Following up his first article at the Huffington Post, Richard Garriott has posted a second article asking, in its title: why human space travel? And while he illustrates the article with a leading picture of the Apophis asteroid, the bulk of his argument concerns something other than the need for humanity to migrate to the stars in order to ensure its long-term survival against even extinction-level events. No, good Lord British instead argues that human space travel needs to both remain on the table and in fact advance because, as he puts it, no “robotic agent [is] able to have anything close to the perception and judgment of a human explorer.”

…Robots are far lighter, cheaper and expendable. So whenever possible, robots can and should be used! Humans need complex and heavy life support systems, so many might ask, why even consider the prospect of sending humans to space as robotics and computers continue to rapidly advance?

The answer is important. We are still very far from a robotic agent being able to have anything close to the perception and judgment of a human explorer. And that is a very critical distinction. To demonstrate this I can cite historical facts as well as personal experience.

A great example of this important difference came when Jack Schmitt became the first geologist to walk on the moon. Knowledge of the moon’s geology including how and when it formed gives us important data about when and how the Earth finally cooled down and developed its rocky crust. This in turn gives us deeper understanding of tectonic plate movement which is the cause of earthquakes around the globe. Clearly predicting and protecting against earthquakes is essential science for those who live in Japan, California or other earthquake prone areas!

Before Jack Schmitt walked on the moon, the probes and test pilots who preceded him, had done their best to find valuable samples, but only Jack’s deep geological understanding and direct human perception allowed him to quickly find rocks on the moon that turned out to be from the primordial crust formed when the moon first solidified from a molten state. This find allowed lunar formation science and thus Earth formation science to advance greatly.

To be fair, he does devote his closing paragraphs to mentioning Stephen Hawking’s contention that humanity must take to the stars to ensure its survival against asteroids, gamma ray bursts, and suchlike. The merits of such endeavours are up for debate, of course (either that, or playing Mass Effect 3 as an essentially Paragon character has me wondering, yet again, what’s so great about humanity that it should require so much sacrifice on the part of so few good people to save, and is it even worth the effort?), though the logic itself is sound. There is nowhere else for humanity to hide, at present, from the many and terrifying hazards of the Universe, and it would be trivially easy for an errant chunk of space rock — or a too-large, too-close star exploding — to reduce mankind to a historical footnote. Such is the inherent vulnerability of any planet-bound species, and the only remedy for it is to become a species not bound inextricably to just one planet.

But in his main argument, I think he has a very strong point to make. Robots are analytical tools; data in is processed algorithmically, and certain outputs are generated therefrom. Robots can’t necessarily correlate seemingly disparate points of data to reach a different conclusion than what their algorithms are designed to compute; an adding machine can compute 15 as the result of the addition of two integers, but it has no ability to detect or comment on the aesthetic similarities of 6 and 9. Humans, on the other hand, come by this sort of thinking naturally, and it is this ability to think abstractly that has driven much of human innovation and discovery. Robots may one day be able to simulate, mimic, or even possess these same faculties…but I think Lord British is quite right when he notes that the day when this becomes a possibility is still a long way off. A human colony on another celestial body, however, may yet be something we here live to see.

Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott gave a presentation at SXSW on Saturday, talking about Man on a Mission and various space travel concepts related thereto. For those of you who’ve followed his talks on this topic in the past, there won’t be much in the way of “new and surprising” commentary from the “second-generation astronaut”. That said, these revelations came as news to me:

{Garriott is] passionate about finding ways to fund his own future journeys, for one thing. On the recent trip he had created a software that warned astronauts when they were approaching spots where they were supposed to take photos. Previously astronauts had to watch out the window and try to visually line up the photo they?d gone up with with the scene below.

He also did work protein crystallization for ExtremoZyme, Inc., a biotechnology company he co-founded with his father. The proteins they used have important cellular functions and are associated with common human diseases. The weightless environment of space helps form superior crystals which researchers on earth to study to learn more about the molecular structure of these proteins for protein engineering and drug design.

This statement, meanwhile, will resonate with Ultima fans:

“I have a passion for exploration,” he said, “I have a passion for understanding and I have a passion to create things for others to explore.”

Ain’t that the truth?

In what I gather is his new periodic feature at the Huffington Post, Richard Garriott writes about what, in his view, the next phase of human exploration of space will look like, and what forces will drive it.

There can be little doubt that humanity is destined to live beyond the confines of our Earth and even our solar system. But this expansion is far more than mere adventure, more even than a survival necessity in the great span of time. Human expansion into space will continue to bring radical benefits right here on Earth in the very short term, just as it has already done.

Today we are at a new dawn, the beginnings of the new Space Race! With the retirement of the Space Shuttle and all the budget and planning cutbacks, many have proclaimed the end of the U.S. manned space program, ceding our leadership to Russia and China. But this is not the case.

And how, exactly, is it not the case?

Space X — The firm started by Elon Musk, founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon Space Capsule in November of last year. It orbited the Earth and safely re-entered, and the company recovered its capsule. This monumental event was the first orbit and re-entry of a space capsule by a non-government entity. They are scheduled to begin cargo service to the ISS this year, with crew to follow. Space X already has plans beyond ISS, beyond LEO (low Earth orbit), all the way to Mars. They believe they can drop prices to low Earth orbit to near $1 million, through fully reusable launch vehicles. If they do this, human space exploration will be hugely profitable for the first time!

Traditional firms are competing in this new era too! Boeing, which makes the main shuttle orbiter and which few can doubt has the capability to build rockets, is one of the major commercial competitors. Sierra Nevada Corp. is building a great “mini shuttle” that could sit atop existing rockets and bring crew comfortably back like an airplane. It is similar to the shuttle but with far less complexity in a simpler and safer system.

