Gamers unite!
Do you know someone with a mind-afflicting disease? A body-wrecking Cancer? Feel powerless to help them? Here's your chance...
Since October 2000, Stanford University has an application that you can partake in called Folding@Home. Over one million CPUs throughout the world have participated in this distributed computing project. The goal of this project is to research protein folding and misfolding to gain an understanding of how these are related to disease. See F@H's Executive Summary, in PDF, here.
Targeted diseases include (but are not limited to) such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
It's a small application that runs in the background of your computer (XP/Vista/Linux/MacOSX) or as a stand alone program on your home console, the Playstation 3.
I've started a Team for the members of Allakhazam called Allakhazam's Magical Research Realm (Team# 85020). Team Statistics: Please allow 3 to 24 hours to populate.
Simply download Folding@Home and join the team: To join, just put the team's number in the configuration panel (on graphical clients) or enter the team number at the first time you run the client (for text console versions).
You can view our weekly status here at Overclocking.com A very nifty site for tracking everyones process. We've made great leaps and bounds since our inception.
Via Technobob in the FFXI Forums wrote:
For those who would like to run the console version, you can configure it to run as a service on system startup, IIRC, you can set up F@H on it's first run, but if it doesn't, you can do the following:
For Windows users, create a shortcut of the executable file in the same folder, right client on that shortcut, and in the target field, add a -config at the end. it should look like "C:\...\Folding@Home\Fah5xx-Console.exe" -config (My path is "C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\Fah504-Console.exe" -config), Then hit apply. Then, click on the shortcut to open the file, you SHOULD have the client asking you to set the options, first one being your User name. set this as the name you wish to fold under.
I will use these settings as an example.
User name: User
Team Number: 85020
Launch Program automatically as a service: Yes
Ask before fetching/sending work: No
Use internet explorer settings: No
Use Proxy: No (but if you use one, then yes)
Allow receipt of work assignments and return of work results greater than 5 MB in size (such WU's may have large memory demands): No
Change advanced options: No
If you do not see this list of options, then I can see if I can find a link to a guide, and post that, but following those instructions should hopefully be sufficient for the average folder, and the next time you boot into Windows, it should start automatically, and run quietly in the background.
I'm not sure how to configure this for Linux, but there are several guide on google for that.
For Windows users, create a shortcut of the executable file in the same folder, right client on that shortcut, and in the target field, add a -config at the end. it should look like "C:\...\Folding@Home\Fah5xx-Console.exe" -config (My path is "C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\Fah504-Console.exe" -config), Then hit apply. Then, click on the shortcut to open the file, you SHOULD have the client asking you to set the options, first one being your User name. set this as the name you wish to fold under.
I will use these settings as an example.
User name: User
Team Number: 85020
Launch Program automatically as a service: Yes
Ask before fetching/sending work: No
Use internet explorer settings: No
Use Proxy: No (but if you use one, then yes)
Allow receipt of work assignments and return of work results greater than 5 MB in size (such WU's may have large memory demands): No
Change advanced options: No
If you do not see this list of options, then I can see if I can find a link to a guide, and post that, but following those instructions should hopefully be sufficient for the average folder, and the next time you boot into Windows, it should start automatically, and run quietly in the background.
I'm not sure how to configure this for Linux, but there are several guide on google for that.
Who knows, the life you help save, could be your own.
Edited, Jan 8th 2008 1:27pm by Kaelesh
@ nLod 
My almost entire vegetarian diet and not drinking any soda (When I did drink soda it was always diet) causes diabetes :( I guess I'm screwed then...