This one's for everyone who misses the Science blog. So that includes me? *Grin*. Anyway, In case you didn't know, the Large Hadron Collider's atom smasher will start today.

So how would you feel about contributing to the research of the Large Hadron Collider? You know, help destroy the world and everything. I kid. But someday you might be able to contribute to the LHC's research. That part's true. Following in the footsteps of Folding@Home is LHC@Home. Dun dun dunnn.

And a big load of thanks goes to trigger for the tip!

People who pay their own electricity bills want to know which of their electronics use the most amount of electricity. And as gamers who uses consoles, you should to. Choice, an Australian consumer group, came out with a study that checks out the average power consumption of the oft-used electronic household gadgets, including consoles. Check out the results in the full article.

(Editor's Note: After the TGS, you'd think that things would go back to their "normal" pace in the gaming industry, but see, the gaming industry isn't all that "normal" to begin with. Harhar. As the Chesire Cat once told Alice: "We're all mad here." Now, if you might remember, our 13th Issue of QuickJump QuickPeek rolled out early, which means this edition might cover some news from last week which weren't included in the previous issue. Yes, it's not "normal" procedure as QuickPeek posts go. And we're saying that with a disembodied Chesire grin.)

A few days ago, we ended the previous TGS Special Edition of QuickJump QuickPeek with a series of open questions. Well, if Master Yoda had anything to say about it, it'd go somewhere along the lines of "Rumors lead to questions. Questions lead to TGS. TGS leads to answers. And answers... lead to more questions... and the eventual Hamill-tendency to scream out 'Nooooo!'"

This week though, it's anything but a miserable negative outburst. We're getting some answers all right. With us having the tendency of screaming out '"Yeeeees!" instead. How so? Let's see, shall we? M33's identity (i.e. Dark AleX, Mathiuelh, et. al.) revealed, Halo 3 week, Folding@Home's ongoing success, building anticipation for the Wii Zapper... Let's not get ahead of ourselves here though! Get busy with your mouse and start scrolling down!


Hit the Full Article link below to see the rest of this week's issue!

Can the Xbox 360 outperform the PlayStation 3 (PS3) when it comes to Folding@Home? We don't know for certain yet as Microsoft is yet to jump in, so to speak, but Sony Computer Entertainment America's Jack Tretton is questioning Microsoft's motives and mentioned that he'd be very disappointed if they are just seeking out good PR.

Tretton added that if big MS is indeed just trying to create a good image for itself then that is a rather shallow reasoning. And he suggested that MS might be doing this only because Sony is doing it. Tretton explained:

I think to look at it as a marketing platform is something that a company certainly wouldn't want to do. I'm certainly not insinuating that's Microsoft's motivation, but I'm not even sure how relevant it is to what we're doing. Would they be even having this conversation if we weren't doing it? I don't know.

More interestingly, Tretton went on to question as well the processing abilities of the 360 and doubts if it is capable to take part in such project. The official claimed that Stanford University is not even sure if Microsoft will be able to help them in this endeavor. According to Tretton:

I would guess that the medical community would take help from anywhere they could get it, but the commentary that I heard is that Stanford isn't sure that would help them very much. Which is odd to me because if it helped at all, it seems like they would welcome it with open arms.

It should be remembered that earlier this month, Peter Moore suggested that Microsoft is willing to join the project provided that they can "truly believe that they can in some way marshal the resources of a much larger installed base of Xbox 360 owners." In the end, Tretton lamented that he just wished MS is not trying to milk the medical community:

It's really ugly territory to get into, but let's take fighting a disease and see if we can get some credit for that. It's not a cool game to play one way or the other so I don't want to even give the impression that that's our motivation, and I'd be very disappointed if they're looking for PR value or to try to suck off some of the goodwill that we're doing.

 

The Inquirer reports that during an interview with San Jose Mercury News, Microsoft's Peter Moore admitted that Microsoft was somewhat left out by Sony's PS3 Folding@Home initiative. However, he does take a jab at Sony and says: "I’m not quite sure yet whether we’re seeing real tangible results from the PlayStation 3 Folding@Home initiative."

