Just read this story about GeoHot... the kid is a genius for sure... but a lot of people flame for hacking PS3.What do you think about it?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/07/120507fa_fact_kushner?currentPage=all

I don't care about him. He did an 'awesome' thing to his 'fans' by disappearing as soon as Sony gave him some money (or something along that line).

(don't remember how the story ended)

Yet he made quite an impact with hacking iPhone & PS3... For me - hacking the PS3 was quite good... you can finally have the control of your gaming system,like on your PC..

He allegedly hacked the PS3, but after announcing that he had done it, he failed to provide any of it to the rest of us. Meaning that Sony then took away features that some people had when they bought their PS3. Not cool.

Ultimately, I dislike him. Cracking the PS3 is cool, but then scaring Sony into locking the thing down and removing features without providing anything for the rest to show for it is decidedly not cool.

Ultimately, he's a punk that deserves all the hatred he gets.

After swearing he'd take the case to court he... ran away and settled it thus stopping the precedent being set that you actually own the hardware you bought and can do anything you want to it...

Yet this is for the new consoles and people using PS3 with PS+ and PSN for multiplayer. I have a lot of friends who use PS3 for homebrewed stuff thanks to him.

You do realize that the original homebrew cracks that people had access to were done by a completely different crew, right. A job made harder because Geohot couldn't keep his big mouth shut.

I'm not a fan of piracy, but the crack is pretty much the only sane way of backing up the data in a convenient way. Sony wants you to individually download each and every file or backup the entire disk. Unless of course that's changed.

And locking a device that you paid 500-600euro is fun :) Hail Apple & Sony than.

No, we have lax consumer protection laws to thank for that. I'm shocked that nobody at Sony was ever prosecuted for engaging in vandalism on that scale. They sold the product, vandalizing it after the fact because they didn't get what they wanted isn't something that's ever appropriate.

As for that pirate comment, ad hominem arguments are really only befitting children.

Oh FFS stop with the "if it's cracked it's for piracy" bullshit. Cracking the PS3 was the only way to access the GPU and more than 1SPE and thats what the original crack did it let you access the GPU in linux NOTHING ELSE. But Sony being Sony thought "We can't allow that they're accessing things we didn't want them to!!!11one" and removed otheros.

The next crack allowed you to.. you guessed it reinstall Linux it did NOT allow piracy infact all the hooks required to allow piracy were DELIBERATELY LEFT OUT.

After a few months yes a hack was released that allowed games to be run off the HDD but heres the thing at the time it required you to rip the game yourself so wasn't very effective for piracy really was it? Before then most people were using homebrew to either use Linux or run a decent video client that could handle MKV's and other odd video formats.

About a month after that the first unencrypting hack was released which allowed piracy but before that no the hacks DID NOT allow piracy so please actually think before assuming homebrew means piracy.

you bought the friggin' PS3 under 'locked' conditions. you got no right to complain about that afterwards. don't like it? don't buy it.

why do you need a gaming console unlocked anyway? what for, exactly? what awesome homebrew software is there that you would sacrifice your warranty for it?

@wodmarach: yeah, i'm totally sure the cracks were so popular because everybody all of a sudden wanted to install Linux, when nobody gave a crap about it before Sony decided to remove it...

What rules? Seriously WHAT RULES the item is mine if I want to smash it into bits and use the parts in an art project I can cause IT'S MINE, if I want to open it up and see what makes it tick I can cause IT'S MINE. If I want to change the OS and open it upto other stores guess what I CAN CAUSE IT'S MINE.

I DID NOT RENT THE DAMN THING I BOUGHT IT.

The PC is mainly Windows based that doesn't mean you can't use Linux or MacOS on it right? Don't be a douche like that.
For instance I hate Xbox cause I can't play a lot of video formats on it. But my PS3 can do that cause of this hack.

Yes, I bought a PS3, it's my property and I can do whatever I damn well please with it. Perhaps you ought to know the rules if you're going to spout off about it. Once Sony sold me my PS3 their right to control what I do with it was terminated. It's my property and removing features from other people's property is not cool.

If they really feel the need to control it, then they should be leasing the consoles to people rather than selling them.