What Happened To Down Time?
So PSN is down for maintenance today between, get this, 8am and 10pm. For those with a time telling deficiency thats slightly more than half a day through the middle of the day time and in to the evening.
Now I’ve been doing IT work for approx 14 years and never have I heard any one make the statement that it’s “ok” to take a network down during business hours or during peak times. NEVER. In this case I wager during the middle of the day probably isn’t peak but I’d guess 5pm-11pm when every one is off work and home from school is probably peak. I guess I give them credit for doing it closer to the middle of the week but wouldn’t 3am-5pm have been a better time?
Yet lately both in this instance, and where I work, it seems to be increasingly more acceptable to take something down when ever you darn well feel like it. Did I miss something? Are we becoming so reliant on our network 24×7 that it no longer matters when it becomes unavailable because it has to happen some time eventually any way? Or is it that we’re increasingly bowing to what management wants? The symptom is obvious but what do you think the cause is?
Farewell Battlefield 3 Till Next Time Perhaps
I’ve all ready voiced, very loudly and very clearly, my reasons for boycotting Battlefield 3. That having been said I’m not one who can justify to myself or others talking about something I don’t know anything about or have had no part in. That being said here is my experience so far with the Battlefield 3 beta.
For starters I wasn’t even invited to the closed beta a month or two ago. Never mind the fact that I’ve beta tested for a decade or more, have run a beta for my own game, played Battlefield since it’s inception and until recently owned Bad Company 2 on every system it exists on and even on the PC *TWICE!*. All that aside, here is my experience with the current beta.
Again I wasn’t invited to the PC version. Mainly because I chose not to buy my way in to it. My buddy Chris got his invite, downloaded the game and…can’t play it. First it only works on IE(officially any way) and second when he tries to launch the game he runs it, it finds a server and then the website tries to launch the game it won’t run. I spent about 45 mins googling and trying different possible solutions and nothing fixed it. This is 2 x 45mins so a total of an hour and a half man hours and no solution. He had spent some time before I got home from work trying to get it to work too so all told I’m sure it was more than 2hrs spent trying to fix it. Not a great start.
Tonight I discover that I’m able to download the PS3 beta no key or anything required. This, unfortunately, made a worse impression than the game not launching at all on the PC. Now before you jump down my throat about how it’s “beta” etc. and I should expect some issues. I fully understand that. Recall my comment above about having beta tested for over a decade. This, this thing, is a giant pile of garbage. It’s hard to know where to begin. Being as close to official launch as it is I assume they are throwing preview code out to aid in hyping the game. But lets be honest this is not what you want the first impression of your game to be.
For starters I had a tough time discerning lag from glitches from lag hacking. On more occasions than I can count I would watch an enemy player appear out of no where and kill a team mate or, with no footstep noises or other indication of his presence he would kill me from behind in our spawn. On one occasion I turned a full 360 degrees seeing no one only to be knifed from behind in an area with out cover. I mention the lag hacking or possible exploitation of the maps because there were several times the kill cam would seem to be moving in the floor. Another occasion I was covering a door and facing a teammate who was also covering the door from the other side. An enemy simply appeared from no where in front of my team mate and knifed him in the face before he could respond. I managed to kill the guy but only after he turned around and simultaneously killed me too.
This lag, or what ever it is continued in to other areas of the game. I would frequently throw grenades that an enemy would stand directly over as it went off, he would shoot me and kill me and his kill cam would show 100% health. Also while attempting to fire, even sited, I would be struck not only by recoil but apparently by epilepsy too. It would appear that recoil was happening but also that my character was sporadically bending at the waist. The flash light is way way way over powered. From a range of 30-40 meters away it would obscure a 10-15 meter radius keeping you from being able to hit not only the enemy carrying it but any enemies in the immediate vicinity. It’s like they ripped one of the lights from the 9/11 memorial and attached it to a weapon rail. Last but not least were the weird buggy smoke trails lit like muzzle flash but with no one present. Other than obscuring vision and flashing sporadically they don’t move, they don’t do anything. Like a programmer was testing muzzle flashes but forgot to remove the particle system and lighting. Finally about every 3rd spawn or so I would spawn with no retical.
The interface has about as many problems. The outfitting menu is some what similar to Battlefield Bad Company 2′s but they’ve added so many do-dads and cruft elements that it’s just a visual mess. The kit selection menu was kind of jammed towards the bottom like they hadn’t scaled the elements for console and half covered the deploy button indicator. Weapons, as you would expect being metal, are a grey color and much of the kill indicator text is a sort of semi-translucent blue. When you’re weapon is sited the text is nearly invisible. I couldn’t tell if I got a kill at range or not due to this which essentially left me chasing ghosts on occasion.
All said this has been one of the worst beta’s I’ve ever played. I can give a lot of forgiveness to a game since I know what it takes to make one but this, I’d call this beta and probably wouldn’t let any one with out an NDA see it. This has completely re-enforced my belief that not buying this game is the right thing to do beta or not.
