Question: Who would be interested in joining an Ohio Bloggers (and commenters, readers, etc...) Folding@Home team? I've explained what Folding@Home is below for those that haven't heard of it.
What is Folding@Home?
Folding@Home is a distributed computer network that seeks to simulate the folding of proteins to discover how protein misfolding is connected to diseases like Alzheimer's disease, BSE (mad cow disease), Cancer, Huntington's Disease, Cystic Fibrosis in the hope that a way to cure them will be found.
Basically you're computer will download a small (it takes about a minute on my dial-up connection) chunk of data called a Work Unit, analyzes it while your computer is idle and transmits the results back to the Folding@Home team (based at Stanford University) before downloading another Work Unit.
You can find more at Wikipedia and the Folding@Home website.
What's the Catch?
Folding@Home will use 100% of your processor when it is running. It's priority ranking is low so it won't noticeably slow down your computer, it just what processing power is left. This will however use slightly more power than usual. This isn't really a big deal if you remember to do things like set your monitor to turn off after a period of inactivity. Laptop Users: There's a setting to automatically pause Folding@Home when it detects that your using battery power to conserve power.
I also need to mention that Folding@Home isn't the worlds most user friendly software. There are some occasional bugs (though they aren't common enough to be a nuisance). In my case most of these bugs were taken care of by disabling the Folding@Home screensaver.
Why a Team?
Folding@Home has a unique system set up where people can pick a username (no registration needed, just search it first to make sure it's not already taken. Names can also be used by multiple computers at the same time) and join teams. Once a user enters his username and team number into the program on their machine they will start to earn points for each work unit that they complete. They can track these points as well as the number of work units they've completed on their stat page (you can see my stat page here). Teams also have stat pages where members can see their status within the team as well as the total number of points that the team has earned (you can find my current teams stat page here).
Conclusion
If there are enough people willing I'd like to set up a team for Ohio blogger's and readers just to have a little fun. Who knows if we can get enough interest on both side of the political line we could form two teams and have a little summer competition to see who can earn the most points by a set date (when you switch teams I think that only new work units count to your new teams score so I won't have a head start).
So one last time, anyone interested?
Edit: I forgot to mention that the software comes in all flavors - Windows, Mac, and Linux.
