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"Install Other OS" Feature Removed From the PS3
Hann1bal writes "The next system software update for the PlayStation 3 system will be released on April 1, 2010 (JST), and will disable the 'Install Other OS' feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009. This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update."
Updated 3:49 GMT by timothy: An anonymous reader writes "This comes as something of a surprise. Particularly because only a month ago Sony Computer Entertainment management seemed committed to the continued support of the Other OS option on the PS3."
Something sounds awfully fishy about this. If it's real, that's not exactly a day I'd want to release something like this.
OCO is Loco
I'm a flaming PS3 fanboy, I think the games on the PS3 are awesome and significantly better than the 360's, and I really love the full functionality of this machine.
But this really has me seeing red.
I've been using my PS3 for all kinds of shit. It's got firefox and open office and all kinds of productive capabilities. In linux, the Cell rips DVDs much faster than a conventional CPU can.
I understand that the black hat community is actively trying to hack the PS3 because it's proven to be very well protected from pirates. I realize Sony is a business and they are simply trying to protect their rights. But this is removing functionality I paid for and own. Telling me this is my option, my choice, but I can no longer log into the Playstation network (which is required to play many games I downloaded for a fee... you have to be connected to their network or the game won't work... which I didn't know until I had a period without a connection) is no option at all.
They are taking away something that belongs to me. I am really pissed that they couldn't figure out a better way to thwart hackers. Even their own version of Linux, some new version of YDL, that they control, would be better than completely taking away this feature.
I sold my 360 after it was fixed from a RROD (I still play my SNES and don't need a gimp machine that can't last 20 years). I won't go back to xbox. But I am probably not going to go back to PS4 or PS5. Once this generation is over, I'm back to PC gaming. Fucking Sony. Once again, you've gone a little too far in fighting pirates. Like that root kit thing that was ages ago... people have a hard time forgetting that shit.
How can they sell something with a certain set of features and then just take it away? Thats like Ford saying we are disabling the air conditioners that were previously working on pre 2008 vehicles. WTF? I know, it didn't (doen't) really work all that well (slow) but I did run PowerPC Ubuntu on mine. This is more of an "eroding consumer rights" issue. Why now, considering the rootkit etc.. This just proves once again that Sony gives a rats ass about its customers rights.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
It was a great platform to get your hands wet with Cell programming for one thing, as it was the most accessible cell platform. Plus I know of organizations that setup PS3 supercomputer clusters. There was eve an article on Slashdot a few months ago about military (air force) setting up a test cluster. I wonder what happens to them now. Stupid decision, IMHO.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
No, it doesn't seem that Sony ever gave you anything, if they can take it back whenever they want without you having any say. You are a serf who was granted some small favor from his lord. That small favor was taken back because one of you dared to question him; but sooner or later, for any reason or no reason, lord Sony might have changed their mind anyway.
Either the PlayStation 3 was secure, or it wasn't. If it was, then there is no reason to take any functionality away. If it wasn't, then it was simply a matter of time before someone, somewhere, by some method, did something that Sony didn't like. Either way, it's all because of Sony. They knew what kind of game they were playing; they've played it a dozen times before, and lost every time.
As for him achieving nothing useful, and as to whether he had any damn good reason; you have no idea precisely what he achieved, nor what could yet be achieved by him or others as a result of what he achieved.
I don't like pirates... they suck profit out of a tough field and generally make the world a worse place out of their selfishness... but I pirate games all the time just as a demo, and buy the ones that don't suck.
I guess it's okay if you do it.
It might have amounted to something yesterday. Now it's just another fringe platform. In the long story of computer history there have been many processors that have been marginalized by their vendors when they really did rock. The Cell is one, and now it's lost.
The thing is, I expected that from Sony because that's what they do - so I never bothered to master programming for Cell. They just don't get it. They never did and they never will. They've got some world class engineers and the poor bastards are restrained from ruling the world by the idiots they have in marketing and the executive branch.
