Get the US government to offer tax refunds for companies (or money to universities) whose computers run certain distributed folding projects that are deemed to be a good investment.

Bad idea, was covered earlier in the thread.

Uncle Same giving tax breaks? hahaha! your dreaming on that one.
Would equal more red tape than its worth.

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For a lot of users DC (in general) is nothing more than running a program. For some users, there is the aspect of challenge (see sifferent teams, competing each other for the records, e.g. statistics)

David and other scientists often give comments of what is exactly running on your computer. There's 1 point not covered until now:
Give users an idea what is preceeding and what comes after the crunch work.

A proposal:
1/ Before :
* What are the scientists doing?
* How are the jobs, which we'll process, are created.
* Is it only a theorethical job, or are there physical tests ongoing?

2/ After :
* After a complete jobs has been processed by the Rosetta-client, do you test the best results in a lab, or...?
* What you'll do with the results?
* Is it a base for future jobs?

These are some small questions, but can take long answers.
IMHO 99% of the people, running the Rosetta client, doesn't have any knowledge of the folding of proteins etc. But these people want to know wherefore their computer is used. Isn't it possible to make a virtual visit?
So from the beginning, how a job is defined, lab tests etc. Pictures are always positive points. After the job is processed, what are you doing with it, pictures of lab test environments etc.
Give a simple explaination of it, without to difficult expressions.

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Member of Dutch Power Cows

For a lot of users DC (in general) is nothing more than running a program. For some users, there is the aspect of challenge (see sifferent teams, competing each other for the records, e.g. statistics)

David and other scientists often give comments of what is exactly running on your computer. There's 1 point not covered until now:
Give users an idea what is preceeding and what comes after the crunch work.

A proposal:
1/ Before :
* What are the scientists doing?
* How are the jobs, which we'll process, are created.
* Is it only a theorethical job, or are there physical tests ongoing?

2/ After :
* After a complete jobs has been processed by the Rosetta-client, do you test the best results in a lab, or...?
* What you'll do with the results?
* Is it a base for future jobs?

These are some small questions, but can take long answers.
IMHO 99% of the people, running the Rosetta client, doesn't have any knowledge of the folding of proteins etc. But these people want to know wherefore their computer is used. Isn't it possible to make a virtual visit?
So from the beginning, how a job is defined, lab tests etc. Pictures are always positive points. After the job is processed, what are you doing with it, pictures of lab test environments etc.
Give a simple explaination of it, without to difficult expressions.

Good ideas-thanks! Ian Davis is going to start working next month on improving rosetta@home as an educational tool for high school students, and he should have time to produce the answers/pictures you suggest.

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Good ideas-thanks! Ian Davis is going to start working next month on improving rosetta@home as an educational tool for high school students, and he should have time to produce the answers/pictures you suggest.

Cool, I guess it would be a good idea, to motivate people who don't understand anything of what you are actually doing. But they can see how you are doing it, see that it's a good job and start crunching :D

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Member of Dutch Power Cows

Is there an Altivec enabled PPC client ?


We AmigaOs4 users would LOVE to crunch Rosetta instead of Dnetc

You can view our stats HERE

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Is there an Altivec enabled PPC client ?


We AmigaOs4 users would LOVE to crunch Rosetta instead of Dnetc

There is a PPC client but I don't believe it's optimised for Altivec unfortunately. Of course any cycles you guys want to put this way will be welcome ;)

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Is there an Altivec enabled PPC client ?


We AmigaOs4 users would LOVE to crunch Rosetta instead of Dnetc

There is a PPC client but I don't believe it's optimised for Altivec unfortunately. Of course any cycles you guys want to put this way will be welcome ;)

Do Rosetta need the Boinc frontend or can it run without?

The problem with Boinc is that AmigaOS4 don't have a WxWidget port.

RWO

Yes, Rosetta@home runs only under BOINC.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

If boinc had playable games while doing the projects it would have more mainstream appeal.

Although I did not read every single post, I saw lots of ideas. I'd like to put mine in a list so it's easy to read. The list is not in any order.


1)I think having more non-Boinc tech news will encourage web visitors to join. There's a difference in visiting and finally joining. When I look at the RAH homepage, it's filled with garbledy-gook biology stuff and the News section is all about the RAH being up/down, upgrades to software, new beta-ware, etc. That's all the news you have to yap about? Where is the non-technology stuff like what RAH has accomplished, goals of the year 2008, goals of 2009? Have we solved anything yet? If I, the end user, has no idea how the project is doing, why would I sign up for it? I want to be apart of a successful project...and if the project is hitting success, I want to know about it. No news typically means that nothing has happened in the project. In RAH's case, there hasn't been any news in at least 2 years.

2)Email newsletters. They serve as a "thank you", a "reminder" (how many people you think bought a new machine and forgot to install RAH?), and an easy piece of literature for users to forward to friends and peers. The email newsletters could be something like what is discussed in #1.

3)Advertisements online. I have no idea how much this would cost but what about something on websites that relate to the RAH cause? I can't list you those sites, RAH should know them.

4)Magazines and tv...why have we NOT read or seen a single article in major communication markets like tv or magazines? Contact Discover, Time, Scientific American, National Geographic and ask to be interviewed. Contact Discovery Channel and the History Channel and get yourself mentioned on some topic (Distributed Computing, Medical science, whatever). These outlets EACH serve tens of MILLIONS of Americans...and some reach hundreds of millions worldwide. A few simple phone calls could get the attention of millions. If 100 million people read/saw something about RAH and 1% of them joined, you'd instantly have 1million new users...and then of course they would be spreading the word, adding multiple machines, etc. And that's just with 100million people initially interested. What about 200 million? 500 million?

