While suing Sony sounds great, it involves finding a lawyer (ideally a class action lawyer) to handle it. But here in the US, we have another mechanism: the FTC.

If enough of us file FTC complaints online, they might take note. I wrote something like the text at the bottom of this post.

The company in question is:
Sony Computer Entertainment America
919 East Hillsdale Boulevard
Foster City, CA 94404

---BEGIN FTC COMPLAINT---

Sony (as Sony Consumer Entertainment America, Inc.) sells, and has sold for several years, a popular device called the Playstation 3. Up until now, this device has two features of note:

1. It supports a feature called "Install Other OS." This allows users to install operating systems such as Linux on their Playstation 3, which many users use for scientific and other purposes.

2. It supports something called the PlayStation Network. This is an online network of gaming users and is critical to obtaining the full gaming experience advertised by Sony.

Yesterday, Sony announced (http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/03/28/ps3-firmware-v3-21-update/) that they were going to disable the "Install Other OS" feature on all PlayStation 3 units, even those already sold. Users can opt out of this disablement, but that will in turn disable PlayStation Network.

Sony claims that this is due to "security concerns." These security concerns are probably that Sony realized that "Install Other OS" might allow PS3 owners to bypass digital rights management restrictions. In other words, Sony is crippling an existing product to aid in preventing users from doing something that may hurt Sony's relationship with content developers. (Users attacking the Playstation 3 may or may not be legal, but that shouldn't matter here.)

I am not an expert in the relevant law, but it seems to me that a company should not be permitted to disable functionality of products already sold, especially when the reason that they disable that functionality is to prevent their users from doing something.

Well, to be fair, there hasn't been a (Federal) election since they were formed, so the Australian Pirate Party couldn't really have any seats (by-elections notwithstanding) yet.

Not that I think they WILL get any seats come next election. But still...you never know.

There is one flaw with your logic here:

Electric motors are pretty powerful at low speeds. If the regenerative portion of the braking system is instead in acceleration mode, it's going to have a decent chance of overwhelming the undersized mechanical brakes. (The brakes are undersized because of the assumption that the regenerative system does the bulk of the work.)

And this is why we have no effective protests anymore. If you're protesting, it's really only effective if you sacrifice something to do so. Otherwise it's shallow, and the corporation/government/whoever you protest against knows you can be pushed around because you don't really care. If your principles aren't important enough to you to sacrifice while fighting for them, why should they take them seriously? You obviously don't.

Imagine if the Civil Rights movement had its members get up and leave as soon as they were threatened with arrest? What if they got up from the seats they were occupying in a whites-only cafe because they were hungry? What if they picketted, but only until they were threatened with fire hoses? What if they continued to use public transit during the boycotts, just because it was a long walk? Do you really think anything would have changed?

By pirating, you let the game publishers know that you can't do without their game, so all they need to do is hold the line, increase the DRM, and eventually they can get you (or others like you) to buy it without giving into your 'demands'. Look at Modern Warfare 2. There was a 'boybott' group on Steam filled with players in MW2 on launch day. It's no wonder IW didn't care that people were upset, they still got paid!

So don't blow a bunch of smoke up my ass about piracy being a useful protest tool. It likely does more harm to protests than good. Using the word 'protest' is just a convenient justification for "I don't want to pay for this, but I also don't want to feel like I'm doing anything wrong".

Flipping dozens or thousand could be caused by EMI on an unshielded improperly designed control line.

However, this would require someone ripping the magnetron out of a microwave oven, attaching it to a horn antenna, and pointing it at your car. Leakage and "normal" emissions from cell phones and radios is NOTHING compared to the typical electrical environment of a vehicle. Vehicles are known for having VERY noisy electrical systems with lots of spikes and dropouts, and let's not forget that the ignition system is a close relative of the spark gap transmitter. Vehicle manufacturers are VERY familiar with EMI.

It's just a bunch of idiots fearmongering and trying to drum up ad impressions, when there are already incredibly simple explanations that DO have evidence linking them to the problem - THE FUCKING MECHANICAL GAS PEDAL STICKS. (As to claims that this problem appeared after going to drive-by-wire, people forgot that to support drive-by-wire, the gas pedal had to be pretty much redesigned - "classic" pedal systems had quite a bit of friction that would damp pedal movement without sticking, new pedal systems had to add a friction component - apparently some such methods are prone to sticking when they wear.)

What about near the motorway? On the shoulder of one, calling for help? Calls that are data only? (Those are still normal cellphones underneath, with a number and everything.) Should passengers be allowed to use the phone? What of people who live in buildings adjacent to them?

Of course, this is all assuming that you can even tell that someone is on a roadway with any amount of certainty.

Deliberately breaking a class of technology isn't going to stop people from being distracted while driving a car. I would wager that someone on an animated phone call is still safer than all the people that read while driving.

Your scenario is more likely to end up like the annoying GPS systems that lock the screen out from changes while moving: disabled.

Couldn't the science community just not update the firmware?

Only until the PS3's they are running break. Which is scarily looking like it will start occurring soon; the community of users with early PS3's have been seeing early warning signs and ramped-up failure rates for some time now.

What they need, and probably will look for now, is a way to get "behind" hypervisor, install an alternate bootloader or some other method of loading Linux up, and go that route. And the moment that happens, the "pirates" (yarr harr fiddle de dee) will get hold of it and we're off to the races...

Hey, pizza doesn't deliver itself.

Yes, yes it is. If someone offers you exorbitant compensation from public funds and imposes no consequences for failure to deliver, it is unethical to persist once you realize what's going on since you're basically stealing from the public. Both sides of the deal are in the wrong. If the donor were a private entity, then there's no problem.

Say I accept that we can reach agreement about a definition of normal sight. That does not change the argument I am making, which is that once we start using this technique we will almost immediately come up against a different question of normal for which the answer is not obvious, and it would be very easy to cross that line without realizing it until after the fact. There is a slippery slope here. Which is not to say we shouldn't do it at all. But we need to carefully weigh the consequences and determine where we wish to stop before we begin, because if we do it after it may be too late to slow the momentum for improvement and prevent the fracturing of society into physically distinct classes.

Actually, they had a paper slip system where you could enter the time you got there and left if you forgot to punch in. People started forgetting to punch in a LOT (and oddly enough working more overtime).

Yeah, I can hear Steve Jobs railing on his staff from here.

"Damn it, you boobs! You switched to non-industry-standard units, and you STILL didn't get us darkpixel2k? Don't give me those iPhone and iPad sales numbers, you guys FUCKED UP!"

US billion or UK billion?

Mixing 1000 and 1024 just made my day. Well done.

Sorry, you have to obtain the incriminating photos of government officials before you submit your application.