Technology: April 2006 Archive Page

I have written about how traditional chess engines are constructed and about how they go about figuring out what moves to make. I have speculated on how Rybka, a new and powerful chess engine is constructed. I have written a software specification for a new way to estimate the value of a chess position, or a new "evaluation function".

My task now is to convince everyone that my speculation is sound. Although I lack time, I am slowly starting to create software to test these ideas. I suspect that someone else will have some code togther to experiment before I will, but nevertheless it is worth a try to see if these ideas have any merit.

It would sound like a good project for a grad student or someone who has time to give it a try. --John Jerz --RandomVisitor (chessgames.com)

My big brother has been blogging on chessgames.com under the name "RandomVisitor." He just recently revealed his identity there.

My son, who's eight, can already whip my butt in chess if I don't pay close, close attention. Until recently he has been too willing to sacrifice his queen for little gain, and after he does that I can often win. But not always. At any rate, he's far better than I am at openings and the endgame, because those are easy to practice on a computer.

Every so often, after he beats me, he asks, "Am I ready to beat Uncle John yet?"

I tell him, "Keep practicing."

This world premiere will blend Rock, Tango, Jazz and Punk music with contemporary dance to re-imagine Karel Čapek's original 1921 classic, R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots). Čapek's play that started it all, introducing the word ROBOT into the world's lexicon and into our fantasies, is reexamined for the 21st Century. --R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots): A Futurist Folk Opera (Adhesive Theater)

Thanks for the link, Rosemary. I love the play (R.U.R.). Wish I could be there.

--Dad shoots at computer, saying son spends too much time playing games (Tampa Bays 10 News)

Guns don't kill video games. Angry parents with guns kill video games.

As founder of the tech meet-and-greet dorkbot events, and the annual robot talent show ArtBots, Repetto has organized exhibits and meetings that have made it easier for geeks everywhere to learn about new, cool tech projects in their communities. --The Geek Mind Behind Dorkbot (Wired)

In his decision, Spooner wrote: "It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work."

He added: "For this reason, city agencies permit workers to use a telephone for personal calls, so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance. Many agencies apply the same standard to the use of the Internet for personal purposes." --Judge: Web-Surfing Worker Can't Be Fired (Yahoo!|AP (will expire))

This sounds reasonable. An employer certainly has the right to discipline workers who are not doing their jobs, but simply the act of using the internet shouldn't be a terminal offense.

The gathering was the monthly meeting of "Dorkbot," a loose forum for the exchange of creative technological ideas that is developing a cult following around the world.

[...]

Repetto has finished a project called "foal table." The idea originated in a request from a friend working on a theater production to design a table that transformed into a horse. Repetto watched videos of foals being born and carefully calibrated a mechanical table to make it walk in the awkward, stumbling manner of newborn horses.

"What it's supposed to do is ridiculous because it's a table and there is no reason for it to be walking," Repetto said.

The idea is therefore perfectly Dorkbot -- a name that Repetto says is meant to appeal to people who like to stand back and experience awe in technology and creativity. --'Dorkbot' Meetings Develop Cult Following

Reading this article made me go "Ahhh!" Now that's taking control of technology.

Don't think you're addicted to TV? Then why not prove it by going cold turkey for a week? You'd be surprised how difficult it can be to disconnect -- and what a profound week of self discovery it can be. --TV Turnoff Week April 24-30, 2006 (Adbusters.org)

I'm planning to ask my Intro to Literary Study students to participate in a media fast. (If they can't go cold turkey, they can at least exercise their self-control by being more selective about how they spend their time.)

Video game studies? Yes, please. And I don't just mean in gaming schools. Critical perspectives have been developing as well. Metafilter is already wise to ludology,but what about its mother discipline, ergotics? Don't forget narrative and storytelling. Of course, if cultural studies, or education is your thing, that's covered too.

Other programs focus on application and aesthetics.

Perhaps MeFites are catching on? --The seedy academic underbelly of video games (Metafilter)

The system's software goes beyond tracking simple emotions like sadness and anger to estimate complex mental states like agreeing, disagreeing, thinking, confused, concentrating and interested. The goal is to put this mental state inference engine on a wearable platform and use it to augment or enhance social interactions, said Rana el Kaliouby, a postdoctoral researcher at the Media Lab.

"This is only possible now because of the progress made in affective computing, real-time machine perception and wearable technologies," she said.

The researchers are developing an outward-facing version of the ESP system with a cap-mounted camera connected to a wearable computer. People with autism spectrum disorders have a hard time determining others' emotions or even whether someone is paying attention to them. The system is designed to provide that missing information. --Eric Smalley --Face Reader Bridges Autism Gap (Wired)

My students and I recently read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which has a protagonist who is unable to read facial expressions. Now that we're reading The Diamond Age (a cyberpunk bildungsroman about a marvellously advanced educational book), I thought it would be worthwhile to blog this technological innvation as well.

