may the force be with you

A cursory glance at the list of cinematic stinkers which have taken their lead from PCs, Xboxes and PlayStations reveals that there has never been a half-decent movie based on a computer game, says Mark Kermode

At a key moment in Silent Hill, the latest good-looking, badly written schlockbuster to be based on a video game, our heroine is told to memorise a map showing directions to a room which she must reach for reasons that are frankly unmemorable. As actress Radha Mitchell quietly recites her instructions ('right, left, left, right') one can briefly imagine an enthusiastic gamer, console in hand, navigating their way through the labyrinthine matrix of the film's highly acclaimed, computer-generated source. The crucial difference, of course, is that the gamer is in control of the story, deciding which way the wanderer should turn, writing each new chapter as it progresses. 'The video game is extraordinarily popular,' enthuses Silent Hill movie producer Samuel Hadida, 'because each gamer experiences something unique when they play it.' Not so the poor old movie-goer who is left experiencing the same dreary tosh as every other disgruntled audience member. Without the luxury of a joystick in our hands, the viewer has no chance to make the incoherent on-screen antics any better - or worse. We just sit ... and stare.

A cursory glance at the list of cinematic stinkers which have taken their lead from PCs, Xboxes and PlayStations reveals that there has never been a half-decent movie based on a computer game. Look at the evidence: Super Mario Brothers, in which Bob Hoskins runs around in ugly dungarees to no discernible end; Street Fighter, tacky and terrible even by Jean-Claude Van Damme's low-kicking standards; Tomb Raider, a film aimed solely at adolescent boys with an interest in Angelina's Jolie's pneumatic breasts; and most recently Doom, which abandoned any pretence of actually being a movie and simply fell back on hoary old computer-friendly 'FPS' (First Person Shooter) montages. Silent Hill may have been scripted by Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, but it stands proudly within the tradition of duff video-game movie spin-offs distinguished only by their total lack of story.

Why? Because, unlike cinema, computer gaming is a medium which requires the player to make things up for themselves. An individual game may be laden with 'plot points' but its narrative is always up for grabs. It is a format of scenarios rather than stories, elements which can be bolted together in differing orders with varying outcomes. Cinema, on the other hand, is designed for people who like to watch and listen, and who expect the film-maker to get their story straight before the movie reaches the theatres. Viewing a film based on a computer game is like hanging around in an amusement arcade, peering over the shoulders of other people playing video games. It has less to do with story-telling than conceptual shelf-stacking. And it is symptomatic of the painful death of the art of narrative cinema.

While popular movies were once dominated by ripe melodramas (All that Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind) and so-called 'women's pictures' (Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce) which offered masterclasses in the art of storytelling, today's boy-friendly blockbusters often boast nothing more than a collection of spectacular interludes assembled in the manner of a catalogue rather than a chronicle. Even kids' movies have fallen foul of this decline. The biggest movie of the season is Ice Age: The Meltdown, a collection of slapstick animated episodes which not even the kindest critic could accuse of having anything vaguely resembling a story.

The decline of narrative has, of course, gone hand in hand with the rise of consumer test screenings, the grisly process through which Hollywood execs show a movie to a cross section of its imagined 'target audience' and then ask them what they would do to make it better. This is the one area in which audiences do actually get to 'play' movies like computer games, and the results are always terrible. It was dunderheaded audiences screaming 'kill the bitch!' at test screenings of Fatal Attraction who persuaded the film-makers to shoot a new ending in which Glenn Close's character became the victim of a shooting rather than a suicide, thus destroying whatever internal logic the film may have had. If it was left to the viewers, you can rest assured that Humphrey Bogart would have gotten on the plane with Ingrid Bergman at the end of Casablanca, or that Ali McGraw would have experienced a miraculous recovery in the closing moments of Love Story. Audiences cannot make movies - that's why they are audiences. Sadly, in the current marketplace, it seems that many film-makers can't make them either.

The smart answer to all this, of course, is to cite Dickens, whose novels, published chapter by chapter in Victorian journals, responded to the input of readers' letters; or Shakespeare, whose plays were oft revised in light of audience reaction. Yet episodically published tales and constantly evolving stage performances are hardly an adequate paradigm for movies which, like paintings and sculptures, must be first unveiled fully formed. OK, so film-makers can tinker with their work endlessly on DVD. But in the cinema, you (usually) only get one shot. And time and again movie-makers aiming for the imagined desires of the modern 'interactive' audience end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Today it's virtually impossible to turn on the television without being told to 'press the red button for more options', or to phone an 0870 number and vote for your favourite contestant. On the small screen, interactivity may be the much-hyped order of the day but in the cinema it has no place whatsoever. Computer games thrive on player input - movies are stifled by it. Films should not be defined by audience focus groups, nor should they look to video games for their narrative inspiration. Both are anomalous to the very concept of classical narrative cinema. We should vote them out of the picture palaces forthwith.

What do you think?

source:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1759066,00.html

America's dismal showing in a contest of college programmers highlights how China, India, and Eastern Europe are closing the tech talent gap

Ben Mickle, Matt Edwards, and Kshipra Bhawalkar looked as though they had just emerged from a minor auto wreck. The members of Duke University's computer programming team had solved only one problem in the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in San Antonio on Apr. 12. The winning team, from Saratov State University in Russia, solved six puzzles over the course of the grueling five-hour contest. Afterward, Duke coach Owen Astrachan tried to cheer up his team by pointing out that they were among ``the best of the best'' student programmers in the world. Edwards, 20, still distraught, couldn't resist a self-deprecating dig: ``We're the worst of the best of the best.''

Duke wasn't the only U.S. school to be skunked at the prestigious computing contest. Of the home teams, only Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked among the 12 highest finishers. Most top spots were seized by teams from Eastern Europe and Asia. Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests. But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen.

WAKE-UP CALL
The poor showings should serve as a wake-up call for government, industry, and educators. The output of American computer science programs is plummeting, even while that of Eastern European and Asian schools is rising. China and India, the new global tech powerhouses, are fueled by 900,000 engineering graduates of all types each year, more than triple the number of U.S. grads. Computer science is a key subset of engineering. ``If our talent base weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster than any of us can imagine,'' warns Richard Florida, a professor at George Mason University and author of The Flight of the Creative Class.

Software programmers are the seed corn of the Information Economy, yet America isn't producing enough. The Labor Dept. forecasts that ``computer/math scientist'' jobs, which include programming, will increase by 40%, from 2.5 million in 2002 to 3.5 million in 2012. Colleges aren't keeping up with demand. A 2005 survey of freshmen showed that just 1.1% planned to major in computer science, down from 3.7% in 2000.

For young Americans, a computing career isn't the draw it was even a few years ago. Never mind that experienced programmers make upwards of $100,000 and that the brainiest of them are the objects of heated bidding wars (YHOO ). Students fear that if they become programmers they'll lose their jobs to counterparts in India and China, who work for a fraction of the pay. Analysts say those worries are overblown: Programmers with leadership and business skills will do just fine. But the message isn't getting through.

Then there's the thrill factor, or lack thereof. Given the opportunity to make a mint on Wall Street or land a comfortable academic job, many math and science students are turning away from software. ``I couldn't really get excited about sitting in front of a computer and just writing programs,'' says Duke junior Brandon Levin, who has taken computer courses but is majoring in math and plans a career in academia.

You might think the influx of eager foreign students would make up for the deficit, but that's not happening. While about 25% of students enrolled in graduate computer science programs are foreign, many won't be able to stay in the country after graduation because of restrictive post-9/11 immigration policies. That's if they even want to work here anymore. Foreign students are increasingly returning to their home countries after graduation. Duke's Bhawalkar, 19, from Pune, India, plans to go back after getting a degree in math and computer science and attending grad school in the U.S. ``In the past, people from India stayed here after they got their degrees,'' she says. ``But now India is at a turning point. It's getting to be a leader.''

