They didn't remove emulation from PS3s that already supported it, did they? I guess the emulation was done in software after the first generation of PS3s, so there's really no technical reason to take it out for later generations...
I'm trying to figure out why anyone would actually try to patent numbers that are supposedly most effective (for the purposes of encryption, anyway) when they are kept secret. Surely if you patent two numbers, that implies you're using them for something? Maybe it's just a giant misdirection effort... but that seems pointless when the set of primes is infinite.
As far as I can tell, that boot-time phone-home session occurs as part of the *GameOS* boot sequence. When they get dual-booting working, what are they going to do? Try to scan the hard drive and see if Linux is installed? Problem is, any information reported by GameOS when it starts is suspect, because to get dual-booting working they're likely going to need to customize the GameOS firmware, and if they're customizing the firmware, there's nothing to stop them from having the firmware report "safe" data back to Sony (assuming they don't disable the phone-home sequence entirely).
While I think it is possible that Sony could ban some jailbreakers in the short run, I do not think they will be able to do this in the long run.
Imagine that the PS3 had been constructed by YOU, yourself, for the express purposes for which Sony has released this console.
That's where your mental exercise falls apart. By advertising OtherOS as a feature of the device, OtherOS was one of the "express purposes" for which Sony had released the console. OtherOS was a contributing factor to many people's decision to purchase a PS3, including my own.
If any entity -- whether a multinational corporation or a guy in his garage -- advertises a feature and then later arbitrarily removes the feature from already-purchased products, then that entity is definitely *not* entitled to sue its customers when they try to get that functionality back.
This has nothing to do with Sony's size and everything to do with Sony's incompetent management.
I think the interoperability exception, specifically 1201 (f) (1), explicitly permits the circumvention that geohot and fail0verflow have done. (But I'm not a lawyer, that's just how I understand the clause.)
Given that there *are* fair use and interoperability exceptions to the anti-circumvention clause, it is clear that the reason for performing the circumvention is indeed relevant. If you are cracking the system specifically so you can go and pirate Sony's entire game library, you cannot reasonably claim you are circumventing the system's TPMs for the purposes of interoperability; on the other hand, circumventing the system's TPMs in order to restore previously-available and arbitrarily removed functionality to the device (i.e. OtherOS) is quite clearly an issue of interoperability.
The problem isn't that they can't update the firmware, but that they can't replace defective or dying units with new units. They can buy used units somewhere, but that's not an ideal long-term solution.
My guess is that they'll use the cluster until enough units have died that they can't do whatever they need the cluster to do, then wipe the remaining drives and auction off the remaining PS3s.
Quicktime has been around a lot longer than iTunes (but it was never less of a resource hog as far as I remember).
Use your own ISP for DNS.
When you first get a Comcast account, before you've registered your modem's MAC address with them, they give you an IP address but the DNS server they give you always points you at their registration server. Trouble is, the database that the DNS server reads out of can sometimes get out of sync with what modems are actually registered, and there's nothing Comcast's first- or second-level techs can do about it other than to tell you how to set your DNS servers manually to something else (they'll give you the IPs of the regional Comcast DNS servers). (This happened to my dad when he signed up.)
So... you'll forgive me if I'm wary of using the DNS servers my ISP gives me.
Companies can decide their terms of service are being violated at any time, they don't have to wait for a US court to decide the company's terms of service have been violated.
Suppose I watch you steal a candy bar. You have broken the law, whether or not a court convicts you of it. To claim otherwise is absurd.
If Wikileaks wants to challenge Amazon's assertion that they've violated US law, I don't personally have a problem with them trying. Somehow I don't see them even trying, though, let alone succeeding.
I only used the word "evil" to distinguish malicious, speech-suppressing censorship from activities which are technically censorship, but which are not malicious and do not suppress the freedom of speech. Clearly Amazon is engaging in the latter, not the former, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Unfortunately amazon has such relevance in today culture that the effect of their censorship is just nominally different from a violation of first amendment from the US government.
The first amendment does not mandate that private companies be forced to sell particular books. In fact, you could argue that the first amendment explicitly lets them not sell particular books!
At any rate, I was not saying that Amazon is trying to remove any book that happens to mention rape. I was saying that from what it looks like with this incident, they're trying to keep their store image clean by removing books with titles referring to rape. This is wholly different from censoring any mention of gay sexual violence with the intent to prevent any customers from ever reading any book that might refer to that subject.
But by using such a broad brush that is censorship, Amazon is basically answering them , "because I say so", which summed with the point I've made before, creates an ugly, ugly precedent.
It is hardly an "ugly, ugly precedent" for a company to be allowed to decide what products it sells, regardless of whether some subset of their customers want to buy those products. Do you think Amazon should be forced to make available every single book that is conceivably available on the market? Where do you draw the line? Why is that line any better than letting them draw the line based on earning a profit, which is their responsibility to their shareholders?
Don't confuse what Amazon is doing with the issue of freedom of the press. Amazon is not demanding that these books not be printed. Amazon is not demanding that these books not be sold elsewhere. Amazon has simply decided that they do not want to sell the books. This is no different than if a national brick-and-mortar bookstore decided they did not want to carry gay rape fantasy novels in its stores; certainly nobody would be complaining about censorship if that happened.
I would argue that a far uglier precedent would be to force Amazon to sell books they do not want to sell. It's a very short step from there to forcing publishers to publish books they do not want to publish, and you can probably see why that would be a bad thing.
You may not agree with Amazon's moral decisions on which products they sell, but it is absurd to claim they should not be allowed to make those decisions.
First, the ebook market is only a tiny portion of the *book* market. This "censorship" will not have any noticeable impact on what people read and whether they can read it. These books are still available, people will just have to buy them from someone other than Amazon, even if they have to resort to buying paper books. Oh no, people might have to give their money to someone other than Amazon if they want a specific book! The world is ending!
Second, while Amazon currently holds most of the ebook market, analysts expect Amazon's share of this market to drop drastically - for example, one analyst thinks it will drop to 35% over the next five years. This will be true regardless of whether they sell gay rape fantasy books, but the market share drop will not come because a dozen customers are mad that they can't buy gay rape fantasy ebooks for their Kindle. No, the drop will come because of competition, one one of the things they will compete on is what books are available.
I don't think there's any evidence to support the notion that Amazon has enough control over the ebook market that their decision to stop selling gay rape fantasy books will have any impact on the freedom people have to read gay rape fantasy.
I think your definition of "an entire class of titles" is different from mine. There can't have been that many gay rape fantasy books... and if there were, I don't really want to know about them.
Or is it your opinion that Barnes & Noble is not a "general interest" bookstore because they don't carry rape fantasy books in their brick and mortar stores? Is it your opinion that a bookstore must carry books from every conceivable genre before they can be considered a "general interest" bookstore?
The term "general interest" merely refers to "stuff most of the population would be interested in." I have a hard time believing gay rape fantasy falls into that category.
and (formerly) wider selections.
So the gay rape fantasy ebooks were the only set of books making Amazon's selection larger than your local independent bookstore? That must have been a large building.
This isn't a law, it's a single company deciding not to sell a small number of books. Hardly the same thing. There's no "human freedom" being lost. Unless you think there is somehow an inherent "human freedom" to be allowed to buy specific books from Amazon, but that would be absurd.
Ugh. I meant, "while Amazon's action meets..."
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids? -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
