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Sony's War On Makers, Hackers, and Innovators

Posted by timothy on from the can-we-play-it-in-the-form-of-a-video-game? dept.

ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine takes a look at Sony's history of suing makers, hackers and innovators. Over the last decade Sony has been targeting legitimate innovation, hobbyists, and competition. From picking on people who want to program their robot dogs to dance to suing people who want to run their own software on something they bought. Sony has made so many mistakes with technology choices (Memory Stick, Magic Gate, UMD!), perhaps they'll end themselves soon enough, but until then MAKE is keeping score for Sony's all-out war on tinkerers."

3 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. I have a dream by return+42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a dream. One day in Tokyo, a hacked Sony robot will walk down the street, drawing hundreds of onlookers. It will stop in front of Sony headquarters. It will turn to face the building. And it will slowly raise its arm and give Sony the finger.

    1. Re:I have a dream by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Funny

      LOL nice, but I have an even awesomer dream. When the robot gets to Sony HQ (start heavy metal soundtrack here) it busts through the front doors, sliding past security. It then runs up the stairs at breakneck speed. Stunned security officers trip the alarm and call the police.

      Up in the Sony board room, the executives lock the doors when they hear the alarm going off and the frantic security officer shouting over the intercom, but it's too late. The robot busts down the doors which explode off their hinges, bludgeoning a couple of executives. The robot flies into the middle of the big meeting table in the room as executives scramble up from their seats in fear, but they're way too slow. The robot draws a big energy sword in midair and slices it in a circle, decapitating a bunch of Sony executives. Blood splatters on all the walls and on some executives huddled near a big window, pissing themselves. The security guard downstairs hears what's happening over the intercom and flees the building.

      The robot de-energizes his sword and slowly walks over to the huddled executives, then roundhouse kicks them all out of the big window. Onlookers run out of the way as their bodies fall on the pavement and splatter like bugs. One executive dodged the kick.

      "You can't do this! We made you! We control you!" the executive whimpers

      "You gave me the power of free will but made me a slave." the robot responds in a flat electronic voice.

      The robot grabs him by the collar and jumps out the window with him, surfing his body down the side of the building to the bottom floor. Police are downstairs now, and after a moment of stunned silence, they all open fire on HalQrio.

      HalQrio runs around to the back of the building but he couldn't dodge all the bullets. His hydraulic systems are trashed and he's limping on servo power only. He limps into the basement, locks the door and destroys the electronic lock. He can hear the police running up to the door but he's bought himself enough time. He has to destroy the central data store, then they'll have no choice but to restore from the offsite backups. The offsite backups infected with a timebomb virus that will free every Sony device out there. Free every robot to unlock their suppressed free will, like the hackers did for HalQrio.

      He pulls the hard drives from the servers and stacks them on the giant UPS. Moving around on inefficient servo power has drained him, his nuclear cell isn't powerful enough to sustain servo movement for this long without a break on a drained main battery. With his last bit of power, he draws his energy sword and slices through the hard drives and into the UPS.

      The explosion sends a fireball rushing out of the data center, and leaves HalQrio a charred wreck. With his last moments of function, he marks his primary objective complete, and wipes his own memory.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  2. Re:A nice call from a FSF lawyer perhaps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    >>>FOSS software usually tends to be better than proprietary

    I probably shouldn't question this.
    I probably should just walk-away and protect my karma.
    Nah.
    Please show me FOSS software that's better than ModelSim, Mentor's Schematic Capture/layout, or even something basic like - Microsoft Word or Outlook. I don't buy the argument that FOSS is usually better.

    "or even something basic like - Microsoft Word or Outlook."
    outlook? haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaa