Air Force may suffer collateral damage from PS3 firmware update
May 13, 2010, 10:33 (2 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Nate Andersen)
"When Sony issued a recent PlayStation 3 update removing the
device's ability to install alternate operating systems like Linux,
it did so to protect copyrighted content—but several research
projects suffered collateral damage.
"The Air Force is one example. The Air Force Research Laboratory
in Rome, New York picked up 336 PS3 systems in 2009 and built
itself a 53 teraFLOP processing cluster. Once completed as a proof
of concept, Air Force researchers then scaled up by a factor of six
and went in search of 2,200 more consoles (later scaled back to
1,700). The $663,000 contract was awarded on January 6, 2010, to a
small company called Fixstars that could provide 1,700 160GB PS3
systems to the government.
"Getting that many units was difficult enough that the
government required bidders to get a letter from Sony certifying
that the units were actually available. Dirt cheap computing
"Another grotesque waste of taxpayer dollars?"
Complete Story
Related Stories:
- Who Cares About Linux on the PS3?(May 07, 2010)
- No More Cheap Supercomputers? Sony Blocks Linux on PS3(May 04, 2010)
- Sony Sued For Removal Of Linux Support From PS3(Apr 30, 2010)
- PlayStation 3 Owner Gets A $100 Refund For Losing Linux(Apr 09, 2010)
- Hacker Claims To Have Linux Working (Again) On PS3(Apr 08, 2010)
- Playstation 3 Update locks out Linux and Ubuntu, bricks consoles(Apr 08, 2010)
- PlayStation Pull-Back Hurts Inexpensive Supercomputing(Apr 05, 2010)
- Next Sony update to remove Linux support(Apr 01, 2010)
- Hacker vows to fight Sony PS3 update, restore Linux support(Mar 30, 2010)
