Slashdot Mirror

eoyount writes "Wired has an interesting story about a really simple idea I wish I had thought of. Transferring large files across the Internet isn't easy for your average joe, but a combination of RSS and BitTorrent technology might just make it easier - Slashdot ran a previous story on the theoretical blending last year." (LegalTorrents is run by the strangely familiar simoniker, who wrote a short piece on the O'Reilly Network about how it was set up, and offers observations on how well the combination fares.) Update: 03/17 21:45 GMT by T : Ernest Miller submits two related postings he's written on RSS+BitTorrent, a combination he calls "broadcatching."

eoyount writes "Wired has an interesting story about a really simple idea I wish I had thought of. Transferring large files across the Internet isn't easy for your average joe, but a combination of RSS and BitTorrent technology might just make it easier - Slashdot ran a previous story on the theoretical blending last year." (LegalTorrents is run by the strangely familiar simoniker, who wrote a short piece on the O'Reilly Network about how it was set up, and offers observations on how well the combination fares.) Update: 03/17 21:45 GMT by T : Ernest Miller submits two related postings he's written on RSS+BitTorrent, a combination he calls "broadcatching."

The Importance of writes "The California Court of Appeals decided an important cybercafe regulation case last week. Read the decision [PDF]. The court decided that cybercafes are deserving of First Amendment protection. and that the zoning regulations used to regulate them in the City of Garden Grove were unconstitutional. However, in a terrible privacy decision, the court said video monitoring of the computers and patrons was a-ok. Read more on the decision here and here."

The Importance of writes "The California Court of Appeals decided an important cybercafe regulation case last week. Read the decision [PDF]. The court decided that cybercafes are deserving of First Amendment protection. and that the zoning regulations used to regulate them in the City of Garden Grove were unconstitutional. However, in a terrible privacy decision, the court said video monitoring of the computers and patrons was a-ok. Read more on the decision here and here."

Thanks to Got Game? for their posting discussing the in-game slaying of Kerafyrm, aka The Sleeper, in PC MMO EverQuest. This event, commemorated with a screenshot on the site of one of the guilds involved, is notable because the players "...killed what Sony Online Entertainment intended to be unkillable. But rather than actually make it untargetable, Sony just gave it a hundred billion hitpoints. For those non EQers out there a reference scale: a snake has about 10 hitpoints. A dragon has about 100,000. A god has 1-2million." So, it took "close to 200 players almost 4 hours to beat the thing down into the ground", after an earlier failed attempt where the guilds "beat it down to 27% and then it mysteriously disappeared. Without dying. It seems that one of the Game Masters at SoE reset the zone because 'they thought the encounter might be bugged'."

Mahrin Skel (Dave Rickey) writes "When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds , I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received. I hadn't intended my column as a review, but simply as nit-picking over an almost theological point of disagreement between my philosophy of game design and that of Dr. Bartle. My intended audience was the normal readers of my column, mostly other people already working in the Online Games industry." Rickey provides a review of Bartle's book for a more general audience below, and explains his reasoning for doing so. Designing Virtual Worlds author Richard A. Bartle pages 768 publisher New Riders rating Very Good reviewer Dave Rickey ISBN 0131018167 summary An overview of Virtual World Design by one of the field's founders

It never occurred to me that my review would be read by a wider public, most of whom had never heard of me or even Dr. Bartle, and would see only the hostility, and not understand the narrowness of the focus. When the column was picked up by Slashdot I was stunned, when I realized it was also linked by Clay Shirky in Many to Many and by Joystick101 among other places, I felt slightly ill. Without intending to, I may have damaged the reputation of Dr. Bartle and of his book, and I feel an obligation to set the record straight with an actual review of his book. I'm not sure why it has not already received such a review, except that only a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design and would really be qualified to write it.

What is in the book? The "Introduction to Virtual Worlds" of the first chapter does a very good job of laying out what a virtual world is, and defending that definition as a category that includes but is not limited to the online games that are the most common examples of the type. The history lesson included a lot of information even I, after six years in the industry and a serious attempt at studying it, was not aware of. The second chapter gives a very good overview of the process by which the world is created both in business terms and in structural arrangements. The third includes a reprise and updating of Dr. Bartle's now-classic Players that Suit MUD's, the touchstone for every theory of player motivation in online games, and continues into a description of the properties and dynamics of the communities that form in and around the worlds.

Where most of the first three chapters are a primer -- containing the base knowledge needed to understand the whole field in functional terms -- the 4th and 5th chapters focus much more on the worlds as games. The mechanics of game systems, the structure of "advancement" systems and the psychology that makes them run, all of the myriad elements that make a virtual world a game.

Chapters 6 and 7 take a more academic overview of the field, discussing the "why's" of the worlds, what they are, what they may become, and what other fields of human endeavour they are most similar to and therefore may have lessons to offer. Chapter 7's effort to establish the academic and artistic "legitimacy" of virtual worlds was the main source of my disagreement with the book: I think that virtual worlds are entirely capable of standing on their own merits and do not need to be considered credible by the academic arts to be worthy. But this is the "almost theological" issue, and although significant to myself and a handful of others in the field, it's not something that should be counted against the work as a whole.

Chapter 8 focuses on the fact that as virtual as the worlds may be, the people in them (and therefore the relationships) are real, and therefore certain ethical factors normally not considered an issue in game design become much more important. Added to this are questions of "ownership"; if there is no game without the players, but the operator has a finger on the power button, who is in control? Who should be? The book doesn't solve many of these problems (every solution is likely to be unique to a particular setting), but does lay out where most of the fracture lines occur.

