Recorded: June 13, 2009

Jen, Ogre and… Chris?!? New geek Jen joins the crew in the basement once again, and Chris and Tuck switch places in this special Bizzaro edition of GwI.

Recorded: June 13, 2009

Ogre, Tuck and Mollie welcome new Geek Jen to her first episode of GwI.

Well, in a typical month, your geeks record episodes on the first Saturday of the month. However, in observance of World Drawing Day (no I am not making that up: www.drawingday.com), the geeks chose to take June 6th off, break out the crayons and finger-paints and join the festivities.

Episode 113 will be recorded tomorrow, Saturday, June 13th; the episode will be posted as soon as we can get the video online. To thank you for your patience, we’re also going to send the video feed through our newly re-named Livestream channel (those of you who watched the Battle Against Dysentery will remember that this channel was previously named the often-mispronounced Mogulus).

Log on at 1 pm EDT on June 13th to see the next installment of GwI in real-time, all you have to do is click the “Livestream” tab at the top of this page.

In the meantime, here’s a trippy video to keep you entertained:

Wood Smoke from Fredo Viola on Vimeo.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1902950,00.html?iid=tsmodule

This is Tinychat – an impressive, versatile, and lightweight chatting platform. This is chatting like it should be – an interface that is embeddable or can be visited by hyperlink, the ability to use text, audio and video to communicate for as many people in the chat as want to use it, and the ability to know that once the chat event is over, the room is disposable – just leave it alone, and you’ll never see it again. It’s the perfect sort of software if you’re an upwardly mobile Geek, looking to connect with friends on any major topic you can think of…or if you’re a ninja, looking for the perfect place to meet your clan members, and then slip into the night. You’d probably never use the webcam feature…and then again, ninja don’t exist, so there’s that too.

I do have some gripes about the program – the video quality is very low end, and some users can experience some really strange errors using the site (especially if they’re running Firefox, like I do). However, as a total package, Tinychat is one hell of a fantastic resource. One I can’t wait to use before our next big GwI project.

Rest in Peace, David. May your journey be filled with adventure, and may the journey see your fare better than your journey here did.

There’s something about an old game that just makes me a very happy geek. Maybe it’s the graphics – despite the reality of the latest graphics cards, there’s something compelling, even amazing, about older 3D, or even pre-3D graphics. Developers did the best they could with what they had, and what they did do blew me away back then. Even now, looking at older graphics, I marvel at what they could do with so little hardware.
Maybe it was the DOS prompt. I’ve always had a close relationship with the command line, and event though the years have separated us, I still enjoy popping in to visit, and running a good “chkdsk,” or maybe looking in on some files with a “dir/w” and getting to do some “ren.” There’s something visceral, that brings you close to a machine, when you speak to it in its own language.
Maybe it was those charming Sound Blaster sounds.
Maybe it was the stories, each lovingly built, taking a greater majority of production time in games of the past than they do today.

No matter the reason, I love old games.  I love finding long lost favorites, and I love playing games that I was either too young or too poor to own and enjoy. And when I can, I buy them. I get them at tag sales, from specialty merchants, or off of E-Bay.

But sometimes, it’s impossible to buy them properly. Perhaps there’s not enough money in the budget this month for an old game (which is notably true in recent months). Perhaps the game was a limited release, and the people who own the copies either aren’t selling or are asking collector’s prices for them. Perhaps the game is so old, the media you used to play it with doesn’t exist anymore (say, a 5 1/2″ floppy). And perhaps the game has just disappeared into the sands of time.

Before the modern Internet, problems like this would be simple – you don’t get to play the game. Period, end of paragraph. But nowadays, there are many ways to find old games. Some of these games can be classified as Abandonware, as the companies that own them have abandoned any production or support services for them. For Abandonware, there is a multitude of websites that offer free downloads of games that now no longer “exist,” and can easily be found through a savvy Google or Bing search.  Some of these older games are not abandoned, but are extremely hard to find.  Collectors love getting their hands on old, beloved, rare games, and as a result some of these games are not available on the market anymore.  Games like this can be found through services like Bittorrent.

However, the legality of all of this is very much in question.  Because of copyright law, game companies still own the rights to sell their games for years after some of said companies have gone under.  This does not change of a company abandons a game – even if they don’t offer it any longer, no one else can offer it either.  So, by the letter of the law, possessing a downloaded copy of a game that you don’t already own (and therefore have the licence to play, considering you purchased it way back when ) is illegal.

