TechIMO needs YOU!! [FaD]

I seen a couple of these threads, so why not another for my newest, most favoutite DC project!!

Find-a-drug is a project started by Keith Davies, the man who wrote THINK, the client used for Phase I of the United Devices Cancer project. FaD continues the work of UD Phase I where UD stopped to commence Phase II (using Ligand-pitch-a-fit client ).

FaD has only a small membership crunching at present, and the TechIMO Team has only 3 members at present!

The FaD THINK client (an updated client from that used by UD) has a small footprint and runs very well on older processors. It also shares CPU cycles very well with UD Ligand-fit. I run FaD and UD together on all my cows, from a P133 to a Duron 800. Download it here.

So, what's stopping you helping out with the Uni of Oxford Research Project? Or even other projects like HIV (AIDS), Proteome etc (see here)?

Come on, join us on this great DC project! And crunch for TechIMO!!

Cheers
Mick

[JKLiMpKoRn]

now waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait... can u explain these DC projects one more time for us (....me)? And dumb it down a bit will ya? lol

LOL, that was a bit ambiguous, wasn't it?

memo to self: don't post this kind of thing whilst at work and in a hurry!


DC stands for Distributed Computing, a process where your computers idle cycles are uses to perform calculations or manipulations as part of a bigger, wider, research project. Some DC's do stuff like help in the search for alien life forms (eg seti@home), try to break encryption coding (eg ecc2), map the human genome/DNA (eg genome@home, folding@home), or help to find cures/better treatment for diseases (eg AIDS, UD, FaD).

Each DC uses a piece of software you download and run on your machine. The DC's may operate slightly differently in what the require and how they run (eg only as a screensaver, only when idle, or take over whole CPU), so you need to match your PC capabilities and the use of your PC with an appropriate DC that you are willing to assist with.

Now, what I meant about FaD is that the software you download and run is very unobtrusive. It can run automatically whenever your computer is on, and doesn't seem to slow down any tasks you perform (ie it gets out of the way when you want to use your PC, and doesn't seem to slow use down, whilst making good use of idle CPU cycles.) You can turn your PC on and off without losing work already performed, and you can set how often you send results back and how many new pieces of "work" you download ready to do.

FaD also seems to have low system requirements, unlike some of the more flashy DC's like UD and ecc2, which need fast processors and lots of RAM. FaD runs really well on my P133 with 32MB RAM.

Although the principle behind DC's is altruism, there is a bit of fun and competition as you generate points for your work, and can have these points allocated to a specific team. TechIMO has a current team in FaD, and we can have friendly competitions both within the team (like me and mondobyte! ) as well as with other teams (like all the teams TechIMO will pass soon! ).

So, is that more simple, JK?

Come one, give it a try!! Just download for the link above and run the program. Follow the instructions on the download page and you should be fine. If you have any questions, just ask!

Cheers
Mick

This link will probably explain it better than Mick did.

Hey, no wonder they call you Evil Rick!

That was pretty sneaky!

I still think I explained it much better than you number crunchers do!



Cheers
Mick

Originally posted by mickwish
try to break encryption coding (eg ecc2),

You mentioned it first.

I was trying to give a fair, global perspective of DC's.

My own fault really. But check the eccp thread, evilrick.

Cheers
Mick

[eagle1]

LOL!!!!

[JKLiMpKoRn]

Ohhhhhhhhh thank you very much i understand now. One question. One DC project I saw came up with a number as the answer. I dont quite remember what the DC project was for but the answer was a number. How does this number relate to anything? How can multiple computer work to a single answer? Seems DC projects make what is complicated very VERY easy.... little to easy

I think that was eccp109.

At about 12:56pm on 10/15/02, it was discovered that the solution to the ECCp-109 challenge is...


k=281183840311601949668207954530684

What they were trying to do was break an encryption code. That was one single long number.

Or it could have been mersenne prime numbers (http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm)

39th Known Mersenne Prime Found!!

It's huge - over 4 million digits! Michael Cameron, 20, from Canada proved 2 to the power of 13,466,917 is prime on November 14, 2001. Although this prime took only a few weeks on his 800 MHz AMD computer, it took nearly two and half years and tens of thousands of computers for the GIMPS project to test well over 100,000 unsuccessful candidates.

As I said, various DC's do different things. I prefer to concentrate on those which are aimed at improving health.

Cheers
Mick