The makers of these new vehicles can now sell flights to customers not associated with NASA. This is good for NASA, the vehicle makers and anyone who believes, like I do, that they can create business opportunities in space. My company, Space Adventures, has already flown seven private citizens to the space station and has a circumlunar mission planed in a few years. In fact we are the sixth largest global space agency after NASA, RFSA (Russian Federal Space Agency), ESA (European Space Agency), CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency), and ahead of China, Bulgaria and about 19 counties who have flown a single astronaut each.

It’s worth noting that if we look at the most well-known works of sci-fi — Star Wars and Star Trek, and certain others — one common theme that prevails in all of them is that while the governments of the galaxy obviously have access to the biggest, most advanced, and most powerful space ships, corporations and private citizens also have access to cheap, readily available, and even privately-owned means of sailing through the stars.

We’re a long way off from that sort of future, but these early private ventures that Lord British speaks of (Space X, Space Adventures, etc.) are the pioneers — in both technology and practice — that may one day, one century, one millenium arrive us at it. Except for the whole warp drive/hyperdrive thing…I for one am convinced that FTL travel is indeed the stuff of fiction, and only fiction.

Do be sure to follow Richard Garriott’s “HuffPo” blog from now on, Dragons and Dragonettes! He promises to talk about his “30-year plan for Mars” in his next post.

Guys! Guys! You’ll never guess!

Richard Garriott has been interviewed again, this time by VentureBeat (well, actually, GamesBeat, one of their sub-groups). Naturally, it’s prefaced with a look at Garriott’s recently released documentary, Man on a Mission.

Richard Garriott is best known as Lord British, the designer of video games that have been enjoyed by tens of millions of people over the past three decades. But thanks to the documentary film Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott’s Road to the Stars, he is also now known as a pioneer in commercial space travel who paid about $30 million for a trip to the International Space Station.

The story shows how Garriott dreamed of following his father into space, only to be stymied by NASA’s restriction on prohibiting anyone with eyesight flaws requiring glasses from being an astronaut. At 13, with his hopes dashed, Garriott started plotting how to launch his own trip into space as a civilian. His entrepreneurial approach to space travel eventually paid off with the trip of a lifetime in 2008.

And, indeed, much of the interview is about Garriott’s experiences in space.

GB: So was space as much fun as you expected it to be?

Garriott: Of course! But what’s interesting is…It was in very different ways than what I would have guessed. For example, launch you think of as this loud, shaky, scary moment. In fact, on a liquid-fueled rocket like the Soyuz, it’s almost perfectly silent and smooth on the inside. It’s much more cerebral, it feels much more like a ballet move, lifting you ever faster into the sky, than it does a sports car dropping the clutch at a green light. And the same thing’s true for re-entry. Also very smooth, and almost perfectly silent, even as you plunge into the atmosphere and create a plasma hotter than the surface of the sun that’s melting the vehicle around you. Out the window is a pretty surreal visual of the vehicle melting away, it?s only four inches from your shoulder. But it?s very smooth, very calm, not remotely scary, really.

However, by the third page of the interview, the discussion just manages touch on Garriott’s other passion, game design…

GB: So you plan to go up some more still?

Garriott: I might just sit up in my window in orbit and write the next game.

…before plunging right back into a discussion about space travel, private space travel, and the experience of being in space.

Which isn’t to say it’s not an interesting read, Dragons and Dragonettes, especially when the discussion veers into an analysis of the differences between Russia and the US at various levels (technical, social, etc.). Give it a read, if you have the time!

Motherboard has a lengthy interview with Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott, which bears the amusing title “Life’s a Game and Then You Die on Mars”. As has been the case with most interviews Garriott has given over the last little while, this one focuses both on Lord British’s journey into space and his career as a game developer. What’s different is that much of the space-related portion of this interview focuses on Garriott’s passion to see humans reach the surface of Mars one day.

He’d even volunteer to go himself and help settle the place! And failing that, he has a couple of backup plans:

It may or may not be able to occur within my adventuring lifetime, but if it were, I’d be one of the first people headed over to Mars. I’d take a one-way trip to Mars to help settle a new planet.

That being said, there’s still plenty of opportunities left on Earth. I’m going back to the Titanic this summer for the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking. I hope to — I’ve been trying to get it for a few years now and haven’t made much progress — but another big terrestrial adventure I’ve been trying to put together is visiting disappearing indigenous populations of the Earth.

There’s really very few truly remote and isolated civilizations, but there are some. Before they’re all completely absorbed, I have a strong interest in seeing some truly non-Westernized cultures and really understanding some of the differences of cultural identity and belief and organization has evolved in the earliest forms of humanity.

The article gets into great detail about a variety of science & technology issues that Garriott is passionate about, such as the X Prize, and also touches on Lord British’s concerns with how scientific research is funded and encouraged in America. I’ll leave it to all of you to read the section for yourselves — it’s quite interesting, and I wouldn’t do it justice with an excerpt — but I will say that the point he raises that I find most intersting is that there needs to be a quicker, more direct path between scientific discoveries and a market/private usage application thereof.

Random factoid I was unaware of:

Some cosmonauts lost their lives during those landings.

But that was 35 years ago, very, very early on in the program. The Soyuz is actually now considered a hundred to a thousand times safer then the Shuttle.

Naturally, the interview shifts gears toward the end, and puts some focus on Garriott’s history as a game developer and what he has planned next in that space. Interestingly — though I suppose not surprisingly — Lord British has not played the most recent game that has been favourably compared to the Ultima series: Bethesda Softworks’ Skyrim.

What have you been doing on the gaming front since your departure from NCSoft in 2008?

We’re working on a variety of names already. Either Akalabeth or Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game, just to do a tie back to the past. I have a game in production now that will set the stage for a ten-times-larger audience, aiming to do what we did before with MMORPGs, bringing ten times more people into role playing games.

Have you played some of the hot new RPGs, like Minecraft or Skyrim?

Love Minecraft. Haven’t played Skyrim, but from what I know it?s also phenomal. What I love about Minecraft is that it’s an open ended sand box that I enjoy making and playing personally. Skyrim has absolutely first class production valeus, but the company seems devoted to a depth of storytelling that I am, so I’m a big fan of both of those.

Anyhow, Dragons and Dragonettes, do read the whole thing; it’s a brilliant interview, easily the best one Garriott has given in recent months (and he has given many in that time!).

Ultima fan Toryn Farr alerted me to this article at Wired, in which it is made known that the eight minute-long horror movie that Richard Garriott shot during his visit to the International Space Station — “the first sci-fi movie shot in space” — will, in fact, be released at some point.

Good news! Following many reports over the last few days that the first-ever science fiction film to actually be filmed in space was being kept from release by NASA, there is now word that the space agency has relented and that Apogee of Fear will see the light of day after all.

The eight-minute film was shot by Richard Garriott aboard the International Space Station on his trip there as a paid civilian in 2008. Based on a screenplay written for him by Tracy Hickman (best known as co-creator of the Dragonlance shared universe), Garriott made the film with the assistance of two NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut.

He had hoped to release it along with the documentary he made about following in his astronaut father Owen Garriott’s footsteps (Man on a Mission, which is playing in indie theaters across the country). But NASA put the kibosh on those plans without giving a great many specifics as to reasons, except that it was outside the scope of Garriott’s agreement with them. It seemed as though Apogee of Fear would remain hidden from the public eye.

Not any more, it would seem! Wired does go on to note, however, that NASA would appear to be reserving the right to make selective edits to the movie. Still, the possibility that we might see the movie officially released in some form is now much, much greater!

Ever wonder what The Blackrock Sword would look like in D&D?

Well…someone crafted a spec sheet for it, for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. So now you can say that you know.

Just how did BioWare write The Old Republic?

each story line gets passed back and forth between the writers, artists and animators. A line like “and then a the annoying Gungan is hurled face first into an exploding sun” is easy to write, but technically almost impossible to realise. It’s initially up to the world designers to help decide what is and isn’t going to work.

“They go through with a fine-toothed comb and look at everything that’s required,” Erickson explains. “They look at the pacing, and look at how it would feel in the world, and they’re gonna give us feedback and say, “this whole scene here where you have 700 people here, and they’re all going to fly in the air and then get juggled and then turn into tarantulas? We don’t have a way to do any of that.”

“Then it’s gonna go to the cinematic team, it’s gonna go to the art team – they’re gonna look at all the requirements, everybody gives their thumbs up, and then the writers start writing.”

Then all that’s left to is write hundreds of hours of dialogue. This is not straightforward.

The more I play SWTOR and the deeper I get into its plot, the more I appreciate just what a massive undertaking creating a MMORPG with such a strong single-player narrative component must have been. Even something like making sure that key quest landmarks reset in a timely manner after being interacted with must have been mind-bogglingly difficult. On one hand, you don’t want a queue of players standing around in the desert, each waiting for his turn to click on the rock under which the information cache is buried. And on the other hand, you don’t want it to reset too quickly either, lest someone figure out an exploit. SWTOR seems to have found a good balance, but I am not sure I want to know how many people went insane trying to figure that out.

Related: SWTOR won the Guiness World Record for voice acting. Over 200,000 lines of dialogue and more than 200 voice actors attached to the project. Yeah…that’s a pretty solid win.

And: If you’ve ever wondered how a Hutt might actually fight, BioWare has the answer: giant freakin’ mechs.

Age of Booty actually looks like it might be very fun to play!

It also, of course, wins in either the “Most Unfortunate Game Title” or “Most Amusing Double Entendre in a Game Title” category. I can’t decide which.

I am quite intrigued by the Lytro camera concept.

The idea behind the Lytro concept is that, instead of capturing a single image, the entire “light field” entering the camera is recorded. Lytro’s software then performs the “next steps” in the image processing chain (stuff that most digital cameras would normally perform before saving an image), allowing the user to adjust even the focal point in the image.

You have to really see it in action to understand just how powerful an idea that is, so I would direct all of you to visit the Lytro website. With the right software, you could even use these cameras to create 3D reproductions of scenes from just a handful of images…to say nothing of the fact that you’d never have to worry about an out-of-focus snapshot ever again!

Finally! A Swiss Army Knife with a 1 TB drive included!

Because we all needed one of those, right?

Bethesda owns all rights to the Fallout name.

So much for Interplay, it seems.

On Dragon Age’s cinematics.

The BioWare blog has an interview with Jonathan Perry, the cinematic lead for the Dragon Age series. It sounds like he has a pretty fun job.

On the new XCOM game (the strategy title, not the FPS).

Rock, Paper, Shotgun links to a set of screenshots from Firaxis’ newly-announced remake of Enemy Unknown, and offers up some commentary on the good and the worrisome from the set.

Related: Why should you care about this XCOM remake from Firaxis? GameInformer tells you why..

See also: A more recent article/summary of thoughts from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, with at least 50% less worry!

Seven things to know about HTML5!

Including some stuff that aspiring browser game developers might want to take note of!

Steam just topped 40 million users.

Does Valve even need to make games anymore?

Whatever social ills may be plaguing it, the UK does seem to have an awesome education system.

And they are in the process of overhauling it a bit, so as to enhance the technical side of its curriculum, aiming to make it more “open source” and to give it greater focus on computer science.

There could be as many as 100 billion alien worlds in the Milky Way.

Related: Should we re-think the definition of “life”? With so many potential worlds, some of which will no doubt fall inside the habitable zones of their stars, we may need to. Assuming alien life does in fact exist, would we recognize it as life if we encountered it? Is the sort of life we see all around us on Earth the only kind of life that exists in the Universe?

Hell…is the notion of the “habitable zones” around stars even valid for anything other than evaluating whether it might be possible, in some dim and distant future, that human beings might be able to set foot on and/or inhabit an extrasolar world one day?

EA had an amazing year, especially on the digital distribution front.

So much so, it seems to have caught them slightly by surprise, prompting a bit of a re-org:

Moving into 2012, Electronic Arts has made some key organizational changes to its internal structure in hopes of better executing its digital initiatives. Following the launch of the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, the online service FIFA Ultimate Team, and the company’s Origin distribution platform, EA says it hopes to make digital goods a larger part of its overall strategy.

Related: Zynga just poached Barry Cottle from EA. He had previously headed up their mobile/social/casual gaming division. Cottle’s division would have been at or near the forefront of EA’s digital successes.

Syndicate is coming to Good Old Games on Thursday!

And GOG is having a bit of a contest to celebrate:

Mission:
Assemble your team of cyborgs, give us your Team Name, Method of Operation, and any other relevant information you’d like.

Go on, spread your influence across the globe and tell us how.

Bounty:
1 free copy of Syndicate for the 10 posters who have the best Syndicate team. We’ll be reading through all of your posts (Hello, discordiac, our new marketing manager who “volunteered” for this job!) and picking the ones that we like best.

Rules:
1. Only one entry post per user. Feel free to comment & edit until the contest closes.
2. You may enter into similar contests that we are running on Twitter and Facebook, but only once via each different channel.
3. We will be picking 10 of our favorite teams from this thread to win their free copies of Syndicate.
4. The contest will end on Thursday the 19th of January 2012 at 7:00 AM EST.

I guess submissions can be left in the comments of the above-linked news post, or submitted via Facebook and Twitter.

Also: judging by the latest tweet from Paul Barnett, the timing of this release all still part of a grander plan. Actually, the release is rather timely, since a co-op-enabled demo version of the upcoming Syndicate FPS will, it has just been announced, be released later this month. (The full game is slated for release in February.)

How ScummVM survived…and kept adventure gaming alive.

LucasArts isn’t exactly known for being particularly tolerant of fan projects involving its games or works derived from its projects. So how, exactly, did the fan-made, open-source multi-engine-supporting framework ScummVM managed to survive and grow beyond its original developers’ wildest expectations?

Ars Technica’s historical piece on ScummVM is a grand read. Do check it out.

Forget Angry Birds plush toys…now you can have soft, cuddly, heavily armed Worms plushies!

IGS’ Worms key ring plush line launches with four characters – Original Worm, Army Worm, Pirate Worm and the Super Sheep.

In addition to the collectable-sized key rings, the Worms will also be available in a variety of regular plush sizes.

And hey, whaddya know? Worms United was just released on Good Old Games! Convenient!

The origin of Stonehenge’s inner stones has been found!

Apparently, they came from a quarry about 160 miles away. How they were transported over that staggering distance is still a mystery, however.

More Skyrim moddy goodness!

If, you know, summoning zombie dragons and dual-wielding greatswords is your thing.

Tonight’s post brought to you by too much starch:

Thin mattress, too.

Johnny Wood very kindly reminded me this morning that the Richard Garriott-focused documentary, Man on a Mission, has been released. The documentary chronicles Richard Garriott’s efforts to follow in his father’s footsteps and journey into space.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

And here’s how Space.com describes the show:

Richard Garriott is not your ordinary nerd.

Yes, he is a self-proclaimed space fan and develops computer games for a living. But he’s also the millionaire founder of the “Ultima Online” computer game franchise, uses a robot to telecommute between New York and his Austin office, and is one of the few people ever to pay $30 million for a cosmic trip to the International Space Station.

And there’s one more thing: Richard Garriott is the son of Owen Garriott, a former NASA astronaut who flew on the U.S. Skylab station and space shuttle. He is the first American second-generation spaceflyer ever to follow a parent off the planet.

It’s that combination of spaceflight and computer games that comes through in “Man on a Mission,” a new documentary launching into theaters today (Jan. 13) across the United States. The film, directed by veteran documentary director Mike Woolf, chronicles Garriott’s 2008 flight to the International Space Station.

There’s been a lot of other Garriott-related coverage in the online media of late, so here’s a round-up of some of the recent interviews and appearances that Lord British has given and made:

• GameInformer has audio of an interview with Garriott, in which he discusses both Man on a Mission and what he has in mind next in his game development pursuits.
• Space.com has a 30-image gallery of stills from Man on a Mission.
• HomeStation Magazine has an interview with Richard Garriott, which is mostly focused on social networking and Portalarium.
• On the National Science and Engineering Week Facebook page, there are a handful of photos of Richard Garriott, who made an appearance at an event of theirs.
• Lord British also, evidently, made an appearance on Viasat Explorer recently.
• NPR also has a review of Man on a Mission which focuses on the “like father, like son” angle.

Also: While Richard Garriott was up in space, he evidently filmed a short horror movie entitled Apogee of Fear:

“Man on a Mission,” which opened Jan.13, chronicles Garriott’s journey to the station in October 2008, a trip that cost him $30 million of his own money. While up there, the video-game designer made a playful eight-minute film called “Apogee of Fear,” with some standout acting assistance from a Russian cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts.

“Apogee of Fear” is the first science-fiction movie ever made in space, Garriott said, and he would like to let the public see it. There has been some demand, with the Smithsonian Institution even asking to put the film in its permanent archives because of its historical value.

But NASA hasn’t given the necessary go-ahead, according to Garriott.

“NASA has, so far, decided that since it’s filmed onboard NASA hardware and uses NASA astronauts as actors, they have resisted me releasing it publicly,” Garriott told SPACE.com Wednesday (Jan. 11).

Hopefully we’ll get to see it one day!

