[MAP] Digital Attack Map

Someone just shared this with me this morning so I thought I’d put it here so I can come back to it. The map represents DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacls from data gathered by Google…

[REPORT] should video game players face the same dilemmas as real soldiers?

First off the report title is not the same as the post title, as I have tried to do throughout this blog; The reason for this is however to pose the question: shouldn’t video game players face the same dilemmas as real soldiers?, which may seem out of place being that the player is removed from the same risks as the solider–A solider risks death, which is certainly a “dilemma” not only for the solider experiencing the death but also his fellow soldiers. With this outcome removed from the players reality outside the game, it would seem unfair to implement the same sorts of penalties. However this superficial appraisal is forgetting to take into account actual in-game penalties. Is it possible that the Playstation generation allow itself to become the war criminals of the present or future, by the moralities of war are being taught by CGI insurgents?

‘Video games and international humanitarian law (IHL)’ is a relatively new and fragmented field of enquiry, spanning a range of discourses. There is little in the way of IHL-focused literature on the subject. This article is very much an exploratory piece. Its purpose is to highlight the potential impact of these games on players’ perceptions of the normative framework governing the use of force.

Source

This report, Beyond the Call of Duty: why shouldn’t video game players face the same dilemmas as real soldiers? by the International Red Cross addresses this emerging area.

[REPORT] Freedom of the Internet

Freedom House, a human rights group has published their 2013 Report of Internet Freedom, and being some of the major developments this year it is worth reassessing where we think we stand:

1. Blocking and filtering: In 29 of the 60 countries evaluated, the authorities blocked certain types of political and social content over the past year. China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia were the worst offenders, but filtering in democratic countries like South Korea and India has also affected websites of a political nature. Jordan and Russia intensified blocking in the past year.

2. Cyberattacks against regime critics: Opposition figures and activists in at least 31 countries faced politically motivated cyberattacks over the past year. Such attacks are particularly prevalent during politically charged events. For example, in Malaysia and Venezuela the websites of popular independent media were repeatedly subject to DDoS attacks in the run-up to elections.

3. New laws and arrests: In an increasing number of countries, the authorities have passed laws that prohibit certain types of political, religious, or social speech online, or that contain vague restrictions related to national security that are open to abuse. In 28 countries, users were arrested for online content. In addition to political dissidents, a significant number of those detained were ordinary people who posted comments on social media that were critical of the authorities or the dominant religion.

4. Paid progovernment commentators: A total of 22 countries saw paid commentators manipulate online discussions by discrediting government opponents, spreading propaganda, and defending government policies from criticism without acknowledging their affiliation. Spearheaded by China, Bahrain, and Russia, this tactic is increasingly common in countries like Belarus and Malaysia.

5. Physical attacks and murder: At least one person was attacked, beaten, or tortured for online posts in 26 countries, with fatalities in five countries, often in retaliation for the exposure of human rights abuses. Dozens of online journalists were killed in Syria, and several were murdered in Mexico. In Egypt, several Facebook group administrators were abducted and beaten, and security forces targeted citizen journalists during protests.

6. Surveillance: Although some interception of communications may be necessary for fighting crime or combating terrorism, surveillance powers are increasingly abused for political ends. Governments in 35 countries upgraded their technical or legal surveillance powers over the past year.

7. Takedown and deletion requests: Governments or individuals can ask companies to take down illegal content, usually with judicial oversight. But takedown requests that bypass the courts and simply threaten legal action or other reprisals have become an effective censorship tool in numerous countries like Russia and Azerbaijan, where bloggers are threatened with job loss or detention for refusing to delete information.

8. Blocking social media and communications apps: 19 countries completely blocked YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or other ICT apps, either temporarily or permanently, over the past year. Communications services such as Skype, Viber, and WhatsApp were also targeted, either because they are more difficult to monitor or for threatening the revenue of established telecommunications companies.

9. Intermediary liability: In 22 countries, intermediaries—such as internet service providers, hosting services, webmasters, or forum moderators—are held legally liable for content posted by others, giving them a powerful incentive to censor their customers. Companies in China hire whole divisions to monitor and delete tens of millions of messages a year.

10. Throttling or shutting down service: Governments that control the telecommunications infrastructure can cut off or deliberately slow (throttle) internet or mobile access, either regionally or nationwide. Several shutdowns occurred in Syria over the past year, while services in parts of China, India, and Venezuela were temporarily suspended amid political events or social unrest.

