Sony... why can't you mantain a web site?

BillyBoy wrote on 3/13/2005, 7:58 PM
The constant crashing of your web site and the Mickey Mouse "security measures" you insist on using is getting old. I just wasted twenty minutes trying to log on after your servers were down again for what seems like the 100th time just this year.

The situation is this:

After the server is back up, the initial forum page appears, but the previous log in routine fails. I am then forced to again jump through the same lame totally unnecessary registeration hoops, again forced to entry my email address, must be at least 50 times I've done that now, then I'm forced to enter a password, the very same password I already entered countless times then answer the same moronic "security" questions that pertains to my password which you claim is necessary if I"forgot" it, but you see the problem is I didn't forget, your system doesn't seem capable of remembering it or somehow the cookie gets corrupted or something. I didn't have any system crash. There is nothing wrong with my system. Windows even shows the email and password, yet it doesn't matter one bit. All this is bad enough, yet I had to do it over and over and over again until finally it worked.

I can excuse such gross reckless regard for your customer's time if your were some Mickey Mouse company. You Sony, are not a Mickey Mouse company, but coming to this site sometimes I think you are, but no, rather Sony is a multi national, multi billion dollar corporation that can't seem to keep its web site functioning properly. What a joke.

Comments

Nat wrote on 3/13/2005, 8:02 PM
That's funny, never had such a problem.

The forums are provided as a free service to Vegas users.
I'd suggest you go over at DMN and pay some money to enjoy an ad-free forum, you might get less *troubles* there...
mjroddy wrote on 3/13/2005, 8:14 PM
I must be gettin' lucky too. I can't remember the last time I had trouble logging on.
... oh, wait, it took me half a moment to re-register once the "new" board came back on line. Other than that, I've been remarkably trouble free here on Sony's forums.
farss wrote on 3/13/2005, 11:36 PM
No problems here either and I'm on the other side of the Pacific. It is a tad slow to update at times but nothing I cannot live with. One thing though, I do have cookies turned on, could this explain BBs grief?
Bob.
briang wrote on 3/14/2005, 1:26 AM
No problem for me either, and I log on two or three times a day.

BrianG
MyST wrote on 3/14/2005, 3:59 AM
The only problems I'm seeing is that even though I've selected "remember my password", it doesn't. So I have to type it in every time I login.
Also, the "last visited" time is off.

Mario
the_learninator wrote on 3/14/2005, 4:28 AM
no problems here......after the forum change it works even better...your on your own billy boy
craftech wrote on 3/14/2005, 4:54 AM
I had trouble getting the website to load all last night. I thought maybe it was my ISP connection, but this website was the only one that took several attempts to get to load. I can't say it has happened a lot of times, but it has happened and last night was one of those times.
I guess that makes two of us now, doesn't it?

John
Orcatek wrote on 3/14/2005, 5:51 AM
If you are using an old bookmark/favorite that may be your remember my logon problem. I had it to, and just recreated the bookmark and it has worked fine since.
filmy wrote on 3/14/2005, 6:02 AM
No it makes thress of us - I replied to a post and hit "post message", went on about my business and about 20 minutes later it was still "posting". So I opened another Mozilla and clicked aways to other links and they all loaded fine. Clicked to these forums and nothing.

The password issue that BB is having I had, as did a few others, right after the latest 're-sign up version' of this site went live. The problems as far as log in seemed to go away after the first day or so. The other issues seem to still go on - in my case it is daily hangs/lags with this forum only. Sometimes it takes upwards of 5 minutes for a link to load - I mean being in a thread, clicking on a topic and nothing happens. Matter of fact it did it just now in this thread. It is almost like the "old' server was nuked and they moved over to a "new", slower server and it can not handle all the traffic. I have also gotten several Sony site "Unable to locate the page you requested" errors for this forum over the last few weeks as well. Simply re-clicking the same link again will bring up the forums fine however. There are for sure some bugs on the Sony end somewhere.
Spot|DSE wrote on 3/14/2005, 6:13 AM
I believe Sony was upgrading the website last night, because some product registrations I was sending wouldn't go through, nor could I access serial number information. The forums were also completely down for about half an hour last night, but with the significantly lowered traffic of the last couple weeks, it's likely not many caught it.
BillyBoy wrote on 3/14/2005, 7:04 AM
The whole point of my little rant was you shouldn't have to "register" to post to a forum in the first place. Afterall, its only a forum. There are no real security issues involved. There is no need to have passwords, only a unique user name is needed so you don't end up with two or more people posting under the same name. Again the real issue is a company setting up roadblocks with built-in klutziness having "security" features that don't work properly. When they fail, they reflect negatively on the company that uses them, not on the end user being inconvenienced by them. For those that don't know, asking for email addresses is a marketing tool and has nothing to do with any real security.

JJKizak wrote on 3/14/2005, 7:17 AM
Guy's, Guy's---Give them a chance, Rome wasn't built in a day.

