From: Threat Watch
The Department of Homeland Security has launched a research project to find ways to hack into gaming consoles to obtain sensitive information about gamers stored on the devices.
One of the first contracts for the project was awarded last week to Obscure Technologies, based in California, to devise a forensic tool that will siphon data from the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3 and other consoles.
EFF urged a federal court to block Microsoft Corporation’s attempt to misuse copyright law to thwart a competitor offering memory cards for the Xbox gaming system. Microsoft claims that Xbox users violate U.S. federal law — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — if they use third-party cards memory cards, such as those produced by Datel Holdings. If Microsoft were to prevail on this point, it could give the software giant the ability to use the DMCA to prevent competitors from selling Xbox-compatible accessories, like memory cards, controllers, and headsets. Such a ruling would have wide-ranging ramifications for hundreds of other consumer products.
From: Halo.bungie.org
Back in the 90’s, I was in a band called Zone R. It was a RnB/rap outfit that had some small success playing mostly friend’s birthday parties. Haha. We were pretty bad, but we had a lot of fun. Our bassist was a cool Samoan cat called Dirk. He was the best part of the band. No one I met could play bass like that man. He was astoundingly good. He was also one of the scariest people you could ever imagine. He looked like he had been through a million bar fights but underneath he was a teddy bear.He was in a local gang that used to shake down school kids so they could get coins to play Tekken at the Arcade. He hated doing it but his friends thought they were hardcore street thugs. Dirk broke away from them to pursue his dream of becoming a Veterinarian. He did that. It cost him his childhood friends but it meant he could rise above and provide for his family. He inspired his sister to also go to University. He was a leader and a hero to me when I too was lost. We met playing Tekken. I needed a bassist, he wanted to play.
He died today after a long fight with cancer. And I miss him. I love him and I know he would have loved to have seen a day when all of us were doing what we truly love with the courage to go for our dreams.
For you Dirk, Your friend forever, G.
From: Threat Level
A federal magistrate said Sony may subpoena the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, as the gamemaker ratchets up its civil lawsuit against the man who released the first full-fledged PS3 jailbreak in the console’s four-year history.
Tuesday’s order came two weeks after Magistrate Joseph Spero in San Francisco granted Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who had visited Hotz’s website from January of 2009 onward. Sony has also won subpoenas for data from YouTube and Google, as well as Twitter account data linked to Hotz, who goes by the handle GeoHot.
What happens when you have the perfect girlfriend (“Spent all weekend naked play’n Halo 3”) in every single way, except she doesn’t like Firefly?
Dump her.
Then write a song about it.
From: Nuance
Adding voice control to today’s most popular PC games brings the gaming experience to a new level of intensity. Just bark out intuitive commands like release target, lay down, get out, up the ante, fly backwards – and hundreds more! Used together with the included Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home software, the Dragon Gaming Speech Pack instantly executes your desired action with amazing recognition accuracy. Now you can focus more on the strategy for your favorite games like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. Chat more naturally with other game players and communicate more efficiently by voice – and do it all much faster than you can type.
Censorship, whether its speech, TV, movies, or games is just about one thing, control. Gee that sounds like a line from the Matrix doesn’t it? Before Gore was trying to control your greenhouse gases he wanted to control your TV. Don’t think he is a scary madman? How’s this for a quote, “the link between real-world violence and television violence is exactly analogous to the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.†I’ll bet that after he presented “scientific” research to back up that statement, the time for debate was over.
From: David Horowitz
A few years ago I found myself in Nashville at a two-day gathering of liberal “media experts†sponsored by Vice President Al Gore. The purpose of the meeting was to provide a “scientific†rationale for the censorship that Gore and the president (who also attended) were preparing to launch against the nation’s entertainment industry.
The event was held in an auditorium at Vanderbilt University, where Gore orchestrated the proceedings from the stage. With all the obtuseness that generally characterizes his thought process, the vice president was saying scary things like “the link between real-world violence and television violence is exactly analogous to the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.â€
Of the 200 attending the event, only Jack Valenti, Tom Selleck and I took issue with Clinton and Gore’s “solution†— the V-chip — which they proceeded to unveil at the conference.
When Gore called on me to speak, I asked how crime rates could be so different in various neighborhoods of a given city, when the TV shows were the same. I also asked how the experts attending the event could have witnessed 100,000 murders on TV without becoming the desensitized, violence-crazed thugs that they implied was a television-watcher’s inevitable fate. My questions were not appreciated and I even heard some hisses as I spoke.
“with the Supreme Court set to hear arguments tomorrow for California’s controversial law aimed at keeping violent games away from minors, support for gamers and the games industry is coming from all corners.
