I think Geohot is in the wrong, specifically as he released the root key publicly. This post by Butr0sButr0s - timestamp 22/02/11 @ 13:32 succinctly explains what I'm thinking about him releasing the key, especially the book-related analogy.
So I'm going to support Sony - by buying all the good games they release this year.
Oddly enough (well, not really odd) my comment seems to be the only one that doesn't scream "RAR! RAR! RAR! GOOO hackers! BURN SONY TO THE GROUND! YEAH! WOO!".. if only it were, it'd get a +5 in no time.
Perfectly right! Curiously, for a tech-minded website populated by supposedly rational people interested in tech, an amazing number of moderators and posters seem to be outright Sony-haters here.
I don't have any moderator points, but...Kudos to your post!
minus a few exclusives that are crap and you would not want anyway.
You mean like Disgaea 3 and 4, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and Demon's Souls, just to name a few?
If you don't like them, that's fine, you are free to do so. But don't be surprised when you get modded troll for your attitude that anyone who holds different values from yourself is stupid or lying.
I don't think he/she will get modded "Troll" - probably "Informative" or "Insightful". But that's par for the course for ANYBODY who hates on Sony on Slashdot. He will probably get modded up for being an XBox fanboy.
Looks like Mozilla are gearing to more accurately mimic an Agile project, with working releases about every quarter. Good thing - we'll have working nuggets every quarter rather than a major year-long undertaking.
In which case this move seems more attributable to Capcom rather than Sony, as Capcom seems to think groups of gamers might abuse Sony's feature of sharing the game on up to 5 PS3s by buying one copy and then installing on every PS3. This move, by Capcom, NOT Sony would force the game to be playable by only the PSN account on which it was bought.
A VERY inconvenient move indeed, but hardly Sony's fault. From what I understand, the reason they did not implement this on the 360 is because Microsoft do NOT allow game-sharing on multiple consoles the way Sony do, and only allow the game to be playable by ONLY THE XBL subscriber who bought the game. So this move by Capcom is because Sony committed the mistake of being TOO OPEN.
No, my hatred is not exclusive to the PS3. Since I play mostly on PC and don't have an Xbox360, the same goes for some titles here (not the two you mentionned, they are really overrated).
However Xbox exclusives tend to show up on PC after a while lately, but with PS3 exclusive we can barely hope for a port on the PSP (I'm still talking about Disgaea) or nothing at all.
Fair enough.
Sadly, as good as it is, it's still not good enough to counter Sony "bend-over" policy
However, I think you are going a bit overboard here by falling in with the typical Slashdot "Sony is teh evil" herd mentality. Among most of the haters here, I see about as much rational thought applied as a group of white racists would apply towards a colored person.
I have a PS3 and I bought it for playing games, watching movies, streaming video and audio, etc. I was annoyed a bit when Sony removed OtherOS from my Fat PS3, but could understand where Sony was coming from, as Sony removed OtherOS IN RESPONSE to the first Geohot hack which abused the OtherOS feature.
But you know what, I would rather have that inconvenience than have Sony's ability to create hardware and games - the central aspect of the PS3 being games, movies, music and photos - I want endangered.
If a person truly wanted to boycott EVERYTHING immoral and unfair, he would have to renounce his citizenship and go "live off the land" on an uncharted island somewhere. Selective boycotting is petty and hypocritical. Most of the haters on here are more than compromising with other systems and other companies, but because it is cool to hate Sony right now, like any college kid they will fall in to be with the "in" crowd - hence the pattern of modding up anti-Sony posters and modding down non anti-Sony posters.
The Sony and Apple bashing on Slashdot is getting retarded.
Every time some news (and even unconfirmed rumours) comes up, everyone flies into knee-jerk mode and start inventing silly worst case scenarios - most which don't even make any sense from a business perspective for the said companies.
Some of the more rabid anti-Sony posters on here seem to me to be people who have worked themselves up into such a frenzy that by now, they are frothing at the mouth and have ceased to make sense. These jerks seem to be criticizing Sony for no other fault than for being a part of Sony Corp.
Hotz's [is this writing correct?:D] first hacking attempts were done on Linux, on a fat PS3, and required Linux (and a hardware glitch IIRC) to work. So Other OS was removed from the fat PS3 in response to his (failed) attempts.
