I just wanted to say thank you for the great communication that you seem to be giving your participants here. It seems that you stay in the forums and chat well, and keep people up to date and let people know what is going on!

I originally started working on medically related distributed computing with the Fight AIDS @ Home project before Scripps "aquired" it from it's previous owner. Scripps has really kindof abandoned that project, and when Predictor @ Home started, I figured that maybe that's where they would be interested in REALLY working. I gave it a chance, and as it was really the only medical related BOINC project at the time, I devoted 90% of my crunching network to it.

As time passed, communication became less and less, and now it's to the point where you don't even know what work they are really working on anymore. I have several friends in the BioTech/Pharmaceutical Field, working for Boehringer Ingelheim, Phillip Morris, Abbott, Bayer, Bristol Meyers Squibb, and Johnson and Johnson to name a few of the major players. Most of them are in the research field, one being a lead virologist working on potential HIV drugs/vaccines. Their general collective opinion on Scripps has been that "their fingers are in too many pots." and it's no wonder that their projects look abandoned.

I'm not sure what this means, and I don't really like politics. What I do know, is that as a contributor, I like to know what the hell is going on in a project I am spending time (yes, there is time, and effort involved, even though the program is automatic) working on, and letting my computers crunch for. When I heard of Rosetta, sadly, AFTER the beta period ended (I've been beta/alpha at S@H for years, since BOINC version 0.09!), I decided that I would at least attach my computers and JUST check things out to see if maybe this project would be "better" than Predictor @ Home. I put my computers on here with a resource share of "10", while SETI, Predictor, LHC, and Einstein got 100, 700, 200, and 100 respectively.

What I have seen is some stellar communication between administration and contributors. What this means to me is that the contributors really care about their project and the community that is involved in it. I will be changing my resource committments around, and I believe that Rosetta will be getting the lionshare of my computers resources. Please don't stop chatting with us on the boards or posting announcements on the start page. If anything, do it as much as possible, even if it's just to say "Hi, I went to the dentist today" or anything.

Now, I know I don't have a giant farm of computers, but I do manage to place myself in the top 5000 worldwide combined project statistics, and even so - that probably isn't much to brag about. However, if I feel this way about this project then surely others will also. Thanks.

P.S. - Is there any chance I could ask a couple questions?

1. Are you working on any HIV related research?

2. What areas do you specifically target? (I know that the knowledge learned here could help any NUMBER of disease or viral causes, but which ones do you specifically target, if any)

3. Is there any chance that we could get an explanation of each group of studies that we perform, and what we're looking at in common english? (I.E. not using Scientific Jargon)

4. What's your opinion on the Stanford Paper on using the new ATI GPU's (the x1800 series) to offload FLOP calculations to the GPU? Stanford claimed that it's rather easy to implement, and results in 5-30 times the crunching performance of the fastest available Pentium 4 3.73Ghz Extreme Edition Processor. Have you seen this work, and do you think you would be able to use it here?

and.... P.P.S. - After posting this message I just reduced my resource share at predictor to 10, and here @ Rosetta I moved it from 10 up to 500.

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1. Are you working on any HIV related research?

Well, I don't know if it is a secret or not but I'll tell you that we've joined a large collaborative effort for a multi-year research effort on HIV. Our group will be doing large scale studies, designing and testing things, prior to the experimentalist hitting the lab bench. You'll have to ask DB and/or the scientists for more details on this or the other questions...

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I just wanted to say thank you for the great communication that you seem to be giving your participants here. It seems that you stay in the forums and chat well, and keep people up to date and let people know what is going on!

As someone who is slowly transitioning from Find-a-Drug to Rosetta, can I add my voice to Aaron's. Keith Davis was always present on the F-a-D boards, and the communications we had with him really made for a great project. F-a-D will never get a prize for the largest DC project, but I'd be willing to bet it'd be one of the front runners for highest loyalty.

I firmly believe that staying around the forums, talking to us and explaining what's going on will be the number one thing you can do to help retain people.

I won't mention any names, but there are other DC projects that appear to have atrophied away simply because of lack of communication from the project management.

So far, it's been outstanding here. David's comment and subsequent explanation about the breakthrough, the "Graphics" thread where Jack Schonbrun is tantalizing us, etc. etc. This is the stuff on which a DC project community is built. Please don't ever let that slip away.

