Hi Everyone,
I am now going to add my bit along with some legalities which SONY are not following in any territory.
I am an innovator and I bought the PS3 for one reason only, to research and develop. The Cell BE chip inside of it, SONY didn't design it. For that I thank IBM, but only if I could afford one of their fabulous Blades ($50,000.00 I think). This will be my re-embursement and will not settle for less unless they want to get me the PCI board from Mentor Graphics, the other developer of the chip. The last time I checked £7,000.00.
Anyway, here we go. I bought my system in 2005 or 2006, well before the update of 3.21. In fact I have been so busy with using Linux on it developing algorithms and using the IBM SDK, I missed it. So this week my friend came round and wanted to look on the store. Low and behold version 3.41 and no mention of functions being removed from the advertised system. So already the missed updates and later ones do not state the removal of these functions either. I am now in a possition where SONY have not referenced these changes and should be in each and every released revision. The plot thikens and so does the noose surounding SONY's neck. Go on hang yourself.
OK, so I have read the law suit raised in California, interesting that some laws there have major similarities to UK law. We call it the Trades Description Act, which notes that the product being sold must be exact to its description. The law suit brings this up fabulously in many areas including the point of sale and not stating that SONY can update or do what they want. Instead this information is enclosed in the box after you have bought the product.
Regarding Terms and Conditions, UK law is to be revised where T and C should not extend past a sheet of A4 paper, bullet pointed too. So this will be good when it arrives here.
Lets move on to False Advertising, where in the US I believe it is called unfair trade. Bare with me I am not a lawyer or barrister. This is selling something under false pretense and ties in very nicely with the Trades Description Act. All round anyway, they are liars about the product that is being sold, changing it at will.
There is a whole load of legal stuff in this, but here in the UK I will be approaching the Office of Fair Trading, Consumer Rights, Department of Trade and Industry (Now Business Innovation and Skills) and the EU Directive.
EU Directive stood up to Microsoft when they only allowed knowledge surrounding Explorer and forced them to release an update to notify users of this change.
Anyway that is it so far and hope to hear from the lawyer who is taking SONY to court this September regarding this matter.
Myself, if they don't change what they have done and replace to continue my research, then I will also be looking for seven years of research and I think it is something like two years of implementation and initial testing on the platform. If I had spent more time on it then I might have finished before they destroyed valuable research in to photorealistic rendering of 3D scenes in real time. What a game environment that would have made. I hope we get to find out.
J