Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous submitter writes: "Warp 10 speeds may affect... Ooops, wrong story.. Apparently, jets are affecting the weather and contributing to about a 3 degree daily temperature variation. Even a single degree variation in overall temperature (climate) is significant, but I'm not certain how significant is 3 degrees in local temperatures." We mentioned this before - there was a Wired story - but now their work has been published in Nature and the AP has picked up the story.

Diesel Dave writes "A Wired article reports: 'On Wednesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will begin awarding contracts for the design and implementation of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system...The Total Information Awareness program, with its ability to provide persistent storage of everything from credit card, to employment, to medical, to ISP records, is a recipe for civil liberties disaster unless there are provisions for citizens to find out who is looking at their records and to see and correct those records.' The foundation for the omnipotent National ID database has now been laid."

EyesWideOpen writes "Here is an interesting article at Wired which mentions that existing DVR devices (Tivo, ReplayTV) aren't equipped to handle the digital TV signal that broadcasters are scheduled to start delivering in 2006. Also mentioned is a proposal being considered by the FCC that would allow cable companies to 'turn off' the firewire port, which DVR's will use to connect to digital televisions, so that some broadcasts can't be recorded. The proposal is being considered no doubt in response to fears like that of MPAA head Jack Valenti who has said that without proper security measures, the industry won't allow its movies to be broadcast because they don't want viewers to record 'perfect copies' of movies."

As reported in this Wired article, joelav22 writes that an "Iowa college plans to go completely paperless. There are no libraries, just work stations for e-books and online information. the article supports that 'The school plans to be an entirely paper-free campus. Last year, about 75 telecommunications students participated in a pilot program to go paperless. Each student used a Compaq iPaq handheld to access e-textbooks, syllabi and class materials, and to take notes and exams.' less time spent in a library equals more time for beer and filming amateur Girls Gone Wild digital video!"

iAlex writes "Apparently flying around the world in a balloon isn't enough for Steve Fossett. Currently he is attempting to exceed the sailplane altitude record of 49,000 feet. The intention is to fly a two seat glider into the stratosphere on a mountain wave while wearing a pressure suit. Later on the intention is to exceed 100,000 feet in a pressurized glider. There is also a Wired article." Here's a nutshell description of the plan and a primer on mountain waves.

An anonymous reader points out a Wired story on the continuing Peru saga. In this latest episode, Wired notes that the U.S. Ambassador to Peru has chimed in in support of Microsoft and in opposition to Dr. Villanueva's bill which would have mandated open source software be used by the Peruvian government. On the one hand, sure, our diplomats have a national goal of promoting U.S. enterprise, but do we have to promote companies which we are simultaneously pursuing in court for numerous violations of our laws? Isn't that a bit counter-productive?

chill writes "Wired is reporting 'America Online is scaling back efforts to make its popular instant messaging system work with rivals, saying the task has proven too difficult and expensive.' That's funny, they don't seem to have a problem blocking anyone who figures out how to interoperate. Legally, they are not supposed to offer "next gen" IM over Time Warner's cable lines until they can interoperate. We shall see."

EyesWideOpen writes "AMD is set to release a 64-bit chip early next year which will be completely backwards compatible with the Athlon line. The current 64-bit offering from Intel, Itanium, is an entirely new chip that has no backwards compatibility with its x86 line of chips (from the 8080 chip to the Pentium IV) and is designed only for high end servers. AMD's solution to this problem is the Opteron chip (product info) which will be in servers, desktops and laptops. Here is a wired article."

choka writes: "According to Wired news, A 100-million-year-old skull of one of the weirdest creature has been discovered in Brazil. The fossilised pterosaur skull belongs to one of the world's first flying vertebrates and its head measures 4.5 feet long due to the size of its GIANT crest. The story is here. New Scientist has pictures."

nakhla writes "Wired is running a lengthy article detailing GM's billion-dollar effort to invent a radically new fuel cell vehicle. The interesting part is that GM's engineers are no longer trying to squeeze a fuel cell engine into a traditional car design. Instead, they're building a completely new type of car from the ground up. No gears, clutch, braking hardware, etc. It's all drive-by-wire (computer controlled). Even the engines are located in each of the 4 wheels. It's a fascinating read, and the article outlines economic reasons for such a car, as well as environmental concerns and practical uses (imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car). For anyone remotely interested in the future of automotive technology, this article is very interesting."

