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Ziggy
Franchise Player
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 12722
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 Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:15 pm Post subject: Save humanity, Buy a PS3 |
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| Quote: | PlayStation's serious side: Fighting disease
POSTED: 12:01 p.m. EDT, September 18, 2006
By David E. Williams
CNN
(CNN) -- Kids aiming to persuade their parents to buy the PlayStation 3 have some new ammunition -- donating their PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.
This November, Sony's PS3, with a price tag from $499 to $599, will challenge Microsoft's XBox 360 and Nintendo's Wii in a battle royale for holiday dollars when it hits stores in the United States and Japan.
The PS3 uses a powerful new processor called the Cell Broadband Engine to run highly realistic games like "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07," "Metal Gear Solid 4" and "Full Auto 2." It also has a 20GB or 60GB hard drive (depending on the model) and can connect to the Internet either wirelessly, or with an Ethernet hookup so gamers can download new programs and take each other on.
The PS3's chip is the same one IBM is using in a supercomputer it's building for the Department of Energy. That computer is expected to reach speeds of one petaflop, or 1,000 trillion calculations per second. (Full story)
"It has so much horsepower and, of course, when you're playing a game all that horsepower will be used for the game. But there are a lot of times during the day when somebody's not playing the game," said Sony's Richard Marks. "It seemed like a good idea to be able to use that horsepower for something else that is, in this case, good for mankind."
Sony worked with Stanford University's Folding [AT] home project to harness the PS3's technology to help study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly.
Improperly formed proteins are linked to a number of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gherig's disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad-cow disease. MORE HERE |
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Bergamotichek
Retired Number
Joined: 02 Sep 2007
Posts: 16777206
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| Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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Bah! I don't need to spend $700 on a gaming system to help save the world.
You can run the same app on XP, Linux and OS X.
Folding@home
I had downloaded this a while back, thanks for the reminder that I needed to load it. Up and running, right now. |
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Exick
Site Staff
Joined: 17 Mar 2005
Posts: 15880
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| Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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Sony is really pushing this particular story hard for some reason. I've seen it on a bunch of message boards today. The claim sounds a little far-fetched not to mention unrealistic. Who leaves their game system running while they aren't playing it? These things already have a short enough shelf life as it is. I don't need any extra wear and tear on it.
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Game recognize game, Granddad. - Riley Freeman, The Boondocks |
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