Just wondering if anyone has had luck convincing other people or companies to use the spare processing power of their PC's for folding? How did you do it? I've told a few relatives what a great cause it is and they just don't seem to be interested. I've also sent an email to a few PR departments at companies like Google (who I thought would be interested in folding on a certain portion of their PC's, just because that have a reputation for being a "forward-looking" company and for the good publicity it would give them) and nada...no response. This is really discouraging. The cost of running the uniprocessor client is minimal, and I think it should become something that is "cool" for companies and universities to do. It should be one of those essential programs like Firefox that millions of PC users immediately install when they get a new machine. The awareness/enthusiasm just doesn't seem to be out there, despite the fact that so many people are directly effected by cancer and other diseases that F@H is trying to eliminate. Do you have any ideas on how we can "spread the good news" and get more people + companies involved?
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Have you ever been a folding "evangelist"?
- Thread starter bdwilson
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altron1983
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u must not pay attention to the teams? google has there own team already
the electricity cost difference between letting a large server farm sit idle and having the whole farm pegged at 100% is quite substantial. when one of my servers are chugging along at 5-20% utilization, they eat about 130 watts. when that goes up to 100% utilization, the power consumption quadrouples. in orther words- when they are just serving webpages, i can run them for one month for the same cost as using them to fold for one week.
multiply that by a few thousand computers and you can see how quickly the cost goes up.
some people like us will gladly eat this cost. it would be a tough sell to convince a publicly owned, or non-profit, company or university to, though.
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Zarathustra[H]
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I used to Fold/SETI when I was in college, but since I have thought better of it.
Considering folding uses A LOT of electricity and substantially increases your electric bill, as well as the fact that most of our US electricity is derived from filthy coal that spews cancer causing chemicals and heavy metals into the atmosphere, I question if the project actually does more harm than good.
Don't believe the coal industry's propaganda. There is no such thing as "clean coal".
It would be interesting to calculate how many overall kilowatt hours have been used by the folding at home project and what approximate level of coal use that has resulted in, predicting how many cases of cancer ad other diseases have been created out of it, and then compare this to how many people the project will actually save.
It's pretty ironic actually, to consider that a project aimed at curing many cancers is also causing many of them.
And this doesn't even take into consideration the concept of "global warming".
My computer's idle CPU/GPU cycles will not be used for anything. As opposed to leaving my rig on 24/7 like I used to I now also shut it off completely when I am done. It's probably only on 8 hours a week.
If you view power use as spewing out lethal chemicals into the air, you get a brand new perspective on only using the power you absolutely need.
Considering folding uses A LOT of electricity and substantially increases your electric bill, as well as the fact that most of our US electricity is derived from filthy coal that spews cancer causing chemicals and heavy metals into the atmosphere, I question if the project actually does more harm than good.
Don't believe the coal industry's propaganda. There is no such thing as "clean coal".
It would be interesting to calculate how many overall kilowatt hours have been used by the folding at home project and what approximate level of coal use that has resulted in, predicting how many cases of cancer ad other diseases have been created out of it, and then compare this to how many people the project will actually save.
It's pretty ironic actually, to consider that a project aimed at curing many cancers is also causing many of them.
And this doesn't even take into consideration the concept of "global warming".
My computer's idle CPU/GPU cycles will not be used for anything. As opposed to leaving my rig on 24/7 like I used to I now also shut it off completely when I am done. It's probably only on 8 hours a week.
If you view power use as spewing out lethal chemicals into the air, you get a brand new perspective on only using the power you absolutely need.
My university already runs distributed computing on all computers that are run by the IT department (i.e. not the ones run by the College of Engineering). Obviously, it's an in house deal.
sbinh
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I've been trying to recruit people .. and successfully got few potential folders.
From my experience, only those who "open minded" and "open heart" would join with no question asked... Most others would "think" ... "will i get any benefit from it? ", " will i get any $$ for running it?", " it is NOT safe to run f@h.. i'm affraid of my personal info...", etc...
Would i give up ? probably i gave up long ago .. but once i see i can have a chance to recruit some one, i'll do it.
From my experience, only those who "open minded" and "open heart" would join with no question asked... Most others would "think" ... "will i get any benefit from it? ", " will i get any $$ for running it?", " it is NOT safe to run f@h.. i'm affraid of my personal info...", etc...
Would i give up ? probably i gave up long ago .. but once i see i can have a chance to recruit some one, i'll do it.
FrEaKy
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While usually I would totally agree with this, most colleges and universities have a "agreement" with power companies and pay a flat rate price cost. So for instance a big business, if they were to do this, it would double to quadruple cost for power, but at a universitie, especially a state college, it wouldnt change their cost at all due to already signing a flat rate agreement with a power company.
I'm sure the SMP client could significantly increase costs for a big university, but what about the good ole uniprocessor client? It uses far fewer resources and the impact on budgets should be minimal. I know it also doesn't get nearly as many points as the other clients, but that's ok. Given the low cost appeal, the reduced performance could easily be made up for in sheer numbers of people who install it. Remember, given the architecture improvements made by intel, a single core from a modern Core 2 chip cranks out way more folding data than the "enthusiast" Pentium 4's did just a few years ago. It may not match the GPUs or I7s, but it's still important.
I have tried so hard to recruit folders on the other forums I sometimes frequent, but noone seems to be interested in joining at all. I got a few people to join for a short period of time, but even they got bored and quit. I know one is now doing nothing but bitcoin mining now...........
sirmonkey1985
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i don't try to convince people to fold, i give them the facts and my opinion for why i fold(or well use to). other then that its their own decision if they want to do it. its not my job to convince them they should. its PG's job to do that.
thats just my opinion.
thats just my opinion.
tjmagneto
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I talk about FAH to other people but I don't actively recruit.
