Ever wonder what happened to the big dogs in the tall grass?

I was drawn into folding because it was a self-worth thing that made me feel good.

I started with simple hardware and moved into GPU processing which made for an entertaining ramp in points. CPU ppd went to minimal and GPU got more and more finicky (hardware not absolved). Then I got rocked with some billing problems for the electric and I had to ask myself if the devotion to help was worth the time and money.

I slacked off for a few months and have just recently ramped back up. However the effort is certainly not as intense as it first was when the friendly competition of mowing each other was fun. Now it seems dull and boring.

I don't wish to ignore those who benefit from my folding, but some trinket of value would go miles towards re-stoking my desire to continue folding. I attribute a small portion of lost interest to the negative image(s) projected by Panda, and others bad mouthing each other. Coupled with some hardware difficulties, I'm out of motivation to put forth an effort save hoping someone, somewhere will benefit by my effort to help.
 
ND40oz said:
Nah, if you have half a dozen quads folding and the same amount of video cards you can hit $400 a month even in states with cheaper electricity.
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*shudder* I need to retire with something in my savings :\
 
mavalpha said:
I was never a major player, but I did break a million before the GPU clients really contributed- I did most of my work in the SMP days.

I stopped when my 81-year old grandfather died of liver cancer- no, not alcohol-related. I reassessed my feelings towards healthcare, and came to the conclusion that:
a) cancer is an all-encompassing description.
b) as life expectancy goes up, new ailments are naturally going to appear. Our cellular make-up was designed to keep us going for 20-30 years, and we are focusing too much on improving lifespan without improving quality of life at the end.
3) humanitarianism and the urge to help strangers- even lost causes- has allowed us to put 7 billion people on earth. Monitor global trends. 1B around 1800. 2B around 1940. 6B around 2000. Medical "advances" need to be kept in check, and they haven't been.

Long story short, I no longer consider myself a humanitarian. I'm okay with letting people die, including myself and people I know. Most of my friends/family are logical enough to understand and not take it personally, and many even agree.

Sorry to be a downer, but hope this gives you a different vantage point.
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interesting perspective. being only 28 i sometimes share this objective view point on things like faith, but i have to say, it just seems to lack the basic qualities that make people inherently good.

i understand the frustration of not improving the quality of life at the end, but i've seen many happy, functioning people well into their seventies, which would be ideal for all people. without scientific pursuit, those things would not be possible today.

i understand the idea of over-population, but is that really due to scientific advancement? some maybe. aren't the highest populations in places like africa and china? does that evidence point towards science or the simple fact that humans grow like any other living thing? aren't those areas the most affected by life threatening illness and the least effectively treated?

if you start to play the what if game.... what if nuclear war strikes someday? what if an apocalyptic virus takes out the majority of mankind? what if a comet strikes the earth?

people are inherently good. helping people is a good thing. the feeling one gets from helping/aiding others is usually one that can give someone a sense of meaning to their life. i would encourage re-evaluating a business or accounting style perception on life.

as always, all in fun and freindly conversation.
 
oraldlight said:
However the effort is certainly not as intense as it first was when the friendly competition of mowing each other was fun. Now it seems dull and boring.
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I know that feeling very well myself. I have access to more hardware that I could dedicate to folding but just don't have the motivation lately to make the time to get it up and running. A little competition would probably help. I fold mostly for the fun of the competitive side of it so without some competition its hard for me to stay motivated. Its nice knowing the effort also contributes toward some good.

Just finally got around to building another 3xGTX275 box tonight that I have had the parts sitting around for over a month, still gotta get around to loading the OS though. I got a core i7 box with at GTX275 that I built about a month ago but haven't even powered it up to load an OS since I finished the build. SOMEBODY MOTIVATE ME! :D

 
The highest populations are in India and China, which house 30% of the world between them. China (#1) has already acknowledged the problem by passing One-Child laws.

