Genius or criminal

Is access to the hypervisor really that much of an accomplishment when the earlier PS3's would allow any correctly written PPC binaries to be run?

The fact he's announced that he is looking for, with intent to publish, the encryption keys certainly is criminal.

Genius, definitely!

1. Sony have distributed music CDs with root kits.  Shows despicable lack of respect for customers, so customers free to return equal amount of respect.  Sony defined that rule.

2. For every other product, you pay money, get goods, seller gets profit, you use the product any way wanted.  Why should game computer be different?  Old paradigm says control.

3. If Sony made system and software open, smart and curious minds see no attractive puzzle...  Maybe smart and curious minds would develop good games & Sony profit more by sharing with them like iPhone.  New paradigm says share and everybody wins.

Sony will drown in the tar pits with other dinosaurs unless they recognise new profits from new business models.  Stand still and your feet will be locked in tar.

New work building on shoulders of great men and women who went before is basis of development of so many fields of science, engineering and medicine.  We are unique species - must expand in knowledge or we sour and die selling each other insurance.  Ever outwards, into space, there are only limits we set ourselves.  When humans cooperate and share we can overcome anything.  Focus energy on problems, not controlling each other.  Open source show chaotic methods more efficient than old controlling methods.

Cheers, Colin

Cracking the hardware security is only the beginning, the xbox 360 has been "cracked" for a number of years now and has only recently seen an increase in availability of libraries and utilitys to enable any meaningful homebrew code to be written.

Unfortunately software to enable piracy is relatively easy to develop with access to the hypervisor, and is almost always one of the first things to appear on any "scene".

The PS3 is an interesting case as Sony have actively supported development of Linux systems and software on their hardware since the PS2 was initially released, the biggest bone of contention within the community has always been that they have kept the interesting stuff for themselves, such as access to full hardware acceleration for the Gpu and unrestricted processor access.

The cynical amongst us might be tempted to say that this is deliberate attempt by Sony to incite "hackers" to break the security and enable software piracy as sales figures have been poor for the PS3 especially in comparison to the xbox. I would personally like to believe that the release of the slimline version, which removes the ability to boot alternative operating systems is more of a motivating factor.

I do not own a PS3 however I do own a number of xbox 360's and they make excellent linux clusters (with uprated heatsinks and cooling solutions)

with a performance that is difficult to match at the same price point.

When we purchase hardware we are not agreeing to use it as the manufacturer intended, however people that experiment with hardware in this manner must be willing to accept the risks. Would a white goods manufacturer take umbrage at you using thier top of the line refrigerator to hold solder paste? How would you feel if that white goods manufacturer took steps to make your refrigerator useless if it detected the presence of solder paste within it? This is how Microsoft appear to be treating their customers at the moment, lets hope Sony don't go down the same route.