You know what I love more than video games? Using video game consoles for things other than gaming. Whether it’s watching fansubs on a DS or turning an old NES case into a storage box; I love not playing games on game consoles.
Perhaps that’s why I bought a PLAYSTATION 3.
Regardless, the coolest non-game (non-illegal) application in a very long while has been released for the PS3. folding@Home was created by the smarty-pants at Stanford University. It creates a network of PC, Mac, Linux (all two of you), and PS3 users in order to simulate massive amounts of data that will be used for researching diseases such as Alzheimer’s and
Here is the good ol’ US of A. Notice all the little yellow dots? Those are PS3’s running the simulation data.
Across the pond is Europe with a decent amount of users folding digital proteins. The PS3 was just recently released in Europe and has been selling like fish and chips.
However, Japan is barely lit up at all. Except for lights in the megalopolis we call Tokyo and a few in the Osaka/Kyoto area, there seems to be no PLAYSTATION 3 systems running folding@Home.
Now, the image was taken at 11:30 pm Japanese time, which is a peak hour for folding. It’s not like the Japanese don’t know about the program, because it’s a part of the 1.6 update that was released not too long ago.
I have formulated a few reasons for the low (apparently) support of this program. It could be the lack of available PS3 systems. It’s not selling as bad as the 360, but not as good as the Wii or DS. Another reason might be that Japanese consumers don’t want to pay the high cost of electricity that running a PS3 all night would generate. It has been my experience that some Japanese folks don’t like running air conditioning even in August. Finally, there may not be broadband internet beyond the bounds of big cities. However, everywhere I have been in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Matsuyama, Kyoto. etc) has had broadband internet in some form or another.
There has to be some logical reason for the discrepancy. Do you have some speculation into the subject? Drop a line in the comments.
