You're an idiot. The very fact that you can badmouth Bush or call him a chimpanzee and get away with it shows how far we really are from China. Stop fearmongering -- yes, there are issues. Yes, we should be vigilant. But that doesn't also mean we can't be thankful for the freedoms that we do have.
By keeping the client closed, you can raise the cost of cracking, and thereby make the cost/benefit payoff ratio of cracking lower. It's all risk ratios, and the ratios are more in favor of the companies if they don't release the source code.
I'm not saying that these risks and costs can't be offset by the increase in brand loyalty that such an act of goodwill could create (the way many people are grateful and give respect to id software for GPL'ing their engines when they get old), but I just want to express that the decision to open-source old software (and particularly as hack-sensitive of software as MMOs are) is not as open-and-shut-case as many free-software fanatics on here seem to make it out to be.
You can simply design things such that information is only revealed to the client when is appropriate
Simply eh? Alright -- tell me how I can "simply" and feasibly make it impossible for a player to peek around a corner in a 3d MMO, or prevent him from seeing through a wall, or make enemies more visible by changing their textures to bright pink. I'd love to know how to do this without calculating the clip buffers for every client with every potential object in the same zone as him (which is of course O-n^2 complexity). I addressed this very thing when I wrote:
unless you want to render each screen on the server and stream it to the client as video, you're going to open yourself up to at least some of these attacks being possible
I both agree and disagree with you. I agree that the problem is design, but I disagree by thinking that the solution of not giving the user one iota more of information than they need is "simple" (nor that it solves the texture-replacement hacks).
If Blizzard and Sony and Big World and others have budgets in the millions of dollars (and have had them this high for years), then I think they might have solved it by now if it was as "simple" as you propose.
I don't think you understand the full scope of how hard this kind of thing is.
I wasn't just talking about duping items, or making super-hit weapons -- many of the other problems include things like creating bots to grind the game, creating map hacks to display where all of the monsters are (possibly with what loot they have), where hidden players are, hilight hidden trigger points, setting textures or clip buffers to let the player see through walls or around corners, etc. All of these issues that I've listed are very real issues in online games, and unless you want to render each screen on the server and stream it to the client as video, you're going to open yourself up to at least some of these attacks being possible (clip buffers and corner-peeking probably being one of the first to fall).
Sure, be an idealist free software communist, but the fact of the matter is that games are about presenting the player with fun and challenging rules and limitations. Open source is about allowing people to remove unwanted limitations -- in a multiplayer game like an MMO, there are many points at which these ideals can come into conflict, and "map hacks" is certainly one of them.
It's never going to be secure as long as you give a somewhat intelligent client for the user to run. The DRM fiascos have taught us this.
The most an MMO can do is hope to stall the crackers for as long as possible. The only way to make your game secure is to not give the players a client. As soon as you distribute a client, you have no security, and obscurity is all you've got.
What could possibly benefit the publisher more than continuing to profit from game a game after the official service has been cancelled? What do they have to lose?
Perhaps their packet encryption algorithm. Sure, it usually gets reverse-engineered, but if they have untapped extensibility built in that they could use in a newer game, then keeping their network security layer proprietary can help for future games.
This is something I've also been wondering about -- I've generally heard we have plenty of fuel (esp with breeders), and only recently have I been hearing (always un-documented) rumors of a severe shortage in nuclear fuel. I second this request for a source for the grandparent's statement.
I guess I'm wondering what all those posters are hoping to say. Are they trying to say, "Such and such a thing doesn't interest me!" or are they trying to say, "Such and such a thing doesn't interest enough Slashdot readers to warrant a front-page spot?"
If the former, then just leave the article alone. As is painfully obvious from things in the Slashdot Games section, if an article garners less than 20 comments, then it's pretty strong feedback to the editors that it was a dud.
If the latter, then I was just wanting to post to be a vocal happy party. It's easier to be loud when one's angry than loud when one's content, so I just wanted to help balance out the reader voice and say "I thought it was a really good article".
