EDIT 11/1/11: Total overhaul! November challenge issued! Let's hit another million points by the end of November!

EDIT 3/13/11: That was fast: 4M down! We're also inside the top 1200, and now have 50 members!

EDIT 3/8/11: We've past three million points, and are half way to four!

EDIT 2/21/11: On the 19th we hit two million points!

EDIT 2/17/11: We've just broken the top 2000! Thanks to all the new GB members who helped push us over the edge!

Do you:

• have a kick ass PC, a bunch of older PCs, or an internet enabled abacus?
• like competitions involving points, leaderboards, and gloating?
• want to help prove that Whiskey Media's dominance extends into the world of science?

• want to help cure cancer or some other bad thing as a side effect of your rampant drive to gain more points?

Then we want you for the Tested Folding Team!

Our home base is over at this topic where you'll often find us lament one of our computers melting down, gloat about new hardware purchases (to replace the ones that melt down), or complain about the price of electricity. Riveting stuff, really.

I'm interested in the pursuit of points/curing cancer through sheer force of will/proving that I have a better computer then you! How can I join?

Simply head to Stanford's main folding site, download your client of choice, and while configuring enter 197673 as the team number along with your choice of user name. Simply run the client in the background (it's set to only use idle processor time, so you shouldn't notice any major slowdown) and you are good to go. Bonus points if you run both a CPU and a GPU client at once! Everything is wrapped into one client now! Hooray for simplicity!

Help! I can't get the client to run/my computer has caught fire/my computer has gained sentience and is threatening the human race! What should I do?

First off, make sure you've followed the official installation and configuration guides. Check out the V7 client! All of the cool kids are doing it! If you still have one of the first two problems, head on over to the Tested forums and we can help sort you out/teach you how to safely fight an electrical fire/suggest new hardware to replace the burnt out machine you now own. For the third problem, I suggest you head over to Screened as they should have some instructional videos dealing with the robot apocalypse.

I've decided to join but there's too many clients to choose from. What do I pick to maximize my poi-err I mean cure diseases the hardest?

There's been some major overhauls, but it's all a lot simpler. Just head to the V7 client page above, and it should all autodetect for you. If it doesn't head over to the much more frequently monitored Tested thread and we'll sort you out!

Some other FAQs:

• Will this really harm my computer? No, it shouldn't. It'll run your computer at max, sure, but it won't cause it to meltdown unless you've had hardware problems in the past and decide to run it 24/7.
• Speaking of 24/7, do I have to run this all the time to keep up? Not at all. As of writing this, I'm first on the team and I only really fold while I'm sleeping/out to class. We've got members who have dedicated folding boxes, and those who only run a PS3 or a desktop when they feel like it. No matter how much or little you can do, you're welcome to join in!
• Do I get anything out of this besides points? What more do you want? And unlike every other achievement/trophy system, these points are a representation of how hard you're kicking cancer's ass. Can PSN or XBL say that? But really, it's for a good cause and costs you nothing to run.
• Will I see any crazy power bills if I fold a lot? If you just fold while you normally have your computer on, you won't notice a damn thing. Even with my crazy ass computer running it 8-10 extra hours a day, I've barely seen an increase, perhaps like $5 a month. The only time you'll see a jump is if you run multiple computers 24/7. But the points are worth every penny if you do, man!

If you have any other questions, either post them in this thread or over at Tested and we'll get you sorted.

Always be folding!

I approve of this message :P

Great post and great cause. I'm already on a team and have over 2 million points banked (so unfortunately I can't join the Tested team, but I'm rooting for ya). 
 
You should probably mention something about SMP folding, HFM, FAHMon, GPU3 etc for people that have higher end systems. I know it's on the page that you linked to but people might not see it/understand it straight away. 

I just wanted to say that cobraduck is absolutely terrifying.

I totally forgot this was a thing and that it was also on the PS3. 
 
I should leave my PS3 on forever.

I'm confused. So it's just a program that uses your CPU/GPU power pooled together with other designated team members to virtually fold things that give points to help fight cancer?

My PS3 can do this! 
I have no idea what it really is, though, except that it's helping with research or something...

I am actually going to update my OS tonight and work through getting it all set-up again so I might actually have a go at setting up the SMP client as well.

