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Sony PS3 Blog, v 3.21 update ( no freedom of speech here )

Well Sony has removed the OtherOS support for their original PS3 fat systems – which is a feature that influenced many of us to purchase the console in the first place..  On their blog post that announced the update the comments have reached over 6500 negative posts but the entire time countless legitimate and well spoken posts were being moderated and deleted..  Customers trying to be heard, eventually were forced to use dots or spaces between letters and even 1337 speak just to avoid having their messages automatically blocked by Sony’s string filters..

I only posted a hand full of times on SONY’s website, but today I checked back after about a week and attempted to post.  No such luck.  I see why the messages on the topic have slowed – it’s like Tienamen Square, or being a lawyer in Communist China.  The words of us, paying customers have been snuffed out..  Sony has chosen to silence us, their customers.

The future Today when companies take from us what we purchased from them years after we purchased it, and can silence us as if it never happened is bleak indeed.

CLICK HERE to see screenshot of the SONY update blog post, comment page 132 (even though the pages are inaccurate as so many comments were erased/blocked) – Scroll to the bottom of the image to see what I was talking about..

Also just want to post a reeninge’s signature from the Sony blog, which shows Sony blocking the word “FTC”.:

PS3 v3.21 “update”, Sony how could you?

QUICK NOTE: Everyone who disagrees with SONY’s actions, please:

1. Do NOT update your PS3!
2. File a complaint at BBB:  www.bbb.org
3. File a complaint at the FTC:  https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

I’ve been quite happy with my PS3, but today was notified that I had to update my system in order to play online.  Then the ugly detail reared it’s head.. Sony is removing the option of installing another OS (linux) and as a sneaky twist they are releasing the update conveniently on April Fools day so it’s possible some would assume that such an outrageously lame update is actually a joke..  but sadly it’s not.

The sony blog/forums are full of rightfully-angry customers posting regarding this issue, but Sony is deleting countless posts..  My first post was very reasonable, but they removed it..  Yes, it doesn’t look like many people are discontent when you DELETE their feedback!

My comment was posted here but they’ll probably remove it:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/03/28/ps3-firmware-v3-21-update/comment-page-117/

Since it appears they deleted my old comment which had nothing at all offensive or wrong in it, and being a PS3 OWNER on the Sony forums now feels like trying to be a human rights lawyer in China..

I just want to tell Sony that:

1. I’ve lost respect for you and now hold you with similarly low-esteem as I hold Microshaft.
2. I refuse to update to 3.21
3. I will go back to using the PC for multiplayer gaming.
4. If a game requires 3.21, I will NOT buy it!
5. As of this v3.21 update, I will now have to keep an eye on the whole PS3 hacking scene, as THAT is the ONLY WAY that I might be able to continue to use YOUR “product” with the “ADVERTISED FEATURES” that CONVINCED ME to PURCHASE it in the first place.  Until now, I had no motivation to… Good job Sony!

Another message I sent to their customer service ( http://us.playstation.com/support/ask/ ) is:

I purchased my PS3 because it offered multiplayer gaming AS WELL AS the “Other OS” feature. The v3.21 update forces me to remove the “Other OS” feature OR remove the multiplayer gaming feature! This is the equivalent of selling a COLOR TV for $600 and removing the COLOR a year later!

I used to respect you, but now you have robbed me of the product that I purchased from you! Will you offer re-embursement or replacement with a device that offers the features that I payed for? If you do not, that is stealing.

I hope we, the customers, can win against the giant double-crossing chicken beast that is Sony.

Here’s a screenshot of one page of comments taken 11:00PM, April 2 2010:

UPDATE:

I received a response from Sony:

Response (Nicole M.)

04/03/2010 12:00 PM

Hello Sangpo,We apologize for any inconvenience you are experiencing with our latest update 3.21 for the PlayStation(R)3 computer entertainment system. We are not offering a refund for this feature change on the PS3™ system. We understand your frustration with this feature change but the change was made to protect the intellectual property of the content offered on the PS3 system as well as to provide a more secure system for those users who are enjoying games and other entertainment content on the PS3 system, we have decided to delete the feature to address security vulnerabilities of the system.Regards, Nicole M.

UPDATE:

I found an interesting thread by Jaecyn42:  FW 3.21 and Consumer Right’s Law: No Conjecture, Just Facts .  This inspired inspired me to submit a complaint to the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

PS3 owners who are upset by this update would probably be better off submitting a complaint to Sony on the FTC website than waste too much time having their comments moderated/erased on the official Sony blog/forums.

