We are all familiar with the genius hacker George Hotz (GeoHot) for successfully hacking the Sony PS3 three years after its release and the Apple iPhone jailbreaking. To counter his efforts, Sony has recently announced the latest firmware upgrade for its PlayStation 3. This firmware upgrade has removed the Other OS support which allowed us to install another OS on the gaming console.
Now, this upgrade from Sony has upset many people, especially George Hotz. GeoHot has written in a blog post saying,
I never intended to touch [custom firmware], but if that’s how you want to play…
GeoHot has threatened to release a custom firmware which will enable the support for the Other OS feature. This is a direct threat to Sony and should get it seriously worried. As we all know, GeoHot has it in himself to make this happen and he will if he says so. He has done it in an earlier instance already.
Another important question that GeoHot has raised is that Sony is changing the advertised features on offer with PS3. This may not be legally wrong but it is ethically. The Other OS feature was what made many people buy this powerful piece of hardware. Running PS3s in clusters gave them near-supercomputer powers for various purposes.
He puts an argument that if a possible exploit is found in iPhone’s Safari browser, the solution does not lie in removing browser support for iPhone! At least, we can have something to learn from Internet Explorer. They can spend a lifetime releasing patches.
(Via: ars technica)
