PS3 Hacked Using Official Controller 292
YokimaSun writes "The PS3 Hacking War took on a new turn few days ago with Sony releasing a new firmware that blocks USB devices, supposedly aimed at cloned PS3 Joypads, but more than likely to stop the efforts of hackers. Today the PS3 is now hackable using its own Sixaxis/DualShock 3 Controllers. How will Sony stop people now from playing emulators on the PS3?"
Much thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Many thanks to all the people who use their time, so that I can use my own hardware the way I want to!
Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile (Score:2, Insightful)
What the fuck Sony? I cant use a USB device now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you Sony, You removed the Other OS feature, now you remove USB support?
Why not remove video support too so no one can rip data via hdmi now that it is cracked?
Fucking shit. Sony. you suck a whores shit hole.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most obvious answer... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't play games online. Netflix doesn't use DNAS, it just connects directly to Netflix's servers. I'd be willing to bet it's just a normal BluRay.
Oh, the Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony removed OtherOS citing worries about piracy, despite the fact that the system was uncracked after years of OtherOS inclusion.
Very shortly after its removal, various groups publicly announced their intention to crack the system specifically because of the OtherOS removal. They very quickly succeeded, and now Sony is going to have to live with nearly instant cracks of every version of their firmware because they riled up the wrong people. Piracy is now trivial on the PS3, with the usual caveat of no online multiplayer, all thanks to some executives irrational fear of at the time nonexistent pirates.
It's a pity that the executive in question will probably be rewarded because the current rise in piracy proves that he was right about the menace of game copiers in the first place!
Re:Meanwhile (Score:2, Insightful)
He said "major game", not a remake of the same god damn shooter we've been getting for the last 15 or so years.
Adding some more polygons, and some realistic physics doesn't make it a new game. I could go back playing Blood, Doom 2, Quake or Half Life and it would feel exactly like Halo, only with better (mouse+kb) controls.
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
So why don't you file in small claims to get your money back? Chances are they'll simply give you, your money just to be done with you.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
...and I'm free to use my system however I wish.
So, you're not using MS Windows or you never read the EULA?
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
Allow me to help.
1) PS3 allows any hard drive, any video camera, any keyboard, any tablet, any printer, etc. It allows you to download random files from the internet, it allows you to play random files and store them on the hard drive, and it allows you to download PSN games onto up to 5 other consoles and let your friends play your games on their profiles. Compared to EVERY OTHER CONSOLE, the PS3 is the most free.
2) Most new games come out for consoles now, due to the fears of piracy on Computers and other non-locked-down devices. And for games that come out on console AND pc, the console has less security and more stable hardware targets. For example, most PS3 games have no 30 digit id codes, no constant Internet access required for single player games, and easy joining with friends with games.
3) Updates are not forced. If you wish to use every service available on the PS3 that worked before the last update, you can. It is only if you want the new features, the new games, and the new services on PSN that you have to upgrade.
4) The Other OS was only taken down AFTER someone started bragging about the ability to copy $60 PS3 games and play them. Until then, people could play emulators, PS1 games, PS2 games, n64, etc. Only 5-6 assholes who are too cheap to afford new games but feel deserving of free stuff ruined it for the rest of us. Or did you want Sony to let this turn out like the PSP, which is so hacked that almost no new games get released for it? They tried to open their system, and they got slapped for it.
So yeah, I bought a PS3 to play PS3 games. The fact that it had all these other benefits were just frosting on the cake. People bitched about the price, so Sony took $100 ps2 out of the system and sold it separately so you could enjoy PS1 and PS2 and not pay for it if you didn't want it.
Sorry, you can get back on your high horse about how evil Sony is. Just wanted to point out that out of all the evil companies out there, Sony is the only one letting you use generic parts and share purchases. Ooo, scary.
Should have left the abiilty to install Linux.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing emulators, my ass. (Score:2, Insightful)
How will Sony stop people now from playing emulators on the PS3
Oh come on, don't be absurd. This isn't about emulators, this is about piracy, pure and simple. You can try to sugarcoat it, but 99.9% of modded consoles never touch emulators / homebrew - they're only used to play commercial games without paying for them. Stop trying to act like you're the noble ones, here.
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a great idea for those who don't have a PS3 yet. For the rest of us, Its a fight to use what we've already paid for. (and not purchasing future product from a locked down device)
I don't understand why you folks keep buying such consoles and other locked down devices. You're only encouraging the business model.
