Xbox One Update - The Whole Internet Connection Thing

** Updated Info on the Xbox One and internet connections **

In my earlier post talking covering the big Xbox One reveal today, I got a little bit into the whole always on issue.  From those who had hands-on experience with the One, it seemed that it would be only games that utilized Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform that would require an internet connect to play.  Well I’m very sad to report that that’s not totally the case.  Let’s hop over to the Xbox press site, where they’ve posted a Q&A describing a lot of Xbox features.  On a question on always-on, this is what they’ve posted:

Q:    Does Xbox One require an “always on” Internet connection?
A:    No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet. We’re designing Xbox One to be your all-in-one entertainment system that is connected to the cloud and always ready. We are also designing it so you can play games and watch Blu-ray movies and live TV if you lose your connection.

OK…

That doesn’t make a lick of sense!

Unfortunately for me my day job keeps me on the east coast and without an invitation to Redmond to ask further questions on what’s going on.  Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo and Phil Harrison on the other hand do have that opportunity.  When Stephen and Phil pressed for an answer, what they received was the following:

“For single-player games that don’t require connectivity to Xbox Live, you should be able to play those without interruption should your Internet connection go down. Blu-ray movies and other downloaded entertainment should be accessible when your Internet connection may be interrupted. But the device is fundamentally designed to be expanded and extended by the Internet as many devices are today.”  After some more digging, here is what always means as far as Xbox is concerned:

The Xbox One checks in with the cloud once every 24 hours.

It’s a technicality that allows Team Xbox to say that they don’t require an always on connection to play.  But it ain’t exactly forever.  So fine, instead of being shackled to a network, we’re now all… on parole?  Are the 300,000 Xbox LIVE servers my parole officers?  Do I get time off for good behavior?

I have no idea what happens if you don’t check in every 24 hours, but I can’t imagine it’s good.  I have my Xbox 360 turned completely off unless I’m playing.  It’s not listening for my voice commands, it turns on when flip a physical switch.  As it stands at the moment of writing this I haven’t turned my Xbox on in roughly a week.  With these rules on the One, am I going to be restricted because I haven’t checked in for a week?

Anyway, no, I guess it’s not as bad as the three minute rule that was rumored before, but it’s still something that’s a pain in the ass.  Just letting you kids know.

OK Kids, Let's Talk Xbox One

Just a little while ago from their Redmond campus, Microsoft finally pulled the curtain and gave us all the big reveal on their successor to the Xbox 360 – The Xbox One, announcing that it will be available later in 2013.  Not to be confused with the old classic Xbox 1, the new unit is geared to be an all-in-one box as described by Xbox exec Don Mattrick.  Sitting next to the this all-in-one box was a new Kinect sensor, as well as the newly designed controller.  I watched the live stream (well as much as I could) and while it didn’t provide a ton of helpful information, there was some.

What was Covered:

What was showed off was voice control – with the unit being powered on by a user simply saying “Xbox on.”  Using voice, the controller, or gesture commands with the Kinect sensor, the user can easily switch between the Xbox Live UI and Live TV.  The UI itself is is very Windows 8 in the sense that there’s tiles for a lot of things on the interface.  This isn’t really that surprising considering that with Windows 8 Microsoft was pushing a lot of their services and devices into a connected ecosystem, shoving Xbox under that umbrella as well.  Part of that is pretty sweet connectivity, with special software designed to be able to connect between a Windows OS as well as the Xbox interface.  It also seems that Microsoft  has learned from their HD-DVD missteps with the 360, giving the One an optical drive that supports Blu-ray discs.  The unit handles games, internet and web apps, Skype functionality as well as live TV.  That seems pretty close to the “all-in-one” description that Mattrick was talking about, adding that it must be “simple, instant, and complete.”  I guess “complete” also means that the system can pick up and measure your heartbeat while you exercise.

There was also some description on the controller, designed with improved ergonomics and a new D-pad, designed with gamers helping to make it better for gamers.

As for the rest of the livestream itself, there was a big to-do about the partnership between Xbox and EA, showing off a bunch of games from EA Sports including FIFA, UFC, Madden and FIFA, all to be released over the next year.  The EA montage came with the unveiling of EA Ignite, an engine designed “specifically to help us blur the line between the real and the virtual,” according to Andrew Wilson.

The Xbox folks also announced that there would be 15 exclusive titles for the Xbox One over the year, showing one of them (presumably) as Quantum Break, which appeared to focus around a kid with superpowers.  Claiming that they’re investing more in a bunch of studios around the world to create original content, they say that these 15 exclusives will cover 8 different and brand new franchises.

Next came some celebrity guests from different areas of entertainment.  Steven Spielberg joined via teleconference to talk about a new Halo live action television show, broadcast as “premium television” through the Xbox One.  I for one don’t really care, but if that’s you’re thing, well there you go.  Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, also stopped by on screen talking about the partnership between Xbox and the NFL: “You’re going to change the football in a way that is so dramatic.”

