Alright guys, I have permission from council to use our name in a folding team. I'm just gonna rewrite this post quick to get it back out there now that we've clarified the permission of name usage.
I'm happy to announce so far a LOT of people have expressed interest in this team, which is awesome.
So, in short, Folding@Home is basically a way for you to use your computer when it is otherwise idle. Folding@Home performs medical research that would normally be impossible due to the incredibly complex simulations needed. Instead, F@H breaks these simulations into very small work units, and distributes them out to literally millions of PC's sitting idle in homes across the world. The PC's crunch some numbers, send back the unit, and maybe benefit humanity in some small way. For more specifics: http://folding.stanford.edu/
The fun part: Folding has teams. For every work unit submitted, the user (who can have any number of computers assigned to him, for those of you with multiple computers around the house) and the team he/she is on receives points.
I figure, since we have so many people in our community, each with at least one computer to use, we could maybe tap into all those idle cycles. I've gone ahead and created a team for us already, so anyone interested in joining it need only use the team number: 169285. If you go to the "stats" page and enter our team number (http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=169285) you'll see our team's stat page. Right now, since it was just made, it has only 2 users and few points. Despite our handful of members, they only show up on our team page when they finish a work unit and the stats are updated to reflect it.
There are several versions you can download. An important note: None of these will ever harm your performance of anything. The visual version runs like the command console one but with a graphical thingy you can choose to watch (or let it run in the tray out of the way), but if any other application is using processor cycles, it will not try to take them. It only ever uses what isn't already being used by you or applications left running on your computer. If your core is operating at 60%, it uses the other 40. If non-folding use goes up to 75%, folding goes down to 25, etc. I know a lot of us TF2'ers are leaving Drunkenf00l's idling program up all the time to find items/hats, so just run this baby alongside it.
There are even more advanced versions (which require 5-10 minutes of setup with some slightly more advanced techniques from the user, all described in a setup guide on folding's site) that will utilize dual- and quad-core machines. That's what I'm doing right now. I've got 12ghz here and I'd like to use all of it. Otherwise you can download the screensaver version which uses only one core, regardless of how many you have. It also gives you a cool-looking screensaver if I remember right, which is nicer than just the command line I get to have running to use my quad-core.
So, if you've never heard of folding, give it a look see. You could help cure cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), an inherited form of emphysema, and other less-than-awesome conditions. All of these are, in some cases at least sometimes or possibly, the result of protein misfolding.
Join the cause, have some fun. See how highly ranked we can get the eGO team, and, compete within the team to be King (or Queen) of eGO Folding!
You don't need a password or anything to join the team, it's public. If you're folding username differs from your eGO one, though, you may want to just tell us who you are. Please use this thread to announce participation, ask questions, etc.
As an added note: We'll need a team logo other than the eGO logo. Any of you graphically-oriented folks feel free to brainstorm and submit ideas! It can be TF2 related, general gaming, or something totally original.
Thanks!
I'm happy to announce so far a LOT of people have expressed interest in this team, which is awesome.
So, in short, Folding@Home is basically a way for you to use your computer when it is otherwise idle. Folding@Home performs medical research that would normally be impossible due to the incredibly complex simulations needed. Instead, F@H breaks these simulations into very small work units, and distributes them out to literally millions of PC's sitting idle in homes across the world. The PC's crunch some numbers, send back the unit, and maybe benefit humanity in some small way. For more specifics: http://folding.stanford.edu/
The fun part: Folding has teams. For every work unit submitted, the user (who can have any number of computers assigned to him, for those of you with multiple computers around the house) and the team he/she is on receives points.
I figure, since we have so many people in our community, each with at least one computer to use, we could maybe tap into all those idle cycles. I've gone ahead and created a team for us already, so anyone interested in joining it need only use the team number: 169285. If you go to the "stats" page and enter our team number (http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=169285) you'll see our team's stat page. Right now, since it was just made, it has only 2 users and few points. Despite our handful of members, they only show up on our team page when they finish a work unit and the stats are updated to reflect it.
There are several versions you can download. An important note: None of these will ever harm your performance of anything. The visual version runs like the command console one but with a graphical thingy you can choose to watch (or let it run in the tray out of the way), but if any other application is using processor cycles, it will not try to take them. It only ever uses what isn't already being used by you or applications left running on your computer. If your core is operating at 60%, it uses the other 40. If non-folding use goes up to 75%, folding goes down to 25, etc. I know a lot of us TF2'ers are leaving Drunkenf00l's idling program up all the time to find items/hats, so just run this baby alongside it.
There are even more advanced versions (which require 5-10 minutes of setup with some slightly more advanced techniques from the user, all described in a setup guide on folding's site) that will utilize dual- and quad-core machines. That's what I'm doing right now. I've got 12ghz here and I'd like to use all of it. Otherwise you can download the screensaver version which uses only one core, regardless of how many you have. It also gives you a cool-looking screensaver if I remember right, which is nicer than just the command line I get to have running to use my quad-core.
So, if you've never heard of folding, give it a look see. You could help cure cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), an inherited form of emphysema, and other less-than-awesome conditions. All of these are, in some cases at least sometimes or possibly, the result of protein misfolding.
Join the cause, have some fun. See how highly ranked we can get the eGO team, and, compete within the team to be King (or Queen) of eGO Folding!
You don't need a password or anything to join the team, it's public. If you're folding username differs from your eGO one, though, you may want to just tell us who you are. Please use this thread to announce participation, ask questions, etc.
As an added note: We'll need a team logo other than the eGO logo. Any of you graphically-oriented folks feel free to brainstorm and submit ideas! It can be TF2 related, general gaming, or something totally original.
Thanks!
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