What A Chucking Feat!

Japanesse boffins at Tokyo University have build a robot hand that is apparently unbeatable at Rock-Paper-Scissors. While this may seem like a remarkable feat in AI programming, all is not not as it might appear. 

Far from caclulating the odds, cranking through a complex algorithm that takes account of all the human opponent's previous moves, pulse rate, breathing, eye movement, endorphin levels, brain wave patterns and a range of other metrics that might have been lifted from a cyberpunk yarn, this tin wanking spanner is nothing more than a cheat. Apparently it uses a camera (seen behind the human hand in the video) to monitor the shape being formed and then plays the corresponding winning move. 

It's all done very fast, in milliseconds (which is a second with a lot of legs) so perhaps we should be impressed, but I can't help but think it's nothing more than cheating, albeit carried out rather quickly: quite literally, it's simply pulling a fast one.

 

Replay: A History of Video Games

There's a review in today's paper of a new book purporting to tell "the" history of video games (I always think "a history" is preferable: the definitive ambition of "the history" may be a little hubristic).

Fatal flaw of the title aside, it looks quite interesting. According to Keith Stuart's review,

Replay: The History of Video Games by games journalist Tristan Donovan is a[n ... ] up-to-date and thoughtfully written opus. Beginning with the switching on of the first programmable computer in 1946 and closing with the rise of downloadable indie games, this engrossing work manages to touch on every vital facet of the industry, from the formative battles between Atari and Mattel, through the rise of the home computer to the emergence of the Japanese home console empire.

Apparently Donovan includes a consideration of MUDs, which are often overlooked in such works (I know that when I talk about MUDs to students, it's usually the first time most of them have heard of such things). Clive "C5" Sinclair gets some coverage for his pioneering work in developing computing in the UK.

It's £12.99 in the shops and surprisingly expensive at £12.34 on Amazon. If it was more heavily discounted (under a tenner) I'd snap up a copy without thinking twice (Amazon must love me) but Amazon's piddlingly small "discount" is a psychological block that's cost them a sale. Instead of copping myself a copy, I'll ask the library to add one to stock.

Free Audio Books

The Guardian is running a promotion this week, whereby readers can download free audiobooks from audible.co.uk. A different title is made available each day.

Saturday: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [Audible link]
Sunday: Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive [Audible link]
Monday: Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure by Kristina Stephenson [Audible link]
Tuesday: Matter by Iain M. Banks [Audible link]
Wednesday: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell [Audible link]
Thursday: Rapid French: Volume 1 by Earworms Learning [Audible link]
Friday: Yes Man by Danny Wallace [Audible link]

Each free download is only available for a week, so don't hang about.

The way it works is users have to create an account with audible, and each of the free audiobooks is added to a virtual shopping basket and purchased for a cost of £0.00. Each audiobook is then downloaded using the audible download manager. No purchase is necessary, and no credit card details are required to set up the account.

One problem with this is that Audible uses a proprietary format for the files: they aren't .mp3 or .ogg, but a peculiar .aa format (shame on you, Guardian, BTW, for going along with this .aa malarkey). Another problem is that the files appear to be very heavily compressed. However, the ingenuity of the internets can help those who don't want to be hampered by a proprietary format. The audible account is flexible enough to require users to specify how--ie on what platform--they want to listen to the files. Available options are "iPod", "MP3 & GPS", "Mobiles & PDAs" and "Computer and CD Burning". Select "Computer and CD Burning".

The third problem is that the only way to get the files is to use the audible downloader, so you'll just have to install that and dump it later. So complete the sign-up process, and figure out how to download the .aa file via the downloader.

The next thing to do is to use the google to find, download and install a file called audibleMediaPlayerFilter.exe This is an old application, no longer used by Audible, but installing it will also install an aa-compatible codec, which is needed to open these files before converting them.