They closed out the livestream with a preview of Call of Duty: Ghosts, focusing a great deal on the fact that the game has dogs in it, at which point my stream started flipping out, but it seemed like they revealed very little information on it as well as other games for that matter.  I guess they’re saving it all of e3.

Funny sidenote about the stream flipping out – I lost the stream 3-4 times through the whole proceedings, one of them being just as they were talking about how they have 300,000 servers to support Xbox Live.  Unfortunately none of them allowed xbox.com to get through 15 minutes of stream without crashing.

Oh right – machine specs:

• Processor: Custom AMD chip, 8-core GPU, DirectX 11.1, 32MB ESRAM (28nm chip for those interested in fabrication)
• Memory: 8GB RAM (DD3)
• Storage: 500GB internal hard drive
• Audio: 1080p and 4K support, can do 7.1 surround
• Connectivity: HDMI 1.4 output/passthrough, USB 3.0, WiFi Drect

What Wasn’t:

While they kept saying that the Xbox One was connected, they didn’t explicitly address fans’ concerns about “always on.”  I had to get intel from other sources who had a more hands on experience with the One for that.  According to Wired, the One will not be always on as was heavily rumored.  Which begs the question, how did THIS WHOLE NONSENSE even occur in the first place?  I don’t know.  I guess folks can get a little nuts in the twitterverse.  But I found out some other things too:

While it may not be always on, game discs will all have to be downloaded to the console’s internal hard drive (which makes me really worry about only a 500GB hard drive).  But once the data is on said hard drive, the user can play it whenever he or she chooses, and it will be connected to their XBL gamertag.  But if that disc is used with a different account, the person holding that second account has the option of paying a fee to install it to his or her hard drive and play.  Without that download though, play with just the disc and not copying anything to the hard drive is restricted.  According to Wired, Microsoft didn’t have an answer as to if or even how this policy would potentially be altered for the used games market or players that rent games.

As far as the “always” on rumors?  Yes and no.  Game developers making games for the One have access to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services platform to bump some of the game tasks to the cloud.  In this case yes you would require an internet connection.  If a game in question does not actually utilize Azure, then no, you will not need a connection.  I have no basis to make a prediction on what percentage of Xbox One games will utilize Azure, but my guess is that Microsoft is really going to try and push it.

So there it is in a nutshell kids.  I’ll keep my eye out for further details to keep you in the know.

Doctor Who and Football - Why It's Time We Grew Up and Get Along

Those who know me know I refer to my field of interests as multiclassing.  I enjoy sporting events as well as comic cons.  I like talking about the merits of strategy in sports as much as I do strategies for Final Fantasy boss fights.  I even enjoy arguing about the greatness of sports players as well as the greatness of all of the different Doctors.  I think it’s good to be a well rounded sort of guy that way.

I naturally then subscribe to a host of different things on social media, and some of them are Doctor Who related (I even tried lobbying BBC to make me the brown doctor to no avail).  So last month I saw what I considered to be a nice and funny post listing similarities between a Doctor Who Convention and the Super Bowl (that’s American Football for our ex-US friends) and found it wonderful.  These were the points, according to the post, listed that both types events provided:

• Lots of fans traveling from all over to gather together and celebrate something that they love watching on TV
• Sometimes they dress up as their favorite characters
• A good place to make friends and have fun
• Usually you come home with lots of merchandise and souvenirs
• If you’re lucky, you might even get to meet one of the stars and get an autograph

How great is that?  Sports and traditional geekery coming together to recognize the similarities between everyone.  And you know me kids, I like bringing people together.  I’ve even written on the topic of how we’re all the same, like how fantasy football and World of Warcraft share a lot.  So this post made me really happy.

Until, that is, I started reading the comments.  I know, I know, I should have just applied the YouTube comments rule and ignored them but once I started getting into them, I had a big problem reading some of them that were dripping in what can only be described as the old-school “geek vs sports” mentality.  Something struck me as odd though – opposite of traditional convention, the venom was coming from the geeks to be hurled at the sports fans on the page.  Unsolicited, and with a vengeance.  Dozens of people posted about how these events could not possibly be the same because “football is for losers,” or that sci fi / doctor fans are “much smarter people,” or that football doesn’t “require thought” and fans of sports are somehow dumber.  The vast majority of what I’ll call “partisan” commentary was against sports fans.  I only spotted a couple actually insulting sci-fi fans, and those “insults” really didn’t get much harsher than “it’s not real.”

Seriously?

A fandom and community that might have been used to judgment over their lifetime is now slinging the judgment at others?  And I might add, in an unsolicited manner?  It was rough getting through it and feeling like these folks were trying to recreate a version of high school were the stereotypical geeks had the social upper hand.  Or that maybe they were slinging this venom because that’s what their fandom dictates they do.  Either way, it really upset me.  For those who claim that Doctor who is about acceptance and people being themselves, they sure didn’t play the part.  So why are traditional geeks, one of the groups I do identify with, taking this route?  Are these the same people that reveled in Simon Pegg’s recent definition of “geek” that can now be found all over the internet?  Are we so “open and accepting” to shun everyone that doesn’t identify with us?  It’s spooky, and I don’t like it.

