Month: March 2016

Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell. (credit: Oracle PR)

Dell has agreed to sell its IT services subsidiary, Dell Services, to NTT Data for $3.06 billion. Dell Services is the former Perot Systems, a company founded by Ross Perot; Dell purchased it toward the end of 2009 for $3.9 billion.

Dell, which went private in 2013, is trying to raise money as it prepares to complete a $67 billion acquisition of EMC. NTT Data, the systems integration unit of Tokyo-based Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, announced its acquisition of Dell Services today, noting that it still needs regulatory approval.

NTT praised Dell Services as being "an IT services provider recognized for its depth in vertical industries and for its offerings around infrastructure services, cloud services, application services, and business process outsourcing." But under NTT, Dell Services will benefit from "expanded technology resources" and a network of 230 data centers operated by NTT worldwide, the announcement said. The combined company will give NTT Data a greater presence in North America and focus on customers in health care, financial services, insurance, and government.

The Tribeca Film Institute, founded by actor Robert De Niro, is generally supportive of science. It partners with the Sloan Foundation to provide grants for filmmakers who are looking to create "a fresh take on scientific, mathematic, and technological themes." Each year, some of the results are shown as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

But this year, it appeared that the film festival had decided to balance its support of science with some false claims by putting the film Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe on the schedule. The film is the latest attempt by former doctor Andrew Wakefield to support his bogus claim that vaccines can trigger autism. Wakefield's original publication in this area has been retracted, and he has since lost his medical license due to unethical behavior regarding his patients and rampant conflicts of interest. An investigative reporter found that at the time that the research was conducted, Wakefield was receiving payments from lawyers planning on suing vaccine makers, and he was also working on his own alternative vaccine.

Meanwhile, the movie's basic premise has been thoroughly debunked. Although the film purports to provide information from a whistleblower that suggests the US Centers for Disease Control fraudulently manipulated data on vaccine safety, the issue has been studied in a number of countries, and the conclusions are all consistent: there is no connection between vaccination and autism.

It's here, and it's real.

It took me a few days with an Oculus Rift before I really felt comfortable swiveling my head around while playing a video game. Sure, I’d gotten somewhat used to the idea in years of trade show VR demos or while playing around with my own Oculus Rift development kits and Samsung’s Oculus-powered Gear VR. But those experiences were fighting with decades of gaming experiences where my head generally stayed glued to one spot, pointed at the center of a TV or monitor, and tilted only occasionally to maybe get a better view of something in the corner.

It can be easy to fall back into the “look straight ahead” habit when you first start playing many Rift games. Even when the 3D display showed items flying past my shoulder or out of my peripheral vision, I’d often reach instinctively for the right analog stick or the shoulder buttons on my controller to try to turn the camera. It would take a split second before I realized, “Hey, wait, I can just turn and look for the thing I want to see.”

It might sound hyperbolic, but this is a change that requires looking at and thinking about gaming in an entirely new way. The final consumer version of the Rift now shipping to early adopters shows that Oculus has taken that rethinking seriously, putting years of development and billions of Facebook dollars of careful work toward the problem. But it also shows some early rough edges, especially on the platform software side, and these small blemishes highlight the fact that we’re still very much in the first generation of consumer-grade virtual reality.

Surprisingly beautiful scenes like this are practically worth the price of admission on their own.

The title should have been my first clue. The almost too cute spelling of "Adrift" looks like "Adroneft," and this isn't just an affectation. It hints at the all-encompassing isolation and loneliness that pervades everything about this game.

Adr1ft's introduction is by far the most action-packed part of the game, as your protagonist wakes up clawing her way back to the nearest piece of a massive space station that has just blown apart. Her EVA suit is holding together enough to keep her alive, but an air leak means her survival isn't guaranteed. Worse, the computerized systems that operate the escape pods are offline, and reactivating them requires the usual Metroidvania-style wild goose chase/scavenger hunt through the station's tattered remains.

If you're an avid gamer, this is the kind of setup where you now expect the unexpected—a journey filled with hidden dangers or some sort of sci-fi/fantasy twist. Maybe an alien virus has turned everyone else on the station into bloodthirsty zombies. Maybe the station's AI has gone crazy and wants to eliminate all human life. Maybe the station was the first casualty in an alien invasion, and you have to warn Earth.