You'll also need LAME (Lame Ain't an Mp3 Encoder) so if you don't already have it, go back to the google and find and download LAME. However you get LAME, you'll need to drop a copy of lame_enc.dll into the C:/Windows/System directory. This is needed to convert those pesky .aa files to MP3 format using an application called Goldwave. Note that Goldwave needs to have the lame dll in the C:/Windows/System directory in order to be able to export to MP3, so if you've already got LAME installed, just drag another copy of the dll here.

Go back to the google to find, download and install Goldwave 5.06 Note that later versions of Goldwave will expire, so make sure to get 5.06.

Finally, just open the downloaded .aa file with Goldwave and save it as an MP3.
(This method doesn't work with .aax files, Audible's so-called "enhanced" format. In this set of free downloads, only the Rapid French title uses the aax format.)

As an alternative to exporting as an MP3, export the file from Goldwave as a wav file, then open the wav in CDWave (a shareware app used by audiophiles) which is nicer than Goldwave for tracking, and add track divisions or chapter points.

Goldwave can also be used for tracking, using what it calls "cue points", but it involves quite a bit of scrolling and zooming in Goldwave to place the cue points, while the process is more straightforward in CD Wave (CD Wave only reads lossless WAV or FLAC files).

Last time The Guardian got together with audible.co.uk to give away a free audioboook, there was an embedded player on the page with the option of streaming the file, downloading it as an MP3 or using some subscription service thing called iTunes. While the streaming/downloading options were better than the current offering, the book was Wolf Brother, a fantasy tale aimed at younger readers/listeners, by Michelle Paver. However, it didn't expire after a week and, three years later, it's still available here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/wolfbrother.

Wow! It's just like a cathedral

Photo:Eusebius (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0)

In a marvellous article in today's Guardian (just 30p in a student shop near you), Sam Leith likens the popular time-waste 'em up World of Warcraft to a cathedral. According to Leith, World of Warcraft is:

[A] sword'n'sorcery game in which players control virtual characters who whizz about killing monsters, collecting treasure, fighting or ganging up with one another. Azeroth has a functioning virtual economy, and (mindbogglingly) an exchange rate with the real world: a WoW gold piece, enough to buy you some virtual barbecued boar ribs, is currently worth about one and a half euro cents. Also, WoW has some wicked magic swords. Yet grown-ups play it. In fact, seduced by the beauty of this whole new world that's theirs to explore, they find it eats their lives.

Leith goes on to tell us that World of Warcraft is not like a film. What it is like, however, is a cathedral. A great big gothic cathedral, in fact. Just like Chartres. Leith's logic is that the fractured narrative of a WoW session is a repetetive grind, with lots of boar-slaying, getting ambushed and being killed. Quite unlike the oneric experience of sitting in a big dark room full of strangers, gazing upon the projected spectacle of cinematic truth at 24 frames per second.

For Leith, a much better comparison would be to liken WoW to a medieval cathedral: a magnificent work, created by many hands over a great period of time and which remains largely unfinished. "All those programmers", according to Leith, "are the modern-day equivalent of stonemasons, foundation-diggers and structural engineers". Moreover, Leith asserts, there isn't a narrative in a cathedral (that's debatable, but we'll let that one slide) but there is a mythos--a whole system of stories--along with a wealth of detail, and a social space.

Oh, and apparently the number of people who play World of Warcraft outnumber the population of Greece. Now there's a sobering thought.

Blocking Murdoch

Apparently, Rupert Murdoch is planning to block Google from displaying the content of the various domains he controls. The idea is that people will then pay to access News International sites (there at least two flaws there, but let's overlook them for the sake of convenience).

Anyone who doesn't want to wait that long, if they aren't already doing it, can exclude content from Murdoch's domains by adding a simple filter to their search terms in the form of a minus sign, the word "site" and a colon, followed by the domain to be excluded. For example:

• "balanced news" -site:thesun.co.uk


• "celebrity obsession" -site:thetimesonline.co.uk


• "cross-media promotion" -skynews.com

If excluding individual domains on every search seems a bit tedious, Google offers a custom search engine option: http://www.google.com/cse/. After setting up a custom search engine, it's possible to add a list of domains to exclude.

Oh look, this post is also on the letters page of today's Guardian.