And I’m going to be the one to say it - all this reverse judging? Not ok guys. "Ew, dumb jock" and "Ugh, stupid nerd" ended in high school. Fans of both express their fandom, and the stereotype that sports fans have the IQ of a walnut is just as over-generalized as the one about nerds living in a basement doing their thing with anime/sci-fi/computers 24/7. If you're a "nerd" judging others then you've become the very people who pestered you when you were/are young, if that’s your motivation here.

Both events and both "camps" have community as a big part of their fandom, and conversations on "who was the greatest running back/wide receiver" happen just as frequently as "who was the best doctor/companion."

Now I think I have a unique perspective here.  I’m a big geek in the traditional sense.  I’m wearing a Green Lantern t-shirt typing this right now.  I have this Saturday’s Doctor Who episode set to record because I’m not going to be around.  I spend my downtime gaming.  I launched my Final Fantasy career with the original on the NES when I was 8.  On the other hand, I love football, and I do my best to watch every Eagles game during the season, regardless of how they’re doing.  I try to get out and play golf as often as I can when the weather’s nice.  Back in high school I did quiz bowl and debate after my advanced programming classes, but still played Ultimate Frisbee after school and was friends with the guys on the football team.  You can say I have a foot in both camps as it were, and I do understand both sides of the coin.

Which is why I say to everyone, with love, that it’s time to grow the hell up.  I understand that everyone is passionate about what they love and develop fierce loyalties.  And we gravitate to people who share those passions and find a sense of community.  But why does that mean that every other community is somehow inferior or less intelligent or somehow worse than yours?  I just don’t get it, not these days anyway.  According to these Whovian purists, has my INT stat taken a hit because I have a mind for sports as well?

According to my social media feeds, yeah.  And that’s sad.  I can guarantee you that once football season starts and posts/tweets about the NFL start ramping up in a couple months, so will the tweets and posts from those who feel intellectually superior, making damn sure that you know they’re too intellectually superior to watch sports.  You will also, however, find that the reverse is not true at all.  How do I know?  because I've seen it every season since I've been on Twitter.

So are there really fan-based geek outcasts anymore?  The folks I play fantasy football with are the same people who I used to raid with.  “Sports geeks” as I call some of my friends know every stat and every event, both major and minor, in their arena of sports interests.  They’re also some of the sharpest minds I’ve met.

So back to what I was talking about before in regards to Simon Pegg’s geek redefinition:

“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.”

Is there anyone here that disagrees?   He put into words how I’ve always felt.  And there’s a place and room for a lot of different types of folks at my table.

To those who feel like the negative facebook commenters, did I betray you?  Have I gone astray from your fierce Whovian fandom?  Then in the words of the Doctor himself:

Please, point a gun at me if it helps you relax. 

May 4th - The Great Star Wars Derby 2013

This past weekend included the fourth of May, which is generally considered to be Star Wars day to the geek kingdom. To those not hip to 'Wars, you may be wondering why there's a connection between an arbitrary date and an epic saga loved my many.  To those people, "May the fourth be with you."

You pickin' up what I'm puttin' down?  Excellent.

May 4th was also a big day in Louisville, Kentucky with the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby.  I lived in Louisville for a few years when I was a kid, and derby time was always fun - not only on race day and every having fun at parties but the weeklong festival that led up to it.  One of my favorite parts of the derby (and all the other races that are run at Churchill Downs) is the nutty and sometimes outright ridiculous names of the horses.  A horse named Orb won the whole thing this year, but was followed by Golden Soul and Palace Malice.  Other horses had some great names too, like Normandy Invasion, Overanalyze and Will Take Charge.

So given that these two days coincide, I decided to come up with names for horses throughout the day that could potentially run in a Star Wars themed Kentucky Derby.  You know, just for fun.  Eventually some other people started playing along, giving us a huge stable of named horses.  Since there were 20 horses in the race this year, I picked my favorite 20 for the Star Wars Derby (in no particular order, and you can see the whole list on twitter using the hashtag #starwarsderby).  They'll be loading into the gate as follows:

• Hell Hoth No Fury
• 12 Parsecs to Kessel
• Alderaan Places
• Ackbar's Warning
• Gone Baby Qui-Gon
• Dr. Kyle and Mr. Katarn
• Biggs' Mustache Comb
• Lando Milk and Honey
• AT-AT The Wire
• Buns of Steel
• This Is Not The Horse You're Looking For
• The Phantom Mare
• Adventure and Excitement
• Lando's Triple Cross
• Don't Tell Me The Odds 
• Disturbing Lack of Faith
• Wedge Can't Hang
• I Know
• Oo Tee Dee
• May the Horse Be With You
• He's My Brother
• Star Orb A New Hope
• Lando's Colt 45

