It appears that another Hello World attempt has been pulled off on the PlayStation 3, this time by our community's own dragula96. The exploit was achieved on retail model PS3s, although you'll probably want to view the video demonstrating this feat. It's available over in the full article along with some extra details.

Visit: QJ.NET PS3 Hacks, Exploits and Homebrew Forums

We've been having more than our fill of rumors pertaining to Sony PS3 modchips, soft mods, and what-not, and a lot of us are beginning to wonder if there's really any valid work being done to forward this cause. German dev team DC launched a shocker which shows us conceptual proof of what could be Custom Firmware for the PS3.

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Update: Another video showing the supposed PS3 CFW has been posted in the full article, so check it out. Update 2: Rumor debunked.

Here's an update to our report on Sony's plan to conduct a massive initial public offering (IPO) earlier this month. Pricing began earlier today and true to initial predictions, the said IPO became Japan's biggest since Aozora Bank Ltd.'s 351 billion Yen offering in November 2006.

The starting offer per share was at around 415,000 Yen. However, due to low demand activity, Sony decided to lower the price to 400,000 Yen each. At the end of the day, a total number of 800,000 Sony Financial Holdings Inc. shares were sold.

All these money (US$ 2.8 billion), reports added, will be used to further fund Sony projects Bravia TV and the PlayStation consoles. Yasuda Asset Management Co. Japanese Equities Head Masaki Iso said:

The price is acceptable considering it was set when the stock market hadn't fully recovered from the sub-prime shock. Sony Financial's stock has potential to rise as the market will recover.

Sony shares gained 1.4% to 5,650 yen at the close on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Stepping back from the lighter gaming news and dressing up for the industry and investment news, we've learned that Sony Corp. has pulled off more than it had initially expected for the first quarter of this fiscal year even while its game division still struggles to remove itself from the financial red.

 

And today, reports coming in from the executive division itself have claimed Sony was able to remain green for Q1 2007 because of strong digital camera sales and what seems to be a favorable Yen rate. Financial analysts note that the numbers "more than trebles" for the company, but don't look too kindly to Sony's "strategic pricing" and the losses it incurs.

"This deterioration was primarily due to the loss arising from the strategic pricing of PS3 at points lower than its production cost, although operating income from software increased due to further hardware penetration in the market," said Sony.

The move by Sony to cut the price of its 60 GB PlayStation 3 SKU to US$ 499 was well received by consumers all around, but it slowly derailed from the concept of "price cut" when Sony revealed the maneuver as a temporary low pricing while Sony empties its 60 GB inventory to make way for the new 80 GB SKUs - still offered at the same US$ 599.

Read more at the Full Article after the jump.

This is definitely in-depth and useful for newbies to Linux. On the Ubuntu Forums, Ciego has written an extensive tutorial for installing Ubuntu Linux on your PS3.

Specifically, this is an installation tutorial for putting Ubuntu (Edgy Eft 6.10) on a 60GB PS3, including a listing of everything you'll need to get up to speed and everything you could ask for about the programming you'll have to type in to get the darned thing up and running. As he mentions at the beginning of his tutorial, he's written his guide to cater to newcomers, so vets may find themselves scrolling through rehashed information.

Before anything else, he does mention some things you'll need for installation:

• USB Mouse
• USB Keyboard
• 256MB USB Thumb drive (Any storage device that the PS3 can handle will work. Adjust commands accordingly)
• The Addon CD iso
• Gentoo Live CD BETA for PPC iso
• Otheros.self

In any case, feel free to visit the read link, as well as download the Addon CD file below. Trust us, you'll definitely learn something from the tutorial, and learning is always a good thing.

Download: [Addon CD ISO]

We know the things we say and we remember them fairly well. We also know that we already said that our dear reader Nevada pointed out that there's no such thing as a Ferrox PS3 ISO loader. But its mysterious disappearance from YouTube is still a matter of curiosity to us. So the moment we found another one, we couldn't help but share it with you.

If the Ferrox videos are merely proof-of-concepts, then why do such things - and new ones if we may add - continue to surface? Is this a way of saying that, "No! We are pursuing this", or is it mere showmanship? Well, we guess we will never really find out the true score until somebody steps up, again, and say something about this whole hoopla.

Thanks Bernst for the heads up! By the way, take note that the first video, that is no longer available, was uploaded by certain Naoneo (the same as Nevada). This one here is from DeViLs360.

There is a saying: the drama stops where the buck also stops: where it counts, and where it hurts. There must be a reason why the video of the supposed PS3 ISO Loader "is no longer available", and that's because, in an important sense, there's no such thing to begin with.

