Squawk Renaming

Within the last year we have changed the naming conventions in the Squawk Role-Playing Game. Many creatures including the intelligent reptilian species of the Squawk setting were often named after well-known monsters from mythology. The new names are designed to be less confusing:

• Aeolytes, named after Aeolus, ruler of the winds in greek mythology, used to be called rocs.
• Behemoths, who get their name from the bible (Job 40, suggesting the largest and most powerful animal,) used to be called ogres.
  
• Boreans, named after Boreas, the cold north wind from greek mythology, used to be called orcs.
• Dromes, from a latin root which suggests running, used to be called basilisks.
  
• Gafflings, whose name suggests a gaff or hook, used to be called hobgoblins.
  
• Gremians, from an English name meaning "enrages", used to be called gremlins.
  
• Gygeans, from the Ring of Gyges described in Plato's Republic (which made it's wearer invisible,) used to be called gargoyles.
  
• Leviathans, who get their name from the bible (Job 41, suggesting a giant sea creature,) used to be called draconians.
  
• Lyndwyrms, whose name suggests lindworm (a wingless bipedal dragon in British heraldry,) used to be called minotaurs.
  
• Myrmidons, named for a tribe commanded by Achilles in greek myth and whose name meant "ant-people", used to be called manticores.
  
• Orns, from a root word suggesting birds, used to be called gryphons, cockatrices or harpies.
  
• Phages, from hematophagy (blood-eating), used to be called vampires.
  
• Skand, from the root of words like "ascend" and "descend" (suggesting leaping and climbing,) used to be called kobolds.
  
• Strix, from a bird in roman legends that fed on human flesh and blood, used to be called elves.
  
• Stygians, from the river Styx which separated Earth from Hades in greek mythology (also used in words like stygofauna to suggest underground water,) used to be called trolls.
  
• Titans get their name indirectly from the titans of greek mythology through the english word titanic, suggesting largeness.
  
• Zephyrs, named after Zephyrus, the west wind in greek mythology, used to be called unicorns.

Zephyr

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, zephyrs are small intelligent hadrosaurs with a single ridged horn as a crest. Originally they were conceived as furry creatures with a zebra-like mane and stripes.

However, we have extensive information about the skin of some hadrosaurs like the "trachodon mummy" discovered in 1908. The interesting skin of real-life hadrosaurs is covered in fine scales with patterns, wrinkles and variations that suggest how the creatures might have been colored in life. Hadrosaur species also had distinctive frills running down their backs.

Inspired by the skin impressions of these and other herbivorous dinosaurs, we have redesigned the zephyr to have smooth skin covered in tiny non-overlapping scales and a "mane" which is actually a frayed dorsal frill.

More pictures and information about zephyrs...

Titan

In the Squawk, Role-Playing Game, titans are huge armored dinosaurs related to ankylosaurs. Titans are one of the newest intelligent species in Squawk, designed by my brother Ulrich, who also produced this image.

More pictures and information about titans...

Stygian

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, stygians are flightless pterosaurs adapted for swimming. Like beavers, stygians are builders, creating dams and other structures to modify their freshwater habitats. Like platypus, stygians have and electrically sensitive snout used to navigate and find prey in dark and murky places.

More pictures and information about stygians...

Strix

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, strix are intelligent primitive birds with raptorial beaks and talons.
More pictures and information about strix...

Skand

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, skands are small intelligent predatory dinosaurs.

• information about skands
• more skand pictures
  

Phage

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, phages are pterosaurs that drink blood, similar to vampire bats. Pterosaurs are flying reptiles, probably archosaurs, with leathery wings. Pterosaurs look a bit like their bird cousins and and a bit like their more distant bat relatives, but they also have unique features including wings supported by a single elongated finger instead of the four-fingered wings of bats or the fused hands of birds.

Vampire bats are not the only real-life animals that feed on blood. Many invertebrates also practice hematophagy, including mosquitoes, some worms and most leaches. So do some lampreys and even a bird called the oxpecker. Although we don't know of any actual blood eating pterosaurs, Mark Witton and Darren Naish's Azhdarchid Paleobiology research challenges the stereotype that all pterosaurs lived by fishing and scavenging like modern shorebirds.

More pictures and information about phages...

Orn

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, orns are flightless primitive birds. This is the third intelligent species we designed for Squawk (after gafflings and myrmidons) and the first which was not based on a creature from one of our earlier RPGs.