And I have a what-if question of my own: what if people aren't inherently good, and just cling to the mantra to give themselves a reason to get out of bed every morning? (Without bringing religion into it, what makes us unique as being the only life-form with a sense of self-worth and morality?)
Studies have shown that Warcraft maintains its addictive traits because it gives people a sense of accomplishment that they lack in the real world. In other words, a significant percentage of its addicts go through their jobs and relationships feeling unfulfilled and unappreciated. Maybe doing something nice to get a random "thank you" is just another fix.
 
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Maybe doing something nice to get a random "thank you" is just another fix.
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That right there is kind of proof that humans are inherently good. If external validation is required for most people to feel good about themselves, then people have the social tendencies to work together and motivate eachother for the common good. I was brought up with alot of cynicism and it's one of the things I try to change about myself.
 
Lets keep this about the OP, some of this is treading close to soapbox territory.

lassiterb, I think you will be getting some competition come cooler weather.

The otherthing we can look at the trying to get a good group of us to take back the #1 ppd team.
 
I did a stint of Moderating here, but couldnt give the time needed. I went on to get a floor of 70 users of C2D machines I cannot borg, I bought a house, I got embezzled for about $50K, I'm trying to get a divorce... real life.

-I saw maybe 2 OG folders in this thread.
-We get tired.
-We throw thousands towards hardware, only for Moore's law to kick our wallet around some more. We get tired of constantly being on the look out for borg potential and trying to buy/sell for the next faster piece. Not to mention what I've spent on power in the last 8 years. I did a few years of $300 plus electric bills a month.

It just gets to be a very loooooooooooooooong road.
 
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As with most things in life you do more as a NEW big dog,then you age and others take over. Like the old west, someone is always faster on the draw than you, lol. Now that I have read this thread it seems like a good time to pack my gun in for a bit and get some relief from the baby siting of the little farm and the pressure of mowing from the new generation. Thanks for the ride.

 
Just wondering, how long do you have be around to be considered an old timer around here?
I've been folding for about a year now and still consider myself a newb.
 
I'm trying to get my production sorted out and back up to my normal low levels.
 
lassiterb said:
Just wondering, how long do you have be around to be considered an old timer around here?
I've been folding for about a year now and still consider myself a newb.
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I've been at it for around 9 years now. I didn't directly claim the title of old fogey as I was probably just absorbed into the ranks over time. It's not so much something which is claimed or bestowed as it is something that just slowly happens over time.

As it is, there are plenty who have been around longer than me.
 
I just started folding again, after a 15 month hiatus. I had to quit due to house problems, electric bills, and money. I am trying to catch up on the changes, such as SMP and GPU clients and such. I'm also attempting to move my systems into my closet and vent the exhaust into the attic to reduce my AC requirements. If I can get it done, when my electric bill goes down this winter, I will possibly be running on 15 cores, should help me make up for lost time. Right now, though, I often have to shut my systems down when not in use. So, my lack of participation can be attributed mainly to money and climate.
 
Time for me to chime for my own reasons...

It was mostly real life things which got me to reduce the pace drastically (I had a new girlfriend living with me since a few months) which made me shift priorities around. I also decided to redirect resources toward WCG helping a new team (I'm a moderator on their forum).

I had reached 20 millions points and this is the milestone I'm aiming for so anything beyond this is a bit meaningless for me. WCG is a new challenge for me :)

I'm still around on the forums, albeit a bit less active. I will try to help around within my capacities since I still care for the [H]orde despite some lackluster behaviour lately from a few members.

 
I was never a big dog, but I look at my time with WCG as being more productive than my time with FAH. Here are the projects I'm supporting right now with WCG:

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy
Influenza Antiviral Drug Search
Help Fight Childhood Cancer
The Clean Energy Project
Nutritious Rice for the World
Help Conquer Cancer
Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together
Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2
FightAIDS@Home

I prefer diversity.
 
Agreed with aldamon. I started folding almost 7 years ago, and put a lot of energy into it for a few years. Recently I found myself with a lot of spare CPU cycles and decided to put them to work, but I've found that I don't really believe in FAH anymore. They haven't really produced any "real" results that have made a difference (unless I've missed something). So now I have 8 cores running on WCG doing all of those projects aldamon listed. I made this choice not only because I didn't want to put all of my eggs in one basket, but because the SMP client for FAH is terrible to setup and the GPU client makes my room loud.
 
