Epsilon & PlayStation Network Security Recommendations

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I 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.

Expelling the Section 8 Prejudice(s)

Section 8 Prejudice Wallpaper
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Section 8 is a game by Timegate Studios featuring first person shooting and a host of innovative and different game play mechanics. Sadly this fact was not clearly communicated and was thus lost on the general public. Most, I think, came looking for a PC version of a Halo experience. What they got was a game so different it required a learning curve to great for the typical Halo player to handle. PC gaming vetreans who have mastered the learning curve behind a game like Starsiege: Tribes had little problem getting in to the game but only after spending some time learning and doing some reading on forums to discover the pieces left out of the game tutorials.

The biggest detractor wasn't any one game mechanic but rather a mentality. One that Halo and Call of Duty fans have had to deal with very little until recent itterations of those games. That being management. Section 8 required you to passively manage your armor configuration, weapons load out and even your spawn location on the map. Things that see limited use, and some times don't appear at all on other games. Then once you are "on the ground" you have to manage not just shields but your movement power and timing while you move. As well you need to manage your weapon choices as you go along. Plasma isn't useful against a physically heavy armored targets where physical rounds are more effective and vice versa for lightly armored heavily shielded targets. Once you pile on item and mission requests the game becomes a rough learning curve and a much more tactical experience.

Unfortunately it appeared Timegate's dev team did not effectively communicate to their PR firm/department the nature of the game and it was advertised in the same manor as other pick up and shoot FPS games. So when the masses arrived they found they were shooting their shielded opponent with full gattling magazines and doing little damange which became frustrating so they left declaring Section 8 a terrible game. If only they knew you needed to drop the enemies shields first with plasma based weapons before inflicting the physical damage.

I played Section 8 and loved it while it lasted. Unfortunately it didn't last very long with both the PC and PS3 console versions dwindling to almost nothing with in a year. I did in fact buy it twice, once on PC and once on PS3 and I wager folks like me are the reason Timegate has been able to make another game. They do say they've made many changes to the new game. Their marketing doesnt look much different so here's to hoping their tutorial systems are better and that they haven't stripped the game entirely of it's tacticle essence that was so amazing the first go around.

Timegates website can be found here.
The Section 8 Prejudice website is here.

Go grab your copy on:
Steam (releases 4 May 2011) Pre-order nets you 10% off for a cost of $13.49.
Xbox (all ready released)
PS3 (No date set yet "coming soon" on Timegates Buy Now page)

Sony Poised To Take Mobile Gaming By Storm

Just wanted a quick note about this. The PSP NGP from Sony is a hot little item coming out apparently soon. Most of the time another version of the PSP wouldn't be noteable but there are some very interesting things about it that came to light. It's less about the PSP NGP it's self and more about Sony's strategy. If they really leverage what they have, I'm not holding my breath, they could come out of no where to dominate the mobile gaming market. Here's why.

The PSP NGP is being designed on a quad core Arm 9 processor. The same type(not necessarily number of cores) of processor that is in every smart phone out there. This is important because it means with little to no modification all the games and software Sony creates from this point on can potentially run on that device in your pocket or on your desk right now. They've all ready demoed the PSN client/store running on the Android powered Sony Ericsson phone so it's a short leap to installing it on your Motorola or Samsung.



The second thing of note is the touch screen and 3G capabilities being offered on the PSP NGP. Sound like other devices all ready in your pocket? While I'm sure many bigger titles that are first gen on the PSP NGP are not going to provide much in the way of touch screen support. In the not to distant future I think we are going to see top tier Playstation titles coming to smart phones every where. It's Sony's chance to take the mobile gaming market by storm.

Some more video of whats to come after the jump.

Getting Pictures Off the Playstation 3 the Internet Way

As most of you know I've been playing the snot out of Modnation Racers. One of the sweet features that the game includes is the ability to screen shot your creations and in turn use them as your Playstation 3's wallpaper. Playstation home, Little Big Planet and a ton of other games have this feature as well. The Playstation 3 is super flexible in what it can do and yet there seem to be some pieces missing. For example I can copy the pictures to a thumb drive or external USB drive but I can't send to e-mail accounts from the communications section so there is no networked, internet based way to get this content off the system. I've done some searches to try to figure out how to do it and all suggestions are to use the sneaker net approach. I wasn't having any of that. So here is how to get your pictures off the system using the wonderful world of networking and the internet.

