Folding needs the Colbert Bump

[spazzychalk]

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 409#p92409

Re: PS3 enhancement suggestions go here [new]
by Scott_R_K on Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:30 pm

Well , looking at the "pitiful" contributions of late from the PS3 Community , I'll have to go back to one of my earlier suggestions and state that PS3 Owners are
not being "asked" to the Party .

F@H really needs to come up with a way of "advertising" their Product and Intent through the PS3 . Whether you use the Information Banner or bold pop-ups is
irrelevant . Just get the message out there .

i've been contemplating this for a while. dont know why i never posted. i implore you prof. pande to contact comedy central's stephen colbert at the colbert report. i believe you will see a massive spike in new users. let me explain. think of it like leno or any other late night show. comedy take on the news then an interview. an author, scientist, musician, politian, etc. colbert's huge audience, the colbert nation, does anything he says tells them to by the millions. make insane edits to wikipedia, have newly discovered species named after him, even the vote for the name of the pod to the space station that went up with the most recent shuttle. he is very interested in science and has people on of your sort all the time. so get an interview. he'll make some jokes, give you a hard time in good fun and make sure to give you enough air to get the information out. then make sure at the end he says the magic words - colbert nation - youre officially mobilized to ______________ lets say in this case .... visit folding.stanford.edu and download the thing or even more likely visit his web site that'll like straight through. its a guarnteed MAJOR boost in users. its a phenomenon called the colbert bump. unknown musicians become famous overnight, books climb the charts, etc

[VijayPande]

This is a very interesting idea. I don't have any connections with the show, but I'll look and see what I can do. If anyone does have connections, please let me know.

[anandhanju]

Nice idea indeed. I hope the new server code is in place before you go on air

[spazzychalk]

i figured the show's interest in science, your stature and sucesses and the general interestingness of the project not just the science but the technology too may make them consider. the concept itself could work across the board. jon stewart, leno, letterman, conan, fallon, carson, bla bla bla. and then why stop at late night. regis, opera, view, whatever else. i fixated on colbert because the colbert (col-bear re-pore that might be a deal break if you say it wrong) bump is quite statistically proven, but now that im saying it out loud, opera is the god of PR bump, take a book and make it a best seller overnight. start with opera and colbert. then move on. maybe you people can make some calls. someone with a sales background perhaps. then move on to, fankly any talk show. do as many as possible. a PR campain. like an actor hitting the talk show circut to prmote his new movie. you see him on every show spead out over some time of weeks or so. even blagojevich on his indictment hit every daytime show when he was suppossed to be in court.

so, does ANYONE here know ANYONE in ANY sort of meida outlet, foot in the door sort of thing?

[wjg]

I think the best that one can do is to get an interview. Unless someone can get something named after him. If someone talks to his producers, I would push the idea of a "Stephen Colbert" Team.

But starting now, that team would be in dead last. I would propose an idea that all the team points would temporarily reset for a month, to have a short month long competition. That way the Colbert Nation has a fair chance to win... And of course, winning has to mean something... A return visit with a prize if the Colbert Nation wins. Something. Also need a gimmick. Can't one molecule have Colbert's face on it in the viewers?

Colbert likes these sorts of things - if there is an update. Instead of a list of team points, the servers will need a graphical user interface to show Colbert's team and other contender's. Something the people participating in, the people waiting a week to participate can look at - and a chart suitable for Colbert's producers to put on TV as updates.

His show must be watched, come up with a whole package, and in the process - new ideas for F@H may come out of the effort.

And - the FAQ's and download pages must be entirely remade. People will lose interest unless the downlaod and instruction pages are absolutely simple.

[spazzychalk]

the faqs and downloads need to be fixed anyway. how many people are we losing we dont know about because they never joined? any reason is a reason to do it, but do it anyway. the best instructions would just have screen shots.

as far as a week or month contest i fear that people would stop folding after its over. its just as effective for him to periodically show what a powerhouse he is by showing is increase in rank every ________. kinda like when he had them vote for him on nasa's site for the naming the space station pod. after a couple days he showed a screenshot of the nasa site and with the rankings and how he was dominating. definately have a team already set up for him before the show. usually when colbert wants his people to do something everything they need to know is on his site, doesnt need to be on yours, link, instructions. maybe even have that one team auto cache immediately after each update. even appear with a logo on the fah site stats page for that team. a link on the front page for a long enough for anyone wandering in in another way that other than his web site. but he definately does love things named after him. is there a molecule you can name after him? a server or something. tell him its your most important one or best one or something. maybe find out some family history somehow, google, ask the producers, maybe theres a medical reason for him to be interested thats something we work on. always play to his ego. how much incredible difference he'll make personally by assigning the nation to this project.

again, do all the talk shows, not just this one. hey, how about a contest between him and opera how awsome would that be? definately remember to mention playstation on all of them, not just computers, and how any kind of computer, mac, linux, pc, windows, etc

[ParrLeyne]

Unless someone can get something named after him. If someone talks to his producers, I would push the idea of a "Stephen Colbert" Team.

I'm all for creating a "CorlbertNation" team, there isn't one right now (I just checked).

At the moment, I don't belong to any specific team and produce about 34,000PPD.

If we could get a couple more members with decent GPU's, I don't think we would need that long to make the team nominally competitive. Naturally, that would change once an interview/piece on the show would air.

Can't one molecule have Colbert's face on it in the viewers?

Cute idea. He would love it.

Colbert likes these sorts of things - if there is an update. Instead of a list of team points, the servers will need a graphical user interface to show Colbert's team and other contender's. Something the people participating in, the people waiting a week to participate can look at - and a chart suitable for Colbert's producers to put on TV as updates.

