Balls and Chains to Keep Children at Desks

The latest ridiculous idea: make your children study by actually physically constraining them with balls and chains. Follow the link for the usual high-charge punchline commentary from Slashdot.

However, I think I actually have a better idea. Having only a ball chained to your foot can still be distracting, you could look at the birds in the trees or the clouds in the sky or the people in the street or the patterns on your wallpapers, or do something else rather than study/solve problems/write essays. I suggest we build mobile holding cells for unruly students (the iStudyCell!), lock them in, and let them toil there. That’ll teach them, the bastards!!! Just make the interior as un-distracting as possible — completely white, for example, so that, after a while, they get the feeling they are in some old-style medical institution. Scratch that; the interior has to be black, so that no one and nothing can write on it. Also, limit intake of food and drink by providing just a small slot for a water straw and (very thin) slices of bread. All the student needs is light from a light-bulb, books, and writing materials. Place the iStudyCell anywhere in your place of living and enjoy the increase in silence and the better grades. So here are the specifications. Anyone willing to design and produce?

Killer Robots Get Ethical

So now we’re no longer only producing killer robots, we also spread the delusion that they can be “ethical”. Ronald Arkin, a computer science professor, is developing decision-making machinery to be included in the controlling modules of flying drones, “smart” missiles, and other killer machines. We don’t have enough people on the planet willing to go for each other’s throats for the most stupid reasons you’ve heard in your life, no; we also need robots that act autonomously and decide whether to kill on their own. Great. I’m starting to think that the first Terminators will look either like the current Predator and its family of murderers, or like over-sized Wall-es with machine guns, small missiles, mines, and possibly a couple of flame-throwers on board. The future awaits.

UPDATE 22.09.2009: Obviously, data on deadly robots had already been available when I was writing the above. Slashdot posted another story about killer robots deployed in battlefields. Numbers: 250 dead in Pakistan, 9 in South Africa; software glitches are blamed at least in the second case.

Microsoft Patents Methods for OS Crippling

Microsoft has evidently been granted patents for what it long desired: to restrict the users of their operating systems as much as possible. Now they can do that all they want, and no one can steal the sweet invention from them. Congratulations, Redmond! Happy choking on your well-deserved mints, and happy exploding Creosote-style! I’m wondering how far will MS go in enforcing this type of OS behaviour. They stated that “virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system” if that system has an open architecture. How ingenious. What an insight. And now, thanks to finally patenting mechanisms against this sort of blasphemous, disrespectful, beyond-the-pale behaviour on the part of users, MS can curb said behaviour. (via /.)

Strange how MS doesn’t get it at all: with each Windows version from 95 up to XP, they enabled users to do more and more and more on their own, take their own decisions what to install and run. I find XP to be the peak of that enabling thinking. It is a relatively stable system (especially with the latest service packs), has little difficulty except reboots in adding and removing programmes/components of all sorts, be those applications, drivers, residents like firewalls, etc., and lets the user define default programmes, default file associations, default start-up services and applications, and so on. Of course, it has its limitations, but they are a few, and far between. The good thing with XP lies in the combination of all these features which are constantly available to the user. And where did Vista go? One hundred million warnings and confirmations are needed to install a new piece of hardware, or a programme like an audio editor which hovers slightly above average complexity. And now they want to prolong these procedural agonies even further. Dear MS, don’t you get it? Really? Your customers want stability and freedom of choice. You can’t restrict those for reasons of security because security of computer systems can only be guaranteed by both writing bug-less code and educating users about security problems. When you do that, you win. When you don’t, you get lost in the wild vistas of public anger, which are right next to the vistas of oblivion. Since choice of how to accomplish a task borders on the political so often, users need to be allowed to exercise that freedom and learn. They’re not all children under the age of three. (Actually, almost none of them are children under the age of three.)

So what do you do? Do you give people that freedom, or do you decide you can solve everything for them, keep them from cyberharm, find answers to all their questions, give them all they need and want on your own? Your choice, MS.

