We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The BBC on-line has an interesting article called never ending computer games about using vastly improved Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to avoid linear pre-scripted games. Of course this is vastly harder to actually pull off than some people seem to think and in some ways a degree of control over events is essential to maintain an interesting and coherent story line.
Nevertheless, any giants leaps in A.I. has to be welcome as it may well lead to entirely new ways of ‘writing’ fiction, relying less on a movie-like approach of pre-scripted actions, but instead driving a story with a series of looser ‘objectives’ which can be solved in many ways, some of which might not have even occurred to the games writer, which is both a potential joy and a source of potential problems… imagine a Lord of The Rings Game:
- Gandalf lures the Nazgûl back to Hobbitton on a wild goose chase with a false reported sighting of Frodo having gone back there after his visit to Rivendell
- Gandalf summons his giant eagle ally (the one who he escaped from Isengard on the back of)
- With the Nazgûl safely out of Mordor airspace, Gandalf and Frodo fly over Mount Doom on their giant eagle friend, drop The Ring of Power into the volcano safely from 5000 feet up, Sauron goes ‘poooofff’!
- Frodo and Gandalf are back in Hobbitton in time for tea and biscuits the next day… done and dusted but rather an anti-climax!
The games designer had better be on the look-out for possible ‘elegant story killer’ endings!
A.I. characters would be ‘accented’, given objectives of their own and then populated around the game in certain contexts, at which point if the A.I. is good enough, the discreet A.I. ‘players’ will take act and react dynamically to event driven ‘reality’ so well that games would be vastly less predictable. It would however require a very different set of ‘rules’ compared to all forms of current fiction, making games more like a high tech form of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, which is to say an interactive and much looser sort of fiction. Unlike D&D however, the games designer has to balance the game ahead of time rather than on-the-fly. This means good games design will be at a huge premium given that powerful new A.I. technologies will give us whole new ways to make totally crap games as well as transcendently good ones.
There are two anti-war movements… and I think both of them are wrong, though for quite different reasons. But it is the Old Left’s anti-war sentiments regarding Iraq which Janet Daly takes to task in her article in the Telegraph Answer this: do the people of Iraq deserve freedom?. Although I am not a huge fan of “hang ’em an’ flog ’em” conservatives like Janet Daly, I find myself in broad agreement with her on this.
Whilst I realise isolationists (many of whom are on the conservative right or are paleo-libertarians) who oppose the destruction of the Ba’athist regime are often a different intellectual kettle of fish and do not see themselves as give aid to a tyrant, it is the questions like the ones Janet Daly poses which cause me to describe the left wing/paleo-socialist ‘anti-war movement’ as the ‘Pro-Saddam Hussain/Anti-liberation-of-the-Iraqi-people movement’.
Most of the British armoured vehicles being sent to the Gulf in preparation for war with Iraq’a Ba’athist Socialist regime will arrive not painted in the correct desert warfare camouflage, but rather in the European colours. Not enough money for paint? Did the fact the Army was going to go to Iraq somehow take the Ministry of Defense by surprise?
This shoddy state of affairs is a measure of the true attitude of the Labour Party towards the military they are about to order into action. Yet somehow they find money for welfare payment to asylum seekers and legal aid to burglars who want to sue householders who use force to defend their property.
The mighty N.Z. Bear has a splendid article about what he would do if he was UN Secretary General for a day, fisking UN Resolution 1441 and Iraqi non-compliance. Good stuff!
I have liked many of Mark Steyn’s articles in recent months but in The Falklands War is a model of fierce good sense, he has outdone himself. he draws many useful parallels between the Falklands War and the impending war with Iraq’s Ba’athist regime.
Why would anybody think, faced with economic catastrophe, that invading a string of distant islands is the answer? Dictators don’t behave rationally. Indeed, one reason they become dictators is precisely to escape the tiresome constraints of rationality. There may be valid arguments for not going to war with Iraq, but not the ones that begin, oh, even if Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, he’d never use them against the West. Never bet on a dictator’s rationality.
This is Steyn at his best… read the whole article!
After playing some excellent games like tongue-in-cheek No One lives Forever 2 and the the awesome & ultra slick Splinter Cell, I was starting to get the impression computer games were starting to really enter another era: an era in which equal attention is paid to scripts, story flow, voice acting and the ability to interact other than by shooting someone.
Splinter Cell: ultra cool
Shoot people, be stealthy, climb, jump, sophisticated interaction…
take hostages and extract information without saying ‘please’!
Boy was I wrong! Having just played Soldier of Fortune 2, I realise that even quality companies like Raven can produce clunkers. SoF2 is as linear and predictable as the original Doom, the cut scenes are filled with flat and indifferent declaiming and the characters are cliches (in itself sometimes amusing but in this case, not). Even the graphics are nothing to write home about. Level design ranged from uninspiring (“Ah, yet another blind corner… I might as well chuck a grenade as there is bound to be a bad guy lying in wait like the one before. And the one before that. And the one before that…”) to the idiotic (as in ‘my allies will try and kill me if I get too far ahead or behind the patrol I am helping to defend’…. riiiiiight) to the baffling (‘so I shot the guard dead with a silenced weapon, he was nowhere near the bloody alarm button and the alarm goes off anyway instantly? And the logic behind that is…??’).
