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PS3 Downtime To Fight Disease
Aerenel writes, "CNN reports that Sony has teamed up with Folding@home to use the PS3 to study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly. From the article: 'Donating [a gamer's] PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.' PS3 users will be able to download a software package that tracks when the PS3 is not being used. While gamers are in school, at work, or asleep, their system's Cell processor can be used to perform simulations for research organizations. The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."
This definitely seems like a good thing. But I wonder, will gamers really let that influence their purchasing decisions? Honestly, I have my doubts.
Basilisk Digital
In other words, your PS3 uses network bandwidth and electricity you paid for with your money to calculate who knows what and send it God knows where when you're not using it and anyone who tries to stop their PS3 from doing this is a horrible person who supports cancer.
I'm going to pay $600 so I can run a second copy of something that's already spinning away on my PC right now?
No, you are going to pay $600 to play games and run Linux on a Cell processor. The F@H thing is just a perk that you can either use to double (or quadruple) what you are doing on your PC right now or not. If you pay $600 for a PS3 just to do F@H, you are an idiot.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No kidding. Most gamers who would care about this are already running F@H on their computers.
But alas, we are not their target market. This is a ploy aimed squarely at a certain type of parent who wants to feel they are being proactive in finding solutions to the issues that plague all humanity, while also providing their little precious angels with something to do while they are busy watching Tele and/or sending email to the interweb.
Really, there are people like that.
Well, you're right and we shouldn't be feeding cows to other cows. However, I'm inclined to say that it might be nice if the unfortunate souls who have the disease, you know.... wouldn't die a horrible death. I know it's rare, and should become more rare if we start showing some sense in raising cattle, but, you know... if they could maybe cure it along the way to finding a cure for another disease, I wouldn't consider it a waste of time.
Step 1 - Keep using machine when user isn't around
Step 2 - Running all of the time will ensure a standard MTBF causing users to buy new units
Step 3 - Profit!
> Because privately held research would like to use my PS3 for free and then make money from it when
> they discover something - without any intention to charge less $$ for the treatment / cure in
> exchange for all this free computing?
Once a medical discovery is made it doesn't go away. Yes, it is a money tree for YEARS for the company with the patents. YES, a lot of the research was paid for by others. NO, they won't share. YES, they will charge an insane amount for it.
But a new treatment is A NEW TREATMENT. A cure is a CURE. Stop being so goddamned cynical and take one up the rear for the good of mankind once in a while.
And yes, I'm serious. Mod me down if you must though, I'll understand.
Uh, you aren't allowing Sony to use your spare cycles, you're allowing Folding@Home (or more broadly, Stanford University's Pande Group) to use your spare cycles. And they are a non-profit organization who releases their findings for free. So, yes, you as part of the public can access the information you helped discover for free.
Even if Sony WAS a scientific conglomerate trying to find a cure, would you really want to put a hamper on reducing millions of deaths just because you don't want them to earn money? Please avoid discarding your common sense in favor of bashing a corporation you don't like. Oh, wait, this is Slashdot.
It's not novel. Any net-connected game system is just a new platform for any of the @home projects. They can build a client for download via xbox live or the wii as well.
;) ) is that sony's finally found an app that can effectively exploit the parallel nature of the cell processor. So if clients are released for the other systems, it will look like the ps3 has technological superiority.
The only really good reason for this (besides curing cancer
Don't Sony make a loss on the hardware? Maybe they're banking on the Blu-Ray components dropping sharply in price by the time PS3s start breaking down, but it looks to me more like an attempt to get one bit of good PR not written by Official Sony Fanboy Magazine. Note that Wii will also be always-on, but Nintendo have taken the opposite approach, aiming for minimal standby power usage, waking only to receive downloads of freshly minted swag for your games. So, if there's some evil MTBF conspiracy, two companies had the same idea at once... Let's not dump on Sony's decision too much, this will give the research a nice boost, but it doesn't scream out "Get a PS3!" to me by any stretch.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
Why would you insist on "scaling" applications when you could just set the priority(win)/nice(*nix) level lower? (i.e., higher nice value in linux, lower priority setting in windows). That way, it will always yield to every other system that needs to use the CPU. (And nevermind the belief that a process can use only 'part' of a single-core CPU)
Because even if my computer isn't running anything important, running it at 100% CPU usage will invoke the full cooling capacity of the system. For a desktop, this means a louder fan noise. For a laptop, however, it may not be well-suited to 24/7 100% CPU utilization. The fans are small and can get _very_ noisy. The bottom of the laptop can get so hot as to be unusable on your lap; quite possibly, you could shorten the lifespan of your components.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Did you even READ the post you replied to? He specifically states why "nice" isn't a solution. Nice doesn't stop a program from using all the CPU, it just stops it from using CPU when another program wants it. His complaint is constantly having a system peaked near 100% CPU usage, which produces shitloads of heat, shortening processor life.
A better idea... Buy a Xbox 360 or a Wii. (Buy em used after a couple of months!) Save yourself anywhere from $200-$400 and donate the money to cancer research, or the F@H project if you really like that project. No, you don't get to have the PS3, but, your $200 will go a lot further for research than your cycles will over a couple of years. Also, take the $25-$100 you'll save on electricity (or whatever people in this discussion have been calculating) and donate that. With the $500 or so you'll give to research over the next 3 years, you'll be able to say for sure that you helped out. And, you get to cut out the middle men (Sony getting cash on the hardware and the Electric Co for providing the electricity).
Added benefit: Tax write-off! I want to see you try to write-off the additional ~$100 in electricity you're donating.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I'm sorry but my $600 would be better spent if i gave it directly as cash to cancer research groups. I'm not going to buy a PS3 now just because it now runs folding at home when im not using it. This is old news anyways that was discussed on here several weeks back. That didn't reverse my opinion, I've got 2 IBM systems journals sitting in my dorm that tell me what a cell can do and what its limits are. I don't need a smart ass like you to tell me anyting.
You mad
When I can run GCC on it without using rare, expensive add-on hardware that Sony quickly discontinues *cough*PS2 Linux*cough*, then it's a computer. Until then, it's a locked-in console.
OK. Let's try to cure Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. If Mad Cow disease is cured as a side benefit, great.
As for the comparison with AIDS. The behavior modifications required are of an entirely different nature. You see, the "culprits" now are individuals, the majority of who are impoverished and under educated with little communications equipment available to begin with. So even getting condoms and the message of responsible sex to them is tough.
As if that wasn't bad enough the victims are usually the same people and their own families. In other words. They get AIDS because they don't know better and have very limited options. (I have spoken to HIV victims in my own country)
Mad Cow disease on the other hand is produced exclusively on midsized to large cattle farms in industrialised middle income and wealthy countries. They continue to raise cattle on beef scraps because that's cheaper than using grain and grass. This gives them an additional competitive advantage over the smaller farmers that do not have the equipment necessary for reprocessing cattle scraps.
None of them stops on his own because that will let the others who continue get ahead in the marketplace. Keep in mind that the farmer I'm talking about here is more often than not university educated. He knows about all the government farm subsidies and makes sure to collect his share. In short, he is fully integrated in a well regulated society.
If regulations were put in place banning the sale of beef fed cattle or putting an additional tax on it to remove the price advantage the practise would disappear overnight.
Most importantly, This disease is hitting people who have no way of knowing that this risk exists in a particular slice of meat because gee, It's not even on the package.
In short.
Cause of Mad Cow Disease -: people with as much education and more wealth than the average slashdoter selling a defective product. Killing other people.
Cause of AIDS -: People with limited education and few options following a basic biological urge.
One can be stopped by a few of earths most stable governments (England, USA, Germany etc...) passing relatively simple legislation (and enforcing it).
The other cannot.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
My home server is on 24/7/365 and runs F@H. Gkrelm reports my temps. at 52.0, 27.0, and 51.5
It's reniced to 10 so that means it is actually running at a nice value of 19 ....
25848 smoker 39 19 89192 48m 1152 R 96.4 4.8 79:37.24 FahCore_7a.exeAnd I took that top reading while posting to /. in Firefox 1.5.0.7 and downloading a torrent of *some_linux_iso* via Azureus (java) while logged in on a Gnome 2.10.1 desktop on that machine. I use only this machine for the internet. My XP box never goes near the WWW at all.
BTW, I've been running this since Dec. 5 2004 and it has never caused an issue with performance, as far as I'm concerned.Maybe you are running a Microsoft OS ?
My stats.
(the machine concerned is a Sempron 1.5 ghz with 1GB RAM running FC4, 3504.08 bogomips)
Why anyone would run F@H on a laptop is beyond me anyway, it needs to run constantly to get the best results for the project. As another poster mentioned, there is a time limit for results, so you're wasting your time and energy if you keep interrupting it. Those results that are late will be disregarded.
Look at these things that the PS3 can do that I can already do WITH MY FUCKING COMPUTER!
WHICH COST LESS!
That's not true, and I wish people would refuse to assume that it is.
Researchers may have chosen to dumb down the PC version, but it is a triviality to load a different DLL or call different code based on architecture or, hopefully, actually based on capabilities.
There is no reason whatsoever that the PC version can't make the best out of everything from a 386 up to a Core 2 Duo. If my MPEG encoder can do it, then so could F@H. Granted, there's a certain amount of work involved, but it's no more (and probably less) than developing wholly separate versions, especially for other platforms.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you ask me this is a pretty weak marketing ploy. Consider a few things. First off any console with Internet access could do this. Distributed computing is more about numbers than about individual machines being more powerful. Secondly, basically you're donating power and possibly the lifespan of your system away. What Sony's done is give you a convenient way to donate. If you really cared about cancer research then donate some real money to a Cancer charity. I'm sure some folks will do it but it kind of defeats the purpose of what the PS3 was meant for, a gaming unit.
The Linux® kernel is free software, but the bootloader isn't. Likewise, I'm 99 percent sure that the BIOS in your PC is proprietary software.