Program your own Jurassic Park with Microsoft

NEWS Developers are being given the chance to win a Microsoft Xbox and a five day trip to New Orleans by using their programming skills to create virtual beasts that can beat their rivals. In a Microsoft-organised competition, coders are being asked to program creatures for release in an enclosed virtual ecosystem. From then on, the creatures are left to interact entirely without human intervention. At the end of three weeks the creator of the dominant beasts in the "Terrarium" will be awarded the prizes. Creatures must be given the wits, instinct and tools to survive, with prizes given for both carnivorous and herbivorous animals. For Microsoft the aim is to get developers familiar with programming in the new Visual Studio .Net environment, due to be launched formally on 13 February. The aim of this rather Darwinian game is to become the dominant player in the ecosystem. Arguably one of the most successful proponents of this dog-eat-dog philosophy is Microsoft itself. Microsoft did not say whether, having achieved a dominant position in its "market", there were any tactics whatsoever that could be deemed "unfair" to competing creatures. Somehow, we think not.