And they're off!  Hell Hoth No Fury charges ahead of the field out of the gate followed by 12 Parsecs to Kessel with a good run, The Phantom Mare running almost unseen moving towards the inside rail.  This is not the Horse your Looking For trying to make a move to the outside, looking for Lando Milk and Honey and Alderaan Places in the middle of the pack.  Coming up on the turn Oo Tee Dee happily squeals his way into the inside, leaving Don't Tell Me the Odds and Biggs' Mustache Comb sifting through slings of mud.  On the backstretch is He's My Brother side by side with Buns of Steel, catching up to Hell Hoth No Fury who is still ahead by 2 lengths.  Ackbar's Warning staying cautiously steady towards the middle, Gone Baby Qui-Gon and Dr. Kyle and Mr. Katarn split to the outside.  Wedge Can't Hang looks to be losing his steam, overtaken by Star Orb A New Hope who squarely takes 4th position in the series.  Approaching the turn I Know turns on the juice, leaving Adventure and Excitement in his wake, sluggish like he just came out of a Carbonite bath.  May the Horse Be With You tries to make a move and Lando's Colt 45 takes a shot but gets sloppy and blows the turn wide to the outside.  Lando's Triple Cross takes advantage of the situation and finishes the turn at number 5 ahead of Disturbing Lack of Faith coming to the home stretch, AND DOWN THE STRETCH THEY COME!  AT-AT The Wire charges ahead on the outside against Hell Hoth No Fury, closing to within one length.  AT-AT The Wire and Hell Hoth No Fury are neck and neck, but what's this?  Ackbar's Warning goes to the whip and makes a charge, speeding to the front of the pack!  It was a trap!  It was a trap!  Ackbar's Warning on the straight and narrow cutting between AT-AT The Wire and Hell Hoth No Fury, closing the gap at a good clip, overtaking them before the line and Ackbar's Warning takes the race!  Ackbar's Warning wins, with Hell Hoth No Fury with the Place and AT-AT The Line for Show.

Phew, what an exciting race - see you kids when this happens again in 2019.

thanks to the folks that participated: @GreyAreaPodcast, @BigMikeyOcho, @neophiyte, @Mitzula, @TheRoyLRumble and @armstrongda

The World's Biggest Game of PONG hits the Philadelphia Skyline for Philly Tech Week 2013

Those who know me know that I love the concept of multiclassing.  I love when digital plays with real.  When nerdery exists with business.  When education holds hands with gaming.  When technology tangos with art.  And I have the good fortune of living in the Philadelphia area.  So let’s take those aforementioned topics and throw them all into one mixing bowl for a second.  That’s what I was able to experience Friday night celebrating the kickoff for Philly Tech Week.

And that celebration? Playing PONG. On the side of the Cira Centre. Which is a building over 400 feet tall. From about a mile out. For all the city to see.  Magical.

Philly Tech week is an annual celebration of technology and the arts through over 100 events, naturally taking place in the city of brotherly love.  As Technically Philly‘s Christopher Wink said at the event, Philly Tech Week is to show folks the amazing minds and the amazing work that’s being done in the Philadelphia area, and about the intersection of arts and technology to inspire the region.  This year to kick it off along those lines,  Dr. Frank Lee of Drexel University and his crew rigged the Cira Centre with hundreds of LED’s, each one mapped to its own IP address (pretty slick right?), and  coded a version of PONG that could communicate with each of those lights.  The controls were outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the rest of the party was.  So from the museum steps famous for that Rocky training montage, denizens of our fair city could watch some classic gameplay on an 83,000 square foot makeshift screen.

Why PONG though?  In the words of Dr. Lee when he spoke to Polygon last month, ”Pong is part of our culture,” he said. “Pong lives in every game that came since then. If you get down the tree of the life of the video game, it will lead at the root to Pong. Pong was the first successful commercial game.”  Makes a lot of sense given that the good doctor describes himself as a gamer, and he was also one of the two paddle combatants in the inaugural match.  He defeated Jerry Sweeney, CEO of the Brandywine Realty Trust, the company that owns the Cira Centre.  It was a clash of titans – Sweeney, the guy that owns the building, taking on Lee, the guy hacking it.

Dr. Lee pulled out the win in the 5 point match, but as mentioned by Christopher Wink, who emceed the whole event, with an asterisk next to it in the history books – see the video below to see what I’m talking about:

Outside of the main event, there were classic arcade machines set up as well as some live chuptunes.  The whole thing was threatened by weather, but in addition to Dr. Lee and Mr. Sweeney about 60 players were able to go to old school war in the hour and change the event was able to last.  Luckily for the couple hundred of other folks that were there to see the action, the rain held off for a good bit.  Unfortunately for me though, it started just in time to render me drenched by the time i finished my trek from the Art Museum to Suburban Station to catch my train home.