That is correct - see "http://www.answers.com/topic/george-hotz#Hacking_the_PlayStation_3".
Fact of the matter is - the Sony haters on here do not like to listen to or consider any inconvenient fact which might demonstrate that their irrational Sony hatred does not have much basis in historical fact.
Indeed. Expecting the Slashdot trolling moderators and posters (who say "anti-Sony post = Insightful, Informative, Interesting" and "non anti-Sony post modded -1, 0 or 1") is like expecting a jury of white supremacists to impartially adjudicate a case with a black defendant.
Not to forget that all of these games are superb.
By the way, you also forgot:
1st Party
--------------
Uncharted 1
God of War Collection
Demon Soul
LittleBigPlanet 2
MAG
Warhawk
Non 1st-Party
--------------------
fLow, fLower, Journey
PixelJunk games
Heavenly Sword
MGS4
Resistance 3
Heavy Rain
Ratchet and Clank Future TOD, Ratchet and Clank Future ACIT ...just to name a few more.
People would rather invent demons to ensure their hate can continue than make the effort to think. And I say this in a very general sense. In a way, Slashdotters are representative of that pettiest class of people - those who would act (our their hatred) rather than apply any thought to differing perspectives.
Why the hell was I modded troll? Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean I'm fucking trolling.
Anybody who dares to employ similar terminology such as yours while deriding Sony would have been termed "Insightful", "Informative" or "Interesting". However, since you dared to take an anti-anti-Sony position, you are being modded "Troll".
I guess the/. message is "Either you crap on Sony or Slashdot will crap on you".
so why whine when Sony does something that is actually innovative?
Judging by the way the posts are going on this website, I would say it is because the majority of the posters are hating on Sony. It becomes really funny when some of these "rational" posters praise Microsoft for being so open with the 360 and criticize Sony for being so closed with the PS3 (and they will get modded UP for this "insight", more's the wonder).
PS: It's quite amusing to see so many people** think that Sony is hell bent out to get them.
Is that really surprising? I used to think Slashdot was where rational people used to get together and discuss technology.
This was before I actually started participating here.
Now I see that, as far as Sony is concerned, this is more like an anti-Sony, Sony-haters convention, with impartiality and lack of prejudice being tossed out of the window, both by posters as well as Moderators. Hell, many of them evangelize Microsoft for the same reasons they are criticizing Sony.
Actually, it can't. The only way it can know that a game or PS3 firmware has an update is by checking online. If you are NOT online, the PS3 cannot verify whether your game software or console firmware is old, and thus you will able to start your game. I have verified this on my PS3 (and my 360).
People on Slashdot do not want to listen to that kind of logic. They would rather rant about why Sony did not include OtherOS in the Slims while disregarding the fact that if they were THAT interested in the limited homebrew offered by OtherOS, they could have bought one of the Fat PS3s. It's convenient how/.ers forget about the chronology of events while hero-worshiping Geohot for causing them to lose their OtherOS in the first place. Convenient but easily explained, given how a large number of them seem to HATE Sony (and will search for any reason to continue said hate, including the rootkit fiasco, and the hell with the fact that Sony BMG Crescendo is not the same as Sony Computer Entertainment).
It was more in relation some of the posts in this series which were marked Insightful. In any level-headed comments thread, the ranting tone would have been modded troll.
Here's an example below - painting Geohotz as some sort of messiah and Sony as the anti-Christ fascist - this was modded Insightful, and this pattern is repeated throughout the entire page:
Bullocks! He is a hacker hero. Period. Sony is not out to make things easier for consumers, and good people like George undo the shitheadednessness of assholes like Sony. The more you accept draconian DRM, as well as pure root kit nonsense, that Sony forces you to swallow, the more they take your freedom to do with your hardware whatever you want. I no longer buy Sony or Apple products because of bullshit like this. Also, do NOT subscribe me to your newsletter as you are consumer unfriendly, a possible DRM sympathizer, and as AC put it a "noncompoop."
I wasn't replying specifically to you - sorry about that. Just wasn't sure where to put this observation that the Mods here are mods only in name, with a complete lack of impartiality.