The saccharine sweet family shows of the 50s and 60s gave way to harder biting social commentaries like All in the Family. In 1967, the same year that CBS television ended a 17-year blacklisting of folksinger Pete Seeger, President Johnson signed legislation to establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), asserting that "we have only begun to grasp the great promise of the medium and noting that noncommercial television was reaching only "a fraction of its potential audience -- and a fraction of its potential worth. As part of the legislation, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was to launch major research on instructional television in the classroom. The $9 million investment in CPB in 1967 (about $47 million in today's dollars) has grown to over $300 million in annual funding today. Unlike television, the meteoric rise of computer and video games over the past decade has gone largely unnoticed except by the digiteratti and cultural anthropologists cruising web zines and blogs. This may be because games are not a technology per se, but applications that slip into our lives on the backs of existing technologies, from computers, to televisions and cell phones. They are less hardware and more software. Like many mass culture phenomena, games are understood more on the basis of prevailing myths than reality. Few people realize that the average gamer is 30 years old, that over 40 percent are female, and that most adult gamers have been playing games for 12 years.

One reason myths shape public perceptions is because few universities have seen computer games as worthy of serious academic study, robbing the discourse around games of robust data on their use characteristics, effects, and potential value. There is, of course, the annual Congressional attack on the game world and its denizens, calling for more control of violent games and, like our TV-addicted forebearers, warning of dire consequences to mind and family. Politicians have conveniently made computer games a target of derision rather than a pedagogical ally or tool for public engagement.

The best kept secret in the world of computer and video games is the rise of a movement -- now in the thousands -- of gamers dedicated to applying games to serious challenges such as education, training, medical treatment, or better government. The Serious Games movement is in many ways today's equivalent of yesterday's advocates for non-commercial, educational TV, who knew that the potential of the medium was unrealized and went far beyond pure entertainment. --David Rejeski --Why We Need a Corporation for Public Gaming (Serious Games Source)

Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms' use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)--a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population. The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients' messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety. --Farsetta and Price --Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed (Center for Media and Democracy)

TV news is expensive to produce. As stations compete with each other for market share, they are pressured to produce slick stories that will hold viewer interest. And publicists are happy to provide professional-looking "reports" that highlight their clients.

Has your local TV station aired a marketer's PR videotape and presented it as if it were an original news report?

Veteran commander John Young and his rookie pilot Robert Crippen faced a lot of uncertainties April 12, 1981, as they waited for the space shuttle Columbia to lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Flight Center. --STS-1: 'A test pilot's dream': Columbia astronaut recalls first shuttle flight on 25th anniversary (CNN)

When my class was watching the launch live on TV in the classroom, and the countdown approached zero, my "friend" came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes.

Fanny Pack

This is great if you're trying to create a singularity of pure geekness that will open up a portal to an alternate universe where they're still making episodes of Reboot. But if there are even two working neurons in the style portion of your brain, the same neurons that explained that Mr. T's haircut won't look as good on you, then you're going to want to pass on this one. On the other hand, if you've burned those neurons out through years of cosplay, more power to you. Just don't stand near me. --Lore Sjöberg -- Gotta Ditch the Fanny Pack, Dude (Wired)

Ditch the fanny pack?

Over my cold, dead, fanny.

Update: My sister just threatened me with this.

"Wouldn't shooting cell-phone users in research libraries be counterproductive?" you might well ask. "Wouldn't that actually make the library more noisy?"

A fair point. Yes, it would. But not for long.... --Scott McLemee --The Silencer (Inside Higher Ed)

Like most of the faculty on my campus, I typically just use the ELMO as an overhead projector to show handouts, but without having to go through the trouble of making a transparency, since it will project anything you put on it. In my mind, it's even easier to operate than a PowerPoint presentation, and I'll sometimes print out a quick outline for any lecture or class plan (in large font) and just project it, moving as we go through the class outline, keeping the hour organized. But I also like to experiment with the ELMO and see what other things it is capable of doing. After all, people's eyes are naturally drawn to a big screen spectacle and there is a way to tap into this for educational purposes and to reach out to visual learners. These devices are fantastic for visual aids, but I haven't seen professors using them very creatively, let alone with much expertise. It's something worth taking advantage of to not only project information, but to put into action to keep a class' attention (without, of course, using it as a DISTRACTION). --Mike Arnzen
--Tickling the ELMO (Pedablogue)

A great fresh look at a piece of technology I use almost every day.

On one level, blogs are little more than personal journals posted on the Internet for all to see. They provide a forum for teachers to share ideas with colleagues around the world or simply talk about themselves and others. But under a wider lens, the sometimes funny, sometimes searing blogs paint what may be the rawest portrait seen of the teaching profession in transition -- and by some measures, in trouble.

