Air Force may suffer collateral damage from PS3 firmware update | Hacker News Reader

Air Force may suffer collateral damage from PS3 firmware update

arstechnica.com

44 pointsalrex02122 comments

"Sony's decision had no immediate impact on the cluster; for obvious reasons, the PS3s are not hooked into the PlayStation Network and don't need Sony's firmware updates. But what happens when a PS3 dies or needs repair? Tough luck."

So basically, it's pretty much the same as if Sony just stopped selling/repairing PS3's. Hardly seems terrible doom and gloom to me, and certainly not something anyone should be angry at Sony for.

They got a ton of cheap subsidized hardware, and can use it until it dies.

This has been true since Sept '09 when the slim PS3 was introduced which doesn't support the OtherOS feature; as noted, the Air Force PS3's aren't hooked into the PlayStation Network.

> Off-the-shelf PS3s could take advantage of Sony's hardware subsidy to get powerful Cell processors more cheaply than via any other solution.

If Sony was subsidizing something like $100 per machine, the Air Force cost Sony over $200,000 that it has no hopes of recovering. Thanks, Air Force, for giving Sony a very good reason to remove support for an alternate OS.

What purpose did you think an alternate OS would serve? To drive sales of Playstation games so that Sony could recoup their subsidy? I don't think so. You can hardly blame the Air Force for doing what Sony enabled them to do.

The alternative for Sony would be to sell non-subsidized machines with other OS support.

I really can't feel bad for the USAF when Sony decides to no longer subsidize them.

I am quite sure the USAF has pockets deep enough for a supercomputer more expensive than a cluster of PS3s.

Right now, I would suggest taking the GPU route. The Cell BE was hot a couple years ago. Not anymore.

To be fair, Sony is hard-pressed to provide hardware at a loss just because it's being used for good. As a company they need to stay profitable and all of the good press it got for being a research beast was not translating into positive returns. So it was good while it lasted but unfortunately the free market dictates this change.

Sony could have done better to collaborate with the military and other researchers to leverage the PS3 super computer status into the PS3 brand itself.

Not just that, but you'd think that they could work with Sony to come up with a DoD-spec version that had lower cost, but cost the same (without the manufacturer subsidy). Then Sony might be willing to support them.

The OP alludes to the wasted controllers, and surely the DoD could help Sony save money on those. But there are other components that they wouldn't care about. The actual video and audio output is useless and could be excluded. Does the device come with Blueray? That could be replaced by an off-the-shelf DVD drive to save a bunch of money. Maybe swap in a rack-mountable case, which wouldn't save money for Sony, but would be more attractive to DoD.

Congratulations, you've invented the IBM BladeCenter (QS22 - (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/servers/q...)

The military will spend $5000 on a toilet seat, I'm sure they'd be willing to buy a PS3 at what it costs.

Slightly off-topic, but if haven't read this article explaining why a contractor would bill out a hammer at $600, it's a good read: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1298/120798t1.htm

Except like most of these stories it was a lie.

It was an injection molded waste receptacle cover for the toilets. Given that this was for the huge C-5 air transport, which could be carrying, shall I say, a s..t-load of men on long flights, that weight was at a premium in the design of the aircraft and the expensive tooling was amortized over very few total units for this sort of thing ... well, you can do the math.

The C-5's coffee machines are pretty expensive as well....

Staying profitable is all well and good, but the argument that this won't translate into profitable returns is, IMO, bull. Sony has recently said that the PS3 hardware will be profitable this year, if it isn't already.

Forgive me as I am not a gamer and don't know much about the PS3, but couldn't they image the hard drive from a working linux PS3 to the newer PS3 without linux?

Or it doesn't work like that?

update: oh I see below it's in the firmware.

Already submitted without the RSS string in the URL:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1340983

Why is not possible to install the old firmware on the new devices?

Security measures - Sony doesn't want you doing things like that because it gives people more opportunities to find exploits that will eventually lead to piracy (which will reduce its revenue).

Are these security measures not bypassable? This is the same thing that Apple tries to avoid in iPhones, but AFAIK is possible to change the firmware for jailbreaks.

People have tried. The whole reason they removed the OtherOS functionality is to get around the one known public break in their trusted computing model.

Doing so would likely be illegal under the DMCA

Even if you're the Air Force?

Well IANAL, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't apply to them. It's not like the Air Force is allowed to pirate software.

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