** 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.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
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.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
This is important international news that I first learned about (unfortunately) from buzzfeed and since I apparently have a severe case of tendinitis sometimes referred to as “gamers thumb” and shouldn’t even be typing this right now, all you get this week from me is a picspam of Matt’s stupid new haircut for his stupid new stupid movie with stupid Ryan Gosling. (this is professional blogging at its finest and no I’m not cranky at all leave me alone.)
He apparently shaved off his best feature for a movie called How to Catch a Monster, directed by Ryan Gosling. I’m guessing the monster is Matt’s forehead, which now looks even bigger and makes his caveman features even more pronounced. Oh, Matt. I’m so glad you’re someone else’s problem, and that I fell in love with a Time Lord many years ago who didn’t have any floppy hair with which he could break my heart.
I can’t even deal with these stupid pictures being released of Matt and his bald ass head. Mostly because they are dumb and who actually cares the man can shave his head and his hair will grow back; but also because he does look dumb without his even dumber floppy hair that we’ve come to know and love as something of a trademark of his.
I wonder if he’ll be bald-headed for the anniversary special, or if this means they’ve already finished filming it. Or maybe he’ll get a weave. Who knows.
NOT THAT I FUCKING CARE
I’m not drunk enough for this. If I were, I would appreciate it if someone would explain to me the plot of Party Animals, but for now I will satisfy myself with other men who appreciate the floppy hair that both god and their stylists have given them.
Jen Schiller
Staff Writer
Twitter.com/Jenisaur
When I was five-years-old, I remember sitting in my p.j.s on my dad’s lap watching an old movie “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” on a television as big as our den with a screen half the size of my computer. It was just before bed and I was beginning to doze until this giant Cyclops ambled onto the screen in total “attack mode.” I was both intrigued and frightened as the choppy stop-motion titan lumbered after scrambling miniature folk.
To a young girl in the 1970s, effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen (who passed away Tuesday at age 92) was top-notch amazing stuff. Dragons, skeleton warriors, giant stone Shivas, crazy snake-ladies strangling themselves with their tails — effects that had me staging elaborate play battles during the day and waking me with the occasional night terror in the early morning hours. In other words, they left a lasting impression not just on me, but on filmmakers and filmgoers for decades to come.
Not too much later, however, came the era of special effect “one ups.” Lucas, Spielberg, Jackson, Del Toro, the gang at Pixar (who gave Harryhausen a well-deserved shout out in Monsters, Inc.) and beyond were raising the bar for CGI and other visual effects that left a whole generation of those who found stop-motion effect the cutting edge in a bewildered fog. Thanks be to Tim Burton and Henry Selick for keeping this genre alive.
But there was something in Harryhausen’s work that is lacking in much of the smooth, crisp images of today’s less-cheesy fantasy films — the heart of a child. When I see Harryhausen’s “outdated-by-industry-standards” effects, I see a man with a happy grin on his face, gleefully manipulating these mystical creatures to bring them to life. I see someone who loved his work, and the results it produced. I see contentment, and I see self-satisfaction. And I see the work of a man who would have left us too soon had he lived to be 150.
To which I say, Goodbye and Godspeed, Mr. Harryhausen, may your battling skeletons’ bones forever rattle on.
— Lisa Kay Tate
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:
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.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.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
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.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene