Air Force Unhappy With Removal of Linux from PS3
There were a lot of unhappy people when Sony disabled Linux support on the PS3 and it seems among them was one of Sony's biggest customers: The United States Air Force.
You might remember back in November when we reported on the Air Force's plans to purchase more than 2,000 PS3s to create a PS3 cluster. The USAF already had a cluster of 336, and they were looking to expand that by adding 2,200 more PS3s. While Sony decided not to offer Linux support with the PS3 Slim, the older models came with Sony's Other OS feature, allowing users to install Linux and do all kinds of neat things with their consoles -- including stitching together thousands of consoles to form one huge, monster cluster.
While the removal of Linux is not an immediate issue for the Air Force because they're not relying on Sony for its firmware updates, it will be an issue when it comes to repairs. Ars Technica reached out the the Air Force to ask how they felt about the removal of Linux and the USAF said they would continue to use the PS3s they already have but admitted that the removal of Linux will make it difficult for them to replace any systems.
"We will have to continue to use the systems we already have in hand," the lab said, before adding, "This will make it difficult to replace systems that break or fail. The refurbished PS3s also have the problem that when they come back from Sony, they have the firmware (gameOS) and it will not allow Other OS, which seems wrong. We are aware of class-action lawsuits against Sony for taking away this option on systems that use to have it.
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Looks like the US Air Force will have to create their own in house YLOD fix program...
Especially because they probably leave the cluster on all day.
I think Sony done .............. off the wrong people....
Surely GPU's can handle the sort of calculations PS3 do with far greater efficiency.
And if suing doesn't work, they can always bomb them into submission! JK, but now things start to get more serious for Sony. I wonder if they will take back that firmware upgrade...
dont they have power over this civilian company.... doesnt the airforce get special treatment?....
better keep the room cool and dust free...
dont they have power over this civilian company.... doesnt the airforce get special treatment?....
No, since Sony is not a contract by the air force they have no control over what Sony does....although all that money is something that can influence them.
Surely GPU's can handle the sort of calculations PS3 do with far greater efficiency.
The ps3 was the best item they had for this product (atleast at the time...keep in mind best also means for the price).
I think Sony done ......off the wrong people....
Agreed XD
I missed the days of using YDL5.0 on my ps3. I remember feeling so sly and cool for figuring out on my own with the use of mplayer and my ancient unix command prompt skills to get divx files to work on ps3 via ydl5.0 during PS3's infancy and long before ps3 obtained divx file support.
Ahhhh good times.
i wonder why they offer "Other OS" in the first place?
There's gonna be some angry snipers on the loose...
Sue Sony.
What PS3s fail? Hardly
But yeah, when Sony dismantled the Other OS feature, the only people I thought would be ...... were the USAF who bought the 2200 PS3s.
how about the usaf create something like folding@home, but for their military uses. and hundreds of people with powerfull video cards can increase their computing power?
Our military should have gone through the trouble of having a in house design and only then sourced the CELL cpus separately. Better keep the A/C on longer than normal at a lower temp and have skilled people on hand for repairs.
Send some low altitude B52's Sony will get the idea.
Sony needs to watch out for stealth bombers
And if suing doesn't work, they can always bomb them into submission!
that will never happen cuz sony doesn't have oil...
Told you so.
just make a claim that Sony is making weapons of mass destruction, and then attack sony till they put back linux support in the ps3.
Sony should make a blade server based on the chip. It would be more space efficient than a PS3 and probably energy efficient as well. They could make a profit off of it instead of a loss on PS3s users that aren't buying games (as with most cluster builders).
I would hope that Sony would realize that customers that want to cluster PS3's are just more customers. One could call it the industrial PS3 and have an alternate firmware. Given it's the USAF, why not? You can't buy that type of news about your console.
b23h, sony takes a loss on every console sold. if you don't buy games they actually lose money by selling you a ps3.
If sony or toshiba were to offer cell blade based racks for cluster computing needs, each blade would be more than 10x the cost of a single PS3, which is why, even though there are no cell based blades that I know of, that the USAF purchased these cost effective consoles as a DIY computing cluster.
Two words...predator drones.
I think Sony done ..... off the wrong people....
YUP!
Maybe they should have considered a High Performance Computing solution from a manufacturer that actually supports the product for that use. It boggles my mind that our national defense is in some small way dependent upon gaming systems.
dont they have power over this civilian company.... doesnt the airforce get special treatment?....
no, because it is not soviet Russia.
I'm sure all those systems count towards Sony's sales numbers and number of blu-ray players back during the format wars.
b23h, sony takes a loss on every console sold. if you don't buy games they actually lose money by selling you a ps3.
Yeah but the government pays $300 for a screwdriver. They probably paid Sony $30,000 per PS3 and thought they were getting a deal
that will never happen cuz sony doesn't have oil...
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!
Diss of the year!!!!!!!!!! xD hahahahahahah
no, because it is not soviet Russia.
In soviet Russia, PS3 plays YOU!