JJK
BillyBoy wrote on 3/14/2005, 7:39 AM
As its been said before, part of the problem why this forum is frequently sluggish or down is how its designed. If you've installed software than can block/monitor pop ups, you browser would inform you that this site uses 207 pop-ups. That's simply ridiclous. So too is the message at the bottom that mentions free UPS ground shipping for U. S. orders.

Sony, being a well known international company, with no doubt many non American customers accessing this forum are reminded daily they pay extra if they order directly from Sony, which probably means they order elsewhere. If I were such a potential customer, I wouldn't be happy being constantly reminded I'm treated as a second class customer. The point here being if Sony insists on using this site for marketing, they should know how to do marketing fairly. Guess not.
Coursedesign wrote on 3/14/2005, 8:01 AM
BillyBoy,

I don't understand how you can say no passwords are needed.

Let's say there were no passwords.

Tomorrow there is a posting from Billyboy saying that he has become a fundamentalist Christian, he is working hard on an interface to run Vegas 5 under DOS instead of Windows, and this newfangled DV and HDV is nowhere near as good as the first generation of VHS.
And it's from BillyBoy, right? Then the next posting from BillyBoy says, "I didn't say that. I joined the Ku Klux Klan and I prefer Hi-8." And so on. Chaos. Maybe passwords aren't such a bad idea after all...

I also have to say that I don't think too many people outside the U.S. find it offensive that a U.S. company offers free ground shipping to local customers in the same country.

I also think they are very much entitled to put in a discreet plug for themselves on a forum that helps customers a lot and costs real money to maintain. I never saw any indication of missed pop-ups (which Firefox usually indicates just in case).

Now, I noticed an outage last night and even one this morning. Ditto a couple of times in the past. This is not 911 or a bank web site, so some occasional problems don't bother me that much. Think of what a great resource this is, and let's be grateful!

BillyBoy wrote on 3/14/2005, 8:13 AM
This is one of the sites of a huge, very successful, multi national, multi billion dollar corporation that has near instant name recognition world wide. The quality of performace of this site should reflect that. Sluggish performace dating back years, web servers coming up and going down, sometimes many times within hours dating back years does not represent Sony's image very well. I had thought when it was SonicFoundy, a little Wisconsin company that few outside of the music business heard of was the reason. Guess not. Sorry, I'm not one to accept good enough, is good enough. Sony is a leader is several industries, ALL their web sites should reflect that. I mean geez, how hard is it to establish and mantain a decent web site? Answer: Not very.
VOGuy wrote on 3/14/2005, 8:32 AM
(...sigh...)
discdude wrote on 3/14/2005, 8:34 AM
I don't mind the forum being down because Sony doesn't promise 24/7 access to it. Don't get me wrong, I love this forum but I consider it a perk of owning Sony software rather than something that I am entitled to.

However, what does piss me off is when the registration server goes down and I can't activate my software. This has happened a few times (most recently yesterday). That is why product activation makes me livid. I bought a license to use this software FOREVER. What happens if Sony goes bankrupt tomorrow. Will I be able to reinstall my software ever again?

I wish there was some law governing product activaition. I really do. Until that time, it means I could be screwed at any time. Therefore, I avoid products with product activation as much as possible.
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/14/2005, 9:01 AM
Haven't had any prob's yet but will post if I do. Though I do think that not having a login/username/pass is unwise. Having run quite a few forums, I do think it does give some pause before spamming boards with ads or solicitations, or just flaming to flame. And in those situations where they do go ahead and do it anyway, its gives a few more choices on recourse.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com
jlafferty wrote on 3/14/2005, 9:20 AM
No probs with the site here. Ever. I'm on Firefox 1.0.

- jim
BillyBoy wrote on 3/14/2005, 9:34 AM
Product activation schemes should be outlawed and made illegal because the consumer has little or no recourse if for example the company decides to stop supporting the software, hits hard financial times and no longer can afford to support it, or simply goes out of business.

A good example is Sonic Foundy which almost did that because of some very poor management decisions. If it wasn't for Sony buying them out and you were one of the people that suffered a hard drive failure where you had to reinstall you could have ended up holding the bag and have ended up paying hundreds of dollars for software you no longer could "activate" and therefore no no longer use.

The problem isn't does your software run today, rather will it run tomorrow?

If situations beyond your control happen, ie some required reactivation scheme is triggered because you were forced to reinstall software on some new drive and the serial number of the old drive is part of the activation scheme or some other looney idea you could end up in the cold. Its like you daddy bought a Huson years ago and because they went out of business the key to the car would no longer start it.

Like copyright laws, software activation schemes are very loppsided and offer little or no protection to the end user if the producer decides to stop supporting the software or no longer can afford to. Unlike other industries where spare parts and companies qualifed to make repairs to discontinued products abound, the software industry has gotten away with bloody muder and pretty much does what it wants and you the consumer end up holding the bag.

Before Sony came riding in to "save" Sonic Foundy, there was some talk here about them proving a safey net. The reality is under current law there is no requirement to do so and unlike software that simply is no longer supported or updated, having software you can't use because of some idiotic "protection" scheme is a totally different situation that should be banned by law.
filmy wrote on 3/14/2005, 11:10 AM
>>> No probs with the site here. Ever. I'm on Firefox 1.0.<<<

[IRONY] Wow. I must get the new Firefox than. I did not know it could access sites that are not even online or down for whatever reason. Guess it can also login when you need to and enter in passwords and....well, heck..I reckon this whole UI is not even needed because it must be able to auto reply to posts as well. [/IRONY]

Ok, look - enough already. All sites have issues at one time or another. Any honest web person will tell you this. Several sites we have designed have moved servers over the years, one of them as recent as last week. Some have been taken offline while we update pages. The mentality that makes posts like "No probs with the site here. Ever." is the same mentality that posts "Vegas is perfect...all the time. It never crashes...ever". Come on back down to reality here people. This site goes through sluggish times every time some sort of change happenes. When it went from SoFo to Sony we all whined at problems. When it again changed we did it and now again over the last few weeks there have been bugs that have either caused it to go offline or to be sluggish...among other issues ranging from time zones to multiple postings.

It is a knee jerk reaction to defend something you love - Vegas and this site being somehow criticized can cause this reaction. But take a breath, come on back down to earth and smell the fresh snow. I do not like having to click and wait for a thread to come up, I feel like I am back on a 1440 modem anymore. For me it is slower than it was back in the SoFo days at times.

*EDUIT* - A few spelling things.
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/14/2005, 11:23 AM
For myself I wasn't trying to defend Sony, Vegas, or the forum. I was only stating that I myself have not experienced the problems that others have stated. Seems that's part of what we do when were troubleshoot something, isolate the problem. Nothing defensive about it, no knee jerk, and I assure you my feet are planted firmly on the ground. Sorry the site is lagging for you but everything comes up fine and fast over here.

- Ray


- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com
filmy wrote on 3/14/2005, 11:44 AM
Not aimed at you Ray - you didn't say that you *never* had any problems with it. But if you look above and follow the thread you will see people saying they have no issues...you being one of them. This part is fine. But the add-ons of "you're on your own" or "Ever" after the "no problems here" are what I always find bothersome.

Like systems there are many variations of what is going on. I am not web tech support for Sony, I am not the webmaster for the forums. But those who are, they are on top of things and have been making little tweaks here and there based on what we users have said. In itself this is saying "We understand there are things to be worked on" and these things may not affect you at all...but they do exist. I just figured there has been a massive hit in traffic of late causing the slow downs and my point way back up there as that if that is the case maybe they should move to a faster server that can handle the traffic. However Spot pointed out that the site may have been down last night for a while, which would explain last nights glitch. But still the Sony messages about "page not found" that have only been going on since all this new updating is another issue all together, as would be the slow downs on clickings. I posted in this thread because I felt too many people were just sort of blowing off BB's first post as "Must be you, no one else has any problems with the forum" and that is not the case. An I am not saying it is fully the fault of Sony but the issues seem to be at that end, not mine. Some of it might be routing issues along the Time Warner/RR lines. Other might be site traffic at the time I get the errors. A lot can happen between our machine and the server this forum is on...lots of miles of wire.

*EDIT* - some spelling
BillyBoy wrote on 3/14/2005, 11:59 AM
I think comments like these can get taken wrong both ways. You have some people having trouble and some saying oh, not me, which could get read by those having the problem that they must be doing something wrong rather then other people simply reporting what their experience is.

I've got into the habit of coming to this forum frequenty during the time I'm sitting in front of this computer which is usually from about 8:00AM to frequently well past midnight. Sometimes I just peek in for a few minutes or less, other times I hang out for an extented time. I and others that do that, I'm guessing several do, may notice things others may not. That this site at times is up and down more than a yo-yo and ALWAYS has been for years or that at times it is extremely sluggish or that you frequently catch server generated error messages indicating things aren't right is old news. So too posters can get caught posting something, (probably in anger) then a few minutes later edit or delete that post themselves or see the moderator do it are none the wiser. Those peeking in the forum more frequenty DO see those things.

That some never or rarely have "problems" with the site can also be influenced by things beyond Sony's control. For those that don't know, everything on the Internet travels in packets. Some of these packets can take a odd route between Sony's server before ending up on your monitor. That there is so much junk that's part of this site (all the pop ups for example) is within Sony's control and may be what causes some of the delays for some. In my case, living near Chicago, my ISP too, needing to access servers in California results in a lot of extra hops others may not have in their path. I pity those in Europe or further, then again because of how the Internet works my path can at times for some packets end up bouncing around half the globe or more so in spite of my having a very fast broadband connection things at times are very slow, far slower then "normal" access to the rest of the web which strongly suggests somethings isn't right on Sony's servers or at their ISP on their backbone because I rarely have such problems elsewhere. Most every other web site I vist loads instantly, even if extensive. Sony's site can take far longer at times and frequently especially when reading loger threads there are long delays between the screen updating once you click the edit button or want to visit another thread or switch forums. Odd, since now I'm surfing at a speed of 4 million bits per second.