That's a great idea for those who don't have a PS3 yet. For the rest of us, Its a fight to use what we've already paid for. (and not purchasing future product from a locked down device)
That's disingenuous and you know it.
It was clear from the start that the PS3 was meant to be a locked down device and that Sony would resist any attempts to open it up. The only justifiable area in which people can reasonably complain that they were burned was the withdrawl of its Linux support (which was never sold as giving full access to the hardware's capabilities).
But this doesn't justify your implication of bait-and-switch over the general nature of the machine. The PS3 was locked down from the day it came it, and everyone knew it.
This smacks of people wanting to have their cake and eat it, i.e. wanting to complain on Slashdot about Sony's obnoxiously controlling and authoritarian hold on the hardware, then buying it anyway because when it comes down to it, shiny new tech trumps principles. (Same old Slashdotters' story). *Then* complaining that their machine- which they already own(!)- is locked down. Well, yeah. You knew that before you bought it.
(Disclaimer to tl;dr skimmers, this is not an endorsement of Sony's locking down the hardware, but a rebuttal to the implication that anyone who cared about the issue could ever have bought a PS3 imagining it would ever *not* be locked down).
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
They tried to open their system, and they got slapped for it.
Bullshit. They didn't "try to open their system." If they had had a proper way for people to code emulators or legitimate games for the PSP, and they hadn't been pushing that ridiculously stupid UMD as the game storage device (yeah I know, "DS has cartridges", but the DS doesn't have a cartridge slot that eats 30% or more of your battery life) then nobody would have had to spend the insane time trying to hack into the system.
Same thing happened with OtherOS. OtherOS didn't give proper access to certain parts of the system (video hardware especially). The end result was that the Linux guys were trying to find a way to get full access to the hardware. Full access for Linux would STILL not have done the pirates any good, since the games require PS3's OS to run on, but Sony decided to crippleware OtherOS. The end result was no surprise - someone figured out a way to get behind hypervisor and get complete hardware access, and the psychotic, paranoid people at Sony decided to strip OtherOS completely in response.
I'm convinced that what's really going on is that Sony hired behind the scenes one of those paranoid motherfuckers who was responsible for all the crappy Nintendo lock-down crap that resulted in shell companies during the NES and SNES days, blinky-blinky consoles when the "security chip" didn't read properly even on a real game, and then the horrible mistake of using cartridges and then tinydiscs for the N64 and Gamecube, driving all the 3rd party developers away.
Re:The USB lockdown screwed me over (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, you don't just lock out something and then claim to adhere to the bluetooth standard for HID WHILE BEARING ITS LOGO ON YOUR HARDWARE.
Hint: You can't, you're now violating your licensing agreement.
Sony can't do this. Microsoft can because they're using a proprietary bluetooth stack. Sony went STANDARDS and what they're doing is a clear violation of those standards.
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
Nerd rage? There is a world of difference between putting out a new product with fewer features than the older one and removing features from a product I've already purchased through the use of firmware updates.
Re:Oh, the Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't point the finger at them. They are the victims of bait-and-switch fraud by Sony, after all.
Re:Playing emulators, my ass. (Score:2, Insightful)
Is piracy common? Yes. Is it 99.9% of ALL modified console use? Uhhhh.
FYI, I have a Wii with homebrew and a USB HDD attached to it. There's some cool stuff (including emulators) available for homebrew, and I have all my games on the HDD so I don't have to drag out the discs, potentially scratch them, and so on. And it improves load times. I've committed what is arguably piracy once with the HDD setup by downloading the ISO to a Japanese game that I really wanted to play when there was no indication it was going to get localized into English (there is a ton of voicework and texture work that needed to be translated). Then, it turns out, it was licensed and eventually released, and so I bought the English version, which has been much more enjoyable to play since I can't keep up with the voiceovers and walls of text. Stick that data point in your pipe and smoke it.
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:5, Insightful)
At the time the PS3 came out the choice was essentially consoles which were locked down but generally no-messing required and PCs which had all sorts of compatibility problems and a rising push towards online activation and other horrible protection schemes. At the time sony was being nicer (linux, 3rd party controllers) than the XBOX division of microsoft and had the games I wanted.