A large part of the future of the Internet is going to be with online communities. I'm heavily involved as a relatively new administrator for an active online community, and information like this is of particular interest to people like me who are trying to build these online venues. After reading the summary, I saw that there were a couple of hundred comments about this article, and I clicked in, looking forward to a discussion about the difficulties managing such communities, sharing experiences, advice, and anecdotal horror-stories.
I found little or none of that in the entire first page of comments, because it was flooded out with trolls. I wish I had 50 mod points to give out redundant mods after the first wave of "I don't care for this particular article" posts. To adapt some of what you wrote, I would say this: There is limited space on an article's first page of comments, and sometimes comments get posted that have little to no value for the topic at hand. Those are usually the comments that get lambasted.
Thinking about all of those people complaining that off-topic articles drown out helpful discussion makes me want to mod that whole first page "-1 ironic pot/kettle black"
FWIW, this and the "Alex the Parrot" were two of the most interesting articles for me this morning -- the latest happenings of the iPhone or Toby McGuire or the latest rumors about AMD aren't in my interest realm. I don't see why everyone needs to be up in arms over this one in particular, since this is an article about social management -- something that many people (such as myself) feel that *matters*.
So I do appreciate you trying to bring some perspective as to why people might have posted so vociferously about this article, though I think that the Beowulf cluster of Slashdot readers definitely went overkill with what they were trying to say.
Thanks for the good read -- I thought this was a very good article, and I enjoyed reading about it. As someone who is involved with a number of online communities, it was good for me to read an overview of what can happen when members get disgruntled, try to take over, and seeing the methods/tactics they employed to do it.
All that to say, I for one really enjoyed the article. It's one of the few articles that I found interesting and read in this morning's lineup, and I thought it applied very well.
Thanks!:)
--clint
P.S. Why do all of the trolls on the first page of discussion navigate into articles that don't interest them just to complain? Haven't they realized that if they're not interested in reading a particular article, that _they don't have to click on it_? Slashdot's an omelet with all of the fixin's, and you're bound to hit topics that you don't like. Everyone has their anchovies -- just eat around them, and let us enjoy our articles in peace. If a particular article has 4 comments, then it will be painfully obvious that it was a boring article -- we *don't* need 200 trolling complaint posts that drown out real discussion from people who are actually interested in the topic at hand. [/rant]
wether you pay in cash or credit or bullion is kind of irrelevant
Perhaps you're right -- I really don't know. What I do know, is that a year or two ago, I took my wife out to a little hole-in-the-wall family-owned fine Italian restaurant in town here (fantastic food in wonderful ambient-lit environment -- just the kind of place you dream about for nice dates). The owner is a very nice guy -- the first time we were there, I handed them my American Express to pay for the meal -- my reasoning was because AmEx gives me 1% back rather than 0.5% like my MC. The owner returned with my AmEx, and kindly asked if I had anything else I could pay with instead -- he said he hates taking American Express, because the fees really rape him (those were his words).
It was about this time that I started thinking about how the 0.5%-1% I think I'm gaining is really more of a mirage -- the money has to come from somewhere.
Maybe this chef was mistaken about how much he was being impacted -- but he felt the difference was enough to come out and ask me for a different form of payment.
there are substantial costs associated with transferring cash, too. (Armored car, trips to bank, clerk error, etc.)
You're very right about that -- my wife has taken to using a debit card rather than a credit card -- it still has the convenience of the electronic transaction, but it cuts out one of most expensive middle men. We haven't (yet) cut up our credit cards -- I still use them when they're convenient. I guess the larger change for me is that I no longer try to use credit cards whenever I can -- I've reduced my CC usage to be only when another option would be too inconvenient, and I've cut down on my usage of my AmEx -- even though it gives me a *slightly* higher reward percentage-wise, I understand that it's considerably harder on my local merchants.
And in order for that 3% surcharge to go away (and it's not quite that high) everyone would have to stop using credit cards. If you're the only one paying cash, you don't get the rewards, and you won't be making enough of a difference to lower prices, either.
You're right -- I just looked it up, and my 3% guess was a bit high. Seems like Visa/MC are around %2-ish, but the other ones (Discover/AmEx) still being higher. You're also right that if I'm the only one paying cash, then I'm losing out on the half a percent. My consolidation is that at least the other 2%-5% is going back into my local town's economy, rather than off to the CC companies.
