You're right, there must be different N900s

I guess I got one of the good ones, that boots up reasonably quickly, takes decent pictures, works well as a GPS, does flash fine, if a little slowly (yours doesn't?), and works brilliantly not only as a net device on its own but also as a 3G wireless modem for my linux machines.

I'll agree that the manufacturer totally lost it though.

Instead of incrementally developing the OS, adding stuff, making improvements and fixes and delivering them (the usual linux model), and then delivering improved hardware as and when they could, they ended up doing the same thing that killed Openmoko - "Oooh! Shiny! Let's ditch it all and start again!". So you end up with two years of no real progress, no released devices and no income. In the meantime the managers who weren't directly responsible for screwing up the maemo unit were busy screwing up the rest of the company and whoops, suddenly the 'next big thing' doesn't have the time to mature, despite the fact it's 7 years old.

It never got quite that easy

You still needed a way to install it, that's not provided by the default firmware and needed to be unlocked.

And that wasn't quite all, don't know the specifics, but there were still one or two keys to be found when the lawsuit kicked off, and all has gone relatively quiet since then.

I agree

I'm not really sure.

Do I have to sign a license agreement before they take my money?

No? Then I'd say I own that copy of the software, and like a paperback book, can scribble in it and alter it to my heart's desire as long as I don't give away or sell copies, or claim it was my work.

I donh't think he did much wrong either

But given what's going on at the moment you would have thought some common sense was a useful skill in a PR droid. Maybe not though.

OTOH how many people outside of techy circles even know what a crypto key is, let alone what one looks like?

After hours of peering at SSL hex dumps

I wasn't thinking very metaphorically. So sue me!

Boycott affect them? Maybe not

However if I cease to give them any of my money, I know I'm not funding this bullshit.

So it would be nice to see this behaviour boycotted out of existence, I'm well aware that will never happen.

It's enough for me that I'm not helping them harass people and destroy ownership rights.

How would that help?

Unless they're moving to IPv6 then you'll still need an IP address whether it's dynamic or static!

Nowhere? Really?

So that's why they release that open edition of the system software?

No PSN but run what you like?

Or even bootloader documentation so we can put linux on it and be done with it?

Sure Sony are telling you what to do with it, and trying to prevent you from using your hardware as you see fit. At every turn.

Bust?

I thought PC world and the likes were more likely to go bust because they're losing so much money.

Even the 'normal' folks don't like them any more. It's now common knowledge that they're overpriced, their stuff is behind the times and they don't know what they're talking about.

Buying from an established online firm (and there are many) is every bit as safe.

Not a truly free market

"If there really is gross profiteering going on, then vendors will appear who are able to.undercut exiating retailers. If they *don't* appear, that tells you that gross margins may be good, but that nett margins aren't."

Part of the problem seems to be that parallel imports by retailers are either illegal or otherwise prevented, probably through some perversion of IP law (Remember Lik-Sang in the UK anyone?)

So if the wholesalers are gouging, and if you try to buy from another country you get the law pointed at you.... what is there you can do?

Sod the roaming charges

Roaming charges or no roaming charges, being able to use a GPS system when you can't get a mobile signal is important for it to be really useful.

Well, important to me because sometimes, just sometimes, I leave the city and end up lost in places with no network.....

Ummm...

As far as I know Chip & Pin hasn't been compromised, and I used to write Chip'n'Pin transaction software so I'm fairly well acquainted with the cards and their standards.

The only attacks I've read about are either hilariously impractical or rely on legacy support for the magnetic stripe.

I know, I know, new technology is scary (and I have severe doubts about the wireless system if it really is as quick as it's made out to be) but EMV is pretty secure.

I wouldn't like to extrapolate from anecdotes

But I 'suffer' from the same. Give me a block of time off work and I turn pretty much nocturnal in only a couple of days.

Not that I actually like it that way, waking up late afternoon with most of the day gone and then staying up all night at the computer when the rest of the world is long asleep, it just seems to be what I gravitate to. I've always had trouble with mornings and get most of my best stuff done when everyone else has gone.

I've worked with others like me, but I've also worked with the opposite - talented coders that are in at 7am every day, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Freaks!

Quite the opposite

The right has always been the home of small government, it's the left that are associated with economic and legal control-freakery.

I don't ever think the damage of the last labour administration will be undone, but anything to get away from the "Nanny knows best" years by making government more transparent and accountable is a good thing.

If the conservatives could shake some of the cow-towing to big business and the pandering to religious interests, they'd be about perfect in my book

If running unsigned code on a client...

"If the security on a PS3 is compromised and it can access PSN unfettered, that represents a threat to the PSN security and any threat to that is a threat to the security of my financial transactions and information held within PSN."

If someone else running unsigned code on a client machine can expose your personal or financial data then Sony have dropped the ball and deserve to be sued for negligence.

It's that simple. If you're any sort of IT professional then you ought to know that relying on client security in a situation like this is a recipe for enormous, embarrassing and costly failure.

As for the rest -

"people who think that their actions have no consequence. Just like Geohot though that his breaking into the hypervisor had no consequence. Yet it did, it resulted in the removal of OtherOS."

Yup, what a wonderful reaction from Sony, someone finds a way of modifying the hardware to gain hypervisor access so everyone loses OtherOS. Except of course that PS3 slim models had no OtherOS anyway and it looks for all the world like Sony were looking for any excuse to drop it. Either way, it's not a proportionate response and is questionable in terms of legality (see ongoing lawsuits on OtherOS, not that I have any faith they will come to much).

Geohot was in the right, IMHO. Your blaming him for losing OtherOS is like blaming a free-speech advocate for the resulting government clampdown after they speak up.

"Downgrading your firmware back to a version prior to these is great and all, but things move, games get released, new firmware is mandated."

Sure it is, but much new firmware doesn't add anything and the games simply check a version number, this can already be spoofed. Games that genuinely require new features will probably be supported in time too, through the use of custom firmwares and further exploits.

"The PSN is Sony's network, not yours, the firmware is theirs, the encryption keys are theirs and the stolen service key that was cloned to allow the jailbreak exploit is Sony's too."

Actually, that specific instance of the firmware, within the limits of copyright, fair use and other relevant laws, is mine to do with as I please. Well, it is in my book, Sony would probably disagree and they can probably afford enough lawyers that anyone actually looking to do anything with their firmware ought to be careful.

And the exploit doesn't rely on a clone of anything, it's an exploit that mimics plugging and unplugging a few USB devices to overflow the stack and then inserting code in just the right place to get it executed. It may have needed a service jig to find the exploit, but the exploit itself doesn't rely on any copyrighted stuff.

This downgrade stuff may indeed be based on a stolen or 'borrowed' service jig, nobody knows yet as it appears to be all hype.

I don't necessarily disagree when it comes to the PSN, it is Sony's network to do with as they please and they may choose to boot people off that they consider to be pirates, or who have the ability to run unsigned code and could be running bots, cheats, trainers or whatever else.

However your reasons not to want compromised systems on the PSN are unbelievably dumb. Sorry, but they are.

Personally I really like what happened on the PSP - custom firmware arrived that allowed you to boot into homebrew mode, which Sony could detect and not allow network stuff to run, or into original mode which would get you online but not allow hacks.

And the reason I attacked you character was because you seemed genuinely angry about people gaining access to their devices and genuinely gleeful at the idea of retribution from on high. By a huge corporation, on hobbyists. You seem to delight in the idea of authoritarianism and that's usually not a good thing in terms of character.

Competitive?

Well, if you're the only person in the business of white iPhones, sure, you're only competing with yourself and can sell for whatever you like!