I'm working on my letters, two, one directly to Sony, and one to Harvey Norman.

I suck at letter writing... and I hate it so damn much... but I feel strongly enough about this.

A positive sign for Australians is the state of things in the UK, when I mentioned this to the ACCC they were very interested (I suspect being a Commonwealth country there's some influence here)

I've never been a fan of consoles, I've never been a fan of Sony - I bought one console since the days of the Sega Megadrive (Genesis for some of you), the PS3, because it offered the freedom of Linux.

In fact, out side of that console, and the 5 or so games, and one blu-ray movie I own, I don't think I've ever bought another Sony product.

Now you can be sure until the end of days every time I pick something up to buy I will go over the food chain in my head to see if Sony is part of that purchase.

To answer your question, I put to you a question.

What evidence did we have when we laid down $700 on an original PS3 which was marketed with "OtherOS" on the box that they would remove "OtherOS" later?

OtherOS was sandboxed and meant to be secure...

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Just because streaming is via dnla doesn't mean it's secure and can't be used to load an exploit into the ps3 by some form of attack.
  - Security excuse

Just because there's DRM supported in the protocol doesn't mean it stops anyone from playing pirated media.
  - Security excuse

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Really it's not that hard to imagine - if they feel free and safe removing a feature that was on the marketing material - then why not another?

Any port or protocol that allows interaction with the device provides an attack vector to break into it.

Never say never, if one of the best vetted lumps of code on earth (OpenSSH) can be hacked for remote access then any code can.

Value is a perception - and as install other OS was half the reason I purchased it, it's half my value.

The PS3 sux as a web browser, I own 4 games, I use MythTV as a media client, and I own 1 blu-ray movie.

I've had the PS3 for years.

Besides, how long is it until Sony decide to remove media client because of security?

So... I want half my money back as this will be disabling HALF the functionality of my PS3.

Actually, that does explain a lot of things - all through march I was having issues with Twitter on my Virgin connection yet I could ssh home to my Internode connection and twidge to my hearts content... I complained but they couldn't see a problem (they probably weren't using their own dns servers)

An alternative, have the whole lot done by a couple of programmable microcontroller - in this day and age there's no need to build a whole software system to do this.

The week before polling a manufacturer can burn verified programs to microcontrollers, these can then be run through second and third parties to test the code burnt for verification, drop them into chip mounts inside the booths and again test by second and third partys - build the booths in such away as you need 3 keys to open it one share them out.

Add to that my comment above...

I don't know why everyone has such a problem with this - the act of voting, manually or electronically is rather simple and not an overly difficult task.

Have a touch screen/keyboard overlay that displays the candidates and the computer records the order you tick the boxes.

Then prints on paper in fixed locations to match the screen overlay numbers that represent the order a box was chosen (Look at a lottery quick pick, or a machine readable ticket) print a barcode at the bottom that encodes the time, date, location, etc, the options chosen and a checksum (Perhaps one of those new fangled 3d barcodes so people may even be able to verify it with their phones/etc)

Make sure the print out and the screen are displayed side by side, if they don't match the voter is to manually cross out with a specific pen (no computer crossing out at all).

Oh and make sure they can't unlock the voting booth until they confirm one way or the other :D
If the numbers in b
oxes don't match the barcode the vote is declared illegal.

Added points if after the user verifies the vote it's saved locally, sent to a central location, and uploaded to two independent bodies (which check the central location and each other to verify the vote)

Even more points if the barcodes, votes, and backup systems are checked routinely - like every hour all votes are scanned and compared.

The key here is that the humans and the machines are able to read the primary component printout - barcodes are only there as double checks.

Paper systems aren't foil proof - especially as we're given PENCILS to mark the boxes - and as much as they're under supervision a whole group of supervisors can be abusing the system...

Mod parent up lol

I hope this commonsense stuff is contagious...

Now, if we could just get rid of Conroy and Aktinson - I could almost be proud to call my self an Aussie again...

In which case, can I call 911 (actually 000) because the retards in Canberra keep entertaining stupid stupid ideas? That's making me feel bad....

I've been somewhat tempted by the idea of making and releasing a $20 game that is as gory and politically incorrect as possible - see it get banned in Australia (Which a) won't be hard, b) would be interesting because that's where I am), Russia, Germany...

Encourage piracy and importation of the game in those countries, and keep anonymous statistics of the number of users playing the game in which country - just to demonstrate that bans are ineffective and a waste of time.

Less content, more freedom...

I'd rather have the freedom to watch a movie or show (when I actually find one worth watching) on my old CRT TV (which isn't yet due for replacement through failure) than be forced to upgrade my TV just so some fat cat can get fatter.

Incidentally - isn't most piracy digital, not analog? sure people still record stuff on their VHS recorders and maybe share it with friends and family, but that can't be as bad as someone stripping the DRM from a stream and putting it on a torrent for the whole world to grab.

If I were MPAA I'd be encouraging analog users as the lesser of two evils.