technical fowl

US Military Ready to Court Martial the Xbox One

2013-06-18T22:49:00.001-04:00

Remember a while back when former Xbox director Adam Orth put his foot in his digital mouth, tweeting to us all that if there is an always on connection (of course before they confirmed it) that we can all #dealwithit? As you know, I had some fundamental problems with the sentiment. Orth went on to be completely dismissive about folks that didn’t have a constant and reliable internet connection. That covers a lot of folks – gamers that live in the rural United States without broadband or have to rely on spotty satellite service as well as members of our armed services that are deployed abroad. I spoke to some of my friends in uniform when that information came out, and they were unanimously unpleased. Gaming is how some of them blow off steam while deployed in remote areas or at sea, and a requirement for online check ins with the inability to play offline without one puts that to an end.

Those statements seem to be resonating with American military personnel. For example US Navy Lieutenant Scott Metcalf, according to reports from The Navy Times, has gone from eagerly awaiting his console’s arrival to not even being sure that he’ll be buying one from Microsoft. The always on policy as well as other aspects of the Xbox are what he calls “showstoppers.” Here’s what a Microsoft spokesperson told the Military Times about Xbox functionality:

“With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection”

The Times outline the other problems that Lt. Metcalf and others have with the new device. For starters, the Xbox One is only supported in 21 countries – meaning it’s unavailable to any personnel deployed outside of those zones. If somehow the lucky military gamer in question is in one of those 21 countries, games are region locked, so guess what? No buying games locally or firing up a disc from home – because if your XBox Live account is linked to a different region, you’re looking at no joy.

More so than the always on component of the console and the inability to play games offline – or even really at all in some cases, is the security issues. This is a huge issue in the past couple weeks, especially considering Germany’s consideration to ban sales of the console considering it a surveillance device. It’s absolutely no surprise to me that the US military feels the same way. In your living room, an always on (and always listening) Kinect unit might pick up a conversation between you and your friends, or where you want to order takeout from. Now imagine that you living room is actually a military unit, where a Commander has a lot more to worry about being picked up than a food order.

Metcalf isn’t the only one with issues. Naval aviator Jay Johnson is outspoken about the topic as well. Johnson, who served tours on three Nimitz-class carriers, describes gaming as “my sanctuary. It is where I went to calm down after a long day of flying.” In a piece he wrote for Gamasutra, he describes it simply as “the single greatest sin Microsoft has committed against all service members.” And he’s right.

What makes this whole thing even worse is Microsoft’s attitude about the whole thing. While our military personnel are losing a way to escape their sometimes harsh realities, Don Mattrick keeps on with a “sucks to be you” demeanor, stating that if they don’t want a console that has an always on component, that they can always buy an Xbox 360, which allows full-time offline play.

His words in an interview at E3 reflect that:

“When I read the blogs and thought about who’s really the most impacted, there was a person who said, ‘Hey, I’m on a nuclear sub.’ I don’t even know what it means to be on a nuclear sub, but I’ve got to imagine that it’s not easy to get an Internet connection. Hey, I can empathize. If I was on a sub, I’d be disappointed.”

Great, they empathize. Too bad they’re not going to do anything about it. There haven’t been any plans or even words on their part to address the issue. Buthey, they’ve got a 360 for you. It’s absolutely shameful that in a room where these things are discussed at Xbox HQ, there was absolutely no foresight to what their policies could mean for our fighting men and women having a little piece of home when they’re deployed abroad. Said best by Johnson -

“No longer will the sounds of Master Chief saving the human race echo through the hallowed halls of the USS Abraham Lincoln, or any other USS ship, when we have a few hours respite. No longer will you see Marcus and Dom sawing through the Locust Horde at the bases in Afghanistan after the Marines have returned from patrol and want to escape their reality for a bit. Those days are now firmly behind us.”

AT&T Customer? Prepare to get Nickeled and Dimed (Pennied too)

2013-05-24T22:13:00.000-04:00

I’m usually enraged with everyone that runs the show in the mobile consumer space.

Over the years, I’ve found (as well as you’ve found I’m sure) that the major players do their level best to squeeze every copper penny out of the American consumer, trying to back up that squeeze by telling us about service enhancements and whatnot that come with that charge. What AT&T is now doing in that spirit doesn’t even come with a veiled attempt at justification. Soon all AT&T wireless customers will have an additional $0.61 tacked on to their monthly bill. Now sure that doesn’t sound like too much – I mean we’re only talking about an additional hit of $7.32 to your yearly mobile expense, but that adds up. Maybe it doesn’t add up to you personally, but add up that $7.62 per customer over their entire customer base and it adds up a little sweeter to them – to the tune of $500-600 billion added to AT&T’s yearly bottom line.

And why? According to analysts, because they can.

Now let’s take a look at the evil genius of it all.

1. AT&T has a clause in their contracts that if there’s a price increase outside the scope of the contract, the customer has an opportunity to get out of it without having to pay a termination fee. The fact that they call it an administrative fee means it’s not technically a rate increase, so that clause doesn’t apply. Take a look at section 1.3 if you’re interested in their terms of service and make note of administrative fees being explicitly excluded.

2. $0.61 isn’t enough to scare customers away – no one’s going to cancel their contract and pay a huge termination fee over $7.32. Now no one’s going to like it, but it’s jut not enough to quit. This is half a billion dollars pretty much for free as a gift to themselves from all of you. Joe Hoffman, principal analyst at ABI Research had the following to say:

“But why 61¢, why not $1 or $5 or $10? Because AT&T understands price elasticity of demand. When AT&T raises the price by 61¢, they know hardly anyone is going to bail on them, and so can impose this with impunity. $1 or $5 or $10 is just too much to swallow all at once, but give them time. For now, $500 – $600 Million will flow right to the bottom line. Brilliant! No fancy software tools, no focus groups, no high priced engineers and programmers, and no iPhone subsidies. Just a raw, brute force price increase. In six to 9 months, add another fee, then rinse and repeat a few more time. Marketing beats engineering every time!”

Now an AT&T spokesperson says that this is pretty in line with what other carriers do or will charge, and I totally believe it.

It’s $0.61 now, but when is that line going to be $0.90? or $1? It’s going to creep over the years while our phone bills skyrocket, and the average consumer will barely notice. Not exactly much we can do about it, but you should all fully understand what the mobile industry sees us as:

Cash piñatas that always pay out.

Xbox One Update - The Whole Internet Connection Thing

2013-05-21T20:49:00.000-04:00

** 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 on the other hand does have that opportunity. When Stephen pressed for an answer, what he 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

2013-05-21T16:36:00.001-04:00

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/Video: 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

2013-05-10T16:17:00.001-04:00

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

2013-05-06T13:54:00.002-04:00

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

2013-04-20T22:09:00.000-04:00

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

2013-04-12T11:08:00.000-04:00

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

2013-04-05T13:38:00.001-04:00

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

2013-04-02T22:00:00.001-04:00

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

2013-03-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

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?

2013-03-25T20:35:00.001-04:00

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!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Announced For PAX East

2013-03-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

This morning Square-Enix announced that Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be a go for the Wii U this coming weekend at PAX East. This new release is a director’s cut version of the game, and will be an exclusive title for the Wii U. From Square-Enix PR:

The Director’s Cut offers a full slate of Wii U™ GamePad features including touch-screen hacking, interactive map editing, augmented sniping, grenade throwbacks and many other neural hub enhancements. Along with in-depth Miiverse™ integration, the Director’s Cut also provides access to developer commentaries and in-game guides.

Tongs’s Rescue mission and the entire Missing Link chapter have also been integrated seamlessly into the narrative flow of the Director’s Cut. Other core DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION augmentations include overhauled boss fights, refined game balance and combat, improved AI, and striking visual improvements which make this edition the best looking and most immersive Deus Ex experience available.

Utilizing the Wii U’s touch screen for hacking and neural hub seem like interesting alterations to gameplay. I’ll be hanging out with Square-Enix for a while at PAX, so be sure I’ll have more for you once I see it up close and personal, as well as other new stuff from their camp.

EA's Bad Week - the SimCity Saga Thus Far

2013-03-07T20:58:00.001-05:00

By now you kids know how I feel about always-on DRM. It makes me angry. It makes the fire burn in me belly. And worst of all, it’s a trend that shows no sign of slowing down in the near future. I vented and raged about Diablo III when Blizzard released it last year, seeing white hot flashes of rage at the fact that I couldn’t play my single player game offline. Seemed like a reasonable to me of course, since the game’s predecessor allowed me to do so, but hey, maybe that’s just me.

As I’m sure we’ve all learned in a number of times in any history class, relationship or other real-life happening, history seems doomed to repeat itself. This time it wasn’t Blizzard at the heart of the controversy though – instead it was EA, one of the OG’s of always-on DRM, and the release of SimCity, next in that line of addictive little sim games. Fans were looking forward to it, and would be erecting tiny digital skyscrapers as we speak if it wasn’t for an absolutely catastrophic launch.

You see kids, the city is a sim. But the horror was real.

For the last few days since launch, a number of users haven’t been able to connect to theSimCity servers. Of course no connection to the servers means – you guessed it – no SimCity to play. The few players that are in fact able to connect being dropped mid game with a suddenly severed connection. The result? Extremely unhappy gamers. Check out the official SimCity Facebook page to see the kind or ire they drew from their customers. You can take another digital trip over to Reddit where the subreddit /r/SimCity has a ton of discussions between unhappy peoples.

That’s the main story, but it serves as a springboard for a couple of other spinoffs in the SimCity saga. Tuesday on the EA forums (I’d link but it’s since been edited), global community manager Marcel Hatam issued an apology to customers, saying: “If you regrettably feel that we let you down, you can of course request a refund for your order at [Origin's "contact us" page], though we’re currently still in the process of resolving this issue.”

Then I saw this floating around Twitter. It appears to be a post of a support chat posted to the EA forums by a user going by the handle CalebPeters. In that chat, we see the customer support representative telling the user that EA does allow users to request refunds, but doesn’t necessarily process them by their return policy, also adding that account bans are in store for users that dispute said policy. Of course that chat image went Ebola-style viral across the web immediately after. Marcel Hatan’s forum post has since disappeared, being replaced with the line “Please review our refund policy here: https://help.ea.com/article/returns-and-cancellations” (check poster EA_ComRaven). This of course links to their return policy, which states that there will be no refunds. Through their Origin account (@OriginInsider), EA then clarified that users would not in fact be banned for requesting a refund. PHEW. Three days of whirlwind nuttiness, all because of always-on DRM. But wait, what’s that I hear?

**HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!**

Enter Amazon into the heart of the melee. Eager to spare their customers from what can only be referred to as a kerfuffle, Amazon has stopped selling SimCity on their storefront. In addition to marking each purchase option as “unavailable” when selected, they give Amazon customers a warning: “Many customers are having issues connecting to the “SimCity” servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed. Please visit https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information.” Click that screenshot I took to see it full-size or hit up Amazon to see it for yourself.

So EA is trying to address the problem. Naturally, they hate bad press and the prospect of losing future sales as much as the next company. Today they announced that they are removing “non-critical” aspects of the game to help lower the stress on their servers, letting more people connect without getting the boot.

Now this is the second launch that I’ve seen destroyed by a publisher’s absolute insistence on always-on DRM (of course i say “destroyed” due to user backlash, not money). It is also the second launch where the publisher claimed that the always on component provided benefits and was not implemented for DRM reasons. “Oh it’s technical” they say – well I ain’t buying it. Diablo III‘s DRM-laden launch was paired with sales. SimCity will still sell a bunch of copies once they get all this sorted out. That’s two kids. One more always-on DRM launch and I’m ready to call it a horrifying industry trend.

On an actual technical note, this was the second launch where AAA publishing houses didn’t properly test a stressed server load. You’re requiring every single player to be online. Don’t you think your servers and network should be beefed up to match it?

"Six Strikes," Piracy, and Your Internet

2013-03-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

During summer 2012, we all heard tell of internet service providers agreeing to a new Copyright Alert System (CAS), intending to curb online piracy. All we really knew of it back then is that it involved your ISP sending you messages when you were suspected of downloading copyrighted works illegally, ultimately cutting you off when you crossed the line too many times. Of course the RIAA and MPAA were on board, and brought with them major ISP’s Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner. Critics, including myself, took issue with this being a potential violation of users’ privacy, as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) containing language that requires ISP’s to be able to terminate user accounts for repeat offenders. Outside of that, we didn’t have any other real information on how the final impact to users was going to look.

