Toyota Got Me in Trouble

   The post from Friday got me in a little trouble at work. No, not the edited picture of Kaz with his middle finger up but the blurb about Toyota drivers.

   It was not my intention to disparage Toyota drivers who got into accidents. That unfortunate "unintended acceleration" episode was brought up as an example of a small subset of the population having issues with a product while the greater population doesn't. If all Toyota cars were subject to unintended acceleration, the highways of America would be a collision course with much more accidents reported than there were. My family owns two Toyota vehicles including a Cressida from the late 80s that still runs fine and looks great. The other Toyota is a 2008 Lexus which has never had a problem. Based on Toyota's track record, the majority of their customers don't have problems either. If I offended Toyota drivers who were involved in accidents, that was not my intention.

Playstation 3 Firmware 3.42 is FINE

   Read the title again if it needs to be reiterated. I upgraded my PS3 to 3.42 as soon as it was released and everything's fine on my 60GB OG. I've been playing Japanese games, European games, playing Blu-Rays, and watching DVDs on the Playstation 3 for the past week without a glitch. Ya heard me? Not a glitch.

   What about the people who are complaining that their PS3s with 3.42 are crashing like Niagara Falls? They're what I call a "Vocal Minority." You know those people. They make a lot of noise but they represent a minority. Sort of like those Toyota drivers who were claiming that their cars were mysteriously speeding up were a vocal minority who got paraded in front of the news crews. Remember that one middle-aged guy whose Toyota sped up and crashed into another person's car? He was found to be a con artist who was heavily in debt and was hoping for a Toyota payout. I'm not saying that the people who're claiming their PS3s are clamming up are con-artists but maybe they're Xbox fanboys who don't even have a PS3. Maybe they're Jailbreak resellers trying to get into Sony's craw. Maybe they have a lot of time on their hands. Who knows. What I do know is they're a vocal minority.

More Jailbreak sellers in Sony's sights

If you're dumb reckless enough to continue selling PS3 mods after Sony's legal victories in multiple jurisdictions around the world, then you probably deserve to get sued. Sony has started legal action against three PS3 Jailbreak vendors in Sweden - Manzzon, Rejoy, and Wechip. Sony is seeking damages of 1 million Swedish Krona (SEK) or US$137,483.50 based on this morning's forex spot. If the Jailbreak is priced at about US$30, the companies would need to sell 4,582 Jailbreaks to pay Sony.

Official Jailbreak Mods Discounted to US$30 Wholesale

The company I work for gets a lot of offers every day from suppliers in Hong Kong, China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Last night, a mod supplier based in China sent out an email that's offering to sell the official Jailbreak USB device for a measly US$30 each in bulk. Compare that to the price of US$130 just last week before the news of the PSGroove broke. Guess there were a lot of cancellations especially when Sony basically outlawed the device by winning in Australian Federal Court.

   My company won't touch the Jailbreak since we'd like to stay in business and avoid getting sued but prices are going down and they're going to drop even lower in the next few weeks. My target is US$18 on the wholesale market but prices below that are inevitable since people can basically make their own Jailbreaks now with the PSGroove software.

PSGroove Options Expanding

Dingoo A320

   The PSGroove exploit has been ported over to even more devices and phones over the weekend. New additions include:

Dingoo A320 Handheld Game

Google Nexus One
HTC Desire

HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1)

HTC Sapphire Magic 32A
HTC Sapphire Magic 32B 
Palm Pre
Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus / TI-84 Plus Silver Edition

   News of a Playstation Portable version of the PSGroove has also been circulating.

PS3 Firmware 3.42 Released

   Sony released the PS3 3.42 firmware yesterday. The update patches the security exploit that was present in firmware 3.41 which allowed the PS3 Jailbreak and the patched PSGroove to circumvent the Playstation 3's security measures against "backups" and replay of those backups. The official announcement is linked below:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/09/06/playstation-3-system-software-update-v3-42-now-available/
PlayStation 3 System Software Update v3.42 Now Available

Posted by John Koller // Director, Hardware Marketing
Hi everyone! A minor update to your PS3 system is now available via system software update v3.42 that includes additional security features. For more details and instructions on how to update the system software for the PS3 system, please visit the PS3 System Updates page.