nakhla writes "Wired is running a lengthy article detailing GM's billion-dollar effort to invent a radically new fuel cell vehicle. The interesting part is that GM's engineers are no longer trying to squeeze a fuel cell engine into a traditional car design. Instead, they're building a completely new type of car from the ground up. No gears, clutch, braking hardware, etc. It's all drive-by-wire (computer controlled). Even the engines are located in each of the 4 wheels. It's a fascinating read, and the article outlines economic reasons for such a car, as well as environmental concerns and practical uses (imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car). For anyone remotely interested in the future of automotive technology, this article is very interesting."

phriedom writes "Salon has coverage of Palladium which gives first page coverage to the idea that Palladium is designed to kill open source software. My favorite part though is on page two, where the Microsoft apologist says that ones view of Palladium 'depends on what you believe Microsoft's long-term aims are. If you believe it's to stimulate commerce and stimulate security, it's a step in the right direction ...and if you're perhaps given to suspicions that Microsoft always makes decisions with the aim of frustrating competitors of the Windows empire rather than for the good of consumers, you might have a different view of the same architecture.'" Wired also has a story claiming under-the-hood exposure to Palladium, although it doesn't seem to have much information that hasn't come out already. Update by J : Steven Levy's Palladium story, which we linked to in an earlier article, has allegedly been pulled from MSNBC's website. Anyone know if there's a simple explanation of this?

An anonymous reader writes: "Wired has a story in their new issue about Seoul, Korea and how it is The Bandwidth Capital of the World It is really interesting how popular the internet and cybercafes are as a social medium there. They also have a huge following of online game players, with over 70% of broadband users playing online. For me, the best quote about the business opportunities that have sprung up is '(We) wanted to focus on interaction. And what is more interactive than games? We made this market. We made new sectors. American media companies were just using online capacity to distribute offline media.'"

ToddML writes "I just spotted this article at wired.com which talks about the current deficiencies of the U.S. long-distance running program, and more importantly, what is being done about it. An interesting story from both a gadget perspective, and for the source of the program -- private industry."

SoCalChris writes "According to this article on Wired.com, the Sierra Railroad is planning to use diesel train locomotives to produce power for California. Each of the 48 engines are expected to produce 2.1 megawatts of power for a thousand hours each year. Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid."

SoCalChris writes "According to this article on Wired.com, the Sierra Railroad is planning to use diesel train locomotives to produce power for California. Each of the 48 engines are expected to produce 2.1 megawatts of power for a thousand hours each year. Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid."

Slashdot Chaplain writes "At the 2600 site, you can see today's details about why 2600 is withdrawing from taking their suit to the Supreme Court." So let's recap the case: 2600 published the DeCSS utility on their website. The movie studios filed suit, and the EFF agreed to assist 2600 with their case. 2600 lost the case in District Court, receiving a tongue-lashing from Judge Kaplan, which ordered them not to post or even link to DeCSS. 2600 appealed. They lost. They attempted to have their case heard again, by the full Appeals court rather than a three-judge panel, and were rejected. And although they have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, they are saying today that they will not: so Judge Kaplan's decision stands. The case in California is still ongoing. No doubt this will be discussed at H2K2 next week.

prestidigital writes "This is a great fictional advertisement (high bandwidth) for Guinness. I say "fictional" because it is from the movie Minority Report. You may recall that Steven Spielberg is known for heavy branding in movies ala the opening scenes from Back to the Future (Burger King and Pepsi plastered all over). Well, apparently he has taken it a step further by weaving it into the very fabric of the plot in Minority Report. Cool ads if you can afford to wait for them. Lexus is good."

Vish writes "Anyone's who ever seen the grim flotsam of plastic bags which pollute developing countries should take heart from this new bio-degradable plastic from Australia - made from cornstarch and breaks down into the air. At last, some decent technology. Even Linux isn't this cool."

coronaride writes "This article over on Wired discusses the current topic of the FCC's regulation of UHF's (ultra-high frequencies). Apparently, UHF channels 52 through 69 are in danger of being taken over by wireless networking!" Insert your Conan the Librarian or Wheel of Fish joke here.

coronaride writes "This article over on Wired discusses the current topic of the FCC's regulation of UHF's (ultra-high frequencies). Apparently, UHF channels 52 through 69 are in danger of being taken over by wireless networking!" Insert your Conan the Librarian or Wheel of Fish joke here.

