Kyle Maxwell | thinking faster than I should

Links for 2009-09-29 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks
Right on, brother man.

Links for 2009-08-24 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Worldbuilding, Briefly
Quick take on the matter.
concept ships
Great collection of SF concept art
The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane - John Myers Myers
The fall of the Alamo, told in Viking skaldic style.
Viking Verse
Old Norse Motto Generator: Create Viking Battle Cries Online
Sort of like a cross between online translators and mad libs

Links for 2009-08-22 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Canadian model unmasks blog tormentor
Not really a huge deal as it wouldn't be protected speech anyway. (Via SANS)

Links for 2009-08-18 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Blessing or Curse? - Opinion: Are Fanboys Good for the Industry? - IndustryGamers
Funny and insightful.

Links for 2009-08-17 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

If Twitter Consisted of 100 People [Gorgeous Graphics]
Great visualization

Links for 2009-08-16 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

EVE Evolved: Wormhole piracy 101
Nice overview

Links for 2009-08-15 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

NASA - Collaborate and Connect With NASA
Links to their social networking stuff and other crowdsourcing initiatives.
Google Reader's "Send To" Feature
Wait, people still use the Reader interface instead of Feedly?
Open Source Icons
Full of useful.
Facebook To User: Your Life is Empty
YOURS might be. Not mine.

Bookmarked the page: Dragon Writing Prompts :: Grand list of overused science fiction clichés ...

krmaxwell — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:22:07 UT

Bookmarked the page Dragon Writing Prompts :: Grand list of overused science fiction clichés :: February :: 2007

I think the Star Wars Expanded Universe uses this as a to-do list.

Bookmarked the page: SOE Staycation "Geeks of Summer" Forum Challenge

krmaxwell — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:45:35 UT

Bookmarked the page SOE Staycation "Geeks of Summer" Forum Challenge

Hmm, not a bad little idea for community activity.

Bookmarked the page: Physics Games - Demolition City

krmaxwell — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:43:01 UT

Bookmarked the page Physics Games - Demolition City

Seriously addictive.

Bookmarked the page: Full Disclosure: WordPress

krmaxwell — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:13:38 UT

Bookmarked the page Full Disclosure: WordPress <= 2.8.3 Remote admin reset password

We need a patch STAT.

Bookmarked the page: N00b Boyfriend - CollegeHumor Video

krmaxwell — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:10:18 UT

Bookmarked the page N00b Boyfriend - CollegeHumor Video

I love the TL;DR joke.

Bookmarked the page: Who spreads your word?

krmaxwell — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:52:30 UT

Bookmarked the page Who spreads your word?

Food for thought regarding this very blog.

Bookmarked the page: CCP staff paid in foreign currency during economic meltdown // News

krmaxwell — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:07:13 UT

Bookmarked the page CCP staff paid in foreign currency during economic meltdown // News

Very cool.

Bookmarked the page: Star Wars: The Old Republic | News Articles

krmaxwell — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:16:18 UT

Bookmarked the page Star Wars: The Old Republic | News Articles

They get it!!!

Bookmarked the page: CrazyKinux's Musing: Second Skin: Geeks, Freaks and MMOs | An EVE Online blog

krmaxwell — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:05:44 UT

Bookmarked the page CrazyKinux's Musing: Second Skin: Geeks, Freaks and MMOs | An EVE Online blog

It's as if you did a movie on religion, but only focused on the fundamentalist. Or a movie on wine making, but only focused on alcoholics. I don't feel that the movie does a good job at presenting a fair and realistic view of the MMO Gaming community.

Bookmarked the page: Me vs. The Archbishop

krmaxwell — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:21:06 UT

Bookmarked the page Me vs. The Archbishop

Powerful stuff, with testimonials even I would not have expected.

Bookmarked the page: Lucasarts Teases Upcoming X-Wing Announcement

krmaxwell — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:46:53 UT

Bookmarked the page Lucasarts Teases Upcoming X-Wing Announcement

OOOH.

Bookmarked the page: The Edge of Reason? Article - Page 1 // iPhone /// Eurogamer - Games ...

krmaxwell — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:38:16 UT

Bookmarked the page The Edge of Reason? Article - Page 1 // iPhone /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

Interesting and all-too-familiar story about a trademark dispute.