My Issue this week is not about legality, but morality.  I was spurned on to wonder this as I was recently scouring the web for old Star Trek games.  When is it okay to download a game of free?  Does the game have to be a certain age before a player has the right to download it?  Does it offically have to be cast asside by the creator, thus becoming abandonware, before it can be downloaded?  Or should a game be only purchased, at any cost or effort required, making downloading a game never okay?

True Believers:  When is okay to download a game?  DISCUSS! (GwI United Link)

At a price of $70, I’m not running out to buy one just yet; however, my birthday is coming up, so if any True Believers want to send one my way, I won’t complain.

(h/t Anthony, our friend from Bytejacker)

Of course, that’s foolish, because there are a lot of things that the iPhone’s App Store can’t help me with. What is your fiancee walks in on you and her sister in bed together – is there an app for that? Or if you need to stop Skynet from eradicating humanity – is there an app for that? Or if you have a nagging urge to know what Einstein’s Maternal Grandmother’s pet canary’s lung capacity was to the nearest 1/100000th of square inch? Is there an app for that?

I doubt it. Fortunately, thanks to the good people at Nerduo, even if you can’t have an app for that, you can joke about having an app for it. They’ve come out with a website that I found thanks to TechCrunch called “App For That,” which mercilessly lampoons the foolishness of the app for that ad campaign. And best of all, you can add your own witty “App For That” applications, and share them with the Internet! Such fun!

And, if you’re an Apple Acolyte and don’t want your precious brand impinged upon, you can always visit “And I’m A PC,” and take some pot shots at Microsoft’s latest ad craze.

Bravo, Nerduo. Bravo.

Here is the video that Ogre mentioned showing Honda’s demonstration of its Brain Machine Interface technology (courtesy of YouTube user worldcarfans):

I find the examples of future uses for this technology to be particularly uninspired. If you think about your house being too warm, that thought will turn on your air conditioner without the use of a remote control? Seriously? This is one of the three best uses for this technology? I’m imagining a future infomercial with a grainy, black-and-white shot of a frustrated mom having to get up and go over to the A/C to hit the switch while stumbling over a child’s toy… “Turning on the air conditioner is SO HARD! From the maker of the Snuggie…”

By the way, the thought “it’s too warm” is far too vague to be a command. Ultimately, you would need to put on your mind reading headset and think, “Turn on the Air Conditioner at 74 degrees.” So much easier than pushing a button on your remote control! As I asked on the show, why isn’t a voice command simpler? Furthermore, why not set a timer and automatic temperature sensor… like most central air systems have today?

We should also view this video with a salt packet nearby. This technology was already demonstrated a couple years ago by a separate group of researchers. Furthermore, the fact that Honda released a video, instead of hosting a live demonstration is probably a sign that this technology is far from reliable (not to say that it won’t improve after some more development time). Of course, Honda’s demonstration utilized Asimo, a robot that resembles a person, which is good for PR since it most likely led to a lot more media attention.

In general, I’m in agreement with most of the points made in this NeuroLogica Blog post by Dr. Steven Novella.

News articles speculate about using this technology to one day drive a car with mental commands. There is nothing wrong with this speculation – but this is certainly not going to be an early application.

One thing to consider is that there is a certain neurological buffer between our intentions and our actions.  We have to physically move our arms to move the steering wheel. There is a threshold of intention that needs to be overcome. By operating the steering wheel directly with the mind (depending on the sophistication of the reading device and software) this buffer may be lost. Operation of the car may be at the whim of every stray thought or distraction.

For this reason operating equipment like a car will probably be a late application, only after the the technology is fairly mature. In fact, there may never be an advantage to bypassing the arms and controlling a vehicle with the mind. Unless there is a physical impairment, the arms work quite well. I file this under “cooking with a microwave” – just because we can do something in a new fancy way, does not make it better.

Of course, the medical-related possiblities are positively mind-blowing. The future potential of replacing most any non-functional body part with a prosthetic that responds like the original could have a huge and immediate impact on quality-of-life for a great many people.

As for the war-game type application that Tuck and Ogre were talking about, I fall back to my original point. If this technology were used in a command-and-control style, where remote units are programmed with AI and receive tatical commands from a human commander, I don’t see how a mind-reading interface could be more efficient that a computer console that is physically manipulated. We may never be able to issue the complex commands that would be required through mental recognition, and even if we could, the commander would just be manipulating the console he’s sitting in front of with his mind instead of his hands. Again, just because we could do it, doesn’t make it better.