Source

Sub-Sonic Experiments

I have been playing around with Sub-sonic audio for a few months, using research from various sources. I’m still in the early stages but I’m happy with this sample below, it only lasts a minute but if played on a loop it aids relaxation. I named thie track due to its similarity in sound to that of a cat purring.

Note: Sub-sonics do not work on a home stereo, you need to listen thru good quality headphones or the resonance will not be effective.

I also wanted to test the soundcloud short-code, it didnt work so I iframed it

For those wishing to learn more, or even make their own–try the following software called Discord (the above was made with Audacity tho):
http://discord.sourceforge.net/

MCC315 – Fieldwork 1 – Are RSS Feeds ‘Dead’ Technology?

I should have published this live day-by-day (but that would count as plagarism with TurnItIn??), anyway as a follow-on from Fieldwork 0 Is Generic Theory a Valid Tool at Cataloguing Websites?; Here is Fieldwork 1: Are RSS Feeds Dead Technology?

Are RSS feeds a dead technology?

Day 1 – Background

I was an early adopter of RSS so to speak, I don’t reacl exactly what year tho I can date a conversation on RSS I had with a tutor here in 2002 where I was advocating the use of RSS to deliver content to the desktop without the need for browsing multiple news sites for stories.
I ditched the desktop reader for Google Reader in 2006 when I found my bandwidth was being chewed on the thousands I feeds I had set to download, as RSS shifted from being text only to having rich-media content.
I have relied on RSS for more their technical simplicity. During the migration of the University of Notre Dame Australia’s old static-HTML website onto an CMS, I used RSS as a method of leaching parts of the sites content, automatically placing it in the database of the new CMS. Additionally, the bushfire alerts on the Department of Parks and Wildlife (formerly DEC) website is managed by RSS as the approval process for the alerts needed to be not just simplified but also immediate[1].
But then, earlier this year Google sent me a notification that it was going to discontinue its Reader product. I panicked and asked online what Reader alternatives people were using, I had a few answers, but tried this product Feedly… and really haven’t checked my feeds much since.
Day 2 – Opening Feedly

Ok, this kinda looks familiar, theres none of the ads Google use to run, cluttering the screen. First stop XKCD–this should give me a good calculation of how long I haven’t checked my RSS for; 13 unread, I swore it was longer than that, I’ve got time to look at comics later, I want to see some news!. I check an RSS from a Yahoo! Pipe[2] I created a few years ago, its a mash-up from a number of tech sources to filter content related to my particular interests in IT[3].
I browse over the other feeds I have, all grouped by subject: Drupal, Flex, Joomla!… I want something a bit lighter, the category “funny” should have something to spike interest[4]. Reconfirming I have a bad sense of humor I decide to look back over my list, not being a developer at this time I don’t really want to read about the latest updates to WordPress, or release notes from whatever git repository I was following. I need to find some new feeds. Reader had a way to search and browse for new content, what Is Feedly going to offer me?

Day 3 – Mobile Application

I downloaded the feedly app for my tablet, it has a far prettier UI, but it presents the feeds dissimilar to the web version, which is closer to Reader. I flipped thru the usual feeds… In the early days of mobile app development, when everyone and his proverbial canine absolutely needed an app, the pushed for time web developer would build a simple RSS reader app, plug the clients RSS feed from the corporate homepage or media releases and re-skin the app to fit corporate styling[5].

Day 4 – Datasets and XML

The inherent beauty of RSS is that most of the time its essentially XML, which is the same markup used in a wide range of applications. In the interests of this excersise I decided to visit data.gov.au and see if I could find some cool XML dataset in RSS format[6] and publish it online, in the end I chose to re-publish ACT FOI applications RSS over the national public toilet registry[7].
The praising of the XML was facilitated by the CMS itself; WordPress. No actual coding was needed on my part to get the feed to display onto the site, tho filters can be added with additional scripting. This method of aggregating content with RSS is more common on the net than is obvious from the front end.
So what is the point of this? well I have the GitRepo of my WordPress themes RSS their changelog to my site so I dont have to publish changes to the page[8]. This automation is invisible to front end users–but its a crucial time saving tool for me. If RSS were “dead” I would have to find a new way to automate publishing.

Day 5 – Who is JSON?

