Many years ago, I joined SETI@home and crunched Workunits for them because I figured I could use all those wasted CPU cycles for something "useful". At first, I was only on a 56k modem, downloading a few WUs, crunching them, then uploading them again the next day or next time I went online. Back then, the CPU power wasn't really impressive, but I did it anyway.

Over time, I got better computers, flatrate DSL, and also let my computer run alot more often. The workunits for S@H increased in numbers, but then came 2004 and Bush was re-elected.

I was completely disillusioned then. Why waste my time helping people search for intelligence on other stars and planets if there's obviously not even intelligence on this waste dump called Earth. If the supposedly "best" country in the world is dumb enough to vote for such an idiot TWICE, there surely can't be more vacuum out there than there is in the american people's heads.

So I canceled the current WU, uninstalled S@H, and forgot about it. But I also forgot to remove my e-mail address from the S@H newsletter, and eventually in late 2006, I received a message from them, asking for financial help. Of course I had no intention to send any money, or crunch for S@H again, as my opinion (and pretty much everybody else's) about the US "intelligence" kept on falling and falling the more they screwed up.

But it made me think again. By now, I had again a better computer which was also sound-proofed, so I could let it run 24/7 for various reasons, despite it being in my bedroom. I searched around a bit, found out about BOINC, and came across Rosetta@home. I liked the idea of helping to find cures for diseases a lot more than S@H's, and joined on December 3rd 2006.

By now, I've crunched quite a few WUs. I don't even know how many exactly (S@H at least gave you a specific number...), but my Total Credit is around 79k. I guess for some that's rather laughable, but hey, it's the best I can give you guys with my old single-core CPU.

But what exactly is my point you ask, right? Well, it's quite simple. Yes, it says "Total Credit" on the profile page, but what kind of real credit do we, the crunchers, actually get??

SETI@home might be a useless application, but at least it honored its members by giving them small goals. You received some sort of "diploma" for your first 100 WUs, then 250, then 1000, etc. You could be all geeky, print them out and put them on the wall next to you.

But what does Rosetta@home do? Nothing it seems. No automated Thank You e-mails, no diplomas, not even a friggin gold star next to your name for whatever reason. We crunchers dedicate all those CPU cycles and receive nothing in return. Where are the RL results? Where are the cures? Where is our deserved appreciation?

My computer with its single-core CPU and outdated GF6800 can't keep up anymore with the latest games and applications, so I might upgrade again in the near future. But I'm seriously wondering if I should also re-install BOINC and Rosetta@home again because I'm almost as disillusioned again as I was back in 2004. Another 4-8 years of republican warmongering with McCain (certainly there will never be a woman or a black guy in the White House), and I might even join Al-Qaeda and blow up the local US embassy! :P

(I'm kidding, geez! Back off, you damn NSA agents...)

So, Mr. Baker, or whoever's in charge of Rosetta@home, what will you do to show a little "luv" with the people without whom your little project would be nothing? We live in a selfish world (you americans should know that best), and this guy is tired of just giving.

Let's hear it.

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Many years ago, I joined SETI@home and crunched Workunits for them because I figured I could use all those wasted CPU cycles for something "useful". At first, I was only on a 56k modem, downloading a few WUs, crunching them, then uploading them again the next day or next time I went online. Back then, the CPU power wasn't really impressive, but I did it anyway.

Over time, I got better computers, flatrate DSL, and also let my computer run alot more often. The workunits for S@H increased in numbers, but then came 2004 and Bush was re-elected.

I was completely disillusioned then. Why waste my time helping people search for intelligence on other stars and planets if there's obviously not even intelligence on this waste dump called Earth. If the supposedly "best" country in the world is dumb enough to vote for such an idiot TWICE, there surely can't be more vacuum out there than there is in the american people's heads.

So I canceled the current WU, uninstalled S@H, and forgot about it. But I also forgot to remove my e-mail address from the S@H newsletter, and eventually in late 2006, I received a message from them, asking for financial help. Of course I had no intention to send any money, or crunch for S@H again, as my opinion (and pretty much everybody else's) about the US "intelligence" kept on falling and falling the more they screwed up.

But it made me think again. By now, I had again a better computer which was also sound-proofed, so I could let it run 24/7 for various reasons, despite it being in my bedroom. I searched around a bit, found out about BOINC, and came across Rosetta@home. I liked the idea of helping to find cures for diseases a lot more than S@H's, and joined on December 3rd 2006.

