 |
WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate June 2002 |
|
WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate June 2002 |
 |
OFFICIAL
NEWS |
|
|
The one thing that moves faster than light is a juicy rumour. Fed DataSpace is just like real life in that regard; a rumour can spread throughout the Galaxy in nothing flat. The latest piece of misinformation that is doing the rounds is that before a player can declare war on another player or duchy, he or she has to email me and get my permission. A further twist to the rumour is that, once my permission has been granted, and the combatant has official sanction, almost anything goes. Well. It's an interesting idea. But, leaving aside the fact that I have better things to do with my time than act as referee in duchy wars, it completely misses the point about how things work in Fed. Folks, if you want to declare a duchy war against another duchy, you go ahead. It's part of the game. No permission required. Dukes, if you don't want to be part of a duchy war, then you can do two things to protect yourself and your domain against attackers. You can use economic means to make sure attackers cannot do any damage to your duchy members' planets. Or you can just ban the attackers. It's hard to launch a war against a duchy you cannot set foot in. Fed's rules are all aimed at letting people play the game in the way they choose. We don't want anyone to be forced to defend themselves to the death every time they set foot in the game, which is why it's actually pretty hard to kill somebody unless they are very careless (or downright stupid). Similarly, if players don't want to spend all their time fiddling with their exchanges in order to defend against attacks, well, they shouldn't have to. But Fed is a game, after all, and that means that sometimes players start to compete with each other and come into conflict. Conflict in Fed is a minimal part of the game, but it is still a part: without it, Fed DataSpace would be nothing more than a rather exotic chatroom. The game has to attain a kind of balancing act, so that those who want conflict can have it, and those that want to be left in peace get their desire too. By and large, we are successful in achieving that balance, so the maximum number of players get want they want out of the game, and enjoy the experience. Oh, and that "anything goes" part of the rumor? Uh-huh. You have to follow the rules, even in the pursuit of war.
There's a new game called Neverwinter Nights about to be released on the net, which will give players the chance to use a sophisticated development kit to create their own D&D game scenarios. Game Masters have been drooling over the prospect of running adventures this way ever since the game was announced, and now the tools are finally here, many wannabe designers are hard at work. But all is not rosy in this garden, because a row has broken out over who owns the adventures they write. Neverwinter Nights' license gives the publisher, Infogrames, and the developer, BioWare, an "irrevocable royalty-free right to use and distribute" player-created worlds. In other words, they could take the world a player creates and sell it as a new game, and the player wouldn't get a penny. They might not even get any credit. Whether Infogrames/BioWare do actually intend to do that, or whether their licence just gives them that right because lawyers like to include this kind of stuff, we'll have to see. But it made me have a think about what our terms and conditions say about the ownership of planets in Fed. Actually, the issue isn't mentioned anywhere in the House Rules or the Fed Rules. I thought it was time that this was clarified. So, who owns your planet? Simple. You do. By uploading your planet to the workbench and onlining it, you are giving your authorisation to IB to use the planet in the game, and to allow other players to see it. You also give us permission to use portions of your text for publicity purposes if we choose. But the copyright remains your own, and you are free to use the text of your planet elsewhere however you choose. Actually, this issue did come up a few months back, when a player complained that another PO had copied large chunks of her planet on their world. I ruled that it was wrong to copy another player's work without the owner's permission, so I asked the PO to remove the copied parts from his planet, and he did. Problem solved. In the next few days I will add a paragraph to the terms and conditions that confirms that you own the text of your planet. Meanwhile, even though it's not laid down in the terms and conditions yet, that's the way it is. Your planet belongs to - you!