Go to the Playstation 3's browser and navigate to your favorite e-mail service provider. Mine in this case is Google GMail. Fill in your own e-mail address. Then click on your link/icon to attach files. You will now have access to the file browser on the Playstation 3 and be able to select any images you like. Attach away! Google e-mail lets you download multiple files as a zip attachment so I can attach a bunch of pictures and then on my computer I can pull them down in one download. Super simple and effective.

Below are attachments of some of my creations in Modnation Racers as well as some of the other hard work from other players.

Review: Modnation Racers for PS3

"If you build it they will come!" More iconic words are rarely spoken and that concept seems to be built in to every line of code in this game. It's all about having tons of options for making your own Mod, what they call the driver, kart and tracks. Imagine fourteen or sixteen pairs of eyes to a page and twenty or so pages. On top of that color, position and size are all variable. This is the case for virtually everything in the game. As far as creativity goes the sky is truly the limit. The top three mods yesterday were very accurate Mario, Ironman and Spiderman recreations that looked like they were made by professionals. All from the basic sets of tools and options made available through the game. To keep you coming back for more most of the options are locked from the get go and can only be unlocked by racing.

First 48hrs with the Playstation 3 GJ Sony

Ok so up front I have to let you know I owned an original Xbox and have had an Xbox 360 for the past year and a half. Being an original PC gamer I've never much liked the idea of paying a monthly charge to play a video game. It just kind of blows my mind. I suppose the advent of DLC might have made it worth while but then why am I paying a third party plus paying the developer for that DLC. Regardless I've done it and it was good. Definitely a solid experience from Microsoft. But...with the exception of the money from my wallet I really didn't know what I was missing.

First what you need to know is that we're about half way through this generations life cycle. Both Microsoft and Sony have stated they plan to keep this generation of consoles for 10 years plus. That means 5 more years of the 360 at $50 a year. That's $250, give or take 5 games worth of cash. May be some of you make enough money that it is inconsequential but I think for most of us thats a tidy bit of money. An while we're on the subject of money Microsoft points are designed to generate that non-round amount that leaves you just short of the amount you need to buy that next game or avatar item. The PlayStation charges real money at set amounts. No need to worry about left over cash on your account that you can't use. Score 1 for the PlayStation. The other effect this has is the ability for any one who uses the system to create a free login/profile on playstation.com and log in to the system to maintain their own Trophy record, use their own financial information to buy games and avatar items and to maintain their own friend list. The girl friend is much happier getting in to the online action and I can barely tear her away from Fat Princess.

Second is in the social aspect. While PlayStation Home is definitely a unique and fun way to interact with people and view certain types of content its just worth mentioning as a unique point of interest. My actual point is that I had the Xbox 360 for a year and a half and I've met precisely zero people online that I play games with. Every one I play 360 with were either met online but not on the Microsoft service or were people I know in real life. Day two with the system and I've all ready added one friend, who is some one I've never met in real life, just from sharing a squad in a game of Battlefield Bad Company 2. It's not clear yet if that says something about the nature of gamers who choose a PlayStation 3 or if it says something about the folks on the Xbox 360 or may be its just happy coincidence. No matter how you look at it I'm up one friend and team mate over a year and a half with the Xbox. We'll see what the future holds.

The system uses Bluetooth. If you've used a cell phone then you probably know what that is. It's a standard wireless technology for connecting things in close proximity. Controllers, keyboards, and headsets are the most common things connected to a console via this technology. I saw bluetooth headsets at Walmart for $13. How much is a 360 wireless headset now? The PS3 also supports other standards and functionality like USB ports front and back with the ability to plug in standard FAT formatted hard drives for things like video content, music and even full system backups. While the Xbox 360 can do the first two it doesn't do the last one. Throw in user replaceable internal hard drives for easy upgrades in the future using standard cheap SATA based hard drives. I can drop $100 for 1TB for my PS3 or I can drop...oh wait the only option is a 250GB for the same price for the Xbox 360.

Many of the games on the PlayStation 3 are more unique and more fun than those on the Xbox 360(I do realize thats subjective) and the majority of big title games are cross platform and thus available on the PlayStation 3. The Blueray player is great when the compressed HD from netflix just won't do it justice or if you have to have a physical medium in your possession(*cough*avatar*cough*). It's far more quite than the Xbox 360 and consumes less space. I could go on but alas a geeks gotta sleep. I look forward to more posts about the awesomeness of the PlayStationo 3 and all the new possibilities it provides over the Xbox 360.

P.S. While I was shopping around for my Playstation 3 I found a few places selling the 250GB for only $50 more than the 120GB version. Hard to beat a deal like that.