Remember a while back when Sony revealed the Folding@Home option within its PlayStation 3 consoles and everyone got warm fuzzies in their tummies and Phil Harrison visited all of our homes on a unicorn to give us each a puppy? As it turns out, that entire thing was some kind of elaborate Trojan Horse, designed to suck money from companies willing to exploit the spare cycles inherent in the always-on PS3.

According to this piece at MCV, Sony is in talks with companies interested in handing them fat bags o' cash in exchange for time with their distributed console network. The tremendous computing power of all those PSTriples is at super-computer levels, and, as you could probably guess, there are quite a few very wealthy companies who would love to be able to harness that kind of power for research, large-scale rendering and sexy, sexy porno.

While consumers were eager to donate their spare cycles to Stanford to aid in the fight against degenerating proteins, will they be as eager to donate their spare cycles to Monsanto to aid in their ongoing struggle to grow corn with realistic human genitalia? 

[Addendum: Since it was mentioned in the comments that consumers ought to be given an incentive to assist companies with their consoles, I thought I should add this quote from the MCV piece:

The Financial Times reports that Sony is ‘studying’ whether it needs to offers incentives to gamers, such as free products, to get them to participate in a similar scheme for profit-seeking companies.

Happy now? The fact that they have to 'study' whether or not people would willingly give large corporations their computing power only proves that Sony is hopelessly out of touch with its average consumer.] 

Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)

Hipple

Maybe if the genitalia were female genitalia...

uptonogood

sweet christ, whoever came up with that idea to profit is a genius and deserves some sort of bonus. of course the big companies will pay. they will pay out the ass for it and the consumer benefits from whatever free crap that they'll toss for the computing power. free subscriptions to whatever server is probably incentive enough for people to participate.

but for monsanto ... not a chance in hell.

Aaron Mxy Yost

I hope they give customers a damn good reason to participate in that.

Matthew Mac

SKYNEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!!!!

El Fajitas

As long as they accede to my demands, I don't see why not....
{evil} Bwahahahaha! {/evil}

moclippa

Yeah hopefully if they do this consumers will be smart and aware about which companies they sign up to do research for.

Has anyone kept their console on folding the whole time or is everyone resting them every so often? I'd like to find out how likely it is that you could damage a PS3 by Folding 24/7.

My longest stretch has been one week non-stop.

zaqu

sources have rumored that there are possible rewards so you can afford those costly demos and such.....

Notmuchongamingthesedays

sony mislead it's customers for their own personal gain? No Friggin way.

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6376177-1.html

DarkestOmen

So if they set up an affiliation scheme I can buy 100 PS3’s and earn enough to live off by selling computing cycles!

cryocide

In related news, the user "PS3" has out-folded all other users now, despite the short amount of time that the software has been available.


I'd consider trading CPU time if "free stuff" meant that the stuff I got was worth more than the cost of electricity and cooling for the small reactor that apparently lives inside my PS3.

ceark

monsanto can burn in hell.

Crunshii

correct cryocide.

I agree, I havent seen the bill for this past month using folding@home yet, but im sure its going to push it tad up. nevertheless, I dont mind this if it benefits the company and the users as well. I sure dont mind helping on Cancer cures, that is priceless. (specialy after being affected by cancer death within my family)

But this is business, Nothing is earned for free here, if they want power, they have to exchange with something in return.

bleep

Hmm maybe its just me, but it looks like in the pic above someone is getting rightly fucked in the back of the head by porky the pig!

deiga-the-semivaliant

I do believe that Maddox animation has been posted on this website enough to officially make it a D-toid editor.

He can be the Summa for the PS3 lovers!

some_dude

Hmm, I don't think a PS3 beer coozie and big foam hat would quite make up for the wear & tear on the console or the electric bill. Now if they start talkin' Sea-Monkeys that's a different story. I guess this will be a new meaning to fruit cocktail. Ya getit? Wakka-wakka-wakka!

Hexen525

BULLSHIT!!!! They charge WAY too much $$$ for a console with no real use(lack 'o games means a lot of DVD watching...reminds me of the PS2 launch and 1st year), then sell the unused console sitting on your living room floor to a company to use the unused cycles and raise YOUR power bill at the same time. They are just looking for a fast buck, and couldn't give 2 shits about who they f#ck over!!! If they wanted to help save the world, they didn't need to package it as a damn console!!! Why don't they spend a little more time making games ppl want to play so ppl can justify that large PoS they bought?!?!?!

Hexen525

I say unplug all your PS3's everytime you are not using them, F#CK SONY!!!

Crunshii

Hexen could use a carebares hug right about now <3

bhive01