EA case judge paints unpretty picture for Jim Brown

Next time somebody condemns your favourite video game as crude entertainment, you can now legally argue it is in fact a work of art.

That’s the argument used by a Los Angeles judge who rejected a lawsuit filed by NFL legend Jim Brown (pictured) against Electronic Arts. Brown had argued that EA had breached his intellectual property rights by including his likeness in the Madden series.

While the game didn’t name Brown, it did include a player who physically resembled him in a team of all-time Cleveland Brown greats. As well as the the visual reference, the player (who isn’t named) has historical statistics remarkably similar to those of Jim Brown.

However, the judge dismissed the case, ruling that the use of Brown’s image was an example of “expressive works, akin to an expressive painting that depicts celebrity athletes of past and present in a realistic sporting environment.” Such works are protected in the US by the First Amendment.

The ruling, which could still be appealed, doesn’t appear to have put Brown off his campaign on the issue. He’s applied to add his input to a separate legal case led by Sam Keller, a former football player for Nebraska University who is suing both EA and the NCAA over their inclusion of player images in college-based games. In that case, too, the players are not named but are otherwise identifiable.

EA’s defense in the case is based on the logic that all the details they use, such as a player’s physical appearance, jersey number and career stats, are matters of public record. They say visual likeness restrictions should only apply in areas such as advertising.

The nature of the two cases means that the judge in the Keller case is under no burden to take into account the Brown ruling, even if she allows him to join the Keller case.

Earlier this year, the NFL Player’s Association, which represents retired players, agreed to pay $24 million in compensation over claims that it deliberately worked with EA to allow the firm to avoid paying royalties to players featured in ‘historic’ modes.

How Microsoft is Making Money out of Piracy

In the following video, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, explains how Microsoft is turning piracy into money by letting people in under-developed countries use their software for “free”. Later, when these countries start to prosper, the users, who are now hooked on Microsoft’s technologies, will apparently pay for the products gladly.


Breaking Glass with Sound

Rubbing the rim of a wine glass with a wet finger will cause it to resonate at its resonant frequency. The glass is placed in front of a speaker playing a sine wave, created by the function generator, of this same frequency. When the amplitude is turned up, we can see by shining a strobe light at the glass that this resonant frequency causes it to oscillate. When the glass becomes too stressed, it will shatter, which we see very clearly on high speed video.

[Via TechEblog]

Redwoods: the Big Picture

SectionaltreeThese days, with digitized photography and photo editing, we may not think a whole lot about the process of making pictures, at least those of us with casual camera hobbies. One of the downsides of accessible technology is a kind of normalization of process. I know, since owning a digital SLR that can store hundreds of pictures in a single session, I think a lot less about process and “getting it right” since I have so much wiggle room for experimentation. I just click and click and worry about editing later.

But let me assure you, there is plenty to be impressed when discussing Michael Nichols, the man who just recently photographed what may be the biggest, tallest tree on record. Redwoods, some of which date before the first century, are marvels of nature, the largest, most ancient trees on earth. And photographing them is no easy feat. From the NPR article:

In a recent lecture at National Geographic in Washington, D.C., Nichols described his frustrations. Eventually, though, he devised a way to do redwoods justice. It involved three cameras, a team of scientists, a robotic dolly, a gyroscope, an 83-photo composite and a lot of patience.

I would love to see that setup.

And while the picture itself is quite remarkable, in addition,  the National Geographic site has put together a fantastic interactive redwoods page where you can track Nichols’s team across the California coast. The redwood timeline is especially inspired.

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3D Short of the Day: Indigen

In a savanna where remain the relics of a bygone war, a young African hunter protects his meal against an opponent who is as stupid as resistant.

Indigen is a computer generated short animated movie made within the framework of specialization in computer graphics with Supinfocom our school. We were 4 to work on this project. The production of the film (scenario, story-board, production, post-production) took us 6 months to complete.

Warning: Animation contains blood and gore.

