On the PSN Relaunch Announcement

[bassdrum]

I saw this on your Blog-thingie

Honestly, it rather reminded me of this:

Actually, I kind of see that as almost the opposite. For a while there, BP was taking every opportunity it could to show you how good a job it was doing cleaning up the spill (hell, watch the video that you posted--he brags about how this is the biggest cleanup ever). Sony owned up to the mess, accepted responsibility, and asked for our trust and patience. BP, conversely, said that they're doing an awesome job and that we should be proud of them for saving the day. Whereas Sony used the announcement as a true apology, BP used it to advertise. Maybe you didn't see it that way, but their entire campaign really bothered me (it's kind of like they were expecting a reward for trying to clean up their own mess--which they didn't even do a very good job of).

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

This thread is painful to read.

OT: I agree, this was about as good as they could get in terms of an apology.

 

[Delusibeta]

This thread is painful to read.

Yeah, the fanboys and anti-fanboys are really out in force here.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

This thread is painful to read.

Yeah, the fanboys and anti-fanboys are really out in force here.

That and the <300 posters with their awful grammar and assumptions.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I personally find the apology acceptable and indeed even admirable. Not only do they admit they had a hand in the problem (an admission that will almost certainly cost hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars) but they don't try and use the fact that they, for a brief moment had my undivided attention to sell me some product or another. I honestly don't know what people actually expect Sony to do in this case above and beyond what they have already done short of time traveling and preventing the problem in the first place. To all those who remain unsatisfied, what could Sony realistically and reasonably do as a gesture of apology that would satisfy you?

 

[unwesen]

One group of people had (or might have) the password for everyone else.

This. This should never have happened. It's a n00b mistake to store plaintext passwords; any half-witted security engineer will tell you not to do it. That Sony has someone done it is unforgivable, in terms of trusting their security solutions.

It wasn't in plaintext/cleartext, though, they've clarified on that [http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/05/02/playstation-network-security-update/].

Alright, I hadn't seen that! That's good news, I think. So far I'd only seen that passwords were stolen, which suggests plaintext, otherwise there's nothing to steal... unless they hashed them without a salt. Unfortunately, they didn't clarify that in the article

 

[AzraelSteel]

I'm glad to hear a report/article that I can actually get behind. I don't use my PSN much at all, but reading the reports of what happened and how Sony was responding, I kept thinking, "From their standpoint, could I do much better at this point?" I don't know anything aside from what has come out from Sony and other sources, but it seems to me they are MUCH better than most other companies when it came to owning up to what happened and telling their customers what was going on.

I was reminded of Wizards of the Coast, who essentially stopped supporting a premium service for around 3 months before telling anyone why they were doing it. Sony is showing the appropriate amount of contriteness for me, though apparently there are some who will never be satisfied no matter what Sony says.

 

[Sovereignty]

-Snip-

Thank you. Mainly your last part is something I'm glad others have taken note of.

No one seems to realize that this "breach" has seriously put people who used a universal password for their online accounts at serious risk.

 

[Nexus4]

What if the one company they hired missed something during their investigation and ended up leaving another problem to exploit? If you have three teams combing through your network, you have three sets of eyes scanning the same area that would pick up on different problems. It is not a pointless waste of money, it is called being thorough in your investigation. Have you never looked at say, an essay or assignment and noticed something in it someone else missed, like a typo or just any sort of error that is detrimental to the work as a whole? Same sort of concept, different people find different problems, just as how these three firms are going to find different problems in different areas. It is just naive to think that one group's investigation is going to find everything.

 

[Flame Rider]

I don't know about any of the rest of you, but I'm patient about the whole thing, they do their work, I have no business in nitpicking it.
Judging by the fact that absolutely everyone else is angry about it, should I be?

 

[Brian Hendershot]

My god. People just love to hate. As an affected PS3 owner, I thought the apology and and rewards (Well that's debatable, but that's just luck of the draw I suppose) were pretty good. Considering nothing of this scale has happened before (to my knowledge), Sony responded the best they could.

My favorite part about this thread is how people are trying to call Shamus out. Yeah...real classy. Attack his opinion and insult his journalist integrity. That's gonna work out real well.

 

[The.Bard]

This is probably the first real positive reaction I've seen to the return of PSN. So far all I've heard is entitled brats moaning about how 2 weeks without PSN has ruined their lives and how the welcome back bonus doesn't even come anywhere near healing the gaping mental scars of this whole fiasco (which they will probably forget about in a few months). Good to see someone is actually being mature about it.

Ignoring the whiny brats for a second, a lot of people have legitimate complaints about this whole fiasco. For starters, it wasn't down for two weeks. Try tripling that number. When all's said and done it'll have been out for ~40 days. That's huuuuuge. Enough to even make ME, a mega PS3 hater, feel sorry for them.

You have companies who only work on PSN who have been making zilch, and then you have legitimate adults with credit card info, email addresses, etc. stolen. This is well beyond children complaining about not being able to game.

The funny thing about scandals and catastrophes, be they real world or online, is that they generate a lot of negative press. There's a reason Microsoft wasn't getting lots of hugs and high-fives when the RRoD came a calling.

Do you really expect a lot of people to go around with warm and fuzzy feelings when talking about this? "Hey, wow! I'm so excited that I get to order a new credit card because my old one's been compromised! Yippee!"

My only problem with crediting Sony with anything at this point is that it's VERY easy to do the right thing when you don't have a CHOICE. They're on the hook; they're going to say WHATEVER YOU WANT TO HEAR. There are so many entities, corporations, governments, lawyers, etc, breathing down their necks right now, the decision on how to handle this is almost being taken away from them.