" @MaFoLu:  It simulates the protein folding, which is a chemical process that is vital to many biological functions, including cell division. The relationship with cancer (for example) is that failed protein folding can lead to cellular mutations, which is the cause of cancer. There are more diseases than just cancer that are related to protein folding, and the Folding@Home project seeks to understand the process better so that those diseases may be cured. Check out the project website for more information on the scientific aspects. "

I don't have folding@home on the PS3 anymore.  O_o 
 
EDIT:  It's not even in the XBM.

I actually made it into the top ten with just a PS3 and a MacBook Pro. 
 
Damn, it's kind of addicting.

I don't know when this was sticky'd or which kind mod decided to do it, but thank you! Awareness is key in the fight against other folding tea- I mean cancer!

I made it into top ten.  looks like I could get spot 7.  not sure though.   people will probably join that will knock me back out of the top ten... but for the good of the team.

i am CatpainTypo on tested, btw

Hooray!  Well-deserved sticky!

Just want to make this clear for everyone (since we've picked up like 10 new members thanks to this topic): If you are running the SMP multicore client, make sure you set up a passkey! If you follow the installation and configure guides you should be fine, but I feel it needs repeating. You can get 10x the points if you do this one step.

I just joined the team and running on my ps3 as we speak/type.
 
[exclamatory statement]

We're closing in on 2 million points; will you be the duder that pushes us over the edge? Join today and make it happen!
 
(I love talking in pseudo army-recruitment poster form. :D)

2 million come and gone.  We're flying through score almost as fast as E4!

Weren't you guys at 1.5mil just a few days ago? Phew, time flies. Congrats!

we lost one of out threats when i last checked.  NOW... we are only threatened by Jesus.  On the other hand, we are on track to be in the top 1000 overall teams within 2 months.

Here's a quick status update (shamelessly ripped from the Tested topic to save time):
 
"We've pushed Jesus back to 1.4 months, and we now have 10 people putting out more then 11k a week (The "Red Club" if you go by Kakao Stats' coloring system) as well as 40(!!) members! If you can believe it, we've already done 100k points past 2M, and we will be in the top 1,500 in under two weeks. It's crazy how fast we're picking up ground."
 
10 more duders and we can hit 50 total members. If you haven't signed up yet, join in! Every point helps us keep Jesus at bay!

This hasn't been updated in a while but we flew past 3 million not too long ago and we're coming up on 3.5 pretty quick.  Jesus is no longer on our threat radar.  Congrats on the good work, everyone.

A few more milestones:
 

• We've hit 5 million points; it only took us about 10 days to go from 4M to 5M, since we now average over 100k a day.
• We've also hit 50 members, the vast majority of which are actively folding. (Half of our members have over 10k points and 1/5 have over 100k)
• We also have no other immediate rivals; every team behind us is folding slower, while we're actually folding faster then teams in the top 100. (Granted it's predicted to take YEARS to pass them at our current speed, but as we get new members that'll keep going down. We're still a small team.)
  
• Finally, we've hit the top 1200, which is significant because our individual stats will be posted over at EOC. We're also predicted to crack the top 1000 in about two weeks.
  

You can also do this on PS3 I think.

Would love to. I used to run both the folding@Home CPU and GPU clients but I have had to reformat and install WIndows 7 several times in the last few months. I'm thinking of maybe just building a small machine dedicated to folding.

I know this is a fairly coveted quest to get done here over at Giant Bomb but when I came here to post about [H]ardOCP I got this: 

Ah, distributed computing projects. The late 1990s was such a fun time.
 
These days, I'd rather save on the electricity bill than contribute an insignificant amount of processing toward any of the various DC projects.

I actually took place in d.net back in the day as well. 
 
For anyone interested, I'm working on a tool that makes setting up and running a PC client incredibly easy.  It's still a work in progress at this point but you can give it a go at http://helushune.net/folding/.  It has a link to the instructions or you can go ~half way down on this thread over at Tested. 
 
@mirado: My power bill's gone up a bit more than that but you're probably not running a power hungry dual Xeon...  =)

5 million down.  That's a million in about 9 days, pretty impressive.

So.. anyone fold still...or... yeah this looks a bit dead.

@Darkstar_KoP: The tested thread is a bit more active. That being said, you reviving this thread made me boot up my ps3 and join the folding team.