Important Update to Folding@Home's End User License Agreement (EULA)

Vijay Pande has posted on his blog a very important notice about an update to the Folding@Home End User License Agreement (EULA).

Straight from Vijay:

"We added the word "written" to this sentence:

"You may use this software on a computer system only if you own the system or have the written permission of the owner."

We felt that this was an important addition in order to avoid any confusion. There have been a few situations where donors felt that they had permission, but the owners of the computers did not. Having written permission is the best way to make sure that there is no doubt. It also gives protection to the donor in that he/she would then have proof of permission, avoiding problems involving oral agreements."

I'd like to re-affirm that you could find yourself in a situation of getting sued for installing and running this program unauthorised, as many people have gotten into trouble setting up multiple computers at they're place of work (such as a school I.T. Administrator setting up tens to hundreds of computers) when they weren't authorised to do so, and have in some cases been ordered to pay damages for things such as increases in power bills, internet bills etc. Also, not having sufficient knowledge about the program and how it can affect different computers etc. (such as Notebooks being advised to run at no more than 90% CPU usage due to their less than optimal cooling systems) can lead to a bit of a blame game as far as what caused the computer to pack itself in and who is going to pay for it!

So guys, make sure you get written consent to run Folding@Home on computers or machines that are not your own. And be sure to inform those owners or bill-payers of the potential to have slightly higher power and internet bills whilst running this program (not a big deal for one or two machines, but any more, the extra power and internet usage quickly adds up!). Providing you do the right thing by the owner, i'm sure they will enjoy helping out a Distributed Computing Project such as Folding@Home.

New Paper published on the Playstation 3 Folding@Home client

Vijay Pande's blog yet again brings good news with yet another Paper being published, this time about the Playstation 3 Folding@Home client - Accelerating Molecular Dynamic Simulation on the Cell processor and PlayStation 3.

A collaborated effort between the Folding@Home and Sony Development teams, this is the first paper resulting from the Playstation 3's involvement in the Project. The paper is more of a 'how does it work' with details about how the PS3 accelerates simulations through use of it's powerful streaming processor, the CELL Broadband Engine.

The abstract reads:

"Implementation of molecular dynamics (MD) calculations on novel architectures will vastly increase its power to calculate the physical properties of complex systems. Herein, we detail algorithmic advances developed to accelerate MD simulations on the Cell processor, a commodity processor found in PlayStation 3 (PS3). In particular, we discuss issues regarding memory access versus computation and the types of calculations which are best suited for streaming processors such as the Cell, focusing on implicit solvation models. We conclude with a comparison of improved performance on the PS3's Cell processor over more traditional processors."

Papers of this type not only help the Folding@Home team at Stanford, but can potentially help many others outside of the Project. Whether it helps out others involved in the field of Molecular Dynamics, or people that intend to use and program for the CELL processor, knowledge gained can be knowledge shared!

Work Units Milestone - ROO_BOY29 - 50

ROO_BOY29 has made the milestone for 50 work units!

Due to a bit of downtime, after needing a re-format/re-install, his computer unfortunately didn't tally any points for our recent November = 2nd Team Birthday Foldathon. However, his got 4 services of v5.04 text-only console client running on his quad-core again, and should see a pretty consistent return from him now.

Currently on 13,736 points from 50 work units, he sits 186,173rd out of 1,149,041 all-time folders. Well done mate.

New Team Member - brolli55_ps3

We have a new team member! Another one of my mates - brolli55_ps3 has joined the team currently folding with his Playstation 3. brolli55 will also appear on the team stats soon, as we await his computer to return it's first work.

With one work unit currently to his name, brolli55_ps3 has made 450 points, and sits 729,857th out of 1,149,041 all-time folders. Good stuff mate.

Another new Paper! Ribosome Gate

Only on Tuesday Vijay Pande announced on his blog that the Project published New Alzheimer's Disease Work. Now another paper, Folding@Home's 59th to be exact, has been published - 'Side-chain recognition and gating in the ribosome exit tunnel'.

The Ribosome plays a very important role in Protein research says Vijay:

"The ribosome is a fascinating molecular machine, responsible for the synthesis of proteins. For this reason it is of fundamental importance to protein folding (as the last step in the central dogma of biology) as well as to human health (since the ribosome is the target of a very large fraction of antibiotics)."

Vijay mentions that this paper has been made possible by the contributions of folders running 'bigWU' enabled classic clients stating:

"the ribosome is so huge that it would not run on regular classic clients."

It's certainly good to see a couple more important research papers come out lately, and only a day after another! I can't wait to see what other papers get released and how they can help us move forward in the Protein research field.

