Distributed Computing on Next Gen Consoles

anonymous lion writes "Wired has a story on the need for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to support distributed computing with a non-gaming purpose. The article goes on to discuss SETI@home, distributed.net, and Folding@Home." From the article: "The next generation of console gaming is going to see a huge increase in machine performance and overall computing power. Already planned for both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are multiple 3.2-GHz PowerPC processors capable of handling advanced gaming and graphics simulations, along with out-of-the-box internet capabilities such as Xbox Live Silver. With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use."

Comments

To help who?

[tres3]

I can see helping SETI, testing an encryption algorithm, or some other such entity but I damn sure am not going to help find a cure for cancer so that the pharmacutical companies can make even more money and deny yet another life saving resource from the people that can least afford it. If the mega-corporations want the world to donate their spare computing resources to them then they should start doing some things for the people. It is amazing that we allow it but we do. Taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars researching new drugs for exotic new diseases each year just to award the rights to the new drugs to some company that's going to make as much money off of them as they can. You can't blame the corporations as they have a duty to their shareholders but we should damn sure hold our politicians to task for giving away something that costs taxpayers mega-bucks to a corporation that is going to turn right around and charge those same taxpayers more mega-bucks to use what they funded the research for in the first place.

The article mentions discovering how protiens fold. Why? So they can use that info to make drugs that they can patent and charge us an arm and a leg for. They want to map the human genome. Why? For the same reason. There is a company in Utah that has patented a gene that can lead to breast cancer and they charge hundreds of dollars for a test that can be had for less than $10 if the patent fees are subtracted out. To make matters worse they have actually stopped other companies from researching cures that can be related to that gene. Here we have a clear case of patents inhibiting progress that is outside the world of software. Since our politicians have such a difficult time grasping why our runaway patent system needs reform maybe some non-software issues like this will help.

Another role is to research materials science. Why? To make new products to patent and then sell to us. Here's an idea, why don't we use grid computing to help a non-profit discover something that they can patent (required in todays world) and then sell to the world at cost. So how many Slashdotters want to help the international mega-corporations get even richer?