Cloud computing and RESERVOIR project

The support for complex services delivery is becoming a key point in current internet technology. Current trends in internet applications are characterized by on demand delivery of ever growing amounts of content. The future internet of services will have to deliver content intensive applications to users with quality of service and security guarantees. This paper describes the RESERVOIR project and the challenge of a reliable and effective delivery of services as utilities in a commercial scenario. It starts by analyzing the needs of a future infrastructure provider and introducing the key concept of a service oriented architecture that combines virtualisation-aware grid with grid-aware virtualisation, while being driven by business service management. This article will then focus on the benefits and the innovations derived from the RESERVOIR approach. Eventually, a high level view of RESERVOIR general architecture is illustrated

Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies

The legacy of the rich, stratified work of Roger Caillois, the multifaceted and complex French scholar and intellectual, seems to have almost solely impinged on game studies through his most popular work, Les Jeux et les Hommes. Translated in English as Man, Play and Games, this is the text which popularized Caillois’ ideas among those who do study and research on games and game cultures today, and which most often appears in publications that attempt to historicize and introduce to the study of games—perhaps on a par with Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. The purpose of this article is to introduce the papers and general purposes of a collected edition that aims to shift the attention of game scholars toward a more nuanced and comprehensive view of Roger Caillois, beyond the textbook interpretations usually received in game studies over the last decade or so