Facebook are slowly depreciating RSS for their pages, in favor of a newer format called JSON[9], however the concept behind JSON feeds is much the same as RSS[10]. A cynical interpretation of this move by one of the webs biggest content generators is that it limits the re-publishing of Facebook originating content on extrinsic websites.
Due to the amount of content generated on Facebook, and the associated issues of ownership and privacy, it makes sense from Facebook’s perspective to make it harder to syndicate content.

Conclusion – Are RSS Feeds Dead?

From a users perspective RSS may be a disappearing technology, but as shown with my weeks “research” into the phenomenon, it is clear that RSS feeds are still a vital technology for publishing and syndicating web content–even if the end users are oblivious to said technology. As new media professionals it is highly ignorant to dismiss a technology just because its mainstream use is not as dominant as its esoteric use.
[1] http://dpaw.wa.gov.au/news/alerts/bushfire-alerts
[2] http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
[3]The Pipe itself is not public so there in o URL to link, but the following articles were accessed from that feed:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/524152/what_litigation_tells_us_about_dangers_ip_theft/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57599275-93/court-rules-that-ip-cloaking-to-access-blocked-sites-violates-law/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/changing-ip-address-to-access-public-website-ruled-violation-of-us-law/
[4] http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/08/police-pretty-sure.html
[5] http://blog.thansys.com/2011/05/13/no-mobile-lameness/
[6] http://data.gov.au/dataset/freedom-of-information-foi-summaries
[7] http://byronlevene.net/mcc315-rss-demo/ This page is fed by RSS from the URI above and praised by the CMS, then published as to the sites pre-defined CSS.
[8] http://byronlevene.net/wordpress/greenscreen/ As above.
[9] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13020897/official-facebook-rss-feed-for-a-page
[10] http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=577571948920771&format=json will return an RSS like feed, structured in a more formal variation of XML.

MCC232 – Skyrim Vs Pool of Radiance

Critically discuss the differences and similarities of Skyrim and Pool of Radiance.

By Byron Levene

Introduction

Skyrim, 2011 (PS3, 360), by Bethesda is a fantasy game, has been one of the most popular and highest grossing video games to date. Although technically not a Role-Playing Game (“RPG”) in the traditional sense, it draws heavily from the RPG genre. Pool of Radiance, 1988 (Commodore 64, MS-DOS), was one of the earlier RPG games and drew its rules more canonically from the board game Dungeons & Dragons (“D&D”)[1]. This essay will critically discuss the differences and similarities between these two games.

Comparing Pixels and Polygons

The D&D rule-set that underpins early RPG’s like Pool of Radiance had a fairly strict style of play; Combat was turn based, as it was with the board game, and battle was played in a different user-interface (or screen) in a top-down 2-Dimensional third-person perspective. A separate interface for movement around the map was used; A simulated 3-Dimensional space, known as bitmap scaling[2] (almost 5 years prior to this “interesting innovation” occurring in Wolfenstein 3D[3]). This gave the player first-person perspective moving within the map. If judging only by geographical characteristics[4], we see how different these two games are.

The psudo-3D movement screen

The top down combat screen

This “discrete” movement in Pool of Radiance is a stark contrast to the freedom of “continuous” movement in an open world such as Skyrim[5]–where movement and battle take place in the same interface, which draws more from the First-Person Shooter (“FPS”) genre. This real time control that the player has in Skyrim gives a feeling, or greater sense of immersion in the virtual world than the more turn based structure of Pool of Radiance[6].

Using Swink’s model for cataloguing game feel[7] may seem unfair, as real-time interactions were somewhat limited to developers of 1988. The real-time interactions in Skyrim add that much more to the sense of immersion for the player, hitting a sweet spot in the centre of Swink’s model; Pool of Radiance on the other hand does possess a rudimentary form of spatial simulation[8], and any question of polish would have to be taken in account of the 8-bit standards of the day.

Is it Because I’m Khajiit?