Dr. Lee talked about working with the Guinness folks about establishing the world record for the biggest video game ever.  Apparently something similar was done by Atari in Kansas City a while back, but that was only a 22 story building.  The Cira Centre is 29, so mathematically there shouldn’t be any issues getting the record confirmed.

It was an awesome time and a great way to kick off the events of the coming week.  Oh and by the way, in your face Kansas City.

With love, Philadelphia.

We May All Be Computer Criminals Soon: The CFAA and the Power to Destroy

Over the last couple of years there's been a lot of focus on legislation concerning internet privacy and regulation.  SOPA came and went.  CISPA was effectively (so we thought at the time) dead but is rearing its ugly head once again.  ACTA was killed last summer.  But all of those can have thousands of words dedicated to just them on their own.  Today we're going to be talking about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, affectionately known as CFAA for short.

The CFAA

The goal of the CFAA (when it was born from from the twisting nether ironically in 1984) was to reduce unauthorized access to computer systems for government and financial institutions.  OK, fair enough.  But the number of amendments that were attached to it over the next couple of decades changed its tone.  In 1994 Congress turned it into a weapon for private litigants suing for civil damages, giving private business a means to sue employees for alleged information theft.  2001's Patriot Act amended it to allow searching records from a user's ISP.  Each amendment suffers the same kind of vague, broad and overreaching language that we've grown to know and cringe at just like other proposed internet regulation has.  A broad interpretation of the CFAA justified criminal charges for employees that violated a company's acceptable use policy or violating an internet terms of use policy.  Criminalized.  Thankfully that last one was changed again in 2011, to bring the focus of the law back to what it originally was - combating unauthorized access to information.  But it still had the power to destroy.

The case of Aaron Swartz

The most prominent case illustrating this was that of Aaron Swartz, a bright digital innovator and activist that helped develop RSS content syndication and the creation of the Creative Commons licenses.  He also was the founder of the online group Demand Progress, an activist group that was well known for their digital campaign against SOPA.  The case was around his access to information from JSTOR, a not-for-profit repository of scholarly and academic journals created in 1995 to help academic libraries and publishers provide access to their works without taking up physical shelf space.  Users that have JSTOR accounts through an academic institution have free and unfettered access to this repository.  Swartz's position as a research fellow at Harvard University granted him access to the JSTOR system.  According to the Department of Justice however, Swartz did so from a "protected computer" on MIT's campus, with the intention of stealing documents and sharing them sharing them over numerous file-sharing sites, leaving him open to prosecution with the full strength of the CFAA.  If he was convicted of the charges (wire fraud and computer fraud as violations of the CFAA) he could have faced up to 35 years in prison and fines up to $1 million.  Sadly, Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment this past January.

There are tons more details to this case I'm glossing over, but you can read more about the whole thing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Present Power and Proposed Changes

That's the power the CFAA has as it stands.  In the wake of Aaron Swartz's death, many politicians, including SOPA critics Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), raised questions about how the government handled the case, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) proposed to reform the CFAA with Aaron's Law, to prevent what happened to Swartz to happen to other computer users.  This reform is extremely important in the internet age, because according to the bill, you don't have to be a hacker or know anything about hacking to be charged for unauthorized access.  In the words of Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University,

"Breaching an agreement or ignoring your boss might be bad. But should it be a federal crime just because it involves a computer? If interpreted this way, the law gives computer owners the power to criminalize any computer use they don't like. Imagine the Republican Party setting up a public website and announcing that no Democrats can visit. Every Democrat who checked out the site could be a criminal for exceeding authorized access."

So reforming this bill would be in the best interests of the internet and all American internet users, right?  So why are new proposed amendments aimed at dealing more damage instead of fixing what's broken?  Looking at the new draft (which you can see here) just talking about violating the CFAA will carry the same punishment as actually completing the act itself, by adding the short phrase "for the completed offense."  There's also language that links CFAA violations to racketeering, putting every violator on the same level as a member of an criminal organization.  In addition to violating website's fine print being a criminal act, the proposed changes expand the scope of civil seizure and forfeiture by the federal government.  And one of the most frightening additions is a section on "exceeding authorized use,"  meaning that if I want to access information I legally have access for an "impermissible purpose" then I'm punishable.  I'm not saying that's a common thing, but it could be another arrow in a prosecutor's quiver.

Terms of Use Violations and... Seventeen Magazine?

Yes, that's right, Seventeen Magazine.  Upon hearing of the new proposed earlier this month, they immediately changed a very specific part of their terms of service.  Their terms of service used to read that you had to be at least 18 years of age to access the website, meaning that if you couldn't access Seventeen if you were... actually 17.  They have a readership of 4.5 million teenage readers, whose average age is 16 and a half.  As of April 3rd, that language has been removed.  Otherwise, under the new proposed CFAA changes, over 4 million teenagers could have been charged with computer crimes just for visiting the site, violating the user site agreement fine print.  Hearst Magazines realized that this was ridiculous, and thankfully chose not to turn an army of teenagers into felons.

