The Sound of Skyrim

Bethesda has released this rare insider's view on one of the less exposed aspects of modern gaming: The Music (and sound). Mention gaming music 25 years ago and most people would have started the familiar 'do...do do' imitation of Super Mario Bros. famous 8-bit tune.  Mention music nowadays and you (hopefully) will get a variety of opinions about what is the best and how the music influenced a given gamer's feeling or emotion towards a game.

The Elder Scrolls series most certainly obtained recognition for this advancing craft (pun intended) of intelligent scoring; where music style and variety underpins a given moment or mood in a game according to what the player is doing or where the player has ventured.  Skyrim promises to take this craft to the next level.

Do check out the video and the various faces behind the scenes, particularly the musicians, who contribute to this very important element of games.  It's a rare opportunity also to see one of the great Shakespearean actors, Christopher Plummer, work his magic on a voice-over that will soon be imprinted on the ears and minds of millions of lucky gamers all over the world.

First Skynet...next? Why the T101, of course!

Not that I'm obsessed with futuristic miltary tech these days...it's just, there seems to be a lot of it coming out of the woodwork lately. (begs the question as to what contract tenders are being offered behind the scenes right now)

So here's another neat/weird/scary/omg-its-head-is-a-warning-light-like-the-Robocop-prototype example of what developments are making press.  The headliner is Boston Dynamics, a 'friendly' company that does robotic-type stuff.

We've seen it all before a.k.a. that little Honda guy...but wait, no you haven't.  Check out the video on the source article and you may just feel a hair standing up on the back of your neck.  This time, the robot is seemingly all-too capable of pretty much any typical human movement and at speed.  There are safety tethers present but throughout the video there's almost zero tension on them meaning that this prototype is the closest thing we've seen yet to a fully-operational bi-pedular machine.  Machine for what? -well that's the real question.  The U.S. Army (contract behind the prototype) claims it's for situations too dangerous for humans such as chemical attacks, firefighting, etc where the 'Petman' would be used to exercise search and rescue functions in such conditions.

Yeah.....right.

I just hope it's not addicted to 'Nuke.'

Skynet in 3...2...1...

More scary stuff.  This time an article from aviation news chronicling the U.S. and partners' desire to interlink a vast, global network of unmanned drones all controlled through a centralised command centre.  The pitch is simple: Information (or rather, the collation of information) is power.  With thousands or even tens of thousands of drones airborne across the globe, telemetry can be analysed, cross-referenced and shared and if need be, strikes can be ordered to the very drones that are sending all the information.

It is a Terminator-esque level of military intelligence, the likes of which we can only imagine.  In actual fact, all of the technology needed to make this work is already available.  It becomes a simple matter of binding it all together with the necessary funding, software and logistics; ok, not so simple...but certainly doable.

To put this into context: imagine a world-wide air traffic control system (such systems already exist with this capability) where the planes not only fly, they take pictures and shoot missiles too.

Get the picture? (pun intended)

The rationale?  It's cheaper than sending hundreds of warships and spyplanes around the world to keep track of everything from terrorist activities in Sudan to pesky drug cartels in Northern Australia, or possibly identifying that the two are interconnected.

The problem?  Who controls it?  Who governs it?  Most importantly: Who has their button on the trigger?
Somewhere, Orwell is laughing.

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World of Goo dev sides with Team Meat in exodus away from Xbox

Sometimes someone hits a key note that begins a revolution.  It would seem that Team Meat's concerns about Xbox Live and Microsoft's policies towards supporting developers has hit a chord; this time with 2DBoy, author of the equally notable (to Super Meat Boy) Xbox Arcade hit: 'World of Goo.'

The complaints will read familiar: lack of communication, poor promotional support and overbearing restrictions on release.  Ron Carmel, the voice of 2D Boy, cites that PSN, Steam and others are proving to be greener pastures these days...and again, it all begs us to wonder: What the hell is going on at Microsoft?

While no person will ever accuse Microsoft of abandoning the drive for the almighty dollar, at least some critics would have been silenced by us intelligent folk who recognized a strong business strategy when we saw one.  However, that was then and this is now, so to speak.  Obviously Microsoft will always try to maximize profits, but alienating the developer community and failing to promote games doesn't seem like a winning strategy.  In fact, it seems like utter madness.

