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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
RTFA. It's on a voluntary basis. If you don't like it, don't do it. But it certainly is nice to have the possibility, and, as it seems, officially approved by Sony.
Basilisk Digital
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.
Riiiight.. because the heating/cooling cycles of electronic equipment being turned on and off repeatedly is *much* better for it.
At least try to come up with a valid reason to not use it.
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