Ethical folding
Okay... I've seen a lot of people asking for the "hidden tray icon" recipe, and I figured it is time for me to write a few words down.
I find it great to see all the people adding one Ghz after the other to the folding projects, as it serves a good purpose.
Yet I tend to believe that some of those Ghz out there are added to corporate computers, computers at uni's etc., by people who aren't really allowed to do so.
Please reconsider if this is what you are doing, as it can have impacts on the computer itself, network security and also an impact on you.
I've seen students get thrown out of schools for hacking puters to add SETI@home clients or just adding clients to hundreds of computers. I've also seen IT guys getting fired from their jobs for doing the same thing.
Folding serves a good purpose, but that does NOT make it right for you abuse other people's computer equipment. So make sure YOU have permission to add such clients, before you do so.
- Update 11 oct. 2004. -
Here's a thread on something I hoped would never happen within the F@H community. Damaging for the F@H concept and the OCforums, DONT EVER consider doing anything like this.
Read this thread!!!
- end of update 11 oct. 2004 -
Here's a thread that gives an example on what SHOULD NOT happen again.
Cheers and thanks for your time.
Flixotide
----- Here's a popular version of a permission letter by Arkain 32 ---
To the ACC Computer Science Department,
I am writing on behalf of the members of the Folding@Home community to bring the Folding@Home Distributed Computing project to your attention.
The Folding@Home project uses spare processor cycles to synthesize and calculate how proteins fold, misfold, and aggregate. 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 repercussions, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease.
Folding@Home is a distributed computing project, which in essence is a technique that uses the internet to create a tremendous super-computer. By splitting the workload and sending small portions out to volunteers who donate their CPU time, the project is able to harness tens of thousands of CPU’s and move forward more far more quickly than it would running on a Cray super-computer. The folding client runs on an idle priority and never takes CPU cycles that are needed for other processes. Think of a CPU’s cycles as a glass of water. When you browse the internet or process documents, you only drink 1/20 of the glass, and the rest is unused.... The folding client "drinks" the other bits of water. The client lets the other programs take as much as they need. This in no way spies on your activities. Studies have shown that Folding@Home does not impact the performance of computers, and it only needs internet access to receive work packets and to send results, which occurs anywhere from three times per day to twice per week depending on the particular work unit and CPU involved. Bandwidth use is minimal and it operates on standard www and https ports 80 or 8080. Many schools and corporations are starting to help the scientific community by joining this or similar projects.
If security is an issue with your decision on allowing the client to be installed, I can assure you that the F@H client is quite safe. It uses a digital signature that is verified with each download of a new work unit. The signature is a very secure way to verify that no bogus files have been downloaded that may attack/affect your system. The Folding@Home project does not cost anything to you. The school can form its own official team for stats tracking and can then compete against teams (even other colleges) worldwide. Your individual lab administrators may form their own usernames within the team and compete with each other. Clients are available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.
You do not gain anything from folding, but science does and perhaps someday this research will cure protein disorders or find new treatments for some types of cancer, in which case the whole human race benefits. All in all, the client is free and uses very little hard drive space. You may find other uses for the client as well. In monitoring a few dozens of folding@home clients, I've found that they can help pinpoint hardware problems. The folding@home community and I hope that you will think about allowing this client to be installed on some of the school’s computers, even if only on a trial basis. Whatever you decide, I thank you for your time and consideration.
I urge you to seek more information about this exciting DC project at the official Folding@Home site: http://folding.stanford.edu
A free program to track folding@home clients across a local network can be found at:
Okay... I've seen a lot of people asking for the "hidden tray icon" recipe, and I figured it is time for me to write a few words down.
I find it great to see all the people adding one Ghz after the other to the folding projects, as it serves a good purpose.
Yet I tend to believe that some of those Ghz out there are added to corporate computers, computers at uni's etc., by people who aren't really allowed to do so.
Please reconsider if this is what you are doing, as it can have impacts on the computer itself, network security and also an impact on you.
I've seen students get thrown out of schools for hacking puters to add SETI@home clients or just adding clients to hundreds of computers. I've also seen IT guys getting fired from their jobs for doing the same thing.
Folding serves a good purpose, but that does NOT make it right for you abuse other people's computer equipment. So make sure YOU have permission to add such clients, before you do so.
- Update 11 oct. 2004. -
Here's a thread on something I hoped would never happen within the F@H community. Damaging for the F@H concept and the OCforums, DONT EVER consider doing anything like this.
Read this thread!!!
- end of update 11 oct. 2004 -
Here's a thread that gives an example on what SHOULD NOT happen again.
Cheers and thanks for your time.
Flixotide
----- Here's a popular version of a permission letter by Arkain 32 ---
To the ACC Computer Science Department,
I am writing on behalf of the members of the Folding@Home community to bring the Folding@Home Distributed Computing project to your attention.
The Folding@Home project uses spare processor cycles to synthesize and calculate how proteins fold, misfold, and aggregate. 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 repercussions, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease.
Folding@Home is a distributed computing project, which in essence is a technique that uses the internet to create a tremendous super-computer. By splitting the workload and sending small portions out to volunteers who donate their CPU time, the project is able to harness tens of thousands of CPU’s and move forward more far more quickly than it would running on a Cray super-computer. The folding client runs on an idle priority and never takes CPU cycles that are needed for other processes. Think of a CPU’s cycles as a glass of water. When you browse the internet or process documents, you only drink 1/20 of the glass, and the rest is unused.... The folding client "drinks" the other bits of water. The client lets the other programs take as much as they need. This in no way spies on your activities. Studies have shown that Folding@Home does not impact the performance of computers, and it only needs internet access to receive work packets and to send results, which occurs anywhere from three times per day to twice per week depending on the particular work unit and CPU involved. Bandwidth use is minimal and it operates on standard www and https ports 80 or 8080. Many schools and corporations are starting to help the scientific community by joining this or similar projects.
If security is an issue with your decision on allowing the client to be installed, I can assure you that the F@H client is quite safe. It uses a digital signature that is verified with each download of a new work unit. The signature is a very secure way to verify that no bogus files have been downloaded that may attack/affect your system. The Folding@Home project does not cost anything to you. The school can form its own official team for stats tracking and can then compete against teams (even other colleges) worldwide. Your individual lab administrators may form their own usernames within the team and compete with each other. Clients are available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.
You do not gain anything from folding, but science does and perhaps someday this research will cure protein disorders or find new treatments for some types of cancer, in which case the whole human race benefits. All in all, the client is free and uses very little hard drive space. You may find other uses for the client as well. In monitoring a few dozens of folding@home clients, I've found that they can help pinpoint hardware problems. The folding@home community and I hope that you will think about allowing this client to be installed on some of the school’s computers, even if only on a trial basis. Whatever you decide, I thank you for your time and consideration.
I urge you to seek more information about this exciting DC project at the official Folding@Home site: http://folding.stanford.edu
A free program to track folding@home clients across a local network can be found at:
Last edited:
![[H]pututu](/forums/data/avatars/s/241/241673.jpg?1704411343){kind=avatar}
