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Police Raid PS3 Hacker's House, Hacker Releases PS3 'Hypervisor Bible'
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from PSGroove.com:
"Graf_chokolo, who has contributed countless things to the PS3 scene, had his private home raided by police this morning. They confiscated all of his 'accounts' and anything related to PS3 hacking. Some of you may remember that graf_chokolo promised if he was pushed, that he would release all of his PS3 hypervisor knowledge to the world. He kept good on this promise, releasing what is being dubbed as the Hypervisor Bible. 'The uploaded files contains his database, which is a series of tools for the PS3's Hypervisor and Hypervisor processes. It will help other devs to reverse engineer the hypervisor of PS3 further.'"
I think Sony is only a few months away from being told exactly the same thing by the US and EU governments. i.e. Just as cellphones can be jailbroken, so too can consoles.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
The more you tighten your grip, Sony, the more PS3 systems will slip through your fingers.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Something may need to be done, but does that "something" preclude people from using a product that they purchased by busting down their door and stealing all their equipment? Remember back in the old days when people would take things apart just to learn how they worked? Old toasters, microwaves, circuitry sets, etc. It really seems like we're forgetting that whole aspect of learning.
DONT buy sony. dont let anyone around you, buy sony.
Read radical news here
I don't agree with the way Sony is doing it, but at least they are doing something. Some of the multiplayer games are completely unplayable as cheating is rampant. Something needs to be done as they're ruining the games for honest players.
Server-side checks: You don't have to Like Blizzard's "got-to-be-online-to-play" for Starcraft II, but notice: no cheating, with 1000000+ connected users and a easy to hack platform (PC+Mac).
If your game uses p2p connections and no gameplay server, some care in designing the protocol will make it much harder to cheat. Deterministic sync'hing with input passing, for example, will provide you a no-cheating solution. There's many other options.
Problem with cheating is that about no one in the industry cares about quality. Don't go justifying Sony's action on gamer's cheating. Find something better.
Those exploits have nothing to do with the hypervisor being compromised. They have been around long before these cracks and are the fault of the game developers. You can fault Sony for not being more proactive in cracking down on such cheaters, but you can't blame these guys who are cracking the system wide open. Though obviously they're not helping on that front either.
The entire fiasco with people getting arrested for modifying their own property is due to the DMCA's circumvention clause. Because the DMCA casts doubt on basic ownership rights I think that the base law is flawed.
If I want to buy a cheap super-computer or mod my Xbox 360 into a media center that should be a given-right: I bought the hardware so go to hell without my Freedom to Tinker.
Shh.
I'd rather the enjoyment of people games be ruined than have a state that kicks down doors because a person too apart a bit of kit they own.
P.S.
>>>Something needs to be done as they're ruining the games for honest players.
I agree and banning modded consoles is the solution, NOT shipping people off to jail for 5 years. Sony's approach is extreme overkill for what is, basically, just a toy. It's akin to locking-up someone because they modded Optimus Prime with electronics to self-transform, and then shared the plans online. ("Oh no! Got to lock him up for modding our toy!" - Hasbro.)
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
For Sony it's not really about cheating, it's about getting their royalty every time a game is sold. It's the same reason why "Other OS" wasn't allowed full access to the processing power of the PS3. If writing games in Linux had become a viable option on the PS3 then at least some companies would have considered distributing some of their content that way, saving themselves a huge margin. Incidentally cheating will always be an issue if your game's server trusts the client excessively anyway.
sorry, "took apart"
>>>Some of the multiplayer games are completely unplayable in the opinion of commodore6502 and are thus clearly must be unplayable to everyone
Fixed that fixed that for you, for you.
NEVER to buy anything made by Sony
They could also just require you to be logged into their service to play multiplayer; forcing people to be online for singleplayer is a retarded policy. Some of us are regularly in hotels and we don't always have a network connection (and if we do there's no guarantee the connection is any good), or your provider might have some big outage etc etc.
Forcing people to be online for an offline game or offline play is just a big no-no.
looks like it was already deleted
Sony didn't caught him because he modded his console but because he was releasing all kind of tools and secrets about the hacking, just like GeoHot. He sure wasn't just a regular guy.
You don't really understand the full nature of cheating. It's easy to stop some things, but if someone has a wall hack or aimbot, no amount of server side checks will distinguish that from a skilled player. That is, unless the server just precomputes all sound and graphics and sends them to the client, rather than telling the client exactly where sounds are to originate from, or where enemy player models are.
which is totally what she said
Ah, so it's OK if he hacks and mods, but if he <gasp/> actually wants to communicate with others about his hobby, that's criminal?
Not all of us are as willing to be antisocial as you are. Actually, since you're posting here, you can't be that antisocial, eh?
Was it really necessary for the police to wear Riot gear and Bust down the door? Did they think this gamer was going to beat them with a ps3 controller??? I bet they shot his little dog too (standard operating procedure).
Jeez. All they needed to do was knock and say, "We have a warrant to search your home," like polite servants. - Stupid SA
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Are you never tierd of trolling?
Forcing people to be online for an offline game or offline play is just a big no-no.
If it's a big no-no on the PLAYSTATION 3, then why isn't it a big no-no on the PC? With a few exceptions such as Trine, there aren't a lot of well-known PC games designed to be played multiplayer on one machine using two to four gamepads, even with the rise of LCD HDTVs that can be connected to a PC's video card through a VGA or HDMI cable.
Time and time again Sony blow up on their PR. Order court arrest of hackers who are tinkering with their products to make them even more useful to the community. Whatever these guys to hack the PS3, it's only for the good of Sony. Think about the free publicity when your PS3 can do this and that with a simple jailbreak. Sony can simply turn a blind eye, or better yet, encourage those efforts from the community. What if they break the hypervisor? It's not like a modern PS3 game is easy to make, so you will need an SDK and Sony's support anyways. PS3 works in a pretty small confinement defined by Sony, step outside its border and you will be sued. This is a sad example of a company run by lawyers. Had Ken Kutaragi been at the helm, he would no doubt feel excited about those attempts given his engineering background. Even Apple turns a blind eye on the jailbreakers. New iOS updates break them all of time, but Apple didn't go sue anyone. They silently watch the apps in the jailbreak world and turn some of them into iOS (tethering, bluetooth keyboard, etc.) That's smart marketing.
This is the entirety of the original source material for this story:
"SONY was today at my home"? That's not how raids work. In the US, Sony had to go through some rather extensive legal action to be able to get a TRO on geohot, and now they've convinced the German police to raid some random hacker's house out of nowhere? He's also not even one of the more prominent people involved, and had very little to do both with the core hacks and with subsequent piracy tools - he mostly worked on his own on hypervisor reverse engineering and there's just about nothing they could charge him with. This would also be the first action taken by SCEE regarding this entire issue. And you'd expect someone other than graf_chokolo to notice, publish, or somehow independently report the raid. Not to mention that if you're raided, the first thing you do is talk to an attorney, not post a care package online (as "proof"?). None of this makes any sense.
He did mention that if he ever got a takedown notice from Sony or something along those lines, he'd release his hypervisor disassembler database. I think it's more likely that he got tired of waiting and just made up an excuse.
http://grafchokolo.com/ps3-development-page.html
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
This seems like a lot of bull, Raiding someones home because a corporation doesn't like what they're doing with something they own. This is just going to hurt Sony worse and it gives me another reason not to buy from them.
Looks at Xbox... hmmm Microsoft. Nope.
Looks at Wii..... hmmm Nintendo. Nope.
Of the three major video game console makers, the console division of Microsoft is the least evil. Xbox 360 is the only console with a developer program open to the public. Otherwise, you could always put a slim PC by your TV, hook up the HDMI, and game that way.
I'm running out of options - wish Sega still made a console.
Sega and Nintendo worked together on the Triforce arcade console. Xbox 360 builds on Sega's and Microsoft's experience with getting a Windows API running on Dreamcast.
Yeah, because raiding a home is entirely justified if you cheat in a game!
The DMCA is nullified by the higher law known as the Constitution
Only nine people in this country know what the Constitution really means. People thought a second successive copyright term extension was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court of the United States said otherwise.
who saw that coming ?
P.S.
>>>It's akin to locking-up someone because they modded Optimus Prime with electronics to self-transform, and then shared the plans online. ("Oh no! Got to lock him up for modding our toy!" - Hasbro.)
Um, no it's not. While I agree with the first part of your statement, an Optimus Prime toy doesn't have a built in commerce engine, play 1000s of movies or provide additional revenue that Hasbro bases their financial projections on to remain a profitable company.
I totally understand the argument that if you own an object it should be yours to do with as you please but as these objects are increasingly connected and integral to the profit margins of the companies that make them you can't expect these massive companies to sit by idly while they watch the potential of their profitability slip out of their control.
Did taking about that toaster or microwave to see how it worked enable people around the world to download free toast that someone else spent tons of time making? Since there was no "harm" (to the companies involved) with that old school hacking there was no reason for those companies to hit back. In fact, many times devices like that came with circuit diagrams (yes, I am getting old). These days we have the problem of the large amount of money and time that must be invested in order to produce one digital copy of something (say a game or movie) against the whole "but the marginal cost of additional copies is zero" crowd intent on getting it for nothing. Hacking these game consoles so that they can play "backups" or "unsigned disks" or whatever has a real cost to the folks who have invested time and money into development. Its a pity that there isn't an easy way to enable folks to do what they want with their own unit (which they should be able to do dammit; they bought it) without also enabling folks to violate copyright and just grab stuff for free.
>>>forcing people to be online for singleplayer is a retarded policy. Some of us are regularly in hotels and we don't always have a network connection
+1 insightful
Ditto for me.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Dissecting the PS3 isn't about piracy (but is an unfortunate side affect)... it is about being able to to do what you like with a platform that was purchased in good faith, good faith that Sony has repeatedly violated (because they believe that the purchaser is merely 'leasing' their unit). If Sony hadn't removed features that were selling points of pre-sold units than this wouldn't even have been an issue.
Oh no he told other people how to modify things they own. This could allow them to bypass DRM. The idiocy was making laws to protect DRM in my opinion if a copy right holder employs DRM they should loose all copyright protections since they are employing technical means they no longer need those copyright protections. Were effectively allowing corps to make nearly everybody with a brain a criminal. Personally I have a modded wii but own all the games I play, backup disks are a godsend for parents, same goes for all the DVD's ripped and programs recorded and commercial stripped. These are the same idiots that think it is illegal for a DVD player to skip the required 15 minutes of Disney commercials or anything with a cable card to not tune to there emergency alerts. The media cartels and politicians want to be able to force things down our throats since they each have an agenda they want to push and are willing to makes laws to further those goals.
No sir I dont like it.
Um yeah, It's the 13 year old kiddies. Modern Warfare II multi player is unplayable on the xbox platform because the sniper rifle is horribly broken. and of course they wont release a patch to fix that, so they released Modern Warfare 2.25 called "black ops" to fix it, somewhat. I can still uttely own someone with my hacked controller and a pistol.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't agree with the way Sony is doing it, but at least they are doing something. Some of the multiplayer games are completely unplayable as cheating is rampant. Something needs to be done as they're ruining the games for honest players.
I agree. They should be violating the rights of people who have done nothing illegal. They should knock down the doors of as many innocent people as possible so that you can PLAY your games without having to stay up at night crying because you lost a game to a cheater. I feel really bad for you. Your life is being destroyed because you can't play your games. boo-fuckin-hoo.
The Good Life
Then I retort simply -- how then can *you* tell the difference between an aimbotter/wallhacker and a skilled player? If it's not just an entirely subjective "he's too much better at it than I am", then shouldn't you be able to gauge some kind of metric to weed them out?
At the same time, shouldn't it be simple enough to publish an update to the game that includes some kind of anti-cheat code, rather than "I assume that the client is always right and completely honest at all times"? I thought "never trust the client" was the first rule of security for games like these?
Moral of the story...
If you found some really good info on cracking a bit of hardware, you had better create a pseudonym and set up a way to hide your tracks online before you release the stuff. Hide who you are, use open relays and proxies outside of the country, do uploads or connects only from public wifi points... You have to hide like a spy because the corporations control the police and government and can get the cops in full SWAT mode to bash down your door and hit you in the head with a rifle butt several times.
Honestly, STOP this stupid "for my rep and street cred yo!" crap, release anonymously and cover your tracks. stop putting up neon signs for the corporate and government goons to come and get you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
People start the whole "never buy Sony" whine again. Well, I disagree there, but that's simply because I own a PS3 myself for 2.5 years now and totally love it.
Still, the real problem here is that the hacking people simply didn't do their homework. Thanks to the "American culture" (yes, this is a cynical remark) almost everything needs to be covered in some EULA because if it isn't companies risk that morons ("Real Americans" ?) for suing them for hundreds if not millions of dollars whenever something "bad" happens. "Help, my son shot a police officer after he had been playing GTA IV for a week. Its all the games fault! We''ll SUE!".
And so you need to comply to a EULA. A process which companies like Sony picked up quite well by including a whole lot of extra stuff you need to agree on before playing can commence. A list so long that hardly anyone reads it.
Here is your problem right there.
These guys should at least have read the EULA so that they knew what they got themselves into. Better yet: should have worked their way around it. Yes, it can be done, because there are loopholes in there. It isn't easy, it takes a lot of time to read, comprehend and work out a strategy, but it can be done.
I agree that the police invasion is a bit over the top, but you know what they say: "Mess with the big boys and...".
Sorry, I think they should have done their homework.
I can't pull up the article - web category blocked, so maybe this is explained in the article, but why are local police getting involved in these hacking cases? Shouldn't this be a job for federal investigators - ie, FBI or similar organization, depending on country? This isn't the first story I have seen like this. It seems to me that local police are overstepping the bounds of their jurisdiction in cases such as this. Just a thought.
Server-side checks: You don't have to Like Blizzard's "got-to-be-online-to-play" for Starcraft II, but notice: no cheating, with 1000000+ connected users and a easy to hack platform (PC+Mac).
And that appears to one prong of attack Sony are pursuing. Sony have put modders on notice they won't get into PSN most likely to stop griefers and other assholes exploiting bugs / behaviours not normally seen in the server and ruining the experience for normal players. I expect future games with substantial online components will have mandatory sign on requirements and feature stronger, punkbuster like checks during gameplay to stop modders too.
The idiocy was making laws to protect DRM in my opinion if a copy right holder employs DRM they should loose all copyright protections since they are employing technical means they no longer need those copyright protections.
What you propose would be the opposite of the laws for physical theft, where the punishment is lowest if I take something away that is unprotected, worse if I break a lock, and worse again when I use force. Your argument says basically that if I try to steal your car, you defend it with a baseball bat and I shoot you, there should be no punishment.
MMOs are like beer. They keep sucking moderate amounts of money out of your wallet, month after month.
You don't drink, do you? Or if you do, you'll quit now? That one reusable water bottle is a lot cheaper and you can still drink out of it...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Why d'ont you go after the people who download illegal software then?
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
for a strategy other than protectionism?
Yeah, I know: "free" (not as in beer) - but how can we make that "pay"? And who gets paid?
That's what cheaters want you to think!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
But I bet Sony will keep fighting this like SCO did.
You don't really understand the nature of cheating. It's easy to stop wall hacking/fog of war with client side checks. The whole premise of server side checking is to ensure the server only sends you the data necessary for you to render at that time, not before, not after. As far as things like aimbots go, you would actually need to inspect the code loaded/running on the client, which isn't something that's 'brand new' and hasn't been solved countless times. Hell even hardware controller hacks like 10 trigger inputs on one pull are easy to recognize and detect with well implemented server side checks. There are plenty of games out there already that are multiplayer online games that don't have hacking as a problem. These tend to be newer PC games though, as PC's have had to deal with this issue for ages, and thus the developers think about security when they actually build their games.