It's important that people know what's going on with this kind of legislation - any laws that affect computer use affect all of us, and we as citizens should actively be making sure that our own day-to-day activity can't be potentially weaponized against us.  If you want to contact your representatives about the CFAA (or anything else for that matter) the EFF has a lookup tool you can use to know where to send your comments and letters.

This is far from the first and far from the last when it comes to skewed computer law.  Outside of recruiting more geeks in Congress, our voice is all we have.

Microsoft Creative Director Doesn't Deny Always-On Rumors, Tells us to #dealwithit

Remember when I told you kids about the rumor that the next iteration of the Xbox console would require an always-on connection?  Even after those rumors have spread like wildfire, drawing a collective “WTF guys?” from the gaming community, Microsoft is still unwilling to confirm or deny an always-on requirement to operate their next-gen Xbox, codenamed “Durango.”  In my opinion it is that same refusal that is keeping the rumor alive and drawing gamers’ ire.  It’s really simple fix – all we want is a straight answer.  Yes or no, that’s all it would take.

But instead of real answers from Microsoft to their customer base (that pay hundreds per console and upwards of $50 per title) through a statement or press release, what we got instead was arrogance, ignorance, and insult from Microsoft Studios’ Creative Director Adam Orth (@adam_orth).  Over Twitter.  After going on about how he doesn’t see the big deal about always-on devices and software, he added one choice hashtag to the proceedings:

#dealwithit.

That was his answer.   Classy, man.

After BioWare’s Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) cited the always-on issues that arose with Diablo III and SimCity, Orth quipped that “Electricity goes out too” and sarcastically followed up with “I will not buy a vacuum cleaner” and other assy things of the like.   His twitter feed has since been protected (uh ohhhhh I think the boss may be angryyyy), but of course a number of screencaps were taken around the web to let everyone know how it went down.  For someone who really loves always-on that much, I figured he would have known that stuff you put out on the internet can last forever.  Thanks to HuffPost Tech UK by the way for this lovely capture.

As far as the validity of the always-on rumors, it was Kotaku who finally furnished an answer for us.  Their sources say that the answer is not only “yes,” but that it will only take 3 minutes of being offline to not be able to play anymore.   So why not just tell us that in the first place?

I’m surprised that Orth, someone who’s been in the industry for a while (he’s spent time with SCEA and LucasArts), could make such a shortsighted comment after the very public fiascoes concerning Diablo III last year and SimCity just last month.  The comment shows an alarming amount of industry ignorance for someone in such an important position, and says to me that Microsoft is catering only to users that have stable always-on broadband connections, telling those who don’t to deal with it.  There are a number of areas in the United States that either don’t or have spotty service.  You guys ever use Skype internationally or to someone in the remote USA?  play World of Warcraft or any other MMO?  Then I’m sure you noticed that some players would lose connection and drop wayyyy more frequently than others.  If that’s the case, then your wiped raid is evidence of this fact.  For those users, a 3 minute timer would render this console unplayable.  And that’s just in the United States.  What about American military personnel that game during deployments to remote areas?  In remote areas they’re running on connections reliant on satellites in geosynchronous orbit, where some areas can only be reached by certain satellites, possibly giving a skewed signal on a flatter-than-optimal angle.  So there are definitely potential issues with that setup.

And what about international users?  A lot of those users may find similar problems.

Working in IT I get that Microsoft’s plan forward on their enterprise side is pushing everyone cloud-ward with SkyDrive and their 2013 line of Office.  Given that they’ve been talking for a while about a Microsoft “ecosystem” that would combine Microsoft OS’es with Xbox, their moves including this one don’t seem so shocking.  But aside from that, they need to understand that this business model going forward is not only going to hurt their users, but their own brand.  Sony has made no such assertion that the PlayStation 4 would have an always-on component, so this helps them too, potentially giving them the opportunity to take some ground and have a chuckle at the same time.   But we still don’t have a straight answer.  So it looks like we’re going to have wait until E3 to see any sort of confirmation from Microsoft.  Meaning they have until June to get it together with a unified front and message to users, without rogue employees going berserk on social media.

Let me be clear on my stance on this sort of business practice in case you don’t know already.  I am against always-on.  In my opinion it’s a form of DRM that is sharply anti-consumer, especially now that we have laptops that have the graphics card juice to play modern games.  Always-on means I can’t play Diablo III on a flight, or SimCity on a long train ride.  And dictating when and where we can play our games just isn’t right. We’ve been burned with it more than once.  But the problem is partially us.  Always-on seems to be the way the industry is going, and we tacitly support it by still buying the games knowing the potential issues going in.  At that point, they already have our money, so why should they care?  They’ll move on, and quickly.  And we’ll be left wondering what to do when they finally shut down those connection servers.

nVidia at PAX East: Project Shield Hands-On

Back in January we saw Project Shield from nVidia making its debut at CES in Las Vegas.  It was shown off as a mobile gaming device that looked like an Xbox controller with a screen conveniently attached to it for gaming on the go.  There weren’t many details available at the time aside from touting Steam streaming, gaming from the Android market, and streaming games from PC’s running nVidia cards.  Outside of that there wasn’t much else available, but suffice it to say that I was intrigued and looking forward to getting my hands on it.