Bookmarked the page: Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:01:19 UT

Bookmarked the page Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

Recommended by Lisa Gold.

Bookmarked the page: Give 'Em A Spin - A Fun Family Photography Project | DIYPhotography.net

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:53:12 UT

Bookmarked the page Give 'Em A Spin - A Fun Family Photography Project | DIYPhotography.net

Oooh, looks like something for the weekend?

Bookmarked the page: Saved By The Bell: Class Reunion - ABC News

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:49:38 UT

Bookmarked the page Saved By The Bell: Class Reunion - ABC News

I hate celebrity news. So why am I linking this? Good question.

Bookmarked the page: Is There Money To Be Made? - Jeff On Games

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:42:23 UT

Bookmarked the page Is There Money To Be Made? - Jeff On Games

Thoughtful if imprecise. (Not a criticism)

Bookmarked the page: Link This, Gawker: A Print ‘n’ Read Article

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:32:09 UT

Bookmarked the page Link This, Gawker: A Print ‘n’ Read Article

The discussion in the comments is even more insightful than the actual article.

Bookmarked the page: Google Chrome Themes Gallery

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:21:57 UT

Bookmarked the page Google Chrome Themes Gallery

Great now give us a Linux version.

Bookmarked the page: Essential Metaplace Modules - Cerebrate's Contemplations

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:21:19 UT

Bookmarked the page Essential Metaplace Modules - Cerebrate's Contemplations

Bookmarked the page: CogDogBlog » Flickr CC Attribution Helper Greasemonkey Script

krmaxwell — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:59:07 UT

Bookmarked the page CogDogBlog » Flickr CC Attribution Helper Greasemonkey Script

This alone makes Greasemonkey worth it on my laptop and notebook.

Bookmarked the page: Champions Online offering $199 lifetime sub, access to STO beta 'later ...

krmaxwell — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:51:02 UT

Bookmarked the page Champions Online offering $199 lifetime sub, access to STO beta 'later this year' - Massively

WOW

Bookmarked the page: MixedRealities :: Upcoming MixedRealities event: preparing Connectivism

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:49:47 UT

Bookmarked the page MixedRealities :: Upcoming MixedRealities event: preparing Connectivism

Planning to attend this tomorrow.

Bookmarked the page: Metaplace Featured Creator - Sarvana

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:38:27 UT

Bookmarked the page Metaplace Featured Creator - Sarvana

nice set of worlds and approach

Bookmarked the page: TubeSat - Personal satellite kit?

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:35:10 UT

Bookmarked the page TubeSat - Personal satellite kit?

Hobbyist satellites. WE LIVE IN THE FUTURE PPL.

Bookmarked the page: Arduino Forum - My Arduino Aquarium Controller

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:29:34 UT

Bookmarked the page Arduino Forum - My Arduino Aquarium Controller

Very cool and creative.

Bookmarked the page: Making The Universe A Safer Place – A guide to running missions

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:23:16 UT

Bookmarked the page Making The Universe A Safer Place – A guide to running missions

Great intro to EVE PVE.

Bookmarked the page: Polymath = user innovation « Jon Udell

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:18:21 UT

Bookmarked the page Polymath = user innovation « Jon Udell

Blogging about math just got easier, adding even MORE win to Wordpress.

Bookmarked the page: Welcome to island marketing

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:13:18 UT

Bookmarked the page Welcome to island marketing

Do the online services you use realize they're on an island?

Bookmarked the page: Cartoon: Mars Needs Women!

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:22:11 UT

Bookmarked the page Cartoon: Mars Needs Women!

The hashtag is particularly interesting.

Bookmarked the page: Improvised Arson Devices

krmaxwell — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:21:23 UT

Bookmarked the page Improvised Arson Devices

Everything this man ever says -- including about reality -- makes me remember we are living in a cyberpunk novel.

Bookmarked the page: Harnessing the power of iEVE

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:02:32 UT

Bookmarked the page Harnessing the power of iEVE

iGoogle tools for EVE

Bookmarked the page: Pretty Code

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:45:28 UT

Bookmarked the page Pretty Code

Oooh.

Bookmarked the page: Hello Kitty Online now in closed beta

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:41:47 UT

Bookmarked the page Hello Kitty Online now in closed beta

Other than Free Realms, this could be my daughter's first MMO.

Bookmarked the page: Five Best Instant Messengers - Instant Messaging - Lifehacker

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:28:34 UT

Bookmarked the page Five Best Instant Messengers - Instant Messaging - Lifehacker

Pidgin (gaim) is cool but I pretty much live in meebo for IM purposes.

Bookmarked the page: Atoms Apparel - Shirts for Hackers. Makers. Builders. Doers.

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:27:12 UT

Bookmarked the page Atoms Apparel - Shirts for Hackers. Makers. Builders. Doers.

We're hardware hackers, electronics geeks, makers, roboticists, fabricators, and do-it-yourself-ers who started a t-shirt company to make the t-shirts that we wanted. Shirts that represent the things that we are into. The things that get us excited. The things that say "I'm a geek, and I've got the t-shirt to prove it!". We've been saying for years "We should put that on a shirt!". Well, we finally have!

Bookmarked the page: 3,604 cups of coffee

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:24:03 UT

Bookmarked the page 3,604 cups of coffee

Coffee art of a different flavor (tee hee).

Bookmarked the page: Sony says GIRLZPLAYTOO

krmaxwell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:34:30 UT

Bookmarked the page Sony says GIRLZPLAYTOO

Garrr. Marketing to girls irritates this daddy.

Shared the story: Themes are GPL, too (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:52:09 UT

If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Matt,

You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.

On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.

HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.

Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

Shared the story: Raph Koster speaks on Metaplace's new functionality and the state of ...

krmaxwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:47:49 UT

Metaplace introduced the world to a brand new technology two days ago -- the ability to embed a fully functional virtual world into any website or forum, anything that can handle HTML.

This upgrade allows Metaplace to act like a more enhanced version of Google's old Lively service. All you need to do is make a world, take the embeddable HTML code from it, drop it into your website, and you now have a full virtual world running in flash right inside of your blog post or forum thread. The world can be edited to your whims through the Metaplace builder, letting you create whatever you want to create inside of your space. Think of it like Second Life Lite.

We had more than a few questions for Raph Koster, the founder and creator of Metaplace, about this new upgrade for his virtual platform, so we caught up with him to pick his mind on Metaplace and virtual worlds at large.

Continue reading Raph Koster speaks on Metaplace's new functionality and the state of virtual worlds

Filed under: MMO industry, MetaPlace, Free-to-play, Browser, Casual, Virtual worlds, Massively Interviews

Raph Koster speaks on Metaplace's new functionality and the state of virtual worlds originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shared the story: Content Exists to be Consumed (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:46:31 UT

From the comments in the Algorithmic thread:

The problem I have with most games is the constant expansion of land as the game grows old and a reluctance to remove/revamp content even when the company’s own stats tell them that no one is using it.

Eventually, all games get pear-shaped, with the majority of players at the top and much fewer as you go back to the beginning. And yet, the six/eight/whatever starting areas that were needed in the beginning are now six/eight/whatever nearly empty areas that the company now wants people to skip (evidenced by the increase in exp gain to hurry them along to “the real game”).

The ‘hollow world’ phenomenon has existed as long as there has been MUDs with level systems. The issue is two-fold:

The further you get from launch, the fewer newbies you have running around, which especially means that group content at lower levels gets harder and harder to find people for.
As the game ages, it tends to expand on the upper end, because well, you want to make content for the people who are actually out of it.

End result: it’s a lot harder to find people who want to run level 20 dungeons like Deadmines four to five years after launch, because the odds of you finding a tank, a healer and 2 other DPS before you level past it really isn’t all that good anymore. My heretical notion, though, is that this is not necessarily a bad thing - or if so, a relatively minor one.

Another example of the Hollow World syndrome is Molten Core. An early raid from the WoW experience, it was created and balanced for level 60 characters. I, personally, will never see Molten Core the way it was originally seen - as a difficult, challenging teamwork requiring enterprise, and I wish that I could. The flip side of it, of course, is that the people who WERE there for Molten Core would really rather prefer never set foot in the place again. Which is, incidentally, how I feel about Black Temple - dude, we spent like 9 months in that place. The LAST thing I want is for some well-meaning designer to incentivize my guild revisiting the place. Nostalgia steamroll runs are fine, thank you.

On top of this, the designers want to, in general, keep most players in the same ‘content band’. Even as the game expands, you generally want to keep people, en masse, needing to go to the same places, in order to increase the odds that groups will form and keep the recruiting pool full. And it’s not just raiding - World PvP is more fun when people are shepherded into the expansion zones. 2+ person quests (such as WoW elite quests and WAR’s public quests) requires a certain critical mass in the zone before they can even be accomplished. Player density, for the most part, is good - and far better a goal to strive for than ‘old content never dies’.

Because at the end of the day, the thing about content is that it gets old and busted. Quests that were once amusing and interesting get far less so the third or fourth time you do them. Exploring a zone is much more interesting when it is a new place seen with virgin eyes. And raid encounters are essentially puzzle fights - and once the puzzle is solved, that content becomes increasingly less interesting very quickly.

Game SYSTEMS, hopefully, remain fresh and survive reputation (as most PvP scenarios do). Game CONTENT, on the other hand, doesn’t survive the repitition as well. In the end, MMO teams have limited resources. They can use to either fix up or close off old zones, or to build all new one, and accelerate the pace players can get there. Given the problems with game content repetition, I would say the latter is almost always better.

Are there exceptions? Sure - fixing the levelling path, salvaging content that was utterly unused, or destroying a single city for plot reasons come to mind. But even then, it should be used sparingly.

going to pick up my kids, knowing I miss them but regretting the end of the peace and quiet...

krmaxwell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:15:52 UT

going to pick up my kids, knowing I miss them but regretting the end of the peace and quiet...

Shared the story: The Linguistics of ReTweets (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:49:25 UT

I’ve done a bunch of research into the characteristics of ReTweets in an effort to understand what makes them viral. ReTweets are the first entirely observable and analyzable viral content spreading mechanism in the history of mankind and as such they offer an unparalleled window into what makes humans spread ideas.

Over the past few weeks I’ve begun delving into much deeper analysis than I have in the past with more advanced tools and a much larger dataset. At present I have a database of over 10 million ReTweets and I’ve gained access to Twitter’s new streaming API which allows me to build a very large (10 million and growing) random sample of all tweets (not just ReTweets).

In re-visiting a data point that I looked at 6 months ago (this time with a larger data set), I found that in a random sample of normal (non-ReTweet) Tweets, 18.96% contained a link, whereas 3 times that many ReTweets (56.69%) included a link.

Then I tested the assumption that simplicity is a vital component of ReTweets (as it has been observed in other viral-content types) and I found that random Tweets have 1.58 syllables per word on average, while ReTweets had an average of 1.62 syllables per word. Longer, higher syllable-count words are typically more complex, indicating that ReTweets may be more complex than their less viral counterparts.

Comparing two different types of reading grade level analysis revealed that ReTweets, in general, are less “readable” and require a higher level of education to understand. A Flesch-Kincaid test gave ReTweets a reading grade level of 6.47 years of education, while random Tweets only required 6.04 years. The similar SMOG test (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) indicated that ReTweets required 6.13 years of schooling, with random Tweets only needing 5.88 years.

Another characteristic commonly found in viral content is novelty; that is, the “newness” of the ideas and information presented. I created a measure of novelty by counting how many other times each word in my sample sets occurred. In the random Tweet sample, each word was found an average of 89.19 other times, while in the ReTweet sample each word was only found 16.37 other times. This shows us that while simplicity may not be very important to ReTweetability, novelty certainly is.

Part of speech (POS) tagging is an analysis technique in which an algorithm is used to label each word in a piece of content as a specific part-of-speech–noun, verb, adjective, etc. The graph below shows what percentages of words in each sample were labeled as a specific part-of-speech. It lists only the most interesting parts from the much larger list of POS tags.

Interesting points from this data include the noun and 3rd-person heaviness of ReTweets, indicating a subject matter and headline type nature.

I also used the two linguistic lexicons currently in use on TweetPsych: RID and LIWC.