What I liked: The book establishes good points and brings the reader up to date on the known principles of the field, with copious references to other writings on the subject provided in the footnotes. The general focus on the "players eye" view is a very important attribute: too often, discussions of virtual worlds have the "God's Eye" designer's view from orbit, and forget that in the end it's the ground-level "fun or not-fun" experience of the players that makes or breaks a design.

What I didn't like: Dr. Bartle is much more broadly educated than I am (they don't give out any titles for an Associates degree in electronics), and tries very hard to make a case to the academic community that virtual worlds are worthy of consideration as serious works of Capital-A "Art." Since I am not concerned about credibility with the dilettantes and dabblers who make up most of academia in the Arts, the repeated references to the Hero's Journey and the effort to define a dramatic theory of online games in Chapter 7 distracted and occasionally annoyed me. But those interested in such things will probably find his efforts there as workmanlike as the rest of the volume.

Summary: This book is a must-read for anyone who works in the field of online games, and highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the theory and structure of the systems that make them run, or to effectively discuss them with the teams that work on them.

You can purchase Designing Virtual Worlds from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Hylton Jolliffe writes "Hey, thought you might like a new blog we've just launched on gaming by RIT professor Andrew Phelps. He's going to be writing about a whole host of things: the gaming industry, the rapidly expanding user base, the role of gaming in the entertainment/media spectrum, the technology and standards that undergird today's games, the emerging social phenomena surrounding them, the future of wireless gaming, the study of gaming in academia, blah, blah, blah. Neat stuff and Andy's already in full stride - see this as a possible starting point."

Hylton Jolliffe writes "Hey, thought you might like a new blog we've just launched on gaming by RIT professor Andrew Phelps. He's going to be writing about a whole host of things: the gaming industry, the rapidly expanding user base, the role of gaming in the entertainment/media spectrum, the technology and standards that undergird today's games, the emerging social phenomena surrounding them, the future of wireless gaming, the study of gaming in academia, blah, blah, blah. Neat stuff and Andy's already in full stride - see this as a possible starting point."

Hylton Jolliffe writes "Hey, thought you might like a new blog we've just launched on gaming by RIT professor Andrew Phelps. He's going to be writing about a whole host of things: the gaming industry, the rapidly expanding user base, the role of gaming in the entertainment/media spectrum, the technology and standards that undergird today's games, the emerging social phenomena surrounding them, the future of wireless gaming, the study of gaming in academia, blah, blah, blah. Neat stuff and Andy's already in full stride - see this as a possible starting point."

scubacuda writes "Today's Bottom Line links to an article on Internet-over-powerline technology. St. Louis-based Ameren Corp and other utilities are testing are testing the technology, and, according to the article, "many consider it increasingly viable." Proponents claim the powergrid technology will bolster broadband competition, lower consumer prices and bridge the digital divide in rural areas. Skeptics say that few tests prove its financial and technical viability. Kludge, panacea, or hoax? (I'd think it was a total crock had I not personally known someone working in India with a PCL company)"

scubacuda writes "Today's Bottom Line links to an article on Internet-over-powerline technology. St. Louis-based Ameren Corp and other utilities are testing are testing the technology, and, according to the article, "many consider it increasingly viable." Proponents claim the powergrid technology will bolster broadband competition, lower consumer prices and bridge the digital divide in rural areas. Skeptics say that few tests prove its financial and technical viability. Kludge, panacea, or hoax? (I'd think it was a total crock had I not personally known someone working in India with a PCL company)"

scubacuda writes "Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes, 'While there are many Net-heads who share Dan Gillmor's [and Larry Lessig's] enthusiasm for Creative Commons, I do not. It has little or no significance, because it is based on a strikingly naive 60's-retro ideological view of how content intermediaries function.' He compares artists' works to, well, raw sewage that publishers filter into something that can be later consumed by the public. 'What Creative Commons lets you do as an author is label your stuff before you flush it down the toilet.' Kling points to Bayesian Intermediaries (filters based on flexible keyword weights and 'trained' by user preferences) and weblogs as good ways to filter out the drivel that many content creators produce. (Dan Gilmore and Siva Vaidhayanatha respond, to which Kling responds in his blog."

scubacuda writes "Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes, 'While there are many Net-heads who share Dan Gillmor's [and Larry Lessig's] enthusiasm for Creative Commons, I do not. It has little or no significance, because it is based on a strikingly naive 60's-retro ideological view of how content intermediaries function.' He compares artists' works to, well, raw sewage that publishers filter into something that can be later consumed by the public. 'What Creative Commons lets you do as an author is label your stuff before you flush it down the toilet.' Kling points to Bayesian Intermediaries (filters based on flexible keyword weights and 'trained' by user preferences) and weblogs as good ways to filter out the drivel that many content creators produce. (Dan Gilmore and Siva Vaidhayanatha respond, to which Kling responds in his blog."

Last week the Berkman Center held their second annual Internet Law Program, an intensive course in (surprise) internet law and developments. You probably didn't spend the time/money to attend, but the topics covered are interesting enough (to me anyway) to check it out even second-hand. Dan Gillmor attended and posted his notes: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 part 1 and Day 5 part 2. Donna Wentworth was there, trying to record the seminar in real-time; hopefully she's learned her lesson. There is tons of interesting stuff in there - it's worth your time to read through if you have any interest in the subject matter at all.