Though many people were pissed at Sony’s decision to remove OtherOS support from the PS3, at least the electronics giant were safe in the knowledge that no one was going to get bombed over it. Until now that is. Expressing their “disappointment” regarding the move, the United States Air Force have voiced their concern that each of the 2,000 PS3s they recently purchased as part of a project to create a dirt-cheap high performance processing cluster are now potentially lame ducks if one of them needs to be replaced.
The Air Force Research Laboratory told Ars Technica:
“We will have to continue to use the systems we already have in hand.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 [updated] firmware… and it will not allow OtherOS, which seems wrong.”
The USAF are just one of many research groups affected by Sony’s decision to remove the feature, a move many saw as a direct response to growing concerns about the system’s security after renowned hacker GeoHot reportedly unlocked the PS3 through the use of the OtherOS option.
Reports of fighter-jets scrambling in the direction of Tokyo are unfounded at this time.
Source: Ars Technica