OmegaGeek writes: "Jay Rubinstein, a researcher at the University of Iowa, has found a way to improve the signal processing algorithms of cochlear implants (and he's writing in FORTRAN - is this a leading indicator of a FORTRAN revival?). Adding static to the signal actually increases the dynamic hearing range in patients with a cochlear implant."

OmegaGeek writes "Wired is reporting from NECC 2002 that one solution to achieving universal computer access advocated by teachers (and marketing departments too, no doubt) is the use of handheld computers instead of laptops or desktop PCs. Is this a reasonable solution? Does it offer anything for the students other than the ability to beam notes instead of passing a piece of paper? I've also posted a commentary at LearningTech."

OmegaGeek writes "Wired is reporting from NECC 2002 that one solution to achieving universal computer access advocated by teachers (and marketing departments too, no doubt) is the use of handheld computers instead of laptops or desktop PCs. Is this a reasonable solution? Does it offer anything for the students other than the ability to beam notes instead of passing a piece of paper? I've also posted a commentary at LearningTech."

jonerik writes: "As part of its inevitable 30th-anniversary-of-Watergate coverage, ABC News has this article on the National Archives' search for someone who can recover part or all of the missing 18 ½ minutes of President Nixon's Oval Office tapes, whose existence had been unknown until the Watergate hearings. The famous tape - recorded on June 20th, 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in - was last examined in 1974, but Nixon tape archivist Karl Weissenbach is hoping that nearly thirty years of technological progress can make the difference this time, saying 'We have decided that the time is right and appropriate to determine whether that conversation can be retrieved or recovered.' Stephen St. Croix, one of several forensic audio experts who is interested in taking on the job, says 'You never completely erase a tape. You think you do, but you really don't.'" There's another article in Wired on this quest as well.

scubacuda writes: "Wired.com reports that Columbia's CS Department has designed a new gadget designed to "take the brainwork out of billiards" and help the average player eventually take on professional pool sharks. The Stochasticks consists of a 5-by-10-inch laptop carried in a backpack, a half-centimeter-by-1-inch long lipstick camera and a headset. Pool experts, such as Mike Spinkle, president of United States Poolplayer Association, say that this device makes it easier to visualize the angles."

Mike writes "This Wired article mentions that research firm SRI International has come up with a nifty way to lessen the need for the ugly cell towers that you see popping up everywhere (I love the ones here in Atlanta that are oh-so-cleverly dressed up to look like pine trees). Their PacketHop software would create a sort of peer-to-peer network, utilizing the unused power in phones in the vicinity as miniature relays, with your voice/data hopping from one phone to the next until it reaches a relay tower and its final destination."

The sleaze has gotten out of hand; it's time to roast a group of 20 or so companies whose profits are directly linked to creating fear in their customers, who have to keep discovering new sources of fear to improve their bottom line - or in the absence of new discoveries, keep inventing new sources of fear. Yes, it's time to take on the anti-virus software vendors.

The latest "news" to come out of the AV industry is New Virus Infects Picture Files. McAfee put up their description and made sure to issue a wide-spread press release to stir up some interest. McAfee's spokesdrone fans the flames:

• "Potentially no file type could be safe."
  
  That evolution should make computer users think twice about sending pictures or any other media over the Internet, Gullotto said.
  
  "Going forward, we may have to rethink about distributing JPGs."

Now, if you know much about computing, you may be a little suspicious of this. JPEGs are compressed image files that only contain data representing an image to be displayed, not code to be executed. A modification of that data might screw up the picture of your cat dangling from the edge of the kitchen table you like so much, but it won't turn the image into a potential virus transmitter, because the programs that display JPEGs don't read them with an eye toward executing the code. An image file is just data to be displayed. The line between "data" and "code" is a little bit fuzzy - often particular characters or a particular file can be both data and code, depending on the context of how other code handles it. Or a particular file can include both data and code separately, like a Microsoft Word file that includes data (your text) and code (some macro designed to be executed by Word when the document is opened).

