In his role heading policy and enforcement for Xbox live, Stephen Toulouse is widely known for wielding the "banhammer"--that is being the guy who comes down on cheaters and those who harass people over the online service.
Toulouse said he is starting to shy away from the banhammer moniker, given that he and his team employ a range of punishments, from the temporary suspension of a feature all the way up to permanent ban of all users of a particular console. But, he said, as an avid gamer, he is enjoying his role trying to keep Xbox Live as a fun and safe space.
Toulouse
(Credit: Stephen Toulouse)"It's nice to get to protect people in a new way," Toulouse said in an interview. Before taking over as top Xbox cop, Toulouse worked in Microsoft's Security Response Center and trustworthy computing unit, handling the flaws in Microsoft's products and the resulting security outbreaks they caused.
In some ways, life has changed little for Toulouse since he switched to the Xbox role in August 2007. He's just fighting different kinds of bad guys.
Whereas Microsoft has a large team of people scouring the Internet for reports of security holes, it also has a team of five or six dozen people that are playing Xbox Live at any given time, looking for any type of problems.
"There's always a segment of the population that is going to be miscreant," he said. Still, he said, at any given time just one-twentieth of one percent of all those using the online service have a complaint registered against them. "It's a tiny fraction of the overall interactions."
Toulouse said he relies on the lessons he learned while trying to protect Microsoft customers from bugs that exploited its flaws.
"I carry with me from the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) days that concept of how can this feature be misused or how can this capability be misused," he said.
Cheating is one of the issues that he deals with, though Toulouse said that is somewhat limited given the closed nature of the Xbox as compared with, say, the PC. Most of the issues come around exploiting a flaw in game's map, say a place that one can go where they can shoot other characters but not be hit themselves.
Probably the area he spends the most time policing isn't in any game at all. It's overseeing the regulation of what people put in their gamer tags and profiles.
"They have 255 characters," Toulouse said. "They can say a lot of things."
The company not only responds to complaints but is also constantly working on expanding its lexicon to include new slang for the terms and subjects that it bans. Urban Dictionary, Wikipedia, and other places help the company keep up to date.
"We spend a lot of time researching those terms," Toulouse said. "It's a huge and fast-moving world in terms of how slang develops."
One of the specific issues that has cropped up under Toulouse's watch is the issue of whether and how users can identify their gender identity and sexual orientation. The issue gained some measure of attention starting last summer after several users were prohibited from referencing a gay identity in their gamer tags.
Microsoft's current practice is to ban any discussion of sexuality in either tags or profiles--a move that makes it impossible for those gamers who want to identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender to do so.
In part, Toulouse said, that's because 98 percent of those who have tried to use the term gay have done so not as a means of self-identification but by using the word as a put down.
But for someone who wants to be more than a "banhammer," Toulouse acknowledges just prohibiting all reference to sexuality isn't much of a solution.
"I think what we have today is inelegant," he said, adding that he is working on an improvement, but he still doesn't have a timetable for when a better option will be in place. That's basically the same position he took when the company addressed the issue in February.
"I haven't made a change to date but I am committed to making a change," Toulouse said. "We hear very clearly that customers wish to express this."
Toulouse said that part of the reason it has taken so long is that the company is looking at changing not just the policy but also the profile technology, perhaps adding check boxes where people could include their gender identity or sexual orientation and perhaps other characteristics as well.
"That's the thinking we are leaning toward," he said, adding that no final decision has been made.
This past weekend, Toulouse was in San Francisco for a panel discussion on the role of homophobia in virtual worlds--an issue that more than just Microsoft is trying to grapple with. More than 100 people turned out for the discussion, which was sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and also included representatives of Electronic Arts, Linden Labs, the Entertainment Software Association, and Flynn DeMarco, founder of gaygamer.net.
GLAAD's Justin Cole said that it is not surprising that it is taking Microsoft time to come up with a workable solution to what is clearly a big problem.
"For a system as big as Xbox Live to be able to change something isn't as simple as just a flip of the switch," Cole said.
Another issue for Toulouse and team is educating parents about the need to set controls for their children's use of the Xbox. With other game consoles, the biggest issues are often deciding which games a child can play and for how long.
Many parents aren't aware of a potentially bigger decision that comes with the Xbox. Because it runs online and has chatting capabilities, parents also need to decide with whom their child can communicate online. With Xbox Live, users can get text and audio messages, as well as pictures.
"Those capabilities, like any capabilities, can be misused," Toulouse said. By default, accounts set up for under-18 users turn off the chat capabilities, but many teens set up their own consoles and decide to make create adult accounts, which allow all such messages by default.
Parents often think about these issues when it comes to their children's computer use, but don't always think about having similar rules for things like the Xbox. To try to make parents aware, Microsoft has launched a "Get Game Smart" Web site as well as recruiting a number of online parents and teens to serve as "ambassadors" to their less savvy counterparts.
It's a lot more complicated than when he was young and his parents could just take away the power cord if he wasn't allowed to use his Atari home computer. However, he got an early taste of how to cheat the system--saving up his money and buying an extra power cord from a local electronics store.
