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1M PLAYSTATION®3 USERS PARTICIPATE IN FOLDING@HOME

Sir Fragula said:
Nope, but obviously he can given his statements. I want to hear how Stanford has made up such an elaborate hoax.

However I'm guessing that, like ParticleReality, he will not come back and explain himself.
 
Madman said:
Is there a consensus there? I don't think anyone that is behind Folding at Home answered.

Well, I think it's pretty clear (at least to me) that a quad core system can be setup that will produce more points per watt of electricity expended. What isn't clear is whether or not the FAH point system actually is representative of the amount of work each is doing for the project.
 
Evander said:
Is protein folding really the snakewater that's gonna cure it all?

Personally, when it comes to a cure for cancer, my money is on deactivation the enzymes that rebuild the telomeres of cancer cell DNA. I don't know if protein folder will get us any closer to that, though, since I suspect it has more to do with DNA mutation.



I'm not saying that folding is bad AT ALL, but I don't think that people understand exactly what it is. We're not "Curing Cancer", we're helping in research into a particular area that may contribute to a cure for cancer. That is great, but so is searching for Extra-terestrial life.

Fuck, maybe aliens will cure cancer for us too!
I don't think most of GAF understands the implications behind protein folding, and most certainly not you. It's much, much, more than just understanding disease and the human body in general. The bioengineering and nanotech implications behind this are astounding. Being able to construct complex protein structures from simple gene-expression is something that will completely change the medical world.

Anyway, is the information for this going released publicly, or are the stanford folks keeping the data (and possible copyrights) for themselves?
 
larvi said:
Well, I think it's pretty clear (at least to me) that a quad core system can be setup that will produce more points per watt of electricity expended. What isn't clear is whether or not the FAH point system actually is representative of the amount of work each is doing for the project.
Hopefully one of the people behind it there can answer.
 
Fuzzery said:
I don't think most of GAF understands the implications behind protein folding, and most certainly not you. It's much, much, more than just understanding disease and the human body in general. The bioengineering and nanotech implications behind this are astounding. Being able to construct complex protein structures from simple gene-expression is something that will completely change the medical world.

Anyway, is the information for this going released publicly, or are the stanford folks keeping the data (and possible copyrights) for themselves?

Stanford will be publishing papers on the results in some journals which are highly technical. The only thing that will stop stanford from releasing their results will be if the project is for commercial purposes where in that case, it will be patented instead of published. But I don't see that happening.

Anyway, this branch of biotechnology is called Bioinformatics. After identifying genes and their corresponding protein chain, the net step is understanding its structure and function and this is where bioinformatics comes in. Evander, you would do well to read up on it before you spew your baseless opinions.

Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics

EDIT: I am one of the million people who help contribute. 247WU from me!
 
MassiveAttack said:
Whatever Sony proposes, you propose the opposite. You're the world's dullest contrarian. Unfortunately, you post too much and that spoils most of the fun.

Fold away though.
Agreed
 
this thread has inspired me to do some folding. What is the deal with the custom soundtracks? I can't figure out how to change the songs. It seems to group them in this weird way.

nm I figured it out.
 
the_id said:
Stanford will be publishing papers on the results in some journals which are highly technical. The only thing that will stop stanford from releasing their results will be if the project is for commercial purposes where in that case, it will be patented instead of published. But I don't see that happening.
They better not patent any of the findings...
 
Jtrizzy said:
this thread has inspired me to do some folding. What is the deal with the custom soundtracks? I can't figure out how to change the songs. It seems to group them in this weird way.

nm I figured it out.
You can play songs while folding?! :O!! XD
 
yeah it's awesome, I just realized it too...Since I am constantly listening to the music on my hd it looks like I'll be getting a lot more folding done now, especially since my roommate pays the electricity bill. No more staring at the earth visualizer for me!

You might need to mess with the settings a little. I just put mine on shuffle.
 
Tideas said:
SETI on the other hand, if you discover a more superior alien out there that's even more evil and aggressive than humanity (I know, that's hard, but it's highly possible, power gets to everyone), then they'll know we're here, and they'll come to enslave us.

of course, I think Bush would nuke the entire world rather than let that happen

Bush is more likely to be like the president in Independence Day, up in a plane shooting at Alien UFO's. However, even if the powerfull PS3's were helping the SETI project, I doubt we'd get results quick enough to let that happen..
But I guess it dosn't matter if Hillary or Obama push the button, there'd allways be some dumb people people stating they'd do idiotic things, just because they are an american president. :-/
 
larvi said:
Well, I think it's pretty clear (at least to me) that a quad core system can be setup that will produce more points per watt of electricity expended. What isn't clear is whether or not the FAH point system actually is representative of the amount of work each is doing for the project.
No, they aren't directly proportional to the amount of work you're doing. It's touched upon in the PS3 FAQ on Stanford's site. Basically, they set an amount of points per day for all their reference machines for their different client classes (single-thread, SMP, GPU client, PS3 client, Macs) in a way that is proportional to their "excitement" about that class.

If I run two single-thread clients on my dual-core PC, I average at around 300~350 points per day. If I instead run the SMP client on the same machine, I get an average of 1050 points per day. Nobody will convince me that this means the same machine has managed to do more than three times as much work. It's just "more exciting" work, to Stanford, for now.
 
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