Soldier of Fortune 2: suspect moustache
Shoot people, occasionally push buttons, try to hide (almost impossible)
plus shoot some more people… and then some more. And again…
I guess that the SoF & Raven brand names are responsible for the game’s excellent sales and I gather that multiplayer in reasonable in SoF2, but I would certainly urge anyone who likes a good plot line, thoughtfully designed scenarios or snappy dialogue in a single player game to look elsewhere and give this by-the-numbers First Person Shooter a miss… Deus Ex or Half Life this game ain’t.
After watching the news tonight, I am coming around ever more to David Carr’s way of thinking. Perhaps sheer irritation by the Bush Administration about the obscurantist stance of the French and German governments regarding the use of force to depose Saddam Hussain may achieve something I have long wanted to see… the end of the fiction in American minds that either France or Germany are in fact US allies in any meaningful sense.
This is the first step needed to de-couple the Anglosphere Atlantic Alliance from the legacy of World War Two and the Cold War. The first clear step that this process is under way will be the permanent withdrawal of most US forces currently stationed in Germany, a situation which is a costly anachronism in the post Cold War world. Maybe the opportunity will be immediatly post-Gulf War II, with the US troops currently based in Germany which are going to be involved in Iraq going back to bases in the USA instead.
I just hope the pompous Chirac and the buffoonish Schroeder keep plucking on the eagle’s feathers… sooner of later Blair, or his successor, is going to have to decide if they want to be on the side of history’s winners or history’s losers.
Hell, changing the name of N.A.F.T.A. to North Atlantic Free Trade Area would not even require reprinting all that stationary with the acronym on it!
There is an interesting post by David Kenner over on An Age Like This complete with pictures he took, of the pro-Saddam Hussain protests in Washington DC. It is good to see a bit of blog primary reportage.
Also David has a picture of Protest Awards!: Most Offensive Banner.
Although attention is focused on the nightmarish regime in Iraq, please spare an angry thought for the vile rulers of Zimbabwe, who are still starving and murdering sections of the population felt to be ‘disloyal’ to Robert Mugabe.
George Bush, supported by Tony Blair, will clear up Daddy’s (and Donald’s) mess in Iraq by spending several billion dollars and sending a few hundred thousand troops to see the end of Saddam Hussain… Blair could do something about tyranny in Zimbabwe for a fraction of that price if he had the moral fortitude. For all his many and varied sins, Saddam is not (currently) killing and dispossessing British subjects, which cannot be said for Robert Mugabe.
Will the British state please stop spending my appropriated tax money on funding the comforts of former Taliban asylum seekers and, given that I suppose it is too much to expect my money back, start sending crates of rifles and ammunition to opposition groups in Zimbabwe.
I have long known that the world is essentially a madhouse with no locks on the doors, but when I read that a former Taliban soldier who fought against British and US forces in Afghanistan will be given asylum in Britain because the pro-western government in Kabul is ‘persecuting’ him, I start to really wonder at what the word ‘asylum’ really means. Did rational people object to former members of the National German Socialist Workers Party being ‘persecuted’ in the aftermath of World War Two?
A few days ago, American bloggers Andrew and Sasha arrived in Britain, neither of whom have ever fought against British soldiers, or called for the death of Christians and Jews, or joined any organisations like Al-Muhajirun which aims to make Britain a muslim caliphate…
…and yet they were nevertheless detained at the airport upon arrival in the UK on Thursday and grilled for nine hours before being provisionally allowed into the country. In fact Sasha’s blog was examined by the Immigration agents and its content used as the excuse to initially deny her entry. It is strange that the content of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad’s website does not seem to get him kicked out of the country.
The state is not your friend.
Or more accurately, the day after the night before. Two separate parties yesterday involving a large contingent of Samizdatistas has resulted in rather meagre output today.
Proper decorum was observed at all times
Brian Linse, our pet pinko from California crashed
the party yet again and chatted up everything female
Sober discourse was the byword at this gathering as usual
Normal output will resume tomorrow…
The excellent folks at Stand.org.uk, who describe themselves as “a group of volunteers who originally came together in 1998 in a vain attempt to fix the worst aspects of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act”, are mobilising efforts to oppose the imposition of ID cards in the UK. They enable you to contribute your comments to the ‘consultation’ process, which Downing Street is claiming shows Growing support for entitlement cards… We think you should go to Stand.org.uk website and let them show you how to tell the British government exactly how you feel about this. I did and left comments saying:
To put it bluntly, this is clear evidence, not that any more is needed, that the Labour government is as utterly inimical to civil liberties as the Tory party was. I shall never cooperate with what is clearly just a euphemism for a national ID card which will enhance the state’s ability to monitor and control its subjects. It is clear that any ‘voluntary’ system you offer up will just the thin end of the wedge for a mandatory system that will enable policemen to stop you on the street and demand “your papers”. I will never consent or cooperate with this.
Be polite but tell them what you think. Kudos to Stand.org.uk for their efforts to defend what is left of civil liberties in the United Kingdom.
The state is not your friend
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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