computer science

Life with PlayStation

Life with PlayStation is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Life with PlayStation rather than just read about it. In short: Life with PlayStation was an online multimedia application for the PlayStation 3 video game console on the PlayStation Network. The application had four channels, all of which revolved around a virtual globe that displayed information according to the channel.

Key takeaways

Life with PlayStation belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Life with PlayStation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Life with PlayStation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Life with PlayStation was an online multimedia application for the PlayStation 3 video game console on the PlayStation Network. The application had four channels, all of which revolved around a virtual globe that displayed information according to the channel. The application also included a client for Folding@home, a distributed computing project aimed at disease research. As of November 2012 the service has been discontinued.

History In August 2006, Stanford University in Silicon Valley, announced that a protein folding client would be available to run on the PS3. On December 19, 2007, Sony updated the Folding@home client to version 1.3. The update allowed users to run music stored on their hard drives while contributing to Folding@home and automatically shut down their console after existing simulation work was done. The software update also added the Generalized Born implicit solvent model, which broadened the PS3 client's computing capabilities. On September 18, 2008 the PS3 version of the Folding@home client became Life With PlayStation. The application became available for the PS3 in March 2007 and became a channel on Life with PlayStation when it was released. This update also provided more advanced simulation of protein folding and a new ranking system. Following the release of system software version 4.30, the Folding@home PS3 client and all other services under Life with PlayStation were discontinued on November 6, 2012. Life with PlayStation was then removed from the XrossMediaBar for new users.

Channels

Life with PlayStation featured five channels which were updated frequently with new information. The application provided the user with access to information "channels", the first of which was the Live Channel which offered news headlines and weather through a 3D globe. The user could rotate and zoom into any part of the world to access information provided by Google News and The Weather Channel, among other sources.

Live Channel Live Channel was a news, time zone and weather feed, which provided users with information from Google News and The Weather Channel organized by city. The content included live camera feeds and cloud data, similar to Google Earth. Live Cameras was provided by earthTV and the Webcams.travel website. The application only supported certain cities of the world, with limited coverage, such as with the continent Africa, with only four cities covered by the Live Channel.

Folding@Home

Life with PlayStation also hosted an application for Folding@home, a distributed computing project for disease research that simulated protein folding and other molecular dynamics. Users were able to contribute to the project by leaving their client to run Folding@home while not playing games. The application displayed a live rendering of the protein being folded and some statistical information in front of a virtual globe background.

PlayStation Network Game Trailers Channel For users in the United States, the PSN game trailers channel allowed direct access to the streaming of the PlayStation Store's game trailers. It also allowed the ability to purchase titles from the store, without having to leave the application.

United Village United Village, provided by its respective website, and hosted by Frontier International Inc., was a cultural documentary-like project that gathered stories, interviews and articles worldwide. It targeted rural stories from largely from developing countries with some rural parts of other countries. The contents of the channel include culture, development, education, social issues and tourism. The United Village channel was discontinued on March 30, 2011.

World Heritage World Heritage, by α Clock, showed UNESCO-selected locations of special cultural or physical significance around the world. These World Heritage sites linked to their respective articles on Wikipedia. Each location included the introduction directly from the Wikipedia articles.

Features In addition to the channels, the PlayStation 3's also featured photo slideshow viewing, music & video playback. Also Life with PlayStation had a virtual globe that was periodically updated from servers to ensure that cloud, weather, live camera feed and news update data were all up to date. All channels except for the Live Channel included a static representation of our planet Earth, while the Live Channel itself showed day and night time effects. Additionally, the Folding@home protein folding could be disabled.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Life with PlayStation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Life with PlayStation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Life with PlayStation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Life with PlayStation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Life with PlayStation

In research: Life with PlayStation appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Life with PlayStation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Life with PlayStation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2008 software, PlayStation 3 software, PlayStation Network, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Life with PlayStation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Life with PlayStation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Life with PlayStation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Life with PlayStation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Life with PlayStation in simple terms?

Why does Life with PlayStation matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Life with PlayStation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Life with PlayStation.