*shrug* Nothing huge, but I'm just trying to do my part. As I'm growing up, I'm just coming to realize more and more that there really ANSTAAFL, and the "cash back rewards" thing doesn't ultimately help me nearly as much as the CC companies would like me to believe.
I run up my CC bills each month, pay them off at the end of the month and then rack up reward points. It works great.
I used to follow this pattern as well, but then I realized what I'm actually doing.
Credit card companies take a decent chunk of change from every credit card transaction (some are %3, others such as Discover and AmEx are higher). However, I don't think that CC companies allow merchants to charge higher prices for credit-card transactions -- this is why you don't usually see surcharges for using a CC.
So by me using a credit card for everything, I'm essentially forcing mom-and-pop shops to artificially raise all of their prices %3-5 percent.
And what does it get me? Around half a percent "cash back". I'm not gaining that 0.5% -- I'm in fact losing around 3.5% (all of which goes to the credit card companies, not even to the local brick-and-mortar stores).
So lately I've been bucking that system, realizing that rewards points aren't doing me (or my local stores) any favors. Sure, my single usage probably won't make too much of a difference, but I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is, and vote with my dollar.
Your mileage may vary. This is just where I've come to.
This title is just wrong. Zonk, is there any way we could please change it?
Mundane means commonplace, everyday, ordinary. Boring means uninteresting. Not the same. The article is not saying that games should be less interesting -- the article is saying that games could do well to apply more to real life, and to real skills (I.E. Smooth Moves having players balance brooms on their hands).
I'm all for making games more mundane -- I think it's a great idea, and it's a phenomenal idea for making games ultimately more fun. If "fun" is about learning patterns (as Raph Koster posits), then it only makes sense to build off of patterns that are found in real life (hence why driving games are so much fun).
However, I'm [b]not[/b] in support of making the games boring.
Which is why such a system would turn on only one IR bar at once, doing the math to determine when one IR bar is going out of range. Aaah, okay. I didn't understand that part of your comment at first, but now I see what you mean. So it sounds like you would only want one of the dozen-or-so Wiimotes to actually have IR sensing turned on, and all of the other positions are just extrapolated by the angle difference information. I could see that now, yeah.
Just so you know, the "IR sensor bar" isn't actually a sensor bar -- it's really just a dual high-output infrared source. Basically two infrared LEDs that give the Wiimote an absolute reference point. The infrared receiver is actually in the Wiimote itself. To show this, it's not hard to perform an experiment by removing the IR bar and replacing it with two candles spaced 6-12 inches apart. The Wiimote will pick them up as infrared sources, and work just as well as the normal IR bar (until they run out or set your TV on fire).
All that to say, your idea *could* work, but the Wiimotes get confused if they see too many infrared sources at the same time, and if you could keep them from getting confused, it would take some math to figure out which infrared source the Wiimote is pointing at. Still, it's possible (though it still wouldn't work if you're picking up an object that blocks the Wiimote's LOS to the IR source).
You're exactly right about gravity being used to calculate pitch/roll. This is what I used when I made a rag-doll physics simulator for my Wiimote. Sadly though, in order to be accurate, determining pitch/roll completely from the accellerometers must assume that there is no linear accelleration of the controller itself. In most cases, this works fine for relatively imprecise things like driving, but I'm just a little concerned when there is a lot of precise movement involved (such as in a hand).
However, as I'm thinking about it now, I guess the original idea isn't too bad. The basic solution is that you would have to have a Wiimote mounted on each bone in the simulated hand (one for the palm, 3 for each finger, 2 for the thumb, so 15 Wiimotes for a whole hand). Then for each bone, obtain the angle, then just use simple vector addition to get the relative positions for each of the joints. However, this still leaves you with the quandry that you have no idea where in space your hand is located, or if there is any yaw (left to right twisting), and you're back to needing a static reference point like the IR sensor bar. In other words, you would have a very accurately simulated human hand that would be correct as long as it wasn't accellerating, and it wouldn't let you simulate anything from the wrist-up. If you mounted 2 more Wiimotes to the player (one to the forearm, and one to the bicep), then you could have shoulder-down reproduction, and that would give you some decent control to pick up objects (again, just in a plane, since the Wiimotes could not detect yaw for the arm to turn from right-to-left).
I guess now all we need is some smart-guy to strap about 13 Wiimotes to his body and use the vector addition to make a simple stick-figure of himself dance around on the screen.:) It wouldn't be nearly as accurate as standard motion-capture tools (since the pitch/roll angle calculations are so limited by assuming zero linear accelleration), but it would be accurate enough to make a cool YouTube video and get posted on Slashdot.:)
That could be cool, but keep in mind that the WiiMote has two modes -- accellerometer mode and infrared pointing mode.
Accellerometer mode is useful for things like shaking, tilting, and swinging. Sadly, it has almost nil information for determining where in space something actually is -- only how it's moving, and to back-extrapolate position from motion data is highly inaccurate.
The way Wiimotes get highly sensitive positioning data for things like aiming and driving is by using the secomd mode, whihc is the infrared sensor mode. This only works when the Wiimote is pointing at a dual infrared source (the "sensor bar" that hangs out by your TV). So if you point the Wiimote at the floor, the Wii has very little idea of how your Wiimote is actually oriented.
So what all this mumbo jumbo means for your PowerWiiGlove is that you would have to use accellerometer mode, and that it would make your glove highly inaccurate for detecting sensitive motion (such as manipulating VR objects). Your idea is highly feasible (especially with the advancements in small accellerometers that the Wiimote uses), but just not with the accellerometer configuration present in the existing Wiimote. In other words, your idea is good, but sit on it until Wii 2.0 comes out.
Sure you can ignore the challenges, but lets face it no one is going to respect you if you do.
I've happily ignored both challenges and feel no qualms about either. I'm kindof sorry I ignored the Grue challenge as it sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but I'm plodding ahead regardless. I don't feel that I've lost any "respect" from my Nethack-playing-peers, as if that's what I was playing the game for. Personally I think Robin has done a great job with the tournament and I for one welcome him as our Nethack-tourney-overlord.:)
I see that many other people here have suggested Vultures/Falcon's Eye. That one's okay, but I don't like the fixed isometric perspective or the way it handles mouse navigation. My personal favorite has been [url=http://www.darkarts.co.za/projects/noegnud/]n oeGNUd[/url] -- it's got fairly recent builds for Windows, the text-based pseudo-graphical tile sets that are available are well done (like a little red "d" with a white tip for a fox). I also really like the way it does 3d, with letting you spin the camera around with the mouse and check out the field of play from different angles. I highly recommend it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said, sir. Well said.
Not that much different than the Bush admin
You're an idiot. The very fact that you can badmouth Bush or call him a chimpanzee and get away with it shows how far we really are from China. Stop fearmongering -- yes, there are issues. Yes, we should be vigilant. But that doesn't also mean we can't be thankful for the freedoms that we do have.
By keeping the client closed, you can raise the cost of cracking, and thereby make the cost/benefit payoff ratio of cracking lower. It's all risk ratios, and the ratios are more in favor of the companies if they don't release the source code.
I'm not saying that these risks and costs can't be offset by the increase in brand loyalty that such an act of goodwill could create (the way many people are grateful and give respect to id software for GPL'ing their engines when they get old), but I just want to express that the decision to open-source old software (and particularly as hack-sensitive of software as MMOs are) is not as open-and-shut-case as many free-software fanatics on here seem to make it out to be.
You can simply design things such that information is only revealed to the client when is appropriate
Simply eh? Alright -- tell me how I can "simply" and feasibly make it impossible for a player to peek around a corner in a 3d MMO, or prevent him from seeing through a wall, or make enemies more visible by changing their textures to bright pink. I'd love to know how to do this without calculating the clip buffers for every client with every potential object in the same zone as him (which is of course O-n^2 complexity). I addressed this very thing when I wrote:
unless you want to render each screen on the server and stream it to the client as video, you're going to open yourself up to at least some of these attacks being possible
I both agree and disagree with you. I agree that the problem is design, but I disagree by thinking that the solution of not giving the user one iota more of information than they need is "simple" (nor that it solves the texture-replacement hacks).