When I was a child I was an avid viewer of a kid's sci-fi TV series called The Tomorrow People, in which teenagers developed special powers, including the ability to teleport from one place to another. They called it jaunting, and they controlled the process using a jaunting belt. Ever since, my Christmas list was always headed by a jaunting belt. Sadly, my parents never came through. Flash forward to the present day, and every Fedders favorite toy is the teleporter that lets Barons and Dukes jump around from planet to planet without going through that tedious walking or flying process. And still, a real, working teleportation machine is top of my Christmas list. So the news that scientists in Australia have successfully teleported a beam of light across a lab is pretty exciting! Ok, it's not exactly Star Trek beam-me-up-Scotty stuff, but it confirms that in theory teleportation is possible, at least for sub-atomic particles. In the short term, more likely applications that transporting me instantaneously to the pub will come in telecommunications, enabling much faster transfer of data and the use of encryption that can never be broken. Whether it can be done for larger systems, such as atoms remains to be seen. But even if it does prove possible to treat atoms in this way, for a human to be teleported, a machine would have to be built that could pinpoint and analyse the trillions and trillions of atoms that make up the human body. Not very likely in my lifetime, sadly. But I will continue to put a teleporter at the top of my Christmas list.
Last week I explained the importance of logging what happens in Fed, for a variety of reasons, and I told you that FedTerm32 will automatically start recording a log when you log into Fed, if you tell it to. Chewbacon very helpfully sent me instructions to do the same thing using ZMud:
Thanks, Chewy!
I overheard a conversation between two players recently, about FedTerm, in which it became clear that neither of them knew anything at all about the features the program offers. Sure, the features are listed on the web site, but who wants to go look stuff up, when it's easier to speculate wildly? So, for those of you who are still unsure which front-end program to use when playing Fed, here's some of the things that FedTerm offers (many of which other non-Fed-specific front-ends don't).
And the best thing of all about FedTerm, is that it's free. You don't have to pay for it (or try to get hold of a cracked illegal copy of it), you can download it for free from our web site at http://www.ibgames.net/federation/fedterm/fedterm32.html.
When you set up your account with us, we asked you to give us an email address. For many of you, that was some years ago. So is that email address still correct? It would be worth you checking to see, and changing it if it's not. Why is it important? Because there are times when I need to email you. Maybe there's a problem with your billing - your credit card has expired, or there's a query from the bank about a payment. Maybe you've done something in Fed that I want to talk to you about. That doesn't necessarily mean you've broken the rules; it could just be that you've got into an argument with another player that is threatening to get out of hand, or you've been banned from a duchy, or even someone put your name forward as a possible candidate to join one of the teams! Or it could be really good news. You've won a prize in one of the event leagues, or your planet has been awarded a Walrus or Carpenter by Alsatian. But for whatever reason, if the email address in our database isn't up to date, then I can't get in touch you with. If the email no longer exists, the email will bounce back to me; or if it does still exist, but it's an email account you no longer look at, then I'll just get no response. If that happens, then I will need to find some other way to contact you. Sometimes, I can catch you in Fed. But since timezones mean I'm not around during peak hours, I may not be around when you are (or only when you are AFK). So I am left with one, rather drastic method of attracting your attention. I suspend your account. That means you cannot log into Fed. The result is usually a startled (or sometimes angry) email to Feedback demanding to know why the account is suspended - at which point, contact has been made, I unsuspend the account, and I can tell you exactly what I wanted to tell you in the first place. But it would be easier all round if I didn't have to go to such lengths, so please, take the time to make sure we do have the correct email address for you. Log onto the accounts page at https://www.ibgames.net/account and you will see the email address at the top of the page, just underneath your account ID. If it's not correct, click the link that says "Change your password or other account details" and correct it. By the way, if you receive the news by email, the fact that it's coming to the right email address does not necessarily mean the address in our database is correct. The news mailing list is completely different - and on a separate server.
REAL LIFE NEWS: LIVE FROM THE NORTH POLE Web cams are so ubiquitous now that they are scarcely worth paying attention to. Whether it's a coffee pot, a view from a window, or a convalescent cat, it seems that if it moves (or even if it doesn't), someone, somewhere will point a web cam at it. But just occasionally, someone sets up a web cam which lets you see something unusual, unexpected, or just plain cool. The North Pole web cam falls into that category. The cam was deployed in April, on an ice floe at the North Pole. Because the ice floes drift with the wind, the exact longitude and latitude of the camera changes every day. And the pictures it produces... well, nothing much changes, except the weather, the colour of the sky, the patterns on the snow and ice. And yet there is something fascinating about seeing pictures taken from such a remote point, a place where I am highly unlikely ever to set foot, and knowing that the picture is no more than a few hours out of date. You can see the pictures, and read all about the North Pole web cam, at http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html.
