Slashdot Mirror
Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models
JohnWilliams writes "The Sony PlayStation Network appears to be inaccessible to older ('phat') PS3 units. Players cannot play games that require a connection, even in single-player, offline mode, e.g. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also, the system date resets to January 1, 2000. Sony is 'looking into it.' Speculation abounds that it is a bug related to 2010 being incorrectly flagged as a leap year. The newer PS3 Slim models seem to be working properly."
On my UK PS3, the date was reset to 31/12/1999 (a value you cannot input yourself manually) and then rolled over into 2000 some hours (5?) later.
None of my downloaded PS1 games will start - just gives an "invalid copyright protection" error message.
With the exception of Wipeout HD, none of my downloaded PS3 games will start.
None of my Blu-ray game disks will start.
My PlayTV device is not performing scheduled recordings
VidZone cannot be used, since it requires signing into PSN network to determine what region you're from
Oh, man, the party is at Balmer's house tonight.
It's a bug. And it's not because of any kind of DRM system with the bluray games. It's because of the trophy system:
It's the same story for other games that feature dynamic trophy support.
Okay, 2010 was flagged as a leap year (which seems odd - I'd have thought you'd just want to check if the year is a multiple of 4, and you're good until 2100). Why didn't it just report to day as the 29th February?
And why doesn't the workaround of setting the date to 1st Jan 2010 or 1st March 2010 work? What is causing the date to reset? surely this is just a number read from a real time clock.
It's because of the trophy system:
rubbish. older downloaded PS1 games won't start either. they give a "invalid copyright protection" error message
well sony just blew there 3 nines rating. :(
Yeah, that's why I said with the bluray games. Downloaded games obviously use a little bit different system.
I hope Sony gets sued to absolute oblivion over this. Not being able to play games you have paid for is abso-fucking-lutely un-acceptable for any reason other than your console being physically broken.
Jesus fuck. Suing over temporarily not being able to play a game? The "sue everybody" mentality really has gotten ridiculous.
All these goddamn DRM schemes that backfire and companies never learn.. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my DRM-free games and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!!!
What does it have to do with DRM? Calendar bugs have been a very common part of the computing landscape for many years.
... and then they built the supercollider.
More likely, people will simply say "uhuh, it is broken, lets get new one", will go out and buy new one. This bug could end up being quite profitable: people will either come to service center and get software update (or just do get it done by friend) or they will buy new hardware.
Which is same reason why DRM scheme issues are never issue for average consumer because it either works just fine or end up not being big enough deal. It is customers who never learn.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
I hope Sony gets sued to absolute oblivion over this.
Jesus fuck. Suing over temporarily not being able to play a game? The "sue everybody" mentality really has gotten ridiculous.
Thats why I dont want to live in the US. Instead of solving problems like civilized people everyone sues right and left and demands millions in damages if you even looked angrily at someone. I demand, I want, me me me money money money for me.
Sorry, but what do "computer landscapes" have anything to do with being unable to play my games due to a calendar screw up?
I've been playing video games since Commander Keen was being sold as shareware on a 3.5 floppy at your local VHS rental store, and I have *never* had a single problem with my computer or video games because of a "leap year".
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM, there is no - and neither should there be, any reason why a game should be dependent on any date.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I found the ps3 drm quite unintrusive. I just pop in a disc and it works. It doesn't even ask for a serial number. What's your problem?
"modded PS3s"?
Uhm... There are no modded PS3s at this time.
When I said the Millennium Bug would strike again, you all thought I was crazy! Who's laughing now?
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
So you're saying it's ok for me to be locked out of my games because Sony's servers don't feel like giving out achievements at this time.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
While people are far too quick to yell "sue" needlessly, it is a legitimate complaint that otherwise offline, single-player games should be unusable due to this glitch. Whatever happened to gracefully handling failure? A network connection has no business being a requirement (to the point of failing to play without it) for a single player game.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
But this case has nothing to do with DRM. All those games work just fine even if you don't have an Internet connection.
Dude, did you even read the article? SOME GAMES CANNOT PLAY OFFLINE. Lookup what offline means, its opposite of ONLINE.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Potentially could suppliers be forced into higher standards by the fear of consumer litigation?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If this a hardware/firmware issue, then I hope to god for Sony's sake that there's a quick and easy fix that users can apply at home. The problem is that even if they offer everybody a free trade-in to a PS3 slim (which would be cripplingly expensive), then a lot of users, self included, won't accept this. Trading from an original 60 gig PS3 to a PS3 slim is not an upgrade. It's a downgrade.
Why? Because the original first-gen PS3s had full PS2 back-compatibility, while the more recent versions don't. People like me, who got rid of their PS2 when they picked up a PS3, are not going to be happy in the slightest if it turns out we need to start hitting Ebay for PS2s.
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM,
Well, if that's the only reason you can think of, you're not thinking very hard, are you?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sometimes bugs happen.
And sometimes they lead to lawsuits.
A network connection has no business being a requirement (to the point of failing to play without it) for a single player game.
But that's not the problem. On my PS3, an internet connection is available - I can browse the web just fine, but I can't log in to the Playstation Network.
Also, a network connection is not normally required for these games. The problem appears to have something to do with trophies - games that would normally work offline just fine, give an error if you have previously been connected to the network. It now tries to "sync trophies" and fails. If you had been playing purely offlinem I don't think this big would affect you.
... and then they built the supercollider.
We are talking about electronics and software here, It all has bugs and potential failures, you don't sue when your fridge breaks down, you don't sue when your TV shorts, you either return it under warranty or if out of warranty you buy a new one or get it repaired. I hate sony with a passion, but for christs sake it's a mass produced piece of electronics, it is gonna have bugs. People are just lucky they will probably get this fixed for free, now if sony refuses to fix it THEN we can talk about suing.
I just hooked my PS3 up after disconnecting it for a couple of weeks, and noticed the date was off and I couldn't connect to the PSN. Oh well, might as well read Slashdot! And I find this. Someone call James Randi, I think we found a psychic!