The PSP fails because most of the games SUCK...I know others that also own PSP's they sit idle as well....Sony releases only crap games...AS for the PS3, they started the war, but the ps3 still was a distant 3rd in the consoles. I know more people that own a Xbox360 and a Wii than I know own a ps3. Why? the PS3 simply does not have the games to entice people to play it. PS3 motion controls suck compared to Microsoft...I personally think it's nothing but a Mee-Too catchup to the Wii.
Hmm, funny how any anti-Geohotz post gets modded Troll or 0 (at the most 1) and ANY anti-Sony post saying "teh Sony izz ehval", "hope they go out of business",etc is eligible for stuff like "Insightful", "Informative", "Interesting" with scores of 3, 4, and 5.
Someone publishing a crack for the PS3 was absolutely forseeable once Sony got rid of OtherOS. It might have been a mod chip or plug-in hack rather than just software, but someone was going to find a way to crack the security to put back what Sony took away.
Specifically the lines "On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public. It requires the OtherOS function of the machine, and consists of a Linux kernel module and gaining control of the machine's hypervisor via bus glitching.[22] Hotz wrote that "Sony may have difficulty patching the exploit". On March 28, 2010, Sony has responded by announcing to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that removes the OtherOS feature"
Very convenient for people who just want to lambast Sony and glorify Geohotz, REGARDLESS OF THE ACTUAL EVENT CHRONOLOGY.
..Because of Geohotz's initial exploit which USED the OtherOS feature to achieve its ends. So such an argument that he was trying to restore the OtherOS wouldn't really work, as HE was the reason Sony initially removed it from the Fat PS3s in the first place (and OtherOS was NEVER an advertised feature in the Slim PS3s).
When I exercise my right as a consumer to choose not to buy something, that is a lost sale. If you forced everyone to like a product and buy it, that would increase the chances that they would buy it. By not doing that, it is a lost sale. This should be a law.
You are changing the goal-posts now. I know these folks very well. They DO buy a copy of COD each year. So where is all this talk of choice of not buying something coming from?. You seem to be equating the choice of not buying something because it does not appeal to you and surreptitiously obtaining a copied version without paying for it as the same thing. Financially, it is not. Just because the product is not something tangible does not mean it is not a product.
When I was young, I was taught it was wrong to steal. I have grown up now, but still have enough common sense to recognize that obtaining something (or the COPY of something) for FREE when it is not legally meant to be given for free means I AM stealing something from the creators of that something, and no amount of semantics can change that realization (at least to me). Hiding behind semantics is something you seem to be quite good at doing.
We also should get rid of competition. Without competitors to go to, people will likely go to one store with near 100% probability. Right now, competition is depriving many businesses of rightful income. It should be banned immediately.
And this proves my above-stated point about the shifting goal-posts.
I don't know, and neither do you.
No one can know for sure, but it is a good guess that if an ordinary person like me knows at least 4 folks like these, chances are that the number of people who don't let such things as scruples stop them is not miniscule.
As far as I can tell, he hacked a console and released information on how others can make use of the hack. Sony is just screaming "piracy" like governments like to scream "terrorism."
He did not do this out of the goodness of his heart. You are resorting to presenting Geohot as some sort of altruistic messiah so that you do not have to face the possibility that such a USER-FRIENDLY hack may endanger Sony's earnings.
I don't support illogical ideals just to turn a profit. Not only that, but unless you know who I am and what my personality is like, making such assumptions is simply foolish.
WHAT illogical ideals? The need for a business that has invested billions of dollars in something to make a profit is an "illogical ideal" now? Actually, that sentence right there tells me a LOT about your personality.
Illogical ideals. I am amazed and dumbfounded that you would call a legal ROI an "illogical ideal".
After that charade of a reply - illogical ideals - I do not think a logical debate with you is a reality. You would just use the "morality is fluid anyway", "piracy cannot be proved", "it is all guesswork", "Geohot has not directly pirated anything" facile excuses for arguments to "platform" from one subject to the next.
I'm usually quite the liberal, and mostly do not wish harm to befall anyone, but just for the sake of clarity to strike you, I hope someday you will have an experience similar in some way to that of Sony's gaming division.
Slashdot Mirror
So I'm going to support Sony - by buying all the good games they release this year.
And the next.
And so on.
