Sony Hacking Incident – What You Should Know
Sony screwed up bad.
They screwed up really bad, but did they screw up enough to warrant federal legislation, and a class action lawsuit? I’m not so sure, but when something big, bad and newsworthy happens you can always count on an ambitious lawmaker to beg for attention, and for a small army of lawyers to get erections at the thought of filing a lawsuit.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, I have boycotted Sony for months because of their lawsuit against Geohotz, and their company policies that led to said suit. That being said, I still think the media, legislative, and legal frenzy surrounding this circus is a bit much. Here’s what you need to know:
What did the hackers steal?
They basically hijacked everything Sony had on the PlayStation Network. This includes:
- Usernames
- Passwords
- Birth dates
- Home addresses
- Password retrieval question answers (ex. “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”)
- And probably a slew of data about the games you play and things you’ve downloaded from the PlayStation Network
Credit cards
While the hackers did steal credit card information, all of that information is encrypted.
That means that the credit card data should be safe, and unusable.
I have a Playstation Network account, what should I do?
Most of the the stolen information is the kind of stuff that is uncoverable through thorough Google and Facebook stalking… except for the passwords.
If you have a PSN account, and you used the same password from your PSN account in other places, you need to start changing your passwords.
Typically web services that require a password protect that password by passing the text through something called a hashing algorithm before storing them. Hashing turns your password into a unique string of characters, and the process cannot be reversed. Sony failed to hash their users passwords, leaving them vulnerable.
What Sony did was boldly stupid. I can’t even begin to imagine how a tech company to stored millions of customer passwords unhashed, but they did it… And that may warrant a lawsuit.
A PlayStation is a computer, so you still need to practice safe computing while you’re on it. Change your passwords, and while you’re at it, don’t use the same one over and over again.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Xbox 360 Re-release Review
It’s back!
The classic 2D fighter has come back into the mainstream via Xbox 360 (and PS3 on August 13) download.
If you want some background on the game, you can checkout my initial post:
Marvel vs. Capcom 2!!! (What can I say? I was excited).
Review
The Good
It’s Marvel vs. Capcom 2. The game is basically a direct port of the classic Dreamcast version, with slicker graphics. If you liked the original version, you will like this one.
The Meh
While online play works well, actually getting into a match is kind of difficult. Most of my attempts to join a game result in a failure to join message… But once your in it’s great.
The Not-So Good
The Xbox version of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 allowed you to assign dedicated “high/low punch” and “high/low kick” buttons. While some purists probably frown upon this button configuration, I was quite fond of it. I can’t remember if this was an option on Dreamcast (I don’t think it was), but I miss being able to create those buttons. They were especially good for chaining into hypercombos.
The final boss, Abyss. He still sucks.
The Bottom-line
If you are a fan of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, buy it. If you aren’t a fan, and are looking for the slickness of modern fighters, this one isn’t for you.
All-in-all, it’s a good game with the potential for endless variation.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2!!!
My all-time favorite fighting game is the classic 2D fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
The game pits characters from Marvel Comics and Capcom’s video games against each other in crazy three-on-three battles. Some of the characters are popular favorites, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Dr. Doom, the Hulk, and Wolverine among other X-Men come to mind from the Marvel side. Mega Man, Ryu, Ken, Akuma, and a ton of Street Fighter characters are all part of the Capcom character gallery.
The game isn’t particularly balanced, some characters are dreadful, and some are way overpowered, but there are so many characters, and even more combination of characters that the game is endless fun (Over 10 years later, and I do play it on a fairly regular basis).
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is officially coming to XBox Live and the PlayStation Network. You will be able to download it for $15.00 sometime in the near future.
I’m excited!
