Slashdot Mirror
Sony Agrees To Pay Millions To Gamers To Settle PS3 Linux Debacle (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After six years of litigation, Sony is now agreeing to pay the price for its 2010 firmware update that removed support for the Linux operating system in the PlayStation 3. Sony and lawyers representing as many as 10 million console owners reached the deal on Friday. Under the terms of the accord, (PDF) which has not been approved by a California federal judge yet, gamers are eligible to receive $55 if they used Linux on the console. The proposed settlement, which will be vetted by a judge next month, also provides $9 to each console owner that bought a PS3 based on Sony's claims about "Other OS" functionality. Under the plan, gamers eligible for a cash payment are "all persons in the United States who purchased a Fat PS3 model in the United States between November 1, 2006, and April 1, 2010." The accord did not say how much it would cost Sony, but the entertainment company is expected to pay out millions. On March 28, 2010, Sony announced that the update would "disable the 'Install Other OS' feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models." This feature, Sony claimed, would be removed "due to security concerns." Sony did not detail those "concerns," but the litigation alleged piracy was behind the decision. A gamer can get the $55, but they "must attest under oath to their purchase of the product and installation of Linux, provide proof of their purchase or serial number and PlayStation Network Sign-in ID, and submit some proof of their use of the Other OS functionality." To get the $9, PS3 owners must submit a claim, at the time they bought their console, they "knew about the Other OS, relied upon the Other OS functionality, and intended to use the Other OS functionality." Alternatively, a gamer "must attest that he or she lost value and/or desired functionality or was otherwise injured as a consequence of Firmware Update 3.21 issued on April 1, 2010," to get $9.
So, basically, the lawyers get a fee of millions, but they have made it so hard to actually register for the fifty-five dollar rebate that pretty much all the users will get: zero.
Horray for America.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Look shit head, the Air Force built a supercomputer cluster out of 1700 PS3s. The Cell is hot shit if you know what you're doing (which excludes you, of course).
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Vastly different architectures, so those comparisons, despite being in the same units, is still not worth a lot.
You see, the Cell is RISC, while the Intel chips you mentioned are all CISC.
If you don't know the difference, look it up.
Short version, they do very different things well, so a pure measurement of flops is pretty useless to compare.