Slashdot Mirror

superglaze writes "Poland has suspended its ratification process for ACTA, throwing the copyright crackdown into doubt for the whole European Union. ACTA is being handled as a 'mixed agreement' in the EU due to its criminalization clauses, so if a single EU member state (such as Poland) fails to ratify it, it is null and void across the entire union. If that were to happen, at least six of the remaining international signatories would have to ratify ACTA for it to apply anywhere in the world. Outside the EU, only eight countries — including the U.S. — have signed."

superglaze writes "Poland has suspended its ratification process for ACTA, throwing the copyright crackdown into doubt for the whole European Union. ACTA is being handled as a 'mixed agreement' in the EU due to its criminalization clauses, so if a single EU member state (such as Poland) fails to ratify it, it is null and void across the entire union. If that were to happen, at least six of the remaining international signatories would have to ratify ACTA for it to apply anywhere in the world. Outside the EU, only eight countries — including the U.S. — have signed."

gbrumfiel writes "In May of 2010, North Korea made the bizarre claim that it had achieved nuclear fusion. Many, many commentators (including faithful Slashdot readers) mocked the dear leader for his outlandish boast, but could there have been a kernel of truth in the claim? Apparently some odd radioactivity was spotted by detectors surrounding the North just days after the announcement. Now, a new analysis by a Swedish scientist suggests that the radiation may have leaked from covert experiments into boosting fission warheads. The evidence is tentative at best, and many are skeptical, but it does seem that something odd was up on the Korean peninsula that spring."

eldavojohn writes "A recent blog post has Android developers talking about Google finally scanning third party applications for malware. Oddly enough, Google claims this service (codenamed 'Bouncer') has been active for some time: 'The service has been looking for malicious apps in Market for a while now, and between the first and second halves of 2011, we saw a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise.' So it appears that they allow the software to be sold even before it is scanned and it also appears that no one has been bitten by a false positive from this software. Apparently Bouncer is not as oppressive as Apple's solution although given recent news its effectiveness must be questioned. Have any readers had their apps flagged or pulled by Bouncer?"

eldavojohn writes "A recent blog post has Android developers talking about Google finally scanning third party applications for malware. Oddly enough, Google claims this service (codenamed 'Bouncer') has been active for some time: 'The service has been looking for malicious apps in Market for a while now, and between the first and second halves of 2011, we saw a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise.' So it appears that they allow the software to be sold even before it is scanned and it also appears that no one has been bitten by a false positive from this software. Apparently Bouncer is not as oppressive as Apple's solution although given recent news its effectiveness must be questioned. Have any readers had their apps flagged or pulled by Bouncer?"

chrb writes "Apple has failed to get a patent ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N and the Nexus phone in Germany. Presiding Judge Andreas Mueller stated, 'Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection.' The patent in question covered list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display. This news follows the recent Appeals court ruling that upheld the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 ban."

First time accepted submitter uigrad_2000 writes "With all the new exoplanets discovered recently with Kepler, it seemed a sure thing that the first exoplanet in the habitable zone of a star would be found soon. The irony is that Kepler was not involved. GJ 667Cc is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth, and lies in the habitable region of its host star, reports Scientific American. It was discovered by comparing public data from the ESO to recent observations from Hawaii and Chile. As opposed to the stars Kepler is watching, this is only 22 light-years away, making it even more interesting."

angry tapir writes "A botnet that was crippled by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab last September is spamming once again and experts have no recourse to stop it. The Kelihos botnet only infected 45,000 or so computers but managed to send out nearly 4 billion spam messages a day, promoting, among other things, pornography, illegal pharmaceuticals and stock scams. But it was temporarily corralled last September after researchers used various technical means to get the 45,000 or so infected computers to communicate with a "sinkhole," or a computer they controlled."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC recently asked physicist and Cambridge University professor Dave Ansell to draw up a balance sheet of the mass that's coming in to the earth, and the mass going out to find out if the earth is gaining or losing mass. By far the biggest contributor to the world's mass is the 40,000 tonnes of dust that is falling from space to Earth every year. 'The Earth is acting like a giant vacuum cleaner powered by gravity in space, pulling in particles of dust,' says Dr. Chris Smith. Another factor increasing the earth's mass is global warming which adds about 160 tonnes a year because as the temperature of the Earth goes up, energy is added to the system, so the mass must go up. On the minus side, at the very center of the Earth, within the inner core, there exists a sphere of uranium five mile in diameter which acts as a natural nuclear reactor so these nuclear reactions cause a loss of mass of about 16 tonnes per year." (Read more, below.) Pickens continues: "What about launching rockets and satellites into space, like Phobos-Grunt? Smith discounts this as the mass is negligible and most of it will fall back down to Earth again anyway. But by far the biggest factor in earth's weight loss are the 95,000 tonnes of hydrogen that escape from the atmosphere every year. 'The other very light gas this is happening to is helium and there is much less of that around, so it's about 1,600 tonnes a year of helium that we lose.' Taking all the factors into account, Smith reckons the Earth is getting about 50,000 tonnes lighter a year, which is just less than half the gross weight of the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise liner that recently ran aground."

bonch writes "After taking heat over allegations of copying hit indie game Tiny Tower, Zynga founder Mark Pincus wrote an internal memo justifying the company's strategy of cloning competing titles, citing the Google search engine and Apple iPod as successful products which weren't first in their markets. Pincus infamously told employees: 'I don't want f*cking innovation. You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.'"

hypnosec writes "Today is the day when Facebook may be submitting all required paperwork to regulators for its $5 billion initial public offering. According to the source close to the deal, Facebook has selected Morgan Stanley along with four others — Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Barclay's Capital to handle this IPO. Morgan Stanley will be taking "lead left" role in this supposedly biggest IPO from Silicon Valley. According to International Financing Review, the preliminary target of $5 billion will be increased by many folds in coming few months as a response to the demands of investors. Sources close to this matter disclosed that this might turn out to be defining moment for current web investments. The deal might rise to $10 billion which eventually will make Facebook a social networking empire valued between $75 billion to $100 billion. In fact, $75 billion is definitely an undervaluation compared to previous expectations."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, with the assistance of Carpathia Hosting, has issued a call for information on users who lost legitimate data as part of the Megaupload takedown. No promises are made at this point, but Carpathia at least notes: "We have no immediate plans to reprovision some or all of the Megaupload servers. This means that there is no imminent data loss for Megaupload customers. If this situation changes, we will post a notice at least 7 days in advance of reprovisioning any Megaupload servers."

N!NJA writes with an excerpt from a post by Florian Mueller: "Barnes & Noble's primary line of defense against Microsoft's allegations of patent infringement by the bookseller's Android-based devices has collapsed in its entirety. An Administrative Law Judge at the ITC today granted a Microsoft motion to dismiss, even ahead of the evidentiary trial that will start next Monday (February 6), Barnes & Noble's 'patent misuse' defense against Microsoft. [...] Prior to the ALJ, the ITC staff — or more precisely, the Office of Unfair Import Investigations (OUII), which participates in many investigations as a third party representing the public interest — already supported Microsoft's motion all the way. The OUII basically concluded that even if all of what Barnes & Noble said about Microsoft's use of patents against Android was accurate, it would fall far short of the legal requirements for a patent misuse defense."

N!NJA writes with an excerpt from a post by Florian Mueller: "Barnes & Noble's primary line of defense against Microsoft's allegations of patent infringement by the bookseller's Android-based devices has collapsed in its entirety. An Administrative Law Judge at the ITC today granted a Microsoft motion to dismiss, even ahead of the evidentiary trial that will start next Monday (February 6), Barnes & Noble's 'patent misuse' defense against Microsoft. [...] Prior to the ALJ, the ITC staff — or more precisely, the Office of Unfair Import Investigations (OUII), which participates in many investigations as a third party representing the public interest — already supported Microsoft's motion all the way. The OUII basically concluded that even if all of what Barnes & Noble said about Microsoft's use of patents against Android was accurate, it would fall far short of the legal requirements for a patent misuse defense."

thomst writes "Cnet's Stephen Shankland breaks the news that Sony will replace the lamentable Howard Stringer with Kazuo Hirai, the (now former) head of its electronics division. Better yet, the changeover will take place on April Fool's Day. Stringer, who was appointed CEO of Sony in 2005, will become Chairman of its board, and Hirai will become a board member. Hirai has been the leader of Sony's consolidated electronics group only since last year. He was in charge of all Sony electronics products, including the Playstation Network, which famously suffered a massive security breach that compromised its unencrypted user data on his watch."

concertina226 writes with sad news for Swedish pirates. Quoting the article: "The Swedish Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from the founders of The Pirate Bay against prison sentences and fines imposed by the Swedish Court of Appeals, the court said on Wednesday. Over a year ago, the Court of Appeals sentenced Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström to 10 months, eight months, and four months of jail time, respectively. The court also said they must collectively pay a 46 million kronor (£4.3 million) fine." The Pirate Bay has issued a response: "With this said, we hear news from our old admins that they have received a verdict in Sweden. Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday."
Update: 02/01 15:15 GMT by U L :Reader think_nix helpfully copied the Pirate Bay response in a comment for those who cannot access the site.

concertina226 writes with sad news for Swedish pirates. Quoting the article: "The Swedish Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from the founders of The Pirate Bay against prison sentences and fines imposed by the Swedish Court of Appeals, the court said on Wednesday. Over a year ago, the Court of Appeals sentenced Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström to 10 months, eight months, and four months of jail time, respectively. The court also said they must collectively pay a 46 million kronor (£4.3 million) fine." The Pirate Bay has issued a response: "With this said, we hear news from our old admins that they have received a verdict in Sweden. Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday."
Update: 02/01 15:15 GMT by U L :Reader think_nix helpfully copied the Pirate Bay response in a comment for those who cannot access the site.

concertina226 writes with sad news for Swedish pirates. Quoting the article: "The Swedish Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from the founders of The Pirate Bay against prison sentences and fines imposed by the Swedish Court of Appeals, the court said on Wednesday. Over a year ago, the Court of Appeals sentenced Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström to 10 months, eight months, and four months of jail time, respectively. The court also said they must collectively pay a 46 million kronor (£4.3 million) fine." The Pirate Bay has issued a response: "With this said, we hear news from our old admins that they have received a verdict in Sweden. Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday."
Update: 02/01 15:15 GMT by U L :Reader think_nix helpfully copied the Pirate Bay response in a comment for those who cannot access the site.

malraid writes "The White House has issued a statement in which they refuse to comment on the petition to investigate Chris Dodd for bribery from the MPAA to pass legislation. The reason given: 'because it requests a specific law enforcement action.'"

jfruh writes "Mandriva, a venerable Linux distro, is on the verge of shutting down. One of its main problems is that it never grew into more than just an OS vendor. The big players in the commercial Linux space — Red Hat, SuSE, Canonical — all built Linux into their larger computing visions. Is there any room in the marketplace for just a straight-up Linux distro anymore?"

