Month: February 2005

Interesting and silly, from a Times article on cows.

Turns out that cows enjoy problem solving:

Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, who is presenting other research at the conference, will describe how cows can also become excited by solving intellectual challenges.

In one study, researchers challenged the animals with a task where they had to find how to open a door to get some food. An electroencephalograph was used to measure their brainwaves.

?Their brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air. We called it their Eureka moment,? said Broom.

Just like the rest of us it seems. Other interesting bits about cow psychology in the article, some of which are beyond the scope of this blog.

On CBC news (Canada), Greg Hughes has a viewpoint on The future of video gaming.

“Ludology argues that video games are to be understood only in the context of the interface and rules, nothing more or less. Narrativists argue that video games create what’s called “cyberdrama,” in that thay represent a kind of storytelling that immerses the “participant” in characters and story.

If we believe in ludology, the internet-video game model could just be another distraction, a way to continually stimulate already overstimulated minds. Yet it is undeniable that people find meaning in games like Halo 2 and San Andreas, for while they may be electronic and therefore not as “real” as real people, the stories we tell in video games are becoming more real than movie experiences. Why?

Because this time it isn’t Mario or Donkey Kong firing that barrel on screen at faceless villains ? it’s us shooting other people on screen. We’re directly engaged in the experience, a moving character in a sea of digital code. Only this time, it’s not your buddy from down the street ? it’s someone on the other side of the world.”

First of all, interesting to see how the L vs. N thing gets thrown around casually now.
As Derrida said, words just tend to have a life of their own. To the extent that there is an L vs. N conflict, I would say that it’s ludology that’s about “shooting other people on screen” (it’s the real thing), but cyberdrama that downplays such pleasures in favor of precrafted fictions.
I am considering outsourcing this part of the blog to an AI.

Turns out that Bernie DeKoven, author of The well-Played Game (mostly about physical group games) has his own blog, “Bernie DeKoven’s FunLog“.

Today’s post is “Why do people want to spend their time “killing” each other as a pastime?”

“Major Fun responds:

– we play war because we need to play with it – there’s no other way to integrate such an awful reality into our understanding of the world. it is too ugly, too irrational, too stupid for us to grasp in any other way.

– we know we’re not really hurting anyone or anything, we know that we can’t really die, and without that knowledge, we couldn’t have fun

– we can trust each other if we all know that we’re trying to kill each other, that the very worst in us is not hidden or subsumed by any other attempts at being human, so when we meet, we can meet above all that

– it is remarkably clear, war imagery. we don’t have to worry about double-meanings, about the “real” agenda. nothing else is as vivid. no interpretation required

– play fighting is fun, as long as it is play. it’s a very basic form of play, in all playing animals. it’s safer and clearer than sex play, but in many ways, even more intimate”

Nice to see one of the classic non-electronic games people blogging.

CNN asks.

Well, at least it’s interesting (if old news) that EA supports academia in a reasonably big way.

Or perhaps there is a difference between a Ph.D. in video games [theory] and a Ph.D. in video gaming – the latter concerning being great at playing games and theorizing about optimal strategies in Battlefield?

Behold Yahoo’s US patent 6,699,125:

… The game server includes logic to operate a multiplayer game using inputs from and outputs to an active game set of game clients, wherein game clients other than those in the active game set can join an active game by supplying the game server with a reference to the active game. Additionally, logic is included for coupling a game client to a messenger client to allow the game client to send the messenger client data used to initiate joining a game, whereby a message sent by the messenger client includes the data used to initiate joining a game.

Now, apart from the complete blatant obviousness of this idea – use an instant messenging system to initiate a game – I think the amount of prior art for this one is staggering.
Just in my own small part of the world, people were discussing this idea as early as 1997, and browsing through my own emails, I can see I first implemented a program quite similar to the patent in early 1999. They applied for the patent in 2001. I am sure thousands of other people have done the same, much earlier.

So obviously Yahoo is sueing some former employees for infringing this patent.

The good news recently was that the European Union has postponed a decision to implement software patents here, but we are not immune to the effects of the US Patent office. (And I believe the European Patent Office has already awarded software-like patents.)

I should say that I am not particularly anti-patent, but a patent system is never better than its implementation – obviousness and prior art have to matter.

This madness has to stop.