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as posted on the DCzone boards

Rosetta@home

scroll down to post #19

excuse me for being dense, but could you clarify this? does this mean that the whole rosetta project is going to be transferred to WCG? if so, what's the time frame?

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as posted on the DCzone boards

Rosetta@home

scroll down to post #19

excuse me for being dense, but could you clarify this? does this mean that the whole rosetta project is going to be transferred to WCG? if so, what's the time frame?

someone from BakerLab please correct me if I'm wrong ...

Rosetta@Home and Rosetta are different things. Well ... not completely ofcourse, the Rosetta algoritmes and methods are being tested and perfectioned by (amongst others) Rosetta@Home.
They're also being used in Robetta. And eventually, they will be used in the WCG effort.

Nothing wrong with that, on the contrary, it's very good news :-)
So even if Rosetta is implemented to the WCG effort, Rosetta@Home will continue to improve the methods and also do some actual work.

excuse me for being dense, but could you clarify this? does this mean that the whole rosetta project is going to be transferred to WCG? if so, what's the time frame?

This made me raise an eyebrow so here's the post from David on the DCforums if anyone was wondering: "WCG is doing production level calculations with a previous version of Rosetta, while rosetta@home seeks to develop better methods. currently we are in the process of transfering our current improved version of rosetta to WCG to be used in the next round of the Human Proteome project. I am more directly involved in rosetta@home because my main interest is in improving the underlying computational methods."

Vavega, what that means is that the two project share code/binaries, NOT that Boinc Rosetta will be transferred to WCG. Imagine two pens for 2 different piles of paper. They are both pens and papers, but what's written on them is different - so the work is different. (anybody correct me if I'm wrong, of course).

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To add to what Stephan T said:

I can write a program, call it Rosetta ...

2,000 projects can all use this program and yet all be doing different work.

One could be using it to look at protein action with cancer, another with AIDS, another on how to infect BOINC participants ... um, well, maybe not that ...

But, the "same" computations need to be done for all of these efforts ...

I am not sure if this analogy will work well, but, when I worked on the Over-The-Horizon Backscatter radar (based in Maine) we "threw away" the "doppler notch" signal as it was of no use to us ... it was the huge amount of energy "bounced" off of the ocean ... not at all useful in tracking airplanes ... so, we "tossed" it ...

A scientist came along and HE threw away the aircraft doppler information and used the sea return to look for proto-hurricanes ... the winds would start to cause waves to move in a circular pattern before the clouds even started to form ...

Same program to collect the data, same hardware, two completely different outcomes.

Like BOINC, 20 projects "share" the expense of developing the system ... all projects benefit ...

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thank you coldrain, stephan, and paul for the clarifications! i believe i understand the differences now, it's a little confusing when people use the term rosetta to describe the software and this project. i wanted that explanation of the differences out where it can easily be referenced, as there are bunches of us that will not run anything on our machines if we even get a hint that it is associated with ud.

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i wanted that explanation of the differences out where it can easily be referenced, as there are bunches of us that will not run anything on our machines if we even get a hint that it is associated with ud.

Hi,V.... I was wondering why (for my own information only) ud is a problem. For profit only, possibly? Just curious, thanks, Rog (and welcome to R@H:)

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i wanted that explanation of the differences out where it can easily be referenced, as there are bunches of us that will not run anything on our machines if we even get a hint that it is associated with ud.

Hi,V.... I was wondering why (for my own information only) ud is a problem. For profit only, possibly? Just curious, thanks, Rog (and welcome to R@H:)

Do you know what really bugs me the most at the moment its people who don't read project web pages to find out about a particular project. WCG state they use an app called Rosetta to work their WU's.

Its in black and white on their pages and not hard to find

Please read things 1st before jumping to conclusions

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as posted on the DCzone boards

Rosetta@home

scroll down to post #19

excuse me for being dense, but could you clarify this? does this mean that the whole rosetta project is going to be transferred to WCG? if so, what's the time frame?

I'll throw this is since I know that DB is traveling and DK is trying to spend some time w/ his wife and young son (he's been working very hard lately).

The R@H project is an extension of the research effort taking place in David Baker's laboratory at the University of Washington (see http://www.bakerlab.org). This project will continue on into the forseeable (read distant) future as we look at R@H as an integral part of the Baker Lab.

There is no plan to collapse this project into any other effort out there.