My complaint is as follows:

Sony advertised the product ( Playstation 3 ) as having an “Install Other OS” feature, and because of this feature I decided to purchase their product.  Now, they have released an “update” that REMOVES this advertised feature.  I am given the option to either give up the advertised “Other OS” feature, or keep it and be unable to use the other advertised feature “Multiplayer gaming” of the product.

Sony is robbing their customers of the product that they purchased!

It is as if I was sold a color TV only to have the color removed a couple years later.

We, the consumer, should be protected from this type of action, as outlined on the FTC website:

Sec. 238.4 Switch after sale.
No practice should be pursued by an advertiser, in the event of sale of the advertised product, of “unselling” with the intent and purpose of selling other merchandise in its stead. Among acts or practices which will be considered in determining if the initial sale was in good faith, and not a stratagem to sell other merchandise, are:

(a) Accepting a deposit for the advertised product, then switching the purchaser to a higher-priced product,

(b) Failure to make delivery of the advertised product within a reasonable time or to make a refund,

(c) Disparagement by acts or words of the advertised product, or the disparagement of the guarantee, credit terms, availability of service, repairs, or in any other respect, in connection with it,

(d) The delivery of the advertised product which is defective, unusable or impractical for the purpose represented or implied in the advertisement. [Guide 4]

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/baitads-gd.htm

We can’t have companies taking back what they’ve sold you without them providing some sort of reimbursement…  We no longer have the product that we originally purchased and as such they should allow us to return it..or even better.. they should NOT remove the features that we purchased.

Thank you, I hope, for the sake of SONY customers this issue can be remedied.

I posted to the Better Business Bureau www.bbb.org :

COMPLAINT:

I purchased a Playstation 3 (fat) system from Sony because it was advertised as having the ability to play games (online), blueray playback AND the feature to “Install Other OS” – meaning that I could install Linux onto it and use it as a computer.  THE SUM OF THESE FEATURES IS WHY I PURCHASED THIS PRODUCT.

Now SONY, as of the v 3.21 firmware update is REMOVING a feature and forcing us to decide which one:  We must either install the update, which disables the Other OS feature (they are effectively stealing my computer) OR we can opt to not install the update, in which case we CANNOT play games online, cannot connect to the PSN network, and will likely be unable to play future games (they are stealing my gaming system)..  My product is the sum of all features that convinced me to purchase it, and now they are removing the features so that it is NO LONGER the product that I purchased!

”
Sec. 238.4 Switch after sale.
No practice should be pursued by an advertiser, in the event of sale of the advertised product, of “unselling” with the intent and purpose of selling other merchandise in its stead. Among acts or practices which will be considered in determining if the initial sale was in good faith, and not a stratagem to sell other merchandise, are:

(a) Accepting a deposit for the advertised product, then switching the purchaser to a higher-priced product,

(b) Failure to make delivery of the advertised product within a reasonable time or to make a refund,

(c) Disparagement by acts or words of the advertised product, or the disparagement of the guarantee, credit terms, availability of service, repairs, or in any other respect, in connection with it,

(d) The delivery of the advertised product which is defective, unusable or impractical for the purpose represented or implied in the advertisement. [Guide 4]

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/baitads-gd.htm
”

SONY is wronging myself and MANY many other loyal customers and they should not be allowed to get away with it!

– S. Dorje

THE SETTLEMENT SOUGHT:

I want SONY to NOT STEAL functionality from the entertainment system in MY very own living room!  STEAL the features that made me decide to BUY their product int he first place!

As of the v 3.21 “update” this is nolonger the product that myself and many others purchased from the company, and as such, I believe we should either be compensated or better still, they should undo v3.21 and let us keep the product (the sum of all features) that we purchased!

Recursive Batch Image Resizing in Linux

So today I needed to resize a photo archive of 3000 images spread out in sub-folders for every year and month… Fortunately, in linux with a bit of research I got it!

First off, you must download ImageMagick – if you are running Ubuntu, LinuxMint or a similar distro with APT you can simply do:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Then you can cd (change directory) to the folder containing the pictures that are to be resized. For example:

cd /home/username/Pictures/toShrink

Now for example, if you only need to resize the .jpgs in this folder to 800px wide do:

mogrify -resize 800 *.jpg

NOTE: This is case sensitive, .jpg is not .JPG.  It is likely that you will have to run any of these commands for all file extention variations in your collection.  For instance once with *.jpg, then *.JPG, then *.jpeg then *.JPEG

To resize them to a specific size (distorting their aspect ratio if necessary) do:

mogrify -resize 800x600! *.jpg

To resize them to 50% of their original size do:

mogrify -resize 50% *.jpg

To resize them to a specific pixel content (effectively scaling small images up and large images down to a uniform size while maintaining aspect ratio) of their original size do:

mogrify -resize 480000@ *.jpg

Basically, the above number is 800*600=480000px.  Whether it be 800×600 or 600×800 or even 1200×400 pixels in size the image contains a total of 480000 pixels.  This will scale the images so that they contain X number of pixels.

