Don't laugh -- Interstelen is a similar game to what's being discussed here (though not as massively multiplayer presumably), and has an Esperanto name. (It's being written in Python, though.)
Did this really need confirmation? No kidding Scientific Creationism is wrong; it is fundamentally flawed, based on erroneous reasoning, total lack of knowledge about science, and so on.
Religion is well and good, but when you try to reconcile science with religion what you get is pseudoscientific nonsense.
Remember, guys, we're just getting started. There's the whole electromagnetic spectrum to search, and thousands of nearby stars to aim telescopes at. With limited resources, searching in the radio bound near the water hole seemed like a good place to start because radio signals travel throughout the Galaxy and the water hole is relatively quiet and is near a major landmark (the H I line).
We're just starting here. Even if the Galaxy is buzzing with alien civilizations, it may be a while before we find them. We have to find the right frequency.
Well, it's hardly the first evidence. It's just one more in a long line of very strong circumstantial evidence that black holes exist, a prediction from general relativity that few astrophysicists think is incorrect.
Such pictoral messages are unlikely to be very effective, if ever encountered by an alien intelligence; they are too human-centric and require way too many assumptions about visual acuity and pattern recognition and the ability to understand letters. Even people used to some languages on Earth would have great difficulty understand it. What's more, the actual transmission that was actually sent had typos in it! Nice job.
Raw transmissions such as Lincos like languages are largely mathematical, have no required geometrical interpretation to be understood, and are much more straightforward to decipher.
For an example of a Lincos-like language that was easily deciphered by amateurs, see The Contact Project. For an example of what Lincos "looks like" (it is actually a radio transmission, see Excerpts from Lincos. For more information on extraterrestrial intelligence and contact, see my Extraterrestrial intelligence links.
Seems like extremely wishful thinking to me. If you're a magnetic material and are brought near a magnet, then you will experience a force. But if you're attached to the magnet, you won't go anywhere -- the forces are equal and opposite and balance to zero.
This is the same reason why things like gravity drives don't work. A compact nearby mass will impart a force on your ship, but if you're anchored to the mass (as it's part of your ship), then you'll impart the same force back on the mass and the net force will be zero.
Suggesting otherwise is like expecting that, since you're standing on the surface of the Earth and Earth is pulling on you, the you-Earth system should be accelerating indefinitely way. That ain't gonna happen without something like negative matter.
This sounds like someone saying, "Well, here's a system where there are forces. Maybe conservation of momentum will be violated!" Seems an awfully peculiar conclusion.
No match for "FIKUVIN.COM".
No match for "PATRINFIKULO.COM".
No match for "PUTINFILACHO.COM".
No match for "CXIESULINO.COM".
No match for "FORFIKIGHI.COM".
I'm currently working on a turn-based Web (HTML forms, not Java) strategy game (Interstelen), and during the (long) development process, I've had a lot of players express their concerns about potential cheating to me (before the game is even in alpha!). The article featured above concentrates on first-person shooters, but there's just as much risk for turn-based, non client-server games (actually, Interstelen is client-server based, but at present there's only the Web client and no way to access the server directly except through the Web client).
Unfortunately, as the article rightly points out, there really is no way to absolutely assure that people can't cheat, so the best you can do is discourage them. In a turn-based Web game, the primary mode of cheating is to use multiple (dummy) accounts controlled by the same person in a given game, in order to gain an advantage (either play the dummy empires as artificial allies, or gut the dummy empires if they're nearby in order to gain an advantage more quickly).
Firstly, a registration process will be required -- when making a new account, you enter an email address, a registration code is sent via email (not Web) to that address, and the player users that code to validate the account and continue. With the proliferation of free email services, clearly this is not anywhere near enough, but the extra work (of having to create a new account) will tend to discourage the extremely causal cheater (the one that's cheating not because he's a die-hard cheater but because he's experimenting -- the most common cheater is a cheater of opportunity, not necessity).
Second, an auditing system will be set up that watches each game for suspicious activity. This includes the obvious, such as two accounts using the same IP address (which is not necessarily a clear indication of cheating, but is a red flag), to empires appearing to cooperate with one another, and so on. Obviously I cannot exhaustively list all the things I plan to check for, since that would defeat its purpose. The idea, however, is to set up an auditing system that can red-flag suspicious behavior (not necessarily cheating, but possibly), that a human must then examine to confirm or deny whether cheating is actually occurring. Except in some very special and obvious cases, determining when someone is cheating in such a game is not trivial, and will probably require detecting a pattern of behavior in several games.
Third is deterrence. Dictate a cardinal cheating rule: Anyone caught cheating will be banned from the game for life. Since people can use different machines, different email addresses, and different player accounts, this may not sound like much of a threat, but it is more effective than you might think: If you really want to play the game, then being banned means that from now on you're going to have to sneak in, which reduces the fun quite a bit. (Auditing services will also check for IP addresses of people who have been banned, etc., so the threat is not as empty as it may seem.)
All in all, I anticipate no major problems with cheaters when the game is released. The auditing systems should be able to keep on top of the few die-hard cheaters that are attracted to any turn-based Web game.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't laugh -- Interstelen is a similar game to what's being discussed here (though not as massively multiplayer presumably), and has an Esperanto name. (It's being written in Python, though.)