Amazon Kindling

If someone doesn’t make random fun of high tech developments, the world will lose all its colours and become a dull, gray place. I read about the amazing Amazon Kindling on Boing Boing Gadgets. The thing I appreciate deeply about this hack is that it shows how wooden the real Kindle is – can’t install plug-ins, can’t tweak all settings, can’t convert and use most of your own data, and so on. I really hope that competition will bring out better devices soon because they are needed by mad readers such as me, myself, and I. Q. W3ary out.

Shuttle before the Sun

Just like millions of other people, I gazed with awe at the photos of Atlantis and Hubble flying across the background of the Sun’s titanic disc. That the Sun, our relatively small, inconspicuous and average star, is so enormously huge might easily dwarf and asphyxiate any thoughts of the grandeur of human civilisation. But still: for human-created objects to be visible at these distances, even for such tiny periods of time, is already an achievement. We are in space, be it the final frontier or not; let us stay there and go even further. Let us take proper care of the good planet we’ve got here and find some others like it one fine day. Because there’s no road to happiness, happiness is in the road; and what other thing can give us more roads than the unbelievably vast Cosmos? Q. W3ary out.

Intel Fined (Almost) to Hell by the EU

The press exploded with news that Intel has been fined 1.06 billion Euros by the EU. This new record, I think, is not undeserved. The practises of number one chip company were clearly anti-competitive. It’s strange how big multinationals think they are above all rules. And I certainly did wonder whether AMD or anyone else would do the same if they were in a similar position. But the gist of the story lies in the fact that a capitalist for-profit entity can feel pain and understand a lesson, just like a very mischievous dog would, only if you hit it where it truly hurts. The governments in the EU — or anywhere else on our lonely, beautiful planet, for that matter — may not be perfect, but most of them have set up rules called laws to regulate our social exchanges. Business is one of those exchanges, and, I dare say, not the single most essential one in life. Nevertheless, big money thinks it can go above and below and around the rules any time it wants to. That’s why you have to hit it while you can, and money is exactly where it hurts most. Whether it will learn? Who knows. But knowing that we’ll all die one day doesn’t make living less sweet: so fighting the big rude grabbers must be independent of the eventual result of that fight. (via /.)

Jumper

As always, spoilers ahead.

I recently saw Jumper, and thought I’d write a couple of words about it. Based on a novel by Steven Gould, it tells the story of a young man who learns that he can teleport himself at will.

And yes, you guessed: he starts robbing banks almost right off the bat. That, however, is not the interesting part of the story; it turns out that there are people out there who totally hate all jumpers (oh, I forgot to mention: of course there’s more than one jumper) and want them dead. So our good-looking bank robber (portrayed by Hayden Christensen) has to run and fight. His problem is that he’s still in love with his high-school love-unrequited sweetheart. The rest of the story you could write for yourself.

That is, if you ignore all the strange questions this film poses. First of all, it’s really central to ask yourself: what would be my attitude to such people if they existed? Would I want them hunted down and killed, or at least safely locked away? Would I want everyone to have their powers? Moreover: how does one deal with such power? Does one become overconfident, does one become arrogant, as in the evolved higher being versus the lower forms of the species? Does one hide one’s abilities, or attempt to use them to do some good?

Strangely, the film doesn’t answer these questions, and then it does. We learn that our well-dressed, clean-shaven bank robber wants to someday repay the money he has stolen; but then, he doesn’t actually help, assist, rescue anyone using his powers, for the duration of the story. Very few people observe the jumpers in action, so the question of what the general populace thinks and feels is avoided. In the end, we are nonetheless reassured that at least the protagonist jumper is someone of integrity who cares deeply about the people he loves, and not a random rascal who would do anything, molest, maim, murder, to achieve what’s on his mind.

I was wondering whether this has been done intentionally, in order to establish something of a franchise, and my suspicions were later confirmed. So until we get another instalment with more depth, we are left with an action movie with several really funny moments, with a panoramically romantic love story, and with many vital but unanswered questions. This film is not a waste of time, but we must hope for more in the jumping future to come.

