UBBDev: We've seen a lot of different molecules. Which are your favorites
caffeineyellow5: My favorites were the original RAS releases. We had gone from SOD (Superoxide dismutase) which were days long to Ras which were minutes or seconds for some people. I went from SOD at one every eight days to RAS at every two hours. They were great.
Graham Eames: I don't have any particular favourites, because I'm one of the users who tends to just leave the software running in the background without paying much attention to it (as designed), except when I need to look at it to answer questions. That said, I would have to say I prefer the proteins displayed using the ribbon representations (such as Super-Oxide-Dismutase from the start of the project, and Prot-Tyr-Phosphatase from more recently), simply because they look better on your monitor.
UBBDev: A lot of our users also have LRM concerns. What type of advise do you usually offer in dealing with LRM's.
caffeineyellow5: First you have to know if it really is a LRM (or MFH) or if there is a problem with their agent. This is a big step. If it is a LRM, then it is easy. Let it run. The UD agent has come a long way on this issue. There are virtually no LRM's around anymore. The saving is so much better than before. A true LRM is a molecule (NOT AN ENTIRE WORK UNIT OR PERCENTAGE POINT) that runs longer than several hours (usually six or more hours.) My eight day SOD's would have one molecule run for two of those days. Now, people think it is LRM if the work unit goes longer than 5 hours.
Just let them run.
Graham Eames: Of course, there does arise the question of what an LRM actually is. Many users think that the term was coined to describe workunits as a whole, and complain if they get a workunit which runs for more than a day, when in fact it originates from describing one specific base molecule in the file which ran for a long time (many days at the start of the project). My usual answer though, is that if you are able, then you should just let it run. With the advent of workunit timeouts, and other changes since the start of the project, it is no longer possible to get the truly killer units of the past. As an absolute last resort, I would tell people how to dump the workunit, but I would not suggest making a habit of it. To put the issue in perspective, I have only ever come across one unit in the entire time of running the project (11 months now) which I just couldn't process on my home PC in the time it was on.
UBBDev: Tell us a little about the team you are a member of, how many members, what rankings
Graham Eames: I'm not actually a member of any team involved in the project. Initially, this was because I wasn't aware that the teams exist, and then later decided that in dealing with some things on the forums, neutrality can be an advantage. Although that said, I do assosciate with many of the larger teams who frequent the message boards.
caffeineyellow5: I started a team on the day that UD offered the teams option on 4/3/01. Naturally, the team reflects me, so it is the
King James Bible Believers after my beliefs on spiritual matters. We have 20 current members. Our ranks are 96th for results returned, 89th for CPU time and 81st for points.
UBBDev: How did you hear about UBBDev, and our UD Team?
Graham Eames: I can't honestly remember, but I think it was a mix between the link that appears at the bottom of the Who's Online page, which intrigued me, and then off course the presence of a number of the UBBDev team members around the forums. Since then, I have checked back to UBBDev (and Infopop) on occasion to search for answers to various UBB related questions which have arisen in our forums.
caffeineyellow5: The forum board web master that set up the boards (Chris Eaton) got UBB v6 WOL hack from Elliott (Borg) Brady (originally developed by Dave Downin) and put the credit to UBBDev at the bottom of the WOL screen. I clicked on it one day. When I visited, I saw that UBBDev was involved in the UD project and had started a team.
UBBDev: How many computers do you have the program running on?
Graham Eames: I started off running it on one computer, and I'm now up to running it on three.
caffeineyellow5: I have had one computer working 24x7 since January of 2001 and I have new laptop for 2 weeks now.
UBBDev: What have the top tier teams done to be so successful
caffeineyellow5: I THINK that the best thing most of the top tier teams have going for them is a built in network.
For example: Team 2ch had a very large web presence and thousands of members even before they started on the UD project. DPC (Dutch Power Cows) had a large DC presence on past projects of other companies.
Microsoft, Intel, Uni of Oxford and others had many computers already available and the project itself promoted more, non-employees to join on with them too.
Most of the others were good promoting. I got lucky and found a
power user .
Graham Eames: In general, the most sucessful teams are those who already have a community of some form, and so a means to promote the project. Hence a number of the top tier teams are either corporate teams (we have Intel, Microsft, IBM and Compaq in the top 50 to name just a few) who only need a small percentage of users to join to turn out large amounts of processing time, or they are those coming from large frequently visited technical websites who have pushed the project (so for example we have AMDzone, The Register, [H]ardOCP, and yourselves).
UBBDev: Besides running multiple machines, what are some of the things that Power Users do to maximize their results?
caffeineyellow5: I'll tell you what I do. I don't run any screen savers. I push the button on the monitor. I don't run my desktop as a web page, classic with a black backround is fine. Power saving settings are all off. Schedulers, time checkers, tasking programs, etc. are all off. I don't leave IM software running the whole time I am online (only when a meeting is planned or if I manually open it to check. Then I exit it again. Semi weekly LiveUpdate, anti-virus check, WinDoctor(scandisk) and SpeedDisk(defrag) runs.
Many also use UDMonitor to store work units for when a connection to the UD servers is not available or wanted.
Graham Eames: There are a number of things people do to maximize the results returned, the most common are:
- Running UD minimised, and looking at it as little as possible (as there is a small CPU overhead in displaying the graphics).
- Disabling the screen-saver, or using the Blank Screen option (because again there is a CPU overhead with any screen-saver).
- Disabling infrequently used StartUp tasks to free up CPU time for UD.
- Some of the most dedicated will simply dedicate an entire machine to the project, running Windows and UD only, although this is an expensive option
UBBDev: What can you tell us about the status of the project. Most of our users are probably unaware that the current sponsorship for the project is due to end in April.
Graham Eames: There really is nothing definite that I can tell you on that score, we're waiting for UD to publish a statement detailing the current progress on this project, the future of this project, and possible future projects. In purely statistical terms, we have already far exceeded the work UD were originally contracted to do, and each time the project has been expanded, so my personal feeling is that this project will continue running past April, although I obviously don't know for how long. Beyond that there are a number of options under discussion, but I don't know many details of those.
caffeineyellow5: This is still the best answer I can give.
quote:
by Andy Prince
Director, Corp. Comm.
back in late February:
As far as the Cancer Project continuing beyond April, I wish I could give you a more complete answer right now. The original plan was to run the project for one year, and we are still on track to do that. If we are able to extend the project, we will certianly make every effort to do so.
quote:
Snippits of a full text by Tim Williams
Member Services
posted in early March:
I'm still working to formalize a "current status and what's next" report for public consumption, but let me share some of the raw data with you. We have more than completed the original scope of the cancer project and we are currently rescreening some proteins against additional molecules. We may get one or two more proteins from Oxford and will add them to the project as they become available. But, with the current power provided by the UD member community, we can easily complete all the available work by May or June... The bottom line is that the UD members provide an awsome amount of processing power...but there are only a few research projects... This is not a matter of funding or sponsorship, It's...projects. And if you're wondering why we can't just keep running the cancer project and add more proteins, we are pursuing that option but we need to reach agreement with all the parties involved and that hasn't happened.
As far as the outlook for the next quarter...well it looks very busy for all of us, and that's a good thing!
UBBDev: Well thank you both very much. Hopefully the project will continue on, as all of us at UBBDev feel very strongly about helping out. If the cancer project does come to an end, hopefully there will be other projects that we can help contribute to.
