Ask Emily: 01-27-2003

Hello Sigmund,Well, I've never really been a big fan of those programs such as FoldingAtHome or SETI @ Home that use your computer's spare processor cycles to achieve their own convoluted and vaguely scientific ends, but I can tell that you and I are of a different mind concerning this. My main problem is just that it tends to burn out my processor a lot more quickly than it otherwise would be burned out, and as I don't have a lot of money and can't afford a new computer at this point, I'd just as soon have my machine only doing things for me and resting like a fat and bloated slug at all other times. If I burn it out by connecting to Battle.net over and over again, that's my business, but let those fags get their own protein-folding software and do it themselves, goddammit. They have the money to do so. The processor thing and the fact that they are really fucking annoying because they pop up all of the damn time and won't go the fuck away in a timely fashion are reason enough for me to not care about using them.That being said, I think that you are taking this whole thing way too seriously. I understand that there is an element of competition involved in the FoldingAtHome rankings, but additionally, I think that this program was designed to be more of a screensaver than something you should spend your time worrying about, and it isn't good for you to stress out about it in the manner you are doing so. Use FoldingAtHome in the same way that it uses your computer: run it in the background when your machines aren't doing anything else and then forget about it when you are. You should not even be devoting a minute of time from your life to worrying about your ranking among other people who run some screen saver for these sciencey folks. What a waste of effort and energy. You could be doing so much with your time, but instead you are plotting ways to hook up more machines to FoldingAtHome. That's just bad news, my friend.You obviously care about running this thing, so by all means, continue to do so. But don't risk trouble with your employer by using computers that you are not supposed to be using to those ends. Don't spend time worrying about whether you will ever be OMG NUMBER ONE on the list of one group of people who all run the same screen saver. I guarantee you that the only people who care about those rankings are the people who are ranked. Some of those people probably don't even care. It's a contrived thing that means absolutely nothing on the large scale of things, and a good way to see this is to think about whether anyone will remember in five years who was number one on the SA FoldingAtHome team. Most likely, as above, only the people on the list will even remember or care, but hopefully they will have moved on by then. Get a life, man!

Good luck breaking away from FoldingAtHome's addictive strangle-hold of doom...