If its important as a college paper, just to a fresh install of the entire OS
I'll admit it s a cool story of how it came in useful, but not enough to warrant all the attention its getting. Did you ever use the feature once your laptop got fixed? Im assuming not
If you bought it for the otherOS feature, then you didnt need to to game online. If you didnt need it to game online, you didnt need to download the update
TBH, Sony did screw themselves because hackers were trying to use linux to hack the PS3. They were barking up the wrong tree, they might not have found the current exploit for a while if they still had other OS