Hey so here's the deal, I've been following since last night a potentially serious problem for ps3 owners. As of 12am GMT roughly 20 million ps3's essentially crapped out.
Apparently the going theory is the OS clock within the system is telling the machine that it is Febuary 29th 2010.
Theres a couple of potential solutions at the moment.
Basically IF this is a software issue it can be fixed with a firmware patch (when that would get released would be anyone's guess).
The do nothing approach (waiting until the os clock simply ticks past invalid 29th and onto march 1st although a day behind would hopefully allow these machine to resume functionality albeit a day behind.
and lastly the omega approach a potential recall because these machines are suffering from a epic harware problem (some have speculated this is a very real possibility.)
As to why i'm posting this on e-brandon, simply put this is effecting all machines from the pre-slim era. I figure yesterday was Sunday and this didn't become a problem until after 6 last night. Kids coming home from school today though could potentially do some harm to their ps3's. Again this isn't just an isolated incident to ps3s connected online, apparently it's also effecting offline machines as well.
It has been advised that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/03/latest-info-on-playstation-network-status/