Be a Superhero with TeamCFC. Help us perform miracles.

[El_Machinae]

Ball Lightning! Howdy!

Jonny: I bet in a couple days, you'll be able to see your first WU on the status screen.

Sahk: that was a good write-up!

 

[Lambert Simnel]

My point though is to be sure not to cut down on the legitimate use of resources in the process. In this case letting opportunity pass by (unused computer) in an effort at small conservation (energy savings) at the expense of a much greater loss (human life).

Hmm. Well, given that I view the proliferation of domestic air conditioning as a major problem, then I doubt if we're going to agree on the use vs waste debate.

I have had relatives die painfully, and have a family member suffering with Alzheimers at the moment. Whether I have or haven't had such an experience, however, doesn't change the validity (or lack thereof) of my view.

I don't dispute the intention behind the research. But I don't have the same perception as you do of the equation - I think you see the individual's potential contribution to conservation as negligible (as it probably is), but balance that against the consolidated effort of all folders (which you see as significant). I think you need to compare the individual contributions in each case (both sides being negligible), or the consolidated contributions in each case (which I see as significant in the conservation side, but am not convinced on the F@H side).

 

[Lambert Simnel]

I'm not sure I follow.. the enthusiasm surrounding this thread is an attempt to drum up more participants. The reason for that is obviously that we think it's a viable research project, and as such the available data is increased in direct relation to the amount of processing power.

OK. Maybe it's a perception thing. But the thread comes across to me, at times, as a hearty exercise in backslapping. Look, I support Oxfam, and make a regular monthly donation to them - I don't, however, run around shouting "I'm a superhero! I'm ending famine!" (Maybe I should do that, to encourage more people to donate ? )

Anyhow, that's just how it reads to me, and I'm only mentioning it to explain the comment which you didn't follow. I wouldn't suggest you or anyone else should change how you post.

 

[ironduck]

OK. Maybe it's a perception thing. But the thread comes across to me, at times, as a hearty exercise in backslapping. Look, I support Oxfam, and make a regular monthly donation to them - I don't, however, run around shouting "I'm a superhero! I'm ending famine!" (Maybe I should do that, to encourage more people to donate ? )

I understand that, and agree it's a subtle line to tread. But in my opinion the real issue is whether this thread should be here or not. We could make a million threads with good things to support. This thread is really an exception to the spam rule that gets a pass because it is generally viewed as a positive by members of the forum, or at least not maligned (because it's easy to ignore).

Now, given that we accept the thread because there's a community building element to it, how do we go about with the thread itself? Definitely not by playing on any guilt crap which a lot of well-meaning organizations tend to do. That's very counter productive in my opinion. Neutral, then? That would make the thread die very quickly. Fun and positive? That's what we have. What you consider back-slapping I just consider enthusiasm for supporting what we consider a viable project.

The beauty of distributed computing is that the clients really have to do very little. I don't run my computer when I'm not using it. I don't notice I have the F@H client running. The little extra electricity it uses is no more relative to the power/performance percentage I am contributing compared to an ordinary supercomputer. Since I support both government and private funding of science projects such as this one in my view it makes no difference whether it's done as a distributed project or as a regular one.

 

[El_Machinae]

Wait? We're helping research?

I thought I was just watching pretty pictures of connected bubbles!

 

[IglooDame]

Wait? We're helping research?

I thought I was just watching pretty pictures of connected bubbles!

Well then I'm really embarassed, I have them in service mode and was wondering where the bubbles were...

 

[BCLG100]

theres bubbles??? all i get is some crappy red thing in the corner of my screen!

 

[Mulholland]

OK. Maybe it's a perception thing. But the thread comes across to me, at times, as a hearty exercise in backslapping. Look, I support Oxfam, and make a regular monthly donation to them - I don't, however, run around shouting "I'm a superhero! I'm ending famine!" (Maybe I should do that, to encourage more people to donate ? )

Anyhow, that's just how it reads to me, and I'm only mentioning it to explain the comment which you didn't follow. I wouldn't suggest you or anyone else should change how you post.

Seeing that we're all going by our pseudonym's we aren't really asking for recognition or superhero status. You seem to be a little smug however, when you throw around your Oxfam donation as ammunition.

 

[IglooDame]

Seeing that we're all going by our pseudonym's we aren't really asking for recognition or superhero status. You seem to be a little smug however, when you throw around your Oxfam donation as ammunition.

Speak for yourself, I actually wear a cape with an SF (for SuperFolder, not SanFrancisco) on it.

Ignoring the fact that I don't actually own the boxes or pay for the electricity anyway...

 

[El_Machinae]

Seeing that we're all going by our pseudonym's we aren't really asking for recognition or superhero status. You seem to be a little smug however, when you throw around your Oxfam donation as ammunition.