Race has always existed as a character’s attribute prior to D&D moving to a virtualised space, once the framework migrated to a virtual platform these race attributes remained. However implicit racial undertones of “Nomads”, with Arabic sounding names depicted in crude 8-bit kefirs[9], as seen in Pool of Radiance were outside the race types that could be utilised by a player as per the rule-set[10]. This is not negating Everett & Watkins claim that:

“…to build explicitly raced characters and worlds were limited by… the screen resolution (4-, 8-, and 16-bit), and processing speeds.”[11]

As we see more explicitly in Skyrim evidence of raced characters; Effectively the plot throws the player directly in a Nords versus Imperials race war over religious worshiping rights. The complexity of such a racially charged world would be beyond the limitations of developers in the era of Pool of Radiance[12]. Advances in graphics, sound and processing power have enabled a more racially charged virtual world, where race in Skyrim will effect how the player is treated by NPC’s.

Attributing this solely to technological advances does ignore the fact that Pool of Radiance is essentially a “barbaric” game, where battle is the only way to progress. Skyrim is a far more romantic approach[13], including raced characters adds a darker element to a game where a player can spend hours picking flowers and catching butterflies.

Artificial Stupidity

Pool of Radiance included Non-Playing Characters (“NPC’s”) that could venture with the players party when moving about the map, and when in battle the NPC would fight on the players side without any input from the player. After battle they would automatically deduct their percentage of the loot, and then reassemble with the players party back in the movement interface. This scripted behavior[14] pre-dates any notion of AI that came later, but the similarities are there.

Skyrim also includes NPC’s that will join the player on their adventure, however with the unification of movement and battle in one interface, the NPC’s have much more autonomy in how they may follow you.

Modern games Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) enables NPC’s a “seeking” and “fleeing” ability[15], and its this seeking that facilitates the NPC to follow the player in Skyrim. This simple act of following was outside the technical limitations of both hardware and software in the time of Pool of Radiance, yet as mentioned above the rules of the game required the party to regroup before movement around the map.

What unties these two different approaches is the end result: NPC’s that are expendable cannon-fodder like bots that can be exploited for the gain of the player, which is part of the “implicit rules”[16] a player will often observe when playing an RPG.

Game Over

By critically discussing the differences between these two games not only gives us picture of the evolution of the RPG genre, but also helps us understand the technical advances that have changed video games from being just a virtual place to play a board game, to virtual worlds where we live out our character’s existence.

Pool of Radiance may seem archaic to gamers of today, but it is a fundamental piece of RPG history which many games drew their influence from; Skyrim, even though made 23 years later, is such a game.

“However, although Baldur’s Gate and Diablo may receive far more attention and interest today than Golden Age classics like The Bard’s Tale or The Pool of Radiance, we must forever keep in mind that these earlier games were their direct ancestors.”[17]

Skyrim diverges in many ways from the traditional RPG format, mixing it with conventions from other game genres, but still owes much of its success to its RPG heritage. If we take this into account, then Skyrim is not a bastardisation of the RPG, but more its modernisation. Even when taking into account all the differences these two games have, there is still a definite lineage linking the two.

---

References

[1] Apperley, Page 17
[2] LaMonthe, Page 10
[3] Nielson, Page 113
[4] Ibid, Page 137
[5] Champandard, Page 63
[6] Swink, Page 2
[7] Swink, Page 8
[8] Ibid, Page 8
[9] King, Page 174
[10] Nielson, Page 99
[11]Everett, Page 134
[12] Ibid, Page 134
[13] King, Page 175
[14] Champandard, Page 7
[15] Ibid, Page 113
[16] Nielson, Page 101
[17] Barton, online (This quote is referenced from the 2007 online version that later became a chapter in Matt Barton’s 2008 book Dungeons and desktops: The history of computer role-playing games. See bibliography)

 

Bibliography

Apperley, Thomas H. (2006) “Genre and game studies: Toward a critical approach to video game studies”, Sage Publications, Melbourne
Barton, Matt (2007), ”The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993)”, accessed September 2, 2013, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130124/the_history_of_computer_.php
Champandard, Alex J. (2003) “AI Games Development – Synthetic Creatures with Learning and Reactive Behaviors”, New Riders, BostonMass.
Everett, Anna & Watkins, S. Craig (2008), “The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games”, MIT Press, CambridgeMass.
King, Geoff & Krzywinska, Tanya (2006) “Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions”, IB Tauris, London
LaMonthe, Andre (1995), “The Black Art of 3D Games Programming”, Wattle Group Press, California.
Neilson, Simon E., Smith, Jonas H. et al (2008) “Video Game Aesthetics”, Routledge, New York
Swink, Steve (2009), “Game Feel: A Designers Guide to Virtual Sensation”, Elsevier, Burlington, MA

Facebook Page Insights

Being web focused, I tend to use Google Analytics to gain visitor information, but in the walled-garden of social we are limited to some extent by what the application itself provides us. Luckily Facebook is improving their page ‘Insights’–a limited version of Analytics, so admins can keep informed of page activity

Just at a glance of the insights opening ‘overview’ page you can already tell that this page receives over twice as much interaction as it does have likes, this kind of extended reach is often overlooked by page admins.