Microsoft has quietly reorganized its Zune team, splitting up the hardware and software teams, CNET News has learned.
Rodriguez
(Credit: Microsoft)The software and services portion of the Zune team--the bulk of its staff--will be added to the portfolio of Enrique Rodriguez, the vice president who currently runs Microsoft's Mediaroom and Media Center TV businesses. The hardware team, meanwhile, will now report to Tom Gibbons, who also leads the hardware design efforts within Microsoft's Windows Mobile unit.
"We're just being very pragmatic and even more so in a world in which not even Microsoft can afford to over-invest," Rodriguez told CNET News.
The move was made on January 22, as Microsoft made its first-ever companywide layoffs--layoffs which also hit the Zune team, although Microsoft won't say how many people were cut. It also follows a holiday quarter in which Zune sales dropped by more than half from a year earlier.
In an hour-long interview on Thursday, Rodriguez said the move was not made in response to recent Zune sales, but rather as the company looks to create a more unified entertainment business and gears up to expand the Zune service to be available on more than just Microsoft's own devices.
"The goal is to make non-gaming entertainment a first-class citizen within Microsoft's business," he said. That means building better software and gaining scale "a little further out than just in Redmond."
"The other thing we are trying to do, like any other business, is to make some money," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez wasn't ready to offer details on when the Zune service would come, say, to Windows Mobile, but he did say to expect products within this calendar year that take the Zune service beyond just Microsoft's own line of digital music players.
"Zune the service needs to transcend Zune the device," Rodriguez said.
Zune, the device, has faced an uphill battle in its effort to offer a rival to Apple's iPod. Although the company has gained some share, it has come largely at the expense of the companies that were on the market with devices using Microsoft's PlaysForSure software, which predated the Zune.
Microsoft has been saying for some time that it would expand to other "tuners" beyond the Zune player and work on that front predates the latest reorganization. Meanwhile, the company says it is not getting out of the Zune hardware business altogether and in fact new Zune hardware models are expected to come out this fall.
"You have to have a hero device," he said. "If you ask me how important is it from a numbers perspective, today it's ultra-important. If I do my job right, part of my job is to make it less important. Part of my job is to make sure the service comes into every device."
But that doesn't mean Rodriguez doesn't see a need for Microsoft to keep making the Zune.
"The reality is that will continue to be the one vertical device that we control every...aspect of it all the way to what it says on the box," he said. "So shame on us if it is not the best."
Rodriguez said that a large part of the reorganization was about bringing more heads together to work on a unified entertainment approach, one that is headed toward a more cloud-based approach.
"To write the type of software...it's a complex job, it's a Microsoft scale job," he said. Microsoft won't say how many people work on Zune now or how large the team was prior to the reorganization, however, Rodriguez said by combining teams, Microsoft has more people focused on entertainment broadly.
"The aggregate of people is more today than it was two weeks ago," Rodriguez said. "We're taking what used to be 300 people there, 300 people there, and 300 people there...into being 1,000 people all around the same vision."
Updated at 12 p.m. PDT with news that the entry is now up for deletion.
(Credit:
Wikipedia/CNET News)
WASHINGTON, D.C.--In the real world, I changed my gender from male to female a few years back and haven't looked back. But on Wikipedia, my pronouns seem to be changing all the time.
In the last few weeks, there's been a debate as to whether "he" or "she" should be used on my page with different volunteer editors taking opposite positions on whether I am entitled to use female pronouns.
After several days of being "he" on Wikipedia, I was pleased Thursday to see that my pronouns had reverted back to the gender with which I identify.
Unlike in the journalism world, where the Associated Press Stylebook has a concrete answer on how to handle these sorts of things, there is no official "style" on gender matters or many other issues on Wikipedia. (Until a few years ago, one's anatomy or legal status dictated AP's assignment of pronouns. In recent years, though, the AP and other news organizations have adopted policies that transgender individuals should be referred to with the pronouns with which they themselves identify.)
In the unique world of Wikipedia, an article's contents can be changed repeatedly. That means that on matters that are in contention (and apparently my gender is one of those), things don't get settled but remain in flux. There's only one person who absolutely can't weigh in--the subject themselves.
While I find it somewhat confusing to have to log in each day to see what gender I am supposed to be, I have found the debate interesting.
And given that I am here in the nation's capital this week for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association annual conference, I thought it a fitting subject for this page as well.
Update at 12 p.m. PDT: Well, now the entry has had pronouns removed alltogether--a reasonable compromise in my opinion. However, the post is now up for deletion. If it's being deleted because I am not important enough for Wikipedia, that's something I can deal with. But I'd hate to think it's a matter of having a complicated gender.
Major air carriers are opposing a Transportation Security Administration plan to collect the birth dates and genders of airplane travelers, along with their full names, saying the added data collection will create needless hassles.
While the new data collection could add to the annoyance of air travel for the masses of air passengers, the move would pose a special challenge for those of us for whom the question of gender is more complicated than checking one of the two boxes.
