I had written earlier about Sony and how they really commit stupid marketing blunders when it comes to fundamental software. The example I quoted was their failure to include the most basic of music encoding protocols MP3 into their Walkman products, going instead with a proprietary and locked standard. Now, according to Ars Technica, they are doing it again:
Sony drops the ball on the PSP's wireless security
Now here's a major technical fumble of the kind you don't see every day: Sony launches the PSP worldwide, touting its 802.11b support, and only includes WEP support! As you know if you read our Wi-Fi blackpaper (or if you've been paying any attention at all to wireless news for the past few years), WEP is garbage. Someone clever commented in a Sony message board thread about this issue that WEP is so insecure and fast WEP-cracking utils are so widespread and easy to use, that it's almost like there's a Ron Popeil product out that'll do it for you.
Not being a PSP owner (*sniff*), I wasn't aware of this issue until I ran across this outraged ZDNET blog post from George Ou. Ou isn't the first person to be mystified by Sony's decision�some googling turned up this blog post from earlier in the month�but he's the first I've seen with a big soapbox. Ou is calling for Sony to stop producing PSPs without WPA support, and if possible to ship a firmware upgrade that'll put WPA support on all existing PSPs.
Sony does great on hardware -- their WEGA Televisions, the Trinitron was king of the hill for monitors for a long long time (still using mine) and their replacement for the DVD -- the BluRay -- is by far the better of several contenders. Now if they could just get a clue over to their software department...