Well this week the CAS went into effect, and ISP’s will now be sending warnings to customers whenever they see something that can be considered copyright infringement. If you haven’t gotten a letter in the mail from your particular ISP you should be shortly, and hopefully that letter clearly tells you all what’s going on. In case it doesn’t (which let’s be serious, it won’t), ol’ Tushar is here to let you know what’s up.

The way it works is pretty simple – content owners trawl P2P traffic to see if there’s any of their own copyrighted stuff out there. If they find some, they track your IP number and report it to your ISP. Your ISP matches up your IP address with your account information, and SHAZAM – you get, as they call it, an “educational” message saying that there’s illegal content being downloaded from your account. Your ISP, contrary to fears from last year, will not be monitoring your internet use. From everything I’ve read, what they’re expressly looking for is peer-to-peer BitTorrent traffic. The monitoring doesn’t get into email attachments or private online storage like Dropbox and its ilk. If you don’t use BitTorrent, then I really don’t think you have anything to worry about. And according to LifeHacker, right now Usenet is probably safe too.

But come on, we’ve all done it at one point or another.

These warnings can be called “strikes,” and in all cases six strikes will trigger the use of a handful of punitive methods at your ISP’s disposal to deter you from repeating this kind of behavior. Verizon will cap your speed at 256k as punishment (can you imagine coming down from FiOS to THAT?). Comcast will present persistent alerts in their browser windows, and users will have to speak with Comcast security to be educated in how to download legally before their internet service is unlocked. Time Warner will have a similar unlock system. And finally AT&T will force the user to an educational website before unlocking their internet again. In most cases, after four warnings the user has to agree to a “I’ll never do it again guys, I promise” landing page they’re forced to before they browse the web. CAS warnings can be challenged to the American Arbitration Association for a number of different reasons, and the going rate for said challenge seems to be $35. No word on whether or not the user will be reimbursed for winning the challenge. Also in most cases, 6 months of pirate-free activity and you start back at zero. Ars Technica was nice enough to post pictures of the Comcast editions of these notices, which you can see here. It’ll give you a much better idea of what I’m trying to illustrate. You can check some links to your specific ISP’s CAS policies on PCMag.

You’ll notice I use the word “educational” in this post. That’s not my word – it comes from the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), the brainchild behind the new CAS system. In their own words:

“As with any innovative system, the process of building the CAS has taken time. We appreciate the collaborative engagement from the many organizations, companies and professionals involved in CCI who helped advise us along the way. CCI and its partners have worked hard to meet our goal of implementing a system that educates consumers about copyright and P2P networks, encourages the use of legal alternatives, and safeguards customer privacy.”

… Education? Do the RIAA and MPAA (big surprise they back the CCI) really think that people using BitTorrent don’t know the score? Back when I used to do such things I did it for two reasons – (1) because it was relatively easy and (2) it was free. And yes, I fully knew that a lot of it was (3) illegal. No one’s under any kind of illusion that what they’re doing isn't skirting the law. If the CCI really thinks that education is the problem, then they’re not seeing things clearly, or simply refusing to.

Now thankfully, this isn’t as bad as everyone thought it would be. Like I mentioned above ISP’s won’t be sniffing packets or monitoring traffic on everything you’re doing (at least that’s what’s reported). And I get the idea of people getting paid for their work. I really do. But this is just a band-aid to the issue. Copyright law itself has to be re-examined to see what works and what doesn’t now that digital delivery of content has proliferated at such a grand scale. We’ve seen people pay for content with services like Netflix and Hulu+, even though we all wish they had more content. Services like HBO Go on the other hand sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Warner Brothers’ digital copies of blu-rays? Forget it, it’s a horrible service that’s not transferable between my own damn machines. The bottom line is that people are willing to pay for content, as long as it’s fair to the user, structured properly, easy, and most importantly worth their hard-earned money.

Otherwise, Matthew Inman at the Oatmeal makes a whole lot of sense.

Is Microsoft Pulling a Fast One on Us with New Office Licensing?

2013-02-16T00:07:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not know kids, I sometimes describe myself as a tech boss by day and nerd hero by night. So rightfully so tech and the internet play a pretty heavy role in my day and I spend a lot of time, as one has put it before, “absorbing the internet.” And recently the news I’ve been absorbing has progressively meant big changes in the way software works (and I’m counting games in there too). And change always means that people are going to be resistant to it. And that’s not always off the mark, as a lot of stuff seems pretty anti-user these days. We’ve seen our next-gen console manufacturers turn on us with always on DRM and talk ofhard-locking game media to consoles and user accounts in recent history. And now, after talking about blocking games on the next Xbox console, Microsoft is riling users up in their Office line of products.

When you buy most kinds of software, according to most end user license agreements, it’s yours. My current copy of Microsoft’s Office 2007 Pro belongs to me. I installed on my laptop back in 2007. Since then I’ve upgraded my laptop twice, and was well within my rights to install Office again on those replacements, which I did. Hell, I’m using it to write this article right now. And that’s how retail software for consumers works most of the time. But Microsoft’s decided to abandon their existing retail model in their 2013 line.

Instead of the example I gave you above, they’re implementing a 1-license, 1-PC rule. What that means is that if you buy a license for Microsoft Office 2013 and install it on your computer, that’s it. Upgrade to a newer machine? Aww I’m sorry kids, Office can’t come with you to play. You’d have to buy another license for your next computer. So let’s look at my personal situation with Office on my laptops above. If this rule was in play in Office 2007, I would have have had to buy a second license for that laptop replacement, then a third license for the one I’m using now. And Office Pro (seriously, damn my need for MS Access) will set one back about $350-400 per license.

That’s over a thousand bones, brah.

ComputerWorld confirmed this with Microsoft, so there’s not exactly room for speculation on whether or not this’ll “actually happen.” But the reallyscary part is how Microsoft responded when they were asked about replacing a broken laptop. They didn’t note it as an exception. They didn’t say “Naw man, we wouldn’t do that to you!” They said the two words that lead me to believe the worst case scenario is probably true – “No comment.” Well damn. And with all the tech and software they have across their portfolios, they definitely have the means to enforce that.

Let’s look at the direction Microsoft is going – everything is moving from boxed software to cloud and online services, and everything is ruled through the Microsoft ID. Microsoft ID’s link up with Xbox Live accounts, and the next Xbox will stream games with an always-on connection. Not only the Xbox, but Windows 8 integrates a Windows Live ID to link itself into every part of the OS and your digial world. And they love convincing you to use SkyDrive. It would be extremely easy for them to map an activated license key to a Microsoft ID, with an “install count” or “activation count” attached to it, leaving users with little recourse.

In that same line of thought, it looks like Microsoft is pushing their online and cloud based agenda, and through this move are trying to get people to start using their subscription-based Office 365. Instead of buying licenses for every machine you need to install your retail copy on, the user signs up subscription style, paying $99 per year to use the cloud based office service. Given my laptop scenario above over 7 years, the subscription plan would have only costed me $700 instead of over $1,000. So it sounds pretty good compared to the 1 copy / 1 PC version right? Well, not really. Assuming that you do in fact buy a copy of Office whenever you upgrade your PC or whenever a new version of Office comes out, sure, the subscription might save you money. But going back to my laptop scenario, here’s what my cash outlay options are/were:

If 1 license / 1 PC was in effect back then : $1200 ($399 x 3 laptops)
If subscription was in effect back then: $700 ($99 per year for 7 years)
What the actual cost was: $400 (1 copy of Office 2007 used over and over)

Why? Because I don’t buy every single new version of Office that comes out. One one machine I’m still happily using Office 2003, as I have been for a decade. I own zero copies of Office 2010. And the same is going to be true with a lot of people and a lot of small to midsize businesses. Office 2003 will be used up until the last day in April 2014 when it’s no longer supported, because that means $400 per user can last for 10 years. And $40 per year is far cheaper than any current option Microsoft offers. So there do exist a number of scenarios where this will hurt the user. Ideally I would buy a copy of Office 2013 Pro, and run it for another decade.

Because I’m a user, not a revenue stream with a face.

Games Workshop Brings the Trademark Warhammer Against Sci-Fi Book

2013-02-08T22:52:00.001-05:00

OK kids, we’re going to start out today with a little game. I’m going to say some words, then ask you some questions, and then we’ll move on. Ready? Great.

Q1: What do you call a person who searches unknown territories? (I came up with “explorer” for this one myself)

Q2: Now… what if that man or woman did said work and/or activity, in oh, I don’t know, the deep sea? What would you call that person? Would you call them a deep sea explorer? Of course you would – it’s an explorerthat does their thing in the deep waters of the damn sea.

So now let’s talk about another occupation/location combination phrase – Space Marine. That phrase has been used a bunch of times over the years in science fiction and gaming and conjures different ideas to different people. For me personally the term makes me think about Blizzard’s Starcraft series, and the nameless hero from id Software’s Doomback in the day when gore only came in 16 bits. But for a lot of other people, Space Marine is synonymous with Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop and video game from Games Workshop. And that’s cool, because it’s not like it’s a specific and proprietary thing that someone could own right?

… right?

Well it definitely was a question that came up when science fiction authorM. C. A. Hogarth surprisingly found her book Spots the Space Marinepulled off of Amazon’s digital shelves thanks to a DMCA takedown request from Games Workshop. As it turns out that Games Workshop kind ofdoes own the name to a certain degree with trademarks they have registered in the USA and Europe. And while in Europe that trademark covers pretty much everything involving the Space Marine name, in the United States it only covers the tabletop game and pieces. So why then, were they able to take action against a book in the United States?

The DMCA, that lovely set of rules that a couple weeks ago said you couldn’t unlock your phone anymore, allows copyright owners to get content taken down via a takedown request. It’s the reason that there’s certain videos on YouTube that you can’t watch anymore – because copyright holders have requested that the content be removed. But the problem for Games Workshop is that the DMCA works with copyrights – you know, what the “C” stands for – and not trademarks. So when Amazon took the book off of their site, it was premature on a claim that didn’t have any teeth to begin with.

But what if the DMCA did support trademarks? As mentioned before, their US trademark doesn’t cover books. So how did Games Workshop justify trying to shut Hogarth down? By claiming that after starting to sell digital books online, that they have a “common law” trademark on the phrase Space Marine in the United States.

Really guys?

These trademark trolls came after Hogarth hard and as a small author she didn’t have the money to fend them off with a legal team. But I still don’t really understand how any court would entertain the claim – “Space Marine” in both concept and name, has been used a number of times historically. If you check out TV Tropes to see the list. That in conjunction with their gimped trademark and I’m not even seeing a case here. At any rate, she’s found support from a number of people on the internet through social media backing her cause, in the sci-fi and gaming community, as well as fans organizing boycotts of Games Workshop pieces. And it’s helping shine a giant spotlight on the bullying tactics of copyright (and now trademark) trolls.

But there seems to have been some progress. While Games Workshop has been following their policy of not commenting, as of my checking this morning, you can again find Spots the Space Marine on Amazon. I applaud them on their decision to put it back up for sale and not allowing this sort of corporate bullying to stand.

Always-On Rumors True? Xbox May Follow Suit in Blocking Used Games

2013-02-07T12:51:00.001-05:00

Now that Sony’s PlayStation team is a couple weeks out from what I think will be the PlayStation 4 reveal, It looks like it’s Microsoft’s turn to continue churning the rumor mill. A while ago you’ll remember that we talked about rumors of the PlayStation 4 having a mechanism to block used games or games not registered to a user from running on the console. And I’m pretty sure consensus across most people was that it would be a horrible idea. And in my opinion, that consensus was right.

Now comes the fun part – We knew Sony wasn’t alone in having this technology, but now there’s evidence that it may actually be put into practice. Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox 720, or Durango, or whatever the hell you want to call it, will be featuring similar technology for the purposes of blocking used games. While a lot of what I’m seeing across the internet are really just referencing this as rumor, Edge Magazine claims to have a source at Microsoft saying that this will be done by requiring an internet connection to even function. They went on to mention that games would still be available to be purchased on physical disk media, but those disks could include activation keys, providing nothing to anyone outside of the initial user that bought the media.

The report also says that the system will finally support Blu-ray discs instead after finally giving up on their horse named HD-DVD, but I’m not really sure you’re even reading that part. The always-on rumor kind of trumps it.

I’ve always hated always-on connections as a method of DRM. Always. I hated it when EA did it on the PS3. I hated it when Blizzard did it with Diablo III. And yes, I have even historically hated it with Steam. Years ago when I refused to use Steam and people said I was nuts because “dude the games are cheaper and it’s soooo much easier,” my concerns were on a higher plane of nerd. I’ve always considered business models that require always-on connections to have heavily detrimental aspects to the user experience – most prominently being the one that says No, you can’t play any time you want to. And Steam did exactly that. They did it with software instead of hardware so it might be slightly different to the minds of many but the principle remains the same. And in my opinion, while sure it was cheaper and easier, it was setting a dangerous precedent in gaming. Not only because it did in fact take something away from the user experience, but that gamers were ok with it, and allowed it to keep happening. There shouldn’t be any rule on any console or system that says you can’t play the games you’ve paid for when the internet is down. It adds another point of potential failure to your gaming console in your internet connection.

I might add, before you all go off on me, that I don’t include MMO’s in this little rant. I mean the “O” stands for online.

In addition to all of this philosophical wrong, if these reports from Edge are true then it’s a fantastic blow to the used game market, which as we discussed before with the PS4 would in fact help developers since they’d be the only shop in town. What this does do though, if true, is give Sony a tremendous opportunity to say “No, we’re not going to follow that model – come to team Sony, my peoples!” They have the option to become the console of the people by abandoning this practice before their PS4 reveal.

Truth be told, I really hope Edge is wrong, or that someone lied to them in an extremely convincing manner. Either way, I’ll keep you posted. I am not going to call this 100% fact until I hear something official from the Xbox team.

If they’re not hiding from us.

Safer Internet Day - Some Tips for Your Digital Life

2013-02-05T20:44:00.000-05:00

The internet contains more and more of our lives these days. We have online accounts for our banks and paying bills, online shopping, and a number of other types of online activity that put more of us out there. With social media like Facebook and Twitter this is increased a hundredfold. And the more of our lives are public, the more we stand to lose if some unsavory digital brigand gets their hands on our digital info.

Hacks happen. Plain and simple. Whether it's a brute force attack or poor security or a social engineering scheme, there are people whose livelihood relies on messing with the livelihoods of others. So we all have to be on the lookout. So to promote safe internet use and to prevent internet abuse, InSafe established Safer Internet Day, a day to promote awareness for internet safety an internet health for all. Today, February 5th is the 10th Safer Internet Day, and this year's theme is "Connect with Respect." The initiative has global support including giants like Microsoft, who has some great resources on their SID site including downloads for how to protect children on line and teach them digital safety, as well as some guidelines on how to keep control of your digital life.

So in that spirit, I thought it would be a good idea to give you all some tips for internet safety. Maybe you don't think you need them, but it's always good to have reminders. I work in IT for a living, and I've been hacked before. Even Mat Honan, part of the crew at Wired Magazine, has been hacked in a very public and spectacular fashion. It goes to show one is ever 100% immune, but with some proactive measures, we can all make our digital world safer. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but take a look, and put some of these practices into play.

1. Good password management: Use complex passwords for your online accounts, especially sites like banking and payment sites. Make sure your password includes a mix of capital and lowercase letters, with numbers and special characters as well. Remember - a good password is hard to guess but easy to remember. Also, update your passwords regularly and be sure to never send your password to anyone over email.

2. Control your social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and any other social media site you use have increasingly become targets for hackers and other online miscreants on an information hunt. These services give you a way to control who sees what information through privacy settings. You can set up exactly how public you want your information to be. For example, your Facebook privacy settings should probably be kept at "friends only" to be on the safe side. And on content you choose to keep public, think twice before you post something that could be potentially embarrasing or damaging to your digital reputation.

3. Suspicious email: Email is a popular way for hackers to hit users with phishing scams, trying to trick them into clicking links to malicious content or handing over information they wouldn't normally hand over, like credit card numbers. Ask yourself if there's any reason you'd be getting a particular email. If not, it might be safer to not open. Another red flag is if there are attachments to the email that you don't recognize. And another trick is to hover your mouse over links in the body of the email. When you do, a tiny box will appear telling you where that link really goes. Because a link that says Blizzard or Amazon may lead somewhere else that you don't want to be. Phishing emails become a lot more common during certain times of the year - namely holidays, tax season. Some of them also claim to be from the government asking for your information. Remember that a government entity like the IRS will always send you official communications in writing, not over random email.

4. Stay updated!: Make sure you have anti-virus software running on your computer like Norton or Trend, and turn on the setting to auto update. This will keep you up-to-date with the latest anti-virus definitions to protect your systems. A good anti-malware software like Malwarebytes is also a good idea. Enabling automatic updates on Windows will also ensure that you have the latest updates from Microsoft like security patches.

5. BE PROACTIVE. There's a lot of stuff you'll come across on the internet, and a lot of it isn't going to be safe. Flag and report sites and content that are clearly abusive and/or illegal to Google or the entity being abused. You can also report internet crime to the FBI through the ISC (the Internet Crime Complaint Center). And if you're one of those tech folks that's in the know, educate people! Run a presentation on internet safety at your workplace, tell your friends how to stay safe, and practice these tips yourself.

If you're unsure of anything, ask your local computer nerd! While they may have a gruff and nerdy exterior, they'll always be happy to help someone be proactively safe on the internet. Or leave a comment or ask me a question if you have them. The internet can be a scary place, so make the right decisions and surf safe.

Sony's February 20th Announcement - I'm Calling PS4.

2013-02-01T11:24:00.000-05:00

OK. Sometimes when a company tries to do a big reveal, they go one of a couple different directions. First is the Apple route - blacking out room windows in R&D, attaching test devices to desks at Apple HQ, and even masking field testing units with external casing to make sure no one knows what's up. Sure it may not seem like that's how they roll now, but that's how they do things. Get their audience so amped that whatever they introduce is an instant hit they've all been waiting for.

The second is the straightforward method. That's more or less saying "hey kids, product X is going to be out on the 37th of Zuhtember (naturally "X' and "Zuhtember" being code for a number and who gives a damn). But in this case potential customers know exactly what's coming and what's going to be involved. I guess the cleanest example here after the Apple thing would be Samsung and their Galaxy phones if you want an example.

So both of those methods make sense, and we've seen both dozens of times before. What confuses me sometimes is when some companies try to blend the two of these in some sort of "openly secretive" teaser thrown out onto the interwebs. Which is the route than Sony took today with their latest teaser on their official US website. Go ahead, watch it. It has all the elements of a big reveal - flashy effects, zoomed shots of different aspects of what gets collected for a final image, and of course mystic and cryptic heavy beats in the background to add an ambiance of mystery and allure. Sweet. Even a date and a time for a very special event so fans have something to look forward to. So what could it possible be? My interest is now piqued beyond recognition - WHAT COULD IT BE? Four very familiar shapes - a triangle, a circle, an X, and is that... is that a square?