Now they just need to release the key for that huge super file from wikileaks....which probably won't amount to a hill of beans. Well besides the fact showing how corrput our govt is and other companys, but hey it's not like we didn't know that already. release the krakon
Um, no it's not. While I agree with the first part of your statement, an Optimus Prime toy doesn't yet have a built in commerce engine, play 1000s of movies or provide additional revenue that Hasbro bases their financial projections on to remain a profitable company.
FTFY. "Buy the new Optimus Prime EX Super Toy with up to 500 lines from the Transformers movies!
Base toy comes with five lines, additional lines sold separately, use of addon voice packs requires continuous connection to wireless network to validate content, see our website for more detail.
In retaliation, PS3 Hackers should make an effort to damage the PS3s market any way possible. And I'd imagine the best approaches will be :
(1) improving the free PS3 emulators for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux,
(2) making piracy of PS3 games more user friendly, say writing better howtos,
(2) developing tools for cheating in-game, ala aimbots that're easily adapted to new games,
(3) writing howto docs explaining how to create PS3 games without paying Sony's royalties, and
(4) a howto for creating an inexpensive knockoff PS3 might be nice too.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
>>>You're a complete [ass]
Fixed that for you. Don't use lame words like "tool" or "troll". Say what you REALLY mean to say. - Embrace the Hate and your transition to the dark side will be Complete. Muhahahaha.
>>>Multiplayer games != Massively Multiplayer Online games.
That is true, but the original poster was discussing ONLINE multiplayer games, and the cheating that ruins them. i.e. MMOs.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
I think the more important question is....what laws did the guy break in the first place? Did he break ANY or is this just another case of the idiotic way americans bow down and worship business?
Uhhhh, do you REALLY think that was an actual photo of this particular raid, and not just some stock photo of a police raid? You really think they planned this raid, then brought in a photographer to do an artsy photo with a lensbaby, and then released that photo to the press?
Yeah! Police should bust down a PS3 hacker's door! They should really be wasting their time to 'ensure' that no one cheats in a multiplayer game. After all, cheating is 'bad' because some people don't like it. Like repeatedly using a certain powerful weapon in a game!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I just want my Linux partition back without having to give up the PSN. Cheaters suck but really its no better than trying to play against the 18 hour a day basement dwellers.
Did taking about that toaster or microwave to see how it worked enable people around the world to download free toast that someone else spent tons of time making?
That would be great! World hunger would be more or less solved. But that's bad because capitalism is obviously good (just like scarcity)!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Indeed, with consoles the major issues that allow cheating are either having one player host the game (in which case he can use a lag switch to give himself a massive advantage) or people taking advantage of glitches in the games themselves. You can only solve the former by having dedicated servers to host games (which nobody in the industry wants to do because of cost) and you can only solve the latter with better testing and development practices (which nobody in the industry wants to do because of cost). In terms of modifying the code locally with a hack, the console manufacturers have this pretty much nailed down and the threat of losing your profile or being branded a cheat are enough to deter most people - lag switching and taking advantage of poorly coded games account for almost every instance of observed cheating in these closed systems. Sony's moves are nothing to do with preventing cheating and everything to do with controlling how you use your hardware.
The stupid thing is the double standard regarding this sort of thing. Books are released all the time that go into detail about how to hack various OSs, systems, platforms, etc, all under the guise of "prevention," and I don't see anyone kicking down the doors of those publishing companies or the book authors...
There is something very wrong with the legal system in this country...
What does modifying something that you supposedly own have to do with stealing another person's property?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Here's an idea: don't trade your freedom just to gain access to video games. Don't fall for the bait and switch. You can play games on your desktop, which as far as I know is not designed to restrict your use of it.
Palm trees and 8
I recently had an experience like this. I don't play video games much, but I can take down my buddies in Halo at work at lunch time on the LAN. I recently went to my nephew's house. He was playing Halo 3 on XBOX 360. His two brothers were playing too. I pulled up the fourth controller and lord have mercy I SWORE they were cheating. They were all claiming no they weren't, they were just THAT much better than me at that specific game. Well come to find out they just actually knew the game that well and could play it at hyperspeed, and could do things that I didn't even think of like using a sniper rifle to shoot longrange like a handgun. I was like "HOW ARE YOU KILLING ME WHEN I CAN NEVER SEE YOU". Anyways aimbot or nephew, I don't think you can code that into the system. I can still whoop their arse at MK1 on Sega Genesis though. FINISH HIM!!!
So a company that makes a bad bet and loses should be protected anyway?
I just wish this woe is me, I am an innocent abused hacker/hobbiest/tinkerer act. Here is the deal if you use the software, just accept the fact that you not get to use the PSN again. If you are distributing the proprietary sony code/information (that they can identify),expect for them to come after you. it is really that simple and it is justified.
You are 100% correct that you should expect them to come after you if you do that. The thing is...they aren't doing that. They're distributing a difference file. You then take the official firmware and the difference file, plug it into a program, and the program changes the bits of the OFW file as directed in the difference file. The difference file by itself has no Sony code, and if you aren't told what to use it on, there is absolutely no way to figure out what it's supposed to be used with. The end user is modifying code distributed by Sony for their own personal use, something that I am almost entirely sure is a protected right. Sure, you can find and download the modified firmware, but the original hackers are not the ones distributing that.
Couldn't you just turn on your aimbot, take down 15-20 cops, and the walk through the back wall and into the street?
If police are doing a raid they often do get a photographer from a newspaper to photograph it, usually for when they do anti-drug raids to discourage people from committing those crimes, lest their houses get raided too.
Yeah because there are masses of people cheating in the wide selection of MMOs on the PS3 right? /. post completely void of merit.
If I recall correctly, FF14 and DCUO are both being released on PS3 sometime in the future, and will be the first two attempts at an MMO on the console. OP is most likely referring to the rampant cheating in FPS and other directly competitive titles, But thanks for another
It's easy to stop wall hacking/fog of war with client side checks.
The whole point here is that if the PS3 is hacked, it is easy to evade client side checks. "Newer PC games" will be hacked too, given enough time and interested parties
which is totally what she said
Wall hacks are not currently measurable by some simple metric. Computers simply can't detect (yet) what humans can. I have seen some sorry cheaters that had low scores with wall-hacks, and some good ones that are really good at hiding it. I say this as someone often accused of cheating, and someone that researched it on my own game servers before VAC2 came out for CS:S. It just isn't an easily solvable problem unless you don't trust the client as you said. But that brings upon extra expense, complexities, etc. Either you don't have single player, or you need to be online to play. And so on.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
What do you expect - this is a geek-centric site with a big userbase of people who like programming and hacking their devices. Would you sign up for a forum account with "we-hate-cheese.com" and then moan because the forum is full of negative cheese comments? Sony has proved time and again that it is averse to some of the ideals a lot of people here hold dear, so of course they're going to get beat down for that - that doesn't say anything about the "hivemind" or the moderation system, it just says "here are a group of largely like-minded people". Besides, at least one in every ten posts is someone moaning that Sony will never get a fair deal because of the hivemind and the broken moderation system (while rarely adding any insightful counter arguments - just like your post, hoping to attract mod points from the minority detractors).
Consequently, Nintendo is the least evil games console manufacturer/distributor.
So you say it's "least evil" to exclude individuals, even serious ones, from officially developing games for its platform. And you say it's "least evil" to sue manufacturers and importers of GBA flash cards and R4-style DS microSD adapters, even those who ship source and binaries of the devkitARM homebrew SDK (or its predecessors) on a mini-CD with the product. And you say it's "least evil" to require region coding on all console games and all DSi/3DS games, as opposed to the PS3, Xbox 360, and iPod touch, where many or all games are all-region. And you say it's "least evil" to have, back in the NES era, threatened stores considering selling the Sega Master System or TurboGrafx-16 with shortages if they didn't go NES-exclusive, and threatened developers with "ROM shortages" if they didn't go NES-exclusive. Or are these examples of "bad guys at heart", not rising to "evil"?
Nintendo DSi vs. iPod touch: How is Apple more evil?
Wii vs. ION nettops such as Eee Box and Aspire Revo: How are ASUS and Acer more evil?