My PS3 slim wouldn't stay logged in on PSN yesterday evening, didn't have any issues earlier that day. Not sure what the error code was, and I haven't tried it today (because I'm obviously at work).
Also interesting to see that also games on the PS3 have shitty DRM that requires online activation/presence. Are they really trying to kill gaming on all platforms?
What does it have to do with DRM?
The DRM for games purchased on PlayStation Network seems to require that it be able to phone home and validate everything before it lets you play the game. This is impacting all of the games I've tested so far which were purchased from the PlayStation Network. Many of them just fail with an inscrutable error message ("Error HEXADECIMALSOUP") and refuse to start up. Others give you "demo version" mode and behave like you need to purchase the full product still.
Calendar bugs are one thing, but DRM which fails and locks you out of a bunch of stuff you paid for in the presence of such a bug is another thing entirely. If Sony gives me a nice discount voucher or PSN credit by way of apology for this inconvenience, I'll be less peeved, but I get the feeling that Sony (and their ilk) consider their self-rights-protection technology to be so damned important that no amount of inconvenience on the part of their paying customers is too much to ask. They'd be more concerned if a calendar bug allowed you to bypass all that license-key crap.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
And sometimes they shouldn't.
This was an accident that is ultimately harmless, particularly in the long term, and will more than likely be resolved within a day or so.
A lawsuit is ridiculous at this point. Maybe if they let it go on for weeks, or if it actually destroys their peripherals.
I understand your explanation of the bug, I'm just arguing that a game shouldn't be crippled by a simple bug that should be trivial to game avaialability offline. I'm just saying a game shouldn't be crippled by the system date. And the only reason I can think of why someone would want the date sync'd or the game made non-working due to changed system date was because of some form of DRM.
Maybe I'm wrong but this is the only reason I can think of. I just can't find it easy to accept their explanation for this, that's all.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Fair is Fair.
If game producers can sue users when they play games they don't own, then user can sue game producers when they cant play games they do own.
If they want to sell software as a service and use trophies to boost first sale value, it better freaking work whenever people want to use it.
I think it's completely fair. If game producers can sue users when they play games they don't own, then user can sue game producers when they cant play games they do own.
I view this a bit differently. If the drive-door fell off or the gears on the tray broke I would't suggest suing.
However, if your fridge doors locked and prevented you from using it each time you set the date wrong on the fridge, yes I would suggest suing.
I am not mad at the PS3 breaking, I am mad at the fact that rather trivial issues prevent people from playing fully functioning games on a fully functioning console system.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
And sometimes they shouldn't.
Of course. When you can't win, you shouldn't sue. Otherwise, why wouldn't you? Sony sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to sue someone if they thought they would win.
Instead of solving problems like civilized people everyone sues right and left
How do two parties in disagreement over financial liability solve things in your country?
Do not worry, if someone does sue, Sony will come to the UK and put a super injunction in place so nobody will hear about it.
It does affect consoles that have never had a network connection and never will.
It was refusing to install the Star Ocean Trophy set. I could get it to start Bayonetta, but when it attempted to load the first cutscene it just hung forever. Tried doing a number of things, nothing worked... And it wouldn't let me back up my data as the largest thumbdrive I own is 8gb and after removing ALL game data, installed demos and everything else I could strip, it claimed it still needed another 750mb of space (original claim was over 17gb). And of course it refuses to recognize either of my external USB HDDs as a target for backing up or reading data from...
So I started thinking "HD Failing" (it is an original PS3 after all). Figured I'd have it format the drive then reinstall and repatch my games. Nearly a 5 hour time estimate. Take a nap, wake up, see this.... "oh god damnit."
If game producers can sue users when they play games they don't own, then user can sue game producers when they cant play games they do own.
That's fucking retarded. The two have nothing to do with one another. Copyright infringement is prohibited by law. Computers/consoles/software are not guaranteed by law to work all the time.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Article? What article? All I see is some blog post where some guy rambles on about how his console is broken, and a forum thread where a bunch of people whine about their consoles not working. The closest to actual information we get is a Twitter post from Sony, who indicate they're researching the supposed issues.
But what we don't have is an article with researched facts. Hell, Sony hasn't even been given a chance to respond to the allegations yet! All we've got here are a bunch of random anecdotes from untrustworthy sources.
The DRM for games purchased on PlayStation Network seems to require that it be able to phone home and validate everything before it lets you play the game.
But that doesn't seem to be the case. I've played downloaded PSN games plenty of times without having any internet connection. This glitch seems like an entirely different beast.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It is not a bug, it is the Sony timer.
No, the reason you shouldn't sue is that suing someone because they pissed you off makes you an asshat.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Two words: Cage Match
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Give the guy a break, he could just be stupid.
Or he could be following the longstanding tradition of not knowing what the hell you're talking about when bitching on the Internet.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
"Jesus fuck. Suing over temporarily not being able to play a game?"
It's more than that - I can't use my Netflix disc - there is NOTHING to do with trophies on that. Every single game I have has some sort of trophy involved, so I'm essentially stuck with $2,000 worth of games I CAN'T PLAY, not what i wanted, especially since I'm on playthrough #22 of Heavy Rain.
The only thing that works, is internet browsing, and playstation 1 games - EVERYTHING ELSE is busted (except my linux install, that works no problemo, and thanks to hypervisor cracking, much much better!)
So I'm stuck with essentially an overpowered PSX with a web browser. For those that paid near $700 at launch (and still have it functional, with BC) they're stuck with a PSX/2 and web browser.
Haven't tried blu-ray movies, don't own any - have yet to find one I like that outputs at 1080p. All the ones I've tried are 720p, from four different rental places.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
... A network connection has no business being a requirement (to the point of failing to play without it) for a single player game.
Ubisoft begs to differ on that statement.
it might be that the date bug is causing some internal mod prevention code to trip. This is why the console can still be used to watch blurays or browse the web or play ps1 and ps2 games. the mod code prevents access to the psn and ps3 games, which is exactly what people can't access at the moment. sony should hopefully be able to reset the mod prevention code remotely, via an online update or posting cds top the affected parties
My PSX games, actual PSX discs, work just fine.
