Sony subsidizes the cost of the hardware, in order to sell games. They were not happy with the Airforce doing this and it probably played a role in Sony pushing out an update that disabled Linux on all PS3s.
They were very happy about the air force doing this.
The whole point of OtherOS (and the official Linux port to the PS2 before this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 ) was to get the system classified as a general purpose computer rather than as a game console because that gave them import tax benefits in quite a few jurisdictions.
That's interesting. There must be other products with "odd features" for tax reasons. There was a case where Ford installed seats in a particular model of van so that it could be imported to the US as a passenger vehicle, but they removed the seats before selling. They ended up getting fined of course, but probably wouldn't have if they left the seats in and allowed the customers to remove them...
Probably the best known example is Converse. "The felt lining on the bottom of the sneakers allows Converse to classify their product as slippers, so the company benefits from a much lower tariff rate." https://blogs.pugetsound.edu/econ/2019/02/18/tariff-engineer...
Similarly, to my understanding, some cameras are perfectly capable of taking video, but disable the feature altogether (or impose a 30-minute recording time limit) to be classified as a still camera rather than a video camera for tariff reasons.
> it probably played a role in Sony pushing out an update that disabled Linux on all PS3s
Pretty sure that was due to it being used to hack the PS3.
> Blame for the latest culling has been pinned on computer hacker George Hotz, who was originally infamous for unlocking Apple's iPhone. In January of this year Hotz claimed that he had successfully hacked Sony's PS3 by exploiting Linux, gaining "read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV [hyper-visor] level access to the processor".
> Hotz released this to the public on 26 January, boasting, "Sony may have difficulty patching the exploit". He may well have been right, since Sony's latest response has been to completely lock off the required 'Install Other OS' feature. Shame on pirates, shame on Sony.
The death of otherOS was entirely to do with the fact it facilitated a lot of the reverse engineering efforts on the PS3, nothing else. As others correctly note, this was largely in response to George Hotz's hacking which required otherOS. Sony actually exposed themselves to legal action in many countries by selling a customer a product with an advertised feature then removing it after the fact, as such behaviour can often fall foul of sale of goods legislation.
Sony absolutely adored that supercomputer project if you lived through this period and followed the company; the idea that the cell processor was a supercomputer for the living room and we'd all be using our PS3s for media editing etc was genuinely a thought Sony had back then. It all fed into much of the (at times ridiculous) marketing for the Cell chip. Sony had plans for more Cell based devices that never materialized too.
"First, the company will manufacture a high-end workstation using the Cell CPU. Planned for release at the end of 2004... the Cell workstations will be marketed directly to the game and special-effects industries. The labor in their creation will be divided between Sony and IBM. SCE will develop middleware and other tools for game development and film effects. The Cell chips themselves will be manufactured by IBM, who will also work on the OS."
It's a shame they couldn't make it work out anyway. If the cost really was 5%-10% of a similar off-the-shelf cluster, even without the subsidy it would be, what, 10%-20%? That still seems like a steal.
And Sony gets to sell their gaming console as "US Airforce proven" or "a supercomputer in a box" or whatever marketing spin they want to put on it.
And it is only a couple thousand PS3s anyway, so it is a drop in the bucket.
I wonder if there was some behind the scenes stuff going on, maybe IBM worried or angry that this would devalue Cell processors somehow.
I don't feel Sony should have to worry about it. That amount of consoles would have been 1M$ at the time that happened, and represents a minor amount compared to the total sales that Sony had. It's probably a good marketing/PR budget, and messaging like "the PS3 is so good that even the military uses it instead of other computers" sounds like it could make it more appealing for customers.
The main risk would have been that more companies buy PS3 without buying subsized consoles without buying games. But due to the highly specialized architecture I'm not sure if there was ever a real risk of that happening.
You think Sony didn't know the Airforce was doing this? It's not like they walked into Walmart and purchased 1,760 PS3s. It had to have been a direct purchase from Sony.
Walmart certainly had 1,760+ PS3s in their warehouses at one point. So the Air Force could have just direct purchased from Walmart (or Target, etc.) if Sony didn't want to sell to them.
2010: 2882 US Super Centers + 608 Sam's Club + 1578 Mexico stores + 321 Canada stores = 5389 stores
People underappreciated the scale of big box national retail. ;)
The article states that Sony disabled OtherOS before the USAF got their cluster built, and Sony was recalling and warehousing the PS3s that had the OtherOS feature. The USAF had to negotiate with Sony to acquire these older PS3s that still had OtherOS capabilities.
Almost 90 million PS3s have been sold, so it seems entirely plausible that they could have directly bought 2000 of them through some distributor. Doesn't the military industrial complex prefer to go through its inner circle of buddies anyway?
Having worked briefly in military procurement, I can tell you the system is set up in a very bureaucratic way.
Certainly there are companies that the military wants to buy from. For all the shit about the F-35, Lockheed Martin probably employs some of the greatest engineering teams on the planet.
The C-130, for example, is probably one of if not the greatest aircraft ever designed.
Anyways, there are certain companies that make things militaries want to buy, but for more mundane things like computers and pens and chairs, either there's a negotiated standing offer that legally has to be the first point of procurement, or it goes out to contracts. Unfortunately winning government contracts is a bit of a skill in and of itself and some firms have that skill and others don't.
> The C-130, for example, is probably one of if not the greatest aircraft ever designed.
One of the benefits of not being a "sexy" project is that you don't have everyone and their mother trying to be part of the design process. You can tell the team that designed the C-130 was given two numbers: range and payload, and every other aspect of the design was determined by the engineers.
I'm sure if you google around you'll find some articles but, from my perspective as an aerospace engineer who used to work on C-130s: It's an absolute workhorse.
If you've ever been up close to a museum fighter plane, they're in good shape. The leading edges are all smooth and polished, everything is sleek and in good condition. Line Hercs are not that. They're usually dented and covered in carbon from the exhausts. The leading edge of the wing is like three feet thick. It's a Mack truck with wings held aloft by furious amounts of horsepower.
It's dependable, reliable, and versatile. These things survive being shot at, being landed on gravel, ingesting birds into the intakes, ingesting sand into the intakes. You can start a Herc by putting another Herc in front of it and running the engines up so that the prop wash buddy-starts the aircraft behind, like bump-starting a car rolling downhill.
There are dozens of variants from the gunships to the EC-130 Compass Call and friends which carry serious business ELINT gear for secret squirrels to do secret squirrel shit with. You can put RATO pods on it. You can use it for SAR. You can drop bombs from it (and not even by throwing them out the ramp, which you could also do). You can use it to refuel fighters and helicopters aerially. You can put skis on it and land it in the show. You can parachute from it. It's not a jet, but despite being a draggy brick of an aircraft it'll still pull almost 0.6 of Mach while carrying two hummvees. Also, those hummvees can parachute from the aircraft.
There's a reason it's so widely-used [0] and that reason is because the Herc is groovy. It's the unsung hero of nearly every military operation carried out by NATO and friends since the 1960s.
The Air Force maintains many recreational centers. I have a buddy that ran these for the Navy. Lots of game consoles, etc. I'm sure they could have explained the purchase that way.
The whole point of OtherOS (and the official Linux port to the PS2 before this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 ) was to get the system classified as a general purpose computer rather than as a game console because that gave them import tax benefits in quite a few jurisdictions.