Look at the video kids. It's gonna be the PlayStation 4. I mean I can't for sure say it, but watch it again. Search your feelings. I don't think you really need the force with you to sense this one.

The date? February 20th, at 6:00pm. The teaser is an ad for the Playstation Meeting, which is a venue where Sony's unveiled consoles and hardware before (that's where they unveiled the Vita before), so the PS4's a feasible prediction. And Sony wanting to beat Microsoft to the punch on consoles does make sense too. There's also a chance that maybe they could be releasing the fruits of their venture with Gaikai, but MY PEOPLES - I'm still calling PS4.

Tech, Law, and the DMCA (Part I of II) - Unlocking Your Phone is Now Illegal

2013-01-27T23:46:00.000-05:00

I love technology and the explosion of mobile tech in the last decade - it's allowed users in the United States and around the world to completely change and enhance the way we communicate and run our day to day lives. Availability of information empowering the American consumer. Activism. Giving users a voice. And as much good as it's brought, it's also brought its own set of problems. With every new service made available to the American public comes an additional way to screw the American public - be it another veiled method of control or a straight up financial jack. Tech rivals make backroom deals while suing each other to take customer favorites off the market. Some folks still pay a 7,000% upcharge for something as simple as sending or receiving a text message. And now, while your mobile bills can top $150 a month based on your device and expanding data usage, the industry is still a cash-devouring beast that cannot be fed. The end result? American consumers paying more money for less control over devices they own, which on their own can cost upwards of $600 if not subsidized with a contract renewal or some other pricing scheme.

If you know me on Facebook or Twitter you would have seen me ranting this past Friday about a new law that went into effect this weekend affecting mobile tech, complete with pleas to the big three carriers Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile. The reason was some new legal developments that went into effect this past weekend. According to the Librarian of Congress and the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), unlocking your phone or mobile device is now against the law.

Yes, you read that correctly. From now forward, if you unlock your phone, you have committed a Federal crime. And I'll repeat myself, because I feel this bears repeating: If you decide to unlock your phone - the one that you own, which you spent hundreds of dollars and hours of research to purchase, under the DMCA you are a criminal and punishable by the law.

I'm going to try and split this up because I'm throwing a lot of information at you. For those of you that don't want to read through this entire thing and get right to the brass tacks, skip ahead to the "How this can affect you" section.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Exemptions

The DMCA was established in 1998 to criminalize the creation and distribution of any technology that could bypass digital rights management systems implemented in various forms of media, as well as the people who use or host those technologies. Stuff like software key generators, hardware hacks and modded game consoles fall under this. The way it's set up, the power to name exemptions to DMCA enforcement rests with one person, the Librarian of Congress. These exemptions have a shelf life of three years, at which time the group requesting the exemption must re-lobby and re-convince Congress to keep that exemption in place. It's that arbitrary system that is causing this headache now. Back in October, the recent list of exemptions was released, and included an extremely convoluted list of what's exempt and what's not involving your mobile tech. Now the way it stands for the next three years:

On cell phones purchased in January 2013 or after, jailbreaking is acceptable, but unlocking is not. That OK for jailbreaking, however, does not extend to your tablet. So if you want to do the same to your iPad, you're out of luck. These rules come with some very specific language - saying that the phone has to be "originally acquired from the operator of a wireless telecommunications network or retailer no later than ninety days after the effective date of this exemption." What this means is that on your current phones, purchased in December 2012 or earlier, can still be unlocked without penalty. But if you want to unlock something you bought this month or later, you can do no such thing without your carrier's permission. The Librarian set this up in October, but was nice enough to give people a 90 day grace period until January 2013 so people could buy phones they planned to unlock later. But that time's over now, kids.

I just don't see the authority here. What the hell does this have to do with piracy and copyright infringement? Kind of reaching, Mr. Librarian.

Jailbreaking vs Unlocking

While these two terms may sound like the same thing, they're actually quite different. Jailbreaking a device means that it has the capability to download 3rd party apps not sold or released by the manufacturer. This phrase became popular with the iPhone, where users would jailbreak their devices to download apps not purchased from Apple's App Store. Unlocking a device means that you remove the software that locks a device to a specific carrier. For example, if I wanted to use an AT&T device on Verizon Wireless, then that device would have to be unlocked to allow me to do so. So you can see how carriers would love keeping those locks down, so they can keep you right where you are. Phone carriers offer subsidies on contract renewals so they can make up that difference over a 1 year or two year contract (similar to a loss leader kind of sale). With data heavy customers, they make that back in about 2-4 months of a contract. Unlocking your phone and jumping ship, even after paying a huge termination fee, still loses them some profit. Not really money, but profit.

We've Played by Your Rules

Termination fees. Yeah. If the above described action happens, I owe my carrier up to $350 in the form of a termination fee. I can't refute that, it's in my contract that I agreed to. So there's already a mechanism in place to protect the carrier from little ol' me. Without Federal law. Just throwin' that out there.

How this Affects Users

For a lot of people this probably isn't going to be a big deal as far as how they use their devices because they don't jailbreak or unlock them. But there's an increasing number of people that do. Even if you don't do anything like this with your devices though, it's still something to pay attention to because this new set of exemptions affects us all in a number of ways. On a fundamental level, this move is a strike against digital freedom and sets exactly what degree we actually own the tech we think we do. If I buy a house I can paint the walls any color I want to. When I buy a car I'm not restricted to what kind of gasoline I can use. And when I buy a PC, there's no rule that says that I can't replace my OS. But now if I buy a cell phone, my actions with it are now somehow up to the Librarian of Congress.

And part of that is thanks to the 2010 court case Vernor v. Autodesk, where it was decided that we own our phones, just not the software that sits on it.

Financially is where the impact will be felt a little more heavily. With the legal inability to unlock your own phone, if you want an unlocked phone you'll have to buy one unsubsidized at full price. For example last year when I bought my Droid Razr MAXX, I got it at a significantly discounted cost (i think it was $299) because I was renewing my Verizon Wireless contract at the time and reaped the benefit of VZW subsidizing my purchase. Now if I want to buy a phone of the same grade but have it unlocked, I would have to shell out somewhere in the neighborhood of $650 and up for that device. For those that were unaware, yes, that's how much good smartphones cost on their own these days.