Points Milestone - Lahm_Family_PS3 - 100k

My 2nd Playstation 3 - Lahm_Family_PS3 is the 5th team member to achieve the 100,000 points milestone! Thus moving up a category in the Major Milestone Club.

Joining the team in late August, I was hoping to gain atleast 100k points by the end of the year, so i'm very happy it's achieved that. Pretty much folding 24/7 (with only occassional power outages and a bit of music playing in between), it wasn't overly hard to achieve. Now I want to set a target of 300,000 points by 27 August 2009.. which would mean a tidy 300k points per year.

Currently on 100,383 points from 343 work units, it's sits 5th on the team leaderboard, and 45,147th out of 1,147,479 all-time folders. No doubt i'll keep her folding as much as possible!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Racing up the Team Leaderboard, Ugly has brought about another shuffle in the top 10 order, this time by moving to 7th spot, overtaking zoneur who now sits at 8th.

Current top 10 order:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	293785	1189
2	Jens_Klausen	265299	569
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	100383	343
6	peterdiva	94067	152
7	Ugly	66590	69
8	zoneur	65715	145
9	smASHer88	56240	193
10	BulleenAnt1	42574	145

New Alzheimer's Disease Work published

The latest news from Vijay Pande's blog is about the publication of a key paper relating to Alzheimer's Disease - 'Simulating oligomerization at experimental concentrations and long timescales: A Markov state model approach'.

Vijay comments saying:

"I am very happy to announce that a first key work from the Folding@home project on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) was just published"

"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. So, while we're excited that this result is now past peer review, we're even more excited for what's coming down the pipeline, waiting peer review. We'll keep you posted as more results become public, hopefully with some even bigger announcements in 2009."

Hopefully this will mean Folding@Home as a Project will start to see some real fruit for all it's labour!

UPDATE:

"It was asked which clients participated. This work started several years ago and took some time to analyze and then publish. So, it 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."

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

With the latest change to the Top 10 Team Members order, Ugly has now moved to 8th spot on the team leaderboard, overtaking my computer - smASHer88, which is now at 9th spot.

Current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	290635	1178
2	Jens_Klausen	251679	538
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	97053	333
6	peterdiva	89374	132
7	zoneur	65715	145
8	Ugly	57770	54
9	smASHer88	55491	192
10	BulleenAnt1	42445	144

Work Units Milestone - Ugly - 50

Ugly has now returned 50 work units to claim his first work units milestone.

Currently on 55,040 points from 50 work units, he's 9th on the team leaderboard, and 73,169th out of 1,145,122 all-time folders.

Points Milestone - Ugly - 50k

Ugly joins eight other team members on the Major Milestone Club list for achieving the milestone for 50,000 points!

Since joining the team in late October, Ugly has managed to gain 51,950 points from just 45 work units! How? Well as you'll read in joining post, he has been running the SMP client on an Apple MacBook Pro, which usually fetches him between 1,000 and 2,000 points per work unit! Of course his points to work unit ratio show hes much closer to 1,000 points / work unit. This could be because he's recently added a PS3 to fold under Ugly as well, bringing his average points per work unit down.

He currently sits 9th on the team leaderboard and 76,306th out of 1,144,455 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Work Units Milestone - Jens_Klausen - 500

Jens_Klausen has become the 4th team member to make the 500 work units milestone as he bumps himself up a category in the Major Milestone Club!

Since joining nearly three months ago, he has returned exactly 506 work units for a total of 237,864 points. This means he has contributed approximately 15% of the team's points, and nearly 10% of all work units!

He's currently coming 2nd on the team leaderboard, and could easily overtake my main PS3 - smASHer88_PS3 just after New Years! He sits 19,715th out of 1,143,682 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Where Folding@Home is heading

Vijay Pande has posted a 'Long term vision' on his blog about Folding@Home about where it is heading and what sort of results we can expect Science wise.

He mentions the fact that the first few years of the project was spent working out the right types of methods to use to enable a functional Distributed Computing network.

The next step was to work in the latest range of clients (Playstation 3, SMP and GPU) which has been a big task to accomplish and still not perfected as of yet. An 'SMP2' client is the next target for the development team, with hopes that it will be similar to the transformation of the GPU to GPU2 client. Vijay comments saying -

"Our goal is to be bleeding edge in the nature of our science, but get back to the simplicity and stability found in the classic client"

Science wise, we are to expect some pretty big results very soon, with many research papers to be published after peer review is completed. Vijay comments -

"In particular, results on Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, and some other surprises in the works"

So there you go guys, the real reason we are all folding hasn't been forgotten. Hopefully a lot can be learned from these future publicly-released research papers, and we can see the benefit gained from lending our CPU cycles!

