Thursday, November 24, 2005
Xbox 360 Crashes, Defects Reported
So, the Xbox 360 launch was a success, right? Turns out the jury is still out - and early reports the morning after are not pretty. From unconfirmed rumors of near-riots as employees apparently hoarded Xbox 360 systems in front of waiting customers, to numbers of pre-orders that went unfulfilled, some are saying Microsoft mishandled the launch.
But those who actually got the system in hand are breathing easy and living it up, right?
Some of them are. But others are posting a plethoral of problems with their brand-new 360s, from game crashes to hard drives that simply don't work.
One reasonable gamer lays it out like this: "Between my friends and I, we bought 6 machines at the Zero Hour event. Of the 6, my machine has a dead hard drive, another machine is working but is rather flaky (seen some strange behavior - the drive may also be scratching discs, as my friend's copy of Condemned is now unplayably scratched, but we don't know if the drive caused it - the machine has also had problems booting games and being turned off...), one seems to be good, and I haven't heard yet about the status of the other three."
Is there enough evidence to shout "recall"? While there are plenty of stories in the games press and blogging scene this morning, many of them seem centered on one fellow's experience - a poster called "Jsgongwon" on the Xbox-Scene forums who included pictures of his crash, which apparently happened repeatedly during Project Gotham Racing 3. "So far haven't been able to play one track without crashing... also got this crashing on Xbox Live screen and on startup too..." he writes.
Another fellow on the same message board reports that his 360 "just turned off" during Perfect Dark Zero.
And some stories seem - well, not to be unduly harsh, but they seem a bit shady. One poster, for example, claimed she had exchanged her 360 because of a defect and the same thing happened. Other posters wondered how on earth she found another 360 in the same area to trade her old one for. I'm not calling her a liar, understand, but merely pointing out it's easy to make stuff up on the internet.
But that there are some systems experiencing real problems is not in doubt. Even here in our offices we have had some incidents with retail units. One of them overheated and crashed during Project Gotham Racing 3, though not as spectacularly as Jsgongwon's experience. Dan "Shoe" Hsu also reported that a very strange echo effect happened during Xbox Live play of Perfect Dark Zero - sometimes a word said over chat would endlessly repeat in a strange echo effect over and over in the headphones. Some kind of bizarre feedback loop?
Just how widespread is the scope of 360 problems, though? It's a little too early to call whether these problems are systemic or isolated bugs. Consumers have to spend a little more time with the machines and we do, too, testing out various games and Xbox Live experiences. We also need to divide the hardware problems from the software bugs. Microsoft has been alerted to these issues and are currently investigating. We should have a statement from them shortly.
In the meantime, if you do have a 360, treat it as you would a gaming PC, which is essentially what it is. Don't leave it on all night long to idle, don't wrap it in a blanket, don't stick it anywhere it won't get enough ventilation. Just in case.
source:http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?Dispatch=Display&cId=3145847
Chinese whispers?
China: the country of the Great Wall, the biggest army in the world and censorship of the internet. Or is it? Meet the bloggers who are claiming they're free to say what they like.
"BBC makes me sick", begins a post at China Top Blog . The blogger goes on to explain that he cancelled an interview with the Beeb because "BBC often casts your voice into pieces and makes a remix".
Moreover, the blog continues, BBC interviewers are close to monsters :
- "Being interviewed by BBC is no fun, it is a grilling experience. At times, interviewers can get very aggressive.
Recently over a scandal in the British cabinet, BBC news reader Jonathan asked the Home Secretary: 'Did you threaten to sack him (a junior minister)?',
the home secretary replied calmly: 'I warned him'.
Jonathan: 'Did you threaten him!'
Secretary: 'I warned him'
Jonathan again Did you threaten him'
Secretary again: I warned him
Jonathan again: Did you threaten him?'
.......
Repeated 9 times, eventually Jonathan shouted: 'You are a coward, aren't you? Why can not you just admit that you threatened him!'
While this is surely a case of Chinese Whispers, you'd hope the Beeb would come across as more even-handed when interviewing members of the public.
Not always. Edwyn Chan's Weblog is among the milder critics, describing the BBC as "annoying" for always asking about freedom of speech when interviewing Chinese citizens.
| | WEBLOG WATCH Weblog Watch is the BBC News Magazine's weekly review of blogs |
- "As everyone can see, there is not much censorship on this blog and I can talk the topic I choose to talk about."
So how can this be? Is the BBC (gulp) fallible, not to mention Amnesty , PoliticsOnline , openDemocracy and Reporters Sans Frontieres , which named China the winner of the 2005 Internet-Censor World Championship ?
Well, the ensuing debate is certainly lively, both in the comments section, on other blogs , and has reached an even wider audience after being flagged up at Harvard's überblog Global Voices Online .
The censorship elephant
The initial spur for all this international attention on China was a recent Chinese Bloggers' Conference which was attended by, among others, "recovering TV reporter-turned-blogger" Rebecca MacKinnon . She describes censorship as a "hitch" and goes on:
- "But this was not the time and place to discuss how to circumvent censorship. Addressing that huge elephant in the room directly would have flagged the gathering as subversive, and would have killed all the good stuff that came out of the meeting."
Like Bill Thompson , this isn't saying "Don't mention the censorship"; it's just acknowledging - like, in fact, the original BBC report - that if freedom of speech is curtailed, it's difficult to talk about it.
Hence the many Chinese bloggers, who we shall not link to here for obvious reasons, who have given slightly-gnomic posts along the lines of "I'm not saying whether there's censorship in China or not - but if there were, I wouldn't want to be the first person to announce it on a world platform".
Losing editorial control
This being the internet, the conversation also involved various members of the community accusing each other of having ulterior business interests, being "trolls", or covertly blogging on behalf of the state.
But overall, it looks as though mutual trust will be regained. And as well as the specific dynamics of talking about China, there's a new phenomenon here of what happens when bloggers are quoted.
Webloggers are in a strange position: they're simultaneously much more visible than their fellow citizens when a mainstream journalist is looking for interviewees, and much more used than their fellow civilians to writing stories themselves, and maintaining full editorial control of their own words.
As Asia Pundit writes, it's standard journalistic practice to use a tiny fraction of your interview, depending on how you're telling your story. The world's first newspaper had probably only hit the streets of Antwerp about ten minutes before a disgruntled Belgian was telling his friends "they quoted me out of context!".
Bloggers - if they're lucky - get to tell the rest of the world.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/4460168.stm
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