(Drawing by my brother Ulrich.)

The original orn was a bird- headed humanoid called the "harpy." Next came the "gryphon" and "cockatrice" which were sometimes giant archaeopteryx- like creatures and sometimes feathered crocodiles.

Finally we settled on an idea that combines some of all those ideas, an anthropomorphic primitive climbing bird with a long flexible body (perhaps similar to the narrow-bodied, four-winged fossil bird relative Microraptor gui.)

More pictures and information about orns...

Myrmidon

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Myrmidons are intelligent ceratopsian dinosaurs. They are also the second intelligent species we designed for Squawk (after gafflings.)

• More pictures and information about Myrmidons
• Illustrated history of the myrmidon design
  

Lyndwyrm

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Lyndwyrms are intelligent theropod dinosaurs with massive horns and shaggy manes. Lyndwyrm horns are inspired by the horns of Carnotaurus, but they are much longer and twisted like the horns of Triceratops.

(The lyndwyrm images above were modeled and rendered with Blender by my brother Ulrich.)

The feathery mane is inspired by the primitive plumage of real life dinosaurs such as Dilong paradoxus, which are thought to be close relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex. We don't know for sure whether the direct ancestors of T. rex had feathers. If some of them did, then it is likely that T. rex itself had some feathers.

More pictures and information about lyndwyrms...

Leviathan

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Leviathans are intelligent crocodilians. Like crocodiles and Alligators, leviathans are armored, swimming predators, but Leviathans have longer and more powerful legs, allowing them to walk bipedally like some crocodilian ancestors.

Leviathans are closely related to gygeans, another species of intelligent crocodilians in Squawk. Leviathans are much more robust than their stealthy cousins, with stocky bodies, thick tails, compressed snouts and short but still heavily muscled arms.

More pictures and information about leviathans...

Gygean

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, gygeans are intelligent crocodilians with the ability to change skin color and pattern rapidly like octopus, squid and cuttlefish. In spite of the difficulty of depicting this ability in action, Gygeans are one of our most illustrated Squawk species.

Two gygean features are coincidentally found in that other dinosaur science fiction franchise, Jurassic Park. The late author of the Jurassic Park books, Michael Crichton, hints in the original novel that the velociraptors have some active camouflage ability like a chameleon. (In real life, velociraptors were covered in feathers like a bird.) In the second book he gives the Carnotaurus an even more dramatic camouflage which makes them nearly invisible when they hunt at night.

In the movie adaptation of Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg gives the Dilophosaurus a neck frill which can be erected. This feature is present in the real-life Frilled Dragon and some of the Squawk gygeans. The creators of the movie knew that the real life Dilophosaurus almost certainly did not have this frill (or the ability to spit poison) but including these features in their fictional dinosaurs is an homage the revelations that come as we learn more about prehistoric life.

More pictures and information about gygeans:

• general information
• gygean anatomy
  

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is the best FPS if you ignore the problems common to proprietary games with high system requirements. It is not superior because of it's beautiful graphics or physics simulation (most decidedly not because of it's graphics and physics simulation) but because of it's superior game design.

Unlike Counterstrike or Halo, the objective of the game is survival, not sacrifice for an abstract cause. You protect yourself and help others who you need in order to survive. You beat the monsters off of your fellow survivors and help them get up when they are knocked down. You work together against strong enemies. You keep going when you are wounded, and when a comrade falls you find another survivor to replace them. The theme of "help is on the way" drives the game forward.

Dominant Position

Melee combat is more effective than shooting when the bad guys are up close, and it is much safer for the other survivors. The right mouse button does a melee attack regardless of which weapon you are using. The melee attack knocks nearby monsters back and often knocks them down if it doesn't kill them. Meanwhile the monsters try to overwhelm you with numbers, pounce on you and hold you down, strangle you with tongue-tentacles or throw you off of the top of buildings.

Survivors pack light: one or two pistols for your sidearm, one primary weapon (automatic weapon, shotgun or rifle), either a molotov cocktail or a pipe bomb and either a first aid kit or pain pills. (The first aid kit or pain pills can be used on yourself or the other survivors, and first aid takes too long to be used in the middle of a fight.) Defensive positions scattered around the game are stocked with extra supplies, piles of ammo (a generic resupply point that refills any weapon), gas cans, propane tanks, oxygen tanks and other situational weapons.