The foreign students have a palpable determination to succeed. Bhawalkar's role model is Srinivasa Ramanujan, an early 20th century Indian mathematician who became famous worldwide in spite of an inferior education. This year, as a Duke sophomore, Bhawalkar placed 70th among 2,500 top North American university students in the prestigious Putnam math competition. Her life goal is ``to make a mark in some discipline so people will say, 'That's Kshipra. She did this.'''

Bhawalkar is inspired by her entrepreneur parents. Her father, a chemical engineer by training, invented breakthrough water-purification systems that use biological processes. Mom runs the business. Bhawalkar showed signs of being a math prodigy in sixth grade and fixed on science after a family friend read her palm and told her she would be a scientist when she grew up. Says her mother, Vidula: ``She has seen us achieve something that's a first in the world, and she wants to do something better than her father.'' At Duke, Bhawalkar spends much of her time in a dorm room doing 35 to 40 hours per week of homework and extra reading.

It's not that foreign students are any smarter, say U.S. university leaders. They just have relentless discipline. The team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which finished first last year and fifth this year, uses past participants to train each successive team. ``We pile up experience year after year,'' says coach Yong Yu. The team practices year-round and puts in three hours a day during the months before the contest. U.S. teams typically spend much less time preparing.

``ARE WE HUNGRY ENOUGH?''
Some tech-industry leaders are concerned that U.S. students have become complacent. ``There has to be a passion to be innovative,'' says Nicholas M. Donofrio, executive vice-president for innovation and technology at IBM (IBM ), which sponsors the ACM contest. Donofrio's father was an Italian immigrant who worked three jobs to feed his family in Beacon, N.Y., then a gritty factory town. Donofrio questions whether Americans still have that kind of drive. ``Are we hungry enough?'' he asks. ``Or are we going to amble along and take our time? If so, the Indians and Chinese will close the gap and perhaps even surpass us. You can see the passion in their eyes. They're people on a mission.''

When BusinessWeek visited Duke on a Saturday in early April, it was clear why many American students don't have the intensity of their overseas counterparts. There are a zillion distractions. The campus was like a carnival, with concerts, outdoor parties, and sunbathing on the grass. Meanwhile, the programming team was sequestered in a concrete-and-steel computer science building writing algorithms on whiteboards and tapping out C++ code on a PC. Sample problem: You have a population of Tribbles (the furry Star Trek beasts) who live for a day. Each Tribble has the potential for producing a number of offspring. What's the probability that, after a certain number of generations, every Tribble will be dead?

Bhawalkar's teammates are no slouches. A year ago, Duke's ACM programming team (she was not yet on it) solved four problems in the world finals. Mickle, now a 21-year-old senior, got job offers from Google and Microsoft (MSFT ), and chose Microsoft. Edwards landed a Microsoft internship this summer. But they acknowledge that they don't have the dedication to programming that some overseas aces do. During a break, Edwards ticked off his list of college activities. In addition to classes and homework, he plays tennis four times a week, practices with the Ultimate Frisbee team, and sings in a choir. ``We're like pickers and choosers at a buffet rather than concentrating on one thing. Some of the other countries, they focus more,'' he said.

Is the answer to turn American students into programming-obsessed drudges? Even if you could do that, it would just make the field less popular. Duke coach Astrachan, the computer science department's director of undergraduate studies, says the way to reverse the decline in interest is to make computer science more compelling to students by linking it to practical, real-world situations. He has proposed two new double majors, computational biology and computational economics, applying programming to medicine and business. He's also developing a course on social networking Web sites such as MySpace, where students will build and manage Web sites -- learning about programming along the way.

Other academic and tech-industry leaders also are striving to make computing more exciting. The University of California at Berkeley and Georgia Institute of Technology, among others, are developing multidisciplinary programs linking technology, business, and social sciences. Intel (INTC ) and Microsoft sponsor student science and technology contests. Yet computer science advocates say that unless the government enacts sweeping legislation aimed at improving the nation's technology competitiveness -- legislation now bogged down in Congress -- there's a limit to what can be done. ``The attitude in the House is very toxic, and I don't see much chance of them coming together,'' says Deborah L. Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness.