Q. W3ary

Zeno Clash

As always, spoilers ahead.

One of the weirdest experiences lately, this game both frustrated and inspired me. I’ve been keeping it on my list of intriguing games for some time, and now I got to play it and finally share some thoughts on its success.

Zeno Clash did frustrate me very much with strange controls and character movement, first of all. I was often unable to time combos correctly, or even hit the appropriate key when necessary. That, however, might have been a result of me hurrying to dive into the game, and not personalising my controls adequately. The stranger thing was character movement: when you load your weapon in the game (you can carry only one at a time), you start moving slower than a newly-born snail. You become the perfect sitting duck for everyone, and believe me, in a game where hand-to-hand combat is predominant, this is really bad news. I know it is a realistic game mechanic, but it is frustrating. The final frustration for me, however, was not the combat which I managed to get along with after a while. The problem with this game is that it’s quite linear: both the environments, with the exception of some tough battle arenas, and the story move forward without much deviation. For a new developer, however, this is acceptable; we have to remember that this is the first big project for these people.

But to be honest and pay respect where it’s due, the storyline is saved by the introduction of flashbacks. These are not passively experienced by the player; they are played in sequence as Ghat tells his story to Deadra while they travel away from Halstedom, and probably constitute about 30-40% of the game time. Combined with the fierce hand-to-hand battles, the story manages to rise way above mediocrity. I was very much interested in both how Ghat had come to murdering Father-Mother, and what would happen now that he is on the run with Deadra, followed by an assassin/hunter. The good thing about it all is that the story establishes a strikingly bizarre but very believable world. The two protagonists meet a rather strange person on their journey who takes them back to Halstedom. There, they face the many children of Father-Mother again and learn something quite sinister about him/her. The important thing is that, although it gives solid closure to the proceedings, the game leaves many open doors for sequels. I find Zeno Clash very successful because of that: it not only tells a powerful story through the interactive medium of gaming, but it also establishes a beautiful world with a lot of opportunities for improvements in game-play and more and more storytelling.

The central element that helps achieve that is the visual presentation. In Zeno Clash, colour patterns are written big. Colours vividly explode all around you in characters, flora, fauna, rock and sky. The patterns beautifully blend in when you are hit during fights; they are compatible, fitting. That is also what contributes a lot into making the hand-to-hand carnage so appealing and satisfying. ACE Team were right to choose the Source engine. They were also quite right to go into game-making. I am already looking forward to their next step.

Q. W3ary

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

I’ve waited for so long to write this… A disaster ensues any time your favourite pieces of entertainment and art become unavailable. That was exactly the case with Clear Sky. None of the earlier patches removed a bug that made the game unplayable on my system. However, version 15.0.7 came out later (better late than never!), and solved the problem. So I started from the beginning again, but this time with fresh ideas on how to proceed.

Just like the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Clear Sky has you do quests, gather equipment, talk to weird people, and see even weirder places of utmost beauty, then progress through the storyline at your leisure. There are several differences in this prequel, however. Weapon/suit repairs and upgrades are introduced; hunting for the necessary upgrades, stored on USB sticks, is almost always necessary. Faction participation has been expanded so that it means more in this game. Zone emissions have been added, which stirs up the game-play a bit and increases the gorgeousness of the graphical presentation enormously.

Of course, some annoyances were not completely removed even by the latest patch. After my character had died for the n-th time and I pressed F9 to quick-load, I always crashed back to desktop, whereas F9 functioned normally while the character was alive. Factions are so persistent that one cannot take them out of the game by simply killing all their members; as I once joked, players can reload as many times as they wish, but NPCs can respawn. I only once managed to wipe the Bandits almost fully off the map by sweeping their base clean 3 or 4 times as a member of the Loners, and then joining Freedom and helping them establish their foothold in Garbage. The effort was rewarded by waves of warm pleasure every time I saw no disgusting Bandits in Garbage, but they continued to stubbornly respawn in one corner of that area, so small raids kept my aiming skills in good shape.