Dunno about Blu-ray movies, but I know my Netflix disc won't work. None of the $2,000 in games I bought work (every single one has trophies/achievements.)
Also, try to play that game, it wipes your trophies. Hopefully those will come back once the servers fix themselves.
This is what they get for making varying hardware in the first place. They should have introduced ONE MODEL, with backwards compatibility all the way through. Leave in EVERY ADVERTISED FEATURE EVER, and ship a solid unit. Don't make different hardware revisions just to save money - they cut corners somewhere along the way and it is starting to come back to bite them in the ass.
There really needs to just be a massive uprising against Sony in court - they've rootkitted our PCs, they've given us crap invasive DRM, they've advertised one feature (BC) and stripped it from 100% hardware to part hardware part software in the next revision, then to full software in the next, and then pulled it totally the next hardware refresh, and now with the PS3 slim advertising campaign they're saying right on the kiosk wall in Best Buy "It does everything" when in fact it does NOTHING close to what the original did. IT IS PURE AND SIMPLE FALSE AND MISLEADING ADVERTISING, and they need the shit sued out of them so they'll NOT DO IT AGAIN. Screw the money - we can sue for a full injunction, and force specifically SCEA to stop operating in the USA until they get the consumers what they originally were advertised on TV, in magazines, - a PS3 with BC and the ability to install another OS. Damn hard drive size, since we can upgrade that ourselves. Give us the hardware and quit trying to dictate everything in our damned lives.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Wait, I'm confused. I thought that was the American way(tm)!
Fuck that, if they want to sell software as a service then it needs a service level agreement, 99.999999% uptime.
That needs to be written into law. NO IF ANDS OR BUTS. Write it that plain and simple, applied to all software sold by license.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Why are you acting like they will never fix this bug? Unless I missed something, it's just a temporary inconvenience to me. Certainly not something to get up in arms about.
Mada mada dane.
Do you mean Y2.01K?
We talk to each other. We try to come to an agreement. If that fails a third party might get involved, especially if it's a disagreement between a company and an individual customer.
And once all those options have been exhausted...then we might bring in an actual lawyer.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
other words, this ONLY effects games with online components, like trophies
All PS3 games released since January 2009 have had mandatory trophy support... I would assume the games most people are currently playing fall in that group.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I can't sign into PSN on my US 60GB, so it's looks like I'm affected by this... :(
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
bzzzzt. Sorry, that's incorrect. I turn off the network connection and still could not play either COD or AC2. This is a disgrace. F Sony.
So many injustices..so little time..
What does it have to do with DRM? Calendar bugs have been a very common part of the computing landscape for many years.
Because even offline games are unplayable, so it's clear some flaw exists relating to their protection mechanism.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Graceful failure? Whatever happened to a basic test suite. There's no way something like this should have made it out the door.
Guys, it's really not that hard:
GregYear <- (appropriate year for start of Gregorian era in locale)
IF (month = 2 AND year MOD 4 = 0 AND (year < GregYear OR year MOD 100 > 0 OR year MOD 400 = 0))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 29}
ELSE IF (month = 2)
{MaxDayForMonth <- 28}
ELSE IF (month IN (4,6,9,11))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 30}
ELSE
{MaxDayForMonth <- 31}
(pseudocode style adapted for Slashcode)
Because even offline games are unplayable, so it's clear some flaw exists relating to their protection mechanism.
How does that follow? The Y2K bug would have affected offline systems if not fixed, and that had nothing to do with DRM.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I ran into this problem last night trying to watch Netflix on the PS3. the Netflix disc gave me a cannot connect error.... Being a slashdot reader my first though was I'd done something weird with my router ports.. So Mucked with those for awhile first making sure I hadn't done something weird. Then I noticed the system date was wrong on the PS3. I tried "Set Time via Internet" which failed, then I Set time manually and tried Neflix again and it works as normal. I'm sure the Servers figured that a 10 year old packet was "timed out" and didn't respond (or the PS3 won't respond to communication from 10 years in the future).
Worked for me, didn't try any games yet though.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Calm down. They didn't do this on purpose, it was a bug, an accident. Accidents happen. No-one is to blame.
It sounds like you need to get out of the basement, go take a walk, and interact with the regular 3D world for a change and come back to your PS3 in a few days when Sony have fixed it. I'm no corporate apologist, but if you can't survive without your PS3 for a few days then its you who has a problem and not Sony.
Listen to my latest album here
There, I just pulled the above code out of my ass, and it's so damn simple! I don't claim any copyrights to this! Go ahead, copy 'n paste it into any of your products as you like (also commercial and closed source, I don't even want a mention!), if that is really to hard for you, you lame ass tinkerers!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
We talk to each other. We try to come to an agreement. If that fails a third party might get involved, especially if it's a disagreement between a company and an individual customer.
And once all those options have been exhausted...then we might bring in an actual lawyer.
Sometimes even "talk[ing] to each other" and "try[ing] to come to an agreement" result in complaints from the Slashdot peanut gallery. A cease-and-desist notice over a fan-made derivative work, for instance, is just "talk[ing] to each other". And a lot of disagreements don't make the news until "all those options have been exhausted", which biases news coverage in favor of lawsuits.
You must be the sort of dissatisfied customer that every company dreams about: Rants angrily on the internet and purchases $2K worth of product...
"It sounds like you need to get out of the basement,"
Seriously, you ignorant people need to quit using phrases like that. I'm independent, I travel the globe, and I work towards getting mankind out into space by working on new artificial plant lighting. Get your head out of your ass so you can actually see, eh?
"go take a walk,"
Hard to do with a crippled leg.
"interact with the regular 3D world for a change and come back to your PS3 in a few days when Sony have fixed it."