If Blizzard and Sony and Big World and others have budgets in the millions of dollars (and have had them this high for years), then I think they might have solved it by now if it was as "simple" as you propose.
I don't think you understand the full scope of how hard this kind of thing is.
I wasn't just talking about duping items, or making super-hit weapons -- many of the other problems include things like creating bots to grind the game, creating map hacks to display where all of the monsters are (possibly with what loot they have), where hidden players are, hilight hidden trigger points, setting textures or clip buffers to let the player see through walls or around corners, etc. All of these issues that I've listed are very real issues in online games, and unless you want to render each screen on the server and stream it to the client as video, you're going to open yourself up to at least some of these attacks being possible (clip buffers and corner-peeking probably being one of the first to fall).
Sure, be an idealist free software communist, but the fact of the matter is that games are about presenting the player with fun and challenging rules and limitations. Open source is about allowing people to remove unwanted limitations -- in a multiplayer game like an MMO, there are many points at which these ideals can come into conflict, and "map hacks" is certainly one of them.
It's never going to be secure as long as you give a somewhat intelligent client for the user to run. The DRM fiascos have taught us this.
The most an MMO can do is hope to stall the crackers for as long as possible. The only way to make your game secure is to not give the players a client. As soon as you distribute a client, you have no security, and obscurity is all you've got.
What could possibly benefit the publisher more than continuing to profit from game a game after the official service has been cancelled? What do they have to lose?
Perhaps their packet encryption algorithm. Sure, it usually gets reverse-engineered, but if they have untapped extensibility built in that they could use in a newer game, then keeping their network security layer proprietary can help for future games.
At least since Uthman -- perhaps his most memorable role as Caliph was to gather up the variant copies of the Qur'an and burn them.
"E.g., the Jews shouldn't eat pork, that was another thing they gave up at Paul's insistence"...
You mean Peter?
Oh wait, sorry -- I don't mean to detract from the Paul bashing -- of course we blame him.
And Bush. Bush and Paul's fault.
Yeah.
This is something I've also been wondering about -- I've generally heard we have plenty of fuel (esp with breeders), and only recently have I been hearing (always un-documented) rumors of a severe shortage in nuclear fuel. I second this request for a source for the grandparent's statement.
I guess I'm wondering what all those posters are hoping to say. Are they trying to say, "Such and such a thing doesn't interest me!" or are they trying to say, "Such and such a thing doesn't interest enough Slashdot readers to warrant a front-page spot?"
If the former, then just leave the article alone. As is painfully obvious from things in the Slashdot Games section, if an article garners less than 20 comments, then it's pretty strong feedback to the editors that it was a dud.
If the latter, then I was just wanting to post to be a vocal happy party. It's easier to be loud when one's angry than loud when one's content, so I just wanted to help balance out the reader voice and say "I thought it was a really good article".
A large part of the future of the Internet is going to be with online communities. I'm heavily involved as a relatively new administrator for an active online community, and information like this is of particular interest to people like me who are trying to build these online venues. After reading the summary, I saw that there were a couple of hundred comments about this article, and I clicked in, looking forward to a discussion about the difficulties managing such communities, sharing experiences, advice, and anecdotal horror-stories.
I found little or none of that in the entire first page of comments, because it was flooded out with trolls. I wish I had 50 mod points to give out redundant mods after the first wave of "I don't care for this particular article" posts. To adapt some of what you wrote, I would say this: There is limited space on an article's first page of comments, and sometimes comments get posted that have little to no value for the topic at hand. Those are usually the comments that get lambasted.
Thinking about all of those people complaining that off-topic articles drown out helpful discussion makes me want to mod that whole first page "-1 ironic pot/kettle black"
FWIW, this and the "Alex the Parrot" were two of the most interesting articles for me this morning -- the latest happenings of the iPhone or Toby McGuire or the latest rumors about AMD aren't in my interest realm. I don't see why everyone needs to be up in arms over this one in particular, since this is an article about social management -- something that many people (such as myself) feel that *matters*.
