First off, hi, i'm Cjwinnit (duh). I'm a general forum bod who hangs out a lot
here.
Recently our forum got bought out by iNET interactive and this gave us an interesting new userbase, you. A bunch of us on the overclockers forum run a Distributed Computing project client on our computers called Folding@Home, and we would like to tell you what it is through a good old forum Q&A
What is folding?
Folding is a Biology experiment investigating how proteins behave. We model this on computers to see how they "mis-fold".
This is the homepage of the project, run by a group at Stanford University. 800 people on this forum do it as a team for overclockers.com. If you decide to do it please feel free to bother us with questions.
We have a sub-forum devoted to the cause
here. We have been doing this for a few years now and have built up a lot of experience.
Why bother folding?
"The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as
Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease."
(Credit to Stanford's folding site)
Where did you say you were from again?
Ocforums is a computing forum owned by iNET.
Does it slow my computer down?
No.
It is designed to use only spare cycles and i've
never noticed the difference having the client paused or running. LOTS of benchmarks by lots of forums and websites show the effect of the client on other processes is almost zero.
Why fold for your team?
Best answered by Gabriel Murphy
here. I quote:
Gabriel Murphy said:
Ok, regarding folding, and suggesting it on our other forums.
I would prefer to keep all folding local to OC-Forums.com, as it best fits this community.
Once these posts are made, I will make these posts sticky so everyone can make sure to have read it as well
BEFORE you do this, I would make sure the concept of "folding" is clearly articulated in a thread, so everyone understands the benefit of participation
Finally, In our December letter, which will be sent out to approximately 380,000 registered members of our various forums, as well as HotScripts.com, we will make mention of the "iNET Folding Team" on OC-Forums.com. I will post this portion of our newsletter here for your review and critique.
Let me know if this all makes sense, or if you have any questions or concerns!
So Ocforums is a computer geek hangout. Welcoming at all?
We
love new members (not too much though
). One of the catchphrases there is "Welcome To The Forums!" which sums it up a lot. We would love for you to visit
Put it another way, the
New Members Post Here... thread in the Folding Team has 1,295 posts and 20,099 views
Any competitive aspect to folding?
Lots. People get points for sending completed work units which are tallied up within a team. Teams are on one master leaderboard. Overclockers is third in the world and we want our top spot back!
How do I set it up?
- Download and install the client (link at the bottom of this post).
- Where it asks for Team Number put 32.
- Add whatever username you feel appropriate. I use my forum name.
That's it! Like all programs there are tweaks you can do, ask in the thread or search the Folding Team at ocforums.
I'm stuck/Any other questions
If you have any questions feel free to ask me or any ocforums folder, we act as a team and have an excellent community spirit. Personally, i'm on Ocforums a fair bit and reply to PM's there quickly. I will be here a lot too I think
Links
Ocforums
Ocforums Folding Team
Folding homepage
Folding client, straight from Stanford
![[H]pututu](/forums/data/avatars/s/241/241673.jpg?1704411343){kind=avatar}