Beside that, two other things irritated me. First, the factions I joined (quite unlike the swift Clear Sky faction at the very beginning) acted very slowly, expanded their territories like snails on a hot summer day, and lost them in minutes. The Loners got massacred by mutants in hundreds. With Freedom, I could never make them move beyond Garbage and into Agroprom Institute to take care of the hot-air balloons in Duty. That, however, was not so central. The second thing that surprised me unpleasantly was the short end fight. In the first game, the final battle took place in a sublimely apocalyptic environment and was long, brutal, and exhausting, but very rewarding. Here, one gets to battle the Monolith minions for about 5 minutes. Not only is the battle short, it is also quite confusing, and initially seems impossible.

Nevertheless, the shortness of the end fight in Clear Sky is well established, logical, understandable. This can be generally extended to the whole story of the game. Although the storyline is pretty straightforward, it’s not without appeal; it motivated me to gather and upgrade equipment and practise while I have time (good targets, those Bandits). The weaponry is one of the things that kicked ass for me. Riddle those ugly dogs with bullets, snipe the slimy Bandits or Renegades or Dutiers, and blow up the moronic Monolithians with the grenade launcher. One of the most ingenious moments in the game was the under-barrel mounted grenade launchers for the assault rifles. Wait for the right moment, let those mutants get near enough but not too near, shoot a grenade in their midst and watch them roll to all sides or fly through the air… then switch back to bullet and muzzle and finish off the rest. The bigger, individual grenade launcher I found toward the end works on the same principle but with even more bang and blast. The Monolithians definitely appreciated it. The sniper rifles, especially after upgrades, are the final piece of the puzzle: they make you want to run through the whole game world and sweep it clean of mutants and exploiters like the Bandits or Duty. (Un-)Fortunately, munition for those was scarce, which made me realise how important and useful they are.

Finally, the strongest part of this game was the atmosphere, the setting, the places. Rarely do people manage to reproduce the twisted beauty of post-apocalyptic scapes with such moving power. The trees, the hills, the lakes of slime, the dilapidated buildings, the enormous factory complexes, the anomalies, the radiation, and the emissions… This is not to be described; one has to see it, to experience it in the darkness of the late night. Nothing’s real until you feel, says one of my favourite musicians, and this holds very much for the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. So, while the story may be simple, the characters are tangible and the world is real. Clear Sky has the clear intention of establishing a history for the protagonist and the events in Shadow of Chernobyl, and it does that with aplomb.

Q. W3ary

Marley & Me

As always, spoilers ahead.

The central character in this film is a dog. It is a crazy dog, one who likes to chew everything he wants to, who pees everywhere he feels like. He’s labelled the worst dog in the world. Marley & Me is the story of a dog, his life and death, his friends, his way of doing things.

I was quite sceptical about the movie when I first read about the premise. Throughout it, I discovered many flaws that were brought about by the makers in their desire to create a family-friendly film. Marley, for example, manages not to eat any other nice animal for the whole duration, something quite common for dogs. He also gets castrated quite early in the story, so that unpleasant sexual encounters can be easily eliminated. But these are just two illogical things about the main character. There’s a whole list of faults one could compile: a neighbour gets assaulted with a knife and our nice family moves out to a more secure neighbourhood immediately; the whole world of politics and economics is missing from the movie, despite the two central non-canine characters who are journalists; somewhat absurdly, journalistic work manages to pay for several big, gorgeous houses along the way; Marley the dog successfully seduces a lot of women for his master’s best friend, a big-shot journalist; and so on, and so forth.

But then, this film, I realised, is also about family and friendship, and about loyalty and love. It is quite amazing to watch a dog selflessly do things human beings would find difficult to justify. A dog — an animal — turns into a best, most loyal friend of adults and children alike. Marley’s love is endless and undying, it transcends his life and death. This, in the end, is what redeems the movie. More needn’t be said. Q.W3ary out.