Folding At Home

[edepot]

Has anyone ever taken a closer look at the folding at home globe? They have yellow dots that indicate the presence of an active CPU. Do those dots represents all types of machines, or just PS3? The reason being that the earth globe has dots where PS3 is not available. I am thinking there are two possibilities for that. One is that folding@home takes the IP of the machine and uses a geoip lookup to place the user somewhere on the globe. In this case the globe can represent only PS3 or any type of machine. Another possibility is that it takes the user account information (when you log in via playstation network you require an userid which you need to give a physical address). The second possibility only applies if the globe only shows PS3 (because other CPU's can download the software without registering a physical address). But the problem with the second scenario is that some of the dots are at places where you can't register a PS3 (the country is not in the dropdown registration box).

[edepot]

Need to do a followup because I am posting from a PS3, and the virtual keyboard only allows a limited number of characters (I think they need to fix that soon). Well, anyways, the above analysis seems to point towards folding@home using a geoip lookup to place those dots. I am not sure if the PC version has an earth globe (perhaps not), then only the PS3 can actually see the PC CPUs. I think if you look at the communication between the PS3 and folding@home, at the beginning of the connection there should be list of active CPUs (most likely PS3 and other architectures) with location info using longitude or some sort of 3D location value.

[ooPo]

The Folding@Home website says the dots are active PS3s.

[dot_blank]

it is perfectly normal to have ps3s around areas
where there is no ps3s in retail outlets ...many of my friends
are connected to folding@home and they live off of fiji :P
and one of my brothers who lives in eqypt has ps3 with folding@home
but i am not sure if he bought from eu or not ...either way i think
it does indeed use a geoip locationing

[ralferoo]

it is perfectly normal to have ps3s around areas where there is no ps3s in retail outlets

Indeed, I had a PS3 in Europe several months before they were available here. Judging by the flags on Ridge Racer 7, I was definitely not the only one... ;)

[Matrixdub]

But the problem with the second scenario is that some of the dots are at places where you can't register a PS3 (the country is not in the dropdown registration box).