Personality

Movie-influenced monsters include the fast angry infected horde from 28 days later, Resident Evil style mutations (like the tentacle-tongued smoker, the fat vomiting boomer and the giant muscular tank) and even a creepy tricky girl monster like Samara from The Ring or the Blair Witch (by far the most feared enemy in the game even though - or because - you can avoid her most of the time, and not playable in the versus mode where one team of players control infected mutants.)

The survivors are represented as four unique characters: A vietnam veteran who is appropriately old, sharp and respectable (not a greasy tragic John Rambo misfit), a white thug playing the comedy relief Jayne Cobb style, a small, athletic female college student typical of horror movie survivors, and what I call the "white collar brother": a black systems analyst who fills the nervous jumpy survivor role.

Assymetrical Conflict

Left 4 Dead is not a war of attrition where victory goes to whoever is last to run out of hit points or ammo or soldiers or minerals. The action goes through cycles of slow recovery, exploration, stealth and avoidance, hunting and stalking, ambushes, escape and big boss battles which you you must sometimes trigger intentionally to meet your long term survival goals (call an elevator, radio for help.)

See my other blog post about the Steam Cloud technology used in Left 4 Dead.

Gremian

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Gremians are highly derived deinonychosaurs related to gafflings. They have completely lost most of the distinctive features of their close relatives: sickle claws, feathers and even the long tail. They have developed a relatively enormous head with a shortened snout and a more erect posture.

Some of these adaptations are examples of paedomorphosis, where adults of the species retain features from earlier stages of development. Superficially, gremians resemble avian hatchlings with their bare pinkish skin and huge heads.

More pictures and information about gremians...

Gaffling

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Gafflings are intelligent deinonychosaurs whose three-fingered hands have exceptional flexibility and opposable thumbs.

Gafflings are the original Squawk species. We designed these creatures (formerly known as "raptors" or "hobgoblins") for an earlier series of RPGs called The Dark Woods or Metazoica, and the Dinosaurs with Swords idea that eventually became Squawk grew out of this idea of an intelligent feathered velociraptor.

More pictures and information about gafflings...

Drome

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, dromes are intelligent theropod dinosaurs. Several drome features suggest that they are primitive theropods like Eoraptor, Herrerasaurus, Coelophysis or Dilophosaurus, and not bird-like coelurosaurs like Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and modern birds:

Dromes have a narrow ribcage instead of a broad, bird-like bellows. This suggest an aerobic metabolism somewhere in-between a normal "reptilian" and avian system. They have skinny legs and relatively small hips instead of thickly muscled thighs. Dromes have four fingers on each hand, and they are covered in scales instead of feathers. (So far only ceolurosaurs have been discovered with feathers.)

More pictures and information about dromes...

Borean

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, boreans are intelligent avians descended from primitive flightless waterfowl. Like penguins they stand upright instead of having a more typical avian horizontal posture. As primitive birds they retain the sharp teeth and claws of their dinosaur ancestors, but their hands and feet are webbed and their teeth more needle-like for catching fish. Boreans have evolved an echolocation system which allows them to navigate by sound, similar to bats and dolphins.

Boreans are inspired by interesting prehistoric creatures from the real world:

• Anthropornis, a man-sized, long-necked, long-beaked, tropical peguin
• Hesperornis, a toothed diving bird with virtually no wings
• Archaeopteryx and other primitive birds with claws and teeth

More pictures and information about boreans...

Behemoth

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, behemoths are gigantic intelligent dinosaurs related to sauropods. Unlike most sauropod who walk on their fingertips, behemoths are knuckle-walkers and can also walk on two legs, allowing them to carry and operate tools with their hands. The behemoth on the right in our illustration is a chimera with extra skin armor, insect-like appendages and batteries of some kind of openings on it's shoulders.

In real life, sauropods were long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs and included the biggest land animals that have ever lived, like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus. In recent years we have learned a lot about the skin of sauropods. Except for the feathered dinosaurs, it appears that all dinosaurs were covered in small non-overlapping scales like the skin of a turtle or gila monster. Some sauropods had armored scales like a crocodile. Elongated dorsal scales in some sauropod skin impressions inspired the row of spikes running down the back of our fictional behemoth (only in the male of the species.)

More pictures and information about behemoths...

Aeolyte

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, aeolytes are enormous flying birds. The ability to fly makes aeolytes valuable as messengers. Male aeolytes have more flamboyant coloring than the females. Aeolyte speech sounds like low, hoarse bird noises.