But for JPEGs there's a well-designed standard, and it doesn't include executing code of any sort. If a JPEG-handling program doesn't like the data it sees, it should just stop trying to display the image, not decide to start executing code from the image. JPEGs are mostly harmless.

McAfee's claim of a virus spread through JPEGs requires one essential element: you have to have already been infected by ANOTHER virus transmitted by some actual executable code. What it comes down to is:

Once you're infected with a virus, the virus can set you up to be infected by other viruses.

No shit, Sherlock. Once you have enemy code running on your system, you're toast. A virus could alter Microsoft Word so that opening any Word document at all would erase every file on your hard drive, making every single Word document in existence a deadly threat -- to you, and to you alone. But this isn't a new virus threat of any sort. It isn't a breakthrough. It's a consequence of being infected, not a new method of being infected.

Two weeks ago, we ran a story about a cross-platform virus. Like this one, it didn't really exist in the wild. Like this one, it was mainly a PR ploy (by Symantec, in that case). But we thought it had at least some minimal technical interest as a bit of code that would run under Windows or Linux.

McAfee and Symantec (and all the other AV vendors out there) are waging a PR war to "discover" ever more news-worthy viruses to defend against. To get maximum coverage, your new virus needs to do something unique or different -- make your computer turn green, or infect something previously uninfectable, or whatever it might be. Compare this to Klez, a very basic virus similar in most ways to viruses that have gone before, which is still out there looting and pillaging tens of thousands of computers every day, but isn't ideal for AV vendors because they don't have a monopoly on the cure.

The press is catching on, to some tiny extent at least, that most virus alerts are fictitious and just designed to drum up business for the vendors. But it's far easier to repurpose a vendor's press release and call it a story than to dig into real threats that exist on the Internet, and the causes of those threats. Today, like last year and the year before and five years ago, there are major email-borne virus threats out there. (There are still old-school viruses out there too, transmitted by sneaker-net or by downloading suspicious software, but email is clearly the way to go for the discriminating virus creator.) All the real email virus threats share a few distinguishing characteristics:

• They only affect Microsoft Windows. If you aren't running Windows, you are safe.
• They're usually transmitted by email. If you know enough on your own, or you've had a half-hour class in "Email 101", you should be able to avoid executing random files received by email.
• They auto-execute in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. Microsoft has finally made some progress, after many years, in reducing the vulnerability of their flagship email programs. So if you have a recent or fully-updated version of these programs, you may not be as vulnerable as people running older versions. Nevertheless, this was (and still is, since so many people don't have recent or fully-updated versions) a primary vector.

And that's really it. If you don't run Windows, you're safe. If you have basic email skills, you're safe. If you don't run Outlook, you're safe. That's the story of modern viruses, and fortunately or un-, it's a pretty boring one.

McAfee, and Symantec, and everyone else involved in the anti-virus FUD business: lay off. I mean that literally, as in, "Lay off the people you employ for the purpose of drumming up new virus threats." Lay off the public relations people you employ to say things like, "We may have to rethink about distributing JPGs." Lay off the BS. There's a real market for your product, people who (for whatever reason) are using Windows and/or Outlook, and haven't received the half-hour training course necessary to avoid viruses. You can market to them based on your fast responses to real virus threats - you don't need to manufacture any more.

sgtwilko writes "The BBC News site has an article about how astronomers have found several new planets including some that have a similar distribution to our own Solar System. They are finding planetary systems that are more and more like the one in which the Earth resides. It's only a matter of time until the Terrestrial Planet Finder program gets going and finds another Earth." There's another story on space.com. Update: 06/13 21:51 GMT by M : Space News and Wired have stories as well, with spiffy graphics and artists' renderings and so on.

EyesWideOpen writes "Microsoft announced Wednesday that there is a serious software flaw with its IIS web server. The 'vulnerability affects a function in the server software that allows Web administrators to change passwords for an Internet site.' A researcher with eEye Digital Security discovered the flaw in mid-April but it wasn't announced publicly because of an agreement with Microsoft. The Wired article is here and this appears to be the MS bulletin describing the vulnerability in detail." And several people reported this Register story on a way to DOS Mozilla users by trying to display ludicrously large fonts. Microsoft's time to patch a remote hole where the attacker can gain complete access to your computer: two months. Open Source's time to patch a much less serious bug where the attacker can merely crash your computer: three days.