Why should I wait for Sony to fix it? I've been bitten by their rootkits, their DRM, and this bullshit. If they want to start selling their shit as a service, they need to start offering a service level agreement.
The whole thing is in one way or another tied to the DRM scheme, I'm willing to bet mad money on it. As soon as the fix comes out I'm breaking it down (I've done quite a bit of work on the hypervisor hacking,) and I'm going to see what changes. Almost everything is linked into the DRM controls, so the answer lying within the DRM is a very likely answer.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
No, the reason you shouldn't sue is that suing someone because they pissed you off makes you an asshat.
Yes, because people should live by social norms and measured responses, but Sony isn't a someone. We've been pushing free market to the point in which lawsuits are the only way to get a company to do what you want. The risk of financial damage when the PS4 is launched due to customers being upset now will not provide a quick enough response to the problem. Re-read you Ayn Rand, the company should only change if they are financially at risk. Lawsuits provide that risk.
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM, there is no - and neither should there be, any reason why a game should be dependent on any date.
Then why do the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Nintendo DS even have a clock? Consoles have clocks for at least four reasons:
Copyright infringement is prohibited by law. Computers/consoles/software are not guaranteed by law to work all the time.
I beg to differ.
They aren't going to fix dick. Mark my words. Anyone who tries to roll their own fix will get sniped with a DMCA, and Sony will just tell everyone to buy a new console. Gamers will begrudgingly buy one, but if as long as they buy new stuff then Sony is happy.
"Why should I wait for Sony to fix it?
Because the other alternative is . . . . not waiting for Sony to fix it? Forcing Sony to hire a team of time-traveling coders to travel back in time and fix the bug before it happened? I fail to see what alternative there is besides waiting for a few days. Deciding to sue Sony won't make your PS3 work any sooner than just doing something else for a few days and then coming back and installing the update that they put out to fix this.
Look, I know you're upset that a bug in the PS3 calendar has managed to trigger some sort of DRM switch. Sony is rightly at fault, and is guaranteed to fix this in a matter of days. But your over-reaction is well outside the realm of what is reasonable.
Ayn Rand is not exactly a good source for economic insight.
Uhhhh...wouldn't that pretty much cover every lawsuit ever filed in history? I mean it isn't like someone is gonna go "hey I really like you, BTW I'm suing you ass!"
As for the bug, it just shows something we have ALL known for quite a long time-QA is currently extremely shitty, especially for anything having to do with gaming. Who here has NOT ever been bitten in the ass by shitty code gaming? Thought so. Why do you think every fricking games needs patches up the wazoo? Because these companies kick out some truly shitty code, why expect the consoles themselves to be any better? The first gen PS1s died quite often, the first gen Xboxes had shitty DVD drives, and of course the RRoD on the x360, and to a lesser extent the YRoD on the PS3. They just don't QA like they used to, it is the "get it out the door and we'll patch later!" attitude across the industry.
Anybody who has been gaming for awhile really shouldn't be surprised by this. Hopefully Sony will release yet another patch, that with any luck won't brick the machines, and it will be back to business as usual. That just seems to be the way things are done now, like it or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But at least she never installed a rootkit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well look at it this way, if Sony made cars, they'd be in the same boat as Toyota. The difference is, owners can't just take it back to the dealership for upgrades and have to subject it to more FedEx/UPS/DHL abuse and wait and wait and wait and wait.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
To me, as an individual, a cease-and-desist doen't feel like you're trying to talk to me, it feels like you're trying to bully me. If you're trying to talk to me, give me a call or send me an informal email, from one human being to another.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Talk about timing: I downloaded Flower for my 5 year old, who loves just flying around in the pretty fields, and the game won't start because of this error. A single-player game, that has no multiplayer aspect, that doesn't even keep score, and it can't be played because it can't connect to the network.
I guess it's because Flower has trophy support, but really...you can't store the trophy information locally and then transmit later? I couldn't sit there, looking at the error screen, then trying to explain to my daughter why she can't fly around the field, and not feel like there was an awesome lesson to be learned here.
So we pulled out a pack of Go Fish cards instead.
Who said anything about remotely? This is a hardware bug...
My thoughts exactly, I mean...
It fails the FIRST TEST, that is, ((year % 4) == 0) for leap years. Guys, 2010 % 4 == 2, I mean
the mind boggles
how long until
Au contraire, mon amis
The people so stupid they buy games that need an always-on network connection are to blame. They are in the same league as people who by fake drugs from spammers.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Actually, if everyone goes to buy a new PS3, SONY will lose money hand over fist. They sell their units at a major loss.
A leap year miscalculation is no worse than the skewed random shuffle bug reported in Microsoft's browser selection screen yesterday. If that's the problem with these PS3's (which I doubt), it could be something similarly brain dead:
Somebody tested that on 2001 through 2009 and declared it good enough.
My 60gig now says its 1/1/2000 guess thats what Sony ment by a 10 year plan.
No, a cease and desist is a threat of legal action.
I's skipping the talk to each other part completely.
That would be correct; her views fall under the purview of politics and philosophy. I do not think that she ever even studied econ; she instead tried to put forth her vision of a free society, utilitarianism be damned. That's how I see it, anyways. Other than that, she wasn't a very good writer; the only book of hers I could stand was Anthem, which just so happens to be very short. She also wanted to claim that she invented libertarianism.
SSC
This bug is something different. I've been able to play downloaded games and games with trophy support even when the net connection has been down before, but not with this bug.
I sure hope this bug is fixed soon. I own a fat 80GB model which meets the description but I haven't played it in the past 3 days or so. Other people I've read say that some 80GB models are unaffected and seem to work fine for now, but it still worries me. If it is indeed a calendar issue and we cannot connect to PSN or even the internet, how are we to receive an update?
It's a bug. Sure they should have caught that error and continued with the game itself, but not doing so is hardly uncommon in computing.
Learn to read.
I found the ps3 drm quite unintrusive. I just pop in a disc and it works. It doesn't even ask for a serial number. What's your problem?
His problem is what this article is about.
