Clash of the Titans
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Technology
(Warning: a slight moan ahead… you’ve been warned…!)
Call me a doomsayer, but I think we could be about to see a trademark war. Thus far, Linden Lab’s legal team have reared their ugly (I mean lovely and in no way defamatory) heads at anybody and everybody who even hints at the name or logo of Second Life, even if the usage falls under “fair use” and does nothing but promote the platform. They have seemingly destroyed communities which support the virtual world, all in the name of defending their oh-so-precious trademark, which was never in any real jeopardy anyway.
It will be interesting to see how these bullies stand up to the biggest legal bully of all, now that Microsoft has (either foolishly or heroically) announced their SecondLight technology. Admittedly, it’s not a virtual world… rather, it provides a degree of depth for an otherwise flat display technology. Still, I reckon its close enough to give Linden Lab the shivers.
You can bet that if I alone started a website or service called “SecondLight”, even if it had nothing to do with Second Life, then Linden Lab would be on my case in a flash. So come on Linden legal dudes… bare your teeth at the monster. If you don’t, we’ll all know you’re cowards after all… you squish the little guys, but hide in the corner when somebody bigger comes along.
Long Distance Communication
Posted by Peter | Filed under Technology
You can tell I had a slightly bored lunchtime, as I spent it doing some trace routes and looking up their geo-location information (such as was available). The reason? I wanted to figure how insanely long-distance communications between me and my boss technically are.
From my office, if I want to visit my boss in person, then I go up a set of stairs, and take a very short walk along a corridor. However, we tend to use email a lot more often… so I was wondering just how much further that actually is. The internal email system is rubbish, so we use our own external email systems… his is based on a server in New York (as far as I can tell), and mine is based on a server somewhere in Germany. Here’s the approximate route traced by my system:
- Paisley (University)
- Glasgow
- London
- San Francisco
- New York (mail server #1)
- San Francisco
- Germany (mail server #2)
- London
- Glasgow
- Paisley (University)
My geography has never been terribly good, but looking at a map, I make that at least 9000 miles! (Probably much longer, given that cables are never in a straight line over those kinds of distances.)
Ironically, of course, an email between our offices is likely to arrive faster than we could on-foot. The Internet is amazing when you think about it!
Studying Games Development
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Games, University
The LA Times is running an article about studying computer/video games development at university-level. It is certainly impressive to see how many institutions are taking up this area, but in line with the quote from an EA employee, as well as many users on Slashdot, I am dubious about the wisdom of quite such enthusiastic uptake.
As was the case with many folks on the Computer Games Technology degree I studied, it seems that too many of the wrong kinds of folks are being attracted to the courses: people who like playing games (which admittedly is an important attribute), but are either unable to develop the necessary skills, or simply can’t be bothered doing the work. In part, I think the problem is people who come straight from high school into university — they are used to being spoon-fed all their education, and have never experienced a significant workload. University and the real-world are full-time endeavours, children… get used to it!
I am certainly all in favour of Higher Education, but only where appropriate. Students undertaking a course where they are likely to fail or drop-out is waste of time, effort, and money for all concerned. Furthermore, unless they manage to change to a different (more suitable) degree, it gives them a pretty bad start for any kind of career.
“Park My Car” — practice makes perfect!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games
There have been a few little web-games along the lines of “Park My Car“, but it’s quite fun for a quick play anyway. The premise seems to be that you’re a valet parking assistant who has to park fancy cars in designated spaces for the rich and famous. Refreshingly, you actually fail the level if you squish a passing dog or that blind man who just happens to be wandering past the parking space. (Admittedly, there is at least one Mafia-style level where you have to shoot the bad dudes who are trying to shoot you while you park… as if reversing round corners wasn’t already hard enough!).
I actually found this quite a surprising challenge, because it’s got a much more realistic control concept than your average driving game. You control it with your cursor keys, but instead of instantly-turning wheels when you steer, you have to hold the key for a period of time to turn your wheels to the desired direction. Your steering also won’t automatically revert to centre when you release the keys, so it’s rather unintuitive for guys like me who grew up playing racing games on the PC! (That’s not necessarily a bad thing though.)
The graphics are clean and fairly well-made (it’s top-down, 2d), and the sounds/music is OK. I have one criticism of the interface, and that’s the fact that it’s quite hard to see which way your wheels are steering until you actually start moving (I would recommend an on-screen steering wheel or something just to give you a better idea). Also, it’s a little unforgiving in the way you progress through the levels… 3 crashes (even if all you hit was a poor frog) and you have to start over completely. For a casual game, I prefer it to be at least a little easier to get through to the later levels… but maybe that’s just because I’m still rubbish at it! 
Theft, Divorce, and Murder
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games, Software, Virtual Worlds
A less-than cheery topic to accompany some interesting virtual activity, starting with the NY Times report of the theft of some virtual inventory in RuneScape (also reported with slightly different details by the Telegraph), in which a 13 year old player was violently coerced to log-in to his account to let the thief (~16 years old) transfer the goods to another account. The incident occurred over a year ago, but a Dutch court ruled earlier this week that it amounted to theft under real-world law, and sentenced the thief accordingly. It’s a tough area to deal with from a legal standpoint, but I think it has been handled well.
