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PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

escapistmagazine.com

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#11
post #3

Meanwhile, back in Redmond, Microsoft (!) has opened the Kinect to 3rd party developers. I doubt this was done to deliberately underscore the galactic idiocy of their chief rival. Still, the contrast between the two approaches is pretty astonishing.

Microsoft's new 'hacker-friendly' approach is refreshing, but I'll be interested to see how long it lasts or how deep it goes. It's a great way to curry favor with developers, which is critically important if WP7 is to be a success, but when push comes to shove I have a sneaking suspicion we'll see the old Microsoft take over.

I suggest rereading "The Scorpion and the Frog" as well as "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#12
I am so glad to be present for the early stages of this kind of emergent support network. Recent examples from Reddit (who often choose to support people with no "internet standing"), job offers here at HN, and the intense support people like myself have received over at MetaFilter are almost totally unprecedented. And I'm not even going to bring up Anonymous.

Now that I'm in a decent employment situation, I plan to share that $ecurity with people like GeoHot whenever possible. Cheers to everyone involved, this is great news in a sea of awful.

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#13
post #5

I'm surprised it took that long. Sony seem to have a magical Streisand effect button somewhere that gets triggered for insane reasons. Remember the BMI rootkit scandal, and the subsequent reaction? The AIBO case referenced is another example of Sony's auto-Streisand function in the legal team. The best part of all of this is that Sony's legal team have very clearly not properly considered the implications of him winn…

Note: This analysis is not a statement of agreement with their actions, just providing some insight.

I am not surprised either but I don't think Sony can be compared with Streisand. From Sony's perspective this makes perfect sense and isn't some emotional over reaction, Someone has gotten around their security and if they don't pursue this it will be seen as an open invitation to hackers on all of Sony's platforms. As a platform company and a content company they're doubly incentivised to pursue these sorts of actions in the courts.

Even the OtherOS debacle makes sense from their perspective. They make a loss on each console they sell[1] and rely on strong games sales to make up the difference. At launch they had a horrible attach rate (games sold per console sold) and much was made of its use as a cheap computing cloud platform. So removing the ability for new consoles[2] to act as a platform apart from its primary gaming role helps Sony's bottom line.

[1] They certainly did at launch not sure if that is the case any longer, historically consoles are sold at a profit once they reach middle age and production costs come down. The Wii was an exception and was sold at a profit from day one, but that is a souped up Gamecube so the factories didn't need much updating.

[2] I haven't updated my console so it can still run Linux for example.

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#14
post #3

Meanwhile, back in Redmond, Microsoft (!) has opened the Kinect to 3rd party developers. I doubt this was done to deliberately underscore the galactic idiocy of their chief rival. Still, the contrast between the two approaches is pretty astonishing.

To be fair, Microsoft would be bringing down a might fury if they didn't have efuses to solve their kernel problems.

I can't imagine Sony being concerned about someone hacking the Move.

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#15
post #3

Meanwhile, back in Redmond, Microsoft (!) has opened the Kinect to 3rd party developers. I doubt this was done to deliberately underscore the galactic idiocy of their chief rival. Still, the contrast between the two approaches is pretty astonishing.

To be fair, Microsoft would be bringing down a might fury if they didn't have efuses to solve their kernel problems. I can't imagine Sony being concerned about someone hacking the Move.

[deleted]

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#16
post #8
post #3

Meanwhile, back in Redmond, Microsoft (!) has opened the Kinect to 3rd party developers. I doubt this was done to deliberately underscore the galactic idiocy of their chief rival. Still, the contrast between the two approaches is pretty astonishing.

A company supporting their involved, early adopting developer base? What? In all seriousness, its a huge marketing backfire for Sony to act in this manner, and a huge plus for Microsoft in it's respective choice. I understand the "magic black box" theory of product development as it referes to the 99% of the population that doesn't mod, but that 1% is a vital asset who's influence far exceeds their numbers. These two…

Sony has a history of huge backfiring actions. This is just another point to add to the trend-line.

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#17
I'm complaining about escapistmagazine, not the poster. I am interseted in the update. But...

Headline:

PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

Less than one paragraph away.

... as he received enough money for the first phase of defense in about 18 hours.

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#18
post #5

I'm surprised it took that long. Sony seem to have a magical Streisand effect button somewhere that gets triggered for insane reasons. Remember the BMI rootkit scandal, and the subsequent reaction? The AIBO case referenced is another example of Sony's auto-Streisand function in the legal team. The best part of all of this is that Sony's legal team have very clearly not properly considered the implications of him winn…

I think it's a cultural issue from what I understand in Japan there is a saying that goes something along the lines of "The nail that sticks up must be hammered down". Geohotz is definitely a nail that sticks up.

Re: PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

#19
If Sony did not take a loss on every console sold, I wonder how much of an issue this would be. Ff they sold a PS3 that was 50% more expensive but with the feature "install whatever you want and don't worry about getting banned from PSN" could they could solve that problem?

Of course, the content folks at Sony (who thought the rootkit was OK) would probably never allow for it. Not that I'll ever buy another Sony product unless they can prove a changed heart and a commitment to bring back the quality that put them where they are.

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