2 months ago my PS3 died (i've replaced it since)... so I decided to show to my kids what kind of games we played when I was a kid. So I dug out of the basement my old ps1, my sega genesis and my 30 years old mattel Intellivision... All of them worked. I didn't expect anything else! (now I remember why we were playing real hockey outside ...) But it make me wonder, will my ps3 still be working in 15 years (or maybe 30)... A simple drm check and everything is down... I have COD warfare 2, and it has to connect to the net ?? I didn't know that.. And I sure would'nt have buy that game if I knew that...
What if the current ps3 network is not compatible with the network in 30 years.. what if sony's servers are down next year?
I have a serious question here, are we really all going toward this kind of drm in everything (tv, blueray, fridge, beds (whatever..)) or is it dying (like for the mp3s) ?
No, the biggest failure is, to reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there are libraries out there that are literally tested for decades, and knows to work properly.
When you don’t know exactly that you can and will do it better, always use the standard library! :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
How many other systems have this y2k bug?
They've been doing that for a long time. What really annoyed me was passing off unfinished features as bugs, then never really doing a good job of implementing it.
When networked multiplayer was getting started, they'd brag about that feature on the box, even as it was shoved out the door with that part unfinished. 3 months later you downloaded a "patch" to "fix" the "problems" with networking. Then you'd find they'd done a lousy job of it. Master of Orion 2 particularly comes to mind. No simultaneous turns (let alone real time action), and often you couldn't even look things over while others were taking their turns. May as well have kept it hotseat. Lot of poor jobs in the early days of LAN parties, before MMORPGs. Doom was one of the few games that networked well.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Still afaict this is a defect in original workmanship (not a wear-out and not a random failure) that renders the product largely unusable.
If sony doesn't sort this out quickly i'd expect lawsuits in the EU at least.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Its funny, I don't have this problem with computer games. Doh! Slam!!!!
They are taking down the US military's ps3 supercomputer rig! http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/213076/u-s-military-building-ps3-supercomputer/
Did you actually read the article? afaict this is impacting all games with trophy support regardless of whether the user is online or offline (and these games can most certainly be played without an internet connection)
One of the (many) reasons I tend to buy console versions rather than PC versions of games is that they don't tend to have online activation BS.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's not software as a service, and if you want an SLA don't expect it to cost anything close to what the playstation network cost now.
This is not DRM. I understand this is sony and anything that odd gets blamed on them being evil!!!!!!!!111 but that isn't what happened here.
Everyone remember this post, where sopssa is clearly defending SONY, next time he makes sense but is accused of being an "M$ troll."
For fucks sake people. Lets keep making assumptions and then stating them as fact by the end of our posts. The console is unable to validate the achievement data as not bullshit, and instead of the console saying "lol that's weird" and moving on, it flips out and prevents the game from starting, possibly because it recognizes the "current" date as being "impossible" according to its bugged programming.
No secret evil motives here, just a design flaw. Hopefully one that can be patched without the console date being valid.
And I don't even like sony...
I never said anything about evil motives. The mod prevention would be understandable and reasonable and yes, a design flaw. Your hypothesis is as possible as mine. However it doesn't take into account the inability to play some PSN games that don't have trophies.
I suggest you should calm down and realise that no one in the thread above stated their hypothesis as fact
Yeah, and you'd think Microsoft would know how to shuffle too, right? ;-)
Actually, any excuse to sue a DRM-laden company is good enough. Only a bankrupt DRM company is a good DRM company. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You're half right. This is DRM working, not DRM broken.
Sony must have gotten schooled by Microsoft about "encouraging" their users to upgrade.
Still, I'm sure a simple root-kit would fix the problem.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I have this issue, but my Netflix disk worked last night. I did set the date to the correct date.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Well, if that's the only reason you can think of, you're not thinking very hard, are you?
Neither are you apparently, otherwise surely you'd have provided some examples of additional reasons instead of simply insulting GP.
While personally I side with GP, I will point out that games do use dates for a variety of reasons. Pokemon games starting with Gold and Silver for the GBC, and the Animal Crossing series, all have date-specific events. Of course, none of those refused to play if their internal clocks did not match the clocks of some central server. Heck, you could even set your clock to before the time of the last time you played, and it would still play just fine (though some Animal Crossing residents might be like "it's been hundreds of years since you've visited me!").
Except maybe the Wii version of Animal Crossing, have yet to touch that.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
This reminds me of the "must be connected" to XBox Live to play the arcade games you purchased after you had the RRoD.
It took a while, but Microsoft gave in and made an incredibly convoluted solution to "fix" the DRM being tied to a console that died. This error is a bit more than "no trophies at this time".... but like Microsoft, Sony's DRM has showed us all the dark side of this whole "you don't own anything" mantra of this generation's consoles... (Including the Wii...)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Our 120 GB and 80 GB fat PS3s are working, but the 40 GB model isn't.
If you're trying to talk to me, give me a call or send me an informal email, from one human being to another.
If you see hundreds of fan works out there of which you disapprove, your public relations department probably doesn't have the time to send anything more than a form letter.
Other reasons to require date being in sync:
The real point is, there are other reasons that would come to mind if one didn't have DRM-blinders on. DRM-hating becomes a conspiracy mentality, influencing one to fit everything into some evil DRM scheme. Not that there aren't real evil DRM schemes!
Actually, you lose some non-net based functionality as well. All my downloaded add-on content is fubared at present, free or paid. This is a pretty significant loss.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Can it be a date bug in the PS3's hypervisor (or other internal 'security' functions)? The units that that maintains among other things the DRM and copyrights.
If that insists that the date is 29/2-2010, I can hardly imagine the number of things that will get decoded wrong.
We may be lucky, that tomorrow the clock will claim it's March 1, at least that is a valid date. or the hardware will continue being 1 day behind, screwing up the DRM again tomorrow.
I demand, I want, me me me money money money for me.
And this is why Universal Health care will never work in the United States.
