Future Gaming

The future of gaming is something that may be hard to imagine but virtual reality is always in the loop.  Games up to now have stimulated one or two of our five senses.  We have improved graphics, physics, and facial expressions and can display the images on ultra-high resolution televisions (UHD).  The since of sight is stimulated here.  There are controllers that vibrate when something happens in the game which uses a small portion of the sense of touch.  The Kinect and PlayStation move have stepped closer to improving a sense of virtual reality but the two main player in virtual reality at the moment are;

1. Oculus Rift
2. Sony’s Project Morpheus

These new technologies are a step closer to giving the user an overall gaming experience much closer to the feeling of virtual reality.   They use headsets and controllers with motion tracking.  The headset practically cuts out any outside visual distractions and using the controllers with this gives an much greater sense of being in the game.

Check out a review below of Sony's Project Morpheus

I think there is a long way to go to make virtual reality in games a complete experience which simulates all the senses but these technologies are a big step in the right direction.  In another 20 years new technology combined with the leaps I expect in graphics will produce some truly amazing results.  It is exciting to think what may happen.

How gaming were introduced to me

The massive industry of gaming is driving the advancements in graphics and user experience in games.  There had been a fast and steady increase in these advancements.  If we go back twenty years the computing power was just a fraction of what we have now yet the size of chips and boards were much larger.  

One of the first games I ever played was fruity frank on the amstrad computer.  With the basic 2 dimensional graphics and limited movement options, this game still was incredibly addictive and was graphically at a level I never seen before.

These games came on an old cassette tape which required the game to be loaded from the cassette drive and be manually turned over during the "loading" process of the game.  This could take up to 90 minutes for some games which was quite painful and the game would often be left running for the day to avoid reloading the game.

It wasn't long before I got my first gaming console, the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) which introduced 3 dimensional games to me.  Loading times increased from 90 minutes to no more than 5 minutes.  This console made life so much easier, and was the cause of my first gaming blisters on my thumbs.

Many consoles came out after the release of the SNES in 1993 and each had an increase in the power and graphics just kept improving.  Also the artificial intelligence improved making the gaming experience more compelling.  

In the next post I will continue this topic and talk about the future of gaming.

Picking a Password and Password Security

There are so many things that require passwords theses day that remembering them can be a problem, because of this a lot of people pick there passwords poorly, but it is important that everyone should know how to choose a good password and keep it safe.

All passwords should be at least eight characters long and use a mixture of upper and lower case characters, numbers, punctuation and symbols. Passwords should never be words that can be found in a dictionary because of an attack method known as a dictionary attack, this is when software tools are used that can try every word in a dictionary or word list or both until your password is found. The same password should never be used for more than one thing, i.e. your computer password should not be the same as your email password.

Don’t ever choose a password based on personal information such as name, birth-date, wife’s name, phone number, address etc. Choose a password that can be remembered and avoid writing it down anywhere. Passwords should never be stored on a computer except in encrypted form and never emailed or sent through an unsecure channel.

Password generating software is available for free to make secure passwords and there are websites that will give you a rating as to how secure your password is. It should be made mandatory in a business environment that every employee should have to change their password regularly, I suggest at least once a month. A completely different password should be picked rather than just adding a number onto the old password; which is a fairly common practice.

If you need to write down passwords make sure the paper with the password is in a secure place that only you have access to; but writing down a password is a bad idea even if you think it will be stored securely. Be careful of entering a password when others are present and be sure no one is looking over your shoulder as you enter a password as ‘shoulder surfing’ is a common method of someone attaining your password. 

Television show review

This week we are asked to review a book, as I only ever read one book in my life I think its better I review something else.  As you can see from the title of this post this a TV-show review and I will review The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead is a television series which was first aired in October 2010 on the AMC network.  It is based on the comic book series the walking dead.  It is set in modern day Atlanta, Georgia and set around the main character Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) who is a sheriff.  

Recovering from a bullet wound after a shootout with criminals, he wakes from the coma and realises he had been there alone for some time, the flowers at the side of his bed are dried out and almost dead, the clock on the wall has stopped working and when he gets out of the bed he finds there is nobody else in the hospital, alive that is.

He realises pretty quickly he is in a zombie apocalypse and goes about searching for his family.  The series continues to test the abilities of his survival as he meets more people along the way.  There is some nail biting moments as each season the group loses some members while gaining more.