So I do appreciate you trying to bring some perspective as to why people might have posted so vociferously about this article, though I think that the Beowulf cluster of Slashdot readers definitely went overkill with what they were trying to say.
--clint
Thanks for the good read -- I thought this was a very good article, and I enjoyed reading about it. As someone who is involved with a number of online communities, it was good for me to read an overview of what can happen when members get disgruntled, try to take over, and seeing the methods/tactics they employed to do it.
:)
All that to say, I for one really enjoyed the article. It's one of the few articles that I found interesting and read in this morning's lineup, and I thought it applied very well.
Thanks!
--clint
P.S. Why do all of the trolls on the first page of discussion navigate into articles that don't interest them just to complain? Haven't they realized that if they're not interested in reading a particular article, that _they don't have to click on it_? Slashdot's an omelet with all of the fixin's, and you're bound to hit topics that you don't like. Everyone has their anchovies -- just eat around them, and let us enjoy our articles in peace. If a particular article has 4 comments, then it will be painfully obvious that it was a boring article -- we *don't* need 200 trolling complaint posts that drown out real discussion from people who are actually interested in the topic at hand. [/rant]
P.S.S. [oblig] I must be new here. [/oblig]
He listed the mags as separate.
*whoosh*
wether you pay in cash or credit or bullion is kind of irrelevant
Perhaps you're right -- I really don't know. What I do know, is that a year or two ago, I took my wife out to a little hole-in-the-wall family-owned fine Italian restaurant in town here (fantastic food in wonderful ambient-lit environment -- just the kind of place you dream about for nice dates). The owner is a very nice guy -- the first time we were there, I handed them my American Express to pay for the meal -- my reasoning was because AmEx gives me 1% back rather than 0.5% like my MC. The owner returned with my AmEx, and kindly asked if I had anything else I could pay with instead -- he said he hates taking American Express, because the fees really rape him (those were his words).
It was about this time that I started thinking about how the 0.5%-1% I think I'm gaining is really more of a mirage -- the money has to come from somewhere.
Maybe this chef was mistaken about how much he was being impacted -- but he felt the difference was enough to come out and ask me for a different form of payment.
there are substantial costs associated with transferring cash, too. (Armored car, trips to bank, clerk error, etc.)
You're very right about that -- my wife has taken to using a debit card rather than a credit card -- it still has the convenience of the electronic transaction, but it cuts out one of most expensive middle men. We haven't (yet) cut up our credit cards -- I still use them when they're convenient. I guess the larger change for me is that I no longer try to use credit cards whenever I can -- I've reduced my CC usage to be only when another option would be too inconvenient, and I've cut down on my usage of my AmEx -- even though it gives me a *slightly* higher reward percentage-wise, I understand that it's considerably harder on my local merchants.
And in order for that 3% surcharge to go away (and it's not quite that high) everyone would have to stop using credit cards. If you're the only one paying cash, you don't get the rewards, and you won't be making enough of a difference to lower prices, either.
You're right -- I just looked it up, and my 3% guess was a bit high. Seems like Visa/MC are around %2-ish, but the other ones (Discover/AmEx) still being higher. You're also right that if I'm the only one paying cash, then I'm losing out on the half a percent. My consolidation is that at least the other 2%-5% is going back into my local town's economy, rather than off to the CC companies.
*shrug* Nothing huge, but I'm just trying to do my part. As I'm growing up, I'm just coming to realize more and more that there really ANSTAAFL, and the "cash back rewards" thing doesn't ultimately help me nearly as much as the CC companies would like me to believe.
I run up my CC bills each month, pay them off at the end of the month and then rack up reward points. It works great.
I used to follow this pattern as well, but then I realized what I'm actually doing.
Credit card companies take a decent chunk of change from every credit card transaction (some are %3, others such as Discover and AmEx are higher). However, I don't think that CC companies allow merchants to charge higher prices for credit-card transactions -- this is why you don't usually see surcharges for using a CC.
So by me using a credit card for everything, I'm essentially forcing mom-and-pop shops to artificially raise all of their prices %3-5 percent.
