Morons Online & You - Sony PSN's Bringing it Out
I've said for years that the internet enables people who have no business making public statements (or, in some cases, even interacting with human beings - and note that I didn't say "other" human beings). With the Sony PSN fiasco, this is becoming more apparent yet again. Let's take a short look at this from a rational standpoint, shall we?
First, the PSN went down completely; Sony didn't state a reason for over a week because they didn't know exactly how much data had been stolen and how severe the damage is. Starting with this complaint (that they should have announced it sooner), isn't it better for over 77 million users to be told that some of their personal information may have been taken AFTER it's been confirmed, and not have 77 million people freaking out because they all think something MAY have been taken? Sony obviously didn't consider the risk to the users to be that serious or they would have said something sooner. Given that I've not yet seen evidence of a single legitimate complaint where this intrusion caused identity theft or fraudulent charges within the first six days, I can't find any reason to fault them for waiting until they at least had an idea of what they were up against.
Second, to help mitigate the damages, Sony is offering identity protection for its users free of charge (see blog post here ), which must be costing their corporation a bundle considering the number of people affected by this security breach, especially since every member will have to $1,000,000 indemnity.
Now, Sony is posting virtually daily updates in their blog about what is being done to restore the service. What is the general response to this by people? Complaints, whining, and threats to take their business to Microsoft's X-Box 360 sum up the answer. I've determined that these people are incapable of using their puerile brains to grasp the situation; all they care about is being able to get back online and kill things with their buddies, most of whom they've probably never met in person (and probably never will).
Sony has announced that they will not reinstate the network until they feel confident that it is secure - I fail to see how this equates to being irresponsible, making people waste their money, etc. - to the contrary, I see this as a good thing. Why should they bother bringing up the network if it could further compromise people's personally identifiable information? You can't fairly complain that your money is being stolen, since the CEO of the company even stated in a public letter to the affected users that they would be getting free services they never had or an extension of their paid services to make up for lost time (see here ).
Given everything already said here (and this information is NOT hard to find, even if you just start at "sony.com"), why the incessant griping? Do you really WANT the network to be brought online just so you can actually have a much more successful, malicious attack against you? Why complain that a rough time-frame wasn't set it stone and had to be pushed out due to unforeseen problems? Also, please don't even get me started on the grammatical correctness of the comments.
So, as of today, here is the current status of the PSN outage: there is no set date as to when the service will be online again, but Sony staff is working on it "around the clock" (and why wouldn't they? Every minute they're down, that's a minute somebody can't be purchasing something from their online store!); there have thus far been no confirmed cases of identity theft or credit card fraud in association with the stolen data; it's highly recommended that you change your password if you use the same one for your PSN account as you do for anything else; and, finally, if you can't find anything to do with yourself because your social gaming network has gone down, then I consider that to be a good thing! People have found forms of entertainment for centuries that didn't involve shooting people in online video games, and I can't imagine it would hurt someone to learn how to walk outside, read, sew, see a movie, cook something, play with a pet, or generally exist in a non-vegetative state for more than a couple of hours every week.
First, the PSN went down completely; Sony didn't state a reason for over a week because they didn't know exactly how much data had been stolen and how severe the damage is. Starting with this complaint (that they should have announced it sooner), isn't it better for over 77 million users to be told that some of their personal information may have been taken AFTER it's been confirmed, and not have 77 million people freaking out because they all think something MAY have been taken? Sony obviously didn't consider the risk to the users to be that serious or they would have said something sooner. Given that I've not yet seen evidence of a single legitimate complaint where this intrusion caused identity theft or fraudulent charges within the first six days, I can't find any reason to fault them for waiting until they at least had an idea of what they were up against.
Second, to help mitigate the damages, Sony is offering identity protection for its users free of charge (see blog post here ), which must be costing their corporation a bundle considering the number of people affected by this security breach, especially since every member will have to $1,000,000 indemnity.
Now, Sony is posting virtually daily updates in their blog about what is being done to restore the service. What is the general response to this by people? Complaints, whining, and threats to take their business to Microsoft's X-Box 360 sum up the answer. I've determined that these people are incapable of using their puerile brains to grasp the situation; all they care about is being able to get back online and kill things with their buddies, most of whom they've probably never met in person (and probably never will).
Sony has announced that they will not reinstate the network until they feel confident that it is secure - I fail to see how this equates to being irresponsible, making people waste their money, etc. - to the contrary, I see this as a good thing. Why should they bother bringing up the network if it could further compromise people's personally identifiable information? You can't fairly complain that your money is being stolen, since the CEO of the company even stated in a public letter to the affected users that they would be getting free services they never had or an extension of their paid services to make up for lost time (see here ).
Given everything already said here (and this information is NOT hard to find, even if you just start at "sony.com"), why the incessant griping? Do you really WANT the network to be brought online just so you can actually have a much more successful, malicious attack against you? Why complain that a rough time-frame wasn't set it stone and had to be pushed out due to unforeseen problems? Also, please don't even get me started on the grammatical correctness of the comments.
So, as of today, here is the current status of the PSN outage: there is no set date as to when the service will be online again, but Sony staff is working on it "around the clock" (and why wouldn't they? Every minute they're down, that's a minute somebody can't be purchasing something from their online store!); there have thus far been no confirmed cases of identity theft or credit card fraud in association with the stolen data; it's highly recommended that you change your password if you use the same one for your PSN account as you do for anything else; and, finally, if you can't find anything to do with yourself because your social gaming network has gone down, then I consider that to be a good thing! People have found forms of entertainment for centuries that didn't involve shooting people in online video games, and I can't imagine it would hurt someone to learn how to walk outside, read, sew, see a movie, cook something, play with a pet, or generally exist in a non-vegetative state for more than a couple of hours every week.