Looks like Distributed Folding is over...

killernoodle

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//relic edits// For the new folks: this is in reference to the Distributed Folding Project NOT the folding@home project


For now at least...

http://www.distributedfolding.com/proteinfolding/distributedfolding/distfold_news.html

2004/09/02
DFP Roadmap
We would like to thank all of our users for their participation in the CASP 6 experiment. We have managed to predict a total of eight targets using DFP. While this is only a small fraction of the targets that were available, we chose some of the hardest ones to predict, and are anxious to see how the present method compares with our other more manual method, as well as other protein folding approaches, after the meeting in December.

After having put forth all our resources towards participation in CASP 6, we now need to step back and conduct a thorough analysis of our results, as well as an in-depth evaluation of all the methods used, including Distributed Folding.

Having limited resources available in our Structure group, we are faced with the following options:

1. Continue running DFP with the current algorithm, tweaking code in the process
2. Implement Boris Steipe's protein fragment libraries into the Phase II algorithm
3. Modify the Phase II algorithm into a true genetic algorithm
4. Shut down the DF project entirely to focus on development and improvement of our core algorithm via data analysis of available results

We feel that the project would benefit most from taking a break, namely the latter option, while we put our efforts towards providing you with a more robust, scientifically cutting edge platform.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all the users who have participated in the project over the past two and a half years. We are grateful for the countless CPU hours you have given us, for your improvement ideas, and for relentlessly testing any changes we made as we progressed towards better software. We have learned much about writing robust software, and we hope you have learned a little about the exciting world of protein folding.

With your help, we have been able to generate large amounts of scientifically significant data that has advanced our understanding of protein folding, and has enabled us to improve our folding algorithms, which may one day allow us to predict protein structure and folding pathways from sequence.

However, due to the aforementioned reasons, we have decided to bring the
Distributed Folding Project to an end upon reaching the 10 billion target on the current protein or on October 1, 2004, whichever comes last. We truly hope that our loyal user community keeps checking back for future distributed projects, as we certainly intend to return with newer and better ideas.

With gratitude,

Christopher Hogue, Howard Feldman and the Distributed Folding team

2004/08/31
 
Carnival Forces said:
wtf is "Distributed Folding Project"

it's not FAH, it's not UD, we prob'ly don't care.

Uhh... I dont think you've been around the scene that long. We do have other people doing stuff other than UD and FAH :rolleyes: Distributed Folding is one of them, the other one was... someone help me remember!

Well, you DF guys are welcome to come to the FAH scene whenever you want, we need all the help we can get ;)

FOLD ON!!!
 
Some of us did DF for awhile to mix things up a little. I personally switched back to FAH fairly quickly...
 
I'm still doing DF, guess it's time to shut it down. The [H] only has 5 active users right now anyway so we weren't very threatening as a team. Still it was fun while it lasted and a good project to have running as a backup in case Stanford went down. Hope it comes back strong, I doubt it will take folders away from fah but it may attract some people who don't do anything with their pc's now.
 
pduan87 said:
Uhh... I dont think you've been around the scene that long. We do have other people doing stuff other than UD and FAH :rolleyes: Distributed Folding is one of them, the other one was... someone help me remember!

Well, you DF guys are welcome to come to the FAH scene whenever you want, we need all the help we can get ;)

FOLD ON!!!
you're right.

to OP: i'm sorry..it was late...4 quizzes next day, sry man. i just was stressed at the time. no hard feelings.

but, could someone please tell me, what IS/was DF? was it to find a cure also?
 
gnewbury said:
That was a 70's problem.

HAha


I ran some DF but stopped a while back. Still try and run some FAD on a 950mhz Duron at work from time to time. All of the stuff here is Stanford F@H.
 
SETI? Not that I have any idea what the [H] team looks like (if there is one) on SETI... :p
 
I think there are (were?) some people running seti under the [H] banner but it wasn't an officially sponsored by Kyle project. Kyle prefers something more immediately worthwhile to the human race than finding the little green men. To each his own but I think fragmaster and the rest of the [H]orde have the right idea on this one.
 
pageian said:
I think there are (were?) some people running seti under the [H] banner but it wasn't an officially sponsored by Kyle project. Kyle prefers something more immediately worthwhile to the human race than finding the little green men. To each his own but I think fragmaster and the rest of the [H]orde have the right idea on this one.

I kinda figured that. Also, that's why I never even bothered to download or look into SETI@home.
 
I used to do SETI, but apart from the fact that the console-version was very limited and didn't let you know what was going on and the gui version chewed up lots of resources, it didn't obey priorities correctly and occasionally crashed on me what finally made me change was when I found out that every packet is normally checked over 10 times, often more. It kinda spoilt any fun knowing that the data I was searching through had probably already been searched by other users.

Then I did distributed.net's RC5-64 until it completed, then OGR/RC5-72 until I found a flaw in their software and when I reported it I had my account erased/disabled, my stats cleared and I never recieved any replies about it. I had over 300 machines crunching away and was their second/third-top contributer for a while (their top 10 is always changing so that's only an approximate position from where I used to mostly hover). Their loss, that was my first bug report and it happenned to be a rather nasty exploit. But if they treated me like that, I didn't want to participate with them anymore. Sadly I didn't have access to most of those 300 machines so I couldn't tell them to stop crunching/submitting work, and since my account was disabled the completed units never got registered.

So I then did a brief stint of prime95, then finally to folding@home where I'm at right now. Folding seems much more worthwile, and I don't think I'll have any of the problems I've had with other distributed computing programs. :)
 
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