Hasta La Gadget!

Sony may be busy flipping the PlayStation Network switch back to the “on” position around the globe, but one locale where it won’t be doing so just yet is its homeland of Japan. The Dow Jones newshounds report that the Japanese government refuses to allow Sony to reactivate its ailing network until satisfaction is reached on a couple of outstanding issues. The first is that the company’s promised counter-hacking measures announced on May 1st have not yet been fully enacted — though details of what has or hasn’t been done yet are understandably unavailable — and the second is that Japan wants to see further preventive measures taken to ensure users users’ credit card numbers and other private data won’t be exposed through their use of Sony’s online services again. These sound like rational demands to us, and Sony is already in talks with the authorities to make sure it lives up to their expectations.

Continue reading Japan won’t allow Sony to turn PSN back on until it’s assured it’s safe

Japan won’t allow Sony to turn PSN back on until it’s assured it’s safe originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 01:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink News.com.au  |  Dow Jones Newswires (Fox Business)  | Email this | Comments

Whoops. If you’ll recall, Sony held what can only be described as an emergency press event in Japan a week ago in order to issue a number of assurances about the resumption of service as it relates to the PlayStation Network and Qriocity. Seven days later, things are still as dead as they were pre-Cinco de Mayo. This evening, the company’s Senior Director of Corporate Communications Patrick Seybold punched out a quick update to let the world know that they could actually leave the house and find something else to entertain ’em — like it or not, PSN isn’t coming back online today. The reason? On May 1st, Sony was apparently “unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers,” and now, it’s spinning its wheels in order to restore security on the network and “ensure” that user data is safe. Mr. Seybold seems to understand that you’re overly anxious about getting back into the swing of things, and he’s even going so far as to ask your trust that Sony’s doing “everything [it] can” to get the lights blinking once more. Oh, and if you were planning on visiting that source link just to find the new ETA… don’t. Sony’s planning to update you “as soon as it can.”

[Thanks, Alex]

Sony misses promised PlayStation Network and Qriocity restoration date, begs for more patience originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 May 2011 03:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joystiq  |  PlayStation Blog  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on August 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

It looks like Sony will be able to market the upcoming Playstation 3 as a “medical miracle” because of its integration with folding@home. BBC News is reporting that the PS3, which is scheduled for release in November, can be setup to donate the system’s idle time to the folding@home project.

The folding@home project was started in hopes to gain an understanding of protein folding and misfolding. Here is a snippet from the project’s homepage that describes why that is important:

Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.”

…

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

To help the team learn more about protein folding they have asked PC users for years to donate your computer’s idle time to simulate the folding process. The problem is that it takes a normal PC 10,000 days to simulate one complete fold even though it takes 10 microseconds to happen in your body.

Surprisingly, the processor that is in the PS3 (which is called a cell) has the ability to run up to 10 times faster than current PC’s. It is estimated that 10,000 PS3′s working together would have the same computational power as IBM’s BlueGene/L System supercomputer. That’s more than 280.6 trillion calculations each second!

Of course, it will be kinda cool to put it on your PS3 because “the Cell microprocessor does most of the calculation processing of the simulation, the graphic chip of the PLAYSTATION 3 system (the RSX) displays the actual folding process in real-time using new technologies such as HDR and ISO surface rendering.” Here is a quick video on what that will look like:

Read more about this on the folding@home PS3 announcement page.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Folding@Home Does a PetaFLOPSWill Google Ever Release Google HealthGoogle Health Opens to the PublicScreenshots of Google Health EmergeCyberNotes: The Free Dictionary

Sony’s PlayStation Network has been down for over a week, and it’s a royal mess for all involved — as you’ve no doubt heard, an external intrusion by unknown hackers compromised the personal information (supposedly including everything but credit card numbers) of potentially millions of users. This morning, Sony VP Kaz Hirai (formerly of the PlayStation division) will address the world from the company’s headquarters in Japan, and our friends at Engadget Japanese are on the scene to bring us first-hand details in just a few minutes. Additionally, there appears to be an official livestream that will begin at 1AM ET, so keep it locked right here and potentially find some video at our source link.

Update: We’re hearing that Sony’s “goodwill gesture” may not be an incredibly significant one — affected users can expect a free 30-day subscription to PlayStation Plus and a free software download of some sort, while Qriocity customers will get an extra 30 days of service on the house.

Update 2: As many as 10 million credit card numbers may have been exposed, though Sony says it has no proof that any actually have been compromised, and claims that it’s received no reports of credit card fraud thus far. It is, however, working with the FBI to investigate the hack.

2:00 JST: The show’s begun — following a little bit of Mozart, Sony has trotted out three solemn-looking executives. More updates after the break.

Continue reading Sony’s Kaz Hirai addresses PlayStation Network hack, we’re liveblogging

Sony’s Kaz Hirai addresses PlayStation Network hack, we’re liveblogging originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 May 2011 00:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Reuters  |  Livestream (Sony)  | Email this | Comments

Sony has shown off a pair of tablets that will launch later this year. The S1 is little more than yet another Honeycomb tablet in a Sony-designed box, with a 9.4-inch widescreen display and a wedge-shaped case.

Way more interesting is the S2, a clamshell tablet with two 5.5-inch screens. Each section has a rounded back, making it look like a squashed burrito when closed. When open, you can use it as a tablet with a black stripe down the middle, or each screen can display different content, similar to the dual-screen Nintendo DS consoles.

And the gaming analogy is apt. The tablets will work with the PlayStation Suite platform, which is Sony’s way of putting PS software onto various devices. We got our first glimpse of it on the PlayStation phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year. For more on the gaming aspects of the tablets, head over to our sister site Game|Life where Chris Kohler takes a look.

Both tablets will come with Wi-Fi and optionally 3G or 4G, and run Honeycomb. And both tablets will also pack infrared lamps to control Sony Bravia devices. They’ll also beam music and video to compatible devices via the DLNA wireless protocol, which is similar in concept to Apple’s AirPlay.

All in all, these look like pretty neat devices, especially if you are already heavily invested in Sony gear. Price and availability are both as yet unannounced, but if you pencil in “expensive” and “later this year” then you won’t go far wrong.

Lastly, a weird quote lifted from Sony’s press release. Talking about the OS, Google’s Android boss Andy Ruben apparently said the following: “Android 3.0 is a new version of the Android platform with a new holographic user interface that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.” Holographic?

Sony tablet press release [Sony]

Photos: Sony Global

See Also:

• Gallery: Sony Readies 2 'PlayStation Certified' Tablets for Fall
• Video: Hands-On With PlayStation Phone
• Gadget Lab Podcast: Android Tablets Galore, PlayStation Phone
• What We Know About Honeycomb, the Android for Tablets