TR Forums

Damage · Fri Dec 28, 2001 11:24 pm

Guys:

I'd like to form a TR team, but I'm not sure which distributed computing efforts are worth considering. Do you all have any suggestions? If you want to recommend a particular effort, provide us a link and a brief description why this effort is worthy.

What I'd like to see:

-Decent clients that will run unobtrusively a computer, not getting in the way of other work.

-An array of cross-platform clients.

-An effort that does some good. I think SETI fits that category, BTW.

-Something a little unique would be nice. If not everyone's doing it, maybe we could make some waves by bringing our CPU cycles to the game.

I might run a poll on the various choices, but maybe not--I think you guys in the know may have a better idea than the rest of us.

Any ideas?

_________________
Scott Wasson
"Damage"
The Tech Report
http://tech-report.com

[ This Message was edited by: Damage on 2001-12-28 22:25 ]

Coldfirex · Sat Dec 29, 2001 11:24 am

My votes are for Folding@home and SETI.

ripped from [H]:
Q. What is Folding@Home all about?
A. Proteins start as long chains of amino acids NOT DNA. DNA is transcribed into mRNA which is translated into a protein which is a string of amino acids covalently bound using peptide bonds. (This is an oversimplification because of splicing, etc.). There are hundreds to thousands of amino acid side-chain interactions plus hydrophilic/phobic tendencies plus chaperone proteins aiding in folding, so it's COMPLEX. Discovering how the folding process occurs (in a relatively short amount of time) and why some proteins “miss-fold”, with the potential of being the source of several diseases, is the goal of F@H. This is a demanding task, computationally. F@H is the first project to attempt to do this as a distributed computing project over the Internet. Discovering the “mystery of protein folding” could have significance in finding new pharmaceutical medicines; cures for several diseases and even nanotechnology.

Sat Dec 29, 2001 12:30 pm

I'm already running Folding@home, just need a team to point to. As far as SETI goes, I used to run it but quit it over a year ago. Projects like Folding and the United Devices ones have a better chance of getting worthwile results. (The United Devices client is Windows only, so it fails the cross-platform test)

lenzenm · Sat Dec 29, 2001 2:06 pm

I say SETI@Home, but I'm biased 'cause I'm almost at 1000 units solo (hey, the machines that stay on all the time suck, and the big boys are powered down for days at a time...no always-on connection sucks).
Folding@Home seemsto be the best choice that fits your criteria, however.

ColinFreeDC · Sun Dec 30, 2001 4:55 pm

Scott,

I might have a ready made solution for you. A few of us broke away from Ars and HOCP and formed an umbrella community geared towards DC newbies.

You are welcome to use our services in whatever way you choose.

We have a forum, teams for everything, site, IRC network. And this is only 5 days old:)

Site: http://www.free-dc.org
Forum: http://www.free-dc.org/forum

Your loyal reader...

_________________
Colin Thompson
http://www.free-dc.org

[ This Message was edited by: ColinFreeDC on 2001-12-30 15:56 ]

[ This Message was edited by: ColinFreeDC on 2001-12-30 15:56 ]

IntelMole · Sun Dec 30, 2001 7:36 pm

I say folding @ home, but I'm biased cos I'm doing A Level biology :smile:

besides, it sounds more promising than looking @ stupid wavelengths and crap like that...

Just my $0.02,
IntelMole

DMG · Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:32 am

Genome is pretty unobtrusive. But it'd have to be a serious team effort for me to want to join a team...

Coldfirex · Thu Jan 03, 2002 9:07 pm

So who would be game for folding@home? Im in.

IntelMole · Sat Jan 12, 2002 4:53 am

I'm in on Folding @ Home...

starlight · Fri Jan 18, 2002 11:54 pm

Before you decide give Sengent a look.

http://www.sengent.com/index.html

The projects just getting started so a new team can still do well.

Good luck in which ever project you choose.

ExcessOrder · Sat Jan 19, 2002 6:30 pm

I don't know if its worth it unless we get in on some unpopular project. We don't have enough people to really compete with the big teams, and several of us are already on other teams.
EO

nitrile · Sat Jan 19, 2002 7:11 pm

I dare say Folding @home (2) fits that criteria actually, it's relatively new. I've taken part in SETI for a long time but there are fundamentally more immediate things to do with my processor time so I fold as well now (already in a team though). One thing i'll note is that it can be a pain - especially on dialups as you can't cache work units like SETI/Genome. Genome/Folding come in Linux versions (I understand it can be made to run in FreeBSD also).

The SETI @home client has to be the most user friendly, and there's nothing I know that's more cross platform than this one is :smile:

.

IntelMole · Sat Jan 19, 2002 7:18 pm

If only someone could combine the usefulness of F@H with the interface of SETI...

Not forgetting of course, a 3400+ two-die Clawhammer running at 3800+ speeds :smile:

Ah bliss,
IntelMole

CAIN · Mon Jan 21, 2002 1:09 am

For me, F@H, G@H and Ubero are the most worhtwhile.

jsbach11 · Fri Jan 25, 2002 4:49 pm

Graham Richards, chemistry department chairman at Oxford University, has research under way to find cure for anthrax. Richards is leading the effort. He wants to get at least 160,000 computer users to download specialized screensaver software, which will help his team scan 3.5 billion molecular compounds for the project. He hopes his team will find a compound which will prevent the anthrax virus from forming the deadly toxin which kills people.

See http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/anthrax

(Note: access to this Web page may be difficult due to heavy traffic.)

xolf · Mon Jan 28, 2002 8:09 pm

Aye, the anthrax one is a different "app" accessible to users of the Intel/UD "Cure for Cancer" distributed project.

Which I've switched my efforts over to - hopefully it's something which will be a little quicker and easier to crack than cancer.

FWIW, I'd be more than happy to switch over to a TR team (though I appreciate that there're apparently not too many favouring the Intel/UD project :-/) - at the moment I'm in Ars Technica's Team Crab Cake (or whatever the heck it's called), and am somewhere in the top 20 by CPU time, I think.

Crash893 · Thu Jan 31, 2002 12:44 am

has anyone given any consideration to prime95?

its a good client works on most everything
very easy to configure and very automated

plus you win some loot would could be better than that?

im running my own team and ranked 291 all by my self im sure if you put a couple comptuers together you could crush some people.

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