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Thread: Folding@home

  1. #1
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    Folding@home

    Hi guys,
    I do not doubt that this is genuine stuff, I just do not seem to find what are the benefits for me from having it running on my PC, except of contributing to the science.
    They quote some points earned per day but they do not reply to my question on Twitter and I have no idea what to do with those points.
    Is it possible to exchange them for cash? Their website mentions nothing about this.
    I was introduced to this scheme on your website here so that is why I am asking the folks here.

    Thanks.

  2. #2
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    Re: Folding@home

    From Stanford Universitys' folding.stanford.edu website: "we ask people to donate their unused computer power to crunch some of the numbers"

    Home Page




    Help Stanford University scientists studying Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers by simply running a piece of software on your computer.
    The problems we are trying to solve require so many calculations, we ask people to donate their unused computer power to crunch some of the numbers.
    In just 5 minutes ...

    Add your computer to over 261,758 others around the world to form the world's largest distributed supercomputer.
    Step 1. Download protein folding simulation software called Folding@home.
    Step 2. Run the installation. The software will automatically start up and open a web browser with your control panel.
    Step 3. Follow the instructions to Start Folding.
    Stanford University will send your computer a folding problem to solve. When your first job is completed, your computer will swap the results for a new job.

    What is protein folding?

    Proteins are biology's workhorses- its "nanomachines." Proteins help your body break down food into energy, regulate your moods, and fight disease. Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." While protein folding is critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology much of the process remains a mystery.
    When proteins do not fold correctly (misfolding), there can be serious health consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, AIDS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers.
    If we better understand protein misfolding we can design drugs and therapies to combat these illnesses.
    How you can help right now.

    Start Folding by downloading and running the free Folding@home software from Stanford University. Once installed the software runs behind the scenes using otherwise unused computing time.
    Your computer's calculations provide us valuable data for our research into protein folding.
    You'll get feedback along the way if you want it, or you can just let it run. You might not even notice how much work is going on.
    Every computer we add gets us closer to the cures.

    Join us. Tell your friends.




    261,758


    ©2013 Vijay Pande. All rights reserved. Video script and music by David Delp. Animation by Scott Harris.




    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

  3. #3
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    Re: Folding@home

    So, since this is just to DONATE the CPU, I get nothing?
    In that case I do not understand why one member here (in the coin generation thread) suggested this as an alternative... dont people mainly do this for some extra cash? I do not want to donate my electricity, I am not in that position right now.

    What about the points then?
    I cannot even see the protein folding. I have the software for it but I only see the night map of the world...

  4. #4
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    Re: Folding@home

    You'd have to ask cloudchecker WRT his mention of points from folding@home.

    AFAIK, participation in the folding@home project is purely voluntary.
    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

  5. #5
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    Re: Folding@home

    ok, fine, thanks for the replies anyway.

    ps: I do not understand the abbreviations such as AFAIK or WRT.

  6. #6
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    Re: Folding@home

    AFAIK = as far as I know

    WRT = with regard to
    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

  7. #7
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    Re: Folding@home

    Nothing wrong here just as SETI@Home

    Credits is a way to record your contributions, i have several certificates with my SETI achievements.
    Also sometimes those projects join in user group to combine their score.

    I remember some Operating System wars were settled that way too, "if team linux better/faster than team MacOs" and so on. Or to brag if you or your team is top X contributor.

    SETI had a kickass screensaver, made you computer look very smart :)


    The only legal problem around those cluster-mining projects was if someone installed it on not theirs or company computers without authorization.
    Last edited by NikSam; 08-10-2013 at 01:06 PM.

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  9. #8
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    Re: Folding@home

    Nik, you know computer stuff. Can you explain how/why this works. Could an organization not just buy a server and/or computing power? Or does the free use of all the individual computers far outweigh the cost/benefits of a central location?

    I understand the premise of it, just seems a rather unorganized way to do research.
    "It's virtually impossible to violate rules ... but it's impossible for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time." Bernie Madoff
    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scam-...98399986981403

  10. #9
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    Re: Folding@home

    Most of those projects have very limited funding with constant threat of loosing it completely.
    Buying supercomputers, maintenance , staff cost pretty much.

    Berkeley University with their SETI i believe was a first cluster-mining, it looked as a future of computing, "let all who cares contribute to the cause and spread workload to work units across the world." or just do it for a hot screensaver :)

    After came crypto breaker projects and human genome. You can see behind all of them is some university, they just cannot afford to build supercomputers for relative number of instructions per second.

    of course anything good will also be used for bad.

    I do not know what exactly "coin-generation" is doing but considering where it came from cannot be good.
    If it does anything at all, but there are a lot of interests from the dark side too,
    (DDOS nodes, Spam Bots, Password crackers, Captcha solvers, etc.. )
    Last edited by NikSam; 08-10-2013 at 02:19 PM.

  11. #10
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    Re: Folding@home

    I have installed the coin generation but I was suspicious from the beginning. I have written my story in the other topic, so I am not going to repeat myself.
    But only a fool would put something like that on their PC where they have everything else. Although I cannot do anything with my bank details I have put there as initially I intended to use this scheme for some little extra income and with fake details I would probably get nothing. I am still very new to these things.
    Perhaps I should inform my bank that I have used my SWIFT and IBAN for risky purposes?
    The e-mail address they have is an additional one, created for similar purposes, from which the e-mails are re-directed to my main e-mail address, so if they have cracked that, they should have nothing at all.