First up is the more “Freudian” Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID). This coding scheme is designed to measure the amount and type of three categories of content: primordial (the unconscious way you think, like in dreams); conceptual (logical and rational thought); and emotional.

Significantly more primordial content has been found in the poetry of poets who exhibit signs of psychopathology than in that of poets who exhibit no such signs (Martindale, 1975).

The first RID graph shows that ReTweets contain less primordial and emotional content than random Tweets and more conceptual content.

Looking at specific RID codes, we see that social and instrumental (constructive words like build and create) behavior are ReTweetable, while abstract thought and sensation-based words are not.

The last analysis I performed used LIWC (pronounced “Luke”). This is a lexicon similar to RID, but based in more reviewed and accepted research and refined over 15 years. LIWC measures the cognitive and emotional properties of a person based on the words they use.

In order to provide an efficient and effective method for studying the various emotional, cognitive, and structural components present in individuals’ verbal and written speech samples, we originally developed a text analysis application called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, or LIWC.

LIWC analysis shows that Tweets about work, religion, money and media/celebrities are more ReTweetable than Tweets about negative emotions, sensations, swear words and self-reference.

RAWR.

krmaxwell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:12:40 UT

RAWR.

Shared the story: EVE: The Burning Life novel in November (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:55:11 UT

Hjalti Daníelsson (AKA CCP Abraxas) noted writer of a cargohold full of EVE Chronicles and various other forms of EVE Online fiction, has birthed EVE's next big novel, EVE: The Burning Life. It's set for cross-oceanic release in November by Tor Books and Orion Books. If Abraxas' dark SciFi moodiness was ever in question, this summary of the novel should quell all doubt:

"A vicious attack on a deep space mining colony results in its destruction and the death of nearly all its inhabitants. Of the handful of tattered survivors, a lone young man swears revenge upon the forces that cost him everything but his breath.

In another part of the universe, an agent of death loses her tenuous grip on sanity, leaves her profession and everything of her past life, and goes on a journey of redemption.

Their respective paths will take them through galactic empires built on faith, hedonism, discipline and rebellion, and plunge them into the darkest parts of space where they encounter denizens of the chaotic and dangerous pirate kingdoms. And all the while, as they draw closer to what they seek, they begin to realize that the only stakes worth playing for are the ones that bring danger and change..."

You can read more about the novel's publication in this press release.

Shared the story: I’m A Doctor, Not A Veterinarian (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:55:11 UT

would like to take a nap.

krmaxwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:20:23 UT

would like to take a nap.

Shared the story: Dynasty Banking's Employee Leaks Reserved Informations (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:05:20 UT

Hek, Metropolis - Dynasty Banking [DB] must now add employee corruption to its troubles, after an employee was discovered offering to sell access to DBANK's sensitive data.

Preliminary reports indicated that database vulnerabilities at Dynasty Banking [DB] were so huge that anyone could have retrieved the establishment's private data. No leaks were reported, however, until recently.

In the last few days, a Dynasty Banking employee has contacted Interstellar Correspondents attempting to sell sensitive data, including inside information and messages published on banks's bullettin board.

While Insider Trading practices are common in New Eden's financial market, the fact that Dynasty Banking's database is already on sale might indicate a growing discontent with the ongoing situation among the bank's staff.

Asked to express his opinion on the alleged leak, EBank's CEO Athre admits that financial institutions must be vigilant regarding their data and points out that it takes a lot of work to prevent leaks, as they are really hard to control.

Athre said that he was surprised to discover DB's database is already be on sale. "From the outside it appears information was very limited even to employees. It is possible that an employee took that a sign of lack of faith or disrespect", was his comment.

Banks and financial institutions are sensitive to integrity and trustworthiness issues and Dynasty Banking's fatal flaw might have been the restricted number of stakeholders. On this subject LaVista Vista explained: "DB is run by very few people, who are quite busy, which does quite dramatically increase the risk".

However, risk might be unavoidable and Glyn Davish, a former Dynasty Banking customer, points out that the forward-thinking marketeer expects and plans for it. Commenting on DB's alleged default, Glyn also admited that he shoud have seen this coming. "I should have known something wasn't right when the delay between withdrawal requests and the ISK hitting my wallet was taking longer than usual," he said.

While Dynasty Banking's crisis unfolds, customers are growing more and more skeptical about recovering their ISK. The Interstellar Correspondents will continue monitoring the situation and will report as soon as new information is made available.

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Shared the story: Apocrypha 1.5 this August (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:48:47 UT

Things have been silent on the dev front since the release of Apocrypha this March. Apocrypha was a major success for EVE Online. We rose to new heights in terms of concurrent players and subscribers, and more importantly, we are very proud of the new features and functionality it provided.

Now we are working hard on our winter expansion. Winter is quite far away, and we felt because Apocrypha was really early for a summer expansion, we should put out a mini-expansion, rather than wait until winter to release all the stuff we are working on. It should come out mid-August if all goes well. We refer to it as Apocrypha 1.5.

Small, Medium and Large rigs

Ever wanted to build the ultimate speed kite frigate but couldn‘t afford the rigs? Tank your cruiser to the max? Mod your little hauler? Now you can!

We are adding small and medium sized rigs ( existing rigs will be considered large rigs ), which will be cheaper to buy and make. With this we are hoping that more people may get introduced to the joys of rigging and the sorrow of losing your specially fitted beautifully rigged ship. CCP Chronitis will explain further in an upcoming blog.

Level 4 epic arcs in Apocrypha 1.5

Apocrypha 1.5 will be rich with content. We have several new epic mission arcs, which unlike the level 1 epic arc we introduced in Apocrypha are all level 4, meaning they will be more challenging, but also more rewarding. With each themed around a specific race, these captivating stories deal with moral ambiguity, intrigue, honor and some people's lack of it. This should come as no surprise to those who know EVE and what we are about. As before with the epic arc that was released in Apocrypha, they provide a deep, interesting story, where your choices influence the outcome.

Specialized Cargo holds - Fuel bays on black ops

We are introducing a system that allows us to author specialized cargo holds on ships. We will start by adding fuel bays on black ops and possibly other ships. This means we‘re adding more space for your fuel, without the ships becoming horribly unbalanced haulers of death. The technology behind this opens up doors to making other types of bays, just for ammo, just for livestock or whatever. Those options will be explored in future expansions.

Factional Warfare improvements - LP for kills

We have been closely monitoring reports on lag in Factional Warfare, analyzing the network behaviour, player behaviour and scrutinizing code. The reported lag does not always occur and is elusive to track down and resolve. We currently have engineers allocated to the resolution of the problem, working tightly with the quality assurance department and our bughunters.

Meanwhile, in an effort to make Factional Warfare more fun, we are looking at introducing Loyalty Point rewards for kills and captures, with special LP stores for each militia, offering unique goodies for hard working militamen and women. More details to follow in an upcoming blog by CCP Ytterbium.

50% features versus 50% maintenance

A recurring question I get from players is "How much time is spent on new features versus fixing and improving existing stuff?". The answer is simple. We allocate 50% of our developer time to new feature development and the rest to polishing and iterating existing systems and resolving defects. We feel this is a healthy balance between moving forward and maintaining what we have already built. EVE is over 650.000 lines of source code today, compared to 280.000 lines when it was first released, so there's a lot to maintain and refactor. Apocrypha 1.5 will have a considerable amount of fixes and polish coming out from this work.

The Winter Expansion

We will be reporting on the winter expansion as it draws closer. All I can say, is that it is focused on sovereignty and you will not be able to walk in it. Check on the dev blogs in the weeks and months to come for more updates. Those who are into RSS and those kind of things can also subscribe to our RSS feeds.

Thanks for reading!

- Torfi Frans

Shared the story: Comic for June 30, 2009 (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:56:00 UT

Shared the story: The emergent chaos of fingerprinting at airports (via feedly)

krmaxwell — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:45:24 UT

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Singapore cancer patient was held for four hours by immigration officials in the United States when they could not detect his fingerprints -- which had apparently disappeared because of a drug he was taking.
The incident, highlighted in the Annals of Oncology, was reported by the patient's doctor, Tan Eng Huat, who advised cancer patients taking this drug to carry a doctor's letter when traveling to the United States. ("Cancer patient held at airport for missing fingerprint", Reuters, May 27 2009)

Reuters classifies this as "oddlyEnoughNews," but in fact it's not odd at all that over time, additional layers of "no" will expose conditions unimagined by their designers. Chaos will emerge. In a free society, that chaos is an accepted part of life. We stop only that which is explicitly denied, not that which the designer didn't anticipate. In information security, we often default to deny, because we know our imaginations are limited. But the role of security in society used to be carefully limited, for precisely these reasons.