There's always Interstelen ...
Did this really need confirmation? No kidding Scientific Creationism is wrong; it is fundamentally flawed, based on erroneous reasoning, total lack of knowledge about science, and so on.
Religion is well and good, but when you try to reconcile science with religion what you get is pseudoscientific nonsense.
That FOX would even consider running such a tripe program indicates the sad state of affairs of science education in this country.
Remember, guys, we're just getting started. There's the whole electromagnetic spectrum to search, and thousands of nearby stars to aim telescopes at. With limited resources, searching in the radio bound near the water hole seemed like a good place to start because radio signals travel throughout the Galaxy and the water hole is relatively quiet and is near a major landmark (the H I line).
We're just starting here. Even if the Galaxy is buzzing with alien civilizations, it may be a while before we find them. We have to find the right frequency.
Well, it's hardly the first evidence. It's just one more in a long line of very strong circumstantial evidence that black holes exist, a prediction from general relativity that few astrophysicists think is incorrect.
Such pictoral messages are unlikely to be very effective, if ever encountered by an alien intelligence; they are too human-centric and require way too many assumptions about visual acuity and pattern recognition and the ability to understand letters. Even people used to some languages on Earth would have great difficulty understand it. What's more, the actual transmission that was actually sent had typos in it! Nice job.
Raw transmissions such as Lincos like languages are largely mathematical, have no required geometrical interpretation to be understood, and are much more straightforward to decipher.
For an example of a Lincos-like language that was easily deciphered by amateurs, see The Contact Project. For an example of what Lincos "looks like" (it is actually a radio transmission, see Excerpts from Lincos. For more information on extraterrestrial intelligence and contact, see my Extraterrestrial intelligence links.
Broken links abound. Here's the real one.
The official soundtrack is also being rereleased on CD.
Seems like extremely wishful thinking to me. If you're a magnetic material and are brought near a magnet, then you will experience a force. But if you're attached to the magnet, you won't go anywhere -- the forces are equal and opposite and balance to zero.
This is the same reason why things like gravity drives don't work. A compact nearby mass will impart a force on your ship, but if you're anchored to the mass (as it's part of your ship), then you'll impart the same force back on the mass and the net force will be zero.
Suggesting otherwise is like expecting that, since you're standing on the surface of the Earth and Earth is pulling on you, the you-Earth system should be accelerating indefinitely way. That ain't gonna happen without something like negative matter.
This sounds like someone saying, "Well, here's a system where there are forces. Maybe conservation of momentum will be violated!" Seems an awfully peculiar conclusion.
No match for "FIKUVIN.COM".
No match for "PATRINFIKULO.COM".
No match for "PUTINFILACHO.COM".
No match for "CXIESULINO.COM".
No match for "FORFIKIGHI.COM".
Unfortunately, as the article rightly points out, there really is no way to absolutely assure that people can't cheat, so the best you can do is discourage them. In a turn-based Web game, the primary mode of cheating is to use multiple (dummy) accounts controlled by the same person in a given game, in order to gain an advantage (either play the dummy empires as artificial allies, or gut the dummy empires if they're nearby in order to gain an advantage more quickly).
Firstly, a registration process will be required -- when making a new account, you enter an email address, a registration code is sent via email (not Web) to that address, and the player users that code to validate the account and continue. With the proliferation of free email services, clearly this is not anywhere near enough, but the extra work (of having to create a new account) will tend to discourage the extremely causal cheater (the one that's cheating not because he's a die-hard cheater but because he's experimenting -- the most common cheater is a cheater of opportunity, not necessity).
Second, an auditing system will be set up that watches each game for suspicious activity. This includes the obvious, such as two accounts using the same IP address (which is not necessarily a clear indication of cheating, but is a red flag), to empires appearing to cooperate with one another, and so on. Obviously I cannot exhaustively list all the things I plan to check for, since that would defeat its purpose. The idea, however, is to set up an auditing system that can red-flag suspicious behavior (not necessarily cheating, but possibly), that a human must then examine to confirm or deny whether cheating is actually occurring. Except in some very special and obvious cases, determining when someone is cheating in such a game is not trivial, and will probably require detecting a pattern of behavior in several games.
Third is deterrence. Dictate a cardinal cheating rule: Anyone caught cheating will be banned from the game for life. Since people can use different machines, different email addresses, and different player accounts, this may not sound like much of a threat, but it is more effective than you might think: If you really want to play the game, then being banned means that from now on you're going to have to sneak in, which reduces the fun quite a bit. (Auditing services will also check for IP addresses of people who have been banned, etc., so the threat is not as empty as it may seem.)
All in all, I anticipate no major problems with cheaters when the game is released. The auditing systems should be able to keep on top of the few die-hard cheaters that are attracted to any turn-based Web game.
Anybody read Portal? I just thought Swigart had made up his "liquid nitrogen" transports out of thin air.
You don't have to see it if you don't want to.
Not sure who's crankier -- the guy who filed the patent, or the reader who say "faster than light" and concluded "wormhole."