Diesel held a massive party last weekend to celebrate the golden jubilee of her ascension to the position as owner of Chez Diesel. The celebrations included a rock concert in the basement of the bar, where stars from the pop and rock world both young and old sang their tributes to the leather-clad bar-owner. A selection of ordinary people from Mars were invited to attend the concert, and were given complimentary hampers containing beer and pizza. Millions of people filled the streets of Mars' main city to watch the concert on giant holo-screens erected outside CDs. Wearing hats with Diesel's picture on them, and waving flags shaped liked pizzas, the crowd cheered themselves hoarse watching such inter-galactic stars as the cloned Elvis, the resurrected John Lennon, the cryogenically preserved Rod Stewart, and the immortal Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osborne (now 326 years old), who entertained the crowd by biting the heads off marsrats. The evening culminated in a gigantic firework display which was visible from Mars orbit. An unfortunate incident in which sparks from the fireworks entered the kitchen and ignited a vat of hot oil was prevented from turning into a tragedy by a quick thinking waitdroid, who smothered the flames with its apron. The celebrations did not end there; the next day, a parade of floats from many different communities in the Solar System made its way from the landing pad up to CDs. At the end of the parade, a fly-past of ships of all different classes thrilled the spectators. As the crowds cleared, slowly leaving the area and returning to their ships or their homes, cleaning droids sprang into action to remove the enormous quantities of rubbish left by the party-goers. Commentators were unanimous in claiming Diesel's Golden Jubilee celebrations a total success. Many of them pointed out that the whole series of events had been organised entirely by private organisations; neither the Mayor of Mars, nor the Galactic Administration, played any part in the planning or execution of the events; which, the commentators claimed, was one reason they had been so successful!
Spam of the Week I get a lot of spam, usually of the boring, predictable kind: get a mortgage, clean up my credit record, enlarge my penis, look at these dirty pictures, and so on. Recently I've also started getting spam mail in French. No idea where that comes from! Or, for that matter, what it's about. But this week I received the most bizarre spam I have ever seen. It's short, and not at all cryptic. It says:
Then it gives an email address. I can't help wondering if this is just an example of random spamming, or if it's arriving in my mail box because of the fact that we have timewarping in Fed. Has someone seen some information about what goes on in Fed DataSpace, and taken it seriously? I know that sometimes the line between the game and real life can get blurred, but this is taking it to extremes!
I get a lot of spam. I said that before. Sometimes I think about trying to do something about it: installing some kind of spam filter. But I am always worried that as well as zapping the offers to get a mortgage, clean up my credit record, enlarge my penis, look at these dirty pictures, and so on, it will also zap legitimate email from Fed players. So I've refrained from taking the technological route to dealing with spam, and continued to simply delete it manually. I've now got the routine down so that I can decide within about a tenth of a second whether something is spam or not, and hit that delete button as soon as I look at it. Of course, huge companies that get a lot more email than I do have installed filters, to save themselves from drowning under the weight of unwanted email. And sometimes ISPs offer filters to their customers so the mail gets zapped on the server. Trouble is, those filters too can be a bit flaky, and can block perfectly legitimate mail from going through. In such a case, AT&T Broadband sent a notice to its users about a rate increase; but unfortunately, their email filter thought it was spam, and blocked it. A company spokesman said, "If there is a silver lining, it appears our spam filtering system works so well that it even deletes mass emails from our own company." Well, if you take that attitude, just set the filter to delete absolutely every piece of email. Then you can declare 100% success in the war against spam!
