Like Winning a Good-Cause Lottery

Spyderbyte | 5/06/2008 7:34 am | Game On

Progress for me continues through the haunted halls of Persona 3:FES, but my past week and weekend have also pulled me away from my PS3 more times than I would wish. A normal course of action when so-called real life ensues would be to shut down my system until I can play again.

Normal is so boring.

No, this rebel likes to leave his PS3 on sometimes while he's out bringing home the proverbial bacon or sawing the proverbial logs. Why? I think it's for a Good Cause.

Enter Folding@Home - a program that comes pre-installed on PS3s. This little program sets the processor to work on crunching data for Stanford University while I'm not roaming the halls of Gekkoukan High. Doing what, you ask? Folding proteins, I respond.

Say what?

The study of protein folding is executed to study diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's in the hopes of gaining knowledge which may be used against all of them in the future. The concept of Folding@Home is to use not just my PS3, but all the PS3s in the world to process these work units and submit them back to Stanford for further analysis. And the fun needn't be halted just because one does not own a PS3. Free clients are available for your OS of choice, too. Let your laptop or PC crunch some data between (or during if you've got the power) World of Warcraft raids.

So where does the winning come in while we wait for our machines to help unlock the cure for cancer? Well, much of this has to do with the way Stanford awards recognition for the folding done by our processors. As you complete Work Units, you are awarded points which you can track online. The system also generates certificates for certain milestones in point accumulation. (Here's a sample certificate for a team comprised of thousands of anonymous donors.) I should explain that standard work units on the PS3 take about seven hours to complete. But every once in awhile, Standford sends your machine a Super Unit which takes about 36 hours to fold. These are sent out to the PS3s randomly, but because they are larger, one gets more points for completing them.

So how was I the winner of the Good-Cause lottery this weekend? I scored back-to-back Super Units. Take that, XBL Achievement Points!

I wonder if we should create a Game On Folding@Home team. What do you think? Would you join the cause? If there is an interest, leave your thoughts in the comments section. If there are enough responses, I'll provide more details. Fold On!