Since many of my photos were different aspect ratios, different sizes and different orientations, some even panoramas, I settled for the above option.  I used 2000000@ which made all of my 4:3 photographs 1632×1224 and the panoramas similarly sized – not totaly precise but at least now all the pictures taken by different cameras at different resolutions are all roughly the same size!

Now RECURSIVE BATCH IMAGE RESIZING:
To resize all .jpgs in this folder and every sub folder contained within it (recursively) – FIRST DO A TEST RUN! – the following command will NOT change files, it will just output to console the commands that it would be performing:

find ./ -name "*.jpg" -exec echo mogrify -resize 800 {} \;

You should see outputted to console the mogrify command for ONLY the files that you want to resize.

mogrify -resize 800 ./subFolderName/fileName.jpg 

This is an example output that I get:

mogrify -resize 800 ./2007/12_December/IMG_0172.jpg
mogrify -resize 800 ./2007/12_December/IMG_0199.jpg
mogrify -resize 800 ./2007/12_December/IMG_0166.jpg
mogrify -resize 800 ./2007/04_April/2007-04-25_ph101_12.jpg
mogrify -resize 800 ./2007/04_April/041207_13491.jpg
mogrify -resize 800 ./2007/04_April/2007-04-25_ph101_13.jpg

Make sure that the options are correct and that it is modifying the correct files.  Use caution, test it out on a few images first..  This overwrites the original file so make sure that you have a backup of everything just in case something goes wrong.
If it all looks good and you’re ready to go, simply remove the echo .
This is the final command that I used (resizing 4:3 images to around 1632×1224):

find ./ -name "*.jpg" -exec mogrify -resize 2000000@ {} \;

Remember, it is case sensitive.  Run it again for *.JPG , *.jpeg, and *.JPEG!

ImageMagick can do a whole lot more, things such as image conversions.. like JPG to PNG 🙂

convert *.jpg imageSeriesName.png

Check out the ImageMagick site to learn more about what you can do with this extremely powerful non-graphical graphics program! 😀

Good luck guys, hope this post helps make life easier for a fellow creature of the net!

Tweak Dial up with Proxy Caching – QUESTIONS!? + answers!

Okay so I’m going crazy trying to come up with an ideal tweaked setup for my mom’s new laptop.  I must get it perfect before I send it out to the middle of nowhere 24kbps dialup country.

Using a localhost DNS server probably does improve performance, but i’m not sure about a proxy.

These are my questions in response to THIS Tweak guide:

I’ve been attempting to do proxy caching technique using Squid, but I really am wondering exactly how it functions and I have some doubts as to whether or not it really works.

So from my understanding this is how it all works:

1. User clicks link on a webpage:
2. Client contacts DNS server (ideally localhost, if DNS entry isn’t there it pulls it slowly from the net ISP or OpenDNS server)
3. Client browser requests webpage from browser cache, if not found, it asks for it from localhost proxy cache, if it’s not there it pulls it slowly from the net.
4. Files are slowly downloaded and written to proxy cache, then written to browser cache creating an unfortunate redundant data and drive usage? 😦
5. Webpage is rendered in browser.

Next time user goes to that page, ideally the content is cached locally and it will load quickly from the harddrive.

Now my major question is –
I can see how a localhost proxy cache would be useful if you had multiple people logging into the same machine where their browsers have seperate caches – but is there any benefit to proxy cache in a single user setting?

Well, I’ve concluded that proxy cache is the way to go, despite it’s added difficulty for two reasons:
1. Mozilla Firefox has the TERRIBLE habit of ERASING the entire disk cache every time it crashes or closes improperly…This renders making a huge disk cache in firefox pointless since it will likely be lost.
2. The proxy cache provides much more in terms of configuration options and works for multiple users and multiple applications.

Does the browser cache and the proxy cache function in the same way? Do they save everything?  .JS, .SWF, .PNG, etc… ?  Wouldn’t it be best to then disable the browser cache to avoid redundant disk usage?

Yes, it seems to cache everything, even cookies.  As far as I can tell the browser disk cache can be disabled when using proxy cache.

