Defenseload

My webcast on software source code analysis

Heres a recent webcast I put together with the folks at Checkmarx (makers of a dandy source code analyzer) that you may be interested in:

The business value of partial code scanning

Enjoy!

Available link for download

Mounting on Wood Panel

I already did one video tutorial on mounting works on paper to wood panel, but that was quite a while ago, so I thought it time for an update.  In this video I start by showing you how I mount the stripes, in sections, to the 12"x36" panels.  Then I show you the next steps - cutting off the overhang, and painting the edges - on a smaller piece.

I always cut my substrate paper a quarter inch larger than the panel on which it is to be mounted so that there is a bit of overhang.  The 12" stripes are cut to 12.25"; my 8"x8" pieces begin as 8.25"x8.25".  If you leave more than a quarter inch, the cut-off can interfere with your composition.  I use PVA glue for mounting.  Some artists use acrylic gel medium.

Available link for download

Myths on Exercise and Weight Loss

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More on Driver the Virtue Conflation Problem and Epistemic Egoism

I’ve been thinking about the distinction between intellectual and moral virtues at the level of value-conferring property. Julia Driver has argued in her paper “The Conflation of Moral and Epistemic Virtue” that what distinguishes moral and intellectual virtues is a matter of what good are produced by these respective virtues, as opposed to (for example) the ends toward which the respected virtues are motivated. And so, Driver employs a consequentialist account in an effort to distinguish between the virtues. On the surface of it, I don’t see anything implausible about employing a consequentialist account here. Driver makes a thorough case for a consequentialist account of virtue, in general, in her 2001 monograph “Uneasy Virtue”. What I am concerned about, though, is whether her consequentialist distinction between moral and intellectual virtues at the level of value-conferring property is one that should posit that intellectual virtues are valuable for the reason that they produce epistemic good (i.e. knowledge, truth) for the agent. This is problematic, I think, because it allows for someone who cares only about gaining truth for himself (and not maximizing epistemic value in general) to qualify as intellectually virtuous. Hence, Driver’s account of what makes an intellectual virtue valuable is one that condones unbridled epistemic egoism. I offer the following example to illustrate this:

1. THE CASE OF THE FACT-SCROOGE
Unlike his brother Ebeneezer, who values monetary goods and misers them, Ludwig Scrooge values doxastic goods. Ludwig believes that knowledge and true belief are valuable. Also, because not everyone has access to all facts, and because some individuals have faulty cognitive equipment, not everyone enjoys a surfeit of these goods. Ludwig is aware of this fact, and determines that if he can acquire more of this good than others, then he will be better off. Ludwig, following this reasoning, embraces the view of epistemic egoism: (as David Gauthier puts it) Ludwig is “…a person who on every occasion and in every respect acts to bring about as much as possible of what he values .” He realizes that there are two ways for maximize what he values: he can maximize knowledge and truth simpliciter, or he can maximize them for himself only. As it stands, Ludwig has no desire to see anyone else but himself attain doxastic goods. And, in fact, he reasons: “If there is some stranger who could, at some time t, acquire some truth N such that I would never gain from it, then I would prefer that that stranger did not acquire N, but rather, some falsehood instead. This would make me better off.”
Just as Ludwig’s brother Ebeneezer became adept with the skills of profiting as a result of desiring his personal monetary gain, Ludwig has cultivated the skills of profiting as a result of desiring what is epistemically valuable for himself. For example, he is intellectually tenacious in forming his beliefs, he is shrewd in his calculation of evidence, he is conscious to recognize his own biases that might affect his belief-forming processes, etc. In addition to possessing these characteristics, Ludwig also has developed a habit of keeping quiet when others want to know information that he knows. He concludes that his goal of maximizing personal epistemic value is better achieved by his deceiving others into thinking he lacks knowledge of some fact, rather than sharing this fact. “I don’t know” Ludwig will say, for example, when someone who wishes to know the way to town questions him, and he knows. (Note: this strategy is shared in the monetary domain by Ebeneezer, who deceives others into thinking he has no money when they ask to borrow it, and whilst he has plenty in his pocket). Ebeneezer becomes the wealthiest man in town through his tactics, and Ludwig becomes the most knowledgeable. Ebeneezer, though wealthy, surely is not morally virtuous. Is Ludwig, though knowledgeable, intellectually virtuous?

I think the answer we should reach is “no.” (I’m at work on a paper in which I’m arguing this).
I’m interested get some intuitions on this…

Available link for download

More Thoughts On the Anti Pirate Measures That Will Work

Well, the storm of commentary and attention directed at my Assassins Creed 2 DRM article has died down a little bit. I suspect that that little blog post is one of the most read pieces of text Ive ever written. At this point, 90% of the Internet has posted on Slashdot, The Escapist, or somewhere else to say Im an idiot. The intensity of the reaction was quite interesting to me, and the various responses left me with a lot of what, for me, passes for thoughts.

I think a lot of the intensity of the reaction was because, simply, many people hadnt heard about this new DRM system. Or, if they had, they were still heated up over it. Add in the constant need among pirates to come up with increasingly overwrought justifications for their obviously illegal and immoral actions, and you have the expected traveling firestorm.

It is now rumored that crackers are making short work of this new DRM software. Believe me, I hope this is the case. As I said in the previous article, I think these measures are overall bad for the PC games industry (of which I am a part). However, this alleged victory will, I think, be short-lived. Once these games are being coded to constantly contact the developers servers, developers have a lot of new weapons in their anti-pirate arsenal. More about this in point #2, below.

But, in the mess, interesting things were said. Here is what I have learned (or still believe):

1. To "work", anti-piracy measures only need to stay unbroken for the peak sales period of the game. That is, the first three months or so. If it stays uncracked for that long, the developers win. I never said that there was uncrackable DRM, because that is not true. It does not need to be uncrackable.

2. UbiSofts "Have the game maintain a constant Internet connection and move a lot of the processing onto the server" solution will slow down cracking. If not now, then in the future. Developers can move more and more processing onto the server. Right now, its just saved games. Later, they can move more and more code off of your machine and onto theirs.

You want your very-difficult-to-crack DRM system? Here it is! Take all the statistics (and maybe scripts) for creatures and items and weapons and put them on the server. The game only downloads them when it needs them. This is ten thousand little chunks, only a handful of KB, of vital and irreplaceable data, and it will take a long time for a cracker to get the game to download all of the bits so he can isolate and read them all and put them in his fake server/cracked game. And God help you if he missed an item. Dont just wave your hands and go, "Oh, someone could break that easy." This system is already routinely used by MMOs, and it would work.

(And I suspect Assassins Creed 2 has some of this and they just havent told us yet. Remember, it has to be using that constant net connection for something.)

Once the game is developed with a constant net connection in mind, the developer can heap an arbitrary amount of work on hackers. Ive read a lot of "easy solutions" to the problem over the last few days. All assume they know everything thats going on on the server side. Not a good assumption.

3. Oh, and by the way, the constant server thing is temporary. UbiSoft has already said that, when they dont want to maintain the servers anymore, they will release a patch removing the need for the game to talk to them. I give it about six months until this happens. Maintaining that many servers is expensive, and once that period of time has passed they wont need the DRM there anymore. Then Assassins Creed 2 is free to appear on ten buck shovelware DVD compilations, coming to a Best Buy near you.

4. People have an almost religious need to believe in the power of the cracker to overcome any obstacle in his (or her?) way. I think that part of the ideological structure pirates build to justify their actions must include believing that, "Hey, itll always be cracked anyway." Either that, or people just dont wanna believe that the river of cool free stuff they believe they are entitled to might dry up.

5. If you use the terms "hacker" and "cracker" interchangeably, you will make a small number of people very angry at you.

6. Suppose, for the sake of argument, they did develop pirate-proof DRM on the PC. Lots of people seem to assume that, when people cant pirate the game, they just wont buy it. Hogwash. People LOVE games. If they have to pay money to get games, they will. Just look at the XBox, Wii, and PS3. Its possible to pirate games there, but it is not easy. Thus, people pay tons of cash for them. Its easy to talk big about how you will never pay money for games with restrictive DRM, but everyone has a price. If games as sexy as Diablo 3 ever start coming with the mean DRM, a lot of people are going to sigh, grit their teeth, and accept it.

