You Can Soon Save Your PS3 Games In Thin Air

Cloud storage means that, rather than just keeping your save game data on your PlayStation 3's hard drive, users will be given the option to upload their saves remotely to a server. The advantage of this is that not only does it save the user space on their hard drive, but since it's tied to a PlayStation Network account, it can be pulled down to different consoles whenever and wherever the user desires.

A couple updates from now Sony will announce that multiplayer-enabled gaming must rely on this cloud mechanism, which is the beginning of the end for any efforts to exploit the firmware. A couple updates after that, all games will at the very least dump a digital signature of save files to this cloud, so good luck trying to edit a save game.

This is not about right or wrong, it just bothers me that none of the news outlets reporting on this is trying to extrapolate what this kind of mechanism means beyond the obvious insurance against the console dying. You wouldn't even need the whole save file in order to perform this kind of control, all that has to happen is for the game itself to generate a signature for each save file and send it to Sony's cloud. Try to run a saved game with a signature that doesn't match (which means the saved game was not generated by a trusted app) and the game won't work online. And you would not be able to fake the signatures.

At least that's how I would do it.

Comments

On sleep deprivation and Incan Monkey Gods

From: Dilbert comic strip for 08/03/1992 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. I was trying to show this strip to a coworker who is dangerously toying with the harsh mistress that is Insomnia. What shocked me is how quickly I was able to look up the strip, which was published when he was just 11 years old, and two weeks before my just-out-of-college ass shipped out to US Army Basic Training.

The Black Hole

If this was a minigolf hole, you can't reach B from A. Ever. If this was a room lined with mirrors, and you lit a candle at point A, you can't see it from B, not even reflected. Update: I guess I didn't explain this all the way through. You can't reach B from A with just one stroke, there's no direct line between them, and there is no way to bounce the ball (assuming perfect conditions). Thanks to Ben for pointing this obvious error.

Goodbye Blackberry 8530, hello Samsung Intercept (both Virgin Mobile USA)

Got the phone switching bug again, and this time I am going to try to see if I can live with an Android phone . According to Virgin Mobile, they will be upgrading their Samsung Intercept to 2.2 froyo sometime in Spring, since I am completely new to Android I am not too worried about it yet. And no, I am not interested in a jailbreak. The dots are used for the unlock pattern, which after very little time becomes instinctive, much easier than having to remember a password. The new phone is slightly longer and narrower than my Blackberry 8530. The back cover is as flimsy. The Samsung Intercept is of course thicker since it has a slide-out keyboard. I haven't measured them, but the new keyboard feels at least twice as wide as the one in the Blackberry. The only problem is that due to the USB port being on the top of the phone, and I am a lefty, it is really damn hard for me to type if I am charging the phone. I imagine right handed people have the same ki...

The Insomniac Coder

Search This Blog