No_Weak_Heart writes "After a brief hiatus, the Web Standards Project (WaSP) has returned. Here's the story at Wired about this grassroots coalition which works to promote the adoption of web standards by authors, tool makers and in browsers. In a related vein, the Boston Globe has a comfy chat with Tim Berners-Lee, the guiding force behind many of those standards."

An Anonymous Coward writes "A new NASA program might once and for all settle the "hydrino" question. The concept of the hydrino -- hydrogen shrunk below its normal state with the resulting release of extreme ultraviolet light -- has been derided by the physics establishment and surprisingly embraced by many engineers and people with deep pockets. Slashdot hashed the hydrino pretty vigorously in December 1999. Now NASA is funding independent research into making a rocket from this novel idea. If it works, we could be seeing a sea change in physics. If it fails, hydrinos might finally just float away. There's an active study group of several hundred users (including some prominent scientists) devoted to debating the possible existence of hydrinos. In many ways it sprang from slashdot."

Guinnessy writes "Wired News reports that one of the most respected journalism schools in America is going to be teaching blogging as part of next semester's course. I find this quite interesting, especially considering the existing controversy over whether blogging, such as Slashdot, is real journalism or not. I still haven't made up my mind." "Blog" now takes the cake as the most ill-used word of 2002. Please draw distinctions between webpages with news, mindless link propagation, discussion sites, personal diaries or journals, etc.

coronaride writes: "This article over on Wired discusses the issue near and dear to every sysadmin and support tech's heart. I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?) unless something majorly goes wrong! The article talks about how some countries, including Japan, try to spice up their product manuals in order to entice the users to read them. Is this just too much work for our lazy American manufacturers to do?"

scubacuda writes "According to Wired, Stanton McCandlish, the Internet's "first full-time activist" (and previous employee of Electronic Frontier Foundation), is retiring. McCandlish is famous for using the comp.org.eff.talk newsgroup and EFFector mailing list to spread the word about the threat of the notorious Clipper Chip (Clipper Chip glossary here) and started the wildly popular "blue ribbon" free-speech campaign."

scubacuda writes "According to Wired, Stanton McCandlish, the Internet's "first full-time activist" (and previous employee of Electronic Frontier Foundation), is retiring. McCandlish is famous for using the comp.org.eff.talk newsgroup and EFFector mailing list to spread the word about the threat of the notorious Clipper Chip (Clipper Chip glossary here) and started the wildly popular "blue ribbon" free-speech campaign."

tregoweth writes "Wired News has an article about "lowercase music" -- electronic music made with itty-bitty quiet sounds."

Rio writes: "A story from myCFnow.com reports that Palm Beach International Airport officials said face-scanning technology will not become part of their airport's security system." Looks like the ACLU was right. Checking a database of 15 employees, the technology gave false-negatives -- failed to recognize the test subjects -- over 50% of the time. A spokesperson said, "There's room for improvement." The Pentagon said the same thing in February. The false-positive rate is more important -- it isn't mentioned, but even if it were just 0.1%, Bruce Schneier argues, it'd be useless.

Michael Jennings writes: "Here is a review of the Game On exhibition that is on at the Barbican centre in London, and which will tour Japan and the US in 2003." Here are two previous mentions of the exhibit. Below are Michael's detailed impressions of the exhibit.

On Friday I attended the Game On exhibition about the history of computer games, at the Barbican Centre gallery. (Admission charge, 11 pounds ($16)). This is on in London from 16 May to 15 September, before moving to The Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh from October 2002 to February 2003 and touring to-be-announced venues in Europe, America and Japan in 2003.

The exhibition starts off well as you walk in. The first thing you see is a PDP-1, with a description of the development of SpaceWar in 1962. Sadly, the PDP-1 is not actually operating, but there is a later (1977) coin operated version of Space War that you can play. From there, we jump straight to the 1970s, where we have a couple of instances of "Computer Space," the very first coin-operated game, from 1971, which had a truly cool cabinet and was produced by Nolan Bushnell, who had then not yet founded Atari, but was otherwise unmemorable, (although this photo does seem to indicate that the sixties were not yet over). We then have working versions (of both cocktail and upright versions) of many coin-operated games from the 1970s.