(Via Slashdot)

Kyle Maxwell | thinking faster than I should

Links for 2009-09-29 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-08-24 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-08-22 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-08-18 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-08-17 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-08-16 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-08-15 [del.icio.us]

Bookmarked the page: Dragon Writing Prompts :: Grand list of overused science fiction clichés ...

Bookmarked the page: SOE Staycation "Geeks of Summer" Forum Challenge

Bookmarked the page: Physics Games - Demolition City

Bookmarked the page: Full Disclosure: WordPress

Bookmarked the page: N00b Boyfriend - CollegeHumor Video

Bookmarked the page: Who spreads your word?

Bookmarked the page: CCP staff paid in foreign currency during economic meltdown // News

Bookmarked the page: Star Wars: The Old Republic | News Articles

Bookmarked the page: CrazyKinux's Musing: Second Skin: Geeks, Freaks and MMOs | An EVE Online blog

Bookmarked the page: Me vs. The Archbishop

Bookmarked the page: Lucasarts Teases Upcoming X-Wing Announcement

Bookmarked the page: The Edge of Reason? Article - Page 1 // iPhone /// Eurogamer - Games ...

Bookmarked the page: Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

Bookmarked the page: Give 'Em A Spin - A Fun Family Photography Project | DIYPhotography.net

Bookmarked the page: Saved By The Bell: Class Reunion - ABC News

Bookmarked the page: Is There Money To Be Made? - Jeff On Games

Bookmarked the page: Link This, Gawker: A Print ‘n’ Read Article

Bookmarked the page: Google Chrome Themes Gallery

Bookmarked the page: Essential Metaplace Modules - Cerebrate's Contemplations

Bookmarked the page: CogDogBlog » Flickr CC Attribution Helper Greasemonkey Script

Bookmarked the page: Champions Online offering $199 lifetime sub, access to STO beta 'later ...

Bookmarked the page: MixedRealities :: Upcoming MixedRealities event: preparing Connectivism

Bookmarked the page: Metaplace Featured Creator - Sarvana

Bookmarked the page: TubeSat - Personal satellite kit?

Bookmarked the page: Arduino Forum - My Arduino Aquarium Controller

Bookmarked the page: Making The Universe A Safer Place – A guide to running missions

Bookmarked the page: Polymath = user innovation « Jon Udell

Bookmarked the page: Welcome to island marketing

Bookmarked the page: Cartoon: Mars Needs Women!

Bookmarked the page: Improvised Arson Devices

Bookmarked the page: Harnessing the power of iEVE

Bookmarked the page: Pretty Code

Bookmarked the page: Hello Kitty Online now in closed beta

Bookmarked the page: Five Best Instant Messengers - Instant Messaging - Lifehacker

Bookmarked the page: Atoms Apparel - Shirts for Hackers. Makers. Builders. Doers.

Bookmarked the page: 3,604 cups of coffee

Bookmarked the page: Sony says GIRLZPLAYTOO

Shared the story: Themes are GPL, too (via feedly)

Shared the story: Raph Koster speaks on Metaplace's new functionality and the state of ...

Shared the story: Content Exists to be Consumed (via feedly)

going to pick up my kids, knowing I miss them but regretting the end of the peace and quiet...

Shared the story: The Linguistics of ReTweets (via feedly)

RAWR.

Shared the story: EVE: The Burning Life novel in November (via feedly)

Shared the story: I’m A Doctor, Not A Veterinarian (via feedly)

would like to take a nap.

Shared the story: Dynasty Banking&#39;s Employee Leaks Reserved Informations (via feedly)

Shared the story: Apocrypha 1.5 this August (via feedly)

Shared the story: Comic for June 30, 2009 (via feedly)

Shared the story: The emergent chaos of fingerprinting at airports (via feedly)

Shared the story: Dynasty Banking's Employee Leaks Reserved Informations (via feedly)