Things We’ve Learned From Computer Games

Many people believe that you cannot learn a single thing from computer games. However, there is a list with arguments that computer games obviously teach you a lot about real life:

• If you lool down, you can’t see your feet
• To heal injuries it is absolutely enough to rest for a few seconds in a corner or to sleep for one hour.
• A well-balanced meal heals bullet wounds and crippledness.
• To pick up any item just run over it.
• If an item is more useful than the item you are currently holding in your hands, it will be replaced automatically. The old item goes to your backpack.
• If you’re packing your rucksack carefully, there is always some more space for a rocket launcher.
• Princesses are exclusively rescued by Italian plumbers.
• You can slow down time, if necessary.
• To operate on human beeings it is enough to read threw a medical news paper.
• Frogs die in the water.
• To repair your car, just drive your car with 100 mph through the repair shop.
• You don’t need to go to toilet. Never.
• Doors can only be burst open if they are much brighter than other doors or the environment.
• In locked crates there are always items more valuable than in unlocked boxes. ALWAYS.
• Hard work and a good education does not result in experience and knowledge. But running around and killing monsters does.
• Every problem can be sovled by force.
• If you loose a race, it can be replayed as long as you are not the winner. Your challenger does not take it amiss.
• The cake is a lie.
• You are never too early, but always too late.
• Guards mostly walk through dark corridors without switching the light on.
• If you don’t know how to go on, just combine all items you possess. If this doesn’t work, go back were you came from. You have probably overlooked something.
• If you are pulling out a gun of your backpack, you will automatically see a crosshair, no matter in which direction you’re looking.
• The size of the crosshair is different for each weapon.
• If you’re reloading a weapon despite your magazine is not empty, the wasted munition is not lost.
• Every enemy dies, if you’re shooting frequently enough into his feet.
• If you are hit by a bullet, you will see red, but just for a few seconds.
• A wooden fence protects you from granate explosions.
• The Allies have won WWII with the help of a huge amount of lone warriors that eliminated strategic targets one by one.
• A military education can be done within five minits and three simple steps. First shooting training, second close combat training, third a parkour.
• You can travel to any place using your map. Only condition: You have been there before.
• Military troups are produced in barracks. A production cycle requires about 30 seconds for each unit.
• If you are shooting a corpse into the head, no blood splatters anymore (at least in Germany).
• Zombies only die if you a) shoot em into their heads or b) to souse them with gasoline to burn them down. Otherwise they will stand up again if you leave the room.
• Sooner or later you’re going to save the world single-handedly.
• For communication speech is not explicitely needed. Bending your neck is simply enough.
• A hellgate in your garden isn’t a reason to worry about.
• If you get out of water your wet clothes will dry within seconds.
• Lighting night vision goggles are also invisible in the dark.
• Flashlights work either forever or just for a few minutes. Afterwards they recharge themselves automatically.
• Despite 30 kg package you can sprint for hours. If you are carrying light package, you are exhausted more easily.
• If you are carrying a knife, you run faster. It does not matter how heavy your package is.
• There are rare items everywhere. You just have to search for them.
• Aliens never come in piece.
• Every problem can be solved using a holy granade.
• If you repaint your car, the police does not recognize you anymore.
• Red things explode. Always. Barrels, the color does not matter, do the same in 90% of the cases.
• Persons only say two or three phrases. Afterwards they repeat themselves.
• You can never carry more than 99 objects of the same type at the same time.
• 30 spear throwers can beat a tank.
• Sho-ryu-ken is the best phrase to start a brawl
• Pain killers also heal bullet wounds. Heart defibrilators also do.
• The bigger the boobs the more dangerous the woman (WTF – that’s true).
• Everything can be upgraded.
• All items can be created from one to three resources.
• Eventhough a big catastrophe is comming up, you have enough time to do some shopping.
• People knocking over guys in orange suites get bonus points.
• With cordless screwdrivers you can kill people. You can also blow up walls with them.
• If you die in Germany you will blink. Afterwards your body disappears.
• Also animals carry weapons around. They just don’t use them but drop them if they die.
• If you experience memory loss, you are going to save the world.
• Not every wolf has a fur. The same applies to bears.
• In Germany people have green blood, or grey, or black.
• Water kills you.
• Armor for female characters is effective despite it only covers a third of the body.
• Either you have gasoline or you have a chain saw but never both items at the same time.
• Wild bigs are human’s strongest enemies.
• If you can’t shoot it, collect it.

Browser Makers Hope WebGL Will Remake 3D

If you want to see the scale of browser makers’ ambition to remake not just the Web but computing itself, look no farther than a new 3D technology called WebGL. The WebGL vision is simple. You’re running around in a video game universe, blasting radioactive aliens – but you got there by visiting a Web site, not by installing the game on your PC. This sort of computationally demanding chore contrasts sharply to with today’s Web, whose top-notch programmers strain to reproduce bare-bones versions of the rich capabilities open to applications running natively on a computer.

WebGL, while only a nascent attempt to catch up, is real. WebGL now is a draft standard for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web. It got its start with Firefox backer Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which oversees the OpenGL graphics interface, but now the programmers behind browsers from Apple, Google, and Opera Software are also involved. Perhaps more significant than formal standards work, though, is WebGL support in three precursors of today’s browsers – Minefield for Mozilla’s Firefox, WebKit for Apple’s Safari, and Chromium for Google’s Chrome. Opera has started implementing WebGL, too, said Tim Johansson, Opera’s lead graphics developer.

With a little tinkering – check the instructions and caveats below – you can give it a whirl, too. Overall, I was favorably impressed with the technology. Its performance certainly isn’t enough for a competitive first-person shooter, but it’s approaching utility for casual gaming. And because of how WebGL elements can be integrated with the rest of a Web site’s code, it’s got some advantages.

What is WebGL

WebGL is one of a handful of efforts under way to boost the processing power available to Web applications. It marries two existing technologies. First is JavaScript, the programming language widely used to give Web pages intelligence and interactivity. Although JavaScript performance is improving relatively quickly these days in many browsers, programs written in the language are relatively pokey and limited compared with those that run natively on a computer.

Second is OpenGL ES, a 2D and 3D graphics interface for devices such as phones or car navigation systems with limited horsepower. If a computer’s graphics system has an OpenGL driver, software written to use OpenGL can tap directly into the graphics system’s hardware acceleration. WebGL links these two so JavaScript programs can call upon 3D abilities, with the HTML5 technology also under development acting as glue.

However, although OpenGL is a reasonably well established technology in graphics circles, it’s a different beast for most JavaScript programmers. That means that just building support for WebGL into browsers isn’t enough to establish the technology; programmers also must learn WebGL.

WebGL is a very low-level API [application programming interface], so it’s not for the faint of heart. OpenGL’s shading language, GLSL, is itself an entire programming environment. So doing even simple things in WebGL takes a lot of code

What is it like?

If you don’t want to suffer the slings and arrows of pre-production software, here are my thoughts about my testing. Overall, I’d say WebGL has potential. It’s certainly not blazing fast, but it can spin 36 shaded miniatures of Earth and Mars at 60 frames per second on an Apple MacBook Pro.

These test results show the frame rate on a MacBook Pro running the latest builds of Chromium, Minefield, and Safari. The test shows a spinning 3D Earth and Mars. Bear in mind this is only one test of pre-production software.

A view of the spinning globes demonstration.

Some of the demos taxed my dual-core machines’ processors, and they were hardly anything eye-popping. But there were differences in the three browsers’ abilities. WebKit seemed to handle WebGL with the least strain; its animations ran with significantly higher frame rates than Minefield or Chrome. I wouldn’t judge or praise any of them too dramatically at this early stage and on limited benchmarks, though. So what’s it good for besides casual games at this stage? Not much–perhaps a little eye candy here and there, 3D models of products you’re thinking of buying online, and mapping and virtual-world applications. But as with many technologies, it’s important to lay a foundation on which future developments can be built.

It’s not clear that Google’s Chrome OS vision will conquer the world and the browser will be the universal application foundation. It is clear, though, that there are plenty of Web applications today, that there will be more tomorrow, and that they’ll need better interface technology. With most of the browser backers pushing it and graphics hardware increasingly common, WebGL has serious potential.

Not the only game in town

JavaScript has been streamlined with widely used libraries such as the Dojo Toolkit, jQuery, the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library, and most recently, Google’s Closure Tools. Packaged in a similar way, WebGL could be made more approachable for some tasks, too. That’s where another 3D Web technology, a Google browser plug-in called O3D, could be a factor. O3D, still under development, provides a higher-level 3D graphics interface. It could be rebuilt out of WebGL components, though, and Google believes that eventually will happen.

It’s an interesting idea, but we haven’t done this so far. It’s definitely possible to create higher level retained-mode renderers (like O3D) that are implemented on top of WebGL, and we expect that this will likely happen at some point. There are potentially some performance issues, but we’re working to resolve those by making some changes to V8.

Gregg Tavares, a Google O3D programmer and longtime game developer, detailed some of those performance issues in a mailing list posting. “WebGL is a very cool initiative but it has a lot of hurdles to overcome,” he said. “JavaScript is still slow in the large scheme of things. Maybe at sometime in the future WebGL will have added enough features over basic OpenGL to be more powerful or JavaScript will have gotten a few orders of magnitude faster but at the moment…”

The Windows Connection

Another hurdle to be overcome is OpenGL driver support on graphics cards. High-end cards found in professional workstations support it, but for mainstream Windows machines, Microsoft’s Direct3D is a more common interface to accelerate 3D graphics. WebGL dovetails with OpenGL, but it’s possible to link to Direct3D, too, said Arun Ranganathan, chairman of the WebGL working group and standards evangelist at Mozilla. “There’s no technical impediment to running on Direct3D. We’ve been careful so we don’t introduce such impediments,” Ranganathan said. Added Vladimir Vukicevic, a Mozilla programmer who’s been leading the WebGL charge, “On Windows the Direct3D drivers are often higher quality than the OpenGL drivers.”

Of course, there’s more to the world than Windows. Khronos Group spokesman Jonathan Hirschon pointed out that smartphones ship with OpenGL ES; the iPhone 3GS supports version 2.0.

Microsoft didn’t comment on its plans for WebGL. It isn’t a member of the Khronos Group, but of late it’s been looking more favorably on Web standards when it comes to Internet Explorer’s design. Adobe Systems’ Flash, too, has some 3D support, and it’s widely installed. “It would be great if they [Adobe] were to implement WebGL in AIR or Flash,” Vukicevic said. That could help spread the technology to Internet Explorer users, he said. The biggest competitor, though, is doing 3D in a regular operating system. There, programming tools are more mature, hardware support is more consistent, performance is better–and the industry has hardly stopped advancing.

For WebGL to truly meet its potential, browser makers will have to convince programmers to adopt a new way of working. The Web has plenty of advantages in usage and ubiquity, but it has a way to go before it can match many native operating system abilities.

How to try it?

The Khronos WebGL demo page offers several pages to kick the WebGL tires. But first you’ll have to get WebGL working. First, you’ll need to install the test versions of the browsers that become Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. Follow the links to download the nightly build of Safari’s precursor, WebKit or the nightly “Minefield” build for Firefox. For those who want to use Chrome’s precursor, Chromium comes in flavors for Windows, Mac OS X, 64-bit Linux and 32-bit Linux.

Rotating a cube with cute puppy images can give a dual-core PC a workout.

Once you’ve got one of these browsers installed – and be warned that these works in progress aren’t fully tested or supported–you’ll have some tweaking to do, because in none of them is WebGL enabled by default. I found it easiest to install it on Minefield, the only one of the three with a point-and-click-friendly method. In the address bar, type “about:config” and click through the “I’ll be careful” warning that you’re meddling with the browser’s innards. In the “Filter” box, enter “WebGL” and search for an item named “enabled_for_all_sites.” By default, its value is false right now; double-click it to make switch it to true.

For Safari on Mac OS X, open the Terminal application (it’s in the Applications/Utilities folder) to get yourself a command line. Type this: “defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitWebGLEnabled -bool YES” then hit return and restart WebKit. (Note that it’s got the same icon as Safari, but with a gold rim around the compass.)

