Do you know what you have been really folding for?

[zollen]

I would like to know is there any methods that PC users like us could validate what we are actually folding?

I mean... how do you know you are actually folding for good causes? What if we have been used by government or organizations for their own ends? For all we know, we could have been unknowingly helping our government analysis North Korea defense tactical data, or helping some investment banks analysis their financial data?

A more realistic picture would be a fraction of our collective folding power (i.e. 2%, 5%, 10%..etc) could have been abused by government or organizations.

[Jesse_V]

Yes. We are folding for a cure for Alzheimer's, cancer, and many other diseases. We are folding proteins that are at the heart of these diseases. I highly doubt that it is for any other cause. In fact, I'm going to guarantee that it is for legitimate front-line research for a group from Stanford University. The rest is all speculation. This could all be one gigantic well-executed fraud thing, but that is EXTREMELY unlikely. So yes. We are folding for good causes. How do I know? Because if you examine everything from top to bottom you find nothing to the contrary. For example, look at the IP addresses in your log. They are the servers. Look at all the papers written as a result of the project. This is never-before-done stuff, so it can't be for Korea. Look all over folding.stanford.edu and you'll find nothing but results. Everything is secure and legitimate. I invite you to look all over folding.stanford.edu. Examine this forum. Read back at the posts on folding.typepad.com. Look at the references sited by Folding@home article on Wikipedia. Its all perfectly safe.

[Jesse_V]

If you would like to know "what you are actually folding", go to this site http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fah ... llbebanned and enter in the project number that's given in your log. You can find your folding log by right clicking on the F@h icon (its colorful and down by the computer clock), and under Status there is a Log File item. Click that and your log opens up. Look for the project that you are working on. For example, on mine I find: Project: 10512 (Run 2, Clone 134, Gen 649). So then I go to that site, type in 10512, and see "Projects 10510-10516 consists of GPU simulations of the full-length NTL9 (56 residues) protein, with slightly different sequences (mutants), all starting from the native state. We are using these simulations to try and predict the effect of mutations on folding stability, folding rates, unfolded-state structure, and folding pathways...." This is the project you are working on. Each work unit that we process is identified for its respective protein Project, Run (protein conformation), Clone (atomic trajectory), and Generation (time steps in the trajectory/simulation). Just as you'd expect. Cool fact: did you know that with the 417,985 combined clients for the CPU, GPU, and PS3, we have a combined computing speed of almost 6.4 petaFLOPS? That's 6.4 quadrillion number-processing operations per second. Currently this makes F@h the second most powerful computing system on the planet, coming in a close second to Japan's K supercomputer that can run at 8 petaFLOPS. Besides this, since 2007 we have been between 2 and 3 times more powerful than any supercomputer ever manufactured. We wouldn't be that powerful if there were doubts among the donors as to what we were doing. So don't worry. Contribute as much as you can to this project. Computers like your move research along just a bit faster. So thank you, and welcome to the forum.

[Zagen30]

I think the 95 peer-reviewed papers are the best evidence that it's not some big fraud. That's a lot of research to fake and slip through the peer-review process without someone noticing something odd.

There's also the post-F@h positions that the former grad students using the project have obtained. I know several of them now have professorships at major universities and others have gotten jobs at big-name companies. They wouldn't have all been hired unless they actually did the research they claim to have done.

The project is not just used by Stanford, or even just US universities. There are professors in Hong Kong, Sweden, and Croatia using the project to further their research. If the project were doing shady US government or business stuff, wouldn't the non-US researchers be unhappy and either say something or quit, or not join at all?

[7im]

Hello zollen, welcome to the forum.

How do we know that you are not an employee from a large pharmaceutical company that is doing similar medical research looking to market drugs that would treat these same diseases that Folding@home is trying to cure? You could simply be trying to draw negative attention to the project so that your own employer has a better chance to make money treating a disease instead of F@h curing it. Maybe a little proof of who you are before we answer your question...? Just joking. FAH has nothing to hide. But now you see how questioning motives and reputation like that is unwarranted, about you and about FAH.