By now, I've crunched quite a few WUs. I don't even know how many exactly (S@H at least gave you a specific number...), but my Total Credit is around 79k. I guess for some that's rather laughable, but hey, it's the best I can give you guys with my old single-core CPU.

But what exactly is my point you ask, right? Well, it's quite simple. Yes, it says "Total Credit" on the profile page, but what kind of real credit do we, the crunchers, actually get??

SETI@home might be a useless application, but at least it honored its members by giving them small goals. You received some sort of "diploma" for your first 100 WUs, then 250, then 1000, etc. You could be all geeky, print them out and put them on the wall next to you.

But what does Rosetta@home do? Nothing it seems. No automated Thank You e-mails, no diplomas, not even a friggin gold star next to your name for whatever reason. We crunchers dedicate all those CPU cycles and receive nothing in return. Where are the RL results? Where are the cures? Where is our deserved appreciation?

My computer with its single-core CPU and outdated GF6800 can't keep up anymore with the latest games and applications, so I might upgrade again in the near future. But I'm seriously wondering if I should also re-install BOINC and Rosetta@home again because I'm almost as disillusioned again as I was back in 2004. Another 4-8 years of republican warmongering with McCain (certainly there will never be a woman or a black guy in the White House), and I might even join Al-Qaeda and blow up the local US embassy! :P

(I'm kidding, geez! Back off, you damn NSA agents...)

So, Mr. Baker, or whoever's in charge of Rosetta@home, what will you do to show a little "luv" with the people without whom your little project would be nothing? We live in a selfish world (you americans should know that best), and this guy is tired of just giving.

Let's hear it.

Wow - my first reaction is to switch to decaf :-)

It would be nice to get some token of appreciation from the project but that is not why I crunch R@H. I built 2 Quad Core systems just for R@H. I am watching the news right now and the story is about children with cancer. If R@H can protect just 1 child from cancer in the future, it is worth all the time and money.

Redirect your passion from politics to science. R@H could be our greatest contribution to society. It could also prove to be a total waste of time...

If you have a PS3, you can use it to participate in Folding at Home.

I plan to add 1 system each month to protein folding projects. The PS3 is the best bang for the buck so in March I will likely get a second PS3. Past that, the Intel Q9450s are looking really good.

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Thx!

Paul

@Nidhogg: There's this little thing called CASP where, despite my disdain for the Project Team, I have to admit that you can see they have some impressive "RL results"

We crunchers dedicate all those CPU cycles and receive nothing in return. Where are the RL results? Where are the cures? Where is our deserved appreciation?

@Paul: I'm with you buddy. Got a Q6600 quadcore, and two PS3's, among others. Also looking at the 9450's (already have water-cooled case, psu, ram, etc. - just need the cpu and mobo) and some more PS3's.

If you have a PS3, you can use it to participate in Folding at Home.

I plan to add 1 system each month to protein folding projects. The PS3 is the best bang for the buck so in March I will likely get a second PS3. Past that, the Intel Q9450s are looking really good.

{...}
But what exactly is my point you ask, right? {...}
{emphasis added}

I've read your post at least four times, and I'm still wondering.

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Rosie, Rosie, she's our gal,
If she can't do it, no one shall!

I'm one of those who has their home computer on periodically, and its CPU isn't doing much when it is on, so it's nice to give it something to do that's beneficial for the greater good.

My work computer crunches for Primegrid and they've started having a Certificate of Computation that's accessible from the Your Account page. It's nothing major, but it looks good enough for the geeks to print out and put up on their wall. It has PG's logo, the user name, and the project's head person (in RH's case, David Baker). It's always up-to-date and it's a separate webpage (versus a pdf or jpeg).

The "certificate" says, "This certifies that [User] has participated in PrimeGrid since [date], and has contributed #### Cobblestones of computation (### quadrillion floating-point operations) to PrimeGrid. The participant also helped to discover: Generalized Cullen/Woodall Sieve factors: # Prime Sierpinski Project Sieve factors: #"

Rosetta could have, instead of factors and primes, the second part of the "certificate" to have low energies or something like that.

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My work computer crunches for Primegrid and they've started having a Certificate of Computation that's accessible from the Your Account page. It's nothing major, but it looks good enough for the geeks to print out and put up on their wall. It has PG's logo, the user name, and the project's head person (in RH's case, David Baker). It's always up-to-date and it's a separate webpage (versus a pdf or jpeg).