A somewhat more bizarre case sees the recent arrest of a scorned divorcee who allegedly murdered her ex-husband. Sounds grim… until you realise she has been arrested on suspicion of (effectively) computer hacking, and nothing more. Seemingly, the pair were only virtual spouses in the Maple Story MMORPG (admittedly, I had never heard of it before). After the ‘husband’ unexpectedly terminated the virtual marriage, the ‘(ex-)wife’ gained unauthorised access to his account, and killed off his avatar in May earlier this year. The arrest itself is very real though, and if charged, she faces a fine of $5000, or a whopping 5 years in jail (though she claims no intent to seek revenge of a more real-world sort).
Pondering…
A comparison of these two cases brings up a fascinating judicial conundrum — isn’t murder worse than theft? On the one hand, you’ve got virtual goods being attributed a real value, so that the legal system perceives virtual theft in the same light as real theft. On the other hand, you’ve got virtual murder, which is completely ignored as the legal system tackles a mere case of unauthorised access to (and modification of) personal data. Why do real-world legal values apply to the one and not the other?
Virtual goods may represent an investment of time, and thus a certain personal value, since it will take time and effort to re-acquire them following a theft. However, does a person’s avatar in an RPG not count for a greater investment of time and personal sentiment? From a purely logical standpoint, it seems like the virtual murder should be treated more seriously than virtual theft… and yet, try as I might, I cannot bring myself to consider punishment for virtual murder as anything but ludicrous! Maybe I just don’t take virtual worlds as seriously as some people.
I’m confused. And I’m glad I never wanted to be a lawyer. 
SL Slide Toggler
Posted by Peter | Filed under Projects, Second Life, Software
In preparation for a virtual seminar presentation I was giving about SLOODLE last week, I decided to make a novel little way to present my slides. I only had a few, so I made them all visible in the background, and scripted each one to toggle to the foreground on demand. This has the advantage that all your textures are pre-loaded, plus it makes for a slightly more interesting display-mechanism than simply changing textures.
I’ve released the script as open source (GPL), and you can check it out on my projects page.
SL Word Processor
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Technology
I am very pleased to see that the new “http-in” functions for LSL (in Second Life) are available for beta testing now. Basically, these functions let you setup any prim as an HTTP server, which can be accessed from outside via URL, for sending data into SL, and/or requesting it back out.
In a word: awesome! It will be great to avoid so many HTTP polls or whatever.
But here is my cunning new idea… create an object which sets itself up as an HTTP server, and puts its own URL as the parcel’s media URL. It then listens for text coming in via chat, and outputs that text in response to incoming HTTP requests. Voila! Mini-word processor for Second Life!
I have no idea if this will work… I guess I’ll need to wait until the functions go officially ‘live’ before I find out. It’ll be really cool if it does though!
INSILICO - amazing SL sim
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life
Quick note about this incredible Second Life ® sim I saw today: INSILICO. It’s very much the futuristic, sci-fi kind of theme… imagine movies like The Matrix, The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd, and so on… totally awesome:
Screenshot from INSILICO
Screenshot from INSILICO
(Most of it is real geometry… no pre-rendered backdrops or anything… absolutely astoundingly good!)
Virtual Theatre Studies
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Second Life, University
OK, so it’s not really a course in virtual theatre studies… but it’s pretty close: students at Kent State University are putting on a virtual play (in Second Life ®) as part of their final exam.
I know from my own experience in music and theatre that creativity often flourishes when your options are constrained. For example, one of my favourite exercises when I studied drama in high school was taking a short section of script, and acting it out in 2 or 3 different ways — we had to utilise techniques other than dialogue to convey differences of meaning. I should imagine that something similar is true of acting in Second Life — one must learn to focus on what is possible, and squeeze every drop of dramatic potential out of it.
In this case, there is great flexibility with costume, since you can make them look pretty much however you like. However, programming animations must be quite a laborious task, requiring careful thought and planning (you’d need to be very careful to keep everything in sequence!). The article doesn’t mention whether the dialogue is delivered by text or voice.
I love to see this kind of thing happening… it’s a genuine challenge for the students, and promotes great innovation. It also benefits the SL community as a whole.
Give them computing… but not too much!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Games, Technology, Websites
All around the world, we are seeing the pros and cons of computers. Education is a major part of the thrust in various aspects of computing right now, whether it is computing classes for prisoners in Pakistan or senior citizens in Illinois, virtual classrooms for universities in India, or even a double-glazing company donating computers to a school in the UK.
As many people have alluded to, genuine computer skills are very important now. The existence of courses such as the ECDL shows this; it is not enough to say simply “computer literate” on your CV now… employers often want to know exactly how computer literate you are (which is entirely fair and valid, because being able to make a pretty Bebo profile is not what I’d call a ‘transferable skill’).
On the flip-side of the argument, I am sure we have all seen many protestations over violent video games. Beyond that, people are now complaining about kids getting addicted to web-games in local cybercafes, with very genuine concern that it could even lead to gambling habits in the future. On a personal note, I am rather appalled at how the number of online Bingo (and similar) sites has ballooned lately (there are numerous TV adverts for them here in the UK). I do not begrudge the choice people have to throw away their money as they see fit, but particularly in such a financial climate as this, convenient at-home gambling — often under the guise of a purely ’social’ activity — is rather a cruel enterprise.
As with everything, moderation is the key. I myself have fallen victim to over-use of computers in the past. Mind you, I don’t even rememeber what I did on the computer all day before I had an ‘always-on’ Internet connection! Perhaps one of the key skills that is not being taught is the most simple of all… how (and when) to switch it off!
