New comic: Age-verification

A new comic is live for your enjoyment. This time, the topic is age-verification.

Security vs everyone

Security and ease-of-use tend to be mutually exclusive, it's said. Security is stuck in a two-front war, not only are there Bad Guys to keep out, but the authorized users will usually do almost everything possible to defeat the security measures that are intended to keep the Bad Guys out. In a sense, IT-security is generally fighting bigger battles with its customers than they are with the bad guys.

Corporate users write their login credentials down, use easy-to-guess passwords or passwords that can be cracked in fractions of a second, use the same password for everything, want unrestricted access from anywhere without any of that complicated password nonsense, install software that compromises their systems, write down login names and passwords and stick them to their laptops, leave those laptops unattended, plug in wireless access points or random modems on the network, or even just give away their passwords in the street for the asking. Seriously.

Most corporate computer users treat the IT or IT-security team as "the enemy". That's actually the word that is most commonly used when referring to them. The IT people are in a bit of a deadly bind here. The rest of the company is generally working so hard to compromise the security of the network and their desktop systems, that it can be an almost impossible chore to actually keep the bad guys out of the network. Then data gets stolen, or systems compromised anyway.

At one corporation I worked for, a company executive brought in a piece of software that wasn't licensed, and installed it on a desktop system in the warehouse. The software was made by a competitor across the street. Over the next few months, the unlicensed software (which was used for booking, labeling and invoicing deliveries and pickups of shipments) sent all of the information it handled across the street to servers at the rival company in periodic batches.

Armed with information about customers, shipments, rates and so on, the rival could offer sweeter deals and steal business away. And they did.

Business plummeted. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in regular business was lost. Of course the rogue software got removed, once it was discovered, right?

No.

The executive refused to uninstall or replace the software, because it would cost around $3,000 to replace. Also he refused to allow the firewall to be configured to prevent the data-transmissions, because that would interfere with certain conveniences demanded by the sales staff.

A solution was eventually found, but only at the cost of nearly all of the company's warehousing business. Why didn't the CTO or the IT department override him, being that it was a technology/security matter? Because he was the director in charge of them. Besides, they had their hands full, because a branch manager in another state had given another competitor dialup access to the local network and share-drives, because he "couldn't be bothered with all those email attachments."

Oh, there was far, far worse.

The thing is that when it comes to computers people want instant, they want convenient, and they want locks without keys (and ideally doors without locks - and perhaps without doors). Computers allow us to get so much done, so much faster that we want everything to be fast. Every moment typing or remembering a passphrase is an impediment - a barrier to getting the job done, or to getting out of the office at 5.

That sort of poor computer hygiene doesn't just live in the office. People's home computers, well they manage their own security for that. It's hard to find a home computer that isn't infected with something, and frequently with many somethings.

Nobody cares until they lose all their data, or their World of Warcraft gold and equipment, or their Second Life account -- and then they want to blame someone else for it. You didn't do enough to protect them.

The bad guys win more often than they lose - because we, as users, make it easy for them to win. We insist that others do all the work for us, and then we don't let them do their jobs. You don't have to become an expert in either computers or security, but if you learn just a little about how to take care of yourself, your computer and your passwords, your whole IT department can relax a little and actually allow some of the things that they're presently forced to block or prevent.

You can make things easier for you. For everyone.

Where has all the advertising gone? The failure of sudden success

You may have noticed that around the middle of April, after a bit of a stretch of inactivity, I worked things over, created the comic archive, updated all my Google AdSense advertising blocks. After quite a while with no revenue from AdSense, the new adblocks seemed to be targeting very well on the whole, and with some general reworking daily ad revenue was really starting to be very good.

Then I got a lucky scoop with the Fallout Trademarks piece, which got linked to by most of the major gaming blogs. A couple other posts got some exposure, and briefly, my blog's traffic surged. The new AdSense blocks were targeting admirably, it seems, and it looked like I'd accumulate enough for a cheque from Google within a mere 15 days.

That's pretty darn good, and welcome income besides.

Then, on Friday morning (US-time), 13 days after refitting everything and working to boost visibility and revenue, I was hit with circumstances beyond my control. You may recall the enigmatic post about it.

What happened? Google AdSense suspended my account.

Seriously.

Why? You know, I have no idea at all. "[Y]our AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers."

There's an appeal form, and I appealed it right away. They ask for additional information that might be helpful, but since they don't (as a matter of policy) reveal why they're suspending your account, it's hard to figure out what information might be useful to appeal that.

So... the appeal is now 6 days old, and the answer's just come back in, a few minutes ago.

"Thanks for providing us with additional information. However, after thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, we've re-confirmed that your account poses a significant risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we're unable to reinstate your account. Thank you for your understanding."

Not that I actually do understand, but there's essentially nothing I can do. I imagine the sudden surge of activity after a relatively slow six months tripped some internal alarm. Over the weekend (advertising-less and all during the appeal period) I got a surge of record amounts of traffic to the blog and comic (around two orders of magnitude better) -- and no way to earn a single US cent off of it.

I've tentatively plugged Adbrite in as an alternative. We'll see how that goes. I'm in the process of dismantling the AdSense ad-blocks. The revenues I'd accumulated are forfeit (which is a bit of a pest, as I was sort of counting on that money), and I'm feeling quite a bit like I've just been punished for doing well.

Play it now: Four free Big Fish games

Big Fish Games have several titles available for free download for a limited time. Azada, Hidden Expedition: Everest, Fairway Solitaire, and Spa Mania. All four titles are available for both Windows and Mac. You'll need to create a free account at Big Fish Games in order to take advantage of the special coupon codes, but it is all fairly smooth sailing other than that.

Azada is a puzzle game, Hidden Expedition: Everest is a hidden object game, Spa Mania is a time-management game, and Fairway Solitaire is a surprisingly well-crafted fusion of a golf-game and a card game which I've had my eye on for some time. I've linked in some reviews above so you have some idea what you're getting.

Purchase instructions, links and the coupon codes for getting them gratis are available on Jayisgames. Enjoy.

Mixed interests - balancing acts in Second Life coverage

One of the tricky things about reporting on Second Life is the issue of what stuff to cover. Hey, how tricky can it be? You just write about what people are interested in, right?

Yeah, you'd think so.

What people are interested in, though, isn't necessarily what you might think people are interested in.

If a user or organization is doing something super-awesome in-world, the odds are that the Second Life readers will mostly pass it over. Human interest stories and similar all get minimal attention. Okay, except for the occasional 'Why the hell are you even covering this stuff anyway?'

Hirings/departures at Linden Lab? Now that generates some interest. Other Linden Lab doings and policy changes even more so, and speculations about which way the Lab is going to jump next are right up there.

Top of the heap - the really grabby stuff? New release candidates.

...

I know, right?

My essential hypothesis sort of works like this... Viewers and stuff about Linden Lab and their staff-lineup and policies affects everyone in Second Life, directly or indirectly. Stuff that people are doing in-world though will axiomatically only have appeal to a subset of people.

Live music, and audio/voice events for example - that only appeals to a portion