The Blame Game

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The Blame Game

Postby live1 » 07 Apr 2010, 20:06

[MODERATOR EDIT: This is more of a speaker's corner topic. I'd mentioned about splitting out this particular subtopic before - I'd like to keep the other post more informative and technical. Feel free to discuss this here as much as you want - just be respective of other folks opinions. Split topic to Speaker's Corner & retitled. -Paul]

i dont understand wont we all get banned using geohots cfw,and geohot is the one to blame for us losing other os
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby ppietro » 07 Apr 2010, 20:11

live1 wrote:i dont understand wont we all get banned using geohots cfw,


Unknown. We may or may not. Depends on if Sony can detect it or not.

live1 wrote:and geohot is the one to blame for us losing other os


That's one theory, yes.

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby Legendary_Agent » 07 Apr 2010, 20:53

Geohot is not the only to blame, Sony is more to blame than him as they were the ones who made us resort to "cheat" their system, in a way they digged up their own grave with their despicable move, thats why most people and me included prefer PCS over consoles at least there they wont disable Internet Connection with a "patch" in order to keep people playing cracked games...
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby live1 » 07 Apr 2010, 21:34

no sony would never have taken other os away if geohot wasnt f**king with it and then telling the world
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby ppietro » 07 Apr 2010, 23:10

Well - pictures like this:

Image

probably made Sony executives extremely nervous. If I were a Sony exec, and I saw that picture, and one of my underlings said "He's using OtherOS to do that....", I think that's an automatic "Bye bye OtherOS" decision.

That's unfortunate, because it really doesn't think through the entire scenario - in other words, harmless text editing vs. removal of OtherOS and massive hacker retaliation.

Legendary_Agent wrote:thats why most people and me included prefer PCS over consoles at least there they wont disable Internet Connection with a "patch" in order to keep people playing cracked games


PCs aren't exactly immune to this either. They just don't engender as much passion when they remove features. For example, I won't install XP service pack 3. They removed the Taskbar Address feature - which I kinda liked. If I install XP SP 3, it's gone. And - Microsoft also forced out their high performance Java engine after having a disagreement with Sun. It used to install on XP by default, but they kind of hard forced you to remove it.

I don't think these compare to Sony's egregiousness here - removal of OtherOS is pretty draconian. But - anything that has the ability to be updated also has the ability to have features removed. Since these privately held companies are the ultimate authority for their product, there isn't much you can do.

Hence, the popularity of Open Source solutions. :)

As an example in the positive - Firefox was created from the browser portion of the Netscape Navigator/Mozilla suite. The Mozilla team decided to concentrate on Firefox and stopped development of the Suite. But - some folks really liked having e-mail, HTML editors, etc. in one program. So - even though Mozilla "killed" it with Firefox, these folks just re-organized the project, and SeaMonkey was born. It gets all of the improvements that Firefox does, but keeps the traditional structure of Navigator/Mozilla.

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby jbob0124 » 07 Apr 2010, 23:18

Not changing the subject or taking away anyone's credit, as Im sure its legit, but how hard is it to add some text to a graphic?
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby ppietro » 07 Apr 2010, 23:29

jbob0124 wrote:Not changing the subject or taking away anyone's credit, as Im sure its legit, but how hard is it to add some text to a graphic?


In this case, Geohot says you can do this by "patch[ing] your hypervisor to allow encrypted access to the partition (flash on old systems, hd on new), and mod[ifying] ps3pf_storage. dev_flash is just a FAT partition, mount it in Linux and change what you'd like."

That's pretty much a nightmare scenario for Sony right there - it means their security has been breached and key system files can be changed at will. If you can change key files, then you can run unsigned code and it's a slippery slope to piracy, etc. - at least in their minds.

The hard part is not the editing - it's the "patching your hypervisor" part. To do this, he had to grab control of the bus and.... but that's a different discussion. :D

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby roshi » 08 Apr 2010, 02:37

With all security issues aside - I'm sure that no manufacturer of digital equipment intends anyone to use their licensed equipment other than how it was designed and built to be used. Also, manufacturers of licensed games (software) don't intend their games (software) to be hacked and they intend hardware manufacturers to keep that from happening on approved hardware. That being said, we can't always make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - but we try. We try everyday. We try because that is our very nature.

It is our very nature to take offense at someone who limits our pursuits, too. Sony (or the powers that be) appear to be limiting pursuits of enthusiasts who may have pushed their liberties a tad too far. Ownership of evolving technology is a liberty - it is not a right. If you buy a device subject to its imposed limitations, you are accepting use of the device within defined and agreed parameters. Once you buy a prize, its yours to keep. Once you buy an End User License Agreement, it is yours to enjoy with certain limitations.

I don't like the fact that Sony is changing the way you enjoy your PS3. I don't agree with their policy. I don't agree with pointing the finger. None of us should be mad at one particular person. If he or she didn't do it, I'm sure it would have been someone else. The fact that it could be hacked is evidence that anyone could have eventually hacked it. I'm sure Sony pays a hardware engineer plenty of money to not overlook these possibilities.