I was able to do just that at PAX East a short while ago, where the nVidia crew gave me a hands on tour of their still-in-development foray into mobile gaming.  While they were getting a unit ready for me to test drive we got down to the brass tacks of system requirements and capabilities.  The Shield is packing a quad-core Tegra 4 and GeForce graphics on a 5″ 720p multitouch HD display on the visual front, with Android Jelly Bean running the unit’s software guts.  A micro USB port and wi-fi run the connections for charging and streaming, and the unit is capable of playing any Android game that supports a controller, anything from nVidia’s TegraZone,  and anything streamed from a PC running at last a GeForce GTX 650 video card.  OK, basics gotten.  Now to sit down and see what this handheld could do.

We started the session with PC streaming, the part I was most looking forward to seeing.  There was a PC sitting next to me running the appropriate spec running Skyrim in HD.  I picked up the Shield and started moving around with the control sticks and could see the controls being sent to the PC at the same time as they were taking effect local on the handheld unit.  The graphics and textures looked great on the small screen and the control was smooth.  But above everything else, the most pleasantly surprising part was that the lag between PC and Shield the two was impressively negligible.  As it was explained to me, the Shield plugs in with nVidia’s GFE (GeForce Experience) and employs their Kepler hardware, which includes an H.264 encoder that helps reduce latency and lag time with low power consumption while streaming.  That’s why you need at least a GTX 650 to get it going.

Next I took at look at how it ran on the Android side with some Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.  The game felt good to play and the controls were very responsive.  There were a few graphical glitches though, where sometimes building edges would bend or ramps went through other structures.  It didn’t affect the gameplay, but it was definitely noticeable during gameplay.

Aside from that there were a few issues with navigation through the menus on the home screen getting between Android, TegraZone and PC stream, but the unit is still under development so I’m not going to hold that against them too much.  What I wanted to see was a success – and that was the PC streaming.

What I really liked about the Shield was how it opens up some options for you.  If you look at iOS or Android as a gaming platform you’re pretty much restricted to what’s available on the App Store and Google Play, assuming you already don’t have access to TegraZone with your Tegra-powered device.  Even units like the DS are limited to some extent.  The Shield’s real power is availability – on the go you can get stuff from Google Play and TegraZone, but once you get to your wireless network and your entire game library is now available to you, including what you have on Steam.  On other specifics, the folks at nVidia weren’t ready to comment on specs like internal memory and gave me a Q2 release date range.

All in, I’m curious to see what the release model can do.

PAX East Panel Postmortem: Game Designers are Defining the Next 50 Years of Education

Off the top of your head, could you tell me what the atomic weight of lead is?  Come on now, no peeking at the periodic table.  How about telling me who invented the cotton gin?  OK, let's try something else - what would you use to deal with a dark-type Pokémon to be super effective?  How about what kind of chocobos you need to get a Golden one?  I'm guessing there's a better chance of you guys knowing the answer to one of the latter two than the first.  Why do you think that's the case?  Maybe it's because some people have more fun playing games than memorizing information from Chemistry class.  Or maybe there's more to it than that.

If you ask Steve Swink, which PAX East goers filling the Merman Theater did on Friday morning, he has a more simple explanation for many of the world's ills.  He ran a panel called "Game Designers are Designing the Next 50 Years of Education."  While talking about healthcare and other complex problems we are currently facing, he mused that "healthcare is fucked, and education prepares no one for anything."  In his opinion, the current educational system treats students more like hard drives by using memorization over teaching problem solving and thinking.  And I can't wholly disagree - I remember a lot of memorization in middle and high school and regurgitation for exams.  Personally, working through puzzles in the Legend of Zelda or figuring out what enemies were weak to what in Final Fantasy for me was more thought-provoking than school was a lot of the time.  I mean we had those old MECC games like Number Munchers, Oregon Trail and Rainbow Trout but still, those were supplemental to our curriculum, not actually a part of the core.  It's true - games help people understand complex systems.  Try to explain a game like a Civilization title or any Final Fantasy universe, and you'll see that while it seems tough and complex to others, you seem to have a pretty solid grasp on it.  I honestly feel I'm smarter and that my brain tweaked itself for problem solving because of the games I played at a young age.

