Well, the three Brits from Guantanamo Bay have been sent back to the UK, now, and detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
The arguments for the process that they've been though seem to be that there is a greater good for other people which overrides their individual rights, but the question for this blog post is simply:
If a country (Britain or the USA) imprisons people without trial (and we're talking of periods of 2/3 years), can it justifiably call itself a free country, or a Land of the Free?
As far as I can see, the argument for their treatment in this way is that the end justifies the means. Subsidiary question: is this true?
I have a feeling that deep down we all know the answers to these questions ...
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Monday, January 17, 2005
MUD Update
This posts's at the geeky end of the spectrum, so you may wish to skip it. The MUD (see previous post) continues to plod along, if that's the right metaphor, but has got stuck (that's more appropriate).
Since it's a Java-based look-and-feel approximation to MUDOS, a famous MUD operating system, I've tried to use a lot of the MUDOS methods in it. One of these tricks is at login time the code for handling and creating the input and output streams which the game uses to chat to a player is built into each player object, so when somebody logs on, how do you chat to them before you've set up their player character? The answer is to have a dummy player which sets up I/O and gets the login details. A real player object is then set up for the player, and the dummy player is frozen, has its I/O taken over by the real player, and is then destroyed. Sounds very nasty.
What happens in practice is that the dummy player doesn't destroy itself when it should, and persists for one round, messing up the I/O. I thought I'd solved this one, but it's back. It seems to be waiting to destroy itself until it gets another round of keyboard input, which suggest two problems to me:
Either
Well, we'll see. Writing that down may have clarified my thoughts a little, and if and when the game ever gets into beta testing mode, I'll publish login details and you can all play (assuming you want to).
Now that's off my chest, the next post may be a litle less techie. I should actually be doing something else rather than blogging, so I'd better listen to my conscience and do it. Bye.
Since it's a Java-based look-and-feel approximation to MUDOS, a famous MUD operating system, I've tried to use a lot of the MUDOS methods in it. One of these tricks is at login time the code for handling and creating the input and output streams which the game uses to chat to a player is built into each player object, so when somebody logs on, how do you chat to them before you've set up their player character? The answer is to have a dummy player which sets up I/O and gets the login details. A real player object is then set up for the player, and the dummy player is frozen, has its I/O taken over by the real player, and is then destroyed. Sounds very nasty.
What happens in practice is that the dummy player doesn't destroy itself when it should, and persists for one round, messing up the I/O. I thought I'd solved this one, but it's back. It seems to be waiting to destroy itself until it gets another round of keyboard input, which suggest two problems to me:
Either
- it's hanging until it gets keyboard input
- the fact that every object in the game has its own thread of control means that it's blocking until some other object does something.
Well, we'll see. Writing that down may have clarified my thoughts a little, and if and when the game ever gets into beta testing mode, I'll publish login details and you can all play (assuming you want to).
Now that's off my chest, the next post may be a litle less techie. I should actually be doing something else rather than blogging, so I'd better listen to my conscience and do it. Bye.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Harry the Twit
Well, Prince Harry has done it now, following in the diplomatic and politically sensitive footsteps of his Grandad. They used to say that he shortest book in the world was "The Wit of Prince Philip", but his grandson has surpassed that.
I refer, of course, to Harry's jolly wheeze of attending a fancy dress party as a Nazi, just to liven things up. He's sure to have pleased everyone - the far right because they might interpret it as support, and the anti-monarchists because he's dropped the Royal Family several more notches in the popular estimation.
HRH seems not only to have shot himself in the foot, but to have taken careful aim and blown off half his leg as well.
It may well die down, but would we bet on him doing something equally awful next week, just to keep us all on our toes?
This blog offers a miniscule prize of fame for the best suggestion as to what he might do next that's as bad or even worse.
I refer, of course, to Harry's jolly wheeze of attending a fancy dress party as a Nazi, just to liven things up. He's sure to have pleased everyone - the far right because they might interpret it as support, and the anti-monarchists because he's dropped the Royal Family several more notches in the popular estimation.
HRH seems not only to have shot himself in the foot, but to have taken careful aim and blown off half his leg as well.
It may well die down, but would we bet on him doing something equally awful next week, just to keep us all on our toes?
This blog offers a miniscule prize of fame for the best suggestion as to what he might do next that's as bad or even worse.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
MUDdy ing the Waters
For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, a MUD is a Multi-User Domain (originally a Multi-User Dungeon, but that has always sounded a bit dodgy to people).
It allows many people to log into the same game, as assumed characters, and to interact with each other and the environment.
It has a long history, blending ideas from the paper and pencil board game Dungeons and Dragons® invented by Gary Gygax (probably with influences from Tolkien), and the original single-user Colossal Cave Adventure game written by Will Crowther. There's now a book out by Richard Bartle on the subject, which I intend to read sometime, and which no doubt will prove to be excellent.
Players in these games originally looked for treasure and fought monsters, and in the multi-user version, fought each other sometimes as well. Offshoots from this idea have led to "gentler" games where participants cooperate to solve quests, or chat with each other, and you can find MUSHes, MOOs and all sorts of variants on the networks nowadays, including graphics version such as Everquest®.
The features provided in MUDs are useful and popular. You can have several personae, and join different guilds, such as thief, wizard, fighter and so on, which give you various skills and powers. You can pick up and drop objects, buy and sell them in shops, and trade the with other players.
Chatting and conversation is versatile: you can talk in various locations such as pubs, while sipping fake drinks (?), and the game allows you to display conversational cues on demand, such as smile, shrug, snore, etc to liven up the chat.
Some areas are safe, while in others you can be attacked by other players (if the game allows that sort of thing). The most addictive feature of all is that by performing tasks and quests, and exercising your skills, you can acquire new powers and ratings in the game.
Although the graphics versions have gained great popularity recently, the old-style purely text-based MUDs still abound, and their attraction is easy to see: a skillfully written game is rich in detail and description, and allows the player to envisage their own version of the world that they inhabit. It's like the difference between radio and television: television hands you the author's view, but radion lets you populate your imagination. (I've always thought that good radion comedy can be better than good TV comedy, Eccles). The text-based ones also tend to be free of charge.
I may rant about all this at some other time, and describe some of the (now defunct) MUDs that have given me great pleasure, but if you can't wait, a very good one at the moment can be found on the Nanvaent site.
Why am I gibbering on about this? Well, for one thing, I'm keen on both the technical and the social parts of the game: it's fascinating to see how people behave and interact in these surroundings. Also, I'm in the process of developing a game engine myself. It's written in Java, and will be freely available when it's ready (don't keep asking - it won't make it happen any faster). The purpose is to produce an engine which will then let people build there own MUDs on top of it.
However, I won't be able to resist setting up my own running MUD, just to test it thoroughly!
At the moment, we can handle locations, characters and objects, and the interaction between these is being debugged (and yes, there are bugs at present). When that's all cleaned up, development will move on to setting up a fighting mechanism (very difficult) and a mechanism that will allow guilds such as thief, wizard etc. One of the problems that has recently been solved is to list the contents of locations in a sensible way: that is, instead of "a sword, a orc, a sword" to say "two swords and an orc". It's been a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.
I'll keep you posted.
It allows many people to log into the same game, as assumed characters, and to interact with each other and the environment.
It has a long history, blending ideas from the paper and pencil board game Dungeons and Dragons® invented by Gary Gygax (probably with influences from Tolkien), and the original single-user Colossal Cave Adventure game written by Will Crowther. There's now a book out by Richard Bartle on the subject, which I intend to read sometime, and which no doubt will prove to be excellent.
Players in these games originally looked for treasure and fought monsters, and in the multi-user version, fought each other sometimes as well. Offshoots from this idea have led to "gentler" games where participants cooperate to solve quests, or chat with each other, and you can find MUSHes, MOOs and all sorts of variants on the networks nowadays, including graphics version such as Everquest®.
The features provided in MUDs are useful and popular. You can have several personae, and join different guilds, such as thief, wizard, fighter and so on, which give you various skills and powers. You can pick up and drop objects, buy and sell them in shops, and trade the with other players.
Chatting and conversation is versatile: you can talk in various locations such as pubs, while sipping fake drinks (?), and the game allows you to display conversational cues on demand, such as smile, shrug, snore, etc to liven up the chat.
Some areas are safe, while in others you can be attacked by other players (if the game allows that sort of thing). The most addictive feature of all is that by performing tasks and quests, and exercising your skills, you can acquire new powers and ratings in the game.
Although the graphics versions have gained great popularity recently, the old-style purely text-based MUDs still abound, and their attraction is easy to see: a skillfully written game is rich in detail and description, and allows the player to envisage their own version of the world that they inhabit. It's like the difference between radio and television: television hands you the author's view, but radion lets you populate your imagination. (I've always thought that good radion comedy can be better than good TV comedy, Eccles). The text-based ones also tend to be free of charge.
I may rant about all this at some other time, and describe some of the (now defunct) MUDs that have given me great pleasure, but if you can't wait, a very good one at the moment can be found on the Nanvaent site.
Why am I gibbering on about this? Well, for one thing, I'm keen on both the technical and the social parts of the game: it's fascinating to see how people behave and interact in these surroundings. Also, I'm in the process of developing a game engine myself. It's written in Java, and will be freely available when it's ready (don't keep asking - it won't make it happen any faster). The purpose is to produce an engine which will then let people build there own MUDs on top of it.
However, I won't be able to resist setting up my own running MUD, just to test it thoroughly!
At the moment, we can handle locations, characters and objects, and the interaction between these is being debugged (and yes, there are bugs at present). When that's all cleaned up, development will move on to setting up a fighting mechanism (very difficult) and a mechanism that will allow guilds such as thief, wizard etc. One of the problems that has recently been solved is to list the contents of locations in a sensible way: that is, instead of "a sword, a orc, a sword" to say "two swords and an orc". It's been a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.
I'll keep you posted.
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