Call me if they show this lovely sense of humanity when the chips are in their favor and they have the wiggle room to decide how to handle things. THEN I will give them some credit.

 

[The.Bard]

My favorite part about this thread is how people are trying to call Shamus out. Yeah...real classy. Attack his opinion and insult his journalist integrity. That's gonna work out real well.

I'm networking-illiterate, so I can't speak to the information Shamus mentions in this particular article, but more than just occasionally he's shown a propensity of not ensuring his data/quotes are 100% accurate. Should we just nod and accept what he says instead of correcting him?

 

[hellsop]

No, they have not fixed the problem. It all about their lack of network security and it is still horrid. It should have never been that bad to begin with, and now they are a big target.

Unless you've got a whole lot of details to share with us about how exactly the PSN network has been changed and not changed, I'm going to have to consider the "it is still horrid" assertion to be in the "bullshit walks" category.

 

[Brian Hendershot]

My favorite part about this thread is how people are trying to call Shamus out. Yeah...real classy. Attack his opinion and insult his journalist integrity. That's gonna work out real well.

I'm networking-illiterate, so I can't speak to the information Shamus mentions in this particular article, but more than just occasionally he's shown a propensity of not ensuring his data/quotes are 100% accurate. Should we just nod and accept what he says instead of correcting him?

Are you kidding? [sarcasm]. Let's just throw our opinions around like they are facts. And pull facts out of our ass and pretend like they are divine word. Because you see my friend, the first rule of the the internet club is that everyone is wrong. Even God.

EDIT: I love how people are super hung up over the fact that SONY hired more then one company to check out the security breach. If 77 million people's information has been stolen, I would hire every damn company in the world, just to make sure nothing get's missed.

 

[powell86]

You know, I've seen many companies screwed up big time. But in my statistically biased observations, I seem to have the impression that Japanese corporations tend to do a better job admitting their mistakes compared to other nations.

Don't know what you guys think abt it. But personally i think Toyota did a good job with their recall crisis, the Jap nuclear crisis was also handled rather nicely with their apologies.

Fact is we all screw up, it's not like the Japs screw up more often, but I do appreciate their sincerity over other companies like BP. Seriously I really wanted to punch the narrator of their apology video. It came off as super arrogant.

 

[powell86]

EDIT: I love how people are super hung up over the fact that SONY hired more then one company to check out the security breach. If 77 million people's information has been stolen, I would hire every damn company in the world, just to make sure nothing get's missed.

Haha, yeah totally agree wtih you, but so far I've only seen 1 "hubris" fool complaining abt hiring 3 companies as an arrogant action. He got totally taken apart by the rest of the forumers lol...

 

[Brian Hendershot]

EDIT: I love how people are super hung up over the fact that SONY hired more then one company to check out the security breach. If 77 million people's information has been stolen, I would hire every damn company in the world, just to make sure nothing get's missed.

Haha, yeah totally agree wtih you, but so far I've only seen 1 "hubris" fool complaining abt hiring 3 companies as an arrogant action. He got totally taken apart by the rest of the forumers lol...

Lol I just skimmed over everything I must admit. I just figured it was a bunch of people getting mad, instead of one guy repeating himself or getting quoted a lot.

I kinda stopped caring about the PS3 thing. I only read this article because, well, its Shamus Young.

 

[BrotherRool]

I have and still take the view that no-one really knows anything about what went on, positive or negative, Sony or not Sony.

I mean Sony and national security organisations have been on the HUNT and turned up not a whole lot and are pleading for leads and information after a detailed month+analysis on the problem with highly trained professional experts.

And what we've seen in this thread, is the wikipedia problem, of how rumours and blogs get sourced by rumours and blogs which are then posted as fact and people look at this, fit it into their world view and then unavoidably end up posting their rumour-substantiated subjective opinion as fact.

I mean I've ended up doing it in this post and it's not like I meant to.

On the internet anyone can pretend they're a Sony insider and every time a rumour is posted, no matter how much it's debunked, it increases the information because the very fact that it's posted as news makes it seem important in our minds (the Fox News strategy, if you report every wild accusation that Obama is a foreign spy, no matter if you say at the end "this is a rumour that hasn't been substantiated yet" you end up with 61% of your viewership doubting their evidence of Secret Service vetting and multiple birth certificates)

So yeah, nice post by Shamus but this thread (and this post) fails life

 

[The.Bard]

Are you kidding? [sarcasm]. Let's just throw our opinions around like they are facts. And pull facts out of our ass and pretend like they are divine word. Because you see my friend, the first rule of the the internet club is that everyone is wrong. Even God.

Precisely right. Which is why, when someone like Shamus makes a mistake, it's important to correct him, whether it's so he can update the article with the correct info (which I've seen him do), or to let others know that what he has may not be 100%. I think it's the strength of conviction he puts into his articles that makes people want to call him out when he's wrong. But I'm just guessing.

Any rate, my point is just because we can't achieve perfection doesn't mean we should shrug our shoulders when something is wrong. Especially now that everyone and their mother has a voice out here. Bad info spreads fast.

EDIT: I love how people are super hung up over the fact that SONY hired more then one company to check out the security breach. If 77 million people's information has been stolen, I would hire every damn company in the world, just to make sure nothing get's missed.

Are they? Other than the shock of how long this thing has been going on (I don't own a PS3, so my concern is more like the dude slowing down for the car wreck) I'm way out of the loop on the pulse of this PS3 ordeal. I'd agree with you, though. If I was working for Sony's security branch I'd probably be hiring every security expert available to help clean up the mess.