Points Milestone - Jawgz - 20k

My mate Jawgz has now hit the 20,000 points milestone!

In addition to his Mac, he's now got some computers at work crunching away for him as well! Sitting on exactly 20,966 points from 29 work units, he sits 15th on the team leaderboard and 143,102nd out of 1,143,038 all-time folders. Good stuff mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Ugly has pushed ahead to 9th spot now on the top 10 team leaderboard, which means BulleenAnt1 slips back to 10th.

Current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	285805	1160
2	Jens_Klausen	229388	487
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	92013	317
6	peterdiva	79806	116
7	zoneur	64217	141
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	Ugly	45060	31
10	BulleenAnt1	42274	143

2nd Team Birthday Foldathon! Results

As we finish our 2nd Team Birthday Foldathon, we look back at some interesting stats that have happened just over the month of November.

A total of 376,655 points was generated by Aussie Rules Footy in November by returning a total of 884 work units. Our team ranking position has advanced 199 places up to 1,080th! (previously 1,279th).

We've seen eleven changes to the top 10 team leaderboard, and two changes in the top 5 order. We've had a few work unit milestones - three 100, two 200 and a 5k for the team. Also, for points milestones, we've had three 5k, two 10k, four 20k, two 50k, one 100k and one 200k. We've also brought in a new team logo, had two new team members join, and have had some interruptions to our foldathon in the form of server troubles.

But past all that, we

EDIT:
WILL UPDATE AS SOON AS I HAVE ENOUGH FREE TIME TO WRAP UP THIS HUGE POST, SORRY!

Winner: Jens_Klausen - 144,096 points from 306 work units, averaging 4,803 PPD

Aussie Rules Footy

Date of last work unit	2008-11-30 06:44:37
Active CPUs within 50 days	39
Team Id	52735
Grand Score	1483416 (certificate)
Work Unit Count	5286 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate)	1080 of 148592
Home Page	http://team52735.blogspot.com/
Fast Teampage URL	http://fah-web.stanford.edu/teamstats/team52735.html

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	284585	1155
2	Jens_Klausen	229004	486
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	90273	314
6	peterdiva	75820	113
7	zoneur	61625	135
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	Ugly	39450	21
11	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138
12	DSE_352_Notebooks	33652	137
13	mikael	26502	127
14	QCKRNU	24728	153
15	BIGMAN	20343	58
16	Delta_Leviathan	18817	132
17	Jawgz	16992	25
18	Greg	16622	114
19	magicgate3	15835	66
20	ROO_BOY29	13055	46
21	ahmsnake	11179	45
22	savernake	9445	38
23	Jacko	7230	36
24	rossqo	6186	13
25	Ravenge	6090	38
26	mgpower0	5280	3
27	bec_clarke	4413	41
28	PS3	3982	33
29	hobbozzrock	3685	15
30	MitchAllen	3614	42
31	nitty	3080	5
32	erBotty	2250	5
33	J4CKT	2220	9
34	BOONDOCKS	1500	1
35	TheePi	1388	36
36	ningcaptor	1036	9
37	terminator80	960	2
38	luigi4562	953	7
39	Rfscann	935	6
40	Suzy_Wong	837	4
41	SHELL86	765	2
42	CCz619	625	5
43	Bennymac	598	4
44	wilson	545	2
45	QUEBEC	500	2
46	Bioufaxxx	500	3
47	Revolutionary_For_Life	372	2
48	goddest	340	1
49	NTC	313	2
50	PS34LIFE.ZACHZEHRUNG	287	1
51	KillerKahuna	287	2
52	Curer_Of_Diseases	256	3
53	naomi	250	1
54	captinmax	250	1
55	nigel	250	2
56	Beauwoodland	186	1
57	chris_be	186	1
58	J4CKT_PC	149	3
59	Shinobi	125	1
60	dcbunny	98	2
61	Jorgo	30	2
62	THAmyth	0	4
63	ronnie	0	3
64	Bernard	0	5

PPD = Points Per Day

New Top 10 Team Member - Ugly

Congratulations to Ugly who has now joined the Top 10 on the Team Leaderboard knocking DSE_352_PS3 back to 11th!

Here's how the current top 10 stands:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	283685	1152
2	Jens_Klausen	225613	478
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	89463	311
6	peterdiva	73608	111
7	zoneur	61625	135
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	Ugly	38557	20

Folding@Home Server changes plan to reduce downtime

Vijay Pande has posted some news on his blog about recent changes regarding the Collection Servers (CS), and also about plans for Server upgrades in the near future.