Could anyone have reasonably predicated that sony would be removing features (first linux support, then support for standard HID controllers) retroactively from existing consoles? I don't think any console manufacturer has done that before.
I agree those who buy a device in the era of updatable firmware and downloadable content under the assumtion that they can keep it both cracked and able to be used online and with the latest games are being very overoptimistic. The trouble is that those of us who just want to use the machine as originally designed are getting caught in the crossfire :(
Personally I find it all very sad, I like gaming but it all seems so much more painful these days.
they cripple OtherOS to preserve their revenues (Score:4, Insightful)
Sony get a licensing fee per game sold for PS3. They don't make money when you buy a PS3.
If you could use all the hardware from OtherOS, then developers would just ship their games to run under OtherOS and not pay any licensing fees to Sony.
So Sony crippled OtherOS, same as they crippled NetYaroze and PS2 Linux. But even uncrippled, OtherOS still sucked. By the time Sony yanked it, PS3 was $400 and vastly inferior to any Linux machine you could build for $400 (and took twice the electricity to run!).
UMD was stupid. Selecting spinning media right at the time when solid state storage became very cheap was a huge mistake. But that is not why people hacked PSP. People hacked PSP because they wanted to get games for free. This is the same reason they hacked GBA and DS, neither of which had spinning media.
Re:How? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are 100% correct, in fact, a great bit of them did not have a law degree. However, once you're a member of the Supreme Court, you are a member of the bench, and thus, a lawyer. At the very least, you are not a member of the legislative branch.
My only point was that law is very rarely clear, and if you think it is, you're not thinking enough.
PA homicide law:
A person is guilty of criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or negligently causes the death of another human being.
Intentionally seems clear. It's defined as: Killing by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing.
So what if I'm hiding in the woods with my 30-06, lying in wait, hoping a deer crosses my path. I hear a noise, line up at the brown figure moving ahead of me, pull the trigger. Was that intentional?
So what if I'm driving on I-80, moving along at the speed limit of 65MPH, and *pop* out pops a kid crossing the freeway from the woods, 50 feet, or about half a second away from me. I have enough time to know it is a human being, and my vehicle contacting him has caused the death of him. Am I guilty of criminal homicide, because I knowingly killed a human being?
Of course, courts in the first instance would not find me guilty of intentionally killing someone, even if my actions met the definition of lying in wait. And in the second, I would probably not be found guilty of anything, even thought I knowingly killed a human being, in violation of the statute.
So, why does the parent poster think lawyers shouldn't "make the law mean something else?"
Re:Why not boycott PS3s (Score:2, Insightful)
Worst. Analogy. Ever.
People should just stick to cars.
Re:The USB lockdown screwed me over (Score:3, Insightful)
You know it's only the unlicensed third party controllers that don't work right? Regardless of Sony's intentions over the usb patch, why would anyone expect unlicensed hardware to work forever?
Why would you expect to require a license for a device that supports standard USB HID devices? You could (and still can, at least the two I tested) plug in any PC USB gamepad or joystick into your PS3 and it will work just fine (button and axis mapping might however be a bit mixed up).
Re:Meanwhile (Score:3, Insightful)
EULA aren't legal. They may seem legal, but they aren't.
Erm... I'm afraid they are. EULAs (or at least clauses within them) have been upheld by a number of courts worldwide. Just google for "eula upheld" and of the first 10 results, 8 discuss EULAs which have been upheld. (Of the 2 which don't, 1 links to a page which discusses a case where an EULA has been upheld, the other is someone on a forum who has looked at a case of employment law and tried to apply it to consumer law).
I play EQ2 and Sony's EULA says I can't use 3rd party software. Which means, my keyboard driver, my video driver, my video card extra software, is all illegal to run while I'm playing EQ2.
Of course, I go further, with innerspace and isxeq2 so I can script & bot the game to my hearts content.
EULA? Fuck you, take me to court and we'll see.
You know, while IANAL I really would love to see you argue that "this clause is nonsensical and therefore the entire EULA is invalid" in court. Last time I checked, "Fuck you" wasn't generally considered a winning legal argument.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't he US navy or something do this? It was freaking genious because it's the US government who can basicaly tell Sony to do anything they want or to GTFO.
It was extremely cheap and it needed only a few PS3's. Even if it would totaly break within a year it would totaly be cost effective ;)