I put a lot of time and interest into things, but the damn client issues killed it for me. when the multi cpu client started requiring me to walk on water for the damn thing to work, i gave up. whatever kept folding I would leave running - however, when I started to look at the overall progress, it wasn't worth it to keep up with all the machines. I received over 80 new multi-core machines in the past two months, but didn't bother borging them. A big issue that finalized things was impact. At night, my machines were to be shut down. If stanford ever gets things worked out, i'll gladly jump back into it. Even my damn gpu clients stopped working, and those were always rock solid producers for me.
 
Huh... haven't checked in this forum for awhile...:)

I used to put down some decent points, but I had a school b0rg. I was mowing some bitches down back then. Last I checked stats I was sitting pretty in the 20's and still climbing, these days I'm at... drum roll please... 123 at the time of this post. Yall are slowing down, I should be getting passed like I'm sitting still, which I am!

All in all, my b0rg lasted far longer than I ever imagined it would. After highschool I ran away to the Army and they remained intact for my first couple years of service, without me or anyone else checking up on them. I'm glad they lasted that long, but I've done what I can. These days I don't do too much with computers, and folding completely slipped my mind. I've still got a couple rogue ones still churning out some units, but I'm not in the folding game anymore.
 
I've been doing the F@H for a little while now ..and got my first couple million on the cpu client alone .. I like to be competitive at whatever I do and I just cant compete against electric bills, meager income, and family time .. and the other motivater, the [C]ause .. have we found any cures for anything thru running the F@H client? .. have we come up with any kind of new treatments for existing sicknesses thru running the F@H client yet? ..are we really any closer to either of those two end results (if they haven't happend already) then we were before F@H's conception?

at 3million I told myself , "hmm , just one more million and I'm done" ..said the same at 4 million, but yet here I find myself looking at 6million and saying the same thing ..

Darn You Folding at Home point system!!

 
I think part of the issue mainly is the constant change in point systems, as well as the clients.

For me as well, I really want to see some results. They no longer let you see what WU's you're completing each day, so you don't know what causes you're helping.

Also, like others have mentioned, F@H hasn't released any new science or papers or anything mind boggling in a while, and I'm wondering how long we have to plug away at this before anything is accomplished. If it's a 10+ year period of time before anything meaningful is gained, then they should let us know that up front.

Anyway, I do miss the friendly competitions around here, it's also sad to see how we used to be the top dog, and now there are teams that are within 2 years of overtaking us, and the top 20 is no longer mainly the [H]orde.

Just my two cents. I still am contributing just because I hope one day some of the $ and time I've put into this project will yield useful results for someone else.
 
58. Simulating oligomerization at experimental concentrations and long timescales: A Markov state model approach

Nicholas W. Kelley, V. Vishal, Grant A. Krafft, and Vijay S. Pande

J. Chem. Phys. 129, 214707 (2008); DOI:10.1063/1.3010881

SUMMARY. Abeta misfolding and aggregation is believed to be the cause of Alzheimer's Disease. Simulations, like Folding@home, are a natural way to understand this process. However, there are several key challenges for simulating the key step -- oligomerization. This work represents a new way to simulate Abeta oligomerization, with a key advance of being able to simulate experimentally relevant timescales and concentrations, using a novel method. We use this new method and the power provided by Folding@home donors to simulate oligomerization in all-atom detail. This has lead to specific predictions about the process, which we are now testing experimentally. In many ways, this paper is the "tip of the iceberg" for the Folding@home activities in AD, with a lot more interesting results to come, especially in terms of experimental tests of our predictions and interesting new possibilities for new drugs and AD therapeutics.