Well, having been accused of hacking a few times in the past when I was just playing well, I think the answer to that is that it's not always possible to tell. Some aimbots I saw back when I used to play CS were really obvious, swinging the player's view around in a figure 8 type motion constantly, others were much more subtle with the aim jumping just as the player shot..
Never trust the client is a given, but guaranteeing the client side is kosher is basically DRM. It will be cracked eventually. Though if you regularly change the keys that would presumably help, and that's entirely feasible for a network game..
which is totally what she said
I gave it a try, but soon realized it has no fixed ending, and no real point/plot/purpose. 6 years and $1000 down the tube.
You think spending 6 years and $1000 on a video game and THEN realizing there was no point/plot/purpose is SOON?
You make it sound like government is the white knight that will ride in and save us all from big bad sony. I beg to differ: government is the cause of all this. It was government and their unjust laws that set the stage and encouraged sony (and many others) to be a corporate tyrant. It is government and only government that holds the key to "corporate oppression", because only government holds the key to using coercion as a business model.
In the end, no business may employ coercion without the blessing of government, and therefore, government is ultimately at fault. The fact that government's police force was employed on sony's behalf says it all.
And even then, I think there are many cases where they shit on the spirit of the constitution in order to push their agenda anyway (eg - I do not think the tax laws we now have are the same as the founding fathers intended)
Federal tax law might not be the best example of defecating on the Constitution's spirit. The Constitution was amended specifically to allow an income tax.
We are discussing a video game console manufacturer violating basic human civil liberties; this article should have more presence on Slashdot. Granted, in the wake of earthquakes and revolutions and the like it is not as big of an issue, but once you give a major corporation like Sony an inch, they'll take it as far as they possibly can.
No sir, a better analogy is you sold him a car, he took it apart to see how it works and then explained it to friends. You then come with your friends with guns, and bust down his door. Could his friends make the car parts? Sure, but should it be illegal to share information? Certainly not. He didn't steal anything. Reverse engineered maybe, but you can't steal a car in your possession.
What he is advocating is that if you put a security system on your car, the police shouldn't have to track down car thieves if the car gets stolen. I see his point, but I don't agree. I believe in information being free, and I think it is "criminal" (to society, in general) to not allow someone to share it. But, I believe in freedom, and someone should have the right to be selfish. Forcing someone to not be selfish is well, selfish.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
That is true, but the original poster was discussing ONLINE multiplayer games, and the cheating that ruins them. i.e. MMOs.
You're... you're kidding me, right? Are you honestly confusing MASSIVELY multiplayer online games (MMOs) with online multiplayer games in general?
Here's a hint for you: World of Warcraft is an MMO. City of Heroes is an MMO. Lord of the Rings Online, also an MMO.
Call of Duty: Black Ops? Fuck no, that's just an online game.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Right, because without a photographer nobody will actually believe the drug houses get raided.
That's called free speech. Are you stupid? Your ability to play a game is not more important than the fucking first amendment.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm tired of this ignorant response. Hotz has nothing to do with the hacks you may or may not be seeing in games. All he has done is returned the PS3 to it's originally sold capabilities, which allow you to run alternate operating systems and various bits of homebrew or other creations. He is no more responsible for someone using it deviously than Intel is responsible for any activities you conduct on your Intel-based computer.
I'd rather anything, than for government agents to be doing the bidding of corporations in what should be CIVIL cases.
If this is how people think then we have already lost...
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
I have a pretty good feeling that's exactly what is happening for the most part. Let's hope that the underground is many times bigger than it appears. We're gonna need it to tear down the authoritarians.
There is no evidence that the police "busted down" his door. I did a little googling after I read the previous comment that referred to that and discovered two things. First, the site linked in the summary is a site that doesn't actually go out and find news. They just report stories that they find that are of interest to their readers. Second, none of the other sites which reported on this story contained such a picture, and all of them talked very generically about the police raiding his house and seizing his equipment. This means that there is no report local to Graf_chokolo of the police conducting a SWAT style raid. As a matter of fact, from the tone of the other reports, I would have to conclude that the police showed up at his door with a warrant and knocked.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I suppose I'm expecting too much.
I viewed online forums as a place for discussion and discourse.
But in order to have any discourse that is worth a damn, opposing view points will both have to get air.
But in online forums like Slashdot and Reddit with downmod/downvote buttons controlled by the masses, everything comes down to mob rule.
It's kind of hard to discuss anything when you are getting shouted-down (or in this case down-modded/voted into invisibility) with cries of "Four legs good, two legs bad.".
I have turned back into a lurker on Reddit and considering doing so on Slashdot as well - Reddit is 10x worse due to everyone having mod privileges; I just go there for kitten pics and rage comics now.
I beginning to feel Benjamin the donkey was right,
things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse – hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life
Human nature hasn't changed since 1945, might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.
EA does this with BF:BC2
10 years of great gameplaying (1995-2005) so I'm hardly anti-sony.
Yep, some of my best friends are black also.
Sony does make a lot of products other than the PS3 system.... Perhaps a huge facebook driven boycott of Sony products... start messing with the bottom line and I bet they change their tune. Oh wait... facebook is evil... well yes it may be considered that especially by those reading this but perhaps it could be used for good... muuuaahhaahaaaaa
people should boycott sony for an invasion of privacy and freedom of information among other things ex: messing with hackers who are just trying to learn something from their own property
http://www.mediafire.com/?5sl3uu7lu5hn7a7
This was working at the time of posting the comment (TFA isn't).
Hurr. It makes "shocking television" to see a dawn raid on the morning news.
Welcome to the Incorporated States of America. The Pledge of Allegiance will now be an EULA that school children will be forced to scroll through and click "Agree" on every morning for 12 years.
"Sony, what you're proposing violates the First Amendment"
"But we based profit projections on it!"
"You did? Oh you poor guys. In that case, get the swat team ready, let's go scare the shit out of some geeks!!"
If this is how people think then we have already lost...
You really think he/she is wrong?
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
I want to define anything first; but have all the + mod points.
Seriously this is too much. If they positioned themselves as not allowing you to have PSN services if you modded your console, then fine. Going against people who pirate games, fine. But targetting legitimate modding (including what can be 'dual use' which is another philosophical question in itself) when people have purchased the console themselves is a new low - it's now infringing on the rights of consumers to do what they want to with machines they purchase. If they are allowed to get away with this as others have mentioned it will set a whole new (lower) standard in how companies can restrict our inalienable rights. The whole concept of them promising the 'other os' option and then taking it away is poor.
I have to say Microsoft has behaved (from a console/gamer point of view) in a much more respectful manner in the past few years. I don't even think Sony has a natural advantage why you would want to buy their equipment, especially as others make better phones/tvs etc.
I'm calling for people to boycott Sony, not just games, but in TVs, cameras, and phones. Maybe they'll get a message that their anticonsumer tactics are not in anybody's interests. As a public service aside I noted the linked article has broken download links for the 'hypervisor bible'. So I provide the following link for the Slashdot audience: http://www.ps3iso.com/showthread.php?t=51100
Fuck them all. Get a PC. Even running Linux (!) you can play so many games for so long, day after day, completely wasting every spare hour of your life. Medical technology will never advance the human lifespan long enough such that even Linux gaming (and c'mon, it's not like Linux is the gaming platform) can ever be exhausted by any one person, even if that person drops out of school and work completely and takes meth all the time so they never sleep. It is so ridiculous to whine about non-evil game platform unavailability when even the most meager non-evil platform has so much to waste your time on. ;-) Fuck Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. The world is bigger than them.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think Nintendo is evil but they have done less harm to gaming than Sony or Microsoft, and ALSO done less harm to the world.
I will admit that Atari is responsible for cryptographic lockout in the 7800, but Nintendo is single-handedly responsible for region coding. DVD borrows a principle invented by Nintendo.
Those aren't game consoles.
Definition disagreement detected. Layne's Law states that rational discussion cannot proceed without a solid definition of "game console". Can you define it to exclude small-form-factor gaming PCs with a 10-foot launcher installed but include the PS3 that "only does everything"?
I have to say, I am not impressed by this. At the end of the day, it is a CIVIL matter. From the look of that copper (an employee of the state!) bashing down the door, its the type of thing you see on police camera action.
BTW Sony, kiss my ass with your attempted take downs. Information wants to be free ;) Lets see your effectiveness against TPB
It's available as always from our friends at the pirate bay.
I am going to find out which constabulary this is, and write a letter of complaint of the police using heavy handed tactics in non criminal matters. It's almost as though they are sony's personal army.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Good luck getting 38 states to agree to an omnibus constitutional amendment to clarify the Constitution so as to reverse the Supreme Court's misinterpretations over time.
Car != IP Copyright is to insure creative arts would be able to profit from there works to entice them to produce those works. If you have a technical means to protect those works you no longer need copyright to do the same it's a pick one. As to the bad car analogy patents protect plenty of that work and are at least somewhat sensible, though they are moving to copyright and DRM to kill off OEM parts.
No sir I dont like it.
You're a tool and a fool. Free toast? You're comparing some bits and bytes - imaginary, abstract nonsense, to real world, concrete possessions. For me to get some free toast, someone, somewhere had to grow some wheat (or other grain), someone had to grow some sugar, someone had to mill the flour, and refine the sugar, someone had to bake that bread - all real things, over which real people sweat, in order to produce a tangible product. Those bits and bytes? Holy mother of God - I have an entire OPERATING SYSTEM which is given away free (gratis), not to mention that it is also free (as in, unencumbered by patents, copyrights, yada yada yada) Now, if my superior (superior to the most common proprietary system) operating system is so very dirt cheap - how in hell do you justify any claim that people downloading bits and bytes are STEALING something? Grow up, dude. Abstract ideas are exactly that - ABSTRACT. You think of something and share it with someone, it's no longer yours. Ideas are viral. You cannot prevent me doing something with your bits and bytes, because once I see/hear/comprehend them, they are as much MINE as they are yours. You get credit for originality, nothing more, and nothing less.
"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
at least apple does not get the cops to bust some a** over Iphone and mac os x hacking.
No they only took the big guys to court over loading mac os x on a pc and even then over seas they will have a even harder time wining a case over the same thing and as for the iphone the dmca says you have the right to hack a phone.
But with a photographer, someone may say, "Holy shit! That's Bob's house!" It personalizes it to the crowd they want to frighten off.
When my friends house was raided during Sundevil, there were reps from Microsoft and Nintendo with them. How else would the cops be able to recognize what was pirated materials or not?
How pathetically sad is it that people will ruin their lives (or corporations will ruin the lives of others) over a gaming platform? Yes, yes - you should be able to do what you want with it - I agree with that tired old argument, but it's just not worth ruining anyone's lives over. Go outside, play with your dog, play with your kids, pick up chicks...oh wait, slashdot crowd. My point being - it's JUST a gaming console, it's just not worth it.
Money must be involved somehow right?
Police don't care about this kind of crap do they?
When they pull someone over and see one of those CD holders on a person's visor they don't care that its all pirated music.... so how do they care about this PS3 stuff?
Does Sony make a huge donation to their department?
Was it a court order?
Is anyone else scared that companies such as Sony have the power to make the police do their bidding and break into peoples' private homes?
What the fuck is going on in our country?
Politician's Fallacy:
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Its a pity that there isn't an easy way to enable folks to do what they want with their own unit (which they should be able to do dammit; they bought it) without also enabling folks to violate copyright and just grab stuff for free.
But the fact is that you can't stop the later, so why crucify the former? More importantly why spend a huge cost in time money and civil rights going after "lost revenue" from people that are not, never were, and never will be your customer?
jeezus, do we need a Turing Test for gamers now?
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Wow I'm amazed that people see this as a some company abusing the rights of an individual. But let me ask you this: Does Sony maintain a police force? ...No. Does Sony make outrageous laws? ...No They just help pay for that stuff, like all taxpayers.
Its the *government* who is abusing this man, not Sony. For all of those who say that they are going to boycott Sony. Go ahead! But if you are in the same jurisdiction as this guy, don't forget to boycott the government too!
I haven't owned a console since the Atari 2600 I bought with my allowance. I have actively boycotted any and all Sony products (including their record labels - not easy for me!) for almost half a decade. This file will never be of any use to me or anyone I know. Nonetheless, I've downloaded a couple of copies, and I'm seeding the torrent as well.
Fuck 'em all.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I personally appreciate the government being a theoretical neutral third party in civil disputes. Particularly those that involve civil law - which should be best served by the entity which wrote those laws defining boundaries of civil relationships.
Furthermore, it's entirely possible that the raid was due to criminal charges rather than civil ones. The article doesn't say, but reverse engineering and in particular circumventing embedded software is a very gray area which often crosses the border between civil and criminal law.
Besides, how exactly do you expect one private entity to enter the premises of another and acquire un-tampered evidence relating to a civil dispute with the authority of a search warrant (or subpoena) and bearing arms without causing even more trouble?
You know, tests have been done with martial artists.... they demonstrated an interesting one in a show "Fight Science".
Very simple, you give a person a bunch of targets, with little LEDs, tell a subject to hit each target as the lights come on.
Compare the results of a trained, practiced martial artist against someone who isn't, and the results are striking. The martial artist was hitting the target BEFORE the normal persons limbs were even in motion!
Similar things in video games, you process visual information, and translate it into action (in this case, button presses). It should be no surprise that practice can make one person far better at these things than another, or that some people are better at these things than others.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Generally, the term "raid" is used when there is a, you know, raid. As in kicking down doors and shit. And I don't know where you live, but not every SWAT raid makes the papers.
But the fact is that you can't stop the later, so why crucify the former? More importantly why spend a huge cost in time money and civil rights going after "lost revenue" from people that are not, never were, and never will be your customer?
Probably because some of that lost revenue is from people who would have been customers. We all know that not every pirate would have bought the game. Most probably wouldn't. But even if 10-20% of pirates would have bought the game then it represents a lot of money. There might also have been another 10-20% who would have bought the game later on when it was discounted or rented out a copy. Again these sales would be lost.
By laying the smack down on pirates, crackers etc., by denying access to PSN (where griefers and cheats would run amok), by bloating up download discs and extra copy detection / protection Sony will dampen piracy and keep most people honest. If they did nothing at all, the situation could easily become as bad as it is on the DS, Wii or even the 360.
If he had been doing something illegal and knew about it there's a good chance he could have destroyed evidence if the police had announced themselves. The smarter thing to do, and safer for all parties involved, would have been to serve the search warrant while he wasn't home. For non-violent crimes this type of behavior is ridiculous. If waiting for him to leave could not be done for whatever reason, him potentially destroying evidence is (imo) worth the risk compared to the risk to everyone involved of bashing the door down.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Either you don't have single player, or you need to be online to play.
Why does single player matter at all? If they want to cheat at single player, go let them. It's their loss, or it can add a whole new dimension of fun to the game. There is never any reason to require being online for single player modes.
That's all quite pragmatic, but the lesson that I took away from this story is that we MUST stop permitting our governments to stop acting on behalf of corporations, and FORCE them to act in the interests of the people, or else we will simply continue our slide into Fascism. If we examine history, fascism leads to stagnation in technical development which leads to military conquest... And not in the direction the fascism would like.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The police don't determine whether you've done something illegal. The courts do. But I am on your side that whatever crime he's being accused of is clearly non-violent so having the police bash down the door is silly at best and probably quite dangerous for everyone involved.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
You're a tool and a fool. Free toast? You're comparing some bits and bytes - imaginary, abstract nonsense, to real world, concrete possessions.
Fallacious.
Those bits and bytes? Holy mother of God - I have an entire OPERATING SYSTEM which is given away free (gratis), not to mention that it is also free (as in, unencumbered by patents, copyrights, yada yada yada) Now, if my superior (superior to the most common proprietary system) operating system is so very dirt cheap - how in hell do you justify any claim that people downloading bits and bytes are STEALING something?
Also fallacious. That entire operating system took thousands of years to make. Something like 30,000 people have worked on Linux, on and off in groups of a dozen main contributors for the last 20 years, GNU longer, all the tools shorter. GNOME has a different set of people working on it-- not that it matters whether 3 people work 5 hours a day or one person works 15 hours a day, it's still 15 hours of work.
Somebody did a lot of work. A lot of somebodies did a lot of work. You want to say that putting all this shit together is a no-op: how can I sell it if I can't sell it? It can't be sold because it's so insanely easy to duplicate, and it's "free" because it's "just bits and bytes." I guess what we need to do is destroy all recording studios, create sound-proof music halls with low-frequency static noise generators and EM fields to screw with your electronic recorders, and make sure nobody can make recorded music at all. No more DVDs either, only music theaters with film, again with an EM field to introduce noise into your CCD so you can't record the video. That'll make shit marketable.
We need to control the physical distribution chain now, that way nobody can argue that they have a copy of "just bits and bytes" since they can't GET a copy.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Some of us are regularly in hotels and we don't always have a network connection (and if we do there's no guarantee the connection is any good), or your provider might have some big outage etc etc.
I doubt people hauling around a PS3 to play in a non-internet enabled hotel room represents a typical use case. There are obvious workarounds such as ensuring to book into a hotel which has wifi or taking a device which offers a personal wifi hotspot, e.g. some android phones.
You can improve the system by meta-moderating. You can do that every day. It helps determine whom should get moderator points, how often they should get those points, and identifies the best moderators for extra points. Please do meta-moderate today to improve the system.
If this is how people think then we have already lost...
I didn't know Sony was on slashdot... :)
If I recall correctly, FF14 and DCUO are both being released on PS3 sometime in the future, and will be the first two attempts at an MMO on the console.
FF11 for the PS2/Xbox 360 didn't count?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I thought "never trust the client" was the first rule of security for games like these?
It probably is. However in a controlled console environment I bet most online games are replete with exploits, holes, bugs for griefers / modders / cheats to run amok through if they are not constrained by the normal firmware and client software. It's one obvious reason why Sony would deny PSN to people with modded consoles because they could and probably would ruin the service for people who paid for their games.
I'm sure given the new potential for piracy that games may be more proactive in protecting themselves against the threat but they still won't be perfect.
+1, and in addition, what about the PS2 emulation that isn't? And what about the 60 meg original I have sitting around as a doorstop because I'm tired of paying Sony $150 to fix their faulty equipment then have it break again immediately?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I was wondering where the search warrant was, even? I don't hear anything about evidence, just sony strongarming and getting police to do sony's job for them while bypassing the legal system.
The PS3 has real-time weapon change, after all...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The mobile phone rulings have next to zero to do with this.
Mobile phones are a special case because they're designed to potentially work on any network, it's considered anti-competitive to lock you to a network. There is no good reason for sim locking except for anti-competative practices.
The locking mechanisms on the PS3 aren't anti-competative (it'll never be possible to put a 360 disc into the PS3 and for it to play), rather than hurt competition, they help the games market (the DS and PSP both were hit massively by piracy) and they're important for security.
Mod chips for consoles have almost universally been declared illegal in European courts. This isn't suddenly going to change.
This is the way it should be. As Geohat has said, it's my equipment i paid for. I should be able to do what I want with it. So Sony should work at preventing these 'cheaters' from connecting, not go after the people experimenting with their own equipment.
Try repairing your own gas boiler that you bought with your own money. Try doing your electricals or plumbing. All your property, all illegal to work on without being authorised to do so in a number of jurisdictions.
Stories like "The Right to Read" and "Printcrime" seem more prophetic all the time. Good on Graf_chokolo for sticking it to the bastards.
Modifying your hardware is not copying someone else's creative works and/or distributing them. It may give you the means to do so in the same way that owning a gun gives you the means to walk into a shopping mall and kill as many people as possible, but in itself it is not wrong. A tool is neither good nor evil. It is the use of that tool that is good or evil.
Historically in the US, as long as a tool has legitimate uses, it can not be outlawed. This new attitude that anything that can lead to copyright infringement must be outlawed is as anti-American as they come. It goes against everything that this country has stood for since its inception. If we outlawed everything that could potentially be misused, we'd all be sitting in the dark in straw huts. This type of innovation should be encouraged as it is how we make progress.
More of a question for the collective arm chair lawyers in the group...suppose a group of say 20 individuals were to each post 5% of the code publicly. The result is that no single person published enough code to do anything with but collectively the segments could be used to reverse engineer the hypervisor and crack the ps3. My question is...would this protect those authors enough to prevent arrests like this while still ensuring the information gets put out there?
It's all about the cheevos. Even single player is multi-player.
Before I actually started participating on Slashdot, I used to think it was comprised of folks interested in tech and actually interested in open-minded discussion with all viewpoints respected.
Oh I was mistaken. How I was mistaken!
Apparently, to be considered Insightful, Interesting, or Informative, all you have to say is "Grrr! I hope Sony goes down in flames!" or something like that. And to be Flamebait, Troll or Redundant, all you have to be is not anti-Sony.
What a woeful state of affairs.
The police did the right thing. This guy is obviously a gamer, which means he is an expert in all forms of combat, including multiple styles of hand-to-hand martial arts, every weapon under the sun, and black magic.
I can tell I'm tired... I apparently read "on the console" as "on a console."
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I put on my Robe and Wizard hat. :-]
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
No, they only do that if you happen upon a prototype that they were stupid enough to lose and not bother labeling in the first place by perverting the course of justice by having the police recover their property.
Probably because some of that lost revenue is from people who would have been customers.
[citation needed]
We all know that some pirates are displacing sales. We also know that some pirates are of the "try before you buy" type who go on to pay because they're socially responsible, and wouldn't have paid otherwise because they wouldn't lay out $50 for a game without trying it first. We know that some pirates will promote the game to their friends, who may buy it. Or make campaign maps or submit bug reports or do various other things that make the game more valuable to prospective customers, thereby increasing sales.
What we don't know is whether the positive effects outweigh the negative. We really have no idea. There is no good way to measure it. But chances are, it's pretty close to a wash.
Then you weigh in the cost of anti-piracy measures. Fair use, gone. Property rights in your own equipment? Sorry, that belongs to corporations now -- Linux is just for hackers anyway. Does the DRM think you're a pirate even though you're not? Guess you paid $50 for nothing. And I hope you like paying the Microsoft tax, because if corporations can intentionally exclude FOSS from being able to play various media, you end up paying big money for what would by all rights otherwise be free. Oh, and losing your ability to control it.
It's just not worth it.
PS3 supports standard [...] USB controllers [but] Xbox360 on the other side has [...] a proprietary USB protocol that is specifically designed to block third party controllers
I thought PS3 system software 3.50 and later had rejected unlicensed controllers.
The thing that sucks with Sony is that they bit by bit are taking away the freedom they offered. Microsoft on the other side never offered any freedom in the first place, quite the opposite, their console is pretty much as locked down as it can be.
What counterpart does any current PlayStation product have to Microsoft's XNA Game Studio, App Hub (formerly XNA Creators Club), and Xbox Live Indie Games?
My reply to Hatta addresses the member states' theoretical sovereignty over the federal government.
There is a lot of grey area. That first 'M' is pretty subjective.
If I play WoW on a private server, is it still an MMORPG? What if I'm the only player? What if there are 10,000 other players?
The prosecutors do. The police in these cases is simply a service department working for the higher ups. There is no cop who wants to do this because it simply ain't what they signed up for and no, they don't get a bonus or a brown envelope. Regular cops in the US are reasonably uncorrupt despite what some 12yr olds might think.
This kind of corruption goes far further up with elected officials who need campaign contributions and a nice job for when they retire.