The "certificate" says, "This certifies that [User] has participated in PrimeGrid since [date], and has contributed #### Cobblestones of computation (### quadrillion floating-point operations) to PrimeGrid. The participant also helped to discover: Generalized Cullen/Woodall Sieve factors: # Prime Sierpinski Project Sieve factors: #"

Rosetta could have, instead of factors and primes, the second part of the "certificate" to have low energies or something like that.

The default BOINC path to a personal certificate is (in Rosetta@home's case) Certificate of Computation. It shows the correctly filled skeleton, but lacks any project-related features.

The Rosetta stuff would just need to upload some geeky ;-) protein images, note the project head's name (should not take longer than two coffee breaks) and possibly add the list of lowest energies found so far. Additionally link it from the front page or from the Your account page.

Peter

Nidhogg,

You are making a donation. Donating is supposed to be a selfless act, yet you want everyone to pat you on the back?

I think you are getting a little overly anxious. You know that you are crunching 24/7 for a project, what more do you need?

If you are looking for stats, because you are fascinated by how the numbers change, search for "boinc bam", then you can find your user name or e-mail or whatnot. I don't think it tracks WUs though.



Paul,

Yeah PS3 is currently the best bang for the buck with the least setup time. However, per dollar spent (equipment and power costs), crunching F@H with a ATI x1950 is TWICE as powerful. All you need is 16x PCIe and a CPU core that is not utilized for anything (the GPU ties up a CPU core), the CPU does not need to be powerful. GPU folding is more finicky and requires a little more monitoring though.

Anyways, I appreciate what you are doing and the commitment you've made. I intend to spend 5% of my paycheck on crunching/folding machines. I'm waiting for a F@H client that can utilize the ATI R2XXX and R3XXX GPUs. I am running 2 GPUs (and have 1 GPU collecting dust) for F@H and various CPUs running R@H.

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I can set up the boinc certificate. I'll put that on my list of things to do.

We do acknowledge users whose models were used in publications.

...But what does Rosetta@home do? Nothing it seems. No automated Thank You e-mails, no diplomas, not even a friggin gold star next to your name for whatever reason. We crunchers dedicate all those CPU cycles and receive nothing in return. Where are the RL results? Where are the cures? Where is our deserved appreciation?

I do agree with you in that a Certificate would be nice...simply for me to tack on the wall. But that's not at the top of my priority list for complaints to RAH.

Nidhogg, you are dead-on about the other "giving back" points like updates, results, news topics, etc.

What tops my "complaints list" to RAH is simply the lack of NORMAL, LAYMEN terminology on the homepage about what the project has accomplished, what very near term goals are to be accomplished, what goals in the next 12 months are to be accomplished, lists of recent trade magazines/articles/tv shows that talk/promote RAH. All in plain old English. Stuff a 12-year old would understand.

In short, RAH doesn't seem to be doing much in the "giving back" field. No, I am not looking for pats on the back or a free candy bar. But I darn well expect to be given updates and information on how my donation is helping.

How hard is it for RAH to update the webpage every few days or weeks with some News? All the "News" is always about technical junk like the servers being up/down or a new version of Boinc or a new version of RAH. That should be titled "Tech News". I (and I'm sure many others) want news that matters to the project as seen as the Big Picture. Where are the email updates every 6-12 months? None. Thanks a lot.

The News page located at:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_articles.php

is all 2+ years old! Worse, RAH can't even take the 5 seconds to put a date stamp next to the article so I can figure out if it's even recent. Come on, this is pure laziness.

I, as Nidhogg, am frustrated with the lack of "giving back" by RAH. I love the project, but am very disappointed with the overall reporting back to us.

-Eric

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Eric makes a valid point. It is hard to get my wife to let me spend $500 per month on R@H hardware when I can't even tell her how the project has helped people thus far. I expected her to find R@H research exciting because her mom died of ALS. ALS is clearly linked to protein folding problems but her first question was "what has the project accomplished to date?" I have no response.

Have any of the results been used for a single treatment of a disease? I understand some of the research has been used for pharmaceuticals but these products have not hit the market.

It would be nice to have a top 10 list of the top 10 ways this research has been used. I would hope that by now, the list would change at least once each month.

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Thx!

Paul

Can deduct the cost of hardware, software or electricity used to donate time to R@H?

Does anyone know the tax rules on this one?

thx

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Thx!

