How my PS3 helps to cure Cancer, Alzheimer, ALS and Parkinsons...

Bear with me:

If you suffer one of the diseases mentioned in the title, you have a good chance it was caused by what are called "badly folded proteins". An error in the formation-process of proteins result in "bad" proteins, which lead to a chain-reaction that cause the disease. If scientists can find out how the folding goes wrong, they might find a way to detect or reverse these "bad" proteins, and thereby stop the disease.

Scientists have modeled this folding process to be simulated on computers. But because proteins are very large (complex) molecules, this folding process takes very long (years and years) to simulate, even on the fastest computer.

Some smart people at Stanford University have developed a way to pick apart the complex folding-process, and to distribute the simulation over many machines. This is called "distributed computing". So instead of one machine that takes years and years, thousands of machines now only take months to accomplish the same task. A research team contributes a "folding" problem (usually some enzyme identified with a cryptic name) which is then distributed over many computers that participate in what is called the "folding @ home" network.

With the latest update of the PS3's software (1.60), a new program was added that takes part in this folding@home project. There are a few very cool things about letting you PS3 join this project:

1. When not playing games, your PS3 is used for a good cause. You feel you're donating something to science, without actually paying more than your electricity bill
   
2. The enzyme which is being simulated is shown in animated 3D. The program also shows who else in the world is using folding@home. Seeing all the dots light up on the black earth gives you a feeling you are part of something big. This even translated to my wife who said "wow" (always the ultimate approval of something-nerdy-but-cool).
3. The ranking of the PS3 in the folding@home project is now 3x higher than that of all PC's combined. It will be very likely that folding@home's PS3's will become "the worlds fastest computer".
   

Sony is often depicted as "evil" because of the restrictions they put on using their machine (makes sense because they're also a media company who have to protect their investments).
But adding the folding@home to the PS3 is surely a "good" thing. How cool would it be if one day the PS3 will be known as "the machine that cured cancer"?

Fingers (and enzymes) crossed.

By the way: Sony's latest update also solved the PAL playback (it can play my entire DVD collection now) . One more points for my PS3!

Mount your ipod on your PS3 using udev

To mount your iPod on your PS3 under Yellow Dog Linux, follow the below steps:

1. Create a new file /etc/udev/rules.d/11-ipod.rules and add:
## iPod
BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="iPod*", NAME="ipod"
2. Create a link for the ipod to be mounted:
mkdir /media/ipod
3. Add the ipod-mount to your /etc/fstab:
/dev/ipod /media/ipod vfat users,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Note: only works with windows-configured ipods.

The dark side of my PS3

After playing around with my PS3, I was impressed with its performance, the demos/games, , the Cross-media bar (XMB). It all looks stunning ( especially on my new 1080p screen). However, for a machine that has been delayed and delayed for various reasons, I expected a lot of effort must have gone in to make sure its functions would provide a superior user-experience. I was wrong. I would go so far as to say that if they would have let me test the thing for a week, I would have come up with quite a few crucial things ANY user would want to have fixed BEFORE the released the thing.

I have compiled a list of functions that have been bugging me, and I am sure they will bug you too:

1. No USB ports at the back
This one had me literally crying out loud.
Why do I have to have ugly wires sticking out from the front of my PS3, when they could be nicely hidden in the back? Why did sony decide to make a flip-cover for the memory-cards, but not for the USB-ports? Now my ipod, external harddisk etc. all have to connect through the front. Ugly, and even ONE a USB-port in the back would have set them back around one dollar. Why-o-why ruin the entire look of my "black beauty" to save one buck?

2. Audio output HDMI OR optical , not both
For the love of god, even my 700 RMB (80 USD) DVD player can output its sound to both HDMI and optical. But if I want to switch audio from my stereo to my TV, I need to go into the XMB and choose Sound-settings, then choose which output I want, select which output-types to "Allow", and then confirm. All of this doesn't make any sense and is extremely annoying

3. No folder-structure accessible from the XMB
There is no way to easily combine videos and pictures in the same folder. For example, I would like to combine pictures and videos of my baby in a certain folder.

4. No network-streaming audio
Internet radio, with decent channel-selection, audio recording etc. are all supported in all media centers. Why not in the PS3?

5. No network downloads? Are you kidding me?
It's 2007. My console has two network cards, (one 54Mps Wifi, one 1 Gigabit ethernet). I still have to get my iPod and manually copy my files over to the PS3.

6. Re-inventing the wheel? Use Firefox already!
What's wrong with sticking with the world's best browser, when it can be integrated in the PS3 free of charge, and with almost zero development efforts? The PS3 browser is not bad, but with very limited Javascript and plugin-support, it's not even close to the stability and usability of Firefox. Missed opportunity by Sony for sure, but they seem to really like NOT sticking with any standard (minidisc/UMD/Memory-stick etc)

7. Dodgy registration-process? Save my data, dammit!
If your internet connection is not rock-stable, the registration process can make you want to chew your arms off. Over three times have I redone this song-and-dance, because halfway through the 10-step process, the moronic browser decided that the Sony server could not be reached, and it should abort the WHOLE PROCESS, discarding what I had typed in so far. Typing with the controller is frustrating, Re-typing the same stuff three times is excruciating. Why not save the data entered so far? What's the point of a hard-drive when you don't use it?

8. No quick-links in the XMD
Adding an option to set a menu-item as a "quick-link" could make the XMB much more user-friendly. Getting directly to my bookmarks and opening those would help. Directly selecting "Other OS" to boot would help too. Defining favorites for certain videos and and picture-folders would help. Time for an update of the XMB!

9. No PAL playback (if you're in Asia / America)
It's irritating not being able to play your DVD's. Come on, Sony, the CSS has been cracked. Live with it. Regio-free playback is a fact. Time to make money on your new (region-free) (online) games and other Blu-ray discs.

10. Sony store takes ages to load
It takes forever to load the store's homepage. And while it's loading, the system does not let you do anything. So if I already KNOW I want to go to the demos-section, the browser wont let me UNTIL I'VE DOWNLOADED EVERY SINGLE GRAPHIC of the opening page. How irritating is that? Very.

11. No RSS feeds
How dumb of Sony not to put some RSS feeds into the XMB screens. It would have made a great marketing-tool for them to show new content in their store etc.

Linux gripes
Apart from the obvious restrictions of the PS3's hypervisor (it restricts NVIDIA's acceleration, access to the PS3/XMB-partition etc.), there are a few gripes about Linux on the PS3:
- wireless not activated: why only activate the ethernet adaptor, and not wifi?
- no clear support for the bluetooth-controller
When connected by wire, it is activated as a USB-joystick, but not enabled on bluetooth.
- no sharing of the graphics-memory: the framebuffer of the PS3 only takes up about 18 MB of the graphics memory. If the remaining graphics-memory could be combined with the regular RAM, this would make it a comfortable 400+ MB instead of a crippling 256


Apart from issue 1 (USB ports), all of the above issues could possibly be solved with a software-update. Despite its shortcomings I love my PS3, but let's see how serious Sony is about improving their user-experience over the next few months. I hope the European release (March 23rd) will improve some of the quirks.