Hey Guys,

Thought you might be interested in this program as an apparently harmless way to do good on those long mileage runs we have, or when plugged in at the office. It's called Folding @ Home. Short version: Stanford U has a program that runs in the background on a PC or Mac that uses available processer time to work on complex protein formulas, hoping to develop new pharmaceuticals or understand other medical issues & diseases. When I checked into it and saw the combined names of Stanford & Google, that gave it a pretty big level of credibility for me! Not spyware or anything, just a good cause it seems. ^

So, here's the link: http://folding.stanford.edu/ This'll give you the overview, download options to the left. If you click on team statistics, you'll see the # 2 ranked team are the boys at Google, so they must know a few things about computers I think. Since we're all a competitive lot, I figured we could come up with a "Flyer Talk" team, where all of our combined computers (laptops, home pc's, office pc's) could do a world of good (no pun intended). Speaking of world, click on the map to see how everyone rates. You European's look great. Hmm, wonder if work units completed on trans-Pacific routes will start creating dots over the water!

Some basic feedback about logical questions. It hasn't caused my home or work pc's to crash or lock up - at least no more than normal... It hasn't seemed to make them move slowly or limited any normal usages of mine. Since it needs to connect to the 'net once a unit is completed, you can configure it to pause once done, etc. Hey, I"m not a rocket scientist though - maybe if you use huge CAD programs or such it will slow those down. So far, I've seen only good & no bad.


Once you download, a red gear-like icon will appear in your tray. You should have a chance to select a user name - your choice, and enter a team. The Flyer Talkers team is team #: 39124, just newly created for us if you'd like. Once underway, click the icon once to see your progress in completing the task. Right click to view statistics, and either yours or the cumulative team stats (using the above number). Let's see if we can put all our combined computing power to some greater good!! I wonder how many work units can be completed on a 30K mileage run, or on a JFK-SYD type of longhaul?!

Let me know what you think.