For Chromium, you’ll have to use a command-line switch, too. On Windows, first locate the Chromium icon in the Start Menu and right-click on it. In the “target” field you should see the full location of the file; it’s “C:\Documents and Settings\stephens\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium\Application\chrome.exe” in my case. Add “–no-sandbox –enable-webgl” to the end of the address, outside the quotation marks. Save the change, then launch the browser.

For Chromium on the Mac, open Terminal to launch Chromium with the switches. After some trial and error I found this did the trick: /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium –no-sandbox –enable-webgl

To run WebGL in Chromium, you have to bypass the sandbox mechanism that makes attacks harder by confining processes to regions called sandboxes. That’s got risks, so it’s best to drop back into the normal mode without the “–no-sandbox” switch when you’re done. Google is addressing this issue, though.

“We are working to make WebGL work in Chrome without the user having to disable the sandbox. It’s a lot of work, but we’re making fast progress on it,” said Matthew Papakipos, a Google engineering director.

One you’re done, start trying the demonstrations. Be warned, though, that not all the demos work on all the browsers. And perhaps because the specification as well as the browsers are a work in progress, some other WebGL demos wouldn’t work for me on any browser.

Europeans Shy Google Android Phones

Operators pushed market share of cellphones running Google’s (GOOG.O) software a little higher in September quarter in Western Europe, but consumers showed little interest towards them, research firm IDC said on Saturday.

Android has won attention in the mobile industry lately, with Motorola (MOT.N) and Sony Ericsson (6758.T) (ERICb.ST) choosing it for their new top models.

Market share of smartphones running Google’s Android operating system (OS) rose to 5.4 percent from 4.2 percent in July-September in Western Europe, a key area for the smartphone market.

“Consumers steer clear of Google’s OS and sell-out is below everyone’s expectations. Consumers recognise the Google brand, but still do not understand what Android is,” IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said in a statement.

“The lack of devices available didn’t help to raise awareness, though this is expected to change, with more handsets from LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and other vendors hitting the market soon,” Jeronimo said.

Last month Gameloft (GLFT.PA), one of the largest cellphone game makers, also bashed Android saying it and other software developers were cutting back investment in developing games and other applications for the platform. [ID:nLK608013]

Global market leader Symbian — used extensively by Nokia (NOK1V.HE) — continued to be the leading operating system also in Western Europe, controlling 48 percent of the market.

SAMSUNG CATCHING NOKIA

Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) share of the total market increased to 30.5 percent in the quarter, boosted by strong sales of mid-range phones, while market leader Nokia saw its share dipping to 35.3 percent.

“The gap between these two has been narrowing, and Nokia is facing a significant threat of being overtaken by Samsung in Western Europe in 2010,” Jeronimo said.

The West European home market has been the key for Finnish Nokia to build its global success, and investors are looking closely at Nokia’s market share development on the market.

Total cellphone sales in Western Europe rose 5 percent from a year ago to 46.8 million phones in the September quarter, increasing for the first time after five straight quarters of declines, IDC said.

Sales of smartphone rose 2 percent from the previous quarter, boosted by growing sales of Apple’s (AAPL.O) iPhone and Research in Motion’s (RIM.TO)(RIMM.O) Blackberrys.

A First Look at Google’s Chrome OS

Some days ago, some interested users downloading the newest version fo Chromium for Mac discovered a folder in the update section named Chrome OS and downloaded its content.  Google was nice enough to provide prepackaged .deb files.

Not surprisingly, this is Linux-only for the time-being, but that makes some sense since Chrome OS is Linux-based. Anyhow, there are already other folders dedicated to that (including a 64-bit variety), and the Chrome OS builds weigh in at 139 megabytes versus around 19 megabytes for Chromium.

It would seem to you like Chrome OS is open source, however it is not. The open source browser by Google is named Chromium. However, what you get after installation is something like this:

Google's Chrome OS

In the top-right corner, you’ll find a clock, a network connection dialog and a battery meter . These “widgets” are still non-functional at the current stage of development. We will see whether this will change later. Also the clock is redundant if you are running the OS inside a linux distribution.

In the top-left, you have what appears to be the new logo. This is also only an assertion, since there is no larger image available of that tiny thumbnail. Clicking on it opens this Google Short Links window, which doesn’t really allow you to do anything unless you have a google.com email address, which I assume is restricted to Google employees only for the moment.

There’s also a new menu option in the drop-down menu found in the top bar. Its options are identical to those found in the standard options button below it, except for a few things. There are options to clear browsing data, import bookmarks and settings, and go into fullscreen mode. There is also a new menu option called “Compact Nav Bar”. Inside it you’ll find the “New Window” option as well as “Open tabs on left”, “Open tabs clobber”, and “Open tabs on right”.

Aside from these changes, the rest of the browser appears to be the same as the standard Linux build. So there you have it. A quick look at an early build of the browser that’s to be included in Chrome OS. Keep in mind that this is an early build of the browser and things are bound to change before the final version of the OS is released.

Chrome’s Homescreen

Chrome’s Options Window

Chrome’s User Login

Free Educational License for CryENGINE® 3

Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) announced today that the recently released all-in-one development solution CryENGINE 3 is now available to educational institutions free of charge.

The CryENGINE 3 Educational SDK is for educators wanting to ensure that their students gain experience with the state-of-the-art in game development and real-time 3D technology.  For courses and research projects in game development, 3D graphics, simulation, architecture, animation, film and design, CryENGINE 3 is the most up-to-date, real-time 3D technology available.

CryENGINE 3 is the first game development platform for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MMO, DX9/DX10 that also is truly Next-Gen-Ready – with scalable computation, graphics and state-of-the art AI and physics for all major upcoming platforms. It provides the complete game engine to create AAA quality next generation games, and includes the redesigned CryENGINE 3 Sandbox™ level editor, a production-proven, 3rd generation “What you see is what you play” (WYSIWYP) – tool designed by and for professional developers.

Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development – CryENGINE commented: “Crytek has always been a strong supporter of education – as evidenced by our commitment for many years to share CryENGINE tools with universities.  We are continuing that commitment now by releasing the brand new CryENGINE 3 tools to any university in the world, for free! Here at Crytek, we work hard to enable all our licensees to achieve their vision with CryENGINE 3, so we aren’t considering this Educational SDK as a product we “fire and forget” – we will be looking for strong educational partners to work together with Crytek in the future – and we will soon be announcing exciting programmes for students working with CryENGINE 3.”

“Students and educators using the engine will become part of our larger CryENGINE community, so they can create their own innovations and train to become the developers of the future. With the CryENGINE 3 Educational SDK, the same cutting-edge technology that the world’s best developers are using now in games, movies and simulations will now be in the hands of the next generation of creators and engineers.” added Ury Zhilinsky, R&D Manager at Crytek.

As well as the new Educational SDK Crytek offers a Game Development SDK for professional game developers and a Simulation SDK for serious games applications.

More information can be found on the recently launched www.mycryengine.com website.

Game Projects

Hey guys,

a lot of things are going on at the moment. I am working on a few different gaming projects with some really interesting people.

A first version of my Super Koopa War, where the player fights Goombas, Shyguys and Monty Moles and tries to defeat Super Mario, will be released for J2ME phones in the near future. A few things regarding usability, balancing and game fun are still to do, before the Demo will be released on the bolg. This little game shall serve as tutorial on how to implement a mobile game with a nice architecture (entity system, event system, collision detection, physics and a nice animation concept) in J2ME.

Super Koopa Jump

Super Koopa (Player) Killed Monty Mole

Super Mario (A.I.) smashed Super Koopa (Player)

Super Koopa (Player) hunts Super Mario (A.I.)

Additionally, we are working on a second (top secret) project, either for the iPhone or for the PSP, since we have the PSP DevKit now at University.

To provide you guys with new stuff, I posted a new tutorial at the publications section. It is a simple Solar System in 3D. Also a first person camera has been implemented to show how things work in the source code. This example does not use OpenGL functions. Matrices, vectors and calculations are done manually. This should give an impression on what OpenGL does when someone calls gluLookAt() or glRotate(). So camera, transformations and rotations are calculated and applied by hand. Feel free to download the example and play around with it.

Why Google Doesn’t Like its Phone Bill

WHEN you call Grandma on her farm in Iowa, your long-distance phone company pays her local phone company an access fee. That’s fine. It’s much higher than elsewhere but few calls go to her and her neighbors, so the fees don’t add up quickly. And it’s a business-to-business transaction. You, the caller, aren’t even aware of the fees paid on your behalf.

But Google is aware. It has entered the long-distance phone business, having introduced this year a service, Google Voice, that includes the ability to make free long-distance calls anywhere in the United States. It knows that access fees are a part of the phone business. But it quickly noticed that a few numbers in sparsely populated areas were accounting for a disproportionate percentage of Google Voice’s total costs.

In a company blog post last month, Google said some rural phone companies partner with “sex chat lines and ‘free’ conference calling centers to drive high volumes of traffic” in what is called “traffic pumping” in the telecom industry.

“People are on the phone for hours — Grandma wouldn’t be on all day,” said Richard Whitt, the Washington telecom and media counsel for Google, in a recent interview.

The F.C.C. regulates the access fees and permits rural phone companies to charge high ones, on the assumption that call volume will be low and that the high fees are needed to support phone service to rural residents. In a traffic-pumping operation with high call volume, however, the local phone company collects the high access fees and splits the bonanza with the partner.

The Google blog calls the fees “ludicrously high.” Instead of being charged a half-cent to 3 cents a minute to have one of its Google Voice calls connected to a local number in these places, Google was assessed 12 or 14, or even 25, cents a minute, Mr. Whitt said.

High fees, as well as high call volume and calls of long duration, meant that Google was not paying typical wholesale prices. In effect, it was being held up by rural highwaymen working with accomplices who pulled in a high volume of calls.

All nonlocal carriers are victims of the same racket as Google. Robert W. Quinn Jr., a senior vice president at AT&T, wrote in August to the Federal Communications Commission about what he called this “industry plague.” AT&T won’t sympathize publicly with Google, however, because it fears that Google is a competitive threat.

For Google, traffic pumping was unbearably maddening. The company decided in August to block Google Voice calls to destinations that had high call volume and a small population. One of the numbers blocked is for a free conference call service based in Redfield, S.D. Northern Valley Communications, the local phone company that handles that number, is in a legal battle with long-distance carriers that have refused to pay access fees to companies they accuse of traffic pumping. “‘Traffic pumping’ is a term fabricated by long-distance carriers who are trying to paint us negatively because we have higher access rates,” said James Groft, C.E.O. of Northern Valley.

Most rural phone companies are older, “incumbent” local carriers and participate in the payments system managed by the National Exchange Carrier System, which prevents abuse, said Joe A. Douglas, its vice president for government relations. “Payments are adjusted downward as minutes go up. Therefore, there’s no incentive to pump traffic,” he said. But a relatively new category of local phone companies, called “competitive” local carriers,” such as Northern Valley, falls outside of NECA’s purview.

Most Google Voice features handle incoming calls. The service provides a phone number that connects to voice mail or can forward calls to landlines and cellphones. It can also record calls, customize greetings for particular callers and transcribe voice mail. Beginning last week, it could also be an alternative voice-mail destination for a user’s cellphone voice mail.

Small technology companies are also affected by traffic pumping. ZipDX, a telephone conferencing service based in Los Gatos, Calif., charges its customers for its service and must compete against free services in rural areas that are funded by the access fees charged to outside phone companies. David Frankel, the company’s founder, said, “The F.C.C. should say to everyone, ‘If the only purpose of what you’re doing is to rake in access charges, it’s not O.K.’”

A spokesman for the F.C.C. said it had resolved some concerns and “begun an inquiry into what further steps can be taken to prevent both incumbent and competitive carriers from gaming intercarrier compensation rules.”

THE F.C.C. has caught one break: it’s not facing a united front of very large, unhappy complainants. Instead of extending its hand in solidarity to Google as a fellow victim, AT&T went on the attack. In a letter to the F.C.C. last month, it contended that Google was blocking calls not only to sex chat lines, but also to others, like an ambulance service and a Benedictine convent.

Google has responded with improvements in its blocking technology. Instead of blocking by phone number prefix, it blocks only individual numbers, and fewer than 100 nationally are restricted, it reported to the F.C.C. in a filing last week.

It’s only an improvised solution, however, to the problem of traffic pumping, which the F.C.C. should root out. In the meantime, calls to Grandma and to the Benedictine convent now go through; those to highwaymen do not.

Psychology: “If there were not any killer games, gunmen would read Nazi lectures”

US psychologist Peter Langman votes against the prohibition of so-called “killer games”. Gunmen are homicidal maniacs, games with explicit contents would not bear the blame.

Peter Langman, psychologists for 20 years now, focuses on juvenile patients. He analyzed alltogether ten files of so-called “school shooters” in the United States. So what does he see as a reason for rampage?

Actually, he does not blame games at all: “Millions of teenager are playing computer games in their freetime and they are harmless”, says Langman. “Of course, Eric Harris (one of the gunmen of Columbine High-School) was amazed of brutal games, he loved Doom, but also brutal movies. However, this was not the reason but more a consequence of his illness.”, Langman continues. An what would happen if killer games are prohibited?

“If these games were prohibited, potential gunman would aquire different media material, for instance books about Nazis”, Langman mentions in an interview with the German newspaper (Spiegel Online)

According to Langman, gun rampage by teenagers does not have to do much with mobbing, brutal games or problems with women: “These pupil gumen were mentally ill – psychotic, psychopathic or traumatized.” Eric Harris for example was pschopathic and sadistic. He wanted to lay violent hands on his fellow men. He hated the world, the civilization and was totally amoralic. “He wished that he was or could be god – to decide on everyones life. In his diary, he wrote about planting houndreds of bombs, capturing air plans and attacking New York. That was way before September, 11th”, so Langman.

Kipland Phillip Kinkel,who injured and killed multiple pupils on Mai 21st in 1998 also heard voices. Voices that instructed him to kill himself and others. According to Langman many gunmen suffer from paranoia and schizophrenia.

Kinkel also thought that the US government would plant microchips into humen’s brains.

habe sogar geglaubt, die US-Regierung würde Menschen Chips ins Gehirn pflanzen.

Windows Phones as iPhone and HTC rival?

Microsoft yesterday unveiled a new generation of phones from leading manufacturers and mobile operators that offer an intuitive user interface, powerful Web browsing, and access to an online library of downloadable services and applications. Windows® phones — a new brand for phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system — are now available in retail stores worldwide in a broad range of styles and prices.

The new phones were shown at press events in New York, hosted by Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, and in Paris, where Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer showed off the new Windows phones. They also announced the availability of two key services platforms for the new phones: My Phone and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. My Phone is a free service that helps people back up and manage photos, applications and other content from their phone or PC, as well as restore information in the event of a lost phone. Windows Marketplace for Mobile is an online library of business and leisure mobile applications — as well as games — that customers can buy and download directly to their phones.

Windows phones are designed to keep people connected to their business e-mail, calendar and contacts, as well as helping people stay in touch with friends and family with voice, instant messaging, photo and video sharing and social networking.

The launch of the Windows phone brand signals a major evolution in the company’s mobile strategy from being purely a platform provider to delivering both a great platform and end-to-end experiences and choices through software and services, including a broad portfolio of applications and support from the developer community. The branding will also make it easier to find Windows phones in stores.

The new phones are available with a wide variety of styles and features, including full physical QWERTY keyboards, touch screens or both. Windows phones offer more choices of mobile operators and phone styles than any other mobile platform on the market. Manufacturers include Acer, HP, HTC Corp., LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba Corp.

The HTC Pure, for example, is engineered for one-hand use, and has a touch screen, a 5-megapixel camera, expandable memory and ambient-light sensor. The HTC Tilt 2 features a high-resolution, 3.6-inch widescreen display and full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, GPS technology, and gravity, proximity and ambient-light sensors. And the Samsung Intrepid features a slim design and full QWERTY keyboard, plus a touch screen for added flexibility, stereo Bluetooth wireless technology, a 3.0-megapixel camera and GPS technology.