And what does it get me? Around half a percent "cash back". I'm not gaining that 0.5% -- I'm in fact losing around 3.5% (all of which goes to the credit card companies, not even to the local brick-and-mortar stores).
So lately I've been bucking that system, realizing that rewards points aren't doing me (or my local stores) any favors. Sure, my single usage probably won't make too much of a difference, but I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is, and vote with my dollar.
Your mileage may vary. This is just where I've come to.
--clint
Mundane != Boring.
This title is just wrong. Zonk, is there any way we could please change it?
Mundane means commonplace, everyday, ordinary. Boring means uninteresting. Not the same. The article is not saying that games should be less interesting -- the article is saying that games could do well to apply more to real life, and to real skills (I.E. Smooth Moves having players balance brooms on their hands).
I'm all for making games more mundane -- I think it's a great idea, and it's a phenomenal idea for making games ultimately more fun. If "fun" is about learning patterns (as Raph Koster posits), then it only makes sense to build off of patterns that are found in real life (hence why driving games are so much fun).
However, I'm [b]not[/b] in support of making the games boring.
--clint
All that to say, your idea *could* work, but the Wiimotes get confused if they see too many infrared sources at the same time, and if you could keep them from getting confused, it would take some math to figure out which infrared source the Wiimote is pointing at. Still, it's possible (though it still wouldn't work if you're picking up an object that blocks the Wiimote's LOS to the IR source).
However, as I'm thinking about it now, I guess the original idea isn't too bad. The basic solution is that you would have to have a Wiimote mounted on each bone in the simulated hand (one for the palm, 3 for each finger, 2 for the thumb, so 15 Wiimotes for a whole hand). Then for each bone, obtain the angle, then just use simple vector addition to get the relative positions for each of the joints. However, this still leaves you with the quandry that you have no idea where in space your hand is located, or if there is any yaw (left to right twisting), and you're back to needing a static reference point like the IR sensor bar. In other words, you would have a very accurately simulated human hand that would be correct as long as it wasn't accellerating, and it wouldn't let you simulate anything from the wrist-up. If you mounted 2 more Wiimotes to the player (one to the forearm, and one to the bicep), then you could have shoulder-down reproduction, and that would give you some decent control to pick up objects (again, just in a plane, since the Wiimotes could not detect yaw for the arm to turn from right-to-left).
I guess now all we need is some smart-guy to strap about 13 Wiimotes to his body and use the vector addition to make a simple stick-figure of himself dance around on the screen. :) It wouldn't be nearly as accurate as standard motion-capture tools (since the pitch/roll angle calculations are so limited by assuming zero linear accelleration), but it would be accurate enough to make a cool YouTube video and get posted on Slashdot. :)
Accellerometer mode is useful for things like shaking, tilting, and swinging. Sadly, it has almost nil information for determining where in space something actually is -- only how it's moving, and to back-extrapolate position from motion data is highly inaccurate.
The way Wiimotes get highly sensitive positioning data for things like aiming and driving is by using the secomd mode, whihc is the infrared sensor mode. This only works when the Wiimote is pointing at a dual infrared source (the "sensor bar" that hangs out by your TV). So if you point the Wiimote at the floor, the Wii has very little idea of how your Wiimote is actually oriented.
So what all this mumbo jumbo means for your PowerWiiGlove is that you would have to use accellerometer mode, and that it would make your glove highly inaccurate for detecting sensitive motion (such as manipulating VR objects). Your idea is highly feasible (especially with the advancements in small accellerometers that the Wiimote uses), but just not with the accellerometer configuration present in the existing Wiimote. In other words, your idea is good, but sit on it until Wii 2.0 comes out.
--clint
Seconded -- we have a blast with both Nexiuz and OpenArena at our LAN parties (favoring the latter)
I've happily ignored both challenges and feel no qualms about either. I'm kindof sorry I ignored the Grue challenge as it sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but I'm plodding ahead regardless. I don't feel that I've lost any "respect" from my Nethack-playing-peers, as if that's what I was playing the game for. Personally I think Robin has done a great job with the tournament and I for one welcome him as our Nethack-tourney-overlord.
Happy hacking!