To be fair, Toshiba and IBM (who participated in the Cell design) don't get it either - they'll never release a Cell platform that normal people can afford, and so they'll avoid the synergy that takes it from the fringe to dominance. It'll live and die in their mainframes and that's it - and they'll make a mint migrating their customers to the next fringe platform because God & Everybody knows you can't run mainframe OS's on x86 harware (right?).
But Sony? No, I expect this from Sony. Some people will find a way to break their DRM and run any OS you want on the thing now - but it's too late. That's too marginal and conditional for people who build stuff. Dammit Sony: we have enough stuff that doesn't work with our other stuff! Will you quit with the breaking flexibility please?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
More than a bummer. This option is what has made the PS3 a popular machine for clusters in the science community. This will be a big set back until a work around turns up.
I agree with your sentiment, but I think you exaggerate. If we stop buying software for 24 months, corporate heads will wake up, and make a lot of concessions - but that won't end proprietary software. And, in fact, I really don't want to see all proprietary software eradicated.
Hey, even Windows would be a decent buy, for twenty bucks, if they stopped with the WGA nonsense, end their stupid call-home validation processes, and whatever other idiot crap they have in mind. They never should have cared about small time dummies who download a ripped ISO. The only piracy they should EVER have gone after, are OEM's who use pirated Windows, and the mass producers of pirated CD's. I think almost everyone can get behind that sort of anti-piracy.
Twenty bucks for a legal Win7 CD, and I can re-install it as many times as I wish in my own home, and I'd run right out to buy a copy. At ten times that price, it's nothing but a ripoff, and I will never buy it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Small claims court is a great thing, and will quite often let you recover the full value of damages rather than getting a coupon or some similar crap from a class-action suit. File for the full value of the thing, claiming that whether you accept the update or don't, irreparable damage will be done to functions you purchased the system to perform. Quite often, they won't even bother to show up and will just quietly pay off what you win. I'd strongly encourage you to look into the small-claims rules in your jurisdiction, and you can also find some basic information here.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Sony already caused massive issues with number crunching by removing the ability to install Linux on the latest slim PS3 models.
The old ones never need to be connected to the internet or have the ability to play the latest games, so they will not need this firmware update and will be unaffected.
This isn't big news, except maybe if they need second hand replacement PS3s.
While I'm sure many will welcome you taking Sony to task, do you mind if I ask exactly how a $10 voucher against your next purchase of a Sony product will help you run Linux on your PS3?
Bi-annual hardware upgrades? Realistically you only need to upgrade your PC hardware once every console generation, since all of the games are multi-platform releases these days. You can game just fine on PCs right now with a 2 year old GPU and CPU. Just because you game on a PC doesn't mean you have to be a 'ricer' type. Hell, most PC gamers I know these days use laptops...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Nobody was forcing you to install the firmware..
Wrong, Sony is forcing you all the time to upgrade the firmware. Using new games might require a firmware upgrade, using the shop requires firmware upgrade, using Home requires firmware upgrade, using DRMed videos requires firmware upgrade and so on. Of course you can say "no" to the upgrade, but then you have basically a brick, as you can't do anything that requires a firmware upgrade.
Sony gives you basically the "choice" to play games or run Linux, to bad that what I bought from them was a machine that could play games *and* run Linux. Stuff like this really should result in a lawsuit, as you shouldn't be allowed to remove features that the costumer payed for.
Where have all the smart people gone from Slashdot? It seems to be full of clueless kneejerk reaction retards now...
And you seem to be one of them...
I do exactly the same as the GP, so I'm really interested to know how exactly can we otherwise evaluate if a game is good enough to buy. Please let us know.
Do you need a free lunch to evaluate if a restaurant is worth your money ? How do you evaluate if a movie is worth the ticket without seeing it ? Seriously..
I agree with piracy in some respects, I think it's a great tool to get what you want while protesting some aspects such as DRMs, aggressive pricing, inconvenience, etc...
And this is why we have no effective protests anymore. If you're protesting, it's really only effective if you sacrifice something to do so. Otherwise it's shallow, and the corporation/government/whoever you protest against knows you can be pushed around because you don't really care. If your principles aren't important enough to you to sacrifice while fighting for them, why should they take them seriously? You obviously don't.
