If I were a betting man, and I am, I'd bet that Sony will have learned from this mess and are already working on fixing it with the next firmware update, whenever that comes up.
And inevitably, that firmware will fix the leap year clock issue, but come with a host of other issues as well.
I apologize to the internets at large. In my hubris I proclaimed that there was no possible way that Sony could be stupid enough to screw up the first step in a leap year algorithm.
I was wrong. I am deeply humbled.
I should not have doubted the stupidity of the company that thinks Home is a good idea.
Sony didn't screw it up, the manufacturer of a chip that is part of the front assembly did. 3rd party. Not Sony.
The chip has done this before, it's widely known. The vendor has released a fix, Sony did not implement it.
Sony doesn't really "make" anything in the PS3. All that crap is made at fabs they do not own, and a good portion of it designed by other companies.
In the end, Sony picked the components, Sony decided on what their box was going to be, and they gooned it up. This isn't the first time they have destroyed their products. TV's failing right after warranty runs out comes to mind, the VIAO laptops that failed, ect. This is a known issue with them. Even the stuff they make from the ground up, ie LION batteries, well those took out all sorts of laptops made by other people.
Whether it's at Sony or at the company that made the chip, jobs have better be lost.
Overreact much?
Oh no! People's games were screwing up for one day. And even then, the "problems" it was causing like lost Trophies aren't really problems at all, the Trophies reappeared
Whether it's at Sony or at the company that made the chip, jobs have better be lost.
Overreact much?
Oh no! People's games were screwing up for one day. And even then, the "problems" it was causing like lost Trophies aren't really problems at all, the Trophies reappeared
There were a few trophies that didn't reappear for whatever reason for some people. A bug that happens for one day once every four or so years isn't that serious of a bug. The main thing about it was that the bug was unexpected. At this point, any future repeat in a few years will just be people sighing and going about their day instead of wandering what the fuck just happened. It is still a fairly hilarious but completely understandable screwup on the part of the manufacturer.
I apologize to the internets at large. In my hubris I proclaimed that there was no possible way that Sony could be stupid enough to screw up the first step in a leap year algorithm.
I was wrong. I am deeply humbled.
I should not have doubted the stupidity of the company that thinks Home is a good idea.
Sony didn't screw it up, the manufacturer of a chip that is part of the front assembly did. 3rd party. Not Sony.
The chip has done this before, it's widely known. The vendor has released a fix, Sony did not implement it.
Sony doesn't really "make" anything in the PS3. All that crap is made at fabs they do not own, and a good portion of it designed by other companies.
In the end, Sony picked the components, Sony decided on what their box was going to be, and they gooned it up. This isn't the first time they have destroyed their products. TV's failing right after warranty runs out comes to mind, the VIAO laptops that failed, ect. This is a known issue with them. Even the stuff they make from the ground up, ie LION batteries, well those took out all sorts of laptops made by other people.
It's completely fair to blame them.
Sony picked the components on the understanding that they worked properly.
Clearly they made the wrong call on that and should take the blame on that count, fair enough.
The component manufacturer should still bear the brunt of the responsibility as far as I'm concerned.
Due to a happy coincidence, I never turned on my system on Sunday when this all started. I kept it off on Monday until the evening due to work/family stuff anyway, so I never got hit with it.
However, when I turned it on last night, the date was wrong. It was one day behind. I updated the time via the Internet and it's fine now. So, I'm betting I would have had the issue if I'd turned it on during the phantom day.
Frankly, I wish Sony had fixed it already. They just waited until it "fixed" itself (not really). But, yeah, I would assume they are writing up some code to push with the next firmware update. They've got four years until the next time.
I think I would have been pretty pissed if a game I wanted to play offline wouldn't start up due to this, so I can understand people's frustrations. If GoW3 had been released yesterday/last night and this would have prevented playing it? Oh, the knashing of teeth would have been mighty.
Sony got lucky. A black mark, sure...but lucky nonetheless. I just hope they fix it...and that they figure out why some SP games wouldn't play offline and fix that too.
Sony got lucky. A black mark, sure...but lucky nonetheless. I just hope they fix it...and that they figure out why some SP games wouldn't play offline and fix that too.
Yeah, that's my main problem there and the reason I threw that quick "job lost" comment. It's not the bug as much as whatever was in there that prevent SP games from working offline.
Whether it's at Sony or at the company that made the chip, jobs have better be lost.
Overreact much?