The Collection Servers have gotten a bit of tweaking, and have been moved onto a new network as the old one has had quite a few problems. Both Servers (171.67.108.17 & 171.67.108.25) are reportedly doing well for now. These servers act as backups when the Work Servers (where you download work units from) can't handle all the completed/uploaded work units, or when they are down.

The Folding@Home team also plan to issue general server upgrades with v5 code (currently in beta testing with Project 3798) early next year, with production Work Servers likely to be updated starting in January. This v5 code is being built from scratch and hopefully will result in much more stable servers for a more reliable Project network.

New Team Member - terminator80

A new team member going by the name of terminator80 has joined our team.

Already returning 2 work units, they have earned 960 points so far and sit 584,890th out of 1,137,792 all-time folders.

Points Milestone - Jens_Klausen - 200k

Joining smASHer88_PS3 in the 200k points Team Member Major Milestones Club category, Jens_Klausen is now the second team member to crack the 200,000 points milestone!

Only joining the team just over two months ago, Jens_Klausen has made a significant contribution to the team's total points in such a short time. Using 2 x GPUs to fold, he cranks out over 4,000 points daily! Now sitting on 205,679 from 433 work units, he's sitting 2nd on the team leaderboard and 22,452nd out of 1,136,995 all-time folders. Well done mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Our most recent change to our Team Leaderboard Top 10 sees zoneur move ahead to 7th spot, pushing my computer - smASHer88 back to 8th.

The current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	277478	1129
2	Jens_Klausen	193199	407
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	83243	287
6	peterdiva	61671	100
7	zoneur	55834	122
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Work Units Milestone - peterdiva - 100

peterdiva has made a milestone for returning 100 work units!

Gaining 61,671 points from those 100 work units, he sits 6th on the team leaderboard, and 65,642nd out of 1,135,251 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Points Milestone - Ravenge - 5k

Ravenge5's computer, running as Ravenge has just broken through the 5,000 points milestone!

Currently on 5,283 points from 35 work units, his computer sits 299,565th out of 1,134,191 all-time folders. Good stuff mate!

New Team Member - NTC

Please welcome our newest member to the team - NTC.

They've already returned their 1st work unit for 114 points and they currently sit 928,174th out of 1,134,191 all-time folders.

Main Assignment Server was down temporarily

Reading Vijay Pande's blog (posts 1 & 2), it seems the Main Assignment Server was out of action for approximately an hour, which wasn't to worry as they have other backup servers in place for times like these. This all happened at approximately 4:30 PM PST November 21 (so just before lunch, 11:30 AM AEDT, November 22 here on the Aussie East Coast!)

The main consequence is that the Stats system had to hold off updating for a while, so the Team/Donor stats might not have appeared to update for a few hours. All work unit credits were still counted, but they just might have taken a while to get credited to the Stats system. All should be good now.


PST = Pacific Standard Time = UTC-8
AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time = UTC+11

Points Milestone - QCKRNU - 20k

QCKRNU has now made the 20,000 points milestone!

Using his dual-core AMD processor, he's returned 134 work units so far for a total of exactly 20,053 points. Sitting 15th on the team leaderboard, he sits 145,347th out of 1,133,297 all-time folders. Great stuff mate.

Points Milestone - Jawgz - 10k

Jawgz has now passed the milestone for 10,000 points!

Sitting on 11,007 points from only 21 work units, he sits 21st on the team leaderboard and 206,995th out of 1,133,297 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Work Units Milestone - Aussie Rules Footy - 5k

We as a team have now collectively returned over 5,000 work units!!!

We currently sit on 5,041 work units which has earned us a total of 1,366,048 points so far. We sit 1,136th out of 147,872 all-time teams. Well done guys, we have contributed a great effort to Folding@Home so far, and we should be at 10,000 work units in no time!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

With another change to our Top 10 Team Members, peterdiva now jumps to 6th spot, pushing my computer - smASHer88 back to 7th.

There's been a lot of changes on team leaderboard just in November, and I can't wait to see where everyone sits at the end of 2008! Heres the current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	274698	1118
2	Jens_Klausen	173999	367
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	80133	275
6	peterdiva	56927	96
7	smASHer88	55199	191
8	zoneur	51514	113
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Points Milestone - zoneur - 50k

zoneur has now passed the milestone for 50,000 points!

Our 8th team member to do so, he joins seven others on the Major Milestone Club for passing 50k points. He now sits on exactly 51,514 points from 113 work units. Currently 8th on the team leaderboard, he's running 75,227th out of 1,132,309 all-time folders. Congrats mate!