A year or so ago, Microsoft had digital distribution gaming in the bag.  Indy Games came on the scene and 'Summer of Arcade' became a gamer's delight of well-priced downloadable hits to tide over the urge until the big releases of the fall.  Nowadays, it seems as though the releases have become more formulaic and uninspired, prices have driven upwards where an average XBLA title is now 1200-1600 points and most 'news releases' seem to be a re-announcement of someone from three months earlier that no one paid attention to on the first occasion.

Why, Microsoft? Why?
Where is everyone...anyone...who actually cared about Xbox as a gaming platform....is anyone left?
Do you really want me to give up and side with Sony utterly and completely?

Finally...don't you like money any more?

Kinect: Legal Dwarves may not play Halo or watch 24

Some ideas are interesting but not really thought out.  A new feature being described in a patent from Microsoft indicates that your Kinect camera may be the new weapon in the war against under-age viewing of mature content.

Allegedly, this patent describes a process whereby the size of a person dictates what he/she can watch.  Ergo, if you're small, then you are a 'child' and not permitted to watch anything outside of the general audience bracket.  Obviously, this is a bit limited as there are many people in the world who may resemble an under-age child while not actually existing as one.

You'll be able to disable it, of course, but it does make me think of situations where a legal dwarf, for instance, might walk into the room to watch his favourite episode of 24 and be told by Xbox, "Sorry, you're too small to watch this, kiddo!"

To make things worse, Kinect will even tone down content if someone of small stature walks into the room halfway into a program.  Imagine your dismay as your Xbox detects your shrunken Granny entering the home theatre and decides to interrupt your pay-per-view title fight by changing over to 'Elmo's Magic Kingdom!'  Oh the joys!

It's an interesting idea and I can see what they (Microsoft) are trying to do, but ultimately, it's a feature only to be employed by the most incompetent of parents as that type of automation is just not pragmatic unless you spent time in your twenties playing nailgun roulette...and let's be honest - if a parent needs that kind of assistance, they've probably bought their 7-year-old son a brand new copy of Modern Warfare to play with anyway.

Maximum computer geekdom meets epic Star Wars nerdom

This brought a smile to my face.  Being an old computer hack for the better part of 30 years, stuff like this always gets my juices flowing.  Den of Geek spotted this video on YouTube featuring a couple of 3.5" floppy drives connected to a custom control board which, as best as I can guess, has been calibrated to move the heads at different speeds to produce..(cue drum roll)..musical notes!  And what should one do with this ultimate power?  Play the Empire theme from Star Wars, of course!

As an added bonus, show this to a young person of post-floppy experience and claim that these drives are actually the first sound devices used on PC.  You can even say it's called a 'Game Blaster' (the Sound Blaster before it was the Sound Blaster).  God knows it didn't sound much better.  I should know, I owned one.  It looked like this (below) and I was excited.  (took me 5 hours to get it working on my PC XT though(...Irq7....Irq10....Irq5....KHAN!!!)

Check out the new U.S. Navy Radar by Raytheon

Filed under 'S' for 'Scary Stuff!' - Raytheon's new radar system is so powerful that it will allow your not-so-average Arleigh Burke classs of destroyer to track pretty much anything...including satellites!  Cnet has thrown up some concept photos from the company formally known as 'Hughes' (a.k.a Howard Hughes) about what it will look like and more importantly: what it will track.

In a connected (I think) topic, I overheard an interesting segment on BBC Radio 4 this morning regarding a new book entitled 'DarkMarket: Cyberthieves,' based on the infamous forum site of the same name (since shut down).  The author, Bodley Head, put in a unique effort by contacting various hackers around the world to get the story from 'behind the keyboard' and what he discovered was shocking.  Every month, vicious and successful hacking attacks against major organisations suchs as banks, defence agencies and government offices are occurring without report.  Much of these attacks are state-sponsered and I suspect that the U.S. is now counting mobile 'Satellite Killing' amongst its 'must have' arsenal of weapons. 

If the war on Cyber crime has a physical form, this is undoubtedly it...for all the good it could possibly do.