Ultima and Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott first filed a lawsuit against NCSoft in 2009, claiming that the games company had forced him to leave in the wake of his 2008 trip into space. He won that lawsuit, but NCSoft evidently appealed, sending both parties back to court.

And now, Garriott has prevailed over his former employers, again.

A three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a $32 million judgement against NCSoft in a contract dispute with Ultima creator Richard Garriott that dates back to his departure from the company in 2008.

Garriott filed suit against NCSoft in 2009, saying he had been forced out of the company following a 2008 space flight, contrary to NCSoft’s earlier public statements that he had left voluntarily.

The distinction had significant implications for the flexibility of Garriott’s stock options in the company, which were only valid for 90 days if he left of his own accord, but would last until June 2011 if NCSoft terminated him.

A federal jury awarded Garriott $28 million in lost profits last July after a three-and-a-half day trial followed by three hours of deliberation. The $32 million appellate court ruling adds interest and attorney’s fees accrued during the trial period.

“NCSoft schemed to avoid its obligations to [Garriott] at the trial court and on appeal, and neither the jury nor the 5th Circuit bought any of it,” said Stephen E. Fox, Garriott’s lead counsel in the suit. “Contracts have consequences, and as the Court of Appeals explained, the trial court is not a trial run.”

An NCSoft spokesperson said the company was “disappointed” with the decision.

I, for one, am glad to see Garriott prevail over NCSoft; that whole chain of events was dirty pool. And in the end, Garriott was awarded an additional $4 million, a fine pot-sweetening if ever there was one.

So, how much of that $32 million will be invested in the completion of Britannia Manor III, do you think?

Risen 2 just keeps looking better and better.

I mean, it already had pirates. And Piranha Bytes (the guys who did the first Gothic games) are developing it. And it’s the sequel to Risen, one of the more promising — if underappreciated — RPGs in recent years. That is a fair bit of awesome right there.

But what if…just…what if those pirates were also wizards?

Another week, another awesome Skyrim media release!

This time showcasing elves, lizard men, cat men, and orcses!

More Mass Effect 3 media, too!

New screenshots (mostly showcasing combat scenarios and enemies), and a visually stunning new trailer.

On passwords…

…I trust by now that everyone has seen this XKCD comic?

I still remember it!

Meet the online password generator it inspired!

Internet Explorer 9 leads the pack for malware blocking?

Apparently, yes.

I know…I was kind of surprised, too.

The Russian government has impounded the world’s first floating nuclear reactor.

I bet you didn’t even know that someone — a Russian corporation, now apparently bankrupt — was building a floating nuclear reactor.

I know I didn’t.

C++0x becomes a standard.

A long-awaited, much-needed update to the C++ programming language.

That’s one way to settle a legal dispute!

Notch, creator of Minecraft, has challenged Bethesda Softworks to a game of Quake 3 to settle their legal differences over Mojang’s upcoming new game, Scrolls:

“I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors,” Notch writes. “We select one level, your select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.”

“If we win, you drop the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with.”

“I am serious, by the way,” he adds.

In case you hadn’t heard, Bethesda is suing Mojang because, in their opinion, the name Scrolls infringes on Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls property.

Finally! World of Warcraft has lost a million subscribers this year.

The first signs that Blizzard’s MMORPG juggernaut is beginning to wane are finally — finally! — showing.

Private space travel firm given approval for ISS mission.

I don’t know whether Richard Garriott has any involvement with the SpaceX project, but I’m sure he’s pretty happy at the news regardless.

CryENGINE3 is now free…at least non-commercially.

The folks at Crytek have released the SDK for CryENGINE3 (the engine that powers Crysis 2), and it is free for non-commercial use (e.g. tinkering at home, use in schools, etc.). There is a licensing fee (which you need to contact them about) that comes into force if you want to release anything you make commercially.

HP exits the hardware game.

Taking a page out of IBM’s book, Hewlett-Packard has decided to spin off its PC-building business unit so as to focus primarily on enterprise services and solutions. Which, I guess, means that they’ll continue cranking out servers and networking gear, but not laptops or consumer desktops. Oh, and they’ll presumably continue to build printers, since they’re mostly known for that.

Oh…yeah. They’re also shuttering all further development of webOS devices, and are currently attempting to decide the fate of Palm’s mobile OS.

Tonight’s post brought to you by not getting it:

n00b!

I spotted this tweet on one of my many and varied Twitter search columns in TweetDeck this morning

Chairman of Space Adventures, this guy.

Which led to this picture:

And yes, he is still wearing the serpent necklace, it seems.

No word on where Lord British’s blushing bride is, though.

Blue’s News reported late last week that it had been announced that Queen Mary, University of London, would be awarding an honorary Doctorate of Science to Richard Garriott ” for his work promoting the importance of science, mathematics and space exploration.” Apparently, the award was actually presented on Thursday, the 21st of July.

British-born Dr Garriott has explored the wreck of the Titanic, hunted meteors in Antarctica and in 2008 realised his lifelong dream of travelling in a space shuttle to the International Space Station. His support for Queen Mary’s outreach programmes in local schools, and help in launching inspiring competitions have captured imaginations and encouraged children to study science at school and university.

The award-winning computer game developer is also an entrepreneur, philanthropist, adventure traveller and space explorer, whose Ultima series of role-playing games remains one of the most successful franchises in gaming history.

Professor McOwan, Dean for Taught Programmes in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, commented: “Richard’s spectacular life story, storming from video games pioneer to explorer, scientist and space entrepreneur is the stuff of modern-day legend. While changing the world around us Richard has also been an outstanding champion in helping us to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers here in London and globally. We are delighted that his talents and drive can be recognised by his award of a DSc from Queen Mary.

