Do you know what you have been really folding for?

[zollen]

If government or other organizations abused.. let say 10% of our collective folding power (instead of our old assumption of 1%), it would create a even bigger incentive for them to utilize this relatively free resources. Would that make sense to you?

Why did you think stanford would hire only people whose studied and graduated from their own school? Did you mean standard .edu site would not hire outside professionals or contractors? Where is the logic in here? Clearly having agents in .edu site is much cheaper than running their own processing.

I fully acknowledge that most of you do not share my thinking. I respectfully hope you all also acknowledge my opinion without resorting to insults or labeling.

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.

[Napoleon]

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?

NOW I begin to get your POW. But why are you posting to KGB-infested forums if you hate CIA so much?

[Zagen30]

If government or other organizations abused.. let say 10% of our collective folding power (instead of our old assumption of 1%), it would create a even bigger incentive for them to utilize this relatively free resources. Would that make sense to you?

Except 7im pointed out that that much use by an outside force would be noticed. Unless there were some massive conspiracy between Stanford, the US government/big pharma, and others to keep quiet about the "real" research being sent out, which we're saying is quite implausible. As pointed out repeatedly, it's not relatively free. And, considering the secrecy with which government files/pharmaceutical research is usually surrounded, they're not going to be sending pieces of that out to tens of thousands of random people, including many people from foreign nations.

Why did you think stanford would hire only people whose studied and graduated from their own school? Did you mean standard .edu site would not hire outside professionals or contractors? Where is the logic in here? Clearly having agents in .edu site is much cheaper than running their own processing.

The project has definitely used outside contractors, specifically for things like the new v7 client or server code. The research, though, is being done by grad students/doctoral candidates/postdoctoral fellows/professors. As 7im was saying, paying off agents to go through that many levels of higher education just to get access to the project for a couple of years, and putting up enough agents to make sure some of them get accepted into the project in the first place, is very costly and far more trouble than just buying/using the supercomputers they already have.

I fully acknowledge that most of you do not share my thinking. I respectfully hope you all also acknowledge my opinion without resorting to insults or labeling.

The problem is that your questions are coming off as rather libelous. Also, your opinion doesn't seem to have any basis other than "I don't see the evidence that it's not happening." Random speculation that implicates shady dealings in a reputable organization is not taken to kindly.

[7im]

If government or other organizations abused.. let say 10% of our collective folding power (instead of our old assumption of 1%), it would create a even bigger incentive for them to utilize this relatively free resources. Would that make sense to you?

Why did you think stanford would hire only people whose studied and graduated from their own school? Did you mean standard .edu site would not hire outside professionals or contractors? Where is the logic in here? Clearly having agents in .edu site is much cheaper than running their own processing.

I fully acknowledge that most of you do not share my thinking. I respectfully hope you all also acknowledge my opinion without resorting to insults or labeling.

Clearly, we don't share your way of thinking. Try to reason through this more thoroughly, with logic, not assumptions or personal beliefs.

1. You couldn't hide 10%. We established that already very early in the discussion. It would get noticed almost immediately.
2. $3.6 million is NOT relatively cheap! and 6 years is too long to wait!!! That is the cost of entry to Pande Group. Not feasible. Not cost effective. Not timely. Not safe.
3. Yes, you could get people in to Stanford as a maintenance worker, but you didn't think this through. YOU didn't use logic. A maintenance worker or contractor does NOT have the access to the data or servers that would be required to make it work.
4. Yes, you could transfer in from another college. But you waste the same money and time at Yale instead of Stanford. It does not change the dynamic. And again, all changes to fah are reviewed by the project lead AND other members of the staff. New members CAN'T sneak in any changes.

Which part of this are you not getting?

[zollen]

1. I disagree. There would be still 90% of legitimate folding to cover the missing 10% and results could be faked. Beside you did not give sufficient reasoning why they would not be able to cover 10% abused? You simply state that as fact, which I would never do. Beside, what about 2%, 5% abused? I would be impress if you could provide sufficient reasoning of why they could not cover 10% abused. Please give me something logical to chew on.

2, 3, 4. Again, what make you think Panda Group, Stanford .edu site would not hire outside professionals or contractor for developing/managing the folding system? Why would they hired only college graduated? What does transfer in/out of other college has anything to do with getting hired by .edu site? Do you know that a candidate would need a resume, professional experiences and external references in order to apply for such a professional position?

Here is another point I fear you all have missed in all these arguments. I want to bring my concerns to everyone attention. So next time you may want to take a closer look at what you are actually folding. What would be the security impact to your personal PC if such a possibility was true? I am hoping you would at least spend a moment thinking about these issues.

[7im]

1. Corrupting a few % of fah is not worth the cost of entry. And any larger % worth the cost of getting is too large to hide. Logical enough?
2. I did not say that Stanford would not hire non-students. I said those non-students would not have the access to fah to make the changes. Only "student" researchers can submit data for processing, and ONLY after review by other more senior members.

There are too many checks and balances to hide dark projects in FAH, and getting up to the level in PG where you could corrupt it is too expensive. It would be easier and cheaper to get hired on at Google, and corrupt their data center, which is a far larger and much more attactive target. It would be cheaper to pay an outside contractor to hire a bunch of scipt kiddies to setup a bot network in Romania. There are any number of options far better than fah.

FAH, by comparison, is not a good target in the grand scheme of things. FAH is not impervious, but other targets are far easier and cheaper to corrupt. Use some common sense and look at the bigger picture, the whole picture, not just fah.

[zollen]

I hope by now you can see that I am not interested in arguing. Beside you again stated everything as fact without sufficient reasoning really turn me off.. I just want to bring my concern to everyone attentions. Have a good day.

[7im]

You are not the first person to raise such questions, nor will you be the last. People do ask these kinds of questions, so Pande Group has statements in the FAQs addressing safety and security. You don't have to make up wild outlandish scenarios to bring this to anyones attention. It is already a concern for a lot of people, and already answered very satisfactorily for all but a very small fraction of people.

If you don't like what you read there, don't run fah. But trying to scare away other people as well is unwelcomed here.