Meeting 2008-03-26

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Contents

Information

  • Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2008
  • Time: 8:30PM
  • Place: Torgerson 3180

News

Wireless auction ends

Does anyone have details? --Conley 14:49, 21 March 2008 (EDT)
Google won and lost at the same time. Also the FCC is investigating possible auction fraud. That's all I know. --Matt 00:17, 26 March 2008 (EDT)

PMOG launched

From the CC blog:

PMOG is the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, an interesting online gaming experience where players interact with each other with their clicks through the world wide web. PMOG.com explains:

PMOG is an infinite game built on individual network histories, transforming our web surfing into ongoing social play. With a game heads-up display in Firefox, players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions.

This unconventional massively multiplayer online game merges your web life with an alternate, hidden reality. Player behavior generates characters and alliances, triggers interactions in the environment and earns the player points to spend online beefing up their inventory. Suddenly the Internet is not a series of untouchable exhibits, but rather a hackable, rewarding environment!

All player-generated content on PMOG.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. FringeHog spoke to game designer Merci Hammon, who said that PMOG “transforms the existing topography of the internet into a game world for players to vandalize, annotate, and curate.”

PMOG

I'm interested in seeing how this goes. --Conley 21:04, 23 March 2008 (EDT)

Creator of WoW bot sued

Slashdot summary: Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, are suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically. Blizzard says the software bot infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game. 'Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time,' Blizzard wrote in its legal submission to the court. More than 100,000 copies of the tool have been sold while more than 10 million people around the world play Warcraft. Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard's copyright because no 'copy' of the Warcraft game client software is ever made. The two parties are now awaiting a summary judgment in the case.

BBC news

Stallman's Speech

How did it go?

About 220 people showed up, so I'm counting that as a good turnout. I also recorded his speech in case Ashton didn't and can post it in FLAC, Vorbis, or Speex. I should have asked him about his stance on video games though: are they software or are they entertainment or both? --Matt 23:42, 25 March 2008 (EDT)

VTU Movie Night

How did it go?

Our next movie is on the 4th of April, and will be Royal Wedding.

Is it just me or does it seem that we always have horrible luck getting these movies on DVD flawlessly and without any complications? Night of the Living Dead had to be remuxed, The Brain that Wouldn't Die had a missing right channel of audio, and His Girl Friday had video corruption issues. Maybe we should just screen Royal Wedding directly from a computer this time. At least if anything goes wrong we can fix it fairly quickly. --Matt 04:53, 22 March 2008 (EDT)
They need to have a dvd a week before the showing. If you want to give them your computer for a week, that's fine. --Conley 11:41, 22 March 2008 (EDT)
New idea: whoever downloads and burns a copy of this movie (most likely me if I find the time) will have to both watch it in its entirety on the computer to check for source errors (and have alternative locations to download the film if it is a source problem) and verify the burned disc against the authored VOB files. The good news is that Public Domain Torrents has this movie as well if there are source problems, however their files are in DivX. --Matt 14:13, 22 March 2008 (EDT)
We could watch it after a meeting some time, if we ever get back into that habit. --Sarah 23:51, 25 March 2008 (EDT)
I doubt it. Archive.org has been painfully slow lately. Plus we tend to watch the lower quality versions for time, and the burned copy will be in full resolution. Public Domain Torrents' torrent is broken, but they sell the movie on a DVD-R for $5. I'm wondering whether it would be easier to just buy it from them --Matt 00:10, 26 March 2008 (EDT)


Also, for Royal Wedding, they request a poster for the case. (No staples; it apparently scratches the case.) Can we just make a big copy of the flier? --Sarah 23:51, 25 March 2008 (EDT)

Well, to effectively do that to a raster image we'll need to increase its DPI. The only way I know of to do that is to scan in the printed flyer at a very high DPI (about 300) and then print it out on a giant poster. So yes. --Matt 00:08, 26 March 2008 (EDT)

T-shirts

How did Saturday go?

Countdowns

I've started a page for countdowns. Put up anything FC work you are anticipating.

Countdowns

Entertainment library

Entertainment library

In the Queue

  • Whiteroom
Link? --Matt 22:18, 23 March 2008 (EDT)

Organization

Review music organization

Nominations

Steal this Film

We are going to watch the second half of Steal this Film part II and discuss.

New media center

We have been asked what we would like to use the new media center for if we could use it for anything. Any suggestions?

Show and tell

Open floor

Barack Obama, Platform Pt #31415: Bubble sort sucks, save the children: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8

Dude...I love Obama a little more every day. (Forgive me, Sarah) --Conley 20:51, 23 March 2008 (EDT)
So what is the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers? --Matt 22:16, 23 March 2008 (EDT)
Someone might try to tell you quicksort, but that is something an amateur would jump to. Radix sort is the way to go. O(n) time. --Conley 11:12, 24 March 2008 (EDT)
Well, that's better than my idea of throwing them all into a giant centrifuge. --Matt 21:58, 24 March 2008 (EDT)
All a politician has to do to get geek hearts beating is to use the words "open" and "source" in the general vicinity of one another. It's an efficient way of getting the nerd vote.

Purisa is such a fun font

If you can't see this than your operating system is lame. --Matt 23:47, 25 March 2008 (EDT)

I can see it *all* the time. --(guess who)

Free Film

Check out a list of free films.

Suggestions:

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