So, as repellent as the new system is, they arent insane for trying. The rewards for success are considerable.

So thank you for all the attention. And, if you dont think Im an entire idiot, my newest fantasy RPG for Windows and Mac doesnt have any scary DRM at all. And the demo is huge and free. Please excuse this blatant self-promotion. Thank you, and good night.

Available link for download

Murdoch rips competitors for bias even as more Fox critics emerge on the right

Murdoch rips competitors for bias even as more Fox critics emerge on the right

Available link for download

My de facto standard on WSDL styles

Here is my de facto standard reference on WDSL styles; bookmark it! When I first started writing Web Services I never knew their were 2 styles and 2 uses, or even that there was a style. As I gradually learned more about WSDLs it was difficult to find a good explanation of the different combinations. This article, written by Russel Butek on IBM developerWorks, explains how you determine which combination of style and use to choose. He provides advantages and disadvantages of each and shows WSDL and SOAP messages for each combination.

Overall when creating a Web Service you have 4 style/use options:

1. RPC/encoded
2. RPC/literal
3. Document/encoded
4. Document/literal

Along with these four is a recently new pattern which is commonly called document/literal wrapped.

Please read this article if you are unfamiliar with the different styles and uses. In general the most common style used is document/literal wrapped with document/literal in second. Most newer SOAP Stacks actually dont support RPC anymore; for examlpe cxf (aka xfire) and axis2.

Available link for download

More Boring Stuff On Why Video Games Are Art Also Ponies!

OK, Im back, and Im about to write about evil, art, and game design. To make it all go down easier, there will also be ponies. So read, on but remember ...



GameBanshee writer Eric Schwarz wrote a tough but fair review of our recent game, Avernum: Escape From the Pit. In the review, he made a comment about the games story that I thought was really interesting:

"The game worlds overall tone and morality is also a bit strange - slaughtering Slith (lizardmen) farmers in the name of the king might be uncomfortable, but the game world certainly doesnt care."

I actually liked this comment a lot, but he didn’t go near as far as he could have. There are places in Avernum where the morality gets even stranger.

For example, one of the main foes in the game is an army of savage lizard men, called slithzerikai, sliths for short. (The sliths are not all hostile. They have friendly settlements, and playing as a slith is an option in later games in the series.)

In one of the dungeons, you have the option to smash a huge clutch of slith eggs. If you do so, several of their guards attack you, but that is the only negative consequence for what most would consider a pretty evil act. I have been accused in my forums of encouraging baby-killing in my games. And, yes, I did allow the player to do a pretty horrible thing with no punishment. And I have written games in which the player can choose to do things that are even worse.

Why did I do this?

Because computer games are art.

Oh God, No, Shut Up!

Yeah, I know. The debate about whether video games are art is probably the boringest thing in the history of boring things. To liven this blog post up, here are more ponies. Hey ponies, what do you think of tedious navel-gazing blog posts?



Products Of My Own Weird Brain

Avernum: Escape From the Pit is a rewrite of Exile: Escape From the Pit, the very first game I released as shareware. It was the first Real Game (tm) I ever tried to write, and it was a pretty wild, uncontrolled process. Since Id never done it before, I just went crazy, throwing encounters and plot bits and moral dilemmas in willy-nilly. It was a raw, unguarded process. I didnt second-guess anything. I just took how I thought and how I saw the world and put it down in the computer.

This is how storytelling works.

Ive always been a huge news junkie. I still keep a close eye on what is happening in the world, as it fascinates me. (And is an endless source of fresh material.) Doing so, however, has given me a very cynical worldview. Our world has many, many principled people, struggling against enormous odds to increase the reserve of justice and kindness available on the planet.

However, these generally unsung heroes fight against an overwhelming amount of awfulness. Ours is a world where horrible things happen to undeserving people on a constant basis, and nobody who is not personally involved will ever know or care.

This is how I see the world. Its not right or wrong. Its just how I see things. When I write a story, any story, it will be colored, in ways obvious and subtle, by this perception.

This is why the morality in Avernum (and in all of my games, really) seems a bit "strange." Because it reflects my worldview, and being exposed to how another humans sees the world can be weird and unsettling. This is what makes art cool. It lets you see how other people think.

Important Disclaimer

My games reflect how I feel the world IS, NOT how I feel the world SHOULD BE. I do not personally endorse crushing the weak, hunting goblins for sport, or smashing slithzerikai eggs. Extrapolating an artists personal experience and views from his or her work is very rarely accurate and is generally a waste of time.

Hmm. Im getting Bored. So here is this.



So Why Leave Do I Leave the Horrible Bits In?

Because I write role-playing games.

The term "role-playing" has become hugely debased since it was created. Most RPGs dont give you the opportunity to actually decide what sort of person you want to play, even in the simplistic way computer games allow. That is why I always try to put moral choices in my games: to give the player more agency in what is going on and to help him or her feel more attached to the little computer person they control. And the better and more dramatic the choices you allow, the greater the effect.

Thus, I give the player a chance to be evil from time to time. If they choose to be good, it affirms their character as moral and admirable. If they choose to be evil, its probably so they can get a vicarious thrill from engaging in craziness they would never consider in real life. Either way, the option to be evil gives the option to be good more meaning.

But I have to play fair. If someone is evil, I can only punish them if it makes sense. Sometimes, evil is not punished. Thus, I dont always punish it. Sometimes, but not always.

Theres No Right or Wrong Ways To Design These Things

I wanted to pull out and discuss that review quote because it was, in the end, a perfectly subjective artistic judgment. Theres nothing wrong with that, of course. Reviews are nothing but subjective judgments. That is what makes reviews cool. My game made Eric Schwarz feel a little unsettled. That wasnt a right or wrong reaction. It was just his honest reaction, and Im happy to get any reaction at all. Id rather make someone feel something, even if its not positive, than for my game to generate 30 hours of "Meh."

As computer games develop as an art form, I look forward to more discussion about what they mean and how they affect us. (Though, of course, I may be the only one.) People are more interesting than polygons.

In Conclusion

Thank you for your patience. I hope it went well. How did it go, Spike?


Thanks, Spike!

Available link for download

Moving on to MSP

Last week was a rest week. 2days off, 1 day with a few short efforts, another 2 days easy/off. I took the rest week as planned even though it didnt seem deserved. In the past Ive been so worked from the 3 week SMSP period that the rest week was a well deserved and much needed respite.

This year I didnt feel as fulfilled going into the rest week as I didnt feel like Ive worked as hard. In the past the intervals have been a more tounge dragging, seeing spots kind of affair. This year wasnt the same. But the tiredness and fatigue were there to be sure.

Regardless I took some days off and did got outside for some short rides here/there. They felt pretty good except for some excersice induced phlegm in the chest after riding outside.

Going into MSP I started with some 8 minute intervals. First one was good, then I bogged in the second one and dropped power. With MSP if you overdo it you can still come back and finish the workout unlike SMSP where if I go over limit than Im usually done for.

The one thing to remember with MSP is that the legs will start to feel a little flat from riding at the same intensity Patience is key to know that they will start to come around once some lead out intervals and regular riding with lots of erratic intensity changes occur.

For the time being my main goal is to strive to keep my fitness above the "speed of fun" threshold. This is a personal level of fitness that is required for me to enjoy mountain biking where live. The terrain is difficult enough in terms of steepness and technical riding that there is a minium level of fitness needed to get through it w/o losing a lung. Its not enough to just ride it Ive tried that before and its no fun for me to just slog. Its not fun to hit some techical rocks and fall apart because the fitness isnt there.

The big question will be racing or not. Its probably a big jump between the speed of fun threshold and racing fitness.

Available link for download

My new webcast on securing your Web environment against denial of service attacks

I saw a recent study that found that distributed denial of service attacks are getting larger and larger.

The thing you need to be thinking about is how youre going to prevent and respond when your Web presence becomes a target.

Well, good timing, because I just recorded a new webcast for my friends at SearchSecurity.com on this very topic...In Proven Practices for Securing Your Website Against DDoS Attacks, I have a one-on-one discussion with Dyns expert Andrew Sullivan on DoS attacks impacting your Web presence including how they work and what you can do about them...

Check it out if this is on your radar...I think youll like it!

Available link for download