set that up on install. IMO once they removed the A1/A2 and the mpiexec/deino madness, I can start to recommend casual users on WinSMP again.
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Dirge
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:25 pm

I forget what I may have read in the past, but has the Pande Group ever committed to releasing their findings publicly? As this is a community effort, the last thing I would want is for possible medical breakthroughs to be patented. Ultimately where will all this research go and who will benefit from it all?
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Flying Fox
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sat Jul 17, 2010 11:41 pm

I thought I gave you enough information to look for your own. Must I do everything for you? :-? :o :P
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amphibem
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Sun Jul 18, 2010 1:06 am

Well found this tool; FAH GPU Tracker V2, which has been serving me well so far. Provides a convenient tool to manage SMP and multiple GPU client - I am currently only running 1 GPU client with it (no problems so far, I think 4 WU in) and will try SMP once the current WU's are finished.

One of the best features is 'Pause While Gaming'; there is a txt file with a list of exe's and if the Tracker detects any of them is pauses the (optionally selected) clients. I have found on my machine video is unplayable with any folding (off I know as the F@H process is low priority) so this is a easy way ti pause and re-start, and for media-centres where desktop access isn't so easy.
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mmmmmdonuts21
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:48 am

Well found this tool; FAH GPU Tracker V2, which has been serving me well so far. Provides a convenient tool to manage SMP and multiple GPU client - I am currently only running 1 GPU client with it (no problems so far, I think 4 WU in) and will try SMP once the current WU's are finished.


Wow I am going to have to give this a try when I get home. Looks very promising especially compared to manually shutdown each client each time I game. Thanks amphibem.
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Dirge
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:21 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
I thought I gave you enough information to look for your own. Must I do everything for you? :-? :o :P


Thats not quite what I was getting at... my concern is the community effort could be turned into profitable patents for big pharmaceutical companies.
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Shinare
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:46 pm

Dirge wrote:
Flying Fox wrote:
I thought I gave you enough information to look for your own. Must I do everything for you? :-? :o :P


Thats not quite what I was getting at... my concern is the community effort could be turned into profitable patents for big pharmaceutical companies.


My thoughts on the matter personally, I don't care if someone [else] gets rich doing it, I'd love to see a cure for these things in my own lifetime.

I hear the argument that pharmaceuticals suppress cures for things so they can get rich treating rather than curing. But I find it hard to believe that if someone offered a drug that would cure your terminal cancer it eould make a difference to you how much money they are making off you to give it to you. They could basically charge the equivalent of treating to cure it. *shrug*

But I digress.
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Flying Fox
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:16 pm

Dirge wrote:
Flying Fox wrote:
I thought I gave you enough information to look for your own. Must I do everything for you? :-? :o :P


Thats not quite what I was getting at... my concern is the community effort could be turned into profitable patents for big pharmaceutical companies.

That's similar to saying that the big companies using the publicly available genome info to develop a drug and you are going to hate on the genome project? Like the genome stuff the Folding results are published in papers for the entire world to see. If you develop something from that information and profit from it, that's fine. Where it crosses the line IMO is if they try to patent the publicly available info as if it is their own. F@H is basic research. There are a few steps (and yes those will be patented) from those results to some viable drugs.
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Dirge
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Mon Jul 19, 2010 8:08 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
Where it crosses the line IMO is if they try to patent the publicly available info as if it is their own.


Ahh that's what I am trying to get at... you have expressed my point better than I could.
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lora45
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Tue Jul 19, 2011 8:26 am

Former participants i think overgrew it a bit, that's why some've lost their interest, but there are many newcomers
 
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Re: Back in F@H - where has everybody gone?

Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:49 am

just brew it! wrote:
...a few quit in disgust when the SMP client remained unstable for so long ...and some have scaled back due to the cost of electricity and/or heat output.


These were my primary factors for letting my contribution fall off.

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