Oh no! People's games were screwing up for one day. And even then, the "problems" it was causing like lost Trophies aren't really problems at all, the Trophies reappeared
There were a few trophies that didn't reappear for whatever reason for some people. A bug that happens for one day once every four or so years isn't that serious of a bug. The main thing about it was that the bug was unexpected. At this point, any future repeat in a few years will just be people sighing and going about their day instead of wandering what the fuck just happened. It is still a fairly hilarious but completely understandable screwup on the part of the manufacturer.
If this is based on a known issue with a component then either somebody at Sony fucked up on ignoring the manufacturers warning, or fucked up the bug test following the warning, or someone at the manufacturer fucked up and didn't warn Sony.
Someone somewhere had final sign off on what has become a worldwide embarrassment and, whether the end result was longterm damage or a short term blip, they will have some serious explaining to do as to why it looks like they didn't do their job.
I think the biggest embarassement is on the gaming sites' forums though where a whole new wave of "FUCK THE GAYSTATION" and "FUCK THE XBOTS" comments have been made.
Even a guy at work was laughing at us, saying how the Xbox was better and the PS3 sucked ass, and everyone just shrugged him off. That's already childlike online, but in real life? That's kinda sad.
Well, what I told him was that I agreed with him that Sony sucked on this one, and that it was especially surprising and hurtful to have my PS3 not work since it would be the first time that it fucked ever, while if it happened to my 360 it would now have been the third time it broke down. And unlike the PS3's case, my Xboxes never had a soft fix, I had to send them for repair.
This problem won't happen again for about 100 years.
It's based on a conversion from BCD hex to regular hex.
In BCD, 10 is encoded as 0x10, in regular hex it's encoded as 0x0A, and 0x10 is 16.
So when they converted from BCD to regular, the internal chip thought 2010 was 2016, at least where they do the leap year check. Since 2016 is a leap year, it thought 2010 was a leap year.
This won't happen again the same way, until 2110. So they have more than just 4 years to put a fix in.
notmetalenough on
Samael the Radiant Faced-- Official Naming, Going Nuclear, Click on the Quest, Make She Run and Guild Measurements Officer - Clawshrimp & Co, Draenor-US
This problem won't happen again for about 100 years.
It's based on a conversion from BCD hex to regular hex.
In BCD, 10 is encoded as 0x10, in regular hex it's encoded as 0x0A, and 0x10 is 16.
So when they converted from BCD to regular, the internal chip thought 2010 was 2016, at least where they do the leap year check. Since 2016 is a leap year, it thought 2010 was a leap year.
This won't happen again the same way, until 2110. So they have more than just 4 years to put a fix in.
Samael the Radiant Faced-- Official Naming, Going Nuclear, Click on the Quest, Make She Run and Guild Measurements Officer - Clawshrimp & Co, Draenor-US
This problem won't happen again for about 100 years.
It's based on a conversion from BCD hex to regular hex.
In BCD, 10 is encoded as 0x10, in regular hex it's encoded as 0x0A, and 0x10 is 16.
So when they converted from BCD to regular, the internal chip thought 2010 was 2016, at least where they do the leap year check. Since 2016 is a leap year, it thought 2010 was a leap year.
This won't happen again the same way, until 2110. So they have more than just 4 years to put a fix in.
This problem won't happen again for about 100 years.
It's based on a conversion from BCD hex to regular hex.
In BCD, 10 is encoded as 0x10, in regular hex it's encoded as 0x0A, and 0x10 is 16.
So when they converted from BCD to regular, the internal chip thought 2010 was 2016, at least where they do the leap year check. Since 2016 is a leap year, it thought 2010 was a leap year.
This won't happen again the same way, until 2110. So they have more than just 4 years to put a fix in.
But... I don't want to learn about the intricacies of mathematics and how things actually work, I want to be upset and make fanboy comments!
Yeah, that's fine. I'm totally okay with that. I just don't want to hear that this is going to happen every two years, like half the internets thinks.
notmetalenough on
Samael the Radiant Faced-- Official Naming, Going Nuclear, Click on the Quest, Make She Run and Guild Measurements Officer - Clawshrimp & Co, Draenor-US
Early yesterday afternoon, PS3 users on the #Efnet IRC network claimed to have pinpointed the problem. A small ARM Syscon CPU dedicated to menial tasks within the PlayStation 3 was known to have an issue dealing with leap years. The same piece of silicon had a history of causing similar aggravation for mobile devices with the likes of Zune and some Blackberry devices afflicted. In those cases, MSFT and RIMM were on top of the issue. Sony, unfortunately, was not.
Early yesterday afternoon, PS3 users on the #Efnet IRC network claimed to have pinpointed the problem. A small ARM Syscon CPU dedicated to menial tasks within the PlayStation 3 was known to have an issue dealing with leap years. The same piece of silicon had a history of causing similar aggravation for mobile devices with the likes of Zune and some Blackberry devices afflicted. In those cases, MSFT and RIMM were on top of the issue. Sony, unfortunately, was not.
I call shenanigans. If it were the "same piece of silicon" from the Zune, why wouldn't it have had the same problem as the Zune?
The Zune problem was when the date went from an actual leap year (December 31, 2008) to a non-leap year. Internally it used the number of days that had passed as a way to calculate whether the year was over and it flipped out because 2008 had too many days in it. It would freak out every leap year without a fix.
This problem has nothing to do with an accumulation of days. It's not the same problem, and until I see actual confirmation I doubt very much it's the same piece of silicon.
notmetalenough on
Samael the Radiant Faced-- Official Naming, Going Nuclear, Click on the Quest, Make She Run and Guild Measurements Officer - Clawshrimp & Co, Draenor-US
Well, good thing this all blew over. When I got home earlier I had batman:aa rather timely delivered, fired up the ps3 noticed it thought the date was 1/3/2010, corrected the date and then proceeded to play batman. A big fuss over a silly hardware issue that fixed itself.
GrimReaper on
PSN | Steam
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I think this problem began and was resolved while I was at school and dinner. This has been a cold shower for the majority of folks tied to their consoles.
I do like reading forum responses from XBOX Loyalists crowing about "lol sony".
I think this problem began and was resolved while I was at school and dinner. This has been a cold shower for the majority of folks tied to their consoles.
I do like reading forum responses from XBOX Loyalists crowing about "lol sony".
Eh, not really surprising. Heard one or two of them trying to talk about it when I went to buy BC2 last night. They were...less than correct, but eh, I wasn't going to help them learn.
It gave them something to feel superior about for a day.
People who think jobs need to be lost over some missing trophies, of all things, really really need to look at the priorities and values that they hold dear, and come to their god damn senses.
If this had bricked a bunch of PS3's, I could see calling for some firings. But freaking trophies? Come the fuck on guys.
PFT, WHAT IF I WANT TO PLAY MY PS3 GAMES IN 2110? HUH?
EVER THOUGHT OF THAT?
Well although it will be difficult to find a PS8 Holocloud with full hardware BC for the infamous PS7 Roboemotion chip the good news is that PS3 is such a child's toy by then that even your toilet paper has enough processing power to emulate it.
fragglefart on
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing was actually "fixed." The circumstances that cause the bug to manifest are simply no longer present. This will happen again.
That might be true, but if the last few years were any indication, they have until about 2014 to fix it for reals.
And how can we be sure they will? Do you have any idea how many warning signs there were for this error?
- it happened in other mobile devices with the same microprocessor or whatever
- the manufacturer of the chip found the problem and produced a new model
- the manufacturer of the chip SOLD SONY THE NEW MODEL for use
It's really brash to say "OH MY GOD FIRE PEOPLE" over this. But holding Sony accountable for knowing multiple times over that this was going to happen and didn't do anything? That's fair game. Shame on Sony. Thankfully the problem it caused was very small in scope. We can now go on with our lives, only knowing that Sony isn't on the ball with everything.
PFT, WHAT IF I WANT TO PLAY MY PS3 GAMES IN 2110? HUH?
EVER THOUGHT OF THAT?
Well although it will be difficult to find a PS8 Holocloud with full hardware BC for the infamous PS7 Roboemotion chip the good news is that PS3 is such a child's toy by then that even your three seashells have enough processing power to emulate it.
There are so few of those extreme "fanboy" types. It's interesting actually:
There are very few actual extreme fanboys or fangirls
The few that exist post a lot
Their posts are disproportionately annoying
People seem to obsess over fanboys, and try to match random posts against this hypothetical fanboy opinion. If they find a match, they attribute the post to a fanboy, consider all of that author's posts to be tained, and mistrust that person.
The world would be better off if we just ignored fanboys. Don't think about them, don't try to find them, don't accuse people of being them.
So plese stop comparing peoples' opinions to hypothetical fanboy opinions and using that to identify people as fanboys or not.
mspencer on
MEMBER OF THE PARANOIA GM GUILD
XBL Michael Spencer || Wii 6007 6812 1605 7315 || PSN MichaelSpencerJr || Steam Michael_Spencer || Ham NOØK QRZ || My last known GPS coordinates: FindU or APRS.fi (Car antenna feed line busted -- no ham radio for me X__X )
People who think jobs need to be lost over some missing trophies, of all things, really really need to look at the priorities and values that they hold dear, and come to their god damn senses.
If this had bricked a bunch of PS3's, I could see calling for some firings. But freaking trophies? Come the fuck on guys.
I don't think anyone's making the point regarding trophies. Playing Devil's Advocate, I can easily mount a case where an oversight that cost numerous users a any amount of time unable to use a multimedia device as a reason for someone at the Company to be punished [upto and including being fired over]. I certainly disagree with it, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear of firings over this.
Litany on
Steam: Litany || PSN: Litany- || Nintendo Network ID: Litany
People who think jobs need to be lost over some missing trophies, of all things, really really need to look at the priorities and values that they hold dear, and come to their god damn senses.
If this had bricked a bunch of PS3's, I could see calling for some firings. But freaking trophies? Come the fuck on guys.
I don't think anyone's making the point regarding trophies. Playing Devil's Advocate, I can easily mount a case where an oversight that cost numerous users a any amount of time unable to use a multimedia device as a reason for someone at the Company to be punished [upto and including being fired over]. I certainly disagree with it, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear of firings over this.
Yeah, I could see it being justified maybe if it were a pay service. But even then, it was 1 small glitch, and it was fixed in under 24 hours. Hell, it didn't even mess up the network, I was able to play fine the entire time. Lets go scream at the guys who picked that particular board 4+ years ago. That makes sense. Firing them over a choice that was made 4+ years ago and was likely approved by many many other people who also didn't notice the issue does not make sense.
You guys. I don't think a day without your PS3 should really require this sort of bloodlust. Nothing was bricked, everything works fine. Everything will be ok, I promise.
Posts
And inevitably, that firmware will fix the leap year clock issue, but come with a host of other issues as well.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
The chip has done this before, it's widely known. The vendor has released a fix, Sony did not implement it.
Sony doesn't really "make" anything in the PS3. All that crap is made at fabs they do not own, and a good portion of it designed by other companies.
In the end, Sony picked the components, Sony decided on what their box was going to be, and they gooned it up. This isn't the first time they have destroyed their products. TV's failing right after warranty runs out comes to mind, the VIAO laptops that failed, ect. This is a known issue with them. Even the stuff they make from the ground up, ie LION batteries, well those took out all sorts of laptops made by other people.
It's completely fair to blame them.
Overreact much?
Oh no! People's games were screwing up for one day. And even then, the "problems" it was causing like lost Trophies aren't really problems at all, the Trophies reappeared
There were a few trophies that didn't reappear for whatever reason for some people. A bug that happens for one day once every four or so years isn't that serious of a bug. The main thing about it was that the bug was unexpected. At this point, any future repeat in a few years will just be people sighing and going about their day instead of wandering what the fuck just happened. It is still a fairly hilarious but completely understandable screwup on the part of the manufacturer.
Sony picked the components on the understanding that they worked properly.
Clearly they made the wrong call on that and should take the blame on that count, fair enough.
The component manufacturer should still bear the brunt of the responsibility as far as I'm concerned.
However, when I turned it on last night, the date was wrong. It was one day behind. I updated the time via the Internet and it's fine now. So, I'm betting I would have had the issue if I'd turned it on during the phantom day.
Frankly, I wish Sony had fixed it already. They just waited until it "fixed" itself (not really). But, yeah, I would assume they are writing up some code to push with the next firmware update. They've got four years until the next time.
I think I would have been pretty pissed if a game I wanted to play offline wouldn't start up due to this, so I can understand people's frustrations. If GoW3 had been released yesterday/last night and this would have prevented playing it? Oh, the knashing of teeth would have been mighty.
Sony got lucky. A black mark, sure...but lucky nonetheless. I just hope they fix it...and that they figure out why some SP games wouldn't play offline and fix that too.
Yeah, that's my main problem there and the reason I threw that quick "job lost" comment. It's not the bug as much as whatever was in there that prevent SP games from working offline.
If this is based on a known issue with a component then either somebody at Sony fucked up on ignoring the manufacturers warning, or fucked up the bug test following the warning, or someone at the manufacturer fucked up and didn't warn Sony.
Someone somewhere had final sign off on what has become a worldwide embarrassment and, whether the end result was longterm damage or a short term blip, they will have some serious explaining to do as to why it looks like they didn't do their job.
Even a guy at work was laughing at us, saying how the Xbox was better and the PS3 sucked ass, and everyone just shrugged him off. That's already childlike online, but in real life? That's kinda sad.
Ask him how many red rings have fixed themselves
Well, what I told him was that I agreed with him that Sony sucked on this one, and that it was especially surprising and hurtful to have my PS3 not work since it would be the first time that it fucked ever, while if it happened to my 360 it would now have been the third time it broke down. And unlike the PS3's case, my Xboxes never had a soft fix, I had to send them for repair.
It's based on a conversion from BCD hex to regular hex.
In BCD, 10 is encoded as 0x10, in regular hex it's encoded as 0x0A, and 0x10 is 16.
So when they converted from BCD to regular, the internal chip thought 2010 was 2016, at least where they do the leap year check. Since 2016 is a leap year, it thought 2010 was a leap year.
This won't happen again the same way, until 2110. So they have more than just 4 years to put a fix in.
EVER THOUGHT OF THAT?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem#Year_2010_problem
But... I don't want to learn about the intricacies of mathematics and how things actually work, I want to be upset and make fanboy comments!
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
Yeah, that's fine. I'm totally okay with that. I just don't want to hear that this is going to happen every two years, like half the internets thinks.
I call shenanigans. If it were the "same piece of silicon" from the Zune, why wouldn't it have had the same problem as the Zune?
The Zune problem was when the date went from an actual leap year (December 31, 2008) to a non-leap year. Internally it used the number of days that had passed as a way to calculate whether the year was over and it flipped out because 2008 had too many days in it. It would freak out every leap year without a fix.
This problem has nothing to do with an accumulation of days. It's not the same problem, and until I see actual confirmation I doubt very much it's the same piece of silicon.
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I do like reading forum responses from XBOX Loyalists crowing about "lol sony".
Eh, not really surprising. Heard one or two of them trying to talk about it when I went to buy BC2 last night. They were...less than correct, but eh, I wasn't going to help them learn.
It gave them something to feel superior about for a day.
If this had bricked a bunch of PS3's, I could see calling for some firings. But freaking trophies? Come the fuck on guys.
Well although it will be difficult to find a PS8 Holocloud with full hardware BC for the infamous PS7 Roboemotion chip the good news is that PS3 is such a child's toy by then that even your toilet paper has enough processing power to emulate it.
And how can we be sure they will? Do you have any idea how many warning signs there were for this error?
- it happened in other mobile devices with the same microprocessor or whatever
- the manufacturer of the chip found the problem and produced a new model
- the manufacturer of the chip SOLD SONY THE NEW MODEL for use
It's really brash to say "OH MY GOD FIRE PEOPLE" over this. But holding Sony accountable for knowing multiple times over that this was going to happen and didn't do anything? That's fair game. Shame on Sony. Thankfully the problem it caused was very small in scope. We can now go on with our lives, only knowing that Sony isn't on the ball with everything.
XBL Michael Spencer || Wii 6007 6812 1605 7315 || PSN MichaelSpencerJr || Steam Michael_Spencer || Ham NOØK
QRZ || My last known GPS coordinates: FindU or APRS.fi (Car antenna feed line busted -- no ham radio for me X__X )
It's "please".
Silly PS3 fanboi.
:^:
I don't think anyone's making the point regarding trophies. Playing Devil's Advocate, I can easily mount a case where an oversight that cost numerous users a any amount of time unable to use a multimedia device as a reason for someone at the Company to be punished [upto and including being fired over]. I certainly disagree with it, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear of firings over this.
Yeah, I could see it being justified maybe if it were a pay service. But even then, it was 1 small glitch, and it was fixed in under 24 hours. Hell, it didn't even mess up the network, I was able to play fine the entire time. Lets go scream at the guys who picked that particular board 4+ years ago. That makes sense. Firing them over a choice that was made 4+ years ago and was likely approved by many many other people who also didn't notice the issue does not make sense.
You guys. I don't think a day without your PS3 should really require this sort of bloodlust. Nothing was bricked, everything works fine. Everything will be ok, I promise.
I never thought my quick little "Jobs should be lost over this" comment would spark such a mess.
To be fair, not really, no. Jobs are often lost for less.
No, to be fair, it really was. Other jobs lost for less don't make it any less so.