I'm not always right. I occasionally offend. I quite often speak my mind and I've been known to write letters to large corporations telling them what I think and following up on those letters. I empathize with PS3 owners. I do not own a PS3 or any gaming system. If I owned a PS3, I'd ask for my money back (by that I mean: 1. sell the used system at a fair value (pro rata) to someone who would benefit from it or 2. if it is new enough, return it because it doesn't do what it was advertised to do (run linux).)

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby ppietro » 08 Apr 2010, 02:50

roshi wrote:None of us should be mad at one particular person. If he or she didn't do it, I'm sure it would have been someone else.


Along those lines, although I blame Geohot for the removal of OtherOS - I don't blame him.

In other words, his fairly innocent actions did cause this extreme reaction from Sony - but he wasn't that far out of line, IMHO. He's being pushed to the extreme now - i.e. releasing hacked firmware - because of Sony's extreme reaction. And - it's easy to point the finger at him - because he's pretty much the only person who *can* do these things right now. Unlike the PSP where anyone who didn't patch their PSP could run homebrew, this is not an easy exploit.

I thought he summed it up the best:

First off, I want to apologize to all the people who use Linux on their PS3. Before releasing, I weighed the pros and cons, and considered the possibility of an impact on OtherOS support. My logic was this. OtherOS support had already been removed from the Slim(not for technical reasons; I believe it only existed in the first place to promote the Cell for IBM) The builders had apparently no intention of including it in future products. So for the purposes of openness why not release? Not like anything else has(or probably will be) done on the PS3.

Now you go and remove a feature that people expected to be included with the expensive device they purchased, citing "security concerns". What security concerns? It's not like the exploit can be run even close to without the users knowledge. You have to open the f**king thing up. How could this harm users? Your blog post doesn't list positive reasons for upgrading like I think most users expect. Instead it lists things you will lose if you don't upgrade. Seriously?

The PlayStation 3 is the only product I know that loses features throughout it's life cycle. Software PS2 emulation, SACD playback, and OtherOS support are all just software switches you can flip. It's unbelievable you would go and flip one, not just on new boxes you are shipping, but on tens of millions already in the field.

Again I'm sorry users. Sony, I expected more from you.


So - is he the reason that the OtherOS was removed? Most likely. Should we blame him? No - not really. Somebody else would have done the same thing eventually if he hadn't. Rather than learn anything from his exploit, Sony apparently turned him into a scapegoat for their own inability to deal with the security holes in the OtherOS.

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby roshi » 08 Apr 2010, 03:22

Exactly.

Have any of you (us & me) read the EULA that came with the PS3? I'm sure the manufacturer retains the right to alter the hardware / firmware / software to their financial benefit. Pretty much standard.

Now you go and remove a feature that people expected to be included with the expensive device they purchased, citing "security concerns". What security concerns? It's not like the exploit can be run even close to without the users knowledge. You have to open the f**king thing up. How could this harm users? Your blog post doesn't list positive reasons for upgrading like I think most users expect. Instead it lists things you will lose if you don't upgrade. Seriously?


The only thing I can tell from this statement is - big picture vs. small picture. Is software compromised by altering the hardware? Do software manufacturers want their product running on a hacked box? Sony also has legal obligations to software developers.

Again, I empathize with PS3 owners. I'm sure this will have far reaching implications about the future of any blend of FREE AND NON FREE hardware / software. All I can say is 'learn from this experience'. We all should be pushing for GNU Software License structure. I'm also sure this could have implications with manufacturers as well. They should never be allowed to impose downgrading to cover their inability to see a potential problem. I'm sure they have a QA department.

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby live1 » 08 Apr 2010, 12:30

i blame geosh*t for this,you could say if he did not do it some1 else would have,i dont believe this ps3 has had no issues of kids trying to hack it before ,and if he was so desprate to destroy the ps3 why tell the world on the net,he should have kept it to himself .
so first he gets our other os taken away,then he has the nerve to say dont worry guys ill make cfw so we get other os back.but the joker does not realise we will get banned like what micro soft did.and is geohot going to buy us all new consoles ,i think not
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby Legendary_Agent » 12 Apr 2010, 11:17

ppietro wrote:Well - pictures like this:

Image

probably made Sony executives extremely nervous. If I were a Sony exec, and I saw that picture, and one of my underlings said "He's using OtherOS to do that....", I think that's an automatic "Bye bye OtherOS" decision.

That's unfortunate, because it really doesn't think through the entire scenario - in other words, harmless text editing vs. removal of OtherOS and massive hacker retaliation.

Legendary_Agent wrote:thats why most people and me included prefer PCS over consoles at least there they wont disable Internet Connection with a "patch" in order to keep people playing cracked games


PCs aren't exactly immune to this either. They just don't engender as much passion when they remove features. For example, I won't install XP service pack 3. They removed the Taskbar Address feature - which I kinda liked. If I install XP SP 3, it's gone. And - Microsoft also forced out their high performance Java engine after having a disagreement with Sun. It used to install on XP by default, but they kind of hard forced you to remove it.