I've tried, with little success. In any case, I don't know too many people with PCs powerful enough to fold effectively.
You're not a folder either, so I don't know why you would even bother posting here.
He could fold with us some day. It is an addiction and we just need to get him to take that initial dose that gets you hooked.
Zarathustra[H]
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True, but those agreements are not eternal. When its time for a new contract, the power company will sign it based on revised estimates for use. If power use has been higher than originally anticipated, the new contract will definitely come in at a higher rate.
In which case the cost of increased power consumption is even more direct.
The University of Cincinnati also has their own powerplant. That thing was just recently built and is a beauty. You guys should have seen the bitching and moaning from the greenies when it was built since it is coal powered.
They can go whine some more. Purdue is somewhat smart about it and uses the steam to heat their buildings. Pretty nice system if you ask me. As long as your room's radiator isn't broken (in the sense of being on full blast at all times).
More direct maybe, but also more direct in that they're not buying the power from a company that's trying to turn a profit. Also as mentioned above, they use the steam to heat the buildings.
All modern power plants have systems in place to recycle waste heat in some way.
Zarathustra[H];1037645900 said:
Fortunately for me I live in B.C. where we get our power from Hydroelectric Dams which apart from possibly preventing a few fish from swimming farther upstream, don't add to global warming or particulate emissions. I have mentioned Folding to many people and a few have looked into it but I have not been successful into bringing them into the Horde (unless they're folding under a name I don't know about). I assigned the elec bill to the wife when she finished school and got a job and I don't think she's aware of the cost of folding so my farm (uh, maybe garden is more appropriate) is safe for now
Although I see the noble intentions here, one thought is that if I am a CEO/ CFO right now I am thinking about what happens if this is the start of another recession or very slow growth for awhile to come.
If I am a CIO I do not want people calling the helpdesk because an application is running slow (running F@H I can still see some slowdown using a low process priority.)
Both of those will keep F@H from mainstream corporate deployments. If this was the late 90's, sure, since you are printing money.
If I am a CIO I do not want people calling the helpdesk because an application is running slow (running F@H I can still see some slowdown using a low process priority.)
Both of those will keep F@H from mainstream corporate deployments. If this was the late 90's, sure, since you are printing money.
Zarathustra[H]
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Fortunately for me I live in B.C. where we get our power from Hydroelectric Dams which apart from possibly preventing a few fish from swimming farther upstream, don't add to global warming or particulate emissions. I have mentioned Folding to many people and a few have looked into it but I have not been successful into bringing them into the Horde (unless they're folding under a name I don't know about). I assigned the elec bill to the wife when she finished school and got a job and I don't think she's aware of the cost of folding so my farm (uh, maybe garden is more appropriate) is safe for now
I wish we had more hydroelectric power here.
Burning coal is really really bad...
Zarathustra[H];1037654873 said:I wish we had more hydroelectric power here.
Burning coal is really really bad...
It would be worse considering that coal is still relatively cheap. With the EPA shutting down a power plant that generations 1/3 of the juice in my region, I am very nervous about what might happen to electric rates as Duke Energy has already stated that they will likely resort to natural gas generators which are expensive as hell.
sirmonkey1985
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Zarathustra[H];1037654873 said:I wish we had more hydroelectric power here.
Burning coal is really really bad...
hydroelectric is next on the list of things to be removed, especially on the west coast right now they are ripping out all the hydroelectric dams because they supposedly effect salmon populations.. they have taken 3 out and there are 5 more left on the chopping blocks to be taken out in California and Oregon.
Zarathustra[H]
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Maybe its just me, but I would happily pay a premium if it meant getting heavy metals out of the air I breathe.
This isn't about global warming that some people believe in and others don't. This is about really bad chemicals in the air we breathe.
Google the "Donora Smog". Its scary.
Even scarier - imho - than rivers in flames, as you can't escape it. it's in the air everywhere.
I'd pay 2, 3, 4, 5 even 10 times as much for electricity if it meant we could get rid of all coal use in the U.S.
And for what its worth, building a new natural gas plant and building a new coal fired plant cost roughly the same amount of money, give or take a few percent.
The part that adds cost is building a new power plant. Building ANY new power plant.
Yeah, I've heard about that, and its really tragic.
Salmon are nice and all, but quite frankly, I'm more concerned about the air we breathe than some underwater animal that barely has the brain to be self aware.
Besides, there are ways to build hydropower dams with little locked falls on the side so that the salmon can circumvent them...
Shutting down the hydropower plants because of the salmon is like throwing out the baby with the bath water. Hydropower is currently the best thing we have going in for us in this country, electricity wise.
sirmonkey1985
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Zarathustra[H];1037662995 said:
it really has nothing to do with the survival of the species. salmon are perfectly fine even in rivers with hydro dams. its the jackasses that live behind the dams that want the salmon to travel up further because their town/cities suck balls and have no tourism because of it. the problem is the governments are to simplistic minded. they think magically salmon will now go further up the river.. sure they may go up further, but they aren't going to lay eggs up there, they are just going to die due to being lost. it will take a minimum of 15 years before salmon ever go further up the rivers. the other issue is that all these dams served a dual purpose, they created electricity and they controlled the melt water flow in the spring and made sure the rivers still had water flowing through them during the summer. now there is nothing to control the water. i'm going to laugh my ass off when california and oregon fish and game realizes they screwed up.