What happens if a dial up user clicks Stop – does the proxy server continue to load the files for that page – actually causing their internet speed to slow down??

Well, I’ve only dealt with Polipo caching proxy and apparently it when the user clicks Stop, Polipo stops loading the file but caches the partially downloaded file so that it continue downloading it later in case the user requests it.  However, I think I read that many other proxies do not cache incomplete files…

Haha sorry for the rant but if anyone knows the answer to any of these questions.. please please post 🙂  Thanks!

Fall 2008 Semester: The grades are in!

Woot, the grades turned out better than I expected. 19.5 credit hours of doom, complete.   Now to just figure out what I can do about the INCOMPLETE for Color and Light..

CRN	Subject	Course		Course Title		Final Grade			GPA Hours	Quality Points
21214	CG	314		PROGRAMMING CONCEPTS		A-			2.000	7.40
21215	CG	321		DSGN & AUTH INT MEDIA II		A-			2.000	7.40
21216	CG	341		3D MODELING AND ANIMATION		A-			2.000	7.40
21220	CG	344		HISTORY OF ANIMATION		A			3.000	12.00
23025	CG	346		PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION I		B-			1.500	4.05
21709	CG	351		STORYBOARDING & STORYTELLING		B+			2.000	6.60
21223	IL	302		DRAWING FOR ANIMATION I		A-			2.000	7.40
2157	PE	141		FITNESS TRAINING		A			1.000	4.00
23035	SC	032		COLOR SCIENCE LABORATORY		A			1.000	4.00
23710	SC	332		COLOR AND LIGHT		B			3.000	3.00

Winter Vacation, To-Do List Placation

Well, the madness of the end of semester is over.  An uneventful (which is good) Christmas has passed – all I did was sit back and watch Slumdog Millionaire, which is a surprisingly awesome movie.

It feels as if I’m making no progress at chipping away at the long to-do list of things I wanted to catch up on during this vacation..  I’m suspecting that to-do lists really do not work.  It seems like, despite the fact I’m barely working two days a week right now during break, I still am falling behind.  There’s so much to do on my list and yet, bam, suddenly tons of bills come, birthdays, holidays, other responsibilities, etc.. The original ToDo list just sits there and pretty much now there’s a NEW ToDo list of more urgent tasks.

I need to somehow pay for tutition which means generating $1k in two days which doesn’t seem possible – this would not have been a problem if my winnings from QuakeCon 2008 QuakeLive had been what they were supposed to be.. They told me that I won $2000, but the check that arrived in the mail was $1000..it’s hard to complain since it’s prize money but still I was really counting on that money for school.  Oh well, guess it’ll be a high interest payment plan for this semester.

I need to learn Adobe AfterEffects well enough to start a level 2 course even though I’ve never taken level 1.. I suspect that during my sleep deprived final two weeks of classes I managed to totally forget to go to my Science of Color and Light final and so I recieved an INCOMPLETE.. Ugh, so disappointing, don’t know how..I thought I went.. I did.. didn’t I?  I don’t remember anything really from the last weeks of school.  It’s kinda frightening.  Next semester I need to make sure that I sleep no matter what happens.

Anyway, so the good thing is I’ve recovered my home built desktop computer from it’s neglected, virus riden state.  What really did it under was a virus that I aquired during an epic two day attempt  at installing the patch for  Resident Evil 4 / Biohazard.  This is a patch that is necessary since the PC port of the game was a total hack job and should never have been released without more work.  I failed miserably in the end at patching the game (trust me, building a computer and setting it up as a headless linux server is easier than patching this game).  And well.. the good news is, now the computer is all fixed up again as a dual-boot machine with a minimal install of WindowsXP sp3 (just for games) and LinuxMint 6 (for everything else).  It’s still not tweaked as nicely as my old Ubuntu Studio setup, but it does the job for now and I found this FlickR group of 360 degree photos to use for the fully rotatable skybox.

Well.. time to enjoy some gaming at long last.. Enemy Territory Quake Wars and HalfLife: Episode One (FINALLY!)

Super Size My Monopoly Money

The following is an excerpt from my essay on Super Size Me, for fitness class:

American public schools provide American children with terrible food that is basically the same as fast-food. This is because large food corporations have payed lobbyists working for them in the government and probably even the educational system. These lobbyists help ensure their patron’s wishes, such as the position as primary food provider for a school district, etc. This allows their corporations to sell low quality food to our children at high prices with government educational funding taken from our tax dollars. Various huge companies have a monopoly on the industry, such as Aramark – the company that produced horrible lunches at my high school way out in New Mexico and continues to produce horrible lunches at my college all the way in New York – there is no escape! I spent a brief period here at FIT working with the Foreign Films Club (now shutdown due to bureaucracy) and was really frustrated by the fact we were forced to pay Aramark for food during our movie showings. We were forced to spend over $12 per person for crappy Aramark boxed lunches, while we could have purchased high quality natural food from a small local restaurant for significantly less.

