Assholes trying to take down PSN

[Ack]

But you WILL be respectful of each other, or I WILL shove my mod foot so far up your Internet ass that your avatar will wince.

I'm not sure my avatar would like that. In fact, I think she could take you.

Admittedly I'd probably enjoy every moment of that.

[CFFJR]

This was a great thread.

Interesting subject, fun argument, and then to top it all off Ack comes in and lays down the "Hand of Mod".

Beautiful.

[YoshiEgg25]

If there is anything I've gotten from this thread, it's this:



Replace words as necessary until it receives the desired effect for the current argument.

[MrEco]

I would like to point something out. Personally, I'm on the fence about whether or not Sony had the right to remove the other OS feature. On one side, people who paid for the pre-slim consoles bought it with the promise that they were going to be able to run other OS. Then that feature was taken away. Though not quite as offensive, it is the same case as if you bought your game console and were later told that the company doesn't want it to be a game console anymore and instead just a blu-ray player that can access the internet. It would be completely unfair and would totally suck. On the other hand, it was a rarely used feature in comparison to something like playing games or movies, and was a very oftentimes abused feature that was used to aid in pirating games and hacking multiplayer games for cheating and getting easy wins, always at the expense of the other players.

However, the bottom line is that whether you support Sony's decision or not, you can't possibly ignore that the group Anonymous have not done anything to help the situation. The only thing they have managed to accomplish in attempting to "help protect the freedom of the average gamer" is to in fact hurt and terribly inconvenience the average gamer. Its god damn hypocrisy at the most fundamentally simple level. "I will protect you. Now please turn your back to me so I may stab you more effectively" is basically what Anonymous has done. It's disgusting.

[brunoafh]

However, the bottom line is that whether you support Sony's decision or not, you can't possibly ignore that the group Anonymous have not done anything to help the situation. The only thing they have managed to accomplish in attempting to "help protect the freedom of the average gamer" is to in fact hurt and terribly inconvenience the average gamer.

One hundred and ten percent true.

[AppleQueso]

Anonymous isn't a 'group', I get really annoyed when people talk about a bunch of 4chan nobodies as if they're a collective, organized group. I can guarantee you that at least half of the folks involved don't even realize WHY they're supposedly trying to take down PSN, most just want to cause trouble because they're bored.

In any case, yeah, I can't possibly see what they think they're going to accomplish with this, aside from inconvenincing legitimate ps3 owners.

Average gamers already think that the guys who cracked the ps3 are a bunch of evil hackers, and I doubt stunts like this are going to change their minds one bit.

[Niode]

On the other hand, it was a rarely used feature in comparison to something like playing games or movies, and was a very oftentimes abused feature that was used to aid in pirating games and hacking multiplayer games for cheating and getting easy wins, always at the expense of the other players.

That's just the thing. It wasn't. Nothing that Geohot did with regards to hacking the OtherOS led to piracy, or vulnerabilities in GameOS. All he did was add memory peeks and pokes into the hypervisor. These required physical modification of the PS3. Basically you had to pulse the memory lines until you glitched the data you wanted into protected memory - without wanting to get too technical, the hypervisor performs checks whenever you want to write data to memory, if you don't have access to the chain of trust of that part of memory it denies you access, think of it like a room within a room, anybody can enter the outer room, but you need a key to get into the inner room. Once that was overwritten you had peek/poke access. Sticking with the room within a room analogy, glitching the memory is basically like slipping into the inner room when somebody authorised is leaving it.

None of these things enabled piracy. They just allow somebody to get a closer look at just what the hypervisor is doing at any one time. It's not possible to get encryption keys or any of that junk from this hack. Think of it like being able to intercept a one way encrypted message being passed between two people. You can 'read' the message but have no idea what it is, or what it means. This sort of attack can be done in GameOS, why wasn't it done? Because hackers had no interest in the GameOS. Only pirates. The hackers wanted to see if they could unlock the rest of the PS3 for use in OtherOS mode so that they could make better and more powerful homebrew for the PS3. When Sony removed Linux the hackers had no choice but to turn their attention to GameOS, because there was no other option.

Bottom line: Hackers != Pirates.

[YoshiEgg25]

Bottom line: Hackers != Pirates.

I think this is the one thing most people forget.

[Inazuma]

Pirating games instead of buying them is wrong,

Aren't you the same guy who's stated many times that he pirates games with DRM?

Let's back up a bit. Let's say that with the release of firmware X Sony removes Other OS. You need to have the latest firmware to be on the PSN but thanks to a court case all new releases would still work on the old firmware. Would you still be raising a total stink? Are you going to claim that Sony doesn't have the right to disallow people from accessing their online service who don't follow the rules they put forth?

I only pirate games that I wouldn't normally buy. In other words, my piracy does not cost game creators any money. Boycotting Sony is costing them money, however. If I pirate their games or not, it makes no difference to them. They are not getting any money from me, regardless.

If I was able to play new PS3 games but was not allowed access to PSN, I would still be very upset and still end up boycotting Sony. Taking away my PSN access just because I refuse to have features taken away is absurd and I will not tolerate it.

Unfairly punching someone in the face once may not be as bad as punching them twice, but it certainly isn't right. I will still get pissed off.

People like you don't mind the occasional unfair punch to the face, and that's exactly why Sony does it.

[alienjesus]

Wow. There are a lot of angry angry people here.

I can understand people get passionate, but I'm honestly more amazed at how this normally pleasant and mature forum seems to devolve into a catfight whenever Sony is mentioned nowadays then angry with Sony for removing features. I like it here because people are respectful of others and their opinions. At least, normally.