It wish it turns out to be a box full of BOOKS!!! I dunno...a kid his age shouldn't be getting an Xbox 360. I didn't get a console (NES) till I was13, and that is after some serious begging, and improvements in school. I wasn't able to getanother console (SNES) till I actually started working.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/185509/dont_steal_this_xbox_360_thief_tracked_by_gamertag.htmlIf you steal an Xbox 360, don't forget to disable the auto sign-in feature before going online. That's the lesson high-tech crooks are probably gleaning from today's New York Post brief about a thief, 22-year-old Jeremy Gilliam, apprehended after logging into Xbox LIVE with his victim's online game id.Xbox LIVE requires a unique identifier known as a Gamertag, similar to an instant messaging id. The owner of the stolen Xbox 360 noticed his Gamertag was logged in without his permission, then told his parents, who contacted police. Detectives on the case ostensibly worked with Microsoft to get the stolen Xbox 360's IP address, then followed the digital breadcrumb trail back through the ISP used by Gilliam at the time. That led them to Gilliam's grandmother's house, where they discovered a trove of pilfered games, laptops, and satnavs reportedly accumulated from hundreds of vehicle break-ins and multiple home burglaries.Jeremy GilliamGilliam was already in the investigatory hotseat for stealing over a dozen unlocked cars, and according to the Post, he's now been charged with grand larceny.It's not clear whether he logged in manually or automatically, or for how long the incriminating Gamertag was active, but an internet connection with an Ethernet cable or Microsoft's wireless USB dongle is required to access Xbox LIVE, so it's a safe bet he was online intentionally.Gamertags aren't the only way Microsoft can trace Xbox 360s. Each system has a unique identifier that's passed to Microsoft when you sign into Xbox LIVE. It's that identifier that allows Microsoft to give some of us in the press access to features ahead of the general public. Logic dictates Microsoft could match IP addresses to identifiers, thereby allowing someone whose Xbox 360 was stolen to trace it, were Microsoft made aware of the theft, and should the perp log into Xbox LIVE--with or without an incriminating Gamertag.I'm pretty sure Microsoft doesn't support system id tracking at this time. For that matter, most people probably don't write down their system's serial number. But if they did, speaking hypothetically, Microsoft could trace stolen systems on that basis alone (the complexities of juggling irate customers, the police, and fiercely independent internet service providers notwithstanding, of course).One of my friends had an Xbox 360 stolen from under his nose. He was just outside his apartment when it happened and heard the thieves through the ground floor window but didn't make it inside quick enough to see or stop them. Afterward, I helped him download his Gamertag to a new system: To date, several years along, no one's popped up on his login radar, meaning the id's almost certainly been wiped and replaced with another. Had we recorded the serial number, and were Microsoft to offer a tracking service, however, we'd probably have come across it by now.
Can any one help me please? I have a blink internet connection of 2mbs, yet i can't connect to xbox live to save my life! Any suggestions?
[Update, 5:30pm: And off comes the rumor tag! Microsoft may have pulled the post but the original video is still live on its own servers, which you can find right here! We'll scrub through it for more information. Update, 5:47pm: Full transcript after the break.]Microsoft's Channel 9 developer community site accidentally posted a video interview with Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment & Devices Division, several hours before the company's annual CES press conference. Initially tweeted by @ch9, the video was pulled, as evidenced by this tweet from none other than @microsoft: "Sorry, spoke too soon, or, tweeted too soon. This video later tonight."Vigilant tipster Iced_Eagle wrote us just after the video was pulled, giving us a quick breakdown. "Go to the 11:53 mark in the video to hear them start discussing Game Room," our tipster writes. "They aren't totally concrete on the details, but they talk about how this is supposed to bring back that retro fun to gaming." That sounds an awful lot like that consumer survey we spotted in October for a virtual Avatar arcade, one of the potential titles of which was "Game Room." You don't say ...Iced_Eagle also unsurprisingly reports, "In the video they confirm Natal is on for this year." Considering everyone from Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot to Microsoft's own Steve Ballmer have alluded to a 2010 release, we're not the least bit surprised. But if they're still calling it Project Natal in this video, that means we're probably looking to E3 for an official reveal, with branding and all.Microsoft's CES keynote begins at 9:30pm Eastern and we'll be delivering all the news straight from Las Vegas.[Thanks for the great tip, Iced_Eagle!]Bach on Game Room: Well, Game Room in some ways is sort of a retro approach. And it's interesting, there's a generation of people -- sort of my advanced, mature age [laughs] -- who grew up with a set of games like Centipede. They look almost like casual, fun games today -- at the time they were high-end, edgy games -- and so Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market. And bringing that to a very broad audience. And I think what we're gonna find is that when people can get 30 or more of these games, they're gonna love it for the experience. And it's not just you and I who are gonna love it, even the people who would call themselves "hardcore gamers" are gonna say "Oh wow this is fun!" In a retro way. It's sort of like my daughter going to watch Journey. I'm like, this is a band that was playing when I was growing up. And she thinks it's a cool band and I like the music. And I think you're gonna have the same phenomenon with Game Room. We're gonna enjoy the games and they're gonna think it's cool. I think that's very powerful.When asked "What's 2010 look like?" Bach responded, in part: And then you look at what we have coming in the Xbox space, with Project Natal, which I think is going to revolutionize how people think about the gaming business, and actually turn into ....