And if you care so much, stop voting for the fucktards and elect someone with a heart. Of course that might mean your taxes go up, can't have that can we?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Then you weigh in the cost of anti-piracy measures. Fair use, gone. Property rights in your own equipment? Sorry, that belongs to corporations now -- Linux is just for hackers anyway. Does the DRM think you're a pirate even though you're not? Guess you paid $50 for nothing. And I hope you like paying the Microsoft tax, because if corporations can intentionally exclude FOSS from being able to play various media, you end up paying big money for what would by all rights otherwise be free. Oh, and losing your ability to control it.
If you think the majority of people buy a console ever expecting "fair use" you're living in cloud cuckoo land. It is almost by definition a closed box, and Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo will do their damnedest to keep it that way.
Though I doubt Sony would give a crap if someone produced firmware that turned their PS3 into a dedicated Linux box. What they do care about is people modifying their closed firmware to enable piracy, isoloaders, game hacks, PSN hacks, aimbots, trophy editors etc. etc.
1) This happened in Germany, not the US.
2) People seem to be forgetting Mr. Chokobo's threat against Sony when they first sued geohot. Threatening reprisal against someone who uses the legal system is never a good idea. In fact, it's unambiguously criminal, unlike DMCA violations.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
There are a lot of reasons, honestly.
Do you really want to go around suing 16 year old kids and their parents? Certainly, it's a lot harder and less effective to go after individual downloaders.
The reality of the situation is that very, very, very people have the knowledge required to do things like 'Hack a PS3'. Take 1000 PS3 gamers and, odds are, 0 can do it. Sure, lots of them can Google and follow instructions, but to actually do it, from scratch? Good luck.
And, while there might be legitimate reasons to 'hack' a PS3 99.9% of the people using a hack are using it to either pirate games or cheat in games where other people are unable to cheat.
Going after a handful of high-profile hackers will do significantly more than going after 10,000 high school kids.
As for the educational aspect, I'm not sure it really exists. The amount of pre-req knowledge you'd need to hack a PS3 means you are already at an elite level of knowledge. You aren't a curious youngster, regardless of age, you know what you are doing.
If you think the majority of people buy a console ever expecting "fair use" you're living in cloud cuckoo land. It is almost by definition a closed box, and Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo will do their damnedest to keep it that way.
That's the problem.
Though I doubt Sony would give a crap if someone produced firmware that turned their PS3 into a dedicated Linux box. What they do care about is people modifying their closed firmware to enable piracy, isoloaders, game hacks, PSN hacks, aimbots, trophy editors etc. etc.
I don't think you understand what I'm saying.
It isn't that aimbots and piracy are socially-beneficial things that must be preserved. It's that the measures required to eliminate them, first of all don't actually eliminate them, but more importantly the cure is worse than the disease. Shutting open systems out of popular culture just so we can stop some jackass from cheating at video games is too high a cost.
It happened in Germany.
But hey, don't let that get in the way of a good America bashing...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
I always assumed chokolo was a pseudonym, but regardless, reputations benefit both sides in "the scene": Obviously it benefits the person or people behind the name through ego and pride, but it also benefits the people who use their products, because they trust the source. Anonymous distribution would make it easy for someone like Sony (since we're on that subject) to anonymously release "custom" firmware that bricks any console it's installed on.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Stolen property is a not the same thing; false analogy. If they stole my phone I'd want the police to get it back and look at the person to see if he was the crook or knowingly bought stolen goods.
PR/Lawyer types invented the Intellectual Property term that mischaracterizes the whole situation and gets us all to use that term and warp thinking on the subject in their favor- its a perfect example of 1984 style word games. This sony thing is only about INFORMATION they claim to own and not in a literal sense; a broad unspecified amount of information defined only by its possible use against them. He should have setup a blog and called himself NEWS so he'd have a little bit more protection.
It doesn't matter if you are insecure if you can ID the those who break your security - you can just prosecute them after (possibly at no expense if gov does it.) Take the pathetic numeric passwords openly displayed on every credit card for example.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why don't you go after the people who upload illegal software then?
FTFY
IMHO, the solution is simple. Let the client serve the user in the fullest capacity possible (a very important distinction from single player games). The server shouldn't send information unless the player is supposed to know it. Don't give the positions of every player on the map and tell the client to withhold that information, someone will exploit that, even if it requires a packet sniffer and external RAM monitor. Cheaters suck, but that's a game design flaw exploited by a social problem. My hardware serves me, not its manufacturer.
Some of you may remember that graf_chokolo promised if he was pushed, that he would release all of his PS3 hypervisor knowledge to the world. He kept good on this promise, releasing what is being dubbed as the Hypervisor Bible.
And we have the beginnings of the SONY religion. :)
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Did taking about that toaster or microwave to see how it worked enable people around the world to download free toast that someone else spent tons of time making?
"Tons of time" making toast? Downloading toast? Cars?
I want to thank you for this enlightening comparison of software to toast. I really had a hard time understanding software piracy, but toast I understand, so I have a whole new handle on the subject.
The image from the article comes from an iPhone article released in 2010. It is not the raid in question. Probably just a stock image.
http://www.technet.hu/hir/20100427/hazkutatas_az_uj_iphone_miatt/
So, Sony continues to shoot itself in the foot, but they managed to switch to tactical nukes?
Definitely makes Streisand look like a bloody amateur.
I would probably take precautions if it was me, but is a police raid really an acceptable response to a civil disagreement?
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
meaning all of us, by way of our investements and 401k accounts. This is why you'll never see massive, real, grass-roots protest of such corporate policies, as most of the US public actually *wants* them to conduct brutal business, make the quarter, and put thirty pieces of unclean silver in their (our) pockets.
The original uploads are missing. Good thing it's now on the Pirate Bay.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6197257/coolstuff.rar
However, they can still refuse to offer you PSN services. Otherwise you are already allowed to use your console as you please.
I read half way through the license when I hooked my PS3 up to the internet, and then removed the cable. Haven't re-attached it since. Can't see that changing any time soon, I don't trust the authors of a viral root kit with access to my home network.
This sounds funny, but I know that my gamer friends living in bad neighborhoods either pack swords or guns depending on whether they are into the SCA or not. Well, except for the one guy that has the metal Maglite with the extended battery case.
He effected a bored affect.
Linux (and other free software) is Free by the choice of the authors: it's free both actually (as cracked software also is) and ethically (which separates it from cracked software).
Threatening reprisal is unambiguously LEGAL...
If you punch me in the face, I will punch you back. I just threatened reprisal, and I clearly didn't break the law....even in Germany.
Point taken about it being in Deutschland though. Somehow I missed that.
What I gather from Sony's lawsuit fever:
- Sony sues it's own customers, so I'd better not buy stuff from them because you never know...
- What you buy from Sony is not really your property.
- Sony violates people's rights in many ways and really doesn't care about you or me - why should I support such a company with my money then?
- Sony can't protect their code and software properly (i.e. by programming the software properly) and has to use lawsuits instead. As a customer I think it says a lot about the quality of their products then, so I won't buy.
This is awful advertisement for Sony. This kind of strategy works for the MAFIAA because, as most people know by now, the music industry is not actually trying to protect their music, they simply changed their business from making music to making lawsuits. The music industry does not need customers, they need pirates that they can sue.
So yeah, the MAFIAA can afford angering would-be customers. Sony, on the other hand... they record music and make money out of PS3 games, but they also sell TVs and other items... Not sure suing their customers strategy will pay off.
Anyway, I own a PS3. It's not connected to the Internet, and I do what I want with it. I even have sex with it, SUE ME FOR RAPE, SONY! Oh and I'm no longer buying from Sony, just like I no longer buy CDs I can't port to my computer (to avoid inserting/removing the disc in the drive) or make my friends listen to when I invite them over.
This. Please take the time to both moderate and meta-moderate.
Positive moderation on Slashdot is intended to reflect posts that are informative, interesting, insightful, etc -- NOT as an "I agree with this" marker or "I like this" marker. Similarly, negative moderation is NOT intended to be used to reduce the visibility of things you disagree with, but rather to disagree with things that are trolling or off-topic. It DOES get abused by some, but by and large I've frequently seen opposing viewpoints both get moderated positively. I personally have moderated posts which argue in disagreement with my personal feelings in a positive way, due to the fact that they bring up a point I hadn't thought of, or argue well for the position in a way which elicits good discussion. I also tend to spend most of my moderation time looking for posts to upmod, rather than downmod, which Rob's asked us to do in the moderation guidelines.