Travelers can also face some issues. Someone with an unlocked phone can take it global, and just switch SIM cards at each destination to be able to use their own device. This kind of convenience just became a lot more expensive.

Users can still buy phones that are already unlocked from their carriers, but it might cost them a pretty penny. Some devices, like the iPhone 5 and Google's Nexus 4, come unlocked out of the box, which is OK under the new law, and under certain situations the carrier will unlock a device for you, but don't expect them to just go along with it. Either way, the bottom line is that carriers win, and users lose.

So what are these consequences one would face should they choose to unlock their phone? The CTIA has been kind enough to outline them for us on their official blog. They, and subsequently the carriers, are the biggest beneficiaries of this whole mess:

"The penalties for unlocking a subsidized wireless phone without carrier consent can be severe. Civil penalties are based on the carrier’s actual damages and any additional profits of the violator, or a court can award statutory damages of not less than $200 or more than $2,500 per individual act. Criminal penalties are even more severe: any person convicted of violating section 1201 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain (1) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and (2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense."

This is of course by no means an exhaustive analysis of the situation - there's a number of factors involved. There's another part of this exemption list that involves DVD/blu-ray media and your mobile devices, and I'll cover that in part II.

Atari Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy - Insert Pitfall Reference Here

2013-01-23T21:03:00.000-05:00

You know those friends that you used to hang out with all the time when you were kids, now just see every once in a while during the holidays? For some gamers on the console front that was Atari. Even though I still consider Fairchild’s Channel F as the “OG” of console gaming, in the late 70′s and early 80′s Atari was where it was at. And it’s a little rough to say that this old friend of ours, whose 2600 system gave us games like Asteroids and Space Invaders on, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this past Monday in New York.

Atari SA is filing to separate from their French masters Infogrames after what can only be described as a troubled history over the last couple of decades. Through a lot of crazy mergers and acquisitions over that time, they were property of Time Warner, then Tramel, then to what could be considered their comeback under Hasbro’s flag before being picked up by Infogrames. Infogrames tried to turn the brand into mobile entertainment, casual games and digital downloads, which just didn’t seem to work out to well. Since their 2600 console, they’ve been almost a jinx for anyone who had them at the time. At this point they’re so far removed from their original bread and butter of console and old-school arcade games that they just can’t keep up with the big studio games dominating the market.

Now this doesn’t mean the Atari brand is going away. This is a strategic move to sell off some of their properties because they’re sorely strapped for cash, and owe a lot of creditors a lot of money. In a statement from Atari, “The Chapter 11 process constitutes the most strategic option for Atari’s U.S. operations, as they look to preserve their inherent value and unlock revenue potential unrealized while under the control of Atari SA (ATA). During this period, the company expects to conduct its normal business operations.”

OK. We’ll see how this works out.

Remember when a couple of guys named Steve worked at Atari before starting a little company called Apple? We sure are a far ways away from then. Oh and on another note, I’ve been hearing tell of an Asteroids movie, and now it’s even listed on IMDB for 2014. Maybe this was all part of the deal?

I’ll keep an eye on that rumor mill for you, kids.

Sony's VP of Awesome Settles Lawsuit Over Bridgestone and Mario Kart

2013-01-17T23:13:00.000-05:00

Everyone loves a funny television commercial. Regardless of what it's advertising, humor holds people's attention. This is doubly true when the subject matter is of your interest. So a few years ago when Sony presented Kevin Butler as their "Vice President of Awesome" and "Director of Rumor Confirmation" among other made up titles, you were amused and enjoyed the show. It's cool, we all were. He was the character for Sony serving as the humorous mascot for the PlayStation 3, aimed squarely at pulling in that crucial 18-35 demographic with what seems to work today - pure ridiculousness. Exchanging "booms" with gamers and even speaking at E3 2010, he blew stuff up, stole cars, and through a series of other crazy antics at least got your attention for Sony.

The thing is that Sony ad campaign was pretty high profile, and the character of Kevin Butler (actually played by an actor by the name of Jerry Lamber) became an instantly recognizable figure on TV. I'm sure you've all seen Lamber lately in Bridgestone's ad campaign for their tires, donning a lab coat alongside Troy Aikman, telling a frustrated Deion Sanders to "Giddy up now, D." On its own that's really not that big of a deal - it's just another actor doing a gig. But another commercial in that Bridgestone campaign featured Lamber playing Mario Kart on a Nintendo Wii, which seemed to upset Sony a little bit. Playing a competing product (especially since he was drilling Xbox and Nintendo earlier on Sony's behalf) made Sony / SCEA do what any red-blooded American company would do in October of last year.

They sued his ass.

Not only did they sue Jerry Lamber himself, but his company - advertising film Wildcat Creek for breach of contract, as well as Bridgestone for facilitating the whole thing. You see a pretty basic clause in these sorts of agreements called a non-compete - think "thou shalt not shill for a competitor" for some pre-agreed-to period of time. So when they saw what they considered a Kevin Butler type character using the products of a direct competitor, which he could have worked on while still under that timeframe, they saw a problem. And even though Bridgestone said they weren't breaking any rules because Lamber didn't have a speaking part, they pulled his section of the commercial from air (I couldn't find a video version online with him still in it, but that screengrab is still out there).

Sony's words from the lawsuit back in October talk about how the Kevin Butler character is an iconic personality, some stuff about misappropriation of their intellectual property and even went far enough to say it would cause market confusion. Personally I don't know about that last part but really once a lawyer gets rolling it's tough to stop them.

Well, EuroGamer reported today that Jerry Lamber had finally settled with Sony on the lawsuit. He surrendered, admitting that his appearance playing the Wii did in fact cause market confusion with video game consumers, and that he did in fact violate his non-compete clause. The settlement? I'm not sure about any kind of dollar figure, but Lamber has agreed not to appear in any video game related commercials for a period of 2 years, unless Sony approves of it. So if you enjoyed his Kevin Butler-esque performances in the video game ad space, you're going to have to go without until 2015. Kevin Butler is Sony property. Sony's battle with Bridgestone on the other hand rages on in the courtroom.

Might I suggest settling this with a nice game of Mario Kart?

