For a lot of reasons we got distracted from the blog thing for a bit. Posts will still be sparse for a while but we’re working on a massive overhaul of the site, both in terms of “look and feel” as well as content.

We’re excited about the new approach but finding time to implement will be challenging…

See you soon!

Gaming still provides some news worth posting about, though (if not very much). First the downloads:

•Act of War Multiplayer Demo (RTS)
•Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines v1.4 patch (listed as “unofficial” since Troika doesn’t really exist anymore)

Gaming news that’s worth reprinting:
•Ghost Recon 3 will be released for PC before the end of the year
•X-Men: Legends 2 will be released for PC in addition to game consoles, making for a much better co-op environment (in my opinion, anyway)
•A little company in Redmond unveiled their plans for an obscure piece of gaming hardware called the Xbox 360. You can check out the official site, and Boomtown’s Q&A with MS’ “Chief Xbox Officer”, Robbie Bach, is a good read for understanding where MS wants to take the whole Xbox thing.

Regarding the Xbox 360 - it’s got some great features and the minor improvements to Xbox Live are nice, but the extent to which it will be backwards compatible will determine whether or not I’m an early adopter or a wait-and-see pessimist.

• Empire Earth 2 single/multiplayer demo for RTS fans
• Dungeon Lords single/multiplayer demo for multiplayer RPG fun from the creator of the Wizardry series

Our vacation was a cruise, just like our honeymoon. I don’t think we’ll be doing it again. Don’t get me wrong - Desiree and I had a really great time and it was fairly relaxing. The time in the sun, the ocean, the pools, the hot tubs - all great stuff. But when it comes right down to it, Desiree and I have a very similar attitude toward people; let’s call it “hopeful misanthropy”. What I mean by this is that we strongly dislike other people in general, but we’ll give individual people the benefit of the doubt until they give us a reason to hate them, too.

Being in a confined space with so many passengers who were behaving so badly - both to the crew and each other - did not do a lot to enhance our dim view of humanity. The good times (which were thankfully the rule, not the exception) were punctuated by all sorts of infuriating behavior from people. We were on a European cruise line for which English is not the primary language and the dining and service customs are distinctly continental, so many of these cringe-worthy moments came from fellow Americans (the vast majority of the passengers). Our countrymen acted with such ignorance and were posessed with such an overwhelming sense of entitlement that Desiree and I exchanged the phrase “…and that is why the rest of the world thinks we’re obnoxious” several times a day. Add to that the sheer irritation of lines, crowds, and herd mentality in general, and pretty soon you’ve got Sartre’s “No Exit” on a boat. Don’t even get me started on the perplexingly high proportion of adult males hitting on girls that are clearly of middle-to-high school age; it’s creepy enough all by itself, but when it causes your SCUBA dive master to leave uncertified divers in the ocean - and by divers, I of course mean me - because they’re too busy trying to hook up with sixteen-year-olds, then it’s even more thoroughly unacceptable. Well, it could have been worse - there was a diver in our group who, due to lack of supervision and no fault of his own, drifted into the boating lane and nearly got his head taken off… just a few minutes before he ran out of air due to a leak in his gear. (He made it back ok, no thanks to the dive masters.)

So, in a nutshell - overall vacation: very good, close proximity to vast numbers of stupid people: very bad. I think next time we’ll go for the sun and surf minus the people… maybe rent a big beach house somewhere with some friends.

There are some fascinating implications to this news story. The concept of the “for profit” hacker (which has long been a reality, albeit much less glamorously than Hollywood and speculative fiction would have you believe) getting maintstream press is actually quite novel. If keystroke loggers were indeed used, then it’s somewhat inconceivable that they could have been of the software variety. This presents us with the upside-down reality that it was easier to install rogue hardware on the bank’s premise than to penetrate their network remotely. Even 5 years ago, to think that a bank’s physical security was a “softer” target than its information security would have been absurd - but in an age of contractors, outsourcing, and wide-reaching partnerships, faces come and go. In such an environment, it’s completely plausible that “social engineering” - the hacker’s euphemism for con-artistry augmented by technology - almost walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars.