A Single Phone for Work and Play

Windows phones offer the familiarity of Windows software, with mobile versions of Windows Live, Microsoft Office, Windows Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. People can access their work and personal e-mail accounts, surf the Web, look at a PowerPoint presentation, read a Word document or review an Excel spreadsheet.

The phones come with enhanced touch capabilities, including the ability to recognize a standard set of gestures, and Internet Explorer Mobile, a new, more PC-like browser that comes with Adobe Flash Lite support for better rendering and can log onto secure Web sites, so users can bank online or connect to their corporate networks.

With Windows Live on their phones, users can keep track of friends through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Windows Live. They can upload photos and videos taken with the phones to a Facebook or MySpace page, or have video chats with friends. And they can have access to all their e-mail accounts — Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! mail, Gmail, Outlook Mobile and more — with auto updates so they don’t have to keep signing in to refresh.

My Phone and Marketplace

Microsoft is supporting the new phones with two new services. The first, Windows Marketplace for Mobile, is an online library of business and leisure mobile applications — as well as games — that customers can buy and download directly to their phones.

The second service, My Phone, lets people sync and back up information on their phones — such as contacts, appointments, messages, photos and videos — to a password-protected Web site. The free service is especially useful when a phone is lost, which happens 12 million times per year in the U.S., according to Microsoft surveys. My Phone premium service can ring the phone, even if it’s set to vibrate; show on a map where the phone was the last time it synchronized with the network; remotely lock the phone if it’s been stolen; and even remotely wipe the phone’s memory to protect personal data. If people need to replace the phone, My Phone can transfer to the new phone all the data that had been backed up from the lost phone.

People can personalize their Windows phones, outfitting them with apps and games from Windows Marketplace for Mobile. They can personalize the wallpaper on the home screen with their own photos and colors, or designs created by top designers such as Isaac Mizrahi, then further customize the home screen with widgets and plug-ins that show updates from their favorite Web services, tweets, sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather reports, etc.

Windows phones offer greater value, choice

Todd Peters, senior vice president for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Marketing Group, said the value of Windows phones lies in Microsoft’s ability to give people a great experience regardless of location or device. “We are deeply committed to the three-screens strategy (PC, phone, television) and to delivering great end-to-end experiences for consumers,” he said. “When you look at the assets we have – ranging from Zune to Xbox to Outlook to Internet Explorer – we’re providing people with elegant end-to-end experiences, and connecting them to things that matter the most to them.”

Peters added that Microsoft’s depth of consumer offerings positions the company to better serve customers. “When you look at the assets we have – ranging from Zune to Xbox to Outlook to Internet Explorer – we probably are best position to provide our end users with a seamless transition between their work life and their play life,” he said.

Microsoft worked extensively with phone manufacturers to make sure that phones were equipped to allow users to make the most of Windows Mobile technology. The company’s partners are expected to deliver more than 30 new phones in more than 20 countries by the end of the year, says Stephanie Ferguson, general manager of the Business Experiences Team in the Mobile Communications Business. “Not everyone wants the same model or the same service provider,” Ferguson says. “We give people choice.”

The Windows phones were unveiled by Bach during Microsoft’s Open House, a consumer media event held in Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory, a massive, fortress-like brick structure built in 1879 and now home to a brigade of the New York Army National Guard. For the Open House, Microsoft created spaces throughout the Armory’s domed central hall that mirror various aspects of our lives, including a park-like setting complete with playground and treehouse. Attendees could try out the new phones and see for themselves how easy it is to multitask when you have the right tools.

“Our lives increasingly have become this complex mash-up of our professional and personal worlds, so we need a better way to connect to the people we care about and an easier way to connect to the information that matters to us,” Bach said during his welcome at the Open House.

Ballmer hosted a simultaneous event at Microsoft’s campus in the Paris suburb of Issy-Les-Moulineaux. “These phones are only the beginning of a stream of mobile innovations that will be coming from Microsoft and our partners,” he said. “Over the coming months you’ll see a regular drumbeat of exciting new devices from our partners and updates to our software to keep pace with evolving customer demands around browsing, touch and multi-touch capabilities, to name a few. So stay tuned.”

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/default.mspx

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