Most of the classics are there, from a 1972 version of Pong (or Ping, as it was known in the UK due to the world "Pong" denoting a bad smell in British English). Space invaders, Mr and Ms Pacman, Asteroids, Tempest, Defender, Missile Command, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, Centipede etc. There is a very brief description of the Mame project, and a projection TV system running Mame with a choice of about 20 classic games. Unfortunately, the significance of the project from a preservation point of view is not adequately described, nor are the various issues that go with it. (I asked an attendant whether they legally owned copies of the 20 individual ROMs, and he had no idea what I was talking about). As we go on, a lack of explanation of the things on show turns out to be the major weakness of the exhibition. There are quite a few very significant things in the history of gaming in the exhibition, but in a lot of instances it isn't adequately explained just why they are significant, or even in some cases what they are.

From there, we go to a room containing "Ten playable consoles," showing a few of the things we might have had in our homes: working examples of both dedicated game consoles and early microcomputers: the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari 2600, Sinclair Spectrum, Nintendo Famicon, Spectravision, Commodore 64 (why not the Vic-20?) up to an early Amiga. This room also contains brief potted histories of the gaming activities of Atari, Commodore, Sega, Nintendo, Sony, with one or two pieces of classic hardware to look. Plus there is a little potted history of the IBM-PC (with an AT in a display case to look at). There is no mention of the Apple 2, somewhat curiously. No, it wasn't perhaps principally a gaming machine, but it was the first machine providing high resolution colour graphics that people could have in their homes. It was the first non-arcade machine I personally played games on, and I think this is true of a lot of people. (I cite the results of the "most nostalgic item" poll on Slashdot last week).

Up to this point, the exhibition has been largely chronological. From this point on, it drops the chronological aspects and becomes more theme based. This works with variable success. (Some themes work better than others). Some things that are historically quite closely related to each other are not close to one another in the exhibition due to the way they are categorised. A strictly chonological exhibition may have worked better.

Firstly we have a couple of rooms full of about 50 (mostly console) games that you can play. These are supposedly divided up into "Games of Action," "Games of Simulation," and "Games of Reflection and Thought," supposedly, but the distinctions are not very clear. Largely though it's just a room with lots of games in it. In one corner I found the Infocom game of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which was the only text-based game in the whole exhibition. (No Star Trek, no ADVENT, no ZORK). This was a shame, as the culture of text games would have amongst other things helped bridge the gap between Space War and the 1970s arcade games and would have fit in well in the early history of games section).

After this, we had a section devoted to the making and marketing of five famous games (or families of games): Grand Theft Auto, SimCity / Sims, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, and Pokemon. This section is good. We have original character concept drawings, storyboards and design diagrams from Yoshitaka Amano, James Kenny and other original designers of a number of these games, plus both artwork (both for marketing designs and simply for the sake of art) from many of the game designers. Most notably, we have a series of paintings from Ocean Quigley of Sims fame, showing his visions of various Sim Cities and Sim Worlds. This is really cool.

Upstairs, we find a display comparing games culture between "Europe and the USA" and "Japan." The "Europe and the USA" section is unimpressive, containing a few sports-based games and a few military-based games, without really explaining what these have to do with Europe and the USA. (A discussion of how military simulators and games have influenced each other is the best). The "Japan" half is much better, talking about the influence of manga and anime, the influence of the Pachinko culture, the Japanese love of simulations games ("Go by Train", and "Bass Fishing"), plus a really good demonstration of how the game "Renegade" was modified from its Japanese version (which was set in a violent schoolyard) to its US version (which dealt with violence in a perhaps politically less sensitive gang-dominated urban jungle).

The section devoted to "Character Design" gives us a brief overview of the development of Mario and Sonic, and we then get to a section on "Childrens Games." The most interesting part of this is a display of handheld games, in particular early single-game handheld versions of Donkey Kong, Scramble, and a few others like this. (These were quite important to me, as I remember playing many of these in the early 1980s), as well as the usual Game Boys and the like. (I am not sure what makes these "Childrens Games" any more than a lot of the other games in the exhibition, however).

We then have brief sections on game sound and movie-related games. Nothing too exciting here, although lots of movie posters for masterpieces like "Super Mario Brothers" plus a couple of non-working arcade machines with movie related themes. (Tron, most notably. A bit of a shame this one isn't working. Also a shame they didn't devote more time to the movie, given the movie was about game culture. At least the are showing the film as part of the film season associated with the exhibition).