Oddly enough (well, not really odd) my comment seems to be the only one that doesn't scream "RAR! RAR! RAR! GOOO hackers! BURN SONY TO THE GROUND! YEAH! WOO!".. if only it were, it'd get a +5 in no time.
Perfectly right! Curiously, for a tech-minded website populated by supposedly rational people interested in tech, an amazing number of moderators and posters seem to be outright Sony-haters here.
I don't have any moderator points, but...Kudos to your post!
minus a few exclusives that are crap and you would not want anyway.
You mean like Disgaea 3 and 4, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and Demon's Souls, just to name a few?
If you don't like them, that's fine, you are free to do so. But don't be surprised when you get modded troll for your attitude that anyone who holds different values from yourself is stupid or lying.
Citations provided.
I don't think he/she will get modded "Troll" - probably "Informative" or "Insightful". But that's par for the course for ANYBODY who hates on Sony on Slashdot. He will probably get modded up for being an XBox fanboy.
Looks like Mozilla are gearing to more accurately mimic an Agile project, with working releases about every quarter. Good thing - we'll have working nuggets every quarter rather than a major year-long undertaking.
In which case this move seems more attributable to Capcom rather than Sony, as Capcom seems to think groups of gamers might abuse Sony's feature of sharing the game on up to 5 PS3s by buying one copy and then installing on every PS3. This move, by Capcom, NOT Sony would force the game to be playable by only the PSN account on which it was bought.
A VERY inconvenient move indeed, but hardly Sony's fault. From what I understand, the reason they did not implement this on the 360 is because Microsoft do NOT allow game-sharing on multiple consoles the way Sony do, and only allow the game to be playable by ONLY THE XBL subscriber who bought the game. So this move by Capcom is because Sony committed the mistake of being TOO OPEN.
No, my hatred is not exclusive to the PS3. Since I play mostly on PC and don't have an Xbox360, the same goes for some titles here (not the two you mentionned, they are really overrated). However Xbox exclusives tend to show up on PC after a while lately, but with PS3 exclusive we can barely hope for a port on the PSP (I'm still talking about Disgaea) or nothing at all.
Fair enough.
Sadly, as good as it is, it's still not good enough to counter Sony "bend-over" policy
However, I think you are going a bit overboard here by falling in with the typical Slashdot "Sony is teh evil" herd mentality. Among most of the haters here, I see about as much rational thought applied as a group of white racists would apply towards a colored person.
I have a PS3 and I bought it for playing games, watching movies, streaming video and audio, etc. I was annoyed a bit when Sony removed OtherOS from my Fat PS3, but could understand where Sony was coming from, as Sony removed OtherOS IN RESPONSE to the first Geohot hack which abused the OtherOS feature.
But you know what, I would rather have that inconvenience than have Sony's ability to create hardware and games - the central aspect of the PS3 being games, movies, music and photos - I want endangered.
If a person truly wanted to boycott EVERYTHING immoral and unfair, he would have to renounce his citizenship and go "live off the land" on an uncharted island somewhere. Selective boycotting is petty and hypocritical. Most of the haters on here are more than compromising with other systems and other companies, but because it is cool to hate Sony right now, like any college kid they will fall in to be with the "in" crowd - hence the pattern of modding up anti-Sony posters and modding down non anti-Sony posters.
The Sony and Apple bashing on Slashdot is getting retarded.
Every time some news (and even unconfirmed rumours) comes up, everyone flies into knee-jerk mode and start inventing silly worst case scenarios - most which don't even make any sense from a business perspective for the said companies.
Some of the more rabid anti-Sony posters on here seem to me to be people who have worked themselves up into such a frenzy that by now, they are frothing at the mouth and have ceased to make sense. These jerks seem to be criticizing Sony for no other fault than for being a part of Sony Corp.
Hotz's [is this writing correct? :D] first hacking attempts were done on Linux, on a fat PS3, and required Linux (and a hardware glitch IIRC) to work. So Other OS was removed from the fat PS3 in response to his (failed) attempts.
That is correct - see "http://www.answers.com/topic/george-hotz#Hacking_the_PlayStation_3".
Fact of the matter is - the Sony haters on here do not like to listen to or consider any inconvenient fact which might demonstrate that their irrational Sony hatred does not have much basis in historical fact.
