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Xbox One Consoles Are Down (mashable.com)
If you are having trouble getting your Xbox One online, you are not alone. Xbox One consoles around the world have stopped working. From a report: Xbox One owners are reporting major problems with their consoles online with displays being stuck on black screens at startup, games not loading, and errors when trying to login to Xbox Live. Microsoft is aware of the situation and has promised to give more information when they have it. Within a couple of hours, the official Xbox Support Twitter account updated everyone, saying that they have identified the problem and are working on fixing it. There is no estimate on how long it will take to fix. Bad week for Microsoft services continues. Update: The issue with Xbox Live appears to have been resolved.
Just yesterday there was a post asking about what global technical disasters had not yet come to pass, suspiciously like they were plumbing the Slashdot crowd for ideas on how to finish ruining civilization. And now, here we are.
This is exactly what happens when you buy in to a system that depends on online connectivity.
Fuck that. When I buy a game I want to own the game. You millennials have no idea of the pain you are in for.
your offline, disc based games?
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This is sadly why I refuse to own a game console which requires an internet connection.
When my XBox 360 started displaying ads, it got disconnected from the network never to be connected again. When the XBone was coming out and MS was saying "it must be on-line", I knew that was the end of console gaming for me.
First, because I don't trust companies like MS to suddenly decide that content I've paid for is no longer available to me.
Second, because I don't trust the competence of MS to maintain such a connected device, which they've been proving in spades with Windows 10.
Third, because as an old fart who doesn't play on-line games, there is no benefit to me to have my video game on the internet, other than to put a microphone in my living room and hope that MS plays nice. I'm too cynical to hope that.
Fourth, because fuck you with your ads, analytics, and other pointless on-line shit that is hostile to me as the one who bought the fucking console in the first place.
I'm afraid I have no sympathy for a massive outage no doubt caused by Microsoft's new-found use of everyone as beta testers, and when my older XBox 360 dies and I can no longer play Skyrim in a completely off-line console, that will be the end of my gaming.
I just don't see how I would trust a platform like this.
I bet someone let a certificate somewhere expire. I'd put money on it!
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Many of us care, but we're called Luddites, old men, and paranoid.
We should embrace modern technology and stop being so cranky we're told.
Meanwhile people who know almost nothing about setting up computers or a network are buying connected devices, and letting them have free rein on their network with shit like UPnP, which just turns off all the security.
They find their creepy baby monitor talking in strange voices to their children. They buy a Barbie which uploads everything their child to someone's server.
Hell, they install locks that allows Amazon to open your door to strangers.
Congratulations, you've put complex networked devices with major security ramifications to people who can barely operate their TV remote.
But it's people like me who have been in IT for 25+ years who are the ones trying to explain why this is a terrible idea, and being dismissed as alarmist. OK, well, fine, let's ignore what I do for a living and how 6 months ago you could barely access your own wifi.
Everyone is so obsessed with their connected gadgets they've stopped listening to the people they used to ask how to get onto the interwebs. Because they're all experts, and the devices undermine their security for them.
They all want shiny and easy, but they have no idea of what else is happening.
The upshot of all of this is now I just simply refuse to help or answer questions, because they're clearly experts now.
I had to explain to my parents when they bought their first laptop that I was a two hour flight away, that I couldn't see their screen, had no idea what they'd done, and can't just magically divine their problem over the phone. They bought a Geek Squad package that day.
So, I care about how this affects me, but the people buying the connected toilets and fridges? They're on their own.
XBox Live is a BS fee that you pay in order to play online with others. So as long as your game doesn't require you to be online to play it, then yeah, you could have played it. The problem is that most games today require online activity in some way, and that made it impossible for many.
My thoughts were that MS was experiencing some sort of DoS attack, because if you kept trying to get in, eventually it'd let you. And once you were in, game-play was fine, from what I saw.
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Office 365 stopped working so I couldn't use my work email.
Anything that used "login.microsoftonline.com" as an authentication provider stopped working.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was the XBox issue too.
A clear example of how software non-freedom (proprietary, user-subjugating software) hurts users. This is a relatively minor, therefore fortunate, example in that (as far as the Xbox goes) it's chiefly for recreational use and nobody's lives depends on this. But as more important systems take on the same network-bound DRM schemes, people will be needlessly impoverished, needlessly suffer reputation damage, needlessly lose jobs, and even needlessly die from things like this. It's a good thing that medical equipment, for instance, is not networked and under the control of those at the console (we also know this from what ought to be common sense and the stories about CPAP machines ratting out their users to insurance companies and medical organizations).
Technologically speaking, you should be able to host your own server for these games and thus keep playing against opponents without involving a single central authority you can't replace. Software freedom would give you the freedom you need to improve the game to implement this. A single point of failure central authority, however, also puts you at the mercy of that authority when they want to stop you from playing the game (and by "you" I mean cherry-picked individuals, sets of users, or all users—their choice of users)
I'm sure some of this has already happened and it's only a matter of time until there are enough stories we can point to to create an organized map of them like what the GNU Project has done to back up their claim that proprietary software is often malware.
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