The terrifying thing is that this sort of corporate bureaucracy exists all the way up in all aspects of today’s global society. Not only are we forced to eat unhealthy food, but little by little human beings are losing more and more of their personal freedoms. We accept that we are in a rush running to school or work and can only spend a few dollars on an unhealthy McDonald’s cheeseburger. We don’t bother trying to customize our sandwich just like we don’t try to order customized shoes from Wal-Mart or a customized car from Ford. We accept it as it comes because we know we cannot change it. Fast-food is assembly-line cuisine and we live in an assembly-line society. With every generation a little less personal freedom becomes the accepted norm, and the eventual outcome is scary. We live in a world where the machine of humanity is so large that the individual gears are of little significance, as long as we spin and spend our money the machine can and will continue to give us the little dirty drop of oil that we need to survive. And when we get sick from it’s impurities we go to the doctor and make the medical and pharmaceutical industry gears spin – in sickness and in health we will make the machine run, even if it kills us. The end.

PSP to PC with RemoteJoy Lite

So my final animatic is due tomorrow at 9am for storyboarding class and as per usual, I ended up procrastinating till past midnight.  Tonights form of procrastination was an attempt to capture video and audio from my PSP (fat) to my PC (at school – AMD 64bit).

Requirements: (google them) are:

• A PSP running custom firmware ( i.e. 5.00 M33-4 )
  
• RemoteJoy Lite v0.19
• RemoteJoySDL 2007 (if you’re using 64bit)
  

RemoteJoyLite Installation Instructions
(THIS IS ASSUMING YOU ARE RUNNING CUSTOM FIRMWARE)

• Extract both archives.
• Copy the remotejoylite.prx from the RemoteJoyLite package into a folder called seplugins/ in the root of your memory stick.
• Completely reboot your PSP, hold R-trigger to access recovery menu.  Under Plugins, enable the remotejoylite.prx plugins. Exit to XMB.
• Connect the USB cable, the PC should recognise a new PSP Type B device.  In the install wizard browse for the appropriate libusb0.dll – I believe you can find the driver in the RemoteJoyLite package, but if you’re using a 64bit PC like I am, you’ll need to install the 64bit libusb0.dll from the RemoteJoy SDL package.
• Then you can simply run RemoteJoyLite_en.exe! Double click it for fullscreen 🙂

Game compatibility seems to be sketchy, here’s my list so far:

• Starwars Battlefront Renegade Squadron – WORKS PERFECTLY!
• Monster Hunter Freedom 2 – WORKS PERFECTLY!
  
• Prince of Persia – Rival Swords – Doesn’t work!
• Syphon Filter – Logan’s Shadow – Works Partially (Glitchy sound or textures)
• PSone games – Don’t seem to work..

Here’s an experimental screencapture I did of Syphon Filter – Logans Shadow (Episode 3 part 3 – Nowhere to Run) (hard difficulty)
You’ll notice the odd glitchy sound that occurs when running RemoteJoy with this game.. too bad, it would look great on a big screen 😦

Tilt Shift Photography

I just came across some cool examples of tilt shift photography, which is something I never really knew about before. This is an intriguing effect in which full size scenes are given a miniature appearance.  It would be really cool if this sort of effect could be integrated into an animation, video game, etc.. Note to self: research tilt shift photography!

(mostly this post is just to move the “Smarty Pance – Epistemology boxer” image down so I don’t have to look at it any more)

Pocrastination! Smarty Pance – Epistemology Boxers

So, I was attempting to do my Flash portfolio and website projects that are due TOMORROW morning and got distracted… My friend got me looking at Benford’s law on wikipedia and then Don mentions “epistemology” – the theory of knowledge, which I proceed to look up.. and then I somehow become convinced that it is absolutely imperative that the  bubble chart from epistemology’s wikipedia be on a pair of boxers… and after 40 minutes of searching google image search for “underwear”, “monkey wearing underwear”, “panties”, “butt”, “ass”, and “boxer brief” I found this image and the photoshopping ensued!

Pocrastination of Po

Alright, now that this shameful moment of my life has passed, it’s time to get back to work!