I have uploaded screen caps from the 3 other top-level pages: Page, Posts and People…

As you can see above it shows the progresson of likes and even unlikes (I wish that feature were available to peoples own profiles!)…

Posts is a run-down of all the pages posts which can be filtered–I have this filtered by reach just to show you that a page with 1000 likes can have a post reach over 3 times its page audience. (and this usually exponentiates the more users or ‘likes’ the page has)

And lastly People breaks down our users demographics.

Yeah, this was probably not the most informative on Facebook Page Insights; but those who know me know my motivation 🙂

Is Generic Theory a Valid Tool at Cataloguing Websites?

This was a fieldwork topic, but I went WAY over the word count and after abridging the text it lost any coherency. Since it wasnt going to be assessed I thought I’d paste it here to account for the few months worth of no new content.

Burnette and Marshal, in defining web genres in Web Theory: An Introduction[1], fail to address the the importance of the underlying technology that structures the content; the Content Management System (“CMS”). By identifying a websites CMS, you can identify its intended function, and by defining a site’s function you can select the appropriate CMS.

Brunette and Marshall ask us to look at the example of the Personal website[2]. At the time when the article was written, events like Yahoo’s shutdown of Geocities[3], the rise (then fall) of MySpace, and the continued adoption of social media users were yet to greatly diminished the market in personal websites; The sole survivor to move against this trend are blogs, the “blog” gave the personal website a CMS.

Blogsites, though not all run the same underlying technology, (WordPress being the most popular[4]), all operate with a similar methodology. Due to the similarities all blogging platforms have, end users still have little difficulty distinguishing a blog from a commercial website due to the presentation of the data in a familiar way, by posts rather than pages; Or as “…a personal homepage in a diary format”[5]. Even taking into the consideration there are nearly two-thousand individual “themes” or designs available or WordPress[6], an experienced web-eye can know the underlying CMS just by the presentation of data.

Burnette and Marshall fail to mention the “wiki”; Wikipedia popularised the concept of a user-generated encyclopedia, and the underlying technology MediaWiki[7], has since been adopted by various other sites–from competing encyclopedias to collaborative web documentation for other CMS[8]. Collaborative authoring had been around before the wiki, but it was the MediaWiki software that created the genre.

One web genre Burnette and Marshal break down further is the Commercial Site, which they have divided into: The “Company/Corporate” website, the “Commercial Trading” site and the “Institutional” Site[9]. If we look at the underlying technology that these types of sites utilise, we can better qualify them than, if we were merely assessing them on a superficial user-end, aesthetic, or content providing basis.

Brunette and Marshal lump together in the Institutional sites sub-category, not just “Government Departments…” but also “…universities, schools, charities and non-for-profit organisations”[10]. The reality is these different organisations have very different needs when it comes to web infrastructure. In the example of Universities, the Learning Management System (“LMS”), a form of CMS, is an integral online application for the day-to-day operations of a university. The LMS functionality could not easily be replicated with any off-the shelf CMS product, and hence why a separate application is needed to carry out the online requirements of a tertiary institution. No mention of this type, or genre of Content Management System is present in Brunette & Marshall’s article, or any mention at all of CMS software.

Burnette and Marshall signify a difference between an eCommerce “Commercial Trading Site” site and that of a government agency “Institutional Site”[11]; Government agencies can have a very broad function to the public, and there are cases where government sites offer eCommerce or web shop functionality. Prior to the recent split of the Department of Environment and Conservation, the dec.wa.gov domain in addition to providing similar content hosting functions of other government domains, also had an eCommerce elmment where camp ground bookings could be made and paid for online[12]. This eCommerce application was entierly seperate from the consumer level CMS that the main dec.wa.gov.au website was powered by (Joomla)[13].