Again, some people abuse moderation, and will mark as troll or flamebait something that they disagree with. Meta-moderation helps identify this. While I've never seen such abuse while meta-moderating, I've seen it at times in threads. Sometimes I have mod points that I can use to mark something as Interesting or Informative when I feel it's been mistakenly marked as a Troll, but usually I don't.
On the open sea and before a court of law....
The move is ballsy, but this action might turn out to be a problem for him down the road.
This is why I happily do not buy sony products. Most of it is junk anyway.
due process
the police can't just arrest anybody. a court has to actually say "yes, there's a compelling set of evidence that says you should bring this guy in. i'll sign this warrant for you".
Sorry to reply off-topic, but I want to post this as high up as possible:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6197114/graf_chokolo_holy_bible_for_the_PS3
Get it and seed it, Sony has been taking down any source they can.
If you have mod points please mod this post up so it'll be more visible. You know you'll let them go to waste anyways ;)
Linux isn't actually free. Linux is distributed for free, and it is legally released as free software. Linux cost a lot to create, however; not in dollars (although there has been funding, for example the netfilter guy was paid for 1 whole year "to do nothing" while he wrote netfilter, as a business was interested in it) but in effort. It takes work, it takes stress, it takes knowledge, education, experience, and it takes time to make these things. People could be out socializing, out working a real job for money (those who are being paid are, of course, being paid--compensation for their time), out learning a new skill, or working on anything else such as other free software.
Many of them ask for no compensation for their efforts; but there is a cost. They pay that cost themselves.
How do people expect authors and software creators and musicians to ask for compensation for the effort they put into their work? Remember these people don't churn out 50,000 songs a year either; you think it's so easy, how about you try it? Nobody wants piles and piles of garbage anyway; we only want the creative stuff, the stuff that we haven't heard a thousand times before, the stuff that's actually good.
The operating system is given away free; but it sure as hell ain't free. People don't understand that stuff doesn't magically come from a hole out of nowhere.
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Something like 30,000 people have worked on Linux, on and off in groups of a dozen main contributors for the last 20 years [...] how can I sell it if I can't sell it? It can't be sold because it's so insanely easy to duplicate
You can sell it. You can make a lot of money selling it, even when it's being given out for free (gratis) at the same time. RHEL/CentOS. Sure, some people say Redhat sells support, but not from the practical view of it. Very very few sysadmins require Redhat support.
Also, if someone made a toaster that allowed people to instantly create free toast from thin air, ruining wheat farmers, bakers, etc. I'd still applaud the hacker of the insta-toaster for the boon to all peoples of the world, and the world as a whole would be better off. Even the farmers and bakers wouldn't starve, as there would be free toast available.
even hardware controller hacks like 10 trigger inputs on one pull are easy to recognize and detect with well implemented server side checks
How can it tell the difference between a hardware hack and me mashing the button fast? I used to mash the mouse button for BF2's MEC sniper rifle if I had an enemy get really close in my sites (climb up the ladder in front of me). It sounded like a full-auto rifle, and was always an instant kill. But no hardware or software hacks, just pure caffeine jitters (I had to lift my hand from the mouse slightly and shake my entire hand).
Police don't have to charge you with a crime before arresting you, at least in the United States of Freedom.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
yes, but there's no mention of a warrant, either.
that is a threat? "lol, back off sony or i release my code".
unless that code is Skynet, i don't think that constitutes a threat. it's basically him saying "if you strike me down, i shall become stronger than you can possibly imagine"
but then there's that old cliche of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
doing what you suggest creates a powerful Streisand effect, and there's been no way in hell (as DeCSS proved) that the ps3 hacking will be stopped.
if someone tattoos the key on their arm, will Sony chop it off and incinerate it?
word.
by the time i get into a game (which is rare), the online playerbase will be so vastly more skilled than i, that there's no fun in it for me.
games are for fun... aren't they? guys?
it just kills you that all that effort went without money changing hands, doesn't it?
most of the world's great artworks were not made on commission (in fact, in many periods, commissioned art was a huge detriment).
i'm on a comfortable salary, and my job does not consume all of my creative energy. it's gotta go somewhere, so i make things or write things and often give them away because i feel like it, or don't need the money, or are too lazy/stupid to find a way to monetize my little creations.
must seem like anathema to you. but creativity is planted deeper in the human mind than the desire for money.
goddamn it, i really want some toast now.
Of course I thought it was fiction at the time.... That bloody "Max Headroom".
Coming soon, houses raided for using unlicensed screwdrivers to open paint cans instead of their official $95 paint can opening tool.
considering that the Achievements don't do anything other than give you bragging rights, it is not a valid reason to enforce online components for single-player. There are many many ways to make it work. Whether you can only get achievements if you are online, but can still play without or whatever.
well, I wish Sony all the best of luck. Once information of this type gets out on the web, its nearly impossible to remove. The problem Sony has that "reverse engineering" isn't exactly illegal. Now, they have tried this before and look where it got them: case thrown out of court because the expert witness torpedoed their case.
They might have a case for copyright infringement but with as many copies as are floating around out there, its going to start costing them more than its worth to pursue all the possible litigants.
Perhaps Sony should open source their software and get a lot of "free help" improving it. That would not only earn them increased profits, but also loads better in Public Relations credibility.
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
Don't they own BMG Music and a movie studio or two?
What else?
Are you honestly trying to argue that playing the game in an unintended way actually changes the game's genre? Does Doom become an RPG if I call myself an Elf and try to convince all the demons to stop being "naughty"?
My sig can beat up your sig.
it just kills you that all that effort went without money changing hands, doesn't it?
No, what kills me is that people think they're entitled to it. Who is entitled to Alan Cox's work? What if Linus decided to retire from running the project? Under the consideration that Linux might take a radically different, perhaps not as good, path without his leadership, should he be forced to continue working on it for free?
Musicians make music. Artists make art. Developers make games. Somewhere, they expect to get paid. Somewhere, someone is saying, "But I can download a copy for FREE, I shouldn't have to PAY them for that!" You honestly expect people to do all this work without just compensation?
Linux is not free. Free software is not free. It's all paid for by the sweat and blood of thousands of individuals who made a generous donation to society. You should thank them for paying for it with their time, effort, and experience so you don't have to. What you should not do is rationalize that, because somebody made something you can get a copy of for free, it's just fine to copy it and they don't deserve to be paid for the copying because hell, it doesn't cost them anything for you to get a copy. People who put this shit up for money have done a lot of hard work.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Something like 30,000 people have worked on Linux, on and off in groups of a dozen main contributors for the last 20 years [...] how can I sell it if I can't sell it? It can't be sold because it's so insanely easy to duplicate
Don't tightly associate the general argument with a side argument. A lot of cost went into making Linux; I wanted to establish that the OS has a huge cost to make, even though it's free to get. I was trying to break the connection between "Well people make X for free so see, stuff is free to make," because it's not. Go back one sentence before your ellipses. Putting it together was not a no-op.
You can sell it. You can make a lot of money selling it, even when it's being given out for free (gratis) at the same time. RHEL/CentOS. Sure, some people say Redhat sells support, but not from the practical view of it. Very very few sysadmins require Redhat support.
Yeah but can you sell support for music? Movies? Whatever that new fad is now... Ornery Birds? That's my point. How do we compensate people for making a fucking awesome CD?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That doesn't mean those who misuse legitimate knowledge gained through reverse engineering (which is not only legal, but standard practice in the tech industry to work with any piece of hardware) are an excuse to drop the hammer on those who use it legitimately.
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
since when a profit is a sure thing ???? you make a bet you win or loose, that is a "free market" as they say.
the way sony is acting is like the bully of the school you play by my rules or ELSE you eat your teeth. This is Civil/Legal violence/bullying! If I remember correctly the bullied needs protection and the bully spend some time in the principle's office, not the other way around.