A section on multi-player games is much too small, unfortunately. There are a small number of networked PCs playing a small number of games. (Red Ace Squadron and Worms Word Party when I was there), plus a sign saying that a changing program of games will be shown over the course of the exhibition. This was a little disappointing, as quite frankly this is a small part of a bigger story: the development and evolution of Doom and Quake into things like Counter-Strike is an interesting story, and one that is not covered in this exhibition. (Perhaps they thought that if they had lots of people playing death matches, this would make the exhibition less family friendly). One of the following sections of the exhibition is devoted to the use of gaming technologies for urban planning, and demonstrates the produce V/Spacelab, which is a planning tool used in real urban design, that was developed from the Quake 3 engine. This is really interesting, and one of the best things in the exhibition, but it the obvious connection with the multiplayer game section is missed.

Finally, we have a section on "Future Technology" which talks about where we are going from here. A little bit on games with evolving characters, and voice and body based user interfaces. I would have liked to have seen something on cell phone based games (Japanese i-mode perhaps) as I think this is going to be a big deal.

On the way out, there is a theatrette showing documentaries on the history of games. I sat an watched the documentary "Thumb Candy" from Britain's Channel 4 hosted by Iain Lee, which gave a much clearer history of games than did the exhibition, but this is at the very end of the exhibition when most people are tired, so I was the only person in the theatrette.

As well as all this, the exhibition includes a number of generally small, "contemporary commissions," mostly concept art on games-based subjects. None of this tells you very much about computer games, but I did have the opportunity to play a game of Space Invaders where I got to shoot down the words from quotations from Focault while listening to the sounds of short wave numbers stations. If nothing else, this reminds me that I am in Europe.

I was interrupted by a reporter for the Russian language programs of the BBC World Service, who saw me taking notes for this review in front of the PDP-1, and after I told him a little about the history of Space War and the like, he recorded an audio interview with about my impressions of the exhibition. Thus, the people of Moscow may be hearing my thoughts translated into Russian.

The exhibition bookshop has a book devoted to the exhibition for sale for 20 pounds, plus copies of virtually every book devoted to computer games that the organisers could lay their hands on, a bit of manga and books devoted to manga, one or two tangentially related board games (Harry Potter, anyone?) a little bit of cyberpunkish sf (The Difference Engine, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), and, perplexingly, a large number of copies of Naomi Klein's "No Logo."

There is also a program of films and lectures/discussions taking place to go with the exhibition. The films are "Tron," "The Driver," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (huh?), "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," "Resident Evil," "Existenz," "Ghost in the Shell," and "The Matrix," some of which are clearly worth seeing.

What's good? There is some very cool stuff on display. They have a PDP-1. They have lots of old arcade machines. You can play most of the games. The paintings of SimCity are good. Most of the stories in the histories of gaming are here if you look carefully. The final section on the use of the Quake 3 engine in urban design was great. There haven't really been any major museum exhibits on computer games before, and this is a good effort.

What's bad? There is a lack of coverage of text based games, and anything PC-like prior to Windows 95. There is a lack of coverage of PC gaming. Many of the items on display aren't adequately explained. The organisation into categories doesn't really work.

Is it worth spending my money on? Yes.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Slashdot welcomes reader-submitted features -- thanks, Michael!

jonerik writes "And speaking of the future of unmanned combat, Wired today has this article on several new toys being developed for the U.S. Marine Corps. The Dragon Eye is a small remote-controlled airplane which can be disassembled and carried in a field pack. The Dragon Runner is a miniature camera-equipped wheeled truck about the size of a shoebox which can be sent into dangerous areas as a scout. The Dragon Warrior is a small unmanned helicopter which looks like a toilet seat with wings. Perhaps most intriguing is a device unofficially dubbed the RoboLobster, which skitters around on eight mechanical legs, detecting and disarming mines. Although the Dragon Eye is scheduled for deployment next year, the other three devices are still in the development stage."