Jet-Powered Merry-Go-Round

Built by Brooklyn-based arts collective The Madagascar Institute, this Jet-Powered Merry-Go-Round had never been tested with real people on it, so Popular Mechanics’ Seth Porges “volunteered his life and limb to be the first human ever to take a jet-powered ride on this steam punk-inspired machine.” In case you want to skip the boring part, the fun starts at 1:22.

Reader Geeky Pics: Show Us Your Desk!

catdeskOur teapot blowing contest was such a success that here at [GAS] we realized a couple of things: (a) you guys are very photogenic and don’t mind showing it; and (b) if you’re willing to take a picture of yourself blowing into a teapot, then getting some more mundane geekiness out of you should be a piece of cake.

I’ve been doing Wednesday Geeky Pics for a while now (almost a year!), which involves my scouring Flickr for the best from the Creative Commons-licensed masses. But really, the best geeks in the world are right here, so why go scouring when the photographic evidence can come to me? Plus, here’s an opportunity for you all to get to know each other.

So to kick off what will hopefully be lots of future fun: Send us pictures of your computer setup. Desk at home, office, laptop at a coffee shop, whatever best illustrates your tech in its natural habitat. This of course can include the obligatory “I was going to take a picture of my desk but the dang cat wouldn’t get out of way” photograph.

And as a (meager) incentive to get you clicking, we’ll offer some prizes: $20 to the coolest-looking setup and $20 for the messiest one, as determined by the [GAS] staff, of course. Payable in geek cred. (Okay, no, payable via Paypal.)

All pictures will be posted here on the blog, credited in whatever way you desire (i.e, your name/pseudonym.)

Language meets logic as computers mark English papers

A British exam board plans to grade written responses to English tests with computers. It’s the first time machines have been used to assess language rather than merely mark multiple choice tests.

At the moment, the marking will only be used for a test designed to check if students have the English skills necessary for going into university. It’s not part of the mainstream educational system and is mainly aimed at adult learners and foreign students.

The computers will “scan” test responses, presumably in the form of analyzing text a student has typed in rather than attempting optical character recognition of handwriting. (If that had been used, I’d have failed every exam going.) The machines will then search for text which matches a range of possible correct solutions and award marks where it finds matches.

The system is being billed as a way of avoiding the unreliability of human marking and may well have been prompted by severe delays in marking national tests for younger schoolchildren last year. But critics rightly point out that the system is flawed because there are so many linguistically correct ways of expressing the same facts or concepts. The big fear is that students will wind up trying to figure out the correct trigger phrases to get marks, effectively limiting rather than expanding their range of communication.

Automated marking of writing will always be troublesome simply because human language often doesn’t follow logical rules, particularly mathematical ones. Just look at the controversial singular “they” (for example, a sign telling children that “If anyone misbehaves they will be punished.”)

From a communications standpoint, “they” in this context is by far the best solution, avoiding the need to either guess the gender (“he will be punished”), use unwieldy and unnatural language (“he or she will be punished”) or make up ugly expressions (“s/he will be punished”.) But to a computer, or to the type of grammar purist who insists on logical rules, this simply can’t work because “they” is plural and “anyone” is singular.

As a writer, I’m relieved that computers can’t yet master human language. Like most wordsmiths, I still shudder at reading Roald Dahl’s 1954 short story The Great Automatic Grammatizator in which a computer is trained to automatically write novels in any style, leaving human writers unable to feed their families. (For a more detailed explanation of the story and a look at how it matches up to today’s technology, check out this piece from Durham University.)

In case you were wondering, the staff behind British exam boards are not all shining models of linguistic clarity. A research director at the company which owns one board is quoted as saying “It’s extremely unlikely that automated systems will not be deployed extensively in educational assessment.”

I don’t know what the computer would say, but my elementary school teacher Mrs Dobney would have gone haywire at a double negative such as that one.

[Picture Source: Flickr (CC)]