WCG's work on the Human Genome is being under taken by Rich Bonneau of the Institute of Systems Biology (see http://www.systemsbiology.org). Rich was a graduate student in DB's lab and is a collaborator with the lab now. His efforts on the WCG are largely his own (he works some with a fellow also in our lab and others at the ISB) and, as I understand it, he has modified a somewhat older version of the Rosetta algorithm to address his interests. I gather that he is going to be incorporating some the more recent improvements into his studies of the Human Genome, but he's working on his own thing - much like other Rosetta collaborators that have been members of the group in the past.

In fact, there is a group of developers (they've started to develop a project management site, http://www.rosettacommons.org/, althrough I don't think much is posted there yet) from around the world that work on developing Rosetta and applying it to all sorts of different problems. Most of these are former members of the group that have their own groups now. The group gets together once a year to review things and hash out issues associated with the code, the methods and the applications. It's quite a production, really.

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nowhere did i jump, i asked for clarification
thanks for the help halifax......when i run into someone who does want to jump, i can point them to this thread to help pull them back from the edge of the cliff.

thanks for the welcome rog, :) the problem with ud is not only the for profit aspect of it, it's also their support board, and how they treat their volunteers, the outages they had, problems like that with little communication as to what was going on. not everyone is a pc expert in either hardware or software, so it's nice to know you are at a place with lots of helpful people.

as posted by aaron finney

I just wanted to say thank you for the great communication that you seem to be giving your participants here. It seems that you stay in the forums and chat well, and keep people up to date and let people know what is going on!

david baker's personal dedication and communication is what got a lot of us here, it's his and the other's listed above continued involvment that will keep us here.

sorry kel, almost forgot you.......can't you get a "preview" function on this board?

thank you for your input too!

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.......Please read things 1st before jumping to conclusions[/quote]

Hey Halifax, the only one jumping to conclusions, my friend, is you! I have contributed to both projects and am well aware of the differences between them.....my question was directed to'V'as he and his friends have issues with ud and I was curious. Reread the message....it wasn't me who asked the original question. It really bugs me when people don't read properly and then flame others.

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Thanks for the timely answer vavega.....I was curious as I contributed to WCG until Feb 05 and ud were involved with that project. As for questions asked on these MBs, almost all I have seen are answered in a courteous manner(as it should be)and communication is the name of the game. It's too bad that some people don't get it.

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Thanks, Kel, for this very informative response! :)

I hope DK gets some downtime with his family--he certainly deserves it! :)

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Regards,
Bob P.

as there are bunches of us that will not run anything on our machines if we even get a hint that it is associated with ud.

Myself included. I would never put any WCG or UD project/software on any of my machines.

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i wanted that explanation of the differences out where it can easily be referenced, as there are bunches of us that will not run anything on our machines if we even get a hint that it is associated with ud.

Hi,V.... I was wondering why (for my own information only) ud is a problem. For profit only, possibly? Just curious, thanks, Rog (and welcome to R@H:)

Do you know what really bugs me the most at the moment its people who don't read project web pages to find out about a particular project. WCG state they use an app called Rosetta to work their WU's.

Its in black and white on their pages and not hard to find

Please read things 1st before jumping to conclusions

Based on your comments in various threads one concludes that a lot of things bug you. Can't everybody be as perfect as you but we're trying.

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If people just took the time to read things a little more closely then things become clearer such as the Rosetta issue with WCG it simply been a process used in there WU's which is explained in their pages.

It is quite clear from the descriptions of the projects that the projects are independant of each other and are running by two seperature organisations.

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thank you coldrain, stephan, and paul for the clarifications! i believe i understand the differences now, it's a little confusing when people use the term rosetta to describe the software and this project. i wanted that explanation of the differences out where it can easily be referenced, as there are bunches of us that will not run anything on our machines if we even get a hint that it is associated with ud.

You are welcome ...

AT THE MOMENT, if it is BOINC it is *NOT* UD. This may change in the future as BOINC *IS* open for all to use, so this may change in the future (I hope not). Not having used UD I am taken aback with the bad feelings that they seem to have created, but I can understand ...

Only time will tell about Rosetta@Home and others. Almost all of the projects started out with extensive communitcation with the participant base with a tapering off to the point where you will only see one or two notes a week from someone attached to the project.

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I suppose it also depends on how many users there are and the volume of messages posted. SETI don't seem to be able to keep up with the message boards which is a shame as it would benefit them if they did.

Carry on the good work

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