A long time ago the Sony Company released a product to compete with the well known game boy game device this was the play station portable (PSP). And as soon as it came out it was known as the portable media powerhouse. The capability to play music, movies, wireless internet, photo gallery capabilities and the brand name games that already followed the playstation brand; the PSP hands down earned that name. But the games and movies also had the trademark Sony overpriced price tag attached to it. But the months that followed it's launch hackers learned how to exploit the PSP with Custom firmware which allowed the PSP to play what is known as homebrew applications. Applications such as graphing calculators alarm clocks and emulators, and the cost of the apps… was nothing that’s right after you modified it you can download applications for free on to it. But you had to hack your PSP or the applications could not be used otherwise because they do not exist outside of the hacking community. Needless to say Sony attacked back by updating their PSP and tried to make it un hackable. But these lead in to a back and forth fight with the hackers. Bring forth heros to the hackers cause a programmer by the name of Dark Alex who is known for finding weaknesses in the PSP and exploiting them. Being that there are no real rules to modifying your PSP the only drawback is that your warranty is voided after you do so. The only real problem that Sony has with the Hackers is the piracy of games that is not done by the hacker’s necessarily but by the people that use the hackers programs to be able to play pirated games and movies that Sony would sell. But the hackers also take a shot at Nintendo being that most of the available emulators are for Nintendo games. It seemed that the hackers have won the war for a long time but with the recent introduction of the PSP 3000 the hackers had their work cut out for them. The PSP 3000 was deemed un hackable for the longest time but not until January 13 2009 a group called PSPGen team found a way to hack the 3000 but the how to has not been released to this day in fear that the Sony company would find a way to stop that mod from existing. So the fight goes on between Sony and the cyber world of nick names and teams that do amazing things for nothing but notoriety to this day.
Infromation and Bacround from:
Lisa Baertlein of redorbit
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=166043&source=r_scifi_gaming
By Kenji Hall of businessweek.com
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051230_356459.htm
By Paul Rubens news.bbc
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6397797.stm#chart
DarkAlex
http://www.dark-alex.org/
PSPGen Team
http://psp.brewology.com/
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