Cancelling your card is NOT the same as cancelling the service that you way paying for with the card.
They may just send the debt collectors around instead.
if you want to cancel a service, make sure you do just that. Cancelling the card is good too, in case they don't manage to stop taking payments, but it's not a substitute.
Depending on the service, this is true. But I haven't heard from them in about 9 years so canceling the card must have done the trick.
At this point, I'm almost surprised the password wasn't stored in plain text. Then again, given the magnitude of the breach, I'm betting on it not being very hard to break the hashed password.
I would be very surprised if it were actually even hashed properly. Probably using a tried and true password protection scheme called ROT-13.
Hah! I have an ancient email account I still check once in a while and I got the same notice. I haven't played Everquest since late 2000 or early 2001. Fortunately the only thing they have that's still the same is my name and that old email address. Everything else (credit cards, address, etc...) has changed multiple times since then.
As an owner of both the PS3 and 360, I called my bank and canceled my card last week, just in case. What really irratates me is that, at least through the web interface, you can not remove your credit card information from Microsoft's billing services - at least with an active Live Gold membership (depsite the fact the Live Gold account is already paid for)
I noticed that too and it really irritates me. You have to call their customer service number and jump through a ton of hoops to unsubscribe, while they try to talk you into paying for additional time. It was actually easier for me to just cancel my credit card - I try to cycle through a few per year anyway for reasons such as this.
A journalist friend of mine has suggested the possibility that Sony is staging this "hacker" attack as a fortuitous propaganda stunt to make hackers look bad and possibly cover up a real infrastructure problem caused by Sony itself.
While it makes *some* sense, I don't buy it.
Agreed. It just does not sound plausible. Sometimes it's fun to attribute stuff like this to some scheming corporate overlord, sometimes what appears to be poorly handled public relations nightmare is, in fact, a poorly handled public relations nightmare.
Some of us take pride in our work and write fast, reliable software that runs on servers for multiple years without interference.
Agreed. Although I find this is much easier to do when working alone. Nothing has the potential to wreck finely written code like a bunch of half-competent developers mucking about in it.
... in a thimble made of tin-foil. It still makes shiver, when I comtemplate how rudimentary the Apollo missions were in many ways. It was a great technical achievement, but it was dwarfed by the monumental bravery of the men that went up there.
Indeed. If you've ever been to a space museum where they have actual or replicas of the capsules used in this era, you'd understand. I get claustrophobic just standing outside of one. I could not for the life of me imagine being packed inside and shot across 250,000 miles of nothingness and back. That's a type of bravery I just don't possess. But I do have a healthy respect and gratitude for those that do. Those guys had balls of solid rock.
Place that I worked in the late '90s was partly Novell 3.12 and partly NT 4.0, and I noticed two things almost immediately. First, the Windows side was **MUCH** easier to manage than the Novell side, especially the centralized user management. Second, Novell saddled its customers with IPX/SPX and wouldn't support TCP/IP for quite a long time, which made accessing the Internet from within your network operating system annoyingly difficult. On the other hand, we had to reboot the NT servers every two or three months while the Novell servers only needed reboots about once a year.
This. You just summed up my sysadmin experience from late 1996 until early 2000, which I switched jobs for greener pastures. I haven't seen a Novell server or a Groupwise inbox since then. Can't say I miss it much either.
Well guess what... parents lock the doors, set curfews, and make you eat your vegetables. I honestly don't think this kind of thing will fly in the US, not as long as there's a viable GOP.
Wait...what? Are you saying that the GOP...the Republican party in the US...is the driving force behind keeping internet communications free and open here in the US?
I don't know what your experience is, and I certainly don't mean to disparage senior citizens here, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a group that is more *out of touch* with technology than the GOP. Have you heard some of the comments regarding technology these guys make on CSPAN or on any of the talking head news shows? It's pretty clear that most of them are taught to parrot a few sound bytes involving cyberspaces and internet superfreeways from some techie staffer, but their understanding of the underlying technologies is abysmal.
When I think of groups that are fighting for the rights of the people in regards to technology, I don't usually picture rich old white guys sitting around a mahogany table, drinking scotch and smoking cigars. Maybe that's just me though.
The only thing that surprises me is that we've went so long WITHOUT more government-controlled internet firewalls. I remember telling people back in 1995 that the U.S. government wouldn't tolerate a free internet for very long. I was wrong on the timeframe, but make no mistake, it's coming.
You're thinking in internet time, where 16 years is a very, very long time during which new technologies spring up, flourish, die, and are forgotten. However, 16 years in government time is hardly enough to put something really huge into motion, like an all-encompassing firewall. I'd say you were spot on - the great US firewall will eventually be a reality. They'll probably sell it as a way to protect us from our new favorite bogeyman, "The Terrorists."
No doubt, any attempt at a country-wide firewall would be an utter failure and cost tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. But that won't stop them from trying...
Problem with Razer is they cash in on making things look futuristic. This may be a great new technology, I am no expert. What I do know is that Razer has a nasty habit of covering something with fancy looking LED's and then tripling its price.