On receiving his award, Dr Garriott commented: “Being an early pioneer of the computer games industry has come with many benefits, but academic involvement was not one of them. Working with Queen Mary over the last few years to help develop academic outreach to UK students has been a singular joy; it has allowed me to contribute academically in ways I missed out on in the early days of the industry. It will be a personal highlight of my life, to receive an honorary degree from Queen Mary – it will fill in a notable gap in my personal story.”

Richard’s most recent collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London, Venture Thinking and GovEd was to create Our Space – a special online video gallery of some of Richard’s favourite moments in space…

So I guess we should all call him Dr. Garriott now?

Update: Photo!

Gotta love the English academic garments, eh?

Thanks goes to Browncoat Jayson in the comments for the link to the photo.

Space Shuttle Atlantis leaves the ISS for the last time.

End of an era. Sad.

So just how did NASA train the Apollo astronauts?

Wired marks the anniversary of the first man on the moon with a gallery of images showing the strange, often gruelling things that Apollo astronauts were subjected to as part of their training.

Are AAA games too darn long?

I’m generally of the opinion that they are not, although I’ll grant the point that some titles — The Witcher, Dragon Age — do chew up a darn lot (30 to 50) of hours for a complete playthrough. That’s good in many respects, but one almost always encounters parts of the story which illustrate all too clearly that it’s not always easy (or possible) to tell an engaging story for two days straight.

I suppose it comes down to investment. If you’re paying AAA prices, you want an AAA time investment. In the social and mobile gaming market(s), where game prices are typically lower, there are both economic and practical arguments for keeping games shorter.

Apple more than doubled their profits in the last fiscal quarter.

Actually, their profits shot up 124%, tipping the scales at around $7 billion. Naturally, strong sales of iPhones and iPads were responsible for much of this, although Apple computers have also (I gather) been seeing record sales figures. The fact that app users are buying 61% more apps compared to last year also helps. China was evidently a key factor in all these record-setting results.

Apple is now trading north of $400 a share on the stock market, and that’s probably gone up yet more with today’s release of OS X Lion.

Of course, not all is flowers and unicorns; China is proving to be a problem as well as a boon, with fake Apple stores springing up in places.

The FBI rounds up more ‘Anonymous’ suspects.

A sting operation in London saw the arrest of a 16-year old, while at least 14 others have been detained in raids in the US.

Don’t make excuses: reframe them!

If you haven’t started reading Lifehacker’s various tips and tricks for bettering yourself, maybe now’s a good time to start.

Google will start detecting whether your PC is infected.

Well…sort of. They will look for a particular kind of malware, and warn you in your search results if it is detected on your system.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

Battlestar Galactica reference nonwithstanding, the story here actually concerns Gameloft, a mobile game developer that has been churning out a lot of top-notch titles lately. It turns out that there may be a sinister reason for that, as one of their former employees has revealed that Gameloft developers work insane hours…as in: they make the “EA Spouse” issue seem tame by comparison.

Most Mass Effect players are missing out, it seems.

Only 18% of Mass Effect players opt to play the game as the female Commander Shepard. I’m sure there’s all sorts of reasons why that is, and frankly I don’t really intend to get into those (nor do I much care).

But really…82% of Mass Effect players are missing out; Jennifer Hale is a much better voice actor than Mark Meer, and the game’s narrative is just that much more enjoyable when playing as FemShep…purely on account of Hale’s talent.

How to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors!

It. Is. Science!

Who wouldn’t want to blow craters in asteroids?

For science, of course.

Damn consoles.

Apparently, according to EA’s figures, consoles now account for 40% of the gaming industry.

Well…shit.

Tonight’s post brought to you by stairs:

Ultima creator and second-generation/private astronaut Richard Garriott is in the news again, rather literally this time. Lord British has penned an opinion piece for Austin newspaper The Statesman, in which he discusses the beginning of “a new space era” in the post-Space Shuttle world.

When the space shuttle arrived in 1981, it was revolutionary. It was the first reusable crewed orbital space vehicle.

The shuttle proved we could not only launch but also service satellites in orbit, as we have done with the Hubble Space Telescope. Over the years, it facilitated construction of the International Space Station, something no other vehicle could have done. For just over 10 years, humanity has lived nonstop beyond the surface of the Earth through the continuous occupation of the space station.

Today, we need vehicles that work beyond low Earth orbit, something the shuttle was never designed to do.

With the retirement of the shuttle program, many Americans are rightly concerned about the future of America’s human spaceflight program. I have read innumerable headlines claiming that America is abandoning human exploration of space; nothing is further from the truth.

The new American space race has begun. This new race promises to create safer, cheaper spaceships that will explore farther, sooner. More importantly, in addition to exploration and fundamental research, this new era will return economic value from space resources like energy and minerals and microgravity research in fields such as biology.

Do read the whole thing; it’s a lengthy analysis of emerging technologies and trends in space travel and orbital payload delivery. Garriott may be returning to games with Portalarium, but it’s clear that he’s not done with the space race just yet.

JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, recently interviewed Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott, and has posted Lord British’s answers to their many questions online.

And in truth, it’s a very lengthy, wide-ranging interview, almost entirely focused on Garriott’s second career as a private astronaut (a term, he explains, he prefers be used, as opposed to “space tourist”). It covers his desire to explore the unknown, being a private astronaut (and a second-generation astronaut at that!), what space flight was really like, the medical and physical requirements of space travel, the view from the International Space Station (and where the view is best), space flight, the emotional impacts of the experience…and Garriott’s dream of space travel that is much, much cheaper and therefore open to more members of the general population.

Here’s a taste:

Q. Your private space trip reportedly cost $30 million. Why did you decide to spend so much money on this trip?

Well, I helped start the company Space Adventures specifically so that I could find my way into space. And all of my investment in that company was towards the idea of reaching space, which is a desire I’ve had since I was quite young. So I knew even before we started that the price would be very high. And no matter what the price was, if I could afford that price, I intended to take this trip.