What’s really interesting to me, though, is Sumitomo’s choice to disclose the attempted crime. Sure, there were no financial losses whatsoever - the attempted theft was a complete failure - but why talk about a vulnerability even if it wasn’t exploited?

Some “experts” have suggested that the bank’s choice to go public is an attempt to draw out other conspirators, but that seems non-sensical to me. I am not a criminal, but I do know something of investigative technique and I would think that every news channel in the free world broadcasting news of my partner-in-crime’s arrest (yet no details about me personally) would probably drive me further underground, not out in to the light of day.

I would also disagree that the move is intended to intimidate the thieves at large from trying to collect their shares. Risk management in the financial sector - especially for retail banks, where individual consumers are likely to be more emotional than logical about the safety and privacy of their life savings - is generally not discussed in public, for fear of spooking the consumers. The dirty little secret here is that huge - staggeringly huge - sums of money are planned to be lost each year. From offering customers credit card fraud indemnity to the good old-fashioned knockoff of armored cars in eastern Europe by criminal organizations, money loss is an expectation, not a fear. Some money is protected (when the cost to secure that money compares favorably to the chance the money will be lost or when such protection is required to obtain reasonable insurance) and some is written off as a cost of doing business. That doesn’t mean anyone wants to lose money, of course - the more of the “planned loss” that’s safely in the coffers at the end of the fiscal period, the better the bottom line looks.

In other words, losing this kind of money for a bank of Sumitomo’s size would be vigorously pursued, but ultimately it’d be a matter of course - and who wants to have consumers associate their banking brand with “the guys who almost got hacked”? US$424m in extortion money seems like a small price to pay to avoid that stigma.

Sumitomo’s duty is to provide value to its stakeholders, so I also doubt their disclosure was out of some sense of social responsibility. In fact, better security/risk management can be a competitive advantage in the industry if you’re significantly better at keeping your money safe than your peers. Of course the security community is ecstatic that the disclosure was made, for reasons ranging from altruistic (i.e. people/institutions need to know that these kinds of threats exist and are almost omnipresent) to devious (i.e. childish glee from the paranoia and infamy). Either way, anyone peddling information security products or services stands to benefit.

So, after a great deal of pondering, I can’t figure out why this made it to the news… there must be more to the story than is being discussed publicly. An interesting item to watch, then…

Not all secret tombs are found by accident, however, so it’s good to know that someone had the good sense to try to use inexplicable cosmic rays to find hidden Mayan burial chambers.

The Empire Earth 2 single player-demo should be fun if you like RTS games - the original EE was a great game and the computer opponent difficulty went up to 11 (if you know what I mean).

Speaking of single-player demos, I’m not sure how I missed it - it’s almost 2 weeks old - but the SWAT 4 demo is up for grabs. If you like tactical FPS games (and you know you do), then go ahead and give it a look-see.

Finally, a story that got some press on both Blue’s News and Evil Avatar (both are daily reads for me and generally good sites if you stay away from the comments): The Great Scam. It’s an entertaining (if not always well-written) story about one person’s descent from MMORPG player to elaborate, con-artist level griefer. It’s one of those stories that may be partially or completely untrue, but it’s almost beside the point since it’s utterly believable. Not recommended for Desiree or anyone else who is likely to get highly upset at people completely screwing other people over.

That last story is one of what the Guardian’s game blog calls “10 unmissable examples of new games journalism”. They seem to define “new” games journalism as people writing more about their experience playing games and less about formulaic reviews (e.g. “ok, we covered gameplay, graphics, and sound, so now we have to comment on…”) and x/10 ratings. It’s a little more personal, but if you can sort through the author’s idiosyncracies, then it can provide a lot more insight into whether or not you want to invest your time and money into a game, which is always a good thing.