Nerds, like moths, are irresistibly drawn towards shiny things. I'm just making up percentages here, but I'm guessing a good 90% of consumer products that fail do so because they're not shiny enough, and they don't have enough color-changing LEDs.
- iPod? Shiny, check. Success.
- Zune? Shit brown, dull. Failure.
- Apple Newton? Dull gray. Failure.
- iPad? Shiny! Success.
- Microsoft Sidewinder mouse? Dull, no lights. Failure.
- Razer Boomslang? Shiny! Has bright light. Success.
FYI - that was not a scientific survey by any means.
He didn't get +5 insightful for his insightfulness. It would appear he impressed some newly minted mod with his s/creative/overused/ use of sed word replacement in order to make a s/funny/tiresome/ joke. It's not what you say, but the nerdiness with which you say it.
I believe you're referring to Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann's "discovery" of cold fusion at the University of Utah in 1989. They suspended a palladium electrode in a deuterium bath, applied electricity and...stuff happened. Stuff that nobody else could reproduce and for which they had no explanation, that they believed to be fusion at room temperature.
This case was probably one of the earliest lessons in the fallacy of making announces on the internet without first having your research thoroughly peer-reviewed. The press got hold of the announcement and, unchecked, proceeded to announce to the world that power as we knew it was going to change. Alas, no. We remain regretfully fusion-free.
At my daughter's middle school they have "lockdown drills" the way the kids of the 50's had to endure the "duck and cover" drills.
Essentially, they make an announcement over the PA system that an intruder has been detected in the school. All of the doors are steel and lockable, so the student closest to the door has the responsibility to jump up and lock the door as quickly as possible. Then they all cower along the wall out of the line of fire should anyone try to shoot through the door.
To top off this lunacy, school employees come around and bang on the doors and shout to be let in. I wish I were joking, but I'm not. They actually go around and bang on every single door and beg, demand, and plead to be let into the room. The kids are taught not to let anyone in for any reason until the lockdown is lifted.
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Cancelling your card is NOT the same as cancelling the service that you way paying for with the card.
They may just send the debt collectors around instead.
if you want to cancel a service, make sure you do just that. Cancelling the card is good too, in case they don't manage to stop taking payments, but it's not a substitute.
Depending on the service, this is true. But I haven't heard from them in about 9 years so canceling the card must have done the trick.
Come on y'all. If we try real hard I bet we can find a way to implicate Sony in this.
I'm assuming Sony just did nothing after the breach and allowed passwords with the same hash as the previous one?
Fixed that for ya.
At this point, I'm almost surprised the password wasn't stored in plain text. Then again, given the magnitude of the breach, I'm betting on it not being very hard to break the hashed password.
I would be very surprised if it were actually even hashed properly. Probably using a tried and true password protection scheme called ROT-13.
They are just pissed that somebody stole a lot of personal data, and took over a bunch of computer systems, and it wasn't them.
To quote a great man:
"They wanted to dominate the world. Bullshit! That's our fuckin' job!"
Hah! I have an ancient email account I still check once in a while and I got the same notice. I haven't played Everquest since late 2000 or early 2001. Fortunately the only thing they have that's still the same is my name and that old email address. Everything else (credit cards, address, etc...) has changed multiple times since then.
As an owner of both the PS3 and 360, I called my bank and canceled my card last week, just in case. What really irratates me is that, at least through the web interface, you can not remove your credit card information from Microsoft's billing services - at least with an active Live Gold membership (depsite the fact the Live Gold account is already paid for)
I noticed that too and it really irritates me. You have to call their customer service number and jump through a ton of hoops to unsubscribe, while they try to talk you into paying for additional time. It was actually easier for me to just cancel my credit card - I try to cycle through a few per year anyway for reasons such as this.
A journalist friend of mine has suggested the possibility that Sony is staging this "hacker" attack as a fortuitous propaganda stunt to make hackers look bad and possibly cover up a real infrastructure problem caused by Sony itself.
While it makes *some* sense, I don't buy it.
Agreed. It just does not sound plausible. Sometimes it's fun to attribute stuff like this to some scheming corporate overlord, sometimes what appears to be poorly handled public relations nightmare is, in fact, a poorly handled public relations nightmare.
>
Speak for yourself.
Some of us take pride in our work and write fast, reliable software that runs on servers for multiple years without interference.
Agreed. Although I find this is much easier to do when working alone. Nothing has the potential to wreck finely written code like a bunch of half-competent developers mucking about in it.
... in a thimble made of tin-foil. It still makes shiver, when I comtemplate how rudimentary the Apollo missions were in many ways. It was a great technical achievement, but it was dwarfed by the monumental bravery of the men that went up there.
Indeed. If you've ever been to a space museum where they have actual or replicas of the capsules used in this era, you'd understand. I get claustrophobic just standing outside of one. I could not for the life of me imagine being packed inside and shot across 250,000 miles of nothingness and back. That's a type of bravery I just don't possess. But I do have a healthy respect and gratitude for those that do. Those guys had balls of solid rock.