The Full Tutorial: How To Upgrade The PS3′s Hard Drive
When I bought my Playstation 3 one of the most enticing things about the system was the ability to upgrade the hard drive with a standard laptop drive. Having previously maxed out the hard drive on my Xbox and my refusal to pay though the nose Microsoft’s exorbitant prices, for commodity hardware wrapped in plastic, this is a key feature. While I did pay up front to get a 120GB version which has lasted me the better part of a year I was with in 20GB or so of maxing it out. Thanks due, in no small part, to the Playstation Plus program that keeps pumping my drive full of new games. If I weren’t able to offload my video on to my home server I’d have been making this upgrade far sooner. Despite the ease with which you can swap the hardware the software end wasn’t quite as straight forward which is why I decided to write this. So lets get down to business.
- Backup your data! Use a second usb drive to make a backup through the backup utility. Move important saves to the cloud saves storage. You lose your data it’s your own fault!
- Remove the old drive and install the new one. Unfortunately the person who made the video disabled embedding. Who know why but the link to the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sRkj89axOU
- When you start up the system for the first time with the new hard drive installed, you’ll get a message saying “The system software cannot be run correctly”. Don’t panic.
- Format a usb flash drive with a FAT32 file system.
- On the usb flash drive create a folder called PS3 and inside the PS3 folder create a folder called UPDATE.
- Download the latest version of PS3 firmware from here http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/pc_update/index.htm
- What you will download is a file called PS3UPDAT.PUP. Put this file in the UPDATE folder on the usb flash drive.
- Take your usb flash drive from your PC and plug it in to your PS3.
- Press and hold the ‘start’ and ‘select’ buttons at the same time briefly and you should launch in to the formatting and re-install process.
- Follow the prompts.
The Uncanny Valley Is Moving–LA Noire Is Proof
On the eve of Rockstar’s latest game release LA Noire I ponder the concept of the uncanny valley and I wonder if it’s moving. For those not in the know here is a little excerpt from the wikipedia article.
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics which holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.[1] The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.
They busted out a pretty slick graph as well that shows where certain things fall on the scale of awkwardness. Have a look.
So what does all this have to do with LA Noire? LA Noire is sporting new technology that maps faces to 3D models in a level of detail never seen before. This maps real performances from actors in to the 3D world and delivers a much more convincing, human, performance in to the game. Check this video of the technology in action. (more…)
Epsilon & PlayStation Network Security Recommendations
Image via WikipediaI amongst the 70 million have been effected by the PlayStation Network hack that took place between April 17th and April 19th. While there isn’t much we can do right now there are some steps you may want to consider taking to protect your own security and financial well being. I’m sure some would like to think they are extreme but after the security breach with Epsilon recently and now this there is no good reason to take chances.
I will state clearly I am not an information security professional. I have however been working in the Information Technology industry for 13(going on 14) years. I’ve suffered similar security breaches before and I’ve heard of them happening many times before. I am also a member of the US Military who under goes security briefings anually on protection of data and while deployed served my section as the Information Management Officer. While my primary role is not information security I have enough experience to know that the bottom line is that information security is every ones problem. What follows are some recommendations. Some vital, some, may be only if you are paranoid.
First and fore most purchases online can only be made if all the pieces of information line up. Your online account information(username & password), your card/account number, your PII or Personally Identifiable Information, and typically a physical marker for your card(that 3 digit number on the back). So your first line of defense against security breaches that have all ready taken place is to change as much of this information as possible.
The easiest of course is your username and password on sites that contain financial information. That’s Amazon, Ebay, Newegg and any other online retailers. Thats service sites like playstation, xbox, netflix, redbox etc. If you can change both your username and password then go for it. The absolute “must change” is your password.
While you can’t change where you live you can change your card number and the three digit code on the back. In other words go to your bank, talk to them, cancel your card and get a new one issued. While it isn’t a comfortable process it is a fairly easy one. Some banks will even let you do this process online. I mentioned briefly your address which you may be able to change through the post office box service at your local post office. Be sure to do some research before going this route because some services will not let you use P.O. Boxes as your personal address. Lastly, and most drematicly is to change your PII or personally identifiable information. This includes your name, social security number and other bits of information like your drivers license number. These are much harder to change. Changing your name will involve both the state and fedral government. Like wise changing your social security number(this is especially hard to do). I don’t recommend going to this length but if you are really that paranoid it can be done. I can’t outline here how to do it as the process will differ from state to state.
These changes should be more than enough to safe guard your security. When changing username and password ensure you use good security practices like long complicated passwords. If you can come up with something you can remember and don’t write it down. Change your passwords frequently, every couple of months at minimum. Last, keep an eye on your accounts. Know whats going on with them. If anything looks suspicious report it to your financial institution immediately.
Xbox Stifling Progress Not New But Noticeable
I ran across this video earlier today. While PC vs. Xbox vs. PS3 comparisons aren’t new what is new is what we’re finding in what were previously limit pushing games are now making the cash grab for the massive gaming market. So what happens when the limit breakers stop breaking the limit?
At approx. 4:35 you’ll see that the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the door texture appear to be identical. I grabbed a screen grab for a little better look.
I have adjusted the brightness to make it easier to see but that is the only alteration I’ve made. So it’s pretty obvious the PC is getting a much lower quality than it’s capable of. So instead of the line being moved forward it’s just sitting at the 360’s level. I fear what this means for the top end. With more focus on mobile gaming and, for lack of a better way to put it, lesser systems is the top end going to die? Are we starting to look at the end of the line for top end maximum limit pushing games? I hope not.