I moved the date forward on my PS3. Didn't help. Downloaded games don't work (flower, flow, nobi). Except pixeljunk eden works for some reason.
I didn't try any ps3 games but ps2 games played fine.
I personally hate the need for an internet connection to play games. I think its more of a time thing than a pure internet connectivity thing. (my machine isn't always on the internet and I've had no problems till now)
Clearly a stupid bug.
If you see hundreds of fan works and instead of thinking "damn, the customers love us" you think "how dare they make fanart without paying us for it", you probably don't deserve the customers.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Just a few of the reasons that when I was in a local shop looking at buying a laptop, when the assistant suggested i buy an overpriced and underspec Sony I just giggled and walked out...
[The Universe] has gone offline.
My paid-for copy of PixelJunk Monsters is inviting me to buy the full version, and you think this has nothing to do with DRM? Clearly we are using incompatible definitions of the term. There has been some kind of license-key-management screw-up precipitated by this bug. Regardless of the actual mechanism, that makes it a DRM issue.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Two men enter, one man leaves...
Life is not for the lazy.
You don't need to be connected to XBL to play XBLA games. When downloaded, the game is licensed to both a) the hardware, and b) the XBL account. As long as one matches (i.e. the console is the right one, OR you're logged in to XBL with the correct account) you're golden.
If you need to move consoles, you can go to xbox.com and relicense all your stuff to your new console. I think they let you do this once per year, without question.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You despise Sony, yet you spent $2,000 on PS3 downloadable games? Nerd rage troll detected!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
It's software, written by Sony.
Do you really need any more explanation than that? Did you ever see their software for the Connect music store? Terrible quality. Their software that ships with their camcorders? Thank God you can open those video files in something-- ANYTHING-- else.
The long and short is that Sony simple can not write good software. I've yet to see a Sony product with even half-decent software, for that matter.
Comment of the year
"And the only reason I can think of why someone would want the date sync'd or the game made non-working due to changed system date was because of some form of DRM."
You haven't thought of a reason, or an explanation. You've got a boogey-man you'd like to blame something new on, even though you have no basis for it, and you've concluded that it must be true because you can't think of anything else. You could equally conclude that it's a failure in the flux capacitor, since nothing else makes sense.
+5 Insightful just ain't what it used to be. You can get it by using the reasoning of a five year old.
"Quick! Find an excuse to issue a patch that disables OtherOS!"
Mods are funny, since the post should be modded +1 Informative or Insightful.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
You don't need to be connected to XBL to play XBLA games.
Sorry, but I have to call you on this one, from personal experience.
Before doing the MS licensing dance from the website to link my new machine to my account (Old one was stolen, meh), if I were logged in on my Live account, but disconnected, all my downloaded games were stuck in Trial status.
The moment I connected, though, it would acquire the full license for my games and let me play them.
This was a pain in the ass when all I had was mobile broadband -- I'd have to leave my laptop turned on, share the connection with the 360, and log on that way. Usually took two tries, but then it'd let me play more than just chapter 1 of Ikaruga.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
QA in the gaming industry only seems shitty because it's pretty much the cutting edge of hardware and software technology.
Can you name a piece of mainstream consumer electronics (i.e. not a PC) that's more powerful than the Xbox 360 or the PS3? I can't think of one.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
No way. Apply Hanlon's Razor to the situation: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
If they wanted to disable OtherOS, they could do it easily enough by making the latest hot game need a firmware update that did it. That's what many companies have done, including Sony on the PSP. Annoying millions of their customers by making the games they've already paid for not work? Companies - even Sony - have done some stupid things out of greed, but that's a whole new level of moronic.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Sorry, but I have to call you on this one, from personal experience.
GP is correct, read the rest of his post. All the info is there: an explanation of how the licensing system works, and how to fix it if you're stuck having to connect to XBL to acquire your licenses.
gcc: no input sig
I am pretty sure somebody at MS is smiling at this. Not at Nintendo, they are still out cold from laughing to hard all the way to the bank.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
But that was before you tried to hack your system by setting the clock to February 29, 2010. Once that's been done, even once, your offline system is hosed until it can be validated by Sony DRM (tm).
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
But everyone here seems to be make the suggestion that it's the Ubisoft like DRM and you can't play your games because you can't connect to PSN. That's not the case here as you can play them offline just fine, normally. It's just a bug in the system, not some draconian DRM refusing to let you play because you can't connect to PSN.
Still afaict this is a defect in original workmanship (not a wear-out and not a random failure) that renders the product largely unusable.
If sony doesn't sort this out quickly i'd expect lawsuits in the EU at least.
What? This is exactly that.
My Netflix disc wouldn't work either until I reset the date/time this morning to March 1.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
But that was before you tried to hack your system by setting the clock to February 29, 2010. Once that's been done, even once, your offline system is hosed until it can be validated by Sony DRM (tm).
And your evidence for that is what, exactly?
... and then they built the supercollider.
I've had one Dreamcast since 9/9/99 that's run flawlessly to date. In that span I've had: -2 N64's (#1 from '96 croaked in '02) -2 PS2's (#1 died after 1 year) -1 Lonely Gamecube -2 Xboxes (okay they both work, but #1 is sounds like it's on its deathbed...) -4 or 5 360's (#1 broke in a week, RROD gave me 3 or 4 different 360's in Spring/Summer '07) -2 Wii's (1st was broken out of the box) -1 PS3 (although it was sidelined last fall after a Sony 'update' broke it, and demanded $150 to fix. A user fix resolved the problem and it's been ok til now). But that system from going on 11 years ago (and a launch day system at that) is still going strong. Long Live the Dreamcast indeed.
Both are correct. Before the license transfer utility, on a new box you needed to be logged on. Now, you can transfer the hardware license to a new console (as GGP says). GP is also correct that you must be more than logged on with the correct XBL account, you must be connected with the Live servers. In other words: no offline play without the hardware license.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Lucky for me I read up on this before using my PS3 at all today. I seem to have circumvented the issue to a degree. I unplugged the power my wireless router and then fired up my PS3. From there, I noticed my date/time was set to 12/31/2000. In the system settings, I disabled internet connection and reset the time manually to 3/1/2010. Now that internet was disabled, I plugged my router back in. I tested a few games, and all worked. Granted, this does not solve the issue of trophies and getting into PSN, but at least I can play single player games until they come up with a fix.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
No, the biggest failure is, to reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there are libraries out there that are literally tested for decades, and knows to work properly.
You've heard of GPL Allergy. There's something older than that called NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). A symptom is over-dependence on clean-room practices.
And I've used software written in the 1980s that never expected to still be in use in the 1990s so only a single digit, stored as ASCII, was used for the year. 1989 was followed by 198: (nineteen eighty-colon). But at least it was just cosmetic and still worked.
The update that fixed it also sent a copyright notice with every disconnect of the modem to the caller for the software the interpreter was sold with, even if completely different software was being run.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Grr... I reformatted my PS3 last night... I think the onion called it
Does this smell like Chloroform to you?
.And the only reason I can think of why someone would want the date sync'd or the game made non-working due to changed system date was because of some form of DRM.
You assume that the bug is related to a mechanism that stops you from playing a game, but it could be a hangup or a crash or weird behavior, which other posters ARE reporting. The leap to assuming DRM is related is premature (though not ruled out).
and it's not. This bug has nothing to do with the network and everything to do with bad firmware.
The ps3 slims aren't affected... and single player games aren't the only thing this firmware bug is affecting, it also corrupts peoples themes.
Why is it we cannot get a calendar right? The mayans were able to make a calendar that went to 2012 without skipping anything...and they only had rock and chisel. I think intelligence is on a downward spiral if people cant geit their shit in order.
No, she's not, nor ethical insight. She's a rotten bastard.
But reading the writings of a rotten bastard gives some insight into how rotten bastards operate -- in this case, Sony. They're not going to improve unless forced to at lawyer-point. Thus, lawsuits.
No kidding.. I bet when the power goes out he starts raving about the thousands of dollars worth of equipment in his house that is now USELESS!
Sadly the US-lawyer-mentality, while damaging as all hell generally, is what's needed here.
It takes two civilized people to solve a problem, not one civilized person and Sony.
if it were an apple issue, it would be Y2.01.3K
Well it's true it's not the same law that applies in the two cases.
However turnabout, saith the proverb, is fair play.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Pffffff, make it a mudwrestling match with some hot girls.
When they are done, all of us will have forgotten about the lawsuit and Sony will have issued a patch to fix this little glitch.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Don't speak so confidently; you're no more certain of your facts than those claiming it IS DRM.
I suspect the bug itself has nothing to do with DRM, but that the consequences of the bug are numerous, including tripping some DRM checks (therefore preventing downloaded PSN games from playing). Regardless, I'm kind of glad this happened... shine more light on the issue.
It looks to me like there several different issues tied to a single bad-leap-year calculation:
1) It's using an invalid date to update trophies because when you try to play a game with trophies, the trophies disappear. The game becomes unplayable because the trophy code requires them to be available or the game won't launch (this may only be some games with poor trophy code).
2) The invalid date is (somehow) being transmitted to the PSN on login attempts, the bad date is rejected on Sony's end and you can't login to the PSN. Any game that relies on being logged into PSN won't work.
I doubt it was intentional that if the date was wrong games would stop working. I think if you change the system date and play offline you won't bork your trophies and you will still be able to play (In fact, someone reported that they did exactly that and didn't have any problems).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Well, look on the bright side. If they have to replace your console, at least it will have the side-effect of fixing your disc reading problem too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
While I'm not absolutely positively sure of this, I think single-player games that don't have trophies work fine. It's the date bug that screws up the trophies that screws up the offline games. The network connection problem is correlated, not causitive.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
If you haven't paid attention to the recent news - Sony is preparing to charge for the PSN.
So guess what I'm going to demand?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Sony is rightly at fault, and is guaranteed to fix this in a matter of days. "
My PS3 is now officially a BRICK. It will NO LONGER POWER ON.
Sony now has one week to answer for this. If I don't get an answer, I'm going to crack heads.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
McQuown vs. Electronic Arts - the entire case is public record.
You act as if you know me (yet you can't even spell my nickname properly when it's right in front of your face.)
I doubt you've got half a brain to understand anything written in that court case, you can't even spell my name properly when it's right in front of you.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is Sony's way of enforcing users to update so they cannot crack the bitchmachine. Everybody was saying "don't update your PS3 if you want to be able to run linux and to crack the bitchmachine..." well, now you have it.
Onda Technology Institute
Here is a monday afternoon post from playstation detailing issue and serving warnings to not even turn on affected units http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/02/playstation-network-status-update/ updates to problem will be on their Twitter page http://twitter.com/sonyplaystation
Who here has NOT ever been bitten in the ass by shitty code gaming?
*raises hand quickly*
*brain kicks in*
*puts hand back down*
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
"Sony is rightly at fault, and is guaranteed to fix this in a matter of days. "
My PS3 is now officially a BRICK. It will NO LONGER POWER ON.
Sony now has one week to answer for this. If I don't get an answer, I'm going to crack heads.
Umm, I don't know how they're going to apply a patch to your console if it won't power on.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
One of the primary issues this bug causes is that it resets the clock to 12/31/1999. Most content (in fact, all content that I'm aware of) has a "licensed starting" date/time, and none of the titles I have will work at all. This tells me that they must have a secondary clock (a "real clock") that they use to tell when licensed content is valid/invalid (so people can't just change the date/time back two days to play a demo that has expired, or a rental that has expired, etc).
And since the clock is obviously integral to their protection mechanism, it is a flaw in said mechanism.
Note: No, I have no inside information, but this seems to be a reasonable deduction given the evidence at hand.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Got to Date and Time Settings Set Manually (you will notice it will be off a day) Back out and go somewhere else on the PS3 Go back in to Date and Time Settings and Set by Internet Back out again and do something else Go back in manually and make sure date and time are right You should be fixed!