Paul

Paul, I won't try to tackle the tax implications, especially globally, but I think the point about progress is that even if no specific disease has been cured, progress is being made of ALL of them. The Baker team is the best in the world. They've proven this in an independantly judged comparision of their techniques called CASP. It shows they've learned more about how proteins work then any of the more then 252 other teams of researchers. It also shows there is more to learn. But the whole idea here is that once you reach a certain point, and understand how proteins work... then you have reached the point that the medical and pharmacuetical communities can apply their existing techniques to curing amd vaccinating for most any viral disease, and a host of other gentically linked diseases as well. So progress will not be measured one malidy at a time.

To date, drug candidates have been sent for [https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=4905&nowrap=true#40756]further study on AIDS[/url], and the program is being used to complement the existing (slow and expensive) techniques that scientists use to solve protein structures.

This may still sound rather vague, but the Gates Foundation (Bill Gates), decided to fund HIV research to the tune of over a quarter of a BILLION dollars. And they certainly spent considerable time deciding which research teams were worthy investments of that money. They chose Dr. Baker's team to collaborate with 15 other research teams around the world.

There is a protein on the surface of the AIDS virus cells called GP120. Work units studying that protein were processed and resulted in the submission of HIV drug candidates, but I've been unable to find a good link to the original post.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Can deduct the cost of hardware, software or electricity used to donate time to R@H?
Does anyone know the tax rules on this one?
thx

Until the Boinc Admins, meaning the big muckity mucks, probably not each Projects Admins, decide how much each cobblestone is worth, nothing is probably deductible. BUT if the main Admins would sit down and figure out how much it would cost to calculate one cobblestone on a super computer, an average would be fine, then they could let us deduct that amount. Each of us could deduct that number times the number of cobblestones each of us crunches in one year. The problem is that each Project would have to then be responsible to each Countries Tax People as far as being able to say 'yes x person was granted y cobblestones in z year', if asked. In the US that would need to be kept for 3 to 7 years, 3 for home users, 7 for businesses. Other Countries each have their own sets of rules and Boinc is International in scope, so it would be another stats database requirement. Far from difficult, each super computer probably already has a basic idea of what they are going to charge for using their computers, but one would have to ask and then calculate and then tell us users. In the US each Project may even have to declare that as income, I don't know, but that may be another hurdle. Tax Laws are very complicated and until Boinc helps its Users out in this regard, we Users are pretty much stuck with non deductible donations.

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In the US, I think the IRS might have a different opinion...

you can't tax deduct 'crunching for science'.

Anyways, Paul this is kinda what I said to another person who knew about proteins... Chemistry is a predictive science, you have chemicals that go into a reaction and you can precisely measure and know exactly what will result from the reaction. Biology is currently a descriptive science because of all the complexities. It is widely believed that with enough computer power and research into proteins, etc, that biology could become a predictive science. There is not going to be a major breakthrough until enough computer power is tackling the problem or the computers have had enough time working on a problem. It is also widely believed that many diseases are the result of proteins "misbehaving" and if proteins can be studied enough then we could have a breakthrough with a disease.

A year ago, Rosetta@Home had about 35 teraflops of computing power, it now has over 63 teraflops of computing power.

As far as what the project has done to date (besides what Mod.Sense states), it almost sounds like a trust issue. Some people look at trust as far as, "You have to show me that you are trustworthy before I can trust you." This is bringing an energy of "mistrust" to the situation by forcing people to PROVE they are trustworthy. If she were a trusting person, she might be more receptive (instead of challenging you) and trust your judgment. Or, maybe she just wants to know more and you could tell her about the diseases R@H is working on or swing her over to select parts of the website/articles.

Sorry about the tangent, people who withhold their trust still think they are trusting people. There is a difference between making people prove trustworthiness and simply being a trusting person (but not being stupid about it). The thing is that people sense when you are a "prove it" person and it affects the energy you bring to people when you interact with them.


I think people also get impatient about giving some times. They want results now. What if your wife gave to women's shelters but their clients continued to grow or continued to be abused. Or what if she simply proposed it and you replied, "What makes them special compared to all the other women's shelters out there?" Seems like a crappy attitude to take.

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Oh yeah, the YouTube video is a cool start, but maybe it was just more powerful for me because I already understood the project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzATbET3g54

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What Rosetta mainly studies (as far as I understand) is the 3D shape that proteins take when they fold. Besides using expensive crystalline x-ray photography (and possibly computer simulations), it is not known what exact shapes that proteins take in nature. Nor is it known how proteins interact exactly. With enough computational power we can gain this knowledge and produce drugs to treat diseases with much greater ease AND speed.

Otherwise, scientists are swimming in the dark.

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