5)What about joining forces with other Boinc projects? Basically have all the projects pool some money together, create a simple Boinc advertising campaign, and see what projects people join. There is strength in numbers. If an advertisement is going to cost $20,000 then it should not be too difficult for 20 projects to each come up with $1000 and have a generalized ad for Boinc. Even if it was only 10 projects, that's a measely $2000 per project. And what about Boinc itself? They want to be successful...and for them to be successful the Projects need to succeed. And if the Projects each have a very small percentage of donors (like RAH) then that tells Boinc some type of "awareness" about Boinc and the Projects needs to take place.

6)What about contests? There will be no prize except for recognition (or maybe a test tube full of proteins...hardy har har). Maybe things like Best Company Team, Best Educational Team, Best Individual Contributor, Most Credits Per Day. Define 'best' as whatever you want (# of credits received, # of participants, # of CPU cores, whatever). Make it fun. This way people (at least your current user base) will be enticed to tell a friend...maybe even start a team. We all know there is a large percentage of current users who are into the Stats...and a contest is just right to get them to toot their horn. :)

7)What about working a relationship with a computer manufacturer or online retailer that promotes RAH...maybe when you Check Out it states "Please join RAH in the race to find a cure...visit RAH to help solve disease".

8)What about a contest that rewards a user like in a "refer a friend" program...maybe run a contest every month for 1 year...the person that "refers" the most new users (or host machines, whatever you want) get's a free iPod Shuffle (currently $49 or $69). Throw me a bone...trying to make it a contest where people would want the prize.



So, those are my ideas...just thought of them now as I typed.

Any comments?

-Eric

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I saw LHC@Home got a mention in this mornings Astronomy Picture of the Day.

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Eric, I like your ideas except for purchasing advertising. I think the following ideas would be the most successful:

1) Members recruiting friends, family, co-workers
2) E-mail newsletter would be cost-effective ("thanks for contributing to the project. Here's what we are up to now." even if there isn't much news they could just remind folks they could use all the computing power they can get)
3) More YouTube videos talking about different aspects of the research, but still in layman's terms. (maybe we could brainstorm topics? "chemistry [predictive] vs biology [descriptive]")
4) Educational programs (getting a school to crunch would rock!)
5) Press availability, story ideas for the press (story ideas meaning, if the press can't think of a story, maybe we can think of a story for them, doing some of the work for them).

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the easiest way to get some major crunchers back would be to ensure that Rosetta is only used for stable clients running stable WUs, and to have good error handling in case of problems. The top members of my team have all quit R@H recently after the unstable client problems a month or two ago. They still watch the boards though, and I'm sure there are quite a few others outside my team that are doing the same. Some confirmation from the project to this end would probably be a very good start in enticing them back...

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the easiest way to get some major crunchers back would be to ensure that Rosetta is only used for stable clients running stable WUs, and to have good error handling in case of problems. The top members of my team have all quit R@H recently after the unstable client problems a month or two ago. They still watch the boards though, and I'm sure there are quite a few others outside my team that are doing the same. Some confirmation from the project to this end would probably be a very good start in enticing them back...

I use an older machine, but I have agree that stability and more frequent communication from the team would also attract me if I were a super computer user.
Mainly the LACK OF ANY communication outside of members and modsense is a shame.
This has been an ongoing theme in the boards forever and ever. Does anyone from the team pay attention to the boards anymore?

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EIGHTY TERA-FLOPS TODAY!!!!!

I've changed my signiture line in all of my EMail systems to try and pique people's interest:

Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

EIGHTY TERA-FLOPS TODAY!!!!!

I've changed my signiture line in all of my EMail systems to try and pique people's interest:

Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

we went from 80 to 71 in less than 24 hrs ????????????

there are a lot of demands for specific features, e.g. GPU optimised rosetta@home

an idea perhaps is for 3rd party developed rosetta@home apps that sports those features. however those apps would perhaps needs to conform to certain protocols (e.g. so that the databases works) and specific compatibility criteria

however, i'm not too sure how such apps can be accomodated in the boinc & rosetta@home framework

there are a lot of demands for specific features, e.g. GPU optimised rosetta@home

an idea perhaps is for 3rd party developed rosetta@home apps that sports those features. however those apps would perhaps needs to conform to certain protocols (e.g. so that the databases works) and specific compatibility criteria

however, i'm not too sure how such apps can be accomodated in the boinc & rosetta@home framework

I believe the Rosetta source code is available for anyone to develop as an open source project. There have been a few inquiries about it before. If you have the experience and want to try to improve on what the scientists have managed so far I am sure they will welcome your efforts...

The code is not open source. But the research done and lessons learned are published. There is a global community of researchers constantly working to improve Rosetta. It is called Rosetta Commons.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Hello

my team and I are developing an innovative approach to web-based distributed computing that is up to 6 times faster than JavaScript through using Emscripten, WebAssembly and ASM.JS

We would love to collaborate with Rosetta@home and could even handle converting the code to the needs of our platform.
However I can not find any contact to the researchers.
If anyone can help me, here or via l.langgartner@gmail.com, that would be great!

with kind regards
Lorenz