@Red Runner

Finally a non emotionally filled comment. I will answer you.
Your own experience with those you call 'hackers' is clouding your judgment. You need to understand that the term 'hacker' is not always used correctly. Those who will 'hack' your PC or scam you or something are usually "script kiddies" or just "thieves/scum using technology to their advantage".

The term "a hack" is to technology what "a kludge" is to hardware. You use Windows I suppose? Or Mac? Or Linux? Doesn't matter what you use,  the operating system you use was developed by software programmers, and probably 90% of what they did was to "hack something" in it to make it work. When you hit a problem, and find a workaround, it's called "hacking it", it is a widely used term by developers and has *absolutely nothing* to do with illegally accessing your computer or your credit card or whatever.

Now that this semantic issue is out of the way, I'll say that, while you think hackers do things because they're dicks or for evil purposes, I'd tell you that real hackers are doing everything they do because it's their passion. I started programming when I was 5 years old, and I've spent most of my life's free time and week-ends just developing and hacking things (hacking here in the sense of fixing a bug in my software, helping others get what they want from their computer, etc..). I've been the project leader and developer of the aMSN project (see http://amsn-project.net) for the past 10 years, and we've been providing the Linux users with the ability to talk to their friends on MSN, something that Microsoft didn't care to do. The same thing with Mac users who had a neutered version, a lot of people used aMSN instead of the official client even on Windows because we listened to the users and gave them what they wanted.. you could come to our forums and say "can you do this incredibly-specific-thing-that-noone-else-would-want" and sometimes, you could get an answer in less than 15 minutes, and sometimes I even sent special versions to specific users to add a unique feature they wanted that I didn't want in the official version. Oh, and I would often use the term "ok, I hacked it for you real quick, try it".

My main and probably only reason for working on the PS3 was the curiosity, the challenge, the fun, and most importantly the knowledge I would gain from this experience. The satisfaction of achieving something you've spent hours debugging is incredible, and the knowledge you gain from it has no price. That was my whole motivation, it wasn't about greedy or malicious reasons as you seem to think.

I buy all my games, I've had my PS3 jailbroken since September and I haven't pirated a single game. I have bought in the last 2 years (since I bought the PS3) over 150 games (about 70 bluray games, 51 PSN games, 11 PS1 games, and about 20 minis). I'm not doing this for piracy, actually, once I finished making it work, I've never booted my PS3 in jailbroken mode, not even once.

Now about the legality of this, you seem so pissed that Sony will suffer from it. I've explained a bit my views in a recent interview here : http://bit.ly/hRlqOQ and you should read what the smart Independent game developers at Wolfire have to say about piracy http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

To me, the PS3 is nothing more than a computer, and that's what it is, and I cannot understand why it is even legal for Sony to put DRM on it! Imagine you buy a computer, a new laptop, it comes installed with Windows, and the manufacturer (Dell, HP, whatever) added something specifically to prevent you from installing Linux on it.. but not only that, but when you boot Windows, you have this Dell/HP menu that lets you open specific applications, you want to connect on MSN, no you can't, your friend sends you a link to a program, nope you can't install it, you want firefox, nope, you have to use their own browser. Imagine your windows machine without the ability to install the programs you want. That's what the PS3 is, it's a computer with a custom operating system that locks you down, it's basically a DRM machine, and like I said, I don't understand why that is even legal!

You're so pissed at me for giving you the ability to install the applications that you want (If you choose to), but why aren't you pissed at Microsoft for allowing you to install the software you want on your PC? I am giving you freedom, I'm not taking anything away from you. Why aren't you pissed at Sony for taking away that freedom from you ?

About the "PSN hacking", don't  understand this wrong, noone is ever going to "hack" the PSN servers, like I said many times, the PS3 is mine, I bought it, I own it, I do what I want with it, but the PSN is not mine, it's a service owned by Sony, so noone has no business at all playing with it. There were solutions for jailbroken people to connect to PSN, but none us "hackers" made that information public (even those who seek fame) because noone other than Sony owns PSN. They set the rules, they don't want us there, so we should respect that.

The only thing that I suggested was to actually create *another* store for those who wish to connect to it to let them install homebrew applications (not official games, those are copyrighted and it's not legal to distribute them, even free demos). It's just like Cydia on the iPhone for example. I've never seen someone 'disgusted' towards Cydia.. are you ?

I hope this clears out your misunderstandings, sorry for the long post, but considering you seemed pretty misinformed, I thought I'd try to explain everything the best I could.

KaKaRoTo