Enter Nevada, QJ forum member, who is trying to clarify this entire issue over there. Long story short (long story in the forums, by the way), the videos are what we could call proof-of-concepts, a "Hello, World!" if you will, of the exploit that was found. Interpreting Nevada's post (and subsequent posts) in the forums, neither he nor those he had worked with (it's probably a team since he uses "we" at some points) intend to use the exploit to develop their own ISO loader. He even points out that Paradox is working on theirs, anyway.

It is possible that part of the confusion that arose over the exploit vids came about because the intent behind them was never clear - just a "Hello, World!" with no further development on the part of those who discovered it to flesh out into a loader. In fact, they "have informed Sony" of the flaw in question. Nevada goes further (verbatim):

infact for the sake of the argument, i'd like all of you to just assume the videos are fake if you've no intrest in them other than "omg i want to pirate games", to anyone who is actually intrested in running your own code without 'all' the hyperivsor restrictions, theres enough in the videos to give you a good start.

We're not going to go back to that debate about the economic impact of piracy, only to say that each one's intellectual property is his own business, and thus his choice as to go commercial or free/shareware, and we respect choices, so be it. The only thing that really matters now is that as of this post, there is only one ISO loader in development, Paradox's. There's a Read-Only link at the end of this article for further info on this - it leads straight to the page where Nevada makes this post - but note that the thread is locked.

And with that, the buck stops here. End of story.

Read-Only: [Forum Thread]

The word on some forums is that Hyperdrive and Paradox loader">Team Xecuter will be releasing a simple "adapter" for the PS3 that is cheap and easy to use. It is reported that the "adapter" is set to work with their still-upcoming PS3 Hyperdrive. The adapter will be ready in 3 weeks in time for Paradox Loader, which is real, and works/loads in a method that is "similar to psp"

If in case you're a bit confused, we'll run through it again for you. Remember those rumors about a PS3 ISO loader by Internet release group paradox? The one Max F. reported on last December, and the one we reported to be undergoing testing around a week ago? Well, a post by Xecuter on the Team Xecuter forums confirms that the Paradox Loader works. He says:

I am releasing a simple adapter first that is cheap and easy to use - will be ready in 3 weeks in time for Paradox Loader (which works)

The adapter Xecuter was talking about, is an early release just so that PS3 users can hook up larger drives with ease while while they wait for the PS3 Hyperdrive. Xecuter says that what we're waiting for should work well in tandem with the Loader. The Hyperdrive is set to have the following features:

• Connect any 3.5" SATA Hard Drive to the PS3
• Developing ability to connect IDE hard drive
• Supports up to 750GB (maybe more thats all we have here)
• Switch between external HYPERDRIVE and internal 2.5" HDD
• HYPERDRIVE USB2.0 Support to dump data to/from HDD

We'll update you folks about this in 3 weeks time. Or sooner if more information is made available. Stay tuned!

Just in case you'd want to check out the thread regarding this, just click on the Read link below. There's a lot to pick up from it, actually.

We already knew that the PS3 sceners were cooking something when the earlier news from one of PDX's nfos came out. Then, it said that PS3 these ISO dumps would be playable soon. How soon? Nobody knew. Well, it seems that one of the latest nfos on PDX's dump says that an ISO loader is already in the works, maybe even as far as the beta testing stage.

Now while we can't tell a lot more since we ourselves don't know much, I've received word from a friend that unlike what others say, the application might not come out at all. Strange yes, but definitely something which has happened in the past. On top of that, the exploit is most probably software based since we haven't heard of any hardware modifications. This means that the PS3 firmwares are going to be as flaky as the PSP ones, which indirectly means that Sony will have the difficult task of securing the PS3 firmware. And looking at the PSP firmware scene, we can see all too well that Sony won't be having a lot of fun.

Anyways, here are parts of the nfo which make it seem that something is cooking:

 

While we don't support piracy, the fact that there could be software exploits in the PS3 firmware makes it seem that PS3 owners could see native homebrew sooner than we think. The fact that they were able to make an ISO loader means that they have been able to compile and run applications on the Game OS.

Again, this being found on an NFO means that we can't trust it fully. Call me a cynic, but I'll believe it when I see it.

A post at PS3News.com reveals that the folks from the GODS @ Paradox have released Tiger_Woods_PGA_Tour_07_USA_PS3-PARADOX - the last remaining USA PS3 title that currently needed dumping. For those interested, the size is 6.85 GB (7,365,525,504 bytes). While we obviously can't host the file here, what we found really interesting were following details they posted in their nfo.

The NFO Files reveals that PDX haven't had the time to examine FW 1.5 yet. Their NFO Files states:

| sPECIAL nOTE: |
| |
| Stop nagging about loaders - it will come if and when its ready |
| Now sod off and let us beta test it ! |

While most are hopeful that the supposed BETA testing for the ISO loader won't take long, there is speculation that nothing will be released publicly until after the European PS3 release on March 23, 2007.

We'll keep you updated on developments regarding this as soon as more details become available. Stay tuned.