US Air Force To Suffer From PS3 Update

tlhIngan writes "The US Air Force, having purchased PS3s for supercomputing research, is now the latest victim of Sony's removal of the Install Other OS feature. It turns out that while their PS3s don't need the firmware update, it will be impossible to replace PS3s that fail. PS3s with the Other OS feature are no longer produced since the Slim was introduced, so replacements will have to come from the existing stock of used PS3s. However, as most gamers have probably updated their PS3s, that used stock is no longer suitable for the USAF's research. In addition, smaller educational clusters using PS3s will share the same fate — unable to replace machines that die in their clusters." In related news, Sony has been hit with two more lawsuits over this issue.

Comments

Sony is a terrorist organization

[Anonymous Coward]

Bomb them to hell if they don't bring back this feature, vital for national security.

Re:Sony is a terrorist organization

[Anonymous Coward]

Benjamin Franklin said it best. "Anyone who would trade money for something produced by Sony deserves neither, and will lose both."

COTS = COST

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been a big push in recent years to move to "COTS" (Commercial Off The Shelf) solutions in the government - the military in particular. And while this may be find for things like holsters, backpacks, and office chairs, I think this highlights for EVERYONE, not just bright young aquisitions officers, that sometimes taking COTS technology and using it for your highly specific and critical application is not the best choice. Unfortunately, sometimes (sometimes!) big, expensive, and proprietary in-house solutions really are the best.

(heh. captcha is 'acquire')

Re:COTS = COST

[TheRaven64]

Not really. It should highlight the fact that you should always require a second source for any off the shelf products that you're buying. If you go for a single-vendor solution, you are totally at the mercy of their whims, when it comes to pricing and availability. A big in-house proprietary system would have cost more, in this case, than simply buying twice as many PS/3s as they required. The Cell is now starting to look dated, and by the time they actually need to replace this system they could just throw it away and build a new one based on whatever the latest GPGPU design is at the time.

Do you really think that replacement nodes in a big SGI machine cost less than a couple of PS/3s? Or that the price doesn't shoot up rapidly once SGI moves on to the next design? Or that there's a large second-hand market for them?

Re:COTS = COST

[JaredOfEuropa]

Proprietary in-house solutions aren't even always the more expensive choice. It's too bad these decisions are often made poorly.

Outsourcing is good, focus on core business, buy-not-build, standardise, 80-20 solutions... all of these make sense, but I am dealing too often with the mess made by people turning these good pieces of advise into thoughtless mantras and moronic MBA one-liners, as a replacement for thoughtful and informed decision making. A lot of todays leadership doesn't want to make decisions; they look for rules to make their decisions for them.

Re:COTS = COST

[teg]

Systems like these have a very limited lifespan. The military saved a lot of money upfront. The consequence of this is that the number of active nodes in the cluster might go down slightly during the system's remaining lifespan (a couple of years, not more). Negative impact? Yes. But enough so that spending many times the amount on getting custom built hardware would be worth it? Very unlikely. And if you go a couple of levels up the hierarchy, risks like this - and cost savings - are averaged out over many acquisitions and projects. I think your conclusion is extremely unlikely.

Re:COTS = COST

[quacking duck]

[...] but its cheaper to buy the PS3 which Sony, like every other console manufacturer, sells below cost and make up the difference with game sales.

USAF buys literally tons of loss-leading PS3s but no games? I think you just hit on why Sony doesn't care about the problem the Air Force faces now.

Re:COTS = COST

[Richard_at_work]

I've used a developer box, you can self sign and deploy to other PS3's, you just don't have a license to deploy commercially.

not necessarily impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that while their PS3s don't need the firmware update, it will be impossible to replace PS3s that fail.

Unless they, y'know, get directly in touch with Sony and tell them what they're trying to do. I'm sure in a case like this that something can be worked out. Instead of actual reporting and checking up on the situation, we instead get people using words like "impossible". There are many things that happen every single day that fall into this same category of "impossible", and yet they happen...

Re:Retroactive crippling of hw should be illegal

[jonwil]

They HAVE done something evil.

They produced a product (the fat PS3) and included (and advertised) the OtherOS feature and its ability to run Linux.

They then removed that function.

If a car maker sold you a car with a satnav built into the in-car entertainment system and advertised that the car came with a satnav and then proceeded to remove the satnav function when you took it into the dealer for a service, you would have every right to be angry at the car maker for removing this feature.

The Onion right again

[FireofEvil]

http://www.theonion.com/video/sony-releases-new-stupid-piece-of-shit-that-doesnt,14309/