Writing for PCMag, Lance Ulanoff says the decision should rest in parents’ hands: “If I have real concerns, it’s up to me to argue it out with my son and take away the games or not buy them for him when he asks.”
Game developer Daniel Greenberg wants to know “how government bureaucrats are supposed to divine the artistic value that a video game has for a 17-year-old,” adding that he’s “disheartened and a little perplexed to see [his] art and passion lumped in with cigarettes and booze.”
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/11/01/228224/Supreme-Court-Hears-Violent-Video-Game-Case-Tomorrow
From: Danger Room
…a Hungarian company specializing in GPS tracking, has an app that functions as a makeshift version of Blue Force Tracker, the tech the U.S. military uses to map its friends and foes.
That basically turns your iPhone into Land Warrior, the digital mapping-and-communications ensemble that the Army has been trying to roll out to troops since the ’90s. Except Land Warrior weighs about 10 times as much and costs $48,000 per outfit.
Today I read this preview of a game called Operation Flashpoint: Red River and I really liked what the guy from the game studio said. The game is supposed to take place in the modern day. He was talking about multiplayer and how he did not think that it was ethical to have the “player” play as a terrorist or any other faction killing US soldiers. Hence no multiplayer, they focused on making the best single player campaign they were capable of. I have great respect for that.
Bungie Dudes at E3. I think those Reach figures might be bigger than the ones that come with the game.
From: Chris Gaylord
“Portal 2” has been delayed. Why? “Making games is hard.”That’s the tongue-in-cheek announcement from Valve Software, the video game’s developer. The company reports Wednesday that Portal 2 will not be done in time to make its scheduled “holiday season 2010” release date. Expect the hotly anticipated sequel to arrive in 2011.
Valve’s press release – a joint statement with Aperture Science, the fictional company from “Portal” – explains that “public safety concerns factored into the decision” to postpone the game.
“Even though Portal 2 will arrive slightly later than planned, all life on earth won’t instantaneously stop as every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light, which is what would happen should a rip ever appear in the fabric of Valve Time,” says the statement.
From:Game|Life
Barely 15 minutes into the new Wolverine videogame, I am ankle-deep in carnage. I have filleted soldiers straight up the center, like fish; I have spun in a pirouette of death, decapitating anyone and everyone an arms’-breadth away. And I’ve grabbed enemies by the neck, hoisting them aloft and stabbing them repeatedly — crick, crick, crick — right through their rib cages. Eeeyikes.
Does grisly violence like this make action games more fun? For years, I assumed the free market had answered that question with a resounding “yes.†If shoot-’em-up games were insanely gory, it was, I figured, because developers were simply giving their hardcore young-dude audience what it wanted. Violence sells because violence works: It’s crucial to creating a sense of dastardly fun. Right?
Maybe not. In fact, some recent and fascinating scientific work suggests precisely the opposite: In a paper in January’s Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a group of researchers found that violence might be the least compelling part of our favorite videogames. In fact, sometimes it gets in the way of the fun.
According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience, playing games can improve your vision.
Far from being harmful to eyesight, as some had feared, action games such as Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, or Left 4 Dead provide excellent training for what eye doctors call contrast sensitivity, the study found.
Contrast sensitivity is the ability to notice tiny changes in shades of grey against a uniform background, and is critical to everyday activities such as night driving and reading. It often degrades with age.
The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, reveal a previously unsuspected adaptability in the brain, and could open the way to new therapies, the researchers said.
What I love is that the study pointed out that only action/shooter games affect this improvement. What has Jack Thompson to say now?
I just finished reading a very interesting article at Ars Technica in which the author discusses the the way we view history through the eyes of video games. In the new Call of Duty game the “bad guys” are the Nazis. When referring to World War II we separate Nazis and Germans. The author takes issue with this separation stating:
Saying there is a huge gulf between the German people and the Nazi characters would would be like saying it’s okay to kill Republicans in a game, but you have issues with Americans being the bad guys.
The reason we separate the two is because of what the Nazis represented: the Holocaust and their dangerous ideas of fascism.
In 2003 the nonprofit organization Child’s Play was created by gamers in response to wild accusations that video games only hurt children. The organization is dedicated to making a child’s visit the the hospital more comfortable by donating money and games to hospitals around the world. Many other examples of charitable organizations formed around video games include: Get Well Gamers and Fun for our Troops.
Here is an example of what can happen when games are introduced into what would otherwise be a somber situation, from ArsTechnica:
Ryan related a story about how he witnessed two young amputees—one missing the left hand, the other missing their right—joining forces to master the guitar in Rock Band. “One child strums with their one hand, and the other child frets with their one hand. It’s truly an amazing act, and they’ve gotten through songs on the Hard difficulty together! I can’t even finish most songs on hard!”
TomCat gets SCAR-L trigger time at the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) live fire event.