Oh, it was an example. I'm sure others contribute to charities, too. And often you're not looking for status.

I'd bet that Oxfam gets a better 'real-time' bang-for-the-buck, too. Food in people's bellies is a good thing!

I figure that keeping people alive is a good thing; and that each source of death should be battled.

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Oh, it was an example. I'm sure others contribute to charities, too. And often you're not looking for status.

Thanks for that. It wasn't meant as "ammunition" (slightly curious choice of words) or looking for pats on the back. I was just trying to explain my previous comment to ironduck and it seemed a reasonable way of explaining what I was getting at.

 

[Lambert Simnel]

What you consider back-slapping I just consider enthusiasm for supporting what we consider a viable project.

Understood.

 

[BCLG100]

well i consider it back slapping, i only do this to feel better about myself

 

[El_Machinae]

Thanks for that. It wasn't meant as "ammunition" (slightly curious choice of words) or looking for pats on the back. I was just trying to explain my previous comment to ironduck and it seemed a reasonable way of explaining what I was getting at.

My pleasure! I endeavour to see the intention of words used; mainly because I'm bothered when people do the opposite to me. Conversations happen a lot more easily when you try to figure out what people mean, instead of focusing on what they say.

 

[ironduck]

Lambert, I'm interested in what kind of scientific projects you support. What scrutiny do they need to go through in order to be allowed computing time?

 

[Sahkuhnder]

Hmm. Well, given that I view the proliferation of domestic air conditioning as a major problem, then I doubt if we're going to agree on the use vs waste debate.

This one's easy. Even environmentalists have A/C in a climate like Vegas where it can go for weeks with the temperature well over 100 degrees. I don't think they build homes anymore that don't have it. When it's that hot you can't breath, eat, or even think straight. A/C is what makes this part of the world habitable.

On donating electricity - well, I have no problem with anyone choosing to give their time or money to any charitable cause of their choice. However, at the same time there are several campaigns (in the UK at least) trying to encourage people to be more energy efficient on the basis that a big difference can come from many people making a small saving in their energy use - also, a number of large corporates are trying to get staff to turn off PCs, monitors etc at night, and printers over the weekend, allegedly as part of a green agenda, (though probably more as a cost saving).

Bold by me.

My point though is to be sure not to cut down on the legitimate use of resources in the process. In this case letting opportunity pass by (unused computer) in an effort at small conservation (energy savings) at the expense of a much greater loss (human life).

I don't dispute the intention behind the research. But I don't have the same perception as you do of the equation - I think you see the individual's potential contribution to conservation as negligible (as it probably is), but balance that against the consolidated effort of all folders (which you see as significant). I think you need to compare the individual contributions in each case (both sides being negligible), or the consolidated contributions in each case (which I see as significant in the conservation side, but am not convinced on the F@H side).

You made a excellent point about many small actions being able to have a large impact (you can see where this is headed). Let's macro-size my statement and then crunch the numbers and see what we can learn.

Right now F@H has just under 200k 'active' CPUs that have submitted results within one week. Would a cure for cancer, et.al. be worth the sustained output of what would be a very tiny power plant (100 watts x 200k = 20 MW output)? I would answer 'yes' without hesitation. And remember, the cost to run that power plant is fully paid for by individual users through slightly higher electric bills.

Does our little CFC team contribution really make any difference? You may be surprised.

For the sake of an answer let's say it takes 15 years of F@H for a cure for cancer alone (I know this is a big assumption, but we have to start somewhere). Right now our team has contributed .02%, or .0002 of the total work. If the project takes 15 years (5475 days x .0002) our contribution will make the cure come one day earlier. Big deal right? Cancer causes 7 million deaths per year, or 19,100 deaths per day. If the work is completed even one day earlier because of our (hopefully sustained) efforts our motley little band could be responsible for saving thousands of lives.

We laugh and joke, which is great, but in the end this is actually serious business. The mutual "hearty exercise in backslapping" is just for morale and to make what is essentially a tedious process more fun to participate in. If you want to see true, totally undeserved, backslapping watch any group of sports fans celebrate 'their' team's victory sometime.

You're welcome to join and we of course would be glad to have you. Maybe you could fold on your computer only at night during the electric grid's non-peak hours. In the end you must do what you personally feel is best and I respect that as well.

--------

Speak for yourself, I actually wear a cape with an SF (for SuperFolder, not SanFrancisco) on it.

Hmmmm....????

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Sahk. Fair point on Vegas. A/c is used in many other places where & when it really isn't needed, but I can't argue with summer in Vegas!

Would a cure for cancer be worth what you indicate as the possible price ? Well, of course it would. Frankly, if it was as cheap as that, I'm sure the drug companies would be falling over themselves to buy a supercomputer or two, bang some numbers in, and become incredibly wealthy on the proceeds.

Your assumptions include not only that it will take 15 years of F@H to find a cure for cancer, but that F@H will actually find a cure for cancer. As above, why don't the drug companies or the government (whether US or some other more socialistically minded one) buy a couple of Crays (or whatever we use nowadays) and get it done ? Probably because they don't make the same assumptions about the project that you do.

As a last thought, if/when a cure for cancer is found (by this or any other approach), I rather suspect it won't be made available to all (for economic reasons). Think of the number of other diseases which are easily treatable in the West which are a death sentence in Africa. Doesn't make any difference to whether finding a cure is a good thing, but is another aspect of (what appears to me) to be a rather rose-tinted view of this programme.

Anyhow, carry on - I was just interested in how people stacked this work up with other imperatives. I think I can see where you're coming from, and though I honestly don't share your assumptions and thus your conclusions, I'm not looking to convert anyone here, just to understand.

 

[ironduck]

No reply to me?

 

[Sahkuhnder]

Would a cure for cancer be worth what you indicate as the possible price ? Well, of course it would. Frankly, if it was as cheap as that, I'm sure the drug companies would be falling over themselves to buy a supercomputer or two, bang some numbers in, and become incredibly wealthy on the proceeds.

Your assumptions include not only that it will take 15 years of F@H to find a cure for cancer, but that F@H will actually find a cure for cancer. As above, why don't the drug companies or the government (whether US or some other more socialistically minded one) buy a couple of Crays (or whatever we use nowadays) and get it done ? Probably because they don't make the same assumptions about the project that you do.

You're on a roll with some very good questions. I wondered this about the supercomputer too. I mean who owns the supercomputers that exist? Isn't it research facilities like big drug companies and large Universities (like Stanford)? Why do they need (or even want) my pathetic little PC? Couldn't a big budget shop like Stanford afford a really nice supercomputer?

Why not just use a supercomputer? Modern supercomputers are essentially clusters of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. The speed of these processors is comparable to (and often slower than) those found in PCs! Thus, if an algorithm (like ours) does not need the fast networking, it will run just as fast on a supercluster as a supercomputer. However, our application needs not the hundreds of processors found in modern supercomputers, but hundreds of thousands of processors. Hence, the calculations performed on Folding@Home would not be possible by any other means! Moreover, even if we were given exclusive access to all of the supercomputers in the world, we would still have fewer cycles than we do with the Folding@Home cluster! This is possible since PC processors are now very fast and there are hundreds of millions of PCs sitting idle in the world.

Link.

And yes I do take it completely on faith that this will even help anything at all. I briefly touched on that when I mentioned "finding an expert...and then delegating to them the task at hand" in an earlier post. I know nothing about how best to cure cancer, so all I can do is to trust those who do. Expert researchers at an institution I trust have asked for help with their work and so I trust that my contribution will actually be of value. I suspect you have a similar trust that your monthly donation to Oxfam actually helps those in need. We can choose with whom we place our trust, but from then on we often have to blindly trust them to proceed beyond that point without us knowing or understanding all the details.

As a last thought, if/when a cure for cancer is found (by this or any other approach), I rather suspect it won't be made available to all (for economic reasons). Think of the number of other diseases which are easily treatable in the West which are a death sentence in Africa. Doesn't make any difference to whether finding a cure is a good thing, but is another aspect of (what appears to me) to be a rather rose-tinted view of this programme.

Another excellent point, but an entirely different issue. Distribution of resources to those unable to pay for them will I suspect always be a major problem. When a cure is found, who do you think is more likely to make it available to people in lower income groups, a University or a for-profit major drug company? I'm not saying the world is perfect or even fair, but it seems to me that Stanford would be more inclined to share the fruits of their labor more widely than Merck or Pfizer would.

I believe that getting medication to as many people as possible is a worthy goal, but economic reality frequently disrupts that process. Even if the cancer cure initially only goes to those capable of paying for it I still see those lives that are saved as being a net gain to society overall. In other words even if we don't choose to help everyone in the undeveloped world it doesn't mean that helping those in the developed part still wouldn't a good thing. We can't help anyone anywhere until we first have a cure so by necessity that must be our current area of focus.


Perhaps this is all rose-tinted, but hey, I'm an optimist.

 

[ironduck]

The F@H project releases analyses and results regularly. F@H is about understanding protein folding which in turn can be used to develop treatments for diseases. Understanding protein folding is very valuable, and as long as they're releasing their results (as they are now) the point of 'what is made available' is moot. The F@H team is not curing diseases, rather they are expanding knowledge that can be used to cure diseases.

Fundamental research of this kind is essential to develop treatments in the future.