Imagine if the Civil Rights movement had its members get up and leave as soon as they were threatened with arrest? What if they got up from the seats they were occupying in a whites-only cafe because they were hungry? What if they picketted, but only until they were threatened with fire hoses? What if they continued to use public transit during the boycotts, just because it was a long walk? Do you really think anything would have changed?
By pirating, you let the game publishers know that you can't do without their game, so all they need to do is hold the line, increase the DRM, and eventually they can get you (or others like you) to buy it without giving into your 'demands'. Look at Modern Warfare 2. There was a 'boybott' group on Steam filled with players in MW2 on launch day. It's no wonder IW didn't care that people were upset, they still got paid!
So don't blow a bunch of smoke up my ass about piracy being a useful protest tool. It likely does more harm to protests than good. Using the word 'protest' is just a convenient justification for "I don't want to pay for this, but I also don't want to feel like I'm doing anything wrong".
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Idiot?
Well, you buy a console with X functionalities, and then Sony decides to remove some of them. If you paid for a console which can install other OS, will they return the money to you?
Figure that they want all consumers to buy the new PS3 and in the next update, they close the functionallity of playing games. Would it be acceptable?
Is it acceptable to have functionlities removed after you paid for them? Come on!
Idiot is thinking that because some people abuse something, you can remove it from legal users.
If I eat at a restaurant and the food is only halfway cooked, the water glass has a hole in the side, and my chair has an exposed nail in the seat, I generally get my money back.
If I go see a movie and it is horribly spliced and random scenes are replaced with photos of cardboard cutouts, I generally get my money back.
If I buy a game and it crashes constantly, seems to be missing several scenes, and the ending consists of shooting at a bat-thing in the middle of an otherwise empty skybox like it was just tacked on when the money ran out, I would expect my money back. But it isn't likely to happen.
I dislike it when people degrade protest for human rights by comparing it to a protest for fair value on entertainment.
How did I degrade them? I'd say the degrading thing is those who use the same word 'protest' to describe their anger over a luxury item not being suitable to them, while simultaneously selfishly consuming the very thing they disagree with.
My comparison? Civil rights activists were brave and willing to stand up to injustice. Pirates are children who justify getting what they want without paying as 'sticking it to the man'.
Piracy itself is a "problem" created in order to take stock holders focuses off the real problem, which is people are getting screwed and are saying, "I'm not going to pay for that because {you're nickle and dimeing me || you want my arms AND legs || you don't want me to use something I paid you for || you want complete control over everything I do if I use your product}". Causing a loss in profits. Piracy is a way out so the company can say, "It's not our fault, look how many hundreds of millions of billions of people would have bought our product if it wasn't being stolen"
I don't disagree with you. However, because of the quantity of real piracy, these companies have a very strong case that there are lost revenues due to piracy. It's not the 'problem' that's invented (piracy is real and doesn't provide tangible benefits to the company), just the interpretation of the solution. Because they have a quite reasonable scapegoat for lost sales, they focus their attention toward fighting piracy instead of fixing their games and using fair pricing.
In other words, pirating a game to protest the pricing/implementation/DRM actually encourages increased DRM, harsher pricing schemes, and more creative methods to get money from you. Piracy is counter-productive to gamers, in general. Not that the corporations are innocent here, but piracy (which is a real cost to companies) puts them in a bind with their executives and shareholders that encourages this type of behavior. Pirates share some of the blame here, too. Don't pretend you're all innocent or harmless.
It's close minded people like you who think there is only ever one way to go about something that devalue the actions of anyone that disagree with your point of view that is enabling the corporations and government to get away with murder.
Calling it 'murder' to overcharge for a video game seems a bit excessive. Nobody died because they couldn't play a brand-new AAA video game, and anyone who spent too much or regretted a purchase on a luxury item has only themselves to blame. I'm also not sure what the government has to do with any of this, let alone how they benefit from aggressive DRM on video games.
Personally, I think it's the people who buy and play these luxury items regardless of the cost, DRM, and ramifications that allow the companies to take advantage of us. They're the ones that reward the game producers for the status quo, so they're the ones to blame for the lack of innovation and fairness to the consumer.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!