Even if you are that Pharma employee, you are still more than welcomed to open up any of the FAH work units and study the data inside to make sure it is protein data, or not financial data, etc.

As Zagen said, too many people are involved in the project to for them to be hiding dark secrets. Professors would not risk their jobs and careers to hide such things. The univesities would not allow it. The organizations that fund the research would not renew the funding without FAH producing actual medical results. They couldn't publish all those research papers without doing actual research. And they couldn't fool 400,000 FAH users, some of which are very smart, and would know if something fishy was going one.

FAH has been running for over 10 years. If there was something dark going on, it would have come out by now. People just aren't that good at keeping secrets.

[zollen]

You all have good reasons. I was merely suggested that it would be more realistic to think a fraction (i.e. 2%, 5%, 10%) of out collective folding powers may have been abused by government or organizations. The folding results we seen on .edu could be the results of the 95% of our folding efforts. This way nobody would suspect anything.

[Zagen30]

You all have good reasons. I was merely suggested that it would be more realistic to think a fraction (i.e. 2%, 5%, 10%) of out collective folding powers may have been abused by government or organizations. The folding results we seen on .edu could be the results of the 95% of our folding efforts. This way nobody would suspect anything.

I think 7im said it best:

too many people are involved in the project to for them to be hiding dark secrets. Professors would not risk their jobs and careers to hide such things. The univesities would not allow it.

There's also the fact that the GROMACS code, which is what most of the current work runs on, is designed to run biomolecular simulations. I'm pretty sure simulating defense tactical data is impossible.

I also can't imagine why the government wouldn't just apply some of its colossal budget to buy their own supercomputer to do these things. What's easier- a long-running conspiracy to dupe thousands of people into running simulations for the government, with the potential for public outcry if and when it's discovered, or buying a supercomputer and not having to cover anything up?

[7im]

On the scale of crazy wacko conspiracy theories, yes, using a smaller percentage would be easier to hide. Like hiding an elephant instead of a jumbo yet. Even at 1%, none of those people would risk loosing everything for a goverment paycheck. And it would take a significant number of people in the FAH project to get it done. The people making the work units are not the same people who program the servers, etc. It would take multiple conspirators to accomplish a dark task. Not feasible.

No offense, but a lot of what you assume is not realistic to pull off if you applied some logical thought to it. It's just not cost effective for the US government to do that to use a few percentages of FAH for their own use. One, they wouldn't let secret data like that out in the open. 2nd, they already have giant computers at places like Lawrence Livermore Labs to run these kind of things. They also have goverment contractors they could pay to run these kinds of things. Boeing, Lockheed, Blackwater, whatever. Why try to hide 1%, when they can pay billions to have someone do all 100%?

Do you really think the goverment could pull that off? With all those people watching? They can't even raise debt ceiling without threatening to take the world economy in to another great depression.

And big scary companies can run their own data analysis on all of the employees' computers at night to get the job done. They don't have to risk company assets by sending their new secret hair growing forumula out across the internet to FAH users.

It seems people who ask these types of questions are acting more out of blind fear, than acting logically. Put some of your own thought in to answering the question it instead of letting others scare you in to thinking these kinds of conspiracy theories. Yes, I fully support questioning authority, but do it smartly.

[zollen]

Are you implying US government are incapable to send couple of agents to work for .edu site? The fact we open our computers to the outside world to process whatever data they sent to us make me very insecure. The 1% of our collective folding power is still very massive and could be subjected to abuse.

On the scale of crazy wacko conspiracy theories, yes, using a smaller percentage would be easier to hide. Like hiding an elephant instead of a jumbo yet. Even at 1%, none of those people would risk loosing everything for a goverment paycheck. And it would take a significant number of people in the FAH project to get it done. The people making the work units are not the same people who program the servers, etc. It would take multiple conspirators to accomplish a dark task. Not feasible.