While Congress was fiddling, the kids from Saratov State were marching toward victory in San Antonio. The 83 teams sat at tables that were gradually festooned with color-coded balloons signaling which group had solved which problems. After an announcer ticked off the last 10 seconds in the contest, Saratov's players, coaches, and hangers-on shouted with joy and gave each other back-pounding bear hugs. ``I feel euphoric,'' said team member Ivan Romanov. Victory was especially sweet, he added, because it came on the anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's 1961 voyage into space.

Gagarin's rocket ride shocked Americans out of their postwar complacency, sparking a national quest for tech superiority that led to such breakthroughs as the moon landing and the microchip. A trouncing in a programming contest doesn't inspire the same kind of response today. Truthfully, Americans just don't feel threatened enough to exert the effort. But if we wait too long, we might find ourselves playing catch-up again.

source:http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982053.htm?campaign_id=bier_tca

While most nations excavate their skeletons using a toothbrush, the Norwegians found one using a drill. The somewhat rough uncovering of Norway's first dinosaur happened in the North Sea, at an entire 2256 metres below the seabed. It had been there for nearly 200 million years, ever since the time the North Sea wasn't a sea at all, but an enormous alluvial plane.

It is merely a coincidence that the remains of the old dinosaur now see the light of day again, or more precisely, parts of the dinosaur. The fossil is in fact just a crushed knucklebone in a drilling core – a long cylinder of rock drilled out from an exploration well at the Snorre offshore field.

Norway's first dinosaur fossil is a Plateosaurus, a species that could be up to nine metres long and weigh up to four tons. It lived in Europe and on Greenland 210 to 195 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic Period.

The Plateosaurus at the Snorre offshore field had a hollow grave. The fossil, which was found 2256 metres below the seabed, represents the world's deepest dinosaur finding. But it is by no means certain that the record-breaking knucklebone is a rarity down there in the abyss.

In fact, the old North Sea land was once a huge area where big rivers meandered through dry plains. Now the landscape has been compressed to form a pattern of fossil alluvial sand between banks of red shale.

source:http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2006/04/24/the_worlds_deepest_dinosaur_finding_2256_metres_below_the_seabed.html

HyperTransport 2.0 bandwidth woes got you down? Say no more, HT 3.0 is here!

The HyperTransport Consortium just announced (PDF) the 3.0 revision of the HyperTransport interconnect. HyperTransport obtained instant fame when AMD picked up the bus protocol for the Athlon 64 and Opteron series processors. The bus is one of the industry's most open and fastest available already, but 3.0 adds dozens of new features and increased bandwidth.

The most apparent change for HT 3.0 is the bump in the data rate clock. HyperTransport 2.0 had a maximum clock of 1.4GHz; HT 3.0 increases that to 2.6GHz. This brings the total bandwidth available up to 20.8GBps. Additionally, HT 3.0 adds hot-plugging so devices can be inserted and removed from the HT layer on the fly. Power management and AC interconnect mode also played a large part in the newest standard -- HT 3.0 will now transmit up to one meter at the maximum specified clock speed with no signal loss. Effectively, HyperTransport can be used to connect from one machine to another in the correct conditions. DailyTech previously spoke to PathScale, a company focused on making high-speed InfiniBand interconnects. According to PathScale, AMD's HyperTransport interconnect provides greater overall bandwidth and scalability over anything else currently available.

Mario Cavalli, General Manager for the HyperTransport Consortium claims "The added performance and new features of HyperTransport 3.0 extend the applicability of HyperTransport Technology from chip-to-chip and board-to-board, all the way to chassis-to-chassis applications."

HT 3.0 also features an "un-ganging mode". Un-ganging simply means that the HyperTransport links can dynamically reconfigure during operation. For example, a single 1x16 HT link can be reconfigured as a 2x8 virtual HT link. The obvious use for something like this is a processor that could reconfigure itself to run SMT via two logical cores, each with its own HT link. After the SMT operation, the processor could configure itself back down to a single core.

HyperTransport 3.0 was only half of the HyperTransport Consortium's announcement today. Also announced was the HyperTransport HTX interface. HTX is a low voltage differential signaling link designed specifically for chassis-to-chassis HyperTransport interfaces. Essentially, the HTX connector allows the HyperTransport protocol to work over an external interface. One practical use for this may easily become external adaptable DRCs.