jonerik writes "And speaking of the future of unmanned combat, Wired today has this article on several new toys being developed for the U.S. Marine Corps. The Dragon Eye is a small remote-controlled airplane which can be disassembled and carried in a field pack. The Dragon Runner is a miniature camera-equipped wheeled truck about the size of a shoebox which can be sent into dangerous areas as a scout. The Dragon Warrior is a small unmanned helicopter which looks like a toilet seat with wings. Perhaps most intriguing is a device unofficially dubbed the RoboLobster, which skitters around on eight mechanical legs, detecting and disarming mines. Although the Dragon Eye is scheduled for deployment next year, the other three devices are still in the development stage."

blamanj writes "The June issue of Wired includes a list of the top 20 Sci-Fi movies, based on ranking a combination of Adrenaline, Vision, and Precision. Somehow, they came up with (yawn) Gattaca as the #2 SF movie of all time!?! Their rating system was based on one by Josh Calder, who also uses a three-point (Futurism, Entertainment, Plausibility) system, and has the same movie at #2, BTW. Clearly, I think using such a scale gives odd results, but what if it were weighted differently, e.g., Vision is worth 2x Adrenaline, would it be a better list? And, more importantly, what are the real top 20 films? And wouldn't that list have to include Forbidden Planet?"

Annamite writes "Wired news reports about the Mac as 'a good guy' conspiracy, while the traitor was busy hauling a Dell laptop. Can product placement be even better than this. What is next? OS war on screen? You can betcha anything comes out of AOL/TimeWarner would be of AOL/Netscape, but can Bill Gates buy the rest of the movies industry?" I've seen every episode of 24 so far, and did notice certain Macs and PCs being used, but didn't pay attention to who used which one. I probably would have been killed by the traitor.

serendigital writes "Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and creator of Mathematica has, after 10 years+ finished his book, "A New Kind of Science." In a "Wired" article entitled: The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ...," Steven Levy talks about how and why the book was written and more importantly, what it is about. The best part of the article is in this exchange: 'I've got to ask you,' I say. 'How long do you envision this rule of the universe to be?' ... 'I don't know. In Mathematica, for example, perhaps three, four lines of code.'" This book seems a little... nutty. But it's been submitted a bunch of times. If anyone wants to review it, go right ahead.

blankmange writes "Wired is reporting that 2600's appeal has been rejected by a federal appeals court. "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a one-line ruling that it was not going to revisit an earlier decision in which 2600 was found to be unlawfully distributing a DVD-descrambling utility. In January 2000, eight movie studios sued the legendary hacker quarterly for posting the DeCSS.exe utility, which decodes DVDs and allows them to be viewed on a Linux computer." The magazine now has 90 days to file a Supreme Court appeal." The Appeals court did not have to take the case, and they didn't. 2600 can appeal to the Supreme Court, but they don't have to take the case either - it's looking more and more as though Kaplan's ruling will stand.

nautical9 writes: "Wired is reporting that Turkey has just passed a law severely limiting freedom of expression. ISP's can be fined astronomical amounts for something as vague as 'airing pessimism.' It also requires new sites to 'apply' to the government for permission to go online. Amazing the lengths some will go to squash anti-government sentiment."

nautical9 writes: "Wired is reporting that Turkey has just passed a law severely limiting freedom of expression. ISP's can be fined astronomical amounts for something as vague as 'airing pessimism.' It also requires new sites to 'apply' to the government for permission to go online. Amazing the lengths some will go to squash anti-government sentiment."

TheSync writes "Wired News has a story about how contrails may influence the weather. The grounding of commercial flight operations after the 9/11 attack gave scientists a unique opportunity to compare weather with and without contrail-producing flight operations. Day/night temperature differences rose 3 degrees Celsius in some areas."

TheSync writes "Wired News has a story about how contrails may influence the weather. The grounding of commercial flight operations after the 9/11 attack gave scientists a unique opportunity to compare weather with and without contrail-producing flight operations. Day/night temperature differences rose 3 degrees Celsius in some areas."

jfengel writes "Two separate articles about generating faces automatically. From the Boston Globe, there is a story about MIT scientists putting words into somebody's mouth by splicing together footage. In the samples, I couldn't tell the difference between the synthetic footage and the same person really saying the same thing. (Though it's a little hard to tell at only 81kbps video). And Wired as a lengthy article about generating purely synthetic faces at Lucasfilm. It discusses some of the difficulties in getting it right."