From what I have been reading on this subject at folding-community.org, Stanford does NOT actually send out multiple copies of the same WU, at least not right away. There are apparently TWO deadlines, one for when the WU must be completed, but there is a shorter "reassign" deadline. If they don't get the WU back within a certain time, it gets reassigned. So I guess you could say "if I don't do it, someone else will", and you would be right, but it's also true that if you don't do it, it means someone else has to, and it does delay the entire project (for this particular protein).
What I am told is that the folding of a protein follows a "trajectory", and that the work is actually linear: the next state of the protein cannot be determined until the previous state is determined. This doesn't make sense either though. I mean, how would the folding of a protein ever be simulated completely if the next frame cannot be started until the previous one is completed?
I admit to having spotty knowledge on the subject, but I do believe that WU's aborted or deleted ARE detrimental to the project. It's just a fact of life that a certain amount of WU's will be trashed, but I make a distinction between "accidents" and "I don't want that WU because it's not worth enough points".
See, now here we are talking about it, when I said we shouldn't.
What was this thread about anyway?
David