No offense, but a lot of what you assume is not realistic to pull off if you applied some logical thought to it. It's just not cost effective for the US government to do that to use a few percentages of FAH for their own use. One, they wouldn't let secret data like that out in the open. 2nd, they already have giant computers at places like Lawrence Livermore Labs to run these kind of things. They also have goverment contractors they could pay to run these kinds of things. Boeing, Lockheed, Blackwater, whatever. Why try to hide 1%, when they can pay billions to have someone do all 100%?

Do you really think the goverment could pull that off? With all those people watching? They can't even raise debt ceiling without threatening to take the world economy in to another great depression.

And big scary companies can run their own data analysis on all of the employees' computers at night to get the job done. They don't have to risk company assets by sending their new secret hair growing forumula out across the internet to FAH users.

It seems people who ask these types of questions are acting more out of blind fear, than acting logically. Put some of your own thought in to answering the question it instead of letting others scare you in to thinking these kinds of conspiracy theories. Yes, I fully support questioning authority, but do it smartly.

[7im]

Incapable, no. Improbable, yes. Again, think it through. Use your head, not your fear. You can't just show up at the front door of Stanford, flash a CIA badge, and expect them to start sending out workings to calculate missile trajectories to Russia. There is no basis for that kind of insecurity. And whomever put that idea in your head needs to have their head examined. There is no way Pande Group would allow fah to be subjected to abuse. Researchers are principled people. They would rather end fah, than let it be corrupted like that.

Again, 1% of fah is nothing compared to the massive resources they already have at secure locations. There is no want or need to use fah in this manner, nor would Stanford allow it. Think about.

And you know what, when I think about it even more, I don't really care if our goverment wants to use 1% of my computer. As long as 99% is going towards curing diseases at FAH, that's good enough for me. The goverment already takes a third of my income in taxes, what's another $50 bucks in CPU time?

Like I said, you should pick the battles that you want to fight, and fight them smartly, not out of fear or belief. This worry about fah is not a good one to worry about, IMO. Go fight world hunger, heck, fight local hunger. In this ecomony, local foodbanks are all but empty. Donate a few hours of your time to a local animal shelter, or homeless shelter, or senior center. Go fight corruption on Wallstreet. Or on Mainstreet in the political process. There are big scarey things to be fixed right in front of you, without having to worry about something so very unlikely as goverment spies infiltrating fah. If the goverment wanted to use your computer, they would simply hack it and use it. They wouldn't bother to hide the data inside of FAH. Again, think it through logically.

[zollen]

Again, are you implying the best infiltration CIA could come up is.... what you suggest? Would you be able to put yourself into their shoes?

Again, you think 1% of our world collective folding power is less than what Government already processed? I am not sure I agree. Even if it is less than 1%, government computer processing costs money but the 1% collective folding power is *free*. This is just too attractive to not being abused.

You may have been unknowingly helping wall street analysis their financial data by folding.. Money does strange thing to people, even educated people.

Incapable, no. Improbable, yes. Again, think it through. Use your head, not your fear. You can't just show up at the front door of Stanford, flash a CIA badge, and expect them to start sending out workings to calculate missile trajectories to Russia. There is no basis for that kind of insecurity.

Again, 1% of fah is nothing compared to the massive resources they already have at secure locations. There is no want or need to use fah in this manner, nor would Stanford allow it.

And you know what, when I think about it even more, I don't really care if our goverment wants to use 1% of my computer. As long as 99% is going towards curing diseases at FAH, that's good enough for me. The goverment already takes a third of my income in taxes, what's another $50 bucks in CPU time?

Like I said, you should pick the battles that you want to fight smartly. This one is lame, IMO. No offense intended. Go fight world hunger, heck, fight local hunger. In this ecomony, local foodbanks are all but empty. Donate a few hours of your time to a local animal shelter, or homeless shelter, or senior center. Go fight corruption on Wallstreet. Or on Mainstreet in the political process. There are big scarey things to be fixed right in front of you, without having to worry about something so very unlikely as goverment spies infiltrating fah. If the goverment wanted to use your computer, they would simply hack it and use it. They wouldn't bother to hide the data inside of FAH.