Indeed. Expecting the Slashdot trolling moderators and posters (who say "anti-Sony post = Insightful, Informative, Interesting" and "non anti-Sony post modded -1, 0 or 1") is like expecting a jury of white supremacists to impartially adjudicate a case with a black defendant.
Not to forget that all of these games are superb.
...just to name a few more.
By the way, you also forgot:
1st Party
--------------
Uncharted 1
God of War Collection
Demon Soul
LittleBigPlanet 2
MAG
Warhawk
Non 1st-Party
--------------------
fLow, fLower, Journey
PixelJunk games
Heavenly Sword
MGS4
Resistance 3
Heavy Rain
Ratchet and Clank Future TOD, Ratchet and Clank Future ACIT
I really hate it when titles that can perfectly work on every recent system get locked down to one without reason (at least, good reason)
I suppose you think the same way about "Gears Of War" or "Halo" series as well, or do you only resent anything being exclusive to the PS3?
People would rather invent demons to ensure their hate can continue than make the effort to think. And I say this in a very general sense. In a way, Slashdotters are representative of that pettiest class of people - those who would act (our their hatred) rather than apply any thought to differing perspectives.
Why the hell was I modded troll? Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean I'm fucking trolling.
Anybody who dares to employ similar terminology such as yours while deriding Sony would have been termed "Insightful", "Informative" or "Interesting". However, since you dared to take an anti-anti-Sony position, you are being modded "Troll".
I guess the /. message is "Either you crap on Sony or Slashdot will crap on you".
so why whine when Sony does something that is actually innovative?
Judging by the way the posts are going on this website, I would say it is because the majority of the posters are hating on Sony. It becomes really funny when some of these "rational" posters praise Microsoft for being so open with the 360 and criticize Sony for being so closed with the PS3 (and they will get modded UP for this "insight", more's the wonder).
PS: It's quite amusing to see so many people** think that Sony is hell bent out to get them.
Is that really surprising? I used to think Slashdot was where rational people used to get together and discuss technology.
This was before I actually started participating here.
Now I see that, as far as Sony is concerned, this is more like an anti-Sony, Sony-haters convention, with impartiality and lack of prejudice being tossed out of the window, both by posters as well as Moderators. Hell, many of them evangelize Microsoft for the same reasons they are criticizing Sony.
Same would happen if my internet was down.
Actually, it can't. The only way it can know that a game or PS3 firmware has an update is by checking online. If you are NOT online, the PS3 cannot verify whether your game software or console firmware is old, and thus you will able to start your game. I have verified this on my PS3 (and my 360).
People on Slashdot do not want to listen to that kind of logic. They would rather rant about why Sony did not include OtherOS in the Slims while disregarding the fact that if they were THAT interested in the limited homebrew offered by OtherOS, they could have bought one of the Fat PS3s. It's convenient how /.ers forget about the chronology of events while hero-worshiping Geohot for causing them to lose their OtherOS in the first place. Convenient but easily explained, given how a large number of them seem to HATE Sony (and will search for any reason to continue said hate, including the rootkit fiasco, and the hell with the fact that Sony BMG Crescendo is not the same as Sony Computer Entertainment).
1) Sony DOES NOT include OtherOS in Slim (they did not remove it) while still selling Fat PS3s until they run out of stock
2) Geohot breaks the hypervisor in Fat PS3, using the OtherOS feature to do do.
3) IN RESPONSE, Sony removes OtherOS from the PS3 Fat
Thus, Geohot threw the first punch by abusing an existing feature in the PS3 Fat to hack into it.
Here's an example below - painting Geohotz as some sort of messiah and Sony as the anti-Christ fascist - this was modded Insightful, and this pattern is repeated throughout the entire page:
Bullocks! He is a hacker hero. Period. Sony is not out to make things easier for consumers, and good people like George undo the shitheadednessness of assholes like Sony. The more you accept draconian DRM, as well as pure root kit nonsense, that Sony forces you to swallow, the more they take your freedom to do with your hardware whatever you want. I no longer buy Sony or Apple products because of bullshit like this. Also, do NOT subscribe me to your newsletter as you are consumer unfriendly, a possible DRM sympathizer, and as AC put it a "noncompoop."
I wasn't replying specifically to you - sorry about that. Just wasn't sure where to put this observation that the Mods here are mods only in name, with a complete lack of impartiality.
The PSP fails because most of the games SUCK...I know others that also own PSP's they sit idle as well....Sony releases only crap games...AS for the PS3, they started the war, but the ps3 still was a distant 3rd in the consoles. I know more people that own a Xbox360 and a Wii than I know own a ps3. Why? the PS3 simply does not have the games to entice people to play it. PS3 motion controls suck compared to Microsoft...I personally think it's nothing but a Mee-Too catchup to the Wii.
Ah. I see. A 360 fanboy.
Very objective of the mods.
Someone publishing a crack for the PS3 was absolutely forseeable once Sony got rid of OtherOS. It might have been a mod chip or plug-in hack rather than just software, but someone was going to find a way to crack the security to put back what Sony took away.
VERY CONVENIENT how everyone forgets that Geohotz's first hack (which abused the OtherOS feature to perform its exploit) WAS THE REASON that Sony took OtherOS away in the first place - http://www.answers.com/topic/george-hotz#Hacking_the_PlayStation_3
Specifically the lines "On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public. It requires the OtherOS function of the machine, and consists of a Linux kernel module and gaining control of the machine's hypervisor via bus glitching.[22] Hotz wrote that "Sony may have difficulty patching the exploit". On March 28, 2010, Sony has responded by announcing to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that removes the OtherOS feature"
Very convenient for people who just want to lambast Sony and glorify Geohotz, REGARDLESS OF THE ACTUAL EVENT CHRONOLOGY.
...features Sony removed from the PS3...
..Because of Geohotz's initial exploit which USED the OtherOS feature to achieve its ends. So such an argument that he was trying to restore the OtherOS wouldn't really work, as HE was the reason Sony initially removed it from the Fat PS3s in the first place (and OtherOS was NEVER an advertised feature in the Slim PS3s).
When I exercise my right as a consumer to choose not to buy something, that is a lost sale. If you forced everyone to like a product and buy it, that would increase the chances that they would buy it. By not doing that, it is a lost sale. This should be a law.
You are changing the goal-posts now. I know these folks very well. They DO buy a copy of COD each year. So where is all this talk of choice of not buying something coming from?. You seem to be equating the choice of not buying something because it does not appeal to you and surreptitiously obtaining a copied version without paying for it as the same thing. Financially, it is not. Just because the product is not something tangible does not mean it is not a product.
When I was young, I was taught it was wrong to steal. I have grown up now, but still have enough common sense to recognize that obtaining something (or the COPY of something) for FREE when it is not legally meant to be given for free means I AM stealing something from the creators of that something, and no amount of semantics can change that realization (at least to me). Hiding behind semantics is something you seem to be quite good at doing.
We also should get rid of competition. Without competitors to go to, people will likely go to one store with near 100% probability. Right now, competition is depriving many businesses of rightful income. It should be banned immediately.
And this proves my above-stated point about the shifting goal-posts.
I don't know, and neither do you.
No one can know for sure, but it is a good guess that if an ordinary person like me knows at least 4 folks like these, chances are that the number of people who don't let such things as scruples stop them is not miniscule.
As far as I can tell, he hacked a console and released information on how others can make use of the hack. Sony is just screaming "piracy" like governments like to scream "terrorism."
He did not do this out of the goodness of his heart. You are resorting to presenting Geohot as some sort of altruistic messiah so that you do not have to face the possibility that such a USER-FRIENDLY hack may endanger Sony's earnings.
I don't support illogical ideals just to turn a profit. Not only that, but unless you know who I am and what my personality is like, making such assumptions is simply foolish.
WHAT illogical ideals? The need for a business that has invested billions of dollars in something to make a profit is an "illogical ideal" now? Actually, that sentence right there tells me a LOT about your personality.
Illogical ideals. I am amazed and dumbfounded that you would call a legal ROI an "illogical ideal".
After that charade of a reply - illogical ideals - I do not think a logical debate with you is a reality. You would just use the "morality is fluid anyway", "piracy cannot be proved", "it is all guesswork", "Geohot has not directly pirated anything" facile excuses for arguments to "platform" from one subject to the next.
I'm usually quite the liberal, and mostly do not wish harm to befall anyone, but just for the sake of clarity to strike you, I hope someday you will have an experience similar in some way to that of Sony's gaming division.