Why did I want to go to space? Because I like adventures into unknown worlds. Going into the unknown I find to be one of the most fascinating aspects of human possibility that I can imagine, whether that is exploring a cave in my own backyard in Texas, or exploring a rarely visited part of the Amazon jungle, or visiting space, or even visiting a virtual reality on a computer. I find all of those explorations to be similarly motivating.

As we say online, read the whole thing!

I need to take a day or two off from the site, as I’m feeling rather burnt out with all this big news that’s been breaking. It’s been a headlong rush into awesome, but it has left me feeling a bit worn down. Regular posting will likely resume on Monday, at which point I will attempt to cut down to size the backlog of links and articles I have been accumulating.

In the meantime, here’s a couple items of interest to stimulate off-topic discussion.

The water-fountain star.

Astronomers have found a star — relatively closeby, too, at a distance of only 750 light years — that shoots geysers of water from its poles, ejecting 100,000,000 times the volume of the Amazon River every second at a velocity of 120,000 MPH.

The stream of gasses is about 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit, so the water is not liquid, but rather atoms of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, the building block of water. When it gets into space and the molecules interact with the dust surrounding the star, however, and the atoms probably combine to form water ice.

[Lars E. Kristensen, a postdoctoral student at the Leiden University in the Netherlands, an author of the paper] and the European astronomers described the jets of being made up of “bullets” of water but that is a bit misleading. The water actually pulses, like a fire hose with an unsteady water supply.

Kristensen says the pulses fly out at 50 kilometers a second, or about 120,000 mph. As a pulse starts to slow, it is rammed from behind by pulses moving faster behind it, producing something like a bow shock wave. Those collisions are what the telescope sees and what he described as bullets.

Okay, so the star doesn’t quite literally shoot water out of its poles. And the ejecta has a temperature in the area of 180,000 Farenheit, so it’s not like it would be liquid water even if it did. Still…very cool.

The Lytro camera.

It’s a bit hard to describe exactly what this “light field camera” does, but basically it captures as much of the inbound light from a scene as it possibly can, from all points in the scene, and leaves aside things like focus and exposure until post-processing.

In other words, you just shoot pictures with the camera…and then worry later — when you’re editing the recorded images on your home computer — about where in the image you want to focus, or what point(s) in the image you want to use to determine exposure.

The possibilities are endless.

Being raised in a city…puts you at greater risk of mental disorder.

Stress, apparently, is again the ultimate culprit here. Not that any of you should be surprised.

Chinese warships playing chicken with Japanese territory.

It’s probably nothing.

Saab is out of money.

As in: they lack even the necessary cash to pay their employees.

What’s Swedish for “boned”?

Tonight’s post brought to you by engineering:

Been there!

Dark energy is real!

And it’s speeding up the expansion of spacetime.

Speaking of space…let’s talk about orphan planets!

Japanese and Kiwi astronomers have discovered the first orphan planets in the Milky Way, and apparently they’re massive (as in: Jupiter-sized).

And numerous, too:

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, explains David Bennett, a NASA-funded co-author of the study. “Our survey is like a population census,” he said. “We sampled a portion of the galaxy and, based on [this] data, can estimate overall numbers in the galaxy.” Bennett and his colleagues believe there may be twice as many lonely planets as stars, adding up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Aww.

Hey, what’s that “aww” for? Maybe the planets like being out on their own, roaming the stars with no clingy stars dragging them back into orbit all the time.

Help my friend Ian raise funds for MS research!

My friend Ian Crowe rides in the RONA MS Bike Tour every year to help raise funds “for all the people with multiple sclerosis who need help financially to get through life and to help increase funding for research so that one day they will find a cure.”

MMO games and their avatars.

Photographer Robbie Cooper lines up real-life photos of MMO gamers with screenshots of their virtual selves.

Cuter in real life.

Actually, it’s an interesting list — some of the comparisons are touching, others cringe-inducing, and others stereotypical — and I’m sure there’s the potential for a psychology paper examining the implications of how people see and present themselves in the virtual world.

Not that I intend to embark on such an analysis.

Verifying passwords by how you type ‘em.

It makes sense, actually. Most of us, when we sit down at our usual computer and log in to our usual services, type our passwords almost by rote; “muscle memory” does more of the work than actual memory, and we “recall” the password less by consciously calling it to mind and more by simply executing a series of hand movements that ensure the appropriate keys get pressed in the right sequence.

And usually, things like the time it takes to enter the password, the force applied to each key, and the minute delays between each key-press remain relatively constant.

Whereas someone else typing in our password would type it with a very different timing.

For once, I agree with the cops.

Okay, they actually removed this lady from the Amtrak train she was on because of disorderly conduct. But there’s a bit more to the story:

For sixteen solid hours after she boarded an Amtrak train in Oakland, KATU.com reports, she yapped loudly into her goddamned phone. SIXTEEN HOURS. And she was sitting in a designated “quiet car.”

After several passengers asked her, pleaded with her — begged her just out a sense of basic human decency — to stop yelling at the top of her lungs into the greasy little piece of plastic wedged inside her clammy paw, she completely ignored them. Then, a passenger who had reached the breaking point finally mustered the courage to stand up to her. So Beard “got aggressive.”

But wait! There’s a happy ending! These things never have happy endings, but this one does! Conductors stopped the train in Oregon, where hero members of the Salem Police Department were waiting to escort Beard off the train.

Just hazarding a guess here, but based on the image of the woman that accompanies the article, I’m thinking that the excruciatingly long/loud converstaion was probably also fairly banal and overly personal in nature. The sort that isn’t just annoying, but also very awkward to have to overhear.

Sometimes, I’m glad that airplanes (unlike trains) don’t get cell reception.

Tonight’s post brought to you by Jimi:

Trippy!

Bonus Jimi:

Trippier.