[Napoleon]

If I wanted the whole world go to certain warm place, I'd come up with something to encourage global warming on a global scale, as long as there's some "lectricity" available. Null research employing gazillions of computers. Viruses that compel you to obtain them... ooops, had a George Carlin moment there. Great standup, BTW, look it up on YouTube. YT is great, but not necessarily the best possible place in the InterWeb to look up scientific research papers, Thogh.



PS: I hate antibiotics.

[7im]

Again, think it through.

No, it's not free. You have to pay a couple of CIA Agents $50,000 a year each, to go to school for 4 years to establish a good cover. Then 2 more years of advanced education before you are even considered to get in to the Pande Group. Even then, your 2 agents may not make the grade, so you would have to send a dozen agents, just to be sure 2 made it in to Pande Group. 12 agents at 6 years at $50,000. That's $3.6 Million dollars, simply in salaries. For that kind of money, they could rent Amazon EC2 time and get the same job done in 6 months instead of 6 years. Use your head!!!

And after 6 years of waiting to get in, how do you sneak in the programming? All fah programming is reviewed by the FAH project lead and other members of the staff. Then 2 years later, the 2 agents graduate and they can't use fah any more. That's a lot of investement for not much return.

It is not time effective (6 years to get in), Not time effective (you can only use fah for 2 years tops), and not cost effective. 1% of 400,000 computers is only 4000. Langley has that much computer power in the basement storage closet. The CIA can hack that many computers in Russian in a couple of hours FOR FREE. They don't need FAH. And FAH is not attractive. Too small, too difficult, too risky, not worth the reward.

And if you don't want to run fah, then don't. But you better disconnect your internet immediately, because the CIA is listening, and they know that you know that they are watching you watch them watch you.

[zollen]

Did I say 1%? All our discussions were based on 1% so far, what stopping them from abusing more folding power? (i.e. 5%..15%..etc)?

Nice, you finally begin to think logically. Would 10 agents be enough to infiltrate the standford .edu site? I suspect it would take more than 10 technical professionals to manage government massive number of research computers? Guess which approach is cheaper?

Again, think it through.

No, it's not free. You have to pay a couple of CIA Agents to go to school for 4 years to establish a good cover. Then 2 more years of advanced education before you are even considered to get in to the Pande Group. Even then, your 2 agents may not make the grade, so you would have to send a dozen agents, just to be sure 2 made it in to Pande Group.

After all that, how do you sneak in the programming? All fah programming is reviewed by the FAH project lead and other members of the staff. Then 2 years later, the 2 agents graduate and they can't use fah any more. That's a lot of investement for not much return.

It is not time effective (6 years to get in), Not time effective (you can only use fah for 2 years tops), and not cost effective. 1% of 400,000 computers is 4000. Langley has that much computer power in the basement. The CIA can hack that many computers in Russian in a couple of hours FOR FREE. They don't need FAH. And FAH is not attractive. Too small, too difficult, too risky, not worth the reward.

And if you don't want to run fah, then don't. But you better disconnect your internet immediately, because the CIA is listening, and they know that you know that they are watching you watch them watch you.

[7im]

The same thing that prevents 1%, is 10 times more effective to prevent 10% usage. And now you're just changing the subject from even being possible, to arguing a minor detail. It doesn't help your argument.

Again, how is the money better spent? 12 agents wasting time in college for 6 years, or 12 agents running those massive government resources every day for 6 years starting on day one? Which is more cost and time effective? $3.6 million in salaries, just to get to Day 1 at Stanford? or buying and running $3.6 million worth of Dell servers for 6 years? At $3600 per server, that's 1000 server class systems running 24/7. Way better than 4000 FAH end user class systems running 12 hours a day that you can't access until 6 years from now.