According to Mr. Swink, there's some support on making games part of core curriculum from some groups, like the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.  Part of what they do is making educational games so when students "exit school they feel empowered" to understand complex systems.  To show this concept he showed us an educational game he developed called The Doctor's Cure (Plague: Modern Prometheus) which you can see at Atlantis Remixed.  It's a 3D game run on the Unity platform where students take on the role of an investigative reporter learning about a visiting doctor's methods of finding an antidote for a plague that has struck town.  Playing the game helps the students (through their journalist role) put together persuasive arguments.  To do this they find and collect quotes as evidence and put it through an analyzer, which you can see on the right, building causal chains to make a solid persuasive case.

Pretty slick, right?

The game is designed to be part of core curriculum that the teacher can run in the classroom, where he or she plays the role of Scoop, the town newspaper's editor, with their own back end and control panel to set rules and take a look at their students work.  And there's evidence that the program is working.  Sunnyside school district in Arizona, a district where 70% of students are on the subsidized lunch program and 50% of the students speak English as a second language, raised $16MM (that's million) so that they could build infrastructure and give every student a laptop to take part.  As a result, even ESL students that didn't like to write before were producing good persuasive essays using Doctor's Cure.  Which is an amazing thing.

Mr. Swink has the right idea - to give kids a virtual world with the ability to change things and see the consequences by providing them a safe place to fail - and more importantly - understand.  When the students make their persuasive arguments, they vote whether or not to keep the doctor in town or to kick him out - each decision having  its own ethical quandaries.  I'd call that a better way to help kids understand complex systems and spin up some critical thinking, wouldn't you?  Because as he accurately stated, "kids aren't hard drives, and we have no idea what the world is going to be like in 50 years.  Even 5."

And for the record,  the answers to those questions at the top of the page are: 207.2, Eli Whitney, fighter type, and mating a black and a wonderful with a Zeio nut and some luck.

To find more information, you can visit Atlantis Remixed and the Center for Games and Impact.

Pre-PAX Panic! If a Phone Falls in a Cab, does it Make a Sound?

I headed to PAX East a day early so I could get settled in, get my media badge and know exactly where the hell I was going for opening day.  A 6 hour train ride and my luxurious chariot that was the Amtrak was finally in Boston.  The South Station was just a minute or so from my hotel, so within minutes I was checked in (The Intercontinental Boston is fantastic by the way) without issue.  Finally settled, it was time to venture out for procuring those badges with the Grey Area Podcast’s very own lovely and talented Jenesee Grey.  We got to the convention center without a hitch, picked up my badge, got a little sneak preview of the con floor, and went on our merry way.  Next was the cab to pick up her badges from the dude holding them for her.  Again, no problems there.  Everything was going to plan and we were on schedule for some sushi at 8.

Unfortunately that’s when the universe decided that everything was going TOO according to plan.  In the next cab (the one slated for said target sushi) my jacket felt a bit light when the cab started.  A little too light.  About as light as it would be without, oh I don’t know, a Droid RAZR MAXX in the pocket.  Yep.  It was gone.

You’ve all seen those posters and shirts with the famous British epithet “Keep Calm and Carry On?”  This was roughly the exact opposite of that.  It was more like a t-shirt I saw once and almost bought from Threadless.  The crown upside down in distress, and instead of the famous line was the appropriate “Now Panic and Freak Out.”  That’s where I was at.  See these days a cell phone isn’t just something to make calls on.  A decent smartphone can be your life in a pocket.  That was my email, my social media, private accounts I alone access, my pictures and videos, and a host of other information that no one but me should be seeing.  Granted, they’d need to figure out the pattern code an one of a number of ridiculous passwords on rotation but still.  There’s a feeling of helplessness that strikes you when something like that happens.  Oh and the best part – I couldn’t remember my cab number.

Yes.  I know.  an absolute rookie mistake I’ll never forgive myself for.

Thankfully, during my frantic near-episode searching the snow banks on the side on the sidewalks in case it fell, Jenesee called the cab company and spammed my phone number.  With no response we figured that the best play would be to just call Verizon Wireless to track it, and that’s when someone answered.  As it turned out phone was recovered by a group of fellow PAX East goers who got the cab next, and after some searching were able to find them at the bar they were chilling at.  And what was it called?

The Green Dragon.  That’s right, fellow geeks in the city to get their PAX on picked it up, and were holding it for me at a bar with the same name as those frequented by Shire-folk in the realm of Middle Earth.  They couldn’t unlock my pattern or couldn’t make any calls from it but they still held on to it in case I got a call through.  And they didn’t have to.  And I think that speaks to the type of community PAX has created for gamers and their con-goers.  I want to believe that fans that descended upon Boston could imagine if it happened to them, and follow the “don’t be a dick” attitude that we see in Penny Arcade’s strips and columns and a lot of what they do.

And the absolute best part of the whole thing – I had to argue with the dude that found it to at least buy him a beer for his help.  Many thanks to you sir, to PAX, and to nerd culture for averting a potential disaster and horrible time at the convention.

Now then, to the fine folks we met at the Green Dragon, you have my info, make sure you get at me!