MrSeb writes "Since Slashdot first covered lovotics back in July 2011, its creator — Hooman Samani — has been busy working on a couple of new applications for his fledgling scientific sphere of human-robot love: Kissenger and Mini-Surrogate. Kissenger is a robot with highly-sensitive and motor-actuated lips, which you can use to transmit a kiss to another Kissenger robot (held by a friend or loved one) over the internet. Mini-Surrogate is basically a real-world avatar that adds a physical element to video conferencing. Both are primarily for human-human use, but it's easy to imagine a Kissenger hooked up to an AI or video game. Likewise, the next Elder Scrolls game could come with a Mini-Surrogate, so that you can communicate with your in-game wife while you're knee-deep in fireballed orc."

New submitter Killer Panda sends word that a German Appeals Court has upheld the injunction prohibiting sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. Apple convinced lower courts to issue and uphold the injunction last year by making the case that Samsung's devices "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad. "Samsung, which is Apple's supplier as well as a competitor, has been trying to have the German decision overturned while also seeking other means to fight Apple. It redesigned the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for the German market only and named it Galaxy Tab 10.1N to get around the sales ban. Apple challenged the reworked version but a German court last month rejected Apple's claims in a preliminary judgment." The European Union announced some more bad news for Samsung: they'll be investigating the company to see whether its use of patent lawsuits is illegally hindering other companies' use of standardized 3G technology. "Under EU patent rules, a company that holds patents for standardized products is required to license them out indiscriminately at a fair price."

First time accepted submitter AlistairCharlton writes "Users' data on the seized Megaupload website will be saved for two further weeks, according to the website's lawyer, despite being shut down by US authorities. From the article: 'Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken reportedly told tech blog TorrentFreak.com that users' data would be saved for at least another two weeks, after it was previously thought that the data would be deleted by Thursday, 2 February.'"

judgecorp writes "Two Dutch ISPs have complied with a demand to block the Pirate Bay, but KPN and T-Mobile are refusing to block the site." Torrent Freak has a bit more info. T-Mobile at least seems to imply they would respond to a court order, and are merely refusing to take down sites at the request of a private entity.

An anonymous reader wrote in with an update in the long drawn out legal proceedings between the DVD CCA and Kaleidescape, a manufacturer of a video jukeboxes. Despite a victory by Kaleidescape in 2007, they ended up back in court in November 2011. The DVD CCA insisted that ripping a DVD was in violation of the license granted to Kaleidescape; Kaleidescape disagreed since their jukebox made a bit-for-bit copy of the disc rather than first decrypting the contents. Unfortunately, in a preliminary ruling, the court agrees with the DVD CCA. Kaleidescape has released a statement.

An anonymous reader wrote in with an update in the long drawn out legal proceedings between the DVD CCA and Kaleidescape, a manufacturer of a video jukeboxes. Despite a victory by Kaleidescape in 2007, they ended up back in court in November 2011. The DVD CCA insisted that ripping a DVD was in violation of the license granted to Kaleidescape; Kaleidescape disagreed since their jukebox made a bit-for-bit copy of the disc rather than first decrypting the contents. Unfortunately, in a preliminary ruling, the court agrees with the DVD CCA. Kaleidescape has released a statement.

An anonymous reader writes "The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois is finally getting the troubled Blue Waters supercomputer installed. After IBM walked away from the project after 3 years of planning, Cray stepped in to pick up the $188 million contract. Now, in around 9 months time, Blue Waters should be fully operational and achieve performance of 1 petaflop or more. As for the hardware... who wouldn't want access to 235 Cray XE6 cabinets using AMD 16 core Opteron 2600 processors with access to 1.5 petabytes of memory (4GB per chip) and 500 petabytes of local storage."

An anonymous reader writes "The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois is finally getting the troubled Blue Waters supercomputer installed. After IBM walked away from the project after 3 years of planning, Cray stepped in to pick up the $188 million contract. Now, in around 9 months time, Blue Waters should be fully operational and achieve performance of 1 petaflop or more. As for the hardware... who wouldn't want access to 235 Cray XE6 cabinets using AMD 16 core Opteron 2600 processors with access to 1.5 petabytes of memory (4GB per chip) and 500 petabytes of local storage."

Hugh Pickens writes "Marissa Taylor says the retail chains' worst nightmare are consumers who come in to take a look at merchandise in-store, but use smartphone apps to shop for cheaper prices online. But now stores like low-end retail chain Target plan to fight 'showrooming' by scaling up their business models and asking vendors to create Target-exclusive products that can't be found online. 'The bottom line is that the more commoditized the product is, the more people are going to look for the cheapest price,' says Morningstar analyst Michael Keara. 'If there's a significant price difference [among retailers] and you're using it on a regular basis, you're going to go to Amazon.' Target recently sent an 'urgent' letter to vendors, asking them to 'create special products that would set it apart from competitors.' Target's letter insisted that it would not 'let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices without making investments, as we do, to proudly display your brands.' Target also announced that it had teamed up with a handful of unique specialty shops that will offer limited edition merchandise on a rotating basis within Target stores in hopes of creating an evolving shopping experience for customers. Target is 'exercising leverage over its vendors to achieve the same pricing that smaller, online-only retailers receive,' says Weinswig. 'This strategy would help Target compete with retailers like Amazon on like-for-like products.'"

judgecorp writes "The ten-year legal quagmire surrounding Gary McKinnon, who hacked into U.S. military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002, must end this year, a British High Court Judge has ordered. McKinnon has been appealing against extradition to the U.S., and two medical experts must report in 28 days on his mental state, ruling whether he would be a suicide risk if deported. This ruling could short-circuit an extradition appeal hearing in July."

A few weeks back, you asked gaming-world academic and game designer Ian Bogost questions from the business, philosophical, and aesthetic sides of gaming; below, find his responses. Thanks, Ian! Is it all just absurd?
by Anonymous Coward

You satirize the meaninglessness of compulsive-click based games, but what would you say is your larger point in doing so? Do you think that "big" video games (for instance, ones with complex plots and characters, cooperation among players, etc) are all that much better, or would much of the same critique apply?

(Sure, they're not quite as mindless, but they still mean that people are spending time and money to withdraw from reality to some extent, and substituting made-up, arbitrary goals for interacting with other people. Is it purely happenstance and convenience that means you've made a certain point with social games, rather than, say, remade Catch-22 as a FPS?)

Ian Bogost: In my original essay about Cow Clicker, written when the game launched in the summer of 2010, I made a similar observation about "big" videogames: they seem to destroy time. (My exact words were, "Many of today's console games exert a time crush. They demand tens or even hundreds of hours of attention to complete, some or most of which often feels empty"). As I see it, one difference between "traditional" games and social games is that the former don't try to infect the time we spend away from them as well as the time we spend with them. Surely there is something compulsive about console games too, but at least the end. The service-oriented component of social games, along with the fact that companies like Zynga require regularly renewed attention to make money, these are important differences that may not seem fundamental at first.

Still, some cultural trends are more like cracks in a wall than like monuments. It's likely that Cow Clicker is more akin to picking away the plaster to find the veins of a complex structural issue than it is like uncovering a simple fact about its foundation. I don't think that structural issue is limited to games. Whether we noticed or not, we've created a media environment driven by compulsion. Email and instant messaging are examples unbound to specific companies, but Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram — all of these services and many more build value by monetizing our repeated and regular attention, and now we have so many different ways to ask, "Is something new? Am I missing something?" that it's possible never to stop asking those questions, all day long.



Procedural Rhetoric in morally-gray big name games?
by siphonophore

What do you think of AAA studios exploring more moral grey areas (e.g. hostage shooting airport level in COD:MW2 ) as a form of procedural rhetoric? Do you think players' natural tendencies of (in this case) non-violence toward innocents is solidified or shaken by simulating such acts?

IB: For those who don't know the reference, "procedural rhetoric" is a concept I developed in my 2007 book Persuasive Games . We have verbal and written rhetoric, which uses speech and writing to make arguments or express ideas, and we have visual rhetoric, which deals with the way images do so. I suggest procedural rhetoric as a way to describe the use of systems and models to make arguments. Videogames (and software in general) are media that are built largely out of processes, and so we can use this framework to design or evaluate how games make arguments.

Of course, the commercial games industry hasn't been very interested in making arguments with games, in taking strong positions on topics of any sort, let alone controversial ones like politics. We have begun to see some efforts to push harder at this boundary COD:MW2 is one example, but so are Deus Ex, Homefront, Farcry 2, Bioshock. I'm glad to see this progress, but of course I'd like to see more. In particular, we only seem to get the very faintest sense of an argument or position in these games. It's almost like it's just there for the publicity, but not too much publicity, because that might turn some players off.

In fact, that's the usual explanation for why we don't have AAA games with strong positions. They're expensive to make and the publishers are said to be conservative. It's true, of course. I was recently talking to some of the team responsible for securing the publishing deal for Bioshock, and they told me that even they had trouble, and that's for a game that's really just another sci-fi shooter with a very thin layer of contra-Ayn Rand dystopianism wrapped in gorgeous art deco environments.

But to believe that "the market" is the reason we don't see more of these games doesn't tell the full story. The truth is, the AAA game industry doesn't really have much to say about politics or social issues. Not only is traditional sci-fi and fantasy entertainment in books and movies far more political than the average game, even children's animated films are more political than the average game. I mean, there's more political commentary in Wall-E than in the last decade of AAA games. I'm generalizing, but game developers and executives are technolibertarians rather than artists. For them, what's good for the world is what people vote for with their wallets. And once we get enough of that position fed to us over and over again, it's no wonder that AAA shooters risk becoming just the empty power fantasies they are sometimes accused of being.



Skinner Boxes
by Catiline

I have long described both MMO gaming and Facebook social games as being a "well-padded Skinner box" for their staggered/random reward system. Do you see any possibility for anything else to eventually replace this model?

