...okay I'm not REALLY curing cancer but I'm HELPING by running this program called Folding@Home. It runs protein folding simulations on your computer and sends the data it gets back to Stanford where the program is from. Apparently folding proteins is the key to learning how cancer and other disease seem to form/how to cure them. So I guess the simulation runs every possible way proteins can fold to figure out which ways cause diseases. I'm not 100% HOW it works but I'm no doctor. Oh and you get points for every work unit you complete. It depends on the size though, sometimes they're 20 and sometimes they're 5000. The 20 ones take like 2 hours or so and the 5000 ones take a couple days. There's probably different sizes but I haven't run into any yet.
There's more info here: http://folding.stanford.edu/
The reason I'm posting this is if I get enough people to help, I'm going to make a team and all of the points go into the team (in addition to the personal stats.)
Here's my stat page.. http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=Kiento
Okay so if you do decide to get it because you realize how neat it is, there's some things to consider. If you have a really bad computer (or just a crappy processor) I wouldn't recommend running it unless you just run it while you sleep or something. Since the program pretty much takes over part (or all? I can't tell cuz I have two). I receive no lag from it and I usually have it running all the time, but I have two processors so once again... I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure you can just set it to run only when you're idle though so lag isn't much of a problem unless you run it all the time like I do. Also, it WILL run your processor kinda hot. Mine at idle is 40C and it's between 49 and 50C when I run the program. Apparently my processor fan sucks though so yours will probably run cooler. It's not hot enough to be worried about it, but I do monitor it. I also let it take a day off every once in a while. Oh and this program relies on mostly your processor and NOT your internet connection. The only thing it really downloads is the core file from which it works from which are usually only about 600KB which isn't much at all.
I dunno why, I'm just fascinated by this program, it's so cool to be able to help like this. I'm not exactly sure how much of an impact I'm having on the process, but I like to think it's enough to feel good about, lol.
There's more info here: http://folding.stanford.edu/
The reason I'm posting this is if I get enough people to help, I'm going to make a team and all of the points go into the team (in addition to the personal stats.)
Here's my stat page.. http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=Kiento
Okay so if you do decide to get it because you realize how neat it is, there's some things to consider. If you have a really bad computer (or just a crappy processor) I wouldn't recommend running it unless you just run it while you sleep or something. Since the program pretty much takes over part (or all? I can't tell cuz I have two). I receive no lag from it and I usually have it running all the time, but I have two processors so once again... I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure you can just set it to run only when you're idle though so lag isn't much of a problem unless you run it all the time like I do. Also, it WILL run your processor kinda hot. Mine at idle is 40C and it's between 49 and 50C when I run the program. Apparently my processor fan sucks though so yours will probably run cooler. It's not hot enough to be worried about it, but I do monitor it. I also let it take a day off every once in a while. Oh and this program relies on mostly your processor and NOT your internet connection. The only thing it really downloads is the core file from which it works from which are usually only about 600KB which isn't much at all.
I dunno why, I'm just fascinated by this program, it's so cool to be able to help like this. I'm not exactly sure how much of an impact I'm having on the process, but I like to think it's enough to feel good about, lol.