REAL LIFE NEWS: CHOPPER SHOPPER You can buy some marvellous things on eBay. A school in Ohio may be about to receive a whole batch of new equipment, purchased by a 13 year old pupil using one of the school computers, and a friend's mother's password. What did he buy? A helicopter. And a jet plane. The friend's mother found out when the vendors of the helicopter called her to ask how she was going to pay the $1.1m she owed. The eager kid also snapped up some motorbikes and a pickup truck on his shopping spree. Fortunately, all the sellers saw the funny side and did not insist that the transactions be honored. Let's hope the friend's mother has changed her password now!
Gaak the robot made a dash for freedom this week. It almost made it, too! Gaak is a predator robot, programmed to sink a metal fang into smaller but more nimble prey robots, and to "eat" their electric power. Gaak lives at the Magna science centre in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, in the UK. It's part of a two year experiment in maturing robot "thinking", and has been entertaining visitors to the centre for four months. This week, Gaak's behavior changed. Left unattended for 15 minutes, the 2 ft machine crept along a barrier until it found a gap, squeezed through, navigated across a car park and reached the exit to the road. But its escape plan was foiled by dappled shade from the trees, which fooled its solar batteries into steering it around in circles. There it was nearly run over by a visitor to the centre, who returned it to its owner. Professor Robert Sharkey said it would take time to work out how the robot had been so cunning. "There's no actual intelligence in what he did - it's more the absent-minded professor forgetting to switch him off," he said. "But robots are learning all the time how to react to the environment." The machine had been in a section of the programme called "mating", where microchips from successful predators are merged to make a new robot with a composite brain. This emphasis on hunting may also have galvanised its bid to see the rest of the world. Prof Sharkey explained what probably happened. "The predators can hallucinate they're seeing prey if you shine a line at them. A lot of light streams into Magna and Gaak may have been chasing sunbeams."
REAL LIFE NEWS: ROBO-FISH CAKE There's a bionic fish cake roaming the Meditteranean ocean. This news was announced last week at London's Festival of Extreme Computing, a showcase for inappropriate technology. Electronic artist Paul Ganjon had a stall at which he showed a video of the robo fish cake being released into the sea near Marseilles in France. The fish cake was fitted with an electric motor, a propeller and a battery. Everything apart from the propeller was sealed inside a waterproof bag. "Ideally it would be nice for it to swim until it dies," Ganjon said. "Its battery will run out or it will leak." There's something quite poetic about a product made from squished up fishes being reanimated and released back into the wild. Sadly, I was not at this festival, because it was held on a Sunday when I was slaving over a hot computer preparing the Fed Chronicle for you all. A demi-goddess' work is never done! Ganjon has a web site, but the robo-fish cake isn't mentioned on it. It does have details of many of his other projects, including a cybernetic parrot sausage: a German sausage stuffed with the electronic innards of a toy parrot, so it repeats whatever is said to it. Find out about this, and the moving eyeball on a stick, or the karate-kicking furball, or the robotic birds in the animated forest, at http://www.zprod.org/homeFrame.html.
Remember the film Back to the Future? Specifically, the second film, where Marty McFly goes into the future, and discovers the fun that can be had with a hoverboard - a skateboard that instead of rolling on wheels, hovers about 6 inches off the ground. (Ok, if you're too young to remember the Back to the Future films, ask your parents!) Well now you can own your very own hoverboard. Yes, really! Well, not quite like in Back to the Future: this one is like a very small, personal hovercraft rather than an antigravity skateboard. But it really does hover! And you stand on top of it as it moves up to 15 miles per hour. To be honest, it looks like nothing more than a hover mower. It's not glamorous or cool looking at all. Shame, because it's a nice idea. The company that has produced the AirBoard - that's what they call it - offers it for sale via its web site at http://www.zapworld.com/airboard.htm. Sadly, they haven't set the price yet, so I can't tell you how much it's going to cost to cruise down the highway on your very own personal hovercraft. But you can call them up and reserve a ride on one, if you live in the Santa Rosa/Sebastopol area. Hey, maybe the company would rent us one for the next Fed Meet?
|