Read some and find out why more teachers than ever -- some estimates say up to half in this decade -- are leaving the profession feeling exhausted, disillusioned and underpaid. --Valerie Strauss --Blackboard Blogging: Web Journals Become the New Fly on the Wall of Teachers' Lounges (Washington Post (will expire))

This article begins with the approach that blogs are gossipy and snarky vehicles of personal opinion: "Some teachers use blogs in the classroom to communicate with students and allow them to critique each other's work. But it is in the personal blogs that teachers have some of the most open, and occasionally brutal, discussions about themselves and their profession."

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? --Bob Carter -- There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998 (Telegraph)

I'm not really sure what I think. Certainly recycling and avoiding waste are sensible, but when well-meaning activists use bad science to back up their claims, reason suffers.

Half-Life 2 Mod: Week 7 -- Gleaming Translucent Chandeliers, Detail of Railing, Heavy Object Designing (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

This week I finally managed to make my chandeliers look decent. Previously I had placed an invisible light-emitting entity inside a solid translucent block, but that unfortunately left the outside edges of the block looking very dark. So this time I created four thin transparent walls, and put the light inside all four walls. In addition, I placed extra light sources outside the chandelier, to create the glowing effect that I wanted.

The picture shows that I also added some chandeliers to the top level of the balcony. You can also see the woodgrain railings, though at this resolution the 45 degree angle join is only barely noticeable.

I actually spent much more time on the room I haven't shown yet. To give meaning to my new media meanderings, I'm trying to create a Half-Life 2 mod that implements Cloak of Darkness, a very simple scenario that's been implemented in dozens of different programming environments. That scenario is set in the lobby of an opera house, and features a bar (which I'm working on) and a cloakroom (that I haven't started yet).

While designing the bar, for the first time I've worked extensively with angled wall shapes -- complicated modular units that I duplicate and rotate in order to form a circle. The circle is divided up into 10 sections, so I created a large 36 degree wedge, then used it to cut out a kind of trough, and then placed my wall unit in the trough, and used the trough to cut the wall unit into a piece that has 36 degree edges. Since the world-building feature isn't designed to work with resolutions of smaller than one inch, the modules I'm creating are going to be a little off, but I'm not too worried.

These wall units are so complex that I should really be creating them in a 3D modeling tool, and importing them as models into the HL2 world. I'm actually being very wasteful of computing resources by constructing these modules out of blocky square brushes, and manipulating the corners of the blocks in order to approximate the shapes I want. But I'm not yet ready to tackle learning a 3D modeling program.

No pictures of that room yet. I need to spend some time creating the images that will make my wall units look better. Half-Life 2 comes with plenty of materials that represent cracking plaster, rubble, bricks, etc. It's also easy to find assorted high-tech panels and display readouts online, but nothing that depicts the precise decor I'm shooting for. So the models look pretty slapdash at the moment.

I'll show photos of the bar area when I've got something worth sharing.

According to the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization, within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, including hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web; kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms; computer art installations, which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects; conversational characters, also known as chatterbots; interactive fiction; novels that take the form of e-mails, SMS messages or blogs; poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning; collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text of a work; and literary performances online that develop new ways of writing. --Digital writing gives new meaning to a good read (My San Antonio)

The Bob Ross game will utilize the unique inputs that the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Revolution have that can truly immerse the players while they learn to paint like Bob Ross and can play the addictive and fun games that we have planned for the title. I believe that Bob Ross Inc's and AGFRAG Entertainment Group's similar beliefs in independence, creativity, and teaching others will benefit how the game is developed and how the players of all ages will be able to enjoy this game.

I want the community to share with us their favorite Bob Ross shows, painting techniques, and what they?d like to see in the NDS and Revolution games. We want to keep the brush going."
--Bob Ross Video Game (bobross.com)

Bob Ross... the happy little clouds... the gravity-defying 'do... the "addictive and fun" game!

This quote from the Bob Ross rotten.com biography made me burst out laughing: "While some folks distract themselves toting iPods of sh*tty music around like colostomy bags, others prefer to remain focused on a cardboard canvas with a modest fan brush."

Games today are many times more complex than games were even a few years ago. Recreating every three-dimensional point of a complex cave environment is going to take an artist several orders of magnitude more time than dropping a few rough dots on an Atari 2600's 196x160 screen and calling it a cave environment. Similarly, producing a full 5.1 surround sound track for a modern game requires sound engineers and advanced programming libraries. Triggering a few blips and bleeps is much easier.

But there are also some less obvious reasons for longer development cycles. In the old days, a programmer with a text editor and a few programs could create an entire game. However, to create all the complex content and code required for a modern game, programmers and artists need powerful tools such as 3-d modelers and advanced debuggers. Unfortunately, programmers and artists often have to use general purpose tools that are not at all well suited to game development. And when domain-specific tools do exist, such as in console game development, the tools are often unstable and immature due to the short life span of any particular console system. A multi-platform console world further complicates development by multiplying all of the issues of developing for a single platform by the number of platforms on which you intend to deliver your game. --Adam Geitgey --Where are the Good Open Source Games? (OS News)

Great suggestion, Evan.

Prices will be roughly comparable to DVDs -- $20 to $30 for new releases, $10 to $16 for catalog titles.

Now doesn't that bother some of you?

I'm sure it bothers exhibitors, those that own multiplex cinemas. --Scott Rosenberg --Movie downloads an evolutionary idea? (Monsters and Critics.com)

Email as a collaboration tool sucks. Everyone knows this. Everyone says it. Everyone writes about it.

And everyone agrees that its inefficient, it's chaotic, its silo'ed and its full of spam. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, we can assume with confidence that email is still the preferred method of "collaborating" and sharing information with others. --The Good In Email (or Why Email Is Still The Most Adopted Collaboration Tool) (Central Desktop Blog)

I was recently invited to join an IM discussion for a collaborative project, but I declined. I can see how it would be useful for brainstorming, but at that point in the project we had already shared ideas and were approaching a "getting things done" mode, and I didn't feel like that was the right time to switch to chat.

I'm not a total dinosaur. I think Wikis are great collaborative tools, because they keep a track of changes, which means I feel more comfortable making wild changes, since someone else can always moderate it if I've made too drastic a change.

Andrew Swinand, executive vice president at Starcom Worldwide, a major advertising-buying agency, said during a panel discussion that newspapers could do more to harness their presence online, such as getting more participation from audiences.

Swinand also said his firm would like to buy advertising across newspaper websites but had difficulty doing so, and had to go through third-party vendors. He also said it was difficult to buy both print and online advertising through newspapers, and that the process for fulfilling newspaper ad sales was cumbersome and less automated than in other media.

Swinand did say afterward that he was still "bullish" on newspapers' online advertising potential, but added that newspapers should do more to personalize and localize their online content, in ways such as the social networking site MySpace does. -- --Stop the Presses ... Go Online (Wired | AP)

The job market for traditional journalism jobs is drying up. No question about it.

Content rules. It did ten years ago, and it does today. People don't use things they don't understand. Writing for the Web is still undervalued, and most sites spend too few resources refining the information they offer to users. Jakob Nielsen --Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First (Alertbox)

Half-Life 2 Mod: Week 6 - Switchable Chandeliers, Automatic Sliding Doors, Railings, Carpet (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

This was a tremendously productive weekend. After helping two fellow interactive fiction fans finish a proposal for next year's MLA, I tackled a few things I had been meaning to get to for a while.

The first picture shows the much more realistic chandeliers that I managed to create. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it's good enough for the demo I'm working on now.

While I didn't bother trying to capture it in the screen grab, I've also added a button that turns the chandeliers on and off. The red carpet really ought to be running up the stairs, but I'm not sure I want to tackle that yet. Already, when I do a full compile of this game world, it's taking my little laptop 10 or so minutes. I'm not sure yet what the acronyms on the compile window means, but I fiddled with the settings so that I don't have to do that full compile every time, which saves a lot of time.


I'm particularly proud of the railings in this picture. I didn't take a screen grab, but I figured out how to edit the vertices so that the perfectly rectangular railing pieces join together at 45 degree angles.

The red door also slides open to reveal a room inside. I've got some ideas for that room, but I'm going to save them for now, and show them when the room is in really good shape.

Now that I can interact with the world in simple ways (turning on and off lights, opening doors), it's time to start working with NPCs. I'm thinking first of just telling an NPC to walk to spot B when the PC enters spot A, and then walk to spot C when the PC enters spot B, and so on, with the NPC eventually returning to spot A. Since FacePoser crashes my laptop when I run it at home, I don't know how much luck I'll have working with NPCs, but Half Life 2 comes with a range of pre-set emotions and gestures, so we'll see what I can accomplish.

All code operations, despite their metaphoric faculties such as "call" or "return", come down to absolutely local string manipulations and that is, I am afraid, to signifiers of voltage differences. Formalization in Hilbert's sense does away with theory itself, insofar as "the theory is no longer a system of meaningful propositions, but one of sentences as sequences of words, which are in turn sequences of letters. We can tell [say] by reference to the form alone which combinations of the words are sentences, which sentences are axioms, and which sentences follow as immediate consequences of others."

When meanings come down to sentences, sentences to words, and words to letters, there is no software at all. Rather, there would be no software if computer systems were not surrounded any longer by an environment of everyday languages. --Friedrich Kittler --There is No Software (CTheory.net)

Taking a mini-break from working on a proposal that's due tomorrow. This article is new to me.