Like the "Daily Show" there are common "pieces" within each show (open/monologue leads into the first comedy piece, followed by a filler bit, followed by the major interview and then the finish). It is likely that the producers might like a little "filler" for each night's show, while the contest is on.

And - the FAQ's and download pages must be entirely remade. People will lose interest unless the downlaod and instruction pages are absolutely simple.

Unfortunately, all too true. The site and FAQ are far too "geeky" for the average person.

[7im]

Slashdot bump, TheInquirer bump, etc. Target them all.

[wjg]

This is a good idea - but Folding at Home is simply not ready for the general public. I consider myself the general public. I was running two cpu clients for my dual core. Finding the instruction (there arn't any) for running two cpu lients at the same time was a pain in the ass and I had to figure out a way following multiple gpu instructions.

Since I last posted, I have been involved in an exercise of frustration with F@H to get my simple new ATI HD4830 gpu running with a client with the latest chipset manufacturer drivers. It simply can not be done, and forum posts about my similar error that I can find have all been basically guesswork.. DLL issues or whatever, I have given up. If F@H can not have a simple download page, where the download works on cards - doing anything on the Colbert Show will simply alienate the public like I have become alienated from the GPU client. The last thing F@H wants to do is to advertise to hundreds of thousands of people that their software will not work on their computers, will cause their cards to run in endless VPU recoveries. If a basicly clean install of XP Home Edition, with a e5200 chip, good 4gb of ram, one of the most popular motherboards around and a new highly regarded video card can not get the client to run, the producers will not even return any calls when they try to run it.

[spazzychalk]

lets take the space station as the example since its the most recent. see how many times this has come up in seperate episodes. this could be you. before you get offended ever anytime watching him not just these clips he's hilarious if you get past his politics. part of comedy is offending people

first he links through his own site and gives step by step instructions http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... er-stephen

the nest day he's in 1st place. does this say it all? we are an amazing team. together i can do anything we put your mind to. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... c-overlord rehashes it with a joke just to show the update, validates his audience "we did it"

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... rstenmaier he's always doing the siera mist thing. call it social commentary on the state of hollywood product placement

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... y-in-orbit its even on major news channels and politicians now. fox even put his picture on the side of it if you can see it in this video. i dont know what it is but i want it.... people get on his show all the time just by naming something after him. just think if he commited to folding himself during the interview on top of just telling them to do it. thats 4 plugs in a month and more to come as updates happen (llook where we are new in the ranks of folding) and the final launch,

now here is his interview style. you talk, he talks, he's well researched ahead of time to ask you stuff to help you make your plug at the same time giving you a hard time and sarcastic and joking but you get your plug in several times http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... rick-pitts usually the best interviews the guest gets in some witty coimebacks. anyway this interview he went at the guy really hard but its just tv he comes around lets the guy talk opens up good talking points and ends positive on the plug http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... avid-plotz

[spazzychalk]

This is a good idea - but Folding at Home is simply not ready for the general public. I consider myself the general public. I was running two cpu clients for my dual core. Finding the instruction (there arn't any) for running two cpu lients at the same time was a pain in the ass and I had to figure out a way following multiple gpu instructions.

well first consider, if we're gonna isolate colbert from the other talk shows, the playstation client. but after that, i dont know much about computers and i managed to figure out the install without instructions. more importatnly, the web code could be rewritten in less than a day if people here really wanted it done. take a few screeen shots, slap a new instruction page together. dumb it down a little. ive complained about the technical explinations listed in the project #s. translation i feel great when i click on the projects ive completed and see this is about cancer or this is about how a virus infects a cell. but i HATE reading peptide water solution helical WTF?!?!?!? and if people have problems they can always come here. i wish i could help you with yours but i do answer stuff that i do know when its asked here. another serious problem is people's loss of motivation in the project over time. im sick of seeing dead teams im passing every day on overclocking. the fact is, we're left in the dark. nothing to look at but final results, and they're in scienese. i cant read that crap. we need to know what we've done, and what we're making progress in. like a while back pande said something about AD drugs in peer review. thats EXACTLY the kind of things thatll keep uis going. in fact, i'd like right now for F@H to commit to a new section in this forum. progress and results. locked so only the mods can post in it, but WE KNOW WE'RE DOING SOMETHING, motivate to continue, maybe even upgrade hardware, and recruit new users. information is your friend

[7im]

Well, if we need dual client install procedures for the CPU Systray client, then someone needs to send a PM to Xilikon and have him get it done.

@ wjg - we already posted you can't use the manufacturers drivers, you need to use the ATI drivers. This is clearly stated in the FAQ, and should be in the install guide if not already in there.

[spazzychalk]

anyway i just checked the credits,

executive producer stephen colbert
executive producer jon stewart
line producer tanya michnevichi bracco
talent producer emily lazar
segment producer matt lappin
managing producer jeff cooperman
senior producer liz levin
field producer nicole savini / aaron cohen
production manager jeremy tchaban
executive in charge for busboy production chris mcshane
production services hello doggie inc

[wjg]

I never installed the board maker's drivers, only ATI's. F@H just will not work on my system with ATI's 9.3 drivers, with a near clean install of Window XP Home edition, GA-G31-E2SL motherboard, and G.Skill RAM (already memtested) if that matters. In fact, the only graphics drivers on my hard drive are the Intel drivers for the integrated graphics chip I used before using this ATI Radeon HD4830 from Sapphire. I am not the only one either. There have been lots of posts with -10 errors and few resolutions if any. Some posted they rolled back their drivers, some posted they rolled back to a driver set where in another post it does not work for them. F@H for ATI is just bugged. Unless it fixed trying to go national with this software will lead to a brick wall the moment the producers actually test the software.

[7im]

Please read Mike Houston's solution for this error: http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?p=92666#p92666