NEW YORK - Saying surfing the web is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone, an administrative law judge has suggested that only a reprimand is appropriate as punishment for a city worker accused of failing to heed warnings to stay off the Internet.

Administrative Law Judge John Spooner reached his decision in the case of Toquir Choudhri, a 14-year veteran of the Department of Education who had been accused of ignoring supervisors who told him to stop browsing the Internet at work.

The ruling came after Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a worker in the city's legislative office in Albany earlier this year after he saw the man playing a game of solitaire on his computer.

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."

Spooner dispensed the lightest possible punishment on Choudhri, a reprimand, after a search of Choudhri's computer files revealed he had visited several news and travel sites.

Martin Druyan, Choudhri's lawyer, called the ruling "very reasonable."

source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12462332/

BusinessWeek's cover story for May 1st has to do with a little place called Second Life. BusinessWeek Online has several stories related to their exploration on online living. My Virtual Life is a first-time exploration of Second Life, with some examination of the property and financial aspects of the gameworld. It's Not All Fun and Games explores the serious side of virtual businesses, as they interview Ashne Chung (notable real estate baron) in a piece called Virtual Land, Real Money. Ed Castronova has his say in a more general article on virtual economies. Finally, for an outside perspective, the obligatory Terra Nova discussion is always useful.

source:http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/24/187259

In their quest to create the super warrior of the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues.

By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.

Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition envision their work giving Army Rangers 360-degree unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy SEALs to sense sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater — turning sci-fi into reality.

The device, known as "Brain Port," was pioneered more than 30 years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist. Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera through electrodes taped to people's backs and later discovered the tongue was a superior transmitter.

A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through nerve fibers to the brain. Instead of holding and looking at compasses and bluky-hand-held sonar devices, the divers can processes the information through their tongues, said Dr. Anil Raj, the project's lead scientist.

In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics.

Michael Zinszer, a veteran Navy diver and director of Florida State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation School, took part in testing using the tongue to transmit an electronic compass and an electronic depth sensor while in a swimming pool.

He likened the feeling on his tongue to Pop Rocks candies.

"You are feeling the outline of this image," he said. "I was in the pool, they were directing me to a very small object and I was able to locate everything very easily."

Underwater crime scene investigators might use the device to identify search patterns, signal each other and "see through our tongues, as odd as that sounds," Zinszer said.

Raj said the objective for the military is to keep Navy divers' hands and eyes free. "It will free up their eyes to do what those guys really want to, which is to look for those mines and see shapes that are coming out of the murk."

Sonar is the next step. A lot depends on technological developments to make sonar smaller — hand-held sonar is now about the size of a lunch box.

"If they could get it small enough, it could be mounted on a helmet, then they could pan around on their heads and they could feel the sonar on their tongues with good registration to what they are seeing visually," Raj said.

The research at the Florida institute, the first to research military uses of sensory augmentation, is funded by the Defense Department. The exact amount of the expenditure is unavailable.

Raj and his research assistants spend hours at the University of West Florida's athletic complex testing the equipment at an indoor pool. Raj does the diving himself.

They plan to officially demonstrate the system to Navy and Marine Corps divers in May. If the military screeners like what they see, it could be put on a "rapid response" to quickly get in the hands of military users within the next three to six months.

Work on the infrared-tongue vision for Army Rangers isn't as far along. But Raj said the potential usefulness of the night vision technology is tremendous. It would allow soldiers to work in the dark without cumbersome night-vision goggles and to "see out the back of their heads," he said.

___

On the Net:

Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition: http://www.ihmc.us

source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060424/ap_on_sc/tongue_sight&printer=1;_ylt=A9FJqYGJTU5ES0ABLAFxieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

"Interactive Fiction was immensely popular in the 80s and believe it or not has a strong, albeit small, following today. MobyGames takes a look at the origins and history of Interactive Fiction and where it is heading." These games really were some of the best I've ever played.

source:http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/24/1041249