Australia Classifies their Very First R18+ Game with Ninja Gaiden: Razor's Edge

2013-01-11T10:05:00.000-05:00

In the United States, we have a video and computer games rating system that makes sense. It’s managed by the ESRB, and from eC (early childhood) to AO (adults only) the range of ratings make it pretty easy to know what to expect. Thanks to this system, a majority of the time we can make an accurate pre-purchase assessment about whether or not the game is appropriate for the audience we’re buying for. As much as your 8 year old kid would love to play God of War, the M rating on it may make you think twice about letting him or her get their Greek godly gore on. Something rated E may be more the speed you’re looking for. And there’s a rating band for everything, broken down even further than MPAA ratings for movies: between eC and AO are E (everyone), E10 (everyone 10+), T (teen), and M (mature). Similar ratings systems exist in other parts of the world too. In Europe for example that’s PEGI (Pan European Game Association). And for the most part they work – just ask the FTC. But there’s some parts of the world where these systems are (well, were) kind of broken and in need of some repair. And the place in question today is Australia.

In Australia, game ratings are determined by the Australian Government’s Classification Board, but their ratings differed a little bit until recently from ESRB and PEGI style classifications. While ESRB and PEGI have ratings for games meant for adult audiences, Australia didn’t, only going up to an MA15+ at the maximum. So some games targeting adults that were released to the rest of the world never made it to the land down under. Mortal Kombat titles for example were banned there. Other games, like Silent Hill: Homecoming were modified by publishers so the Australian editions of the game conformed to MA15+. It became a real problem down there - as systems become more advanced thy're more capable of showing realistic scenes including violence, which meant that Australian gamers had even that much less of a choice going to pick up some games.

Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of debate in the Australian government about whether or not the Classification Board should create new ratings to allow for adult-themed games, or as they call them, games with “high-impact” themes. And after a lot of back and forth they finally decided that it would be a good idea. Starting this year, two new classifications were effective: R18+ and X18+, both illegal to sell to persons under 18 years of age.

Well today Australian gamers can rejoice, as Lesley O’Brien, Director of the Classification Board put out a media release announcing that the R18+ classification would finally be in effect, and that the first game to carry the rating is going to be Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge on Nintendo’s Wii U. Prior to 2013, Nintendo would have been refused classification for the game, prohibiting sale of the game in the country.

According to the release, “The Classification Board classified the game R18+ (Restricted) with consumer advice of ‘High impact bloody violence’.” Further, “Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge contains violence that is high in impact because of its frequency, high definition graphics, and emphasis on blood effects.” Now the game will have an official R18+ rating, matching the ESRB’s M and PEGI’s 18+ ratings in the United States and Europe, and Ryu Hyabusa’s ninja antics can be executed across the outback.

I’m a firm proponent of video game ratings and do think that they provide folks (especially parents) with guidance as to what kind of content is inside. Everybody should familiarize themselves so they know the score a little better, and I will more than happily guide you to those resources: sites for the ESRB, PEGI, and the Australian Classification Board

Thanks GamePolitics for the heads up!

Does Sony's PS4 Sound the Death Knell for the Used Games Market?

2013-01-05T20:26:00.001-05:00

When I was younger, maybe back in college or so, video games were sometimes a little cost prohibitive to buy. $50-$60 bucks a pop for games for our favorite consoles was a little steep for us that had an income of roughly nil accompanied with tens of thousands of dollars in debt to repay when we were done our fancy book learnin'. Doubly so for a house of nerds that decided that they could run a game review site without time and without money. So sometimes we would rent, sometimes we would borrow, and sometimes we would buy used to save money whenever stuff went on sale. Granted for PC games we couldn't really do that (those had, well, different methods of acquisition) but for consoles it was no issue - we grabbed the disc, popped it in our Xbox or PS2 and when we turned it on it worked. Scratched media excluded, there were never really any issues.

But selling those copies back for store credit and having someone else pick it up used doesn't make publishers happy. It's money they could have had with a new sale that they've lost, and at the same time it creates a big market that they can't get their hands in at all. So now it was time for them to get creative. These days in our digital age, with the popularity of DLC for content delivery and online play, publishers are more than ready and able to do a lot of things digitally to pick up additional revenue streams. Let me give you an example - I own a copy of Dead Or Alive 5. If I get bored of it and sell it to a shop or to a friend of mine (let's call him Sven), that money goes to me, and not Tecmo. So they added a little hook in the pricing model. My new copy came with a key that allows me to play online. But that code links itself to my Xbox Live ID. So having bought my copy, Sven now has to pay for an online pass to play DOA5 to link to his Xbox Live ID. See what Tecmo did there? They put a method in place so that someone buying the game used still had to pay for certain elements of the game. And in this case it's the online pass. And Sven might even go on to buy some of the DLC character costumes, so look at that! Money Tecmo made on a used game where they would have made none before.

original comic here from Penny Arcade

So what's the next step in how publishers can monetize used games? There could be other methods like the one above that could help publishers extract money from the used games market. But then there are also more extreme options... like trying to kill used games outright. Recently on the NeoGAF forums, we found that the legal eagles at Sony filed a very interesting patent (which you can see here) regarding console games and rights. When it broke, the news of this patent application was received so poorly that GameStop's stock price actually dropped on the day, with GameStop shareholders selling like mad out of fear of losing one of their core businesses. Funny thing, the internet.

Don't worry kids, you don't have to read through that ridiculous amount of text. I'm here to do that for you - and strangely actually kind of like reading patents.

The patent more or less states that this technology would lock a disc to a specific player ID, the same way my DOA5 online pass has a lock to my Xbox Live ID. If this goes through and is implemented in the PlayStation 4, then a disc, once authorized to a single player, wouldn't be able to be played by another player, nullifying any value it potentially had in a used games market or sale. How would they do it? The console would write info to a designated blank part of the game disc, putting that link on there. It may sound pretty Spartan in its method, but it's not really a stretch, seeing as that's how most digitally delivered games work these days. Just take a look at Steam's model.

But does this mean that they're actually going to use it? It's true, applying this technology to the PS4 would indeed lock out a used games market, but there were also rumors that Microsoft was talking about doing something similar a while ago with Project Durango (or Infinity, or 720, or whatever). A lot of companies file for patents that they don't actually implement. And I have to believe that they know implementing this would shoot themselves in the foot, and they would be giving up more benefits than they would be getting gains, including but not limited to a ridiculous fan backlash.

The whole thing adds a bit more murk to the waters of DRM and used games, especially when an increasing percentage of software doesn't actually exist on physical media. But one thing I will admit, Sony's come a long way on their protection technology from being able to be beaten by scotch tape and Sharpie markers.