I don't think these compare to Sony's egregiousness here - removal of OtherOS is pretty draconian. But - anything that has the ability to be updated also has the ability to have features removed. Since these privately held companies are the ultimate authority for their product, there isn't much you can do.

Hence, the popularity of Open Source solutions. :)

As an example in the positive - Firefox was created from the browser portion of the Netscape Navigator/Mozilla suite. The Mozilla team decided to concentrate on Firefox and stopped development of the Suite. But - some folks really liked having e-mail, HTML editors, etc. in one program. So - even though Mozilla "killed" it with Firefox, these folks just re-organized the project, and SeaMonkey was born. It gets all of the improvements that Firefox does, but keeps the traditional structure of Navigator/Mozilla.

Cheers,
Paul


lol ofc pcs are immune to this matter, all you stated is software changes that do exactly the same and more as the ones before... Your PC still can have everything you specified is "removed" While the Other OS is actually a removed feature with no way of achieving the same system, as for the SP3 Removed feature you can re-add it yourself if youre a programmer or just install one of the Themes which re-enable it or else heres a way to just re-enable the feature itself:

Go to C:/windows/system32 and copy your SP2 browseui.dll in that folder to somewhere safe, now install SP3 and replace the SP3 Broweui.dll with the one from SP2, now go and check the results, you will notice your feature is back.

If you find out the step above doesnt work then just use this software which re-enables it fully:
http://download.cnet.com/MuvEnum-Address-Bar/3000-2094_4-10837120.html?part=dl-10837120&subj=dl&tag=button

Also that feature has not been removed due "piracy" or any other poor excuse coming from Microsoft, it was not in Microsoft Power to do so, they were forced to remove it by law and you still have access to it by using the step above.

Hope this will fix your issues youre having with your pc and will make you take that step for upgrading to SP3 its really alot better when it comes to bugs & security issues.

As for CFW i really hope he will actually make it work but i have my doubts, the video didnt show him go on psn store.
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby ppietro » 13 Apr 2010, 01:45

Legendary_Agent wrote:Go to C:/windows/system32 and copy your SP2 browseui.dll in that folder to somewhere safe, now install SP3 and replace the SP3 Broweui.dll with the one from SP2, now go and check the results, you will notice your feature is back.


It's not really back, though, is it? As far as Microsoft is concerned, the feature is gone, and if they actually enforced file versioning, like they do for their business installations, swapping a DLL would not pass muster, since the SP2 browseui.dll would have a different version than the SP3 version. Also - since it's a DLL, they could add new API calls in a future revision. Keeping the old one around would break future versions of software that call the new APIs in that specific DLL.

As for using a 3rd party tool that does the same function, I agree with you there - that's a better option. That's the one thing that consoles can't do, since you can't run unsigned code. However, this gets back to my open source point, I think. If someone removes an option from a closed source operating system, a third party can add it back, providing the closed sourced company doesn't sue them for infringing on patents. Again - open source avoids this, since the code can be modified at will, and you can leverage it any way you like, as long as you keep your derived work open source (i.e. GPL).

The main point I was trying to make above is that any closed source software that has updates can also have features removed - operating systems on PCs included. My examples probably weren't the best, but that's what I came up with off the top of my head. And - of course, it's easier to hack your PCs to work around enforced changes - setting up a Bind/Apache system to fool a console update isn't nearly as easy as replacing a DLL. :)

However - it's only open source software that lets you really determine what is and what isn't in your operating system. I think we can both agree on that. :D

On a personal note, thanks for taking the time to write your suggestions re: SP3. Unfortunately, I still don't plan on installing it. :D My XP boxes are already fully patched with all of the 100+ hotfixes, etc., and the four new features aren't worth it to me.

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Re: The Blame Game

Postby Legendary_Agent » 13 Apr 2010, 07:56

yes ure right, open source programs and O.S. are way better than closed source when it comes to freedom of using its features any way u want, still imo im alot happier with my pc than with my console right now when it comes to these sort of issues.
about Apache, i trully hate it regardless if its the best around or not lol, it takes around 20 minutes to set it up + the configuration needed for it to do whatever u wanna do :P

Hopefully GeoHot will fix this rly soon as im few weeks away to present the ps3 features to my mentors, speaking of which ive seen your screenshot, where did u get it from? the red text above looks like its photoshoped into the screen itself because its rotated a bit differently than the white text below, was it in the video or thats just a screenshot?
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Re: The Blame Game

Postby ppietro » 13 Apr 2010, 08:43

Legendary_Agent wrote:speaking of which ive seen your screenshot, where did u get it from? the red text above looks like its photoshoped into the screen itself because its rotated a bit differently than the white text below, was it in the video or thats just a screenshot?


That's directly from Geohot's blog:
http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/2010/03/c ... hemes.html

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