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Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler plans to bring a new policing pilot program before City Council for final approval on Wednesday, Dec. 5. The Public Safety Support Specialists, or PS3s, will be non-sworn officers who do not carry guns. "They will be engaged in the community in non-emergency calls, so that's things like property crimes, break-ins," Wheeler tells WW. The PS3s grew out of a proposal in the 2016 police union contract approved under then-Mayor Charlie Hales to create Community Service Officers who would respond to minor property crimes and nuisance calls, among other things. To fund the program, Wheeler cut the Mounted...

Objective: For two people in separate houses, each with a PS3, to watch a Blu-ray movie played on one of the PS3 systems. Is it possible to do this? If so, can it be done through the PS Network? Is there another or better way?

JAPANESE GAMES CONSOLE MAKER Sony is facing more problems after its Playstation Network was hacked and taken offline, with no estimate in sight for recovery. The company confirmed that its network was the victim of an "external intrusion" and that it voluntarily put it offline while it works on a fix for the problem. However, it's been nearly a week since the first signs of the hacking appeared and the network remains down, with users greeted by error messages and notifications about maintenance and suspended services.

Judge lets Sony spy on Geohot visitors in PS3 suit George Hotz faced another setback in his defense against Sony's anti-jailbreaking lawsuit late Thursday after a judge granted Sony a potentially controversial amount of information access. It now has permission to get the IP addresses, accounts and other details of anyone who has visited either his main Geohot site or his PS3 jailbreak Blogger site between January 2009 and the modern day. Sony made clear that the access wouldn't be limited to those who downloaded the jailbreak code.The company had already received permission to track as much information as possible...

In the dog-eat-dog game console market, it's not about who starts first. It is as clear as can be: Nintendo is stuck in the past, Sony is confused about the present, and Microsoft is preparing for the future. While the Xbox 360 may not be the console with the highest potential out there, Microsoft is playing an incredibly smart game against its rivals that will get bloody later this year. Here are three reasons why Nintendo and Sony are in trouble in the console market and why Microsoft will come out on top. Three years ago, I wrote a lengthy...

Apparently the Department of Defense believes that PS3s are a better value when it comes to supercomputers than IBM products specifically designed for the purpose. Granted recent price drops probably didn't hurt in justifying a 2,200 console order either. This isn't the first time that the DoD is using PS3 consoles for supercomputing. In fact, these 2,200 units are going to be added to an existing Linux cluster of 336 PS3s used by the United States Air Force.

I thought it might be useful to have a thread for game recommendations. Thread suggestions: While popular games like Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and Metal Gear Solid 4 deserve every bit of attention they've received, I can't think of a gamer that doesn't know of their existence. Let's focus on the hidden gems and lesser known games. Let's not get into system wars. The Wii, 360, PS3, PC and Mac all have their own must-have games. If you're a hardcore gamer, odds are good that you own all of these platforms anyway, so please keep your stoney, ninthing, and...

(PhysOrg.com) -- UMass Dartmouth Physics Professor Gaurav Khanna and UMass Dartmouth Principal Investigator Chris Poulin have created a step-by-step guide to building a home-brewed supercomputer that can reduce the cost of university and general computing research.Found at http://www.ps3cluster.org , the resource fully illustrates how to create a fully functioning and high performance supercomputer with the Sony Playstation 3.Last year, Khanna’s construction of a small supercomputer using eight Sony-donated Playstation 3 gaming consoles made headlines nationwide in the scientific community. On the consoles, he is solving complex equations designed to predict the properties of gravitational waves generated by the black holes...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using only the computing power of 16 Sony Playstation 3 gaming consoles, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, have solved a mystery about the speed at which vibrating black holes stop vibrating.It may be the first time this kind of research has been conducted exclusively on a PS3 cluster: A related 2007 UMass Dartmouth/UAHuntsville project using a smaller PS3 cluster also used a "traditional" supercomputer to run its simulations. The biggest advantage of the console cluster — the PS3 Gravity Grid — at UMass Dartmouth was the cost saving, said...

It's a given that every time we write about digital piracy, or laugh at silly pirate jokes, somebody will write in and admonish us. "Shame on you," they say. "Shame on you for laughing at pirates, when there is real piracy taking place in the world that ends up with people being hurt." Well, those among you who are already preparing to tell us the same, take your fingers off the keyboard: this story really is about high-seas piracy. According to Reuters, the recent growth in piracy off the coast of troubled Somalia means that lots of shipping companies are...

Sony's Little Big Planet is one of the most high-profile releases of this holiday season. Developer Media Molecule has seen its game go from indie darling to AAA system-seller in the past year, thanks to the many appearances that the game has made at trade shows and events. However, fans of the game are going to have to wait slightly longer to get it. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that it is recalling the game from retailers after it learned that the soundtrack featured some Arabic-language lines from the Qur'an backed with music. A SCEE representative also confirmed to...

LOS ANGELES - In a bid to regain lost ground in the fiercely competitive gaming business, Sony announced Tuesday that it will cut the price of its high-end PlayStation 3 console by $100. It also will introduce downloads of movies and TV shows to the game machine's online store and, with some software partners, roll out a number of exclusive games. The moves suggested that Sony still views Microsoft as its chief rival rather than market leader Nintendo, which seems focused on extending its lead. But, of course, that's not how Sony brass portrayed its announcements at a press event...

Think you paid too much for your Playstation 3? Don't expect any sympathy from Sony. In the company's fiscal 2008 annual report, Sony revealed that they've now lost roughly $3.3 billion (that's billion with a B) on the Playstation 3 since its launch. That breaks down to $2.16 billion in 2007, followed by a notably smaller but equally daunting $1.16 billion loss in 2008.

A thief made the mistake of a lifetime recently. He broke into professional female boxer Derdre Rodriguez's house and tried to steal her PS3, PSP and videogames as she lay sleeping. She woke up, saw the robber climbing out of her window, chased him down, smashed his head in with an ice chipper, then, in the most awesome coupe-de-grace ever, the former pugilist forced the thief to pick up the stolen electronics he'd dropped during the chase (A PlayStation 3, a PSP, cell phones and videogames). She then made him wait in the house for the cops to show up...

When most of us arrived home with our newly purchased PS3, we couldn't wait to start annihilating aliens in Resistance: Fall of Man or kicking butt kung fu-style in Virtua Fighter 5. Not astrophysicist Gaurav Khanna - he used his to build a supercomputer. Khanna now owns a total of 16 PS3 consoles, all linked together to provide the same computing power as a 400-node supercomputer. His set up, which he calls a 'gravity grid', is used to simulate the activity of very large black holes for the Physics Department at the University of Massachusetts. Stacked Sonies: the 'gravity grid'...

Only a day after Toshiba pulled HD DVD from the high-definition DVD business, conceding defeat in a long-running format war with Sony's Blu-ray, the company has officially finalized a previously announced $835M joint venture with its rival that will help lower PS3 production costs. The joint venture, to be named at a later date, will manufacture Cell chips and RSX graphic chips, both used in the PS3, as well as other microchips that go into Toshiba products. With this, Sony is trying to streamline its operations by getting rid of assets which it simply does not need or are not...

Dr Gaurav Khanna is a professor at the University of Massachusetts. He has been renting supercomputers at NASA and the US National Science Foundation for US$20,000-$30,000 a year to run complicated calculations on just how much radiation is emitted in the process of a black hole swallowing a star... "For US$4,000 or so, I can get eight PS3s that can do the same task that I'd do on a supercomputer. For a one-time cost, I have this resource I can use privately. I can use it indefinitely over and over again. That's hugely attractive. That's why I considered the project....

Plenty of gamers would give their left arm to be included in Grand Theft Auto IV. Miami attorney Jack Thompson, however, claims that he's depicted in the game and wants out. And he threatens to block the release of GTA IV if Rockstar doesn't comply....

July is supposed to be when things start to cool down for the games industry, as students and holiday makers take time off from games over the summer and spend their breaks doing other things. But not this year. The latest figures from the US from NPD Group, reported by GameDaily, have the games industry racking up nearly 40 per cent more sales in July compared with last year. And Nintendo is the one to thank. The Wii and the DS are proving nearly unstoppable, as the pair topped the chart yet again. This time the Wii even managed to...

Police: Pa. Boy Stabs Brother Over Game Jul 17 01:16 PM US/Eastern LANSDOWNE, Pa. (AP) - A 13-year-old boy fatally stabbed his brother with a steak knife after the 16-year-old refused to turn over a video game controller, authorities said. Jahmir Ricks was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Antwan Ricks at their home outside Philadelphia. The older boy died of a single stab wound to the chest, police said, and a bent and bloody knife was recovered from the home. Lansdowne police said the younger boy told them, "I just stabbed my brother," when they arrived at...