Now, I fly a lot. And while some people may see me as female, and others as male, the fact of the matter is that almost no one looks at the gender written on my driver's license. It's there, but right now, the only time it is being checked is when a screener double-checks that the name matches the one on the ticket. Besides, most people use their eyes to determine gender and only if they are particularly confused, will they look at such documentation.
But adding gender to the screening process is bound to make life difficult for many transgender people. Within the transgender community are people who appear opposite their legal gender, but haven't--or can't--change their legal gender.
In some states, a legal gender change is a relatively straightforward process, while other states demand proof of medical intervention such as surgery or hormones, options that many transgender people cannot afford and some would just rather not pursue. A few states, such as Ohio, where I was born, won't let someone change their birth certificate at all, no matter what steps they take. Federal agencies like the Passport Agency and the Social Security Administration have their own rules, which can be more stringent than state rules. So that means some people may have a drivers license that says male, but a passport that says female, or vice versa.
I'm all for making the skies safer, but security for all should not come at the expense of making an already vulnerable group even more likely to be singled out for harassment. I hope that, in addition to making sure the benefits of any changes outweigh the costs and hassles, that the TSA privacy folks also looks into making sure that the system provides for the safety of those of us with complicated genders.
While much of my conversation with Microsoft's Robbie Bach on Wednesday morning dealt with new parental controls for the Xbox, I did get a chance to get his thoughts on Google's phone plans.
"There's a ton of innovation going on in this space," said Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices unit. "They've made an announcement, now they have a product that they need to come and deliver."
But nothing in Google's plans was a surprise, Bach insisted. "It's a different direction than we are going, but it's one we can compete effectively with," he said. "When they bring a phone to market, we'll be happy and ready to compete."
He noted that the market for phones with significant operating systems has broadened from just a business market into a mainstream category, spanning devices that are both consumer and corporate as well as hitting all age groups.
"The good news is that makes it a very large market," he said. "We just have to figure out and focus on the target audiences that matter the most.
I asked whether Windows Mobile, which grew up as an operating system for handheld computers, can continue along its evolutionary path or if Microsoft needs a more radical overhaul to compete. Not surprisingly, he insisted Windows Mobile was up to the task.
"I think Windows Mobile is quite flexible in terms of what we can bring to market using that architecture," he said, pointing to the recently introduced T-Mobile Shadow as an example of a device that is now possible with Windows Mobile but would not have been even a year or two ago.
MSN is going green.
No, I don't mean that it has decided to compost all its Starbucks grounds. And I'm sure it's had recycle bins on more than PCs for a while.
The Microsoft-owned Web site has launched MSN Green, a site for all kinds of environmental news and information. Partners include Conservation International, National Geographic and Grist, an edgy environmental news site.
The initial content is a mixed bag. There was an interesting article on whether extended daylight saving time actually equates to energy savings, but also more iffy concepts, such as a story on how much wood is used for Major League Baseball bats.
Another article, recycled from MSN Health and Fitness, is titled "Are boys an endangered species?" It's overbilled, but an interesting look at how, in a few spots around the world, girl births are outnumbering boy births by 2 to 1.
Welcome.
So what the heck is this Beyond Binary blog anyway?
The idea is to give more space to some of the best parts of my job as a reporter for CNET News.com--helping to connect the dots, talking about where things are headed in the industry, and telling some of the stories behind the stories I write.
As for the title, I wanted something to suggest that there's more to technology than just the code that underlies the products. What's really interesting is the way technology makes our lives simpler, or more difficult. Technology can help connect us to other people or make us feel more isolated--and sometimes both at the same time. I want to hear about the technologies you can't live without, as well as the software and devices that drive you crazy.
And while the products created by our industry may be made up of ones and zeros, the people who create and use them are not. I hope to tell more of those stories as well.
Since I spend most of my time covering Microsoft, the folks in Redmond will get more than their fair share of attention here too, although I hope to talk about other technologies that are changing the way we live and work.
Beyond Binary is also a not-so-subtle reference to my gender. For those who don't know, I spent my first four years at CNET working as a male before transitioning to female in June 2003. At the time, I didn't share much about my personal odyssey with readers. My byline simply changed from Ian to Ina, and that was that. Talking about my gender still isn't my primary focus, but living as a woman who was born a boy does make for some pretty interesting stories. I may share some of those tales on occasion, especially when they intersect with my work as a technology journalist.
For those who are interested in those posts specifically, I'll tag them with "gender" and you can click on the gender link on the right to see all posts tagged as such. Likewise, those looking just for Microsoft stuff or online-services posts can click on those tags.
One of the most frequently updated parts of the blog will be the "Stuff I'm reading" feed. It's an annotated collection of links I come across during my endless hours of surfing the Web.
I'll spare everyone the beta tag, but rest assured, this is a work in progress. Feel free to say what you like and don't like, but please spare the ad hominem, ad feminem and ad-what-the-heck-are-you attacks.
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