IB: I don't know. Certainly the gold rush associated with a very bare version of these mechanics isn't helping. If anything, the Skinner boxes seem to be finding their way into other genres. I haven't played Diablo III yet, but someone who tried the beta opined that it's "Farmville for hardcore gamers." Then again, I suppose we might have said the same thing about World of Warcraft half a decade ago. These features have always been in games, but there's no question that we've begun refining them in the way one refines oil, making them more pure and useful to drive the engines of commerce rather than experience.

We can't just will ourselves out of this situation. It's not simply a matter of developing a new design philosophy that will replace the old one through pure unfettered rationalism. Since the games industry responds only to economic incentives, perhaps what we need is an implosion. Just as the housing bubble was burst by the revelation of inviable lending and the related artifice of constantly-inflating property values, so perhaps something similar needs to happen to the behaviorist bubble. It may already be starting, thanks to the apparently disappointing performance of Zynga's IPO. Still, it's worth remembering that the founders and executives of today's big tech companies have been enjoying the privilege of making liquid parts of their equity on secondary markets, so the tech investment community may not have the same deterrent to bubblethink that the market in general does.

In any case, this trend should remind us that the whole media ecosystem has been built on this promise of high-leverage value derived from the aggregated behaviors of a very large base of patrons who are actually the product of these services rather than their customers. Google and Facebook are the obvious examples, but Zynga derives all of its revenue from 2.2% of its players. The remainder are there as viral marketing infrastructure. Is it even possible to opt out of this situation? Not if you also want to live productively in contemporary society.



Interesting Mechanics?
by spektre1

Hi Ian! Can you comment about game mechanics that you wish designers explored in more depth?

IB: Certainly I have my own tastes. I've said a bit about them here, such as my interest in games that offer political opinion or commentary. And I tend to prefer "systemy" games to narrative games. But at some point, all of that is just a matter of taste. And as the aphorism goes, there's no accounting for taste.

So instead of specific mechanics or styles or genres, what I'd most like to see is more earnestness and more personality in games. I'd like to see more of the creators expressed in the works, not because I want to "receive" the "messages" they are sending, but so that I can feel like the work is not being stamped out by a machine in a factory. Part of that process would have to include more conversation about and framing of games. If you compare games to other forms of creativity, there's just far less deliberate, public discussion of games than there is of painting or novels or films or even sports. Filmmakers go on talk shows, novelists give interviews in magazines. What do game makers do? They send their lowest-common-denominator PR agencies out to put words in the mouths of the enthusiast press.

I'm often more engaged by games with styles I don't particularly like, for example the games of That Game Company or Tale of Tales, because those creators make an effort to frame and personalize the work, to give players a sense of how they might approach them, an invitation to care about the logic of their weird, tiny world. There was a time when Activision shipped their videogames with photos and notes from their creators. True, that was a time when the equivalent of "AAA" games were created by individuals, but the point stands. Indie games have a greater capacity for this sort of thing, thanks to their smaller and more compact teams, but that doesn't make independent games automatically more inviting than AAA games, either (a lot of indie games are starting get that stamped out in the factory feel, too). In the AAA scene, I think Naughty Dog, Valve, PopCap, and Blizzard offer examples of culturing a style and a design sensibility.



Persuasive game elements
by Anonymous Coward

My question revolves around trends in the "gamification" of tasks as used by government, corporations and others. I am curious what you feel about the persuasive elements that may or may not be used in these endeavors. I've noticed this holiday season to some sites seem to have attempted to use some gaming elements in very persuasive ways. I haven't really looked to closely into government sites lately, but I'm sure governments around the world are already starting to adopt them. Understanding the power of this is kind of disturbing, particularly when you see how governments, etc. can abuse this. So my question is what, if any recommendations would you give to social activists looking to develop counter-gaming or ways to identify and inform others about these elements? Given the subtle nature of some of these elements, how difficult a task is it to identify these elements in games?

IB: I've been a pretty vocal critic of gamification, which I think is bullshit, and which I've suggested we reframe as exploitationware. In both of those articles about the trend, I point out that the thing governments and corporations and other organizations like best about gamification is its facility, how rapidly and undisruptively it can be integrated into their current practices. Whereas, when I write about persuasive games and procedural rhetoric and the like, I'm interested in the idea that games might be particularly useful frames for complex issues, precisely because good games make complexity and ambiguity and trade-offs central, embracing them rather than rejecting them. Systems rather than soundbites.

The problem is, most governments and even most social activists don't really want to concede that point—that hard problems are hard, that simple answers are usually wrong, and that solutions are less likely than messy, stochastic progress. Instead, they are more concerned with reproducing the conditions of their own existence. For example, I've written before about the White House's "Apps for Healthy Kids" contest. On first blush, this effort looks like an earnest attempt to create games and software about an issue of great concern and great complexity—health and nutrition. But the results are trite and meaningless, just more bad kids software about choosing the carrot instead of the candy bar. They contain no admission of the entrenched, intractable issues at the heart of healthy eating, like food subsidies, industrial farming, population growth and density, socioeconomics, and so forth. And that's because the White House didn't really launch the contest to solve anything. They launched it to make themselves appear contemporary, engaged with the current "app economy," able to make websites with big form fields.

So, the most important lesson for governments or activists or anyone else is that the subtlety is very rarely there, in fact. So either we have to show the reasons why explanations are insufficient and not just "earnest attempts" at a reasonable solution, or we have to create the subtlety in our own media, be they games or books or blog posts. We have to do that in the games themselves, but also in relation to the medium of games, which we ought to position as a medium against simplicity in the first place.



Places where 'gamification' is good?
by oneiros27

At the closing plenary for the 2011 IA Summit, Cennydd Bowles called out the whole 'UX' (User Experience) community as a whole, in that the role that most of them play is in trying to get people to spend more time on websites and buy more stuff, rather than doing stuff that really improves the world. You've taken a similar stance on 'gamification', but there's at least two groups (Zooniverse [zooniverse.org] and FoldIt [fold.it]) using it for good as they're helping to advance science. Can you think of any other situations where we could use video games to improve the world at a grand scale, and not just simple 'edutainment'?

IB: Sometimes general explanations are helpful, and other times more specific ones are required. So despite everything I just said about the games as windows into complex systems, there are other ways to think about the usefulness of games. In my most recent book, How to Do Things with Videogames , I try to make this case, showing a couple dozen or so different applications of games, from art to tools.

Zooniverse and FoldIt are what you might call "games for work." They are games deployed in the pursuit of specific outcomes in the case of both of those titles, the outcomes are identification and analysis in very large scientific data sets, for which automated (computational) analysis is unlikely to be successful. Some people have used the name "human computation" to describe this process, and Louis von Ahn at Carnegie Mellon is probably the best known proponent of it. Others use the term "playbor," and they usually mean it derogatorily.

That mind, here's a question: does human computation in games really improve the world? I know what you're thinking: how could scientific progress not be good? Well, projects like FoldIt and Zooniverse are also massive distributed outsourcing efforts, offering free labor to the research establishment. Sure, you could make a utilitarian argument for why such work is progressive and not exploitative. And it may seem reactionary and dystopian even to intimate that collaborative work might lead to a nightmarish prison state in which tiny doses of satisfaction replace both gainful employment and crafted distraction. Or it may not.

This leads me to my answer, which may disappoint: the world gets improved in fits and starts, in small ways more than in large ones, and thanks to the unseen, unthought infrastructures that undergird it more than the civic or scientific or artistic victories we celebrate in the streets or in the theaters.



Start with a 'Facebook' game or a regular website?
by Anonymous Coward

I lead an enthusiastic clan of RuneScape players, and they tend to have a pretty broad interest in gaming and game development. As the lead programmer/IT guy for the clan, I'm frequently asked about programming and how to go about doing it.

I'm considering setting up a fairly basic Mafia wars type of game for them to expand and update, coded in python/html5 and running on google app engine for simplicity's sake. Python has a huge amount of self learning resources out there, and putting a python project on GAE is my go-to method for getting a project up and running quickly.

Should I encourage them to move into building a Facebook app, or should I encourage them to keep it a standalone website?

On the one hand Facebook gives better potential for expanding their user base, but on the other there's the 30% fee for using Facebook credits and their horrible API documentation. While I want to keep things as straightforward as possible for them, I would like to see their game accumulate a decent number of players so they can show it off.

IB: A pragmatic question! For those of you who haven't developed on the Facebook platform, let me tell you: it is a fucking train wreck. Badly documented (really, the worst documentation I can imagine), works in fits and starts, infrastructure changes constantly, updates roll out weekly, features constantly deprecated and removed, support non-existent, opaque bug and issue reporting. It's a nightmare. It's the Great War of software development, with tangled barbed wire and constant cross fire.

But, in exchange for tolerating that terror, you get access to some 800 million people and the promise that the small fraction of those you can reach will bring their friends. The 30% take for Facebook Credits is a lot compared to a credit card transaction fee, but the entire system is automated and works without any need for special merchant accounts or fears of PayPal retribution. Facebook is a piece of infrastructure, and the benefits it offers as infrastructure are undeniable even if the platform's viral free-for-all days are over.

Which to choose? It sounds to me like you can get your project working without Facebook, and then consider strapping in the social and payment features as you need them. That makes you less reliant on the platform, but also allows you to explore its benefits for your situation, if indeed there are any. In any case, I think being reliant on Facebook is a terrible situation for anybody to be in, whether they are a large company or independent creator.



Tabletop Gaming?
by Anonymous Coward

Is there a bridge between tabletop gaming and video gaming?

I design tabletop games and RPGs, and sometimes when I'm designing something I realize it would all work better as a video game. Do you feel the same way sometimes when you're designing real time games to want to make them turn based or tabletop games? Is there a link between the two industries in a professional way? Can workers from either industry cross over?

IB: There are a few different ways to think about videogames. One situates them in the long history of games, from folk games through wargames through tabletop games on to videogames, and to find similarities in design, use, and application. Another places them in the history of computing, asking how videogames relate to other kinds of software and hardware media for productivity and expression. Another compares them to creative media like literature, film, art, theater, opera, puppetry, and so forth, finding opportunities for adaptation across material form, or obstacles to such adaptation. Another asks how videogames participate in cultural traditions of play, like festival, conflict, sport, and ritual. These are just some of the possible vantage points from which one could seek to understand or design games. And of course, they are not mutually exclusive.

There is a fairly strong tradition of inspiration between tabletop games and computer games. The relationship between Dungeons & Dragons and certain genres of videogames, especially adventure, RPG, and MMOs is well-known. But tabletop wargames (like those published by SPI and Avalon Hill) also inspired many computer game designers, as did the type of strategy games sometimes called German-style board games. Games like Carcassonne and Puerto Rico used to be unheard of among the general public, but thanks to the success of Settlers of Catan, thoughtful tabletop games are becoming increasingly popular, even in this age of computerization.

All of which is just to say that there are a number of successful game designers who take the tabletop-to-computer spectrum as their primary creative axis. Rainer Knizia has created many successful tabletop games as well as videogames (many of which were adaptations of his board game designs). Designers like Greg Costikyan, Brenda Brathwaite, Eric Zimmerman, Nick Fortugno, and Frank Lantz are also frequent players and designers of other types of games — not just tabletop but in some cases large-scale "big games" played in urban spaces, and installation games played in museums or galleries. And many other developers in the videogame industry also play and make non-digital games in their spare time.

There's also a technique called paper prototyping advocated by designers like Raph Koster and Stone Librande, which draws a strong material connection between tabletop and computer game design. Designer and USC professor Tracy Fullerton's book Game Design Workshop is based on this method, and a game design workshop is held every year at the Game Developers Conference that uses non-digital materials exclusively. So, in short, there is a lot of cross-over, even if that crossover isn't always expressed through published tabletop games.



What do you think of James Franco?
Anonymous Coward

I understand you may be working on some sort of joint project with him in the academic world. Is he the rockstar that he appears to be?

IB: Perhaps one day I will be fortunate enough to have James Franco nap in my classes. Until then, I'll have to be satisfied to click on his likeness in the post-cowpocalypse version of Cow Clicker.



Re:Yo, Ian!
by Hatta

I actually read your book Racing the Beam. Fantastic book. The only thing I really want to know is when we can expect the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis to get the same treatment.

IB: Thanks for reading! For those who haven't yet, Racing the Beam is a book I wrote with Nick Montfort about the ways the hardware design of the Atari Video Computer System (VCS, aka the Atari 2600) influenced game design. The book was the first in a series Nick and I edit called Platform Studies [http://platformstudies.com]. Books in the series discuss the relationship between the hardware and software design of computer platforms and the creative works produced on those systems. These books are meant to be technically detailed but in an explanatory and accessible way, one that doesn't require any particular background to read.

We have a number of new books lined up in the series. Two books will be published this spring: Codename Revolution: The Nintendo Wii Platform by Steven E. Jones and George K. Thiruvathukal, and The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga, by Jimmy Maher. Other books at various stages of progress do include the NES, SNES, Flash, and a number of other more esoteric platforms. We're actively looking for more books and authors, so if any readers here have projects that match our vision for the series, please get in touch. Keep in mind that we're interested in computer platforms of all kinds, not just videogame systems.

So far, Timothy Lord has showed you the Tesla Model S, a CODA electric car, both gas and electric Smarts, and the Chevy Segway. Now, in his final wrap-up video from the North American International Auto Show, he looks at some concept car models he doesn't think will ever make it to production, along with some interactive games some of the car makers used to draw attention to their products.

So far, Timothy Lord has showed you the Tesla Model S, a CODA electric car, both gas and electric Smarts, and the Chevy Segway. Now, in his final wrap-up video from the North American International Auto Show, he looks at some concept car models he doesn't think will ever make it to production, along with some interactive games some of the car makers used to draw attention to their products.

So far, Timothy Lord has showed you the Tesla Model S, a CODA electric car, both gas and electric Smarts, and the Chevy Segway. Now, in his final wrap-up video from the North American International Auto Show, he looks at some concept car models he doesn't think will ever make it to production, along with some interactive games some of the car makers used to draw attention to their products.

So far, Timothy Lord has showed you the Tesla Model S, a CODA electric car, both gas and electric Smarts, and the Chevy Segway. Now, in his final wrap-up video from the North American International Auto Show, he looks at some concept car models he doesn't think will ever make it to production, along with some interactive games some of the car makers used to draw attention to their products.

Despite (and probably partly because of) its much-touted role as a communications link in the Arab Spring protest movements of the last year, Twitter announced a few days ago that it could be (which I take to mean "will be, and probably are") selectively blocking tweets based on local governments' requests. This AP story (as carried by stuff.co.nz) gives an overview of the negative reaction this move has drawn; unsurprisingly, there's talk of a boycott. The EFF has what seems to be a fair look at the reality of Twitter take-downs, noting that for various reasons they remove certain content already, but not as much as some parties would like; VentureBeat looks at the thousands of take-down notices the company received last year. If you use Twitter, does the recently announced region-specific blocking change what you'll use it for?

adeelarshad82 writes "As reported yesterday lucky residents of Wilmington, N.C., will be the first in the nation to have access to a 'Super Wi-Fi' network. However, the only issue is that Super Wi-Fi isn't really Wi-Fi: Mobile analyst Sascha Segan explains the difference and also gets into why it's incorrectly being dubbed as Super Wi-Fi."

slew writes "This is a followup to this earlier story about 2 of 3 of Rambus's 'critical' patents being invalidated. Apparently now it's a hat-trick." There's something that seems unsavory and wasteful about a business environment in which a company's stock value "fluctuates sharply on its successes and failures in patent litigation and licensing." The linked article offers a brief but decent summary of the way Rambus has profited over the years from these now-invalidated patents.

New submitter Krazy Kanuck writes "The White House is running a story on their OSTP blog that Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra is stepping down after being appointed to the post by President Obama in 2009. There is some mention of him returning to his home state of Virginia, and the Washington Post suggests a possible bid for lieutenant governor."

An anonymous reader writes "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere, but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia). Michael Geist has a full rundown on what is at stake and what you can do, wherever you live."

Velcroman1 writes "Failed pressure chamber tests have forced Russia to postpone two manned launches to the International Space Station — echoing a 2011 situation that left the country's space transport vehicles grounded and led to speculation that scientists may be forced to abandon the orbiting space base. Six astronauts are currently aboard the ISS including two Americans: Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer Don Pettit. 'There is plenty of margin for the current space station crew to stay onboard longer, if necessary, and plenty of margin in our manifest for upcoming launches,' a NASA spokeswoman said. But Soyuz issues are scary nonetheless. 'This re-entry capsule now cannot be used for manned spaceflight,' an unnamed source told Interfax."

theodp writes "Testifying before Congress in 2007, Google's HR chief stated: 'We make great efforts to uncover the most talented employees we can find.' But according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Google actually went to some lengths to avoid uncovering some of tech's most talented employees, striking up agreements with Apple, Intel, and other corporations to avoid recruiting each other's employees. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled that Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Disney, Pixar, Intuit and Lucasfilm must face a lawsuit claiming they violated antitrust laws by entering into no-poaching agreements with each other. 'I don't want to see any obstruction on discovery,' Koh told lawyers during a hearing. According to the head attorney representing the plaintiffs, the total damages could exceed $150 million if just 10,000 entry-level engineers were affected."

An anonymous reader writes "The academic publisher Elsevier has attracted controversy for its high prices, the practice of bundling journals for sale to libraries and its support for legislation such as SOPA and the Research Works Act. Fields medal-winning mathematician Tim Gowers decided to go public with a blog post describing how he'll no longer have anything to do with Elsevier journals, and suggesting that a public website where mathematicians and scientists could register their support for an Elsevier boycott would further the cause. Such a website now exists, with hundreds of academics signing-up so far. John Baez has a nice write-up of the problem and possible solutions."

bs0d3 writes "The EU ACTA chief has resigned, saying, 'This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.' 22 EU members signed the controversial ACTA treaty Thursday in Tokyo."

McGruber writes "Wired reports that the American Association of Railroads is refuting the U.S. Transportation Security Administration memorandum that said hackers had disrupted railroad signals. In fact, 'There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,' said AAR spokesman Holly Arthur. 'The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.' The TSA memo was subject of an earlier Slashdot story in which Slashdot user currently_awake accurately commented on the true nature of the incident."

McGruber writes "Wired reports that the American Association of Railroads is refuting the U.S. Transportation Security Administration memorandum that said hackers had disrupted railroad signals. In fact, 'There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,' said AAR spokesman Holly Arthur. 'The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.' The TSA memo was subject of an earlier Slashdot story in which Slashdot user currently_awake accurately commented on the true nature of the incident."

jjp9999 writes "A WikiLeaks cable reveals that the NASDAQ folded to pressure from the Chinese regime and kicked out a U.S.-based Chinese TV network, NTD TV. The Chinese Communist Party has been trying to block this station for years now, since it's one of the few major Chinese media that refuses to censor its content. Although they're blocked in Mainland China, they broadcast in with satellites. The timing of the incident aligns well with other actions launched by the CCP against the TV station. They used to broadcast into China through French satellite company Eutelsat, but their connection was cut. Reporters Without Borders investigated and found the Chinese regime was behind it. They now use a Taiwanese satellite."

New submitter thomas.kane writes "Newt Gingrich announced yesterday, while visiting Florida's Space Coast, a visionary plan for the future of space travel. He suggested a combination of the current private incentives and a government funded section, developing a moon base, commercial near earth orbit, and continuous propulsion systems to better reach Mars." "Visionary" seems an awfully positive spin on it; Gingrich is not the first President or presidential candidate to propose revisiting the moon — and the moon seems like small potatoes, by some measures.

New submitter thomas.kane writes "Newt Gingrich announced yesterday, while visiting Florida's Space Coast, a visionary plan for the future of space travel. He suggested a combination of the current private incentives and a government funded section, developing a moon base, commercial near earth orbit, and continuous propulsion systems to better reach Mars." "Visionary" seems an awfully positive spin on it; Gingrich is not the first President or presidential candidate to propose revisiting the moon — and the moon seems like small potatoes, by some measures.

Hugh Pickens writes "Google's autonomous cars have demonstrated that self-driving vehicles are now largely workable and could greatly limit human error, but questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation have yet to be addressed. Simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered and legal scholars and government officials warn that society has only begun wrestling with laws required for autonomous vehicles. The big question remains legal liability for the designers and manufacturers as some point out that liability exemptions have been mandated for vaccines, which are believed to offer great value for the general health of the population, despite some risks. 'Why would you even put money into developing it?' says Gary E. Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at the Arizona State University law school. 'I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it.' Congress could consider creating a comprehensive regulatory regime to govern the use of these technologies say researchers at the Rand Corporation adding that while federal preemption has important disadvantages, it might speed the development and utilization of these technologies (PDF) and should be considered, if accompanied by a comprehensive federal regulatory regime. 'This may minimize the number of inconsistent legal regimes that manufacturers face and simplify and speed the introduction of these technologies.'"