I never read the comics and wont either, I presume it tells the whole story or more importantly an ending.  Another reason not to read the comic at this stage but I can only imagine the series ending in one of two ways.  A cure to the epidemic or possible they all die.  Looking forward to finding out.

Thanks for reading.

Colm

Newsu Course on Online Media Law

Newsu course review

The course through the newsu website was “Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers”.  This course goes through three main aspects in relation to blogging and publishing articles on the internet. 

Defamation is one of these aspects.  This basically is the publication of a false statement that damages the reputation of a person or business.  People are divided into two categories, private and public.  People that fall into the public category must meet certain criteria, public figures are obviously considered public, and it is generally people that are known from movie stars to local figures that are known within a community.  Directors of company’s can fall into this category also, especially if the company is well known.  With private figures it may be more difficult to peruse legal action in a defamation case.

The copyright infringement section of the course explains to the reader, the methods of avoiding liability when it comes to copyright infringement.  An example from the course would be where someone sets up a blog that allows other people to post on it.  If the third party blogger was to post copyrighted material on your blog, you would not be liable if you have followed procedures for notifying the user and takedown the material.  The term used to describe this was “safe harbour”.

If you publish information about someone, whether true or false, you may become legally liable.  One of the chapters from the course that remains in my head is “intrusion upon exclusion”, this protects people from invasion of privacy in a place where you should expect to have privacy. 

It was interesting to learn about these laws that protect your privacy, reputation and work.  From the other side, it is interesting and important to know how to protect yourself from exposure to legal liability.

Thanks for reading,

Colm

Movie Review

American Hustle 2013

This movie is set in the 70s with the typical music and cloths to suit.  The movie begins with Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) standing in front of a mirror, gluing his comb-over down to his scalp. Pretty bizarre, but it quickly goes from this and gives you a since of what the movie will be about when Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) all come together and in an almost comical dialect, begin sparring off each other. 

The story jumps back to an earlier time before Richie met the other two, and gives a quick, but detailed view of the lives of Irving and Sydney and how they met.  They begin working together in a dodgy loan business where they take a non-refundable deposit for the promise of loan, but of course there never was a loan.  Richie DiMaso first appears as a new “customer” looking for money but it turns out he works for the FBI and uses the incriminating evidence to blackmail the pair into working with him. 

As the story goes on, it delves deeper into the life of Irving and we discover he has an adopted kid, whose mother had some hold over Irving.  One of the quotes that sticks out is of how Irving describes her as “The Picasso of passive aggressive karate”.  She has a bigger role to play as the movie goes on and with a description like this you might expect her to be entertaining but I found her irritating. 

Throughout the movie you get a feeling each are out to con each-other, but as the story unravels this feeling fades a little.  Without spoiling the movie for anyone else I will leave it there.

If I had to rate it out of 5, it would get 3.5  Anyway, enjoy.

Colm

Something about me!

I am a 1^st year computing student studying in Cork Institute of Technology.  One of six modules in the second semester is web publishing, where we have been asked to set up a blog and write three hundred words about ourselves.

Well here it goes, I enjoy sports, poker and love my TV shows / movies.

I was playing with a local soccer team for a number of years until, just over a year ago my back started slowing me down because of disk problems but I swore to myself that I will play again before I am too old.  I follow Liverpool football club, and this is a sweat time for us reds supporters with a young fast team that can only improve in my opinion, contrary to what some people think, but what do they know?

Poker... oh sweet poker, Texas Hold'em to be more precise is quite addictive but so much fun.  I think it goes something like this; if you lose money you are amateur whereas, if you win money you are professional, also if you’re not in you can’t win.  To contradict myself, it is not fun when you encounter bad beats, everyone’s heard of river rats but in poker this refers to someone who, against all logical since and odds, manages to still be in the round of betting only to be blessed with a miracle river card to fill a set of cards to beat you.  If I used hash tags, it would be followed by RAGE.

TV shows for me are a great way to spend my free time or, my not so free time also.  This year I started watching Sons of Anarchy, six seasons in three weeks.  Some people like to read books, I like to watch TV shows.

Just a quick note on privacy on the Internet, I think there is little to none.  Anyway, thanks for reading.
Later.

Colm.