Place that I worked in the late '90s was partly Novell 3.12 and partly NT 4.0, and I noticed two things almost immediately. First, the Windows side was **MUCH** easier to manage than the Novell side, especially the centralized user management. Second, Novell saddled its customers with IPX/SPX and wouldn't support TCP/IP for quite a long time, which made accessing the Internet from within your network operating system annoyingly difficult. On the other hand, we had to reboot the NT servers every two or three months while the Novell servers only needed reboots about once a year.
This. You just summed up my sysadmin experience from late 1996 until early 2000, which I switched jobs for greener pastures. I haven't seen a Novell server or a Groupwise inbox since then. Can't say I miss it much either.
...train rails you!
What it's like to own an Apple product: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple
We must not let the intertubes bring truckloads of filth into the EU.
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. It's not a truck that you just dump stuff on to. It's a series of, um, tubes or some such.
They don't make porn in Germany, Netherlands, or Czech Republic.
Technically this is true. Coprophagia != porn.
Well guess what... parents lock the doors, set curfews, and make you eat your vegetables. I honestly don't think this kind of thing will fly in the US, not as long as there's a viable GOP.
Wait...what? Are you saying that the GOP...the Republican party in the US...is the driving force behind keeping internet communications free and open here in the US?
I don't know what your experience is, and I certainly don't mean to disparage senior citizens here, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a group that is more *out of touch* with technology than the GOP. Have you heard some of the comments regarding technology these guys make on CSPAN or on any of the talking head news shows? It's pretty clear that most of them are taught to parrot a few sound bytes involving cyberspaces and internet superfreeways from some techie staffer, but their understanding of the underlying technologies is abysmal.
When I think of groups that are fighting for the rights of the people in regards to technology, I don't usually picture rich old white guys sitting around a mahogany table, drinking scotch and smoking cigars. Maybe that's just me though.
The only thing that surprises me is that we've went so long WITHOUT more government-controlled internet firewalls. I remember telling people back in 1995 that the U.S. government wouldn't tolerate a free internet for very long. I was wrong on the timeframe, but make no mistake, it's coming.
You're thinking in internet time, where 16 years is a very, very long time during which new technologies spring up, flourish, die, and are forgotten. However, 16 years in government time is hardly enough to put something really huge into motion, like an all-encompassing firewall. I'd say you were spot on - the great US firewall will eventually be a reality. They'll probably sell it as a way to protect us from our new favorite bogeyman, "The Terrorists."
No doubt, any attempt at a country-wide firewall would be an utter failure and cost tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. But that won't stop them from trying...
Problem with Razer is they cash in on making things look futuristic. This may be a great new technology, I am no expert. What I do know is that Razer has a nasty habit of covering something with fancy looking LED's and then tripling its price.
Nerds, like moths, are irresistibly drawn towards shiny things. I'm just making up percentages here, but I'm guessing a good 90% of consumer products that fail do so because they're not shiny enough, and they don't have enough color-changing LEDs.
- iPod? Shiny, check. Success.
- Zune? Shit brown, dull. Failure.
- Apple Newton? Dull gray. Failure.
- iPad? Shiny! Success.
- Microsoft Sidewinder mouse? Dull, no lights. Failure.
- Razer Boomslang? Shiny! Has bright light. Success.
FYI - that was not a scientific survey by any means.
I would call AT&T and their CSRs a lot of things. But polite is not one of them.
So, is anyone aware of any applications that would provide full device encryption for Android phones? Does such an application exist yet?
+1 for the microwave. While big sparkly arcs of electricity has definite nerd appeal, you can thoroughly destroy a CD with 5 seconds in a microwave.
Did anyone else read the headline as "Worlds With Two Suns May Sport Black Pants"?
Dressy, sure. But sporty? A truly alien world that would be...
He didn't get +5 insightful for his insightfulness. It would appear he impressed some newly minted mod with his s/creative/overused/ use of sed word replacement in order to make a s/funny/tiresome/ joke. It's not what you say, but the nerdiness with which you say it.
Also, the site on which this report was published is owned by the authors.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/24/italian-scientists-claim-cold-fusion-breakthrough/?test=faces
Also breaking news, Fox news reports a useful piece of information. More to come.
This case was probably one of the earliest lessons in the fallacy of making announces on the internet without first having your research thoroughly peer-reviewed. The press got hold of the announcement and, unchecked, proceeded to announce to the world that power as we knew it was going to change. Alas, no. We remain regretfully fusion-free.
Essentially, they make an announcement over the PA system that an intruder has been detected in the school. All of the doors are steel and lockable, so the student closest to the door has the responsibility to jump up and lock the door as quickly as possible. Then they all cower along the wall out of the line of fire should anyone try to shoot through the door.
To top off this lunacy, school employees come around and bang on the doors and shout to be let in. I wish I were joking, but I'm not. They actually go around and bang on every single door and beg, demand, and plead to be let into the room. The kids are taught not to let anyone in for any reason until the lockdown is lifted.
So yes, it has come to this.