If you have a computer at home that is usually connected to the internets, you should consider helping out the Folding@Home effort.

This is a global effort which will harness the power of computers around the world to perform protein folding calculations. This will help fight the following diseases:

Alzheimer's
Mad Cow (BSE)
CJD
ALS
Huntington's
Parkinson's
Many cancers

All you have to do is download the application, install it, and use the team number "62014" when you configure it. That's the number for the "ElectricalAudio" team!

I've got two computers at home on that team already. If we get enough people here on our team, we could get ranked as one of the biggest contributors. It's optional of course - you don't have to join the EA team, it's just a feel-good thing for ourselves.

[Geek Note!] Note that this thing runs all the time by default, but it's computational threads have very low CPU priority, and therefore get pre-empted by pretty much everything else. I have had this running for days and despite the fact that my CPU shows utilization at 99%, nothing feels slower at all. You shouldn't have a problem either.

This sounds kinda like the SETI@Home project.

I'm in -- anything to beat that stupid faith god with the science god!

(sorry, I saw a Law and Order last night where some religious nut made claim that you couldn't worship both god and science.)

So if I download the screensaver client, will it do all that matrix rain of numbers across my screen? That would be so sweet.

burun wrote:This sounds kinda like the SETI@Home project.

Yep, there have been a few of these things around before, but I'd much prefer to help cure cancer than find E.T. And this one can even be run on Playstation 3s, of all things!

I also like this one especially because of this:

Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.

Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.

Dude, if we find E.T. he'll cure our cancer with that little light up finger.

I saw this on Kotaku last week - they're trying to recruit all the PS3 owners. I however will proudly throw my hat into the EA ring.

It's about time my computer was put to better use than downloading Kreator MP3s.

night_tools wrote:It's about time my computer was put to better use than downloading Kreator MP3s.

You misspelled Krokus.

im in.

MTAR wrote:im in.

I'll watch out for some mysterious protein folding happening at night, then...

Oh man, I'm totally carrying this team. Get into gear!