This work ran exclusively on classic clients. For the follow up simulations, we are using a mixture of GPU, SMP, and classic clients. Due to the large number of classic clients, they allow us to calculations not possible on the other platforms. However, the raw speed (but smaller number) of the GPU and SMP clients allow us to get a good rough idea quickly, refining later with classic clients.
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This was recent. And a good reason to run classic clients if all you care about is the science.
 
BLUEFISH44 said:
I personally did not have time to babysit the finicky F@H clients so I changed over to the WCG project. The remaining F@H clients I still have going fold for another team becouse of the C.C. B.S.
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I saw that. And thanks for that buddy we appreciate it up North ;)

I see your point. It seems every week there is something going wrong with my own build for our team too. At times I was ready to crack, myself.
 
I got to thinking about this again as I will mow down some "old" big dogs.
 
There are tons of resons people leave. i was gone for 4 years. been back sense nov 2009. my farm got old. electric bill was burning up a whole paycheck. kids getting older needing money for dates,cars and mostly PG making my farm usless with there points system.
 
Xilikon said:
Time for me to chime for my own reasons...

It was mostly real life things which got me to reduce the pace drastically (I had a new girlfriend living with me since a few months) which made me shift priorities around. I also decided to redirect resources toward WCG helping a new team (I'm a moderator on their forum).

I had reached 20 millions points and this is the milestone I'm aiming for so anything beyond this is a bit meaningless for me. WCG is a new challenge for me :)

I'm still around on the forums, albeit a bit less active. I will try to help around within my capacities since I still care for the [H]orde despite some lackluster behaviour lately from a few members.

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It's now over one year since the last time I made that post and let me outline some things :

-Since that post, I went to put my condo for sale last fall and finally got sold in may 2010 (part of this will prevent me from having a big farm running due to the home staging).
-Went to live at some friends between end of may 2010 till september 2010 while my new house is being build. My farm is in a warehouse.
-Moved to the new house since september 2010 but the networking and server room isn't fully done yet.

This along with the fact that I'm now settled in life after a big period of changes gave me the urge to fold back :) I also did my part with the WCG team and I'll still run WCG on a computer while folding for team 33.


 
yay. it would be nice to have legendary xilikon back
 
Xilikon said:
-Since that post, I went to put my condo for sale last fall and finally got sold in may 2010 (part of this will prevent me from having a big farm running due to the home staging).

-Went to live at some friends between end of may 2010 till september 2010 while my new house is being build. My farm is in a warehouse.
-Moved to the new house since september 2010 but the networking and server room isn't fully done yet.
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Do you still have most of your farm intact? For some reason I was under the impression you had sold much of it.
 
Well, I sold the excess parts for sure but the core of it is still intact. Here's what I have from my memory :

-Main computer : i7 920 / EVGA X58 SLI LE / 6GB RAM / GTX 260 core 216 (never folded on it nfortunately, upgrade from a Q6600/Maximus Formula which went bonkers last fall). This will bring me a big boost with the BigWU that I need.
-HTPC : E5200 / Asus P5EVM HDMI still intact with 2 GB of RAM but without video card (I don't plan to run any GPU client on it since it cause issues with video playback).
-WHS : E1200 on a old Foxconn motherboard, zero overclockability.
-GF PC : E6300 with a Biostar motherboard and 8800GS.
-Son's PC : Old AMD Sempron computer.
-My laptop : Dell with a T7200 CPU and 2GB of RAM.
-GF's laptop : HP with a T7200 CPU and 2GB of RAM as well.

I might do some shuffling to optimise the resources (I might give the old E1200 and Foxconn or AMD Sempron to my son and try to find a way to get a good C2D kit).
 
Just wanted to pop-in and say, Marty Sucks!

...and you'll have some points coming your way to fend off those gigolos at EVGA.
 
Normal Marty sucks, it's a whore (or a gigolo) ;)
 
Ever eat so much cookie dough your tummy hurts? Happens to me all the time with that Pillsbury cookie dough in a tube, the white tube not the Tollhouse crap in the yellow tube.
 
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Is this like one of those VH1 "Behind the Music" reunion shows? Who's going to be the first to cry?
 
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