What's interesting about the Inquirer report is that they speculate that the Xbox 360 could possibly beat the PS3 when it comes to folding. Here's their words:

The Geforce 7900 inside the PS3 is no match for Xenos in the Xbox. Even the Sony Cell would probably end beaten by 48 vec4+scalar units hidden inside Xbox's 360 graphics chip. Folding@Home is Stream Computing at its finest, and six/seven/eight SPE units can flourish in the CPU. But when compared to the GPU, the Xbox 360 GPU would probably run in circles around Cell CPU.

And then Microsoft's marketing machine might get interested in touting Folding@Home for the Xbox 360 console, since it would no longer be a race between a snail and a rabbit, as far as protein folding performance is concerned.

Well, we're pretty sure that a lot of you PSP homebrew-making devs are leagues and leagues more "1337" than us when it comes to technical stuff like this, so what's you're take on this? Can the Xbox 360 "out fold" the PS3? Let is know in the comments.

People have been toying with the idea of having the Folding@Home project put up on the Microsoft's Xbox 360. But what does its creator think about this idea?

Pro-G managed to ask Vijay Pande, the genius behind the project, and it was found that he didn't really think the Xbox 360 could be of much help. Replying to the question of whether or not he thought the power of the 360 could be useful: "Possibly, although the cell processor in the PS3 is much more powerful for our calculations than the CPU in the Xbox 360."

So what made Sony's PlayStation 3 the console for Folding@Home? "We are simulating key processes in protein folding and misfolding in Alzheimer's Disease. PS3's are performing aspects of these simulations, and doing so about 20 times faster than a typical PC."

Well, while his statements are far from saying that the project will be hopping aboard Microsoft's green box any time soon, at least it does not, at the same time, close absolutely the possibility of Folding@Home being on Xbox 360. Besides, the cause that the project stands for is worthy enough to break even the toughest fanboyism.

Straight from the United States Patent website, someone found that a Microsoft-stamped patent application was curiously labeled as "multi-component gaming" and had ties to sharing not only digital resources, but physical resources as well. You heard us right the first time, folks: Microsoft thinks the future of gaming rests on the sharing of processing power as well as memory storage.

It's no wonder, really, how they would come up with such a suggestion. For years on end since the best industry leaders identified the serious roadblock for the silicon-based processor, researchers have been trying to avert grinding to a standstill in computer technology by figuring out solutions to the "more power, less heat" problem.

But because biotechnological (DNA) processors and quantum processors are still way past affordability, the industry has resorted to three solutions, which single out one characteristic: shared multiple processing.

Multi-core, multi-processor, and distributed computing all allow computers to utilize additional resources to provide more power to software. Just how Folding@Home used distributed computing to "fold" proteins that would normally require a supercomputer to be processed speedily, games could also be delegated to several computing platforms in order to be played.

Of course, the whole idea - having to require three consoles to do have one thing accomplished - isn't as welcomed by many. But the idea of having a handheld gaming device delegate processing and storage to your Xbox 360 is exciting. There's no doubt that this could be good news to many tech geeks out there who've always wanted to see something like that work.

It's highly unlikely we'll know what exactly the Redmond giant has in store for the gaming industry worldwide, however, with this idea. It just might be that the next Windows OS could be capable of handling such tasks, but no one knows for sure. Hopefully Microsoft could shed some light into this concept soon.

It sounds like a simple idea, but it's one with a high potential for greatness. All the folks at Microsoft have to do is adapt Folding@Home to Xbox 360 and make the console just as cool as the PlayStation 3 (in terms of saving lives, at least).

Well, Adam Frucci over at Gizmodo has one of the best write-ups we've seen so far, pleading with Microsoft to join the Folding@Home craze by adapting the 360 to do the same as the PS3. It would become more of a contest between fanboys to see who could make the most progress in saving lives.

In his impassioned plea, he writes,

While 99.999 percent of fanboy fights end up with everyone being a loser... this battle of the consoles would benefit everyone. Xbox users and PS3 users could compete to see who could complete more Work Units faster, determining which console is superior. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who wins, because it would allow for many, many more people to put what is a dormant computer when not in use into an Alzheimer's curing machine. And heck, since there are many times more Xboxes out there than there are PS3s, you'll start at an advantage and this thing could really take off.

He's right about that though. There ARE more Xbox units out across the world than PS3 units. As for whether or not the combined might of the Xbox Legion can process more stuff than the PS3 legion, we'll leave that up to you. What's important is that it saves lives, and Xboxes can probably do just as admirably in that regard as PS3s.