Oh, that lying TSA…

So it appears that Texas is about to pass a bill banning the TSA from randomly patting down would-be air travellers; the TSA must, according to the bill, demonstrate probable cause before administering a physical search. Predictably, the “security” agency has responded by deeming the Texan law “unconstitutional”…according to the Supremacy Clause. Which, if my reading of the relevant portion of the Constitution is correct, is basically an outright lie.

Then again, I’m not a legal scholar.

Mary Poppins was right!

A spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. And in the case of certain antibiotics, it also boosts the medicine’s effectiveness against persistent strains of bacteria like staph.

So why exactly did Microsoft buy Skype

And does it have anything to do with the rumours that Microsoft might also be looking to buy up Nokia? If you think about it, there is a real opportunity for some high-powered web-driven mobile communications magic to happen there.

Speaking of Microsoft…

…they’re apparently adding support for CentOS to their Hyper-V virtualization platform. Weird.

Grow a mini-garden in an Altoids tin!

Because your office deserves some greenery, but space is limited.

Genetic precursor for obesity confirmed.

And actually, it turns out that genes behave in rather fascinating ways:

…the mother’s KLF14 gene controls other genes associated with body-mass index (obesity), insulin, glucose levels and cholesterol. This means that KLF14 is a “master switch” that controls and shows the connections between metabolic traits.

Researchers made this discovery by recruiting 800 UK female twin participants and studying over 20,000 genes in subcutaneous fat biopsies. They also looked at genes in subcutaneous fat biopsies from Icelandic participants. Between the two studies, researchers discovered the connections between the KLF14 gene and distant genes associated with metabolic traits.

“This is the first major study that shows how small changes in one master regulator gene can cause a cascade of other metabolic effects in other genes,” said Spector. “This has great therapeutic potential particularly as by studying large detailed populations such as the twins we hope to find more of these regulators.”

In a way, I see this as bad news, because it makes it easier for people to now say “I have bad genes!” and ignore the fact that they subsist on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and fried chicken.

Apparently, we have a bent galaxy.

A newly-discovered arm of the Milky Way has shed some light on the shape of our swirling home in the cosmos. Apparently, it’s bent, like the cap of a beer bottle after being bent by the bottle opener.

Social media…now for tinpot despots!

A Britisn journalist gets into a Twitter-based spat with the ruler of Rwanda.

And speaking of tinpot dictators…

…Moammar Gadhafi is kind of a jerk:

Fill an inflatable boat with explosives. Crew it with mannequins. Send it out to sea in search of a humanitarian aid ship to destroy. Behold the desperate ingenuity of Moammar Gadhafi.

I suppose stranger things have been done in wartime. And as soon as I can think of examples, I’ll list them.

This is awesome: a lady snapped a picture of Endeavour’s launch…from the window of a plane!

She also grabbed a video:

Best music video ever: Pomplamoose takes on Angry Birds!

I LOLd. And for quite some time, too.

Tonight’s post brought to you by George:

Spaced out!

Firefox logo spotted in space!

Actually, it’s just the variable star V838 Monocerotis. And the colours are wrong. But even so, the shape is…well, see for yourself.

Rising gas prices take their toll.

Fuel retailers are seeing higher numbers of “gas-related thievery” (that is: drive-offs). Fuel tanks and mobile refilling platforms used by contractors are also being targeted, and bulk thefts are becoming increasingly common.

Even Wal*Mart is feeling the squeeze, both in their own costs (food prices have been subject to increase recently due to transport costs) and at the checkout counter.

Major GPS company hands over customer GPS data to police…what could go wrong?

Well, it turns out that when TomTom supplied “anonymous” user GPS data it had collected to the Dutch authorities, police in the Netherlands used that information — which included historical data about driving speed — to set speed traps in areas where speed limit violations were, according to the data, common.

Apparently, TomTom “never foresaw this kind of use” when it handed over the data.

Video: the Aflac duck quacks again!

After the previous voice actor got fired, Aflac commercials went the silent film route for a couple of months (and were pretty funny, actually). But now a new VA has been hired, and the duck can quack once more.

Tonight’s post brought to you by whatever this thing is:

Your guess is as good as mine.

I need a vacation.

Fidel Castro has resigned.

And with his departure come announcements of plans to vastly liberalize Cuban society. Cubans will evidently be allowed to buy and sell property again (for the first time in 50 years). Cuban president Raul Castro (Fidel’s son) also proposed changes to the structure of Communist party leadership, and articulated a desire to limit top governmental positions to a maximum of two five-year terms.

Swedish file-sharers apply for religious status.

This is certainly a rather novel way to avoid prosecution under piracy and related copyright laws: declare that it is your religion. Kopimism, as the group asking for these protections explains, deems CTRL+C and CTRL+V as its holy symbols, and also regards closed-source software as being the moral equivalent of slavery.

The first few comments are pretty hilarious, too.

Switched is dead; long live Switched!.

My favourite tech news site is no more…or, rather, is no longer what it once was. That’s right, Dragons and Dragonettes: Switched has been devoured by the Huffington beast, and is now known as Huffpost Tech.

Ugh.

Titan, the Saturnian moon, may have an ocean.

Apparently, Titan’s moment of inertia suggests that it is denser near its surface than at its core, which suggests that beneath its icy shell, the moon is really just a big ball of water. Or some sort of liquid, at any rate.

Battlefield 3: 12 minutes of awesome.

I so want to try this game. And I’m so sure my computer will only barely support it.

I miss the Britain of old.

Rules of play for golfers during and after bombing raids by the Germans in 1940. No penalty shall be incurred in the course of removing shrapnel from the field of play!

And on a totally unrelated note, cursing apparently has a “powerful pain-killing effect”.

Not just for catharsis!

Tonight’s post brought to you by Boba:

Mr. Fett, if you please.