Topic: PSN = Privacy? Security? Never!

[bustin98]

It's unfortunate that all the social options in PC gaming don't share some basic universal platform for chat, notifications, and other things.

Other than Steam?

[Enner]

It's unfortunate that all the social options in PC gaming don't share some basic universal platform for chat, notifications, and other things.

Other than Steam?

Not universal. I won't be able to know if friended players on clients for Games for Windows Live, Electronic Arts Download Manager, Gamespy, or other services go online, let alone know if they are playing a game or join their game in progress. Those players will have to spend the extra effort to have Steam, add the game as a non-Steam game, and use Steam to launch the game. Social applications like Raptr aren't connected to these game services as much as it could be, and they are another thing to download and install. Ideally, all these services would be able to talk to each other so you would only need one. However, that doesn't make much business sense for the companies that own the services.

This isn't a big problem and their are workarounds. I just imagine it would be nice if PC gamers didn't have to workaround these issues and have things just work. Then again, it wouldn't be PC gaming if the user didn't have to spend some time setting everything up to work perfectly.

[BlackNMild2k1]

No system is universal, because like you said they can't all talk to each other.

And you could say the same thing about console gamers, unless you want to divide them up by what system they game on.
Console gamers are still separated by platform even if they are playing the exact same game, so it's the exact same thing. The workaround is buying a closed system with a unified online structure that can only play with other people on that same unified system.

Steam is the unified system to beat from what I hear. I hear that Xbox Live is good(never used it), best you can get on a console so far, but Steam supposedly does everything it needs to & it's free.

[Enner]

Mm, quite true.

Cross-platform play would be ideal also. It also doesn't make much business sense for the companies involved. There were some efforts at cross-platform play (Shadowrun for the 360 and PC comes to mind).

Steam is a great digital store and social network. It doesn't offer/own a online multiplayer, but that's because most PC games use dedicated or matchmaking servers provided by other parties.

Back to the topic at hand, PSN made it on the 10 o'clock news in my area again. It was an update on how after 3 weeks the network is still down.

[oohhboy]

The media sure know how to beat a dead horse into fertilizer and then spreading the love.

[Chozo Ghost]

SONY will only get this **** up and running when they can immediately start making money off of it. They're not going to turn any of the free aspects back on until the money starts coming back in. Make the switch to Xbox Live. Longest it's ever been down is what, a couple of hours?

I understand what you're saying, but if you think about it even the simple free things like chat and trophies would be beneficial to Sony in the long run if they could get those up and running immediately. They don't make money off these things, but if these things can keep customers satisfied and better able to tolerate the rest of the service being down then it would be in Sony's best interest to bring them back ASAP.

There's no denying that customers jumping ship and going over to the 360 (and the Wii to a much lesser extent) is going to be a major problem, and is in fact already a major problem. I don't have any figures of how many people are actually leaving the PS3 because of this, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence this is going on if you read the comments people are posting in blogs and forums it is happening...

So yeah, bringing up the little things that don't actually make money for Sony would be a positive move and would be a better thing in the long run than just keeping everything offline and waiting until everything is ready. It would be tangible proof that progress has and is being made toward restoring everything.

[BranDonk Kong]

Finally there's a website dedicated to keeping us informed as to when PSN will be back up and running...
Is the PlayStation Network back up?
Just hit refresh every second or so.

[Morari]

Sony announces new console as current fix!

[Ceric]

Sony announces new console as current fix!

I can't find the onion video you linking to.

[Morari]

Sony announces new console as current fix!

I can't find the onion video you linking to.

Fixed. Make sure the forum isn't censoring the word "****" in the URL for you.

[BlackNMild2k1]

It was working fine for me before Ceric posted, there was nothing to fix.

Ceric, turn off your swear filter.

[Chozo Ghost]

Finally there's a website dedicated to keeping us informed as to when PSN will be back up and running...
Is the PlayStation Network back up?
Just hit refresh every second or so.

That's funny. But will that actually change to "YES" when PSN is up for real?

Speaking of funny, someone sent me this video of Hitler's reaction to all this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FKkWo8KrKc

[Morari]

Hitler overreacts to everything.

On that note, I'd suggest everyone actually watch go "The Downfall" (Der Untergang). It's a great film. It's too bad those memes haven't brought more useful attention to it.

[Shaymin]

I've been using ispsnstilldown.com as a similar site for the last few days weeks.

[broodwars]

Reports are starting to leak out from various anonymous sources allegedly working for 3rd party developers that the PSN has now been restored for developer use.  It's reportedly a bit shaky and not all the functions are back yet, but they are now able to test online play.  That's something, anyway.  Hopefully, this will mean the consumer version will return soon.

[BranDonk Kong]

Reports also show things that SONY will be adding, such as security measures that should have been in place 8 years ago or so, also, someone will be hired to look over the network. Nice start, SONY, welcome to the internet.

[Chozo Ghost]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110513/bs_nm/us_sony

BOSTON (Reuters) – Sony Corp's computer networks remain vulnerable to attack three weeks after the company learned that it had been victim of one of the biggest data breaches in history, according to an Internet security expert.  The expert found a handful of security flaws in Sony's networks while remotely studying its systems via the Internet to see how difficult it would be to penetrate the electronics giant's systems in the wake of the attacks.
 Security researcher John Bumgarner discovered a potential bonanza for hackers by using little more than a web browser, Google's search engine and a basic understanding of Internet security systems.

Uh oh!

Wouldn't it be something if a few days or weeks after PSN comes back online hackers hit it again and the same thing happens all over again?

[broodwars]

Wouldn't it be something if a few days or weeks after PSN comes back online hackers hit it again and the same thing happens all over again?

I'm sure these hackers are big enough douches to try it again at least once the network...finally...goes back up, so I plan on being cautious for those first few Store weeks and relying on pre-paid cards or something until it looks like we're as much in the clear as is possible in this day and age.  If Sony were to suffer another attack and massive information leak on PSN, though, it would probably destroy the Playstation brand permanently and possibly eventually shut down Sony's gaming division altogether.  I think they can weather this nonsense once and eventually recover, but not twice after the network's been down this long.

[broodwars]

GameTrailers has posted an interesting new 20-minute episode of Pac-Attack with Michael Pacter exclusively covering the PSN outage.  It's interesting seeing a financial analyst's take on the whole thing, though he makes some factual errors here and there (for instance, Sony informed us of the information leak a week after the network went down, not two weeks).  He also seems to have filmed this video on the assumption that the PSN would be back up by now, which we know it is not.

In summary, he doesn't think that the network's security was likely much less substantial than is likely on the internet; he doesn't think that the hackers broke into the PSN to steal information and credit cards (on the basis of "if you're going to do that, why hack the PSN and not somewhere where there's actual money to be had"); he doesn't think that this will really affect us financially due to U.S. credit card laws; and he doesn't think that this will cost Sony as much in immediate monetary damage as many seem to think.  He does agree that Sony has an uphill climb to restore consumer confidence, though.

[Chozo Ghost]

To date there have been no confirmed reports of credit card fraud resulting from the PSN hack. That's not to say CC info wasn't accessed or even stolen, but its possible that the hacking had nothing whatsoever to do with the hackers wanting to commit CC fraud. I still believe what I've believed all along: that this was done in retaliation over the Other OS/Geo Hot situation. Until there is some confirmed reports of CC fraud resulting from this there's no reason to believe otherwise. As of now there's still no proof of that.

That said, since whoever did this wasn't after money and since this seems to be because of a vendetta against Sony it is likely that more attacks will follow. When thieves break into your home and rob you blind they're done with you. They took what you have and they aren't going to bother you again... but if someone has a personal hatred towards you they aren't going to just leave you alone. They don't break into your house for their own personal gain; they do it to smash everything you own just to cause grief to you.

I'm sure whoever did it is feeling proud of the harm they've caused, and its likely that they will want to do even more harm to Sony. Sony is a business that only thinks in terms of profit, so it may be very difficult for them to understand that people have emotions and not everything they do is motivated by greed.

[broodwars]

Sony is a business that only thinks in terms of profit, so it may be very difficult for them to understand that people have emotions and not everything they do is motivated by greed.

*sigh*

Not to get too off-course here, but statements like this really make me cringe.  Sony is a business.  Their one and only job (and it is one that is monitored quite closely by the shareholders they are beholden to) is to make money, to profit in any way possible.  If you don't like it, you don't buy their products.  If enough people don't buy their products, the company changes their business model or goes under.  And you know what?  There's nothing wrong with that.  That's how it should be in a capitalistic society, with minimal intervention by the local government to ensure they follow basic laws set by the people.  "Greed", the desire to want more than you have and the dedication to realize your desires is one of the primary forces that ensures that our civilization continues to evolve and change.  It is neither innately bad nor good.

[Mop it up]

"Greed", the desire to want more than you have and the dedication to realize your desires is one of the primary forces that ensures that our civilization continues to evolve and change.

Maybe so, but I think philanthropy is a better motivator to evolve civilization. It's just a shame that seems to be a rarity in people.

[Stogi]

If we're talking about business, money is the greatest motivator. If we're talking about civilization as a whole, the need to be better than our previous generation is our greatest motivator.

[Chozo Ghost]

I support capitalism and I don't think profit is an evil thing. All I'm saying is that Sony is a business and that's all their thinking is limited to. They don't understand the motives of the hackers, just like how they didn't understand Geo Hot or his motives. Geo Hot and the hackers were not thinking in terms of profit. They're like two alien cultures to one another. Did you ever see that episode of Star Trek TNG when they meet those aliens that talk only in metaphors? Even though the universal translator put what they were saying into plain English the two sides still couldn't understand one another. The brain processes are very different.

Since Sony thinks purely in terms of profit they are viewing this whole situation through a distorted lens. They assume CC info was the target, because that would be profitable to the hackers. They don't understand the concept of vendetta. They don't understand it because it has nothing to do with profit. Sony is made up of individual humans, but the entity as a whole does not think like a human being. That's all I'm trying to say... I'm not ranting against capitalism or saying profit is bad. I'm just saying that Sony is narrowminded and they should have seen that they were pissing people off. Its not like the attacks came out of nowhere and without warning. Anonymous warned they were going to do soemthing. Sony views other companies as the real threats, just like how the dinosaurs were more concerned about other dinosaurs and they didn't think much about those tiny mammals scurrying around beneath their feet. The threat posed by hackers wasn't on their radar at all. They forced Geo Hot to settle and they thought was the end of the story, but apparently it wasn't.

ETA: I just though of a better analogy. Sony was like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings. Sauron believed that the power of the ring would tempt anyone and so the thought that someone would destroy the ring never occurred to him until it was too late.

But no, I don't consider profit a bad thing. Sony making profit wasn't what pissed people off. It was how they went about making their profit that pissed people off. Ripping people off, removing features, installing rootkits, etc. That sort of thing. They weren't respecting the rights of consumers. Sony has a right to make a profit, but like someone once said (I think it was Ben Franklin) "your rights end where my rights begin".

[broodwars]

Did you ever see that episode of Star Trek TNG when they meet those aliens that talk only in metaphors? Even though the universal translator put what they were saying into plain English the two sides still couldn't understand one another.

Darkmok and Jilade.  When the Walls Fell.

Yeah, "Darmok" was a great episode.  Not as great as "The Best of Both Worlds", "Tapestry", "The Inner Light", or "All Good Things..." but it's up there.