I think we need to abandon oil and move on to something else like Hydrogen as oil fields get depleted and it is bad for CO2 emmissions.

Actually it has been read by almost 180.

I just read your very nice "How-To: Join Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity" page http://www.hyper.net/dc-howto.html. I noticed that it mentioned "Comments about F@H in Wikipedia suggest that due to recent developments, "Folding@Home approach has become somewhat obsolete"(?). My own measure of useful results would be citations (see later)."
I saw that Wikipedia was adjusted to correct(?) that statement (that was restated in the discussion page). I'm not sure where that statement originated from (no sources listed) and it seemed to be more of a random opinion (I did a quick google search and didn't find anything like that)...

Forbes: Oil Bust Will Dwarf Dot-Com; $35 Oil
Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, predicts that skyrocketing oil prices are just temporary -- and a massive price collapse will dwarf the Dot-Com crash that began in 2000.

In Sydney, Australia this week for a global conference of CEOs, the respected financial editor said the that the price of oil has inflated into an unsustainable and speculative market bubble - and he says that when this bursts, it will make the Dot-Com crash "look like a picnic."

The paper quotes Forbes as saying that the price of oil (which rose above $70 this week) had been inflated by speculators and would soon begin a rapid slide.

"While there is a lot of talk in my country, the U.S., about the housing bubble, I think the real bubble, to be blunt, is in the price of oil," he said.

"It's a huge bubble. I don't know what's going to pop it, but eventually it will pop. The price has to be bought down to earth, and when it does there's going to be a lot of yelping from the hedge fund managers."

Forbes said that speculation on oil hitting $100 a barrel was misplaced.

"(But) if it does, the crash is going to be even more spectacular and will make the tech bubble look like a picnic," he said.

He also believes that the price of oil will decline significantly in 2006.

"I'll make a bold prediction: I think in 12 months, you're going to see oil down to $35, $40 a barrel," Forbes said. "In the meantime, it's a huge drain, more a psychological drain (on the economy), but it's not forever. This thing is not going to last."

Forbes blames the oil price spike on rising inflation and aggressive buying on the part of burgeoning Pacific Rim countries.

"China and India are buying more of the stuff. As the global economy expands, more energy will be consumed," he said.

"But if you look at the price of oil three years ago, it was $20 or $25 a barrel. Supply and demand might have shot it up to $30, $35 a barrel. The rest of it is inflation."

Forbes spoke to The Australian just as news was drifting in regarding the damage sustained to the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Industry observers say that energy companies such as BP, Chevron and Shell have been forced to shut down offshore platforms, which account for 25% of U.S. domestic oil and gas output.

If your PC's hardware is stable, it's a good idea to increase default WU runtime even if you have fast Internet, to use longer WU runtimes (I use 8hr WU runtimes, i.e. each 24/7 PC would finish 3 WUs per day).

If I understand this correct, the longer WU runtimes, the better it is for the project?

If this is the case, I will adapt this setting to the max. But why isn't it like this then by default?

Also, any special settings as far as when it turns on that you would recommend for a school environment? because the pcs stay on the login screen most of the day.

Basically the "standard" BOINC v5.2.13 binary for Linux from Berkeley University is compiled in a way that its benchmark reports roughly HALF the speed (in FLOPS), than the BOINC v5.2.13 binary for Windows, running on the very same hardware.

The science apps (Rosetta, SETI, simap etc) doing the "real" work, might actually be doing MORE work per hour on the same PC under Linux than under Windows, since the OS itself is more efficient.

The solution to get similar credits using Linux, is to use an alternate BOINC client.

Recent progress in the BOINC world is towards awarding credits based on real work done (which I expect to upset some people accustomed to ultra-high benchmarks fitting in L2 cache, as in the case of real science apps accessing memory, often 3GHz and 2GHz PCs might actually doing roughly the same amount of real work per unit of time).

Big help over at CNN, atleast a couple hundred thousand pass thru's a day...