computer programme to cure cancer!!!

palflat

Dear Money Savers,

Here's a way to help with cancer research that won't cost you a penny. Certain types of research into illnesses rely on huge computer processing power, and to solve some problems in molecular biology there is a website that harnesses the spare processing power of our computers.

Most of the time our computer processors are not running at anything like full capacity, so you can download a programme that will allow you to be part of a world-wide community that helps cure major illnesses - you choose which problem you want your pc to work on, there's even a programme to help compute climate change. The programme runs in the background and always plays second fiddle to anything you want to do on the pc, so it won't slow it down.

The website is www.worldcommunitygrid/org The website explains more about how it works.

I've been running it on my pc for three weeks now and don't notice it's there apart from a system tray icon.

I would be delighted if anyone had a go and replied to this to let the others know that it's OK to jump in - the water's fine!!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Thanks

totalsolutions

Here is the corrected link for anyone wishing to have a look.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

marms

You'll notice it's running when you get the electricity bill, the difference between idle and full load on a modern computer can be as much as 200w of power consumption.

System

It actually uses very little processing power and you won't notice any effect.
I've had it running on my server for the last 18 months.

[MaccA]

I used to run one of these programmes when I had my PC on 24/7 and didnt notice any increase in the electricity bill. Even if there is a slight increase, the help you are providing in extra processing power is worth more than any 20p you'll ever throw into the collection pot.

letsbehonest

brilliant idea, I have now signed up and have emailed all of my contacts, by donating my spare processing power I can help medical research and do my little bit, it only takes a few minutes to download and configure.

superscaper

Used to do it a while ago and [EMAIL="SETI@home"]SETI@home[/EMAIL] before that but found it impacted on my resources too much and of course screen savers are a waste of energy if leaving it when it's idle. Too much of a strain on my processor, although I'm sure it's fine for modern processors.

Smirch_This

They take the wrong approach to the problem. They are trying to brute force a solution to it rather than calculating an optimum solution. They are approaching it on a per-chance basis. That wastes tonnes of energy (CPU idle power vs load power is one hell of a lot different). The fact that they've been going for years on it suggests it is the wrong approach.

Don't waste your time and money on it. Don't run the software and get clued up on molecular biology if you really want to help.

palflat

ta for the replies. smirch this, you could be right that a more elegant solution could be possible other than by brute force, but ultimately isn't computer brute force how Deep Blue was able to overwhelm Kasparov?

I cannot go along with the suggestion that just because they haven't found a cure for cancer yet, they are wasting their time, there are a lot of scientific breakthroughs still to be made, expecially in oncology, I like the idea that cancer is being attacked on all fronts, we can't know where the next breakthrough comes until it happens. Anyway each to thier own, I think it's too late for me to train up as a molecular biologist so this is the best I can do.

Peter

superscaper

palflat wrote: »

ta for the replies. smirch this, you could be right that a more elegant solution could be possible other than by brute force, but ultimately isn't computer brute force how Deep Blue was able to overwhelm Kasparov?

But it depends on the problem. There are some that would take more computing power than if you turned every atom in the universe into a computing bit a very long time to compute. First thing that came to my mind when Smirch This mentioned better solutions was something like genetic algorithms etc. Which I guess would be rather poetic to use with a biologically related problem.

Smirch_This

Exactly.

This is what us programmers call top down. Deal with the symptoms, then match all solutions until something is found. Not very efficient. Doing things bottom up
by working out how the components work together and creating a solution from that is far better plus the research can be used elsewhere. They have had more luck with that in the field. I do not recall one solution found by brute forcing it. It's just a good marketing and awareness ploy.

Seti@Home is an example. It's found SFA so far but the astronomers have found more stuff by looking at spectral emissions and classifying star systems and planets to find stuff that could maintain life rather than listening out just in case.