A recurring technology utilised by websites of government departments, and larger corporations is the Microsoft product: Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (Sharepoint). This software in itself is not technically a web CMS (or EDMS as its often marketed as), but more of a collaborative document portal where online publishing can be performed from within the existing Microsoft Office suite. An example of a Government Website running Sharepoint is the Department of Housing Website[14], not only can public servants, with little to no training on the web have the ability to publish from their familiar office suite, the Sharepoint software includes functionality for wiki’s and corporate blogs.

Content is what drives the web, it’s what brings users to sites; How your content is displayed has to suit the content being served. Developers realised this and created different applications to serve the various types of content in the most functional user-friendly way. If we analyse the choice of CMS adopted by a website, then we already know what genre the site belongs to, without the need to employ any subjective qualities–like look, feel or branding.

References

[1] Burnette, R., & Marshall Web Theory: An Introduction – 2003, Page 90
[2] Ibid, Page 94-95
[3] Yahoo Quietly Pulls The Plug On Geocities – April 23rd, 2009 http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/23/yahoo-quietly-pulls-the-plug-on-geocities/
[4] WordPress is Powering 14.7 Percent of Top Global Websites http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/wordpress-is-powering-147-percent-of-top-global-websites-012492.php
[5] O’Reilly, T O’Reilly Network: What is Web 2.0 – 2005
[6] http://wordpress.org/themes/
[7] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
[8] The community collaborative documentation of the populr consumer web CMS, Joomla, wuse MediaWiki to power its documentation subdomain http://docs.joomla.org/
[9] Burnette, R., & Marshall 2003 Page 94
[10] Ibid, Page 94
[11] Ibid, Page 94
[12] “On 1 July 2013 the Department of Environment and Conservation separated to become two agencies. This campgrounds website is now administered by the Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW) although “for an interim period the domain name will remain as dec.wa.gov.au/campgrounds and references to ‘DEC’ and ‘the Department of Environment and Conservation’ will continue to appear.”
http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/campgrounds/
[13] “ The Department of Parks and Wildlife and the Department of Environment Regulation commenced operations on 1 July 2013 following the separation of the former Department of Environment and Conservation.” http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/
[14] http://www.housing.wa.gov.au/

I’m actually glad I didnt submit it

SecureWAMP

I have decided to give SecureWAMP a test run in a development environment. It is put together by Herzlich Willkommen, the same that bought us SRWare Iron–the Chrome alternative without the Google hooks.

So far: A cool feature is the 1-Click installations, SecureWAMP includes Joomla (tho an older version), WordPress, Typo3, and other server side software available to users with no prior knowledge in setting up Apache.

http://securewamp.org/en/download.php

Open Source OBD Information

Its not hard to tell that I’m a bit of a car buff, add to that my love of tech and you get this headache related to the on board diagnosis port (“ODB” or “ODB-II”, the second generation of diagnosis ports). Mechanics can invest in the expensive tools required to “communicate” with the ECU as an operational expense, however the general automotive enthusiast can’t really justify that cost–especially if you own vehicles from different car manufacturers.

There are cheap consumer level tools to perform some of the OBD functions, tho they have their limitations, such as working only with certain marques, or having no upgrade-ability–An open source solution would be better. In an ideal world there would be a huge open source community deving tools we can all use to aid us in automotive maintenance, but there are only a handful of dedicated individuals working on these projects.

This post is to put together some of the existing online resources related to OBD, it’s by no means an authoritative source on how to use, make or develop these tools.

FreeDiag,

From their website: “Freediag is a suite of vehicle diagnostic protocols and an OBD II (mostly) compliant ScanTool, currently for Linux platforms. Multiple graphical user interfaces for scantool are under development – but right now, you have to use a command-line interface to scantool.”. Currently not available on windows.
Homepage: http://freediag.sourceforge.net/
Project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freediag/

openOBD: OBD-II Scan Tool

OpenOBD is no longer in active development, but it does have a windows installer for those users not on a linux platform. According to the projects wiki it only supports the ELM327 device.
Homepage: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/openobd/index.php?title=OpenOBD
Project: https://sourceforge.net/projects/openobd/

OBDToolbox

OBDToolbox is in early development so its features are a bit limited. Windows installer available.
Homepage: http://obdtoolbox.sourceforge.net/
Project: https://sourceforge.net/projects/obdtoolbox/

This is by no means an entire directory of OBD resources, just some software I am currently playing with, hopefully I can put together some more detailed information soon.