    What they could do is to find me by the name and address or spy on the IP address. The stuff I have installed is on an old laptop which has been recovered completely with supposedly no data in the background.

    Where the coin generation came from? I have read some stuff but people contradict themselves in some details.

  12. #11
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    Re: Folding@home

    I was also involved in one project where analyzing entire NYSE and NASDAQ 20 years of stock trading data
    across one or more trading strategies would take entire day running on the high end modern computer.

    by splitting workload on 3-5 computers on the same LAN did accomplish it in couple hours.

    Hedge funds have to do it all the time and there are money involved, but they would never go to outside help from public.


    What CoinGeneration cliams might be just a legend for their ponzi and program does nothing.
    There are no market for such things, definitely with no profits claimed, it sounds something like BB's Blind network.
    Installing that program probably also gives control of your computer to the mothership.
    And seeing people saying "I will just try it for free" makes me wonder why.

  13. #12
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    Re: Folding@home

    I pretty much believe that CG is a pyramid (or Ponzi). People already are having troubles getting money, which appears like a problem of Payza and similar... I don`t know, but the whole scheme, like if you want to earn more you have to pay, the referrals system building lower levels of the network... they are everywhere on the internet and even those that write a blog with "review" are just promoting their own link to get more people involved and bring them easy money.
    As one person had pointed out: once you are the receiver, you should not buy more threads. They should be free and the reward being based on the capacity of the computer that had contributed to the mutual project. The more work done on that machine, the higher reward. Rublik is doing such thing. I have tried that one as well but my old machine is not able to meet the profitable demands. I uninstalled it yesterday, restarted the laptop several times but for some reason the Rublik keeps launching itself every single time I turn the laptop on. And the Microsoft security has found no threat. I don`t understand this.

  14. #13
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    Re: Folding@home

    Quote Originally Posted by NikSam View Post
    Most of those projects have very limited funding with constant threat of loosing it completely.
    Buying supercomputers, maintenance , staff cost pretty much.
    Thanks, I was wondering if that was still the case. Ed Thorpe who did some of that in developing his system for Card Counting that ultimately made the casinos change their rules for blackjack. But that was the 1960s when computers were like a small house.

    Quote Originally Posted by NikSam View Post
    Hedge funds have to do it all the time and there are money involved, but they would never go to outside help from public.
    Same guy Ed Thorpe did the same with one of the first hedge funds, this was pre Black Scholes pricing models for options. He has a book "Beat the Market" which comes up for sale on Ebay from time to time, usually at a premium price. I find stuff like this pretty interesting, although computers have come such a long way since then a lot of this stuff is very outdated and harder to exploit.
    Last edited by ribshaw; 08-10-2013 at 03:02 PM.
    "It's virtually impossible to violate rules ... but it's impossible for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time." Bernie Madoff
    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scam-...98399986981403

  15. #14
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    Re: Folding@home

    Quote Originally Posted by Seeking View Post
    Perhaps I should inform my bank that I have used my SWIFT and IBAN for risky purposes?
    I am the wrong guy to ask about the computer side of things, and this may not "peer to peer" in the exact sense but if the FBI takes time to warn folks, I consider that to be worth listening. FBI — Peer-to-Peer Scams But judging by the responses on the other thread, some people could care less about the risk side of the equation and only want the $30 a month.

    P2P.jpg
    "It's virtually impossible to violate rules ... but it's impossible for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time." Bernie Madoff
    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scam-...98399986981403

  16. #15
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    Re: Folding@home

    Ribshaw, it is not just $30 a month. Many "earn" that each day, or even more. But they must have invested in that first, perhaps contributing to the pool of money from which the others get paid. I am not too good at maths to calculate the odds that how long would such scheme last if this and this amount of people have bought this and this amount of threads, etc. One thing is for sure: there are people who get paid and others swear on their chat like one yesterday: "On Friday of which year will I get paid?" They banned me from that chat for saying that this is a fraud and Ponzi scheme. Nobody argued with me, they just cut me off.
    Even the slogan on the Thread manager that humanity will be thankful for my contribution sounds like an irony, especially when they promise to use only 10% of my CPU but it used to run even on 100% or above half most of the time when set on the minimum of 10% manually.

  17. #16
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    Re: Folding@home

    Quote Originally Posted by littleroundman View Post
    You'd have to ask cloudchecker WRT his mention of points from folding@home.

    AFAIK, participation in the folding@home project is purely voluntary.
    Not if it's in regard to your laundry.

  18. #17
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    Re: Folding@home

    Quote Originally Posted by Whip View Post
    Not if it's in regard to your laundry.
    Couldn't resist, could you ??
    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

  19. #18
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    Re: Folding@home

    no.

  20. #19
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    Re: Folding@home

    So it turns out I had been a prophet on this one. Research curecoin and find out how you can earn some dough in this program. Rewards are higher for actual folders than for miners.

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