Lighter than most intelligent species but large enough to limit maneuverability while flying, aeolytes can weild a relatively large weapon with either of their powerful talons while flying or hopping on one leg.

More pictures and information about aeolytes...

Cheap, Green Freedom

The Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947 assault rifle, better known as the AK-47, is simple, inexpensive to manufacture and easy to maintain. It can be used in arctic conditions, dragged through mud, sand and dust and still fire without jamming. A fusion of best designs adapted to mass manufacturing and close combat, the Soviet Union exported massive numbers of these weapons - at cost or even free of charge - to arm revolutionary forces around the world struggling to liberate their nations. The image of the AK-47 is featured on the flag of Mozambique and the coat of arms of Zimbabwe and East Timor.

The XO-1 is a small laptop manufactured by Quanta and distributed to schools - mostly in developing countries - by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association. The XO-1 is designed to be inexpensive, energy efficient and easy to maintain. A new display technology makes the XO-1 screen readable in direct sunlight and does away the toxic mercury backlight required by today's laptops. The XO-1 is ruggedly designed for use in hot, humid and dusty environments which would severely damage an ordinary laptop. OLPC with assistance from governments and schools distributes these machines "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves."

Read the full article on Google Documents.

The Way We Live Now

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, eBay seller Troy Augusto is being sued by Universal Music Group (UMG) for reselling promotional CDs which the music company gave away to create advertising "buzz". The CDs are labeled "Promotional Use Only, Not for Resale", but according to the "first sale" doctrine in copyright law, once a copyright holder sells or gives away a CD, the recipient can resell it without further permission.

At first the lawsuit seems to be a basic copyright question that could be applied to offline stores or even books. But second-hand music stores have resold promotional CDs for years without being sued. Troy Augusto was targeted because he set up his shop online. When the recording industry goes after it's own customers we are sometimes shocked into focusing on the drama and miss the ethical issues, but in this case the target is a business following widely-accepted business practice. Reselling of music copies - promotional or otherwise - does not directly profit recording companies so this case reminds us that copyright policies should also protect stakeholders other than authors and publishers.

But this case introduces a much broader issue of technology ethics: to what degree can entities that generate culture also generate law? Are shrink-wrap and click-through "end-user license agreements" (EULAs) on software and services legally binding contracts? Does writing "not for resale" on a CD change a gift into a loan? The current trend is for judges and lawmakers to support industry practices, but if courts enforce any rules publishers invent, then the publishers are writing the law and the courts are simply instruments of enforcement. Recently deployed "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) technologies go a step further and actually enforce these "laws" in ways that a typical user will not know how to circumvent, even if they have a legal right to do so. The example of the "not for resale" sticker on a few free CDs may seem trivial, but the potential to embed "rights management" rules into physical goods, electronic transactions and documents, and project them everywhere in both the physical and digital worlds raises serious questions about how power should be shared in society.

There are alternatives to a culture dominated by control-obsessed organizations which write draconian laws in their own interests. Governments could agree to a more limited (and arguably more traditional) interpretation of copyright, trademark and patent law instead of the fuzzy and ever expanding extensions to these laws now called "intellectual property". The original US copyright law, intended to encourage publication in the public interest, limited copyright to 14 years plus one optional 14 year renewal. Patent law, intended to encourage the development of new industrial applications of technology, could be interpreted to require both a more substantial physical component and more originality than patents which are primarily about software algorithms, business practices, or genes found in nature. Trademarks protect the consumer from deceptive labeling, so they should and do operate differently from copyright or patents.

Instead of lobbying for changes in international law which may take a very long time, businesses might adopt commons-based production models such as open-source software, perhaps using the power to create their own laws to establish a "free trade area" where culture can be produced and traded without excessive barriers. In the virtual economy of Second Life, for example, users are allowed to sell content which cannot be copied or which cannot be resold, but not content which can be neither copied nor resold. Such cultural commons initiated by businesses and grassroots movements are growing, but governments may be more naturally inclined to respond to the interests of the "squeaky wheels": entrenched interests clamoring for more aggressive protection of their self-written laws. A two-pronged approach may be necessary: developing open markets with flexibility and rules that protect all stakeholders while steering traditional legal systems in a direction that protects this type of innovation.

Computer Ethics Changes Everything

James H. Moor, What is Computer Ethics? Metaphilosophy, October 1985, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 266-275

Moor defines computer ethics “as the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology.” He argues that computer ethics should be a special field of study, involving general ethics and science as well as problems specific to the domain of computer technology.

