Folding@Home for School

[Geralt]

Hey all, recently I sent a letter to the board of directors in my school about running F@H when the computers are not in use. Long story short, after reading the proposal email, they shot be back 2 questions which I have no way of answering and I'm hoping you guys can help me answer it.

 

1. How does it benefit the students in the school in any way? (I'm from the School of IT btw)

2. What about the security concerns? We have a very strict firewall.

 

 

[Fulgrim]

Whilst i don't have an answer to your questions. The thing that surprised me when reading this post, is that they did not ask about how much it'd cost them due to the power usage.

[Geralt]

3 minutes ago, Fulgrim said:

Whilst i don't have an answer to your questions. The thing that surprised me when reading this post, is that they did not ask about how much it'd cost them due to the power usage.

That was why I could not answer their questions

 

I mean I was prepared to answer the power usage with some statistics that I had going on in my head but they just threw those 2 questions out there. Rip me.

[courtiousdoge]

31 minutes ago, Geralt said:

Hey all, recently I sent a letter to the board of directors in my school about running F@H when the computers are not in use. Long story short, after reading the proposal email, they shot be back 2 questions which I have no way of answering and I'm hoping you guys can help me answer it.

 

1. How does it benefit the students in the school in any way? (I'm from the School of IT btw)

2. What about the security concerns? We have a very strict firewall.

 

 

ans 1 bassicaly none but you will be helping humanity progress

ans 2 there are no security conscerns 

(my recomendation dont use my first answer but do use the help humanity progress part)

[Huntsman]

They really should be asking about the energy cost instead of trivial stuff like this lol.

 

And how does it benefit the students? Nope it doesn't. But how does it help the organization (school) in their Corporate Social Responsibility? A lot.

[Geralt]

Just now, courtiousdoge said:

ans 1 bassicaly none but you will be helping humanity progress

ans 2 there are no security conscerns 

(my recomendation dont use my first answer)

Answer 2 could be improved on by adding some meat but answer 1 will make them say no immediately.

 

I told them that the Health Science school could use it as a case study or something but they went "Yeah but you can't name me the direct benefits of running this" and as for the security concerns, I told them about how F@H uses the internet when sending and receiving WUs but all they said was "our corporate security policy is very strict, this wouldn't be allowed". Then they ended off by telling me to "not spend so much time on this".

 

Guess I failed. I failed humanity.

[courtiousdoge]

1 minute ago, Geralt said:

Answer 2 could be improved on by adding some meat but answer 1 will make them say no immediately.

 

I told them that the Health Science school could use it as a case study or something but they went "Yeah but you can't name me the direct benefits of running this" and as for the security concerns, I told them about how F@H uses the internet when sending and receiving WUs but all they said was "our corporate security policy is very strict, this wouldn't be allowed". Then they ended off by telling me to "not spend so much time on this".

 

Guess I failed. I failed humanity.

you didnt fail humanity your school did

[Huntsman]

Well it's not in their best intention to do this anyway. Unless they get publicity from it. Just corporate stuff.

[Geralt]

1 minute ago, courtiousdoge said:

you didnt fail humanity your school did

It's ironic how the Health Science school is studying to help humanity but then they just don't bother about this at all.

[Imakuni]

1 hour ago, Geralt said:

It's ironic how the Health Science school is studying to help humanity but then they just don't bother about this at all.

Don't worry, same happened to me.

 

University bought 50 workstation PCs (8 core Xeons, Quadro GPUs) to do simulations. Then I was like  "cool, while the machines are idle (because there's a lot of burocracy for companies to send proposals to use those PCs), can I use them for Boinc? I have everything layed down already, it's just install and be happy".

 

I even got one of the teachers there to support me. And the guys in charge of the PC lab were like "hmm... oh yeah, 6 of the machines are dedicated exclusively for people (students or not) to do reasearach, and we didn't got all of them outside their boxes because no one was going to use them right now, and we were lazy. Sure, get ONE of those to do your thing and stop bothering us".

 

At least I got 1 PC in the end. It just took almost 2 months of talks and one VERY comprehensive teacher to get me there. And then I changed course shortly after, so....

 

 

 

I also tried with a "PC School" (you know, teaches courses like webdesign, manintence, etc). I told them that World Community Grid recognizes companies that run their software as oficial partners, which could be used in a marketing campain. "nah, too much work, too little money back".

 

Even my friends, I couldn't get them to join DC..... Don't worry with failure: it's always a given.