Just logged into PSN with my CECHE that was affected by the bug, my PSN downloads have the owner name back, my theme is working, yadda yadda yadda.
If it were an apple issue, it would be i2K .
Dude. I think you need to seriously consider getting out more. Sunshine is a good thing, you know?
zosxavius photography
Yes, it looks like it's over. It probably fixed itself with the change to March, 2. Now, I hope they will be able to prevent this from happening again.
Oh you think you have been bitten? You don't know the pain of being bitten buddy! I downloading the demo for the original Max Payne. Man it was fun, bullet time, cool graphics, so I went out and shelled out the bucks for it at release. Went through the first level, which was the same as the demo, then guess what? BOOM! crash to desktop. And they didn't fix that shit for nearly a year!
Or what about Vampire:Bloodlines? I had the original Vampire, and thought "Wow, this is gonna be SOOOO sweet!" so again I bought it at release. Guess what? BOOM! Bitch crashed halfway through the FIRST mission, and my bug wasn't fixed until a fan made patch came out nearly TWO YEARS later!
That is why I have just about given up on getting new games. Alpha quality BS code, bugs that never get fixed, just a bunch of shit. Now I wait until it hits the bargain bin, so that by then all the patches and the anti-DRM No-DVD is ready to go. Between that and "Good Old Games" (Which if you haven't bought from them I HIGHLY recommend it! No DRM, easy to backup installers, everything "just works" even on x64!) I am just staying out of the BS. On a positive note that means I'll probably get another couple of years out of my 4650 1Gb, since waving my ePeen isn't something I care about.
I just want my games to work, dammit! Is that too much to ask?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Easy, kettles, toasters, ovens...... oh, you didn't mean that kind of power ;)
Either way though, those devices don't contain (non-safety) mechanisms that are designed to stop the machine from doing the job the customer bought it for.
A kettle with only 2 switches was more computationally useful than a PS3 with its x million switches a couple of days ago!
But seriously, stop apologising for the games industry. WRT consoles, they have very static platforms to publish on, and even though it might be quite new tech, it is their business decisions that lead to these scenarios, not some inherent property of technology.
Car analogies break down.
I fixed the issue - it just took unplugging it and trying to turn it on to discharge all remaining power, plug it in and turn it back on, it works, now. Full power cycle.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I agree with everything you said, except the YRoD (Yellow Ring of Death) on the PS3.
There is no "such thing"... You are talking about the yellow light that comes on when a general failure occurs (Memory error/CPU error/MB Error/FAN failure).
The whole talk of "the yellow light of death" was a poorly researched piece by the BBC's Watchdog, where a "tech pundit" suggested that there was a recurring problem with PS3's caused due to poor soldering, and that "many" PS3s where broken. It was later revealed that the "pundit" was in the employ of Microsoft.
The thing was, the YellowLightOfDeath, as mentioned above, is a general hardware failure signal. It was not representative of a specific problem. Secondly it affected just 0.5% of the consoles. Thats actually pretty low.
Have a nice day!
Actually depends where the software is written for. Most of their embedded stuff, and firmware is actually of a pretty good quality, especially considering what it does, and the eyecandy they offer...
There "supporting" software (eg pc stuff.. etc....).. however...........
Have a nice day!
You really don't need A LIBRARY to know if a certain year is a leap year...
Time libraries are really useful and should be used thoroughly (especially for thing like - what's the week day of 400 days from now)
how long until
I was so proud that I bought two original PS3 units. I wanted to write programs for the advanced hardware within. Of course that might mean unauthorized software that Sony would not have control over. I don't like where this is going. I am simply not going to buy any more Sony products. The Sony rootkit episode should have put me on notice. I am not going to buy any more closed hardware. There is no need. Alternatives exist. If GPUs are your thing, there is CUDA. I am sure I would be more pissed off about this if I had an investment in time and money with games, and I was concerned about my on-line status. I was thrilled about the impending release of the HOME product, but after a couple of years of waiting, I gave up. My two original PS3 units are collecting dust, and I remember them being pricey at the time I bought them.
You want to explain why you lose DLC functionality, even temporarily, when you can't connect to their servers and the date is messed up? You really think that their services will exist forever? Hate to break it to you, but for all the complaints about DRM and players rights on this site, this is an example of where it's significant.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
I work in QA for a large Pharmaceutical company.
We have to do a lot of testing, and conform to many rules set out by various agencies including the FDA. There has to be significant testing done on a new product to ensure that it does what it's supposed to do, and does it without killing people in the process.
Now that's just the molecule.
On we go to the manufacturing process.
We document every single little action performed during the very early stages of making the Active Ingredient, to the Drug Product, to the eventual finished goods (be it a pill, syringe or vial)
We then review all the documentation, check if anything out of the ordinary happened, take multiple samples and test them to see they are what we set out to make ... more things happen ... ... Some time later, the product ships out to go to the hospitals so you have pain killers and anaesthetic.
From the inception of a new molecule, to numerous QA testing processes registration etc, it can be years before someone out there gets the new wonder drug. By this time there is already something in the R&D pipeline for the next life saving drug.
This means that it can take years for new medicinal ideas to reach people. And this is because there are a lot of QA processes there to protect people from dodgy meds.
Fortunately badly programmed games rarely kill people, so there are much fewer restrictions regarding QA for such. This means that new ideas, new technologies can be taken advantage of much quicker from when they are formed. If it ships 90% perfect, and can be patched later on for that last 10% then it might be seen as an acceptable trade-off to have the latest and greatest thing out there as soon as it can be got.
Blizzard and Diablocraft 2-3 would appear to be the exception to this (and Duke Nukem Forever) whereby they are holding off on releasing the product until they are certain it's perfect. What will the fallout for it be? Will the games still be cutting edge when they arrive finally? We'll just have to wait and see.
No, the reason you shouldn't sue is that suing someone because they pissed you off makes you an asshat.
Correction: A rich asshat.