Moor points out that computers are revolutionary in the sense that they have “logical malleability”: the data in a computer can be used to represent any symbol. This allows computers to become part of any activity, and when computers become an essential part of that activity, the ethical issues surrounding the activity itself have to be reexamined – not just the usefulness of computers in that activity. Moor also cites invisible abuse (unauthorized access and malicious software) invisible programming values (assumptions in the software that bias the system’s behavior) and invisible complex calculations (computer activity which cannot be completely observed and understood by humans) to support the need for the special study of computer ethics.

David S. Touretzky, Free Speech Rights for Programmers, Communications of the ACM, August 2001, Vol. 44 No. 8, pp. 23-25

Touretzky argues that software is free speech which should be protected, making the DMCA provisions He focuses on the DeCSS case in which the judge decided that code is speech but that compilable and executable code are more dangerous than protected speech. Touretzky is particularly concerned that the DMCA and this ruling are interfering with the publishing of computer science research.

Touretzky supports his argument with the testimony he gave in the courtroom: There is no clear distinction between discussing an algorithm and distributing software that implements the algorithm. Although Touretzky provided numerous examples blurring the distinction, the judge still ruled on the basis of a distinction between functional software and protected speech.

Response

Moor’s two lines of argument – that any activity changed by computer technology needs to be reexamined, and that invisibility creates new ethical issues – represent two different attitudes toward computer ethics that are now very common.

Invisibility concerns are more easy for the general public to understand because they involve clear bad guys: untrustworthy voting machines, biased search engines, viruses, spyware, phishing and so forth. These problems get lots of press, but the existence of botnets suggests the response has been inadequate. (Botnets are remote-controlled networks of hijacked computers owned by unsuspecting victims, often sold or rented for nefarious purposes on the black market. This represents a convergence of both invisible complexity and invisible abuse.) Techniques exist to control malicious software and to enforce accountability in computerized activities such as accounting, but they don’t get used.

Touretzky’s paper is an example of the more abstract justification for the study of computer ethics: computers force us to re-examine activities. This is difficult to communicate, but it is more likely to result in meaningful action than popular concern about invisible enemies inside the machine. The invisibility problem is a bit like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, penned when industrial technology was still a frightening power only beginning to transform human lives. The real computer revolution, however is more like the later industrial revolution of Charles Dickens where the ethical issues are not the problems of technology changing human lives but problems of human lives which have already been changed by technology.

The Meat Bull

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game a Minotaur is a large, intelligent, carnivorous theropod dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus. Minotaurs are covered in simple fur-like feathers, and have a pair of large curved horns sprouting from over each eye. Minotaurs have short but well-developed and relatively dextrous forearms with three-fingered hands. These hands can be used to hold weapons, but the leverage to swing the weapon comes from the Minotaur's powerful legs and body.

Minotaurs prefer long, pole-arm weapons, which they can hold in the middle allowing them to strike with both ends. The following picture shows a minotaur with an unusual short-handled sword and lamellar armor. This Minotaur is creeping along in a low crouch actually walking on it's heels, but minotaurs normally walk on their toes like other theropods.

Long horns is very unusual for a predator. The idea of a horned theropod comes from a real-life dinosaur called Carnotaurus, which has large horns over each eye (but much shorter horns than the Squawk Minotaur.) Older Minotaur drawings have straighter horns and a combination of a feathery mane with patterns of scales found in Carnotaurus skin impressions.

The Manticore Corps

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Manticores are intelligent ceratopsian dinosaurs. While most ceratopsians, like Psittacosaurus and Triceratops are stocky quadrupeds, Manticores are gracile bipeds with long limbs and very long tails. Manticores lack the long horns of some of the larger ceratopsians, and they have a proportionally longer neck shield than any other ceratopsian.
Manticore legs are adapted for running, with only three toes on each foot. The hands are four-fingered manipulators with opposable inner and outer digits. The long tail is a specialized weapon with the tip partially fused into a hard, sharp weapon.
The manticore idea is based on creature ideas from RPGs we made before Squawk. Manticores weren't always dinosaurs (and they weren't always called manticores - the original name was unpronounceable by humans.) The beak is a recent addition to make manticores more like their ceratopsian cousins. As the picture above shows, we have been toying with the idea of giving manticores elongated protective scales.

Hash Functions

This is my part of a short presentation I will be giving with two other students: