What does your Mac do when you're away?

[Xairbusdriver]

Since susato brought it up...

QUOTE

Team MacOSX: Folding Uses Computer's Idle Time
.......................
Team MacOSX donates their computers' extra CPU cycles (spare time) to help with some of science's toughest puzzles, in the hope of helping understand diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. According to Jean Hunter, Senior Administrator for Team MacOSX, five Mac-centric teams are in the top 100. Considering that there are over 3,500 active teams, that's pretty impressive.

Learn more about the group.
<http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/>

See more about folding on apple.com.
<http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/proteinfolding/>

[kimmer]

Been "folding" as a member of "Team MacOSX" since my *mac* arrived here in Oregon. Can't tell you how many hours because I've forgotten how to check that out.

Here's a question ... when my *mac* goes to sleep, does it stop folding?

[Xairbusdriver]

Depends on what is actually 'sleeping' I think. I have mine set to just dim/black out the screen. But the Energy Saver is set to 'sleep' the computer at "Never". However, it is also set to put the hard drive to 'sleep' when possible. That may depend on how much the Folding software uses the disk, of course.

Normally, when the computer is 'sleeping', nothing is happening. Period. Except for the little 'breathing' light! And minimal power supplied to keeping the RAM alive.

[Gregg]

I have to say that this effort sounds like it is more useful than looking for other intelligent life in far corners of the universe.

[kimmer]

QUOTE

Depends on what is actually 'sleeping' I think. I have mine set to just dim/black out the screen. But the Energy Saver is set to 'sleep' the computer at "Never". However, it is also set to put the hard drive to 'sleep' when possible. That may depend on how much the Folding software uses the disk, of course.

Thanks. I had to go double check and when I switched to Tiger my settings were changed. I've moved them back to match yours. I finally found my "acct" at the folding site and my stats were WAY down. I figure that must be due to the computer actually going to sleep, so no folding was done.

All fixed now.

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

sounds like [this effort] it is more useful

My feelings, exactly, although I did contribute some cpu cycles to SETI many years ago. I'd like to hope that Folding might make a medical difference in the world.

[Mrious_be]

Honestly....
I shut my mac down when i'm not using it (for lets say longer than an hour) cause I do believe in energy saving
Not to say that the initiative is not a good one but I feel that things like these make people consume even more energy then needed.
For me it's about the same like saying it's illegal to download software, but than schools these days just demand that you have microsoft office to type essays or whatever... which makes about 80% of the students download an office suit illegal.
I guess it's all part of our society

[Xairbusdriver]

Not sure I follow the analogy.

Requiring, even forcing, a group to use a specific item is does not require or even suggest that the group "steal" anything. I think 99% of the courses at most schools require the student have a specified selection of books. That's just part of the learning process. If the student wants to steal a book, she can.

I've yet to find or hear of a criminal ( of any stripe or rank ) who was 'forced' to break the law. It is always a personal choice, as are all other moral decisions, IMHO.

That I use more electricity than I absolutely must is true. But the same excuse could be used as I sit here right now. There's no real redeeming value in my aking this post or even reading what's here at TS. Does it help that there are absolutely no lights on in the house? Don't even have the heat/air on!

I guess we all have to draw the 'line' somewhere. Most of us use more resources than we really need to ( especially in the USA ). I applaud you for being a conservationist in the best sense of the word!

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(airbusdriver @ Oct 19 2006, 09:35 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I applaud you for being a conservationist in the best sense of the word!

Welll.... i'm not that big of a conservationist (i think i can understand the word), but i do think more about energy i guess
I guess it's a thing from the "old continent" although more and more people here don't really bother with it either.

[susato]

Kimmer, thanks for checking those energy settings!  It's not unusual that a software upgrade will reset the defaults.

Mrious be,  you're correct that Folding@Home, or any distributed computing project, consumes some electricity that would otherwise not be used. But it's not being wasted - it's contributing toward an important research project.  Conserving energy and other resources is important, not because we need to save energy for its own sake, but because we need to use it for useful, worthwhile purposes.    

I've measured the power draw of my 12" G4 iBook, which pulls about 27 watts when folding a protein; my Core Duo Mini with two proteins folding at once pulls about 37 watts.  They're really energy efficient as computers go.  And they're helping to build the knowledge needed to develop better treatments and preventions for cancer and Alzheimer's. IMHO it's a  good use for that energy.

[Parker]

is there anything for Mac OS 9?
I could put the classics to work if there is

[susato]

QUOTE(gailwin @ Oct 22 2006, 11:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

is there anything for Mac OS 9?
I could put the classics to work if there is

Sorry, OSX only - the first mac cores were introduced in 2002 when OSX was already released, and the developers never looked back.

Please do sign up your G3's and newer Macs, though - anything running at 350 MHz and faster is still capable of meeting the deadlines.  Did I see a MacBook in your collection? The Intel Macs currently fold under either the OSX folding client in Rosetta or the Windows client in Boot Camp, but a new Intel Mac client currently under development will supersede both of those when it issues.

[mastercheif]

My computer is usally seeding and downloading 100+ torrents....

[sokukodo]

I've been folding for Team Mac OS X since August, '04, and am currently in 100th place! EEEHAWWW!     Hi Susato, Nice to see you here!
As for "sleeping" my computer: I just blank the screen, but leave it running, so that I can fold 24/7. Now, where are those Tinkers?

Richard

[susato]

QUOTE(mastercheif @ Oct 22 2006, 11:40 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My computer is usally seeding and downloading 100+ torrents....

   Wow! That's a lot of bandwidth.  But what about the CPU utilization? The easiest way to check is under Activity Monitor - open the view window and click on the CPU tab, then order the processes by CPU demand.  (Sorry for the beginner-level details if you are a power user; I'm still new here and getting to know people)  I expect that Activity Monitor will show one CPU partially utilized by bittorrent, and the other one nearly idle.

F@H is CPU-intensive, but uses very little bandwidth - just a few Mb every few days for uploading and downloading work units.  That makes it a good fit with bandwidth-intensive activities like running a web server, file-sharing, or internet-mapping projects such as DIMES.

Your 2.13 GHz duallie would be a pretty good folder with the OSX client under Rosetta, a very fast folder with the Windows client under BootCamp or a Linux client under Parallels, and an absolute screamer when the native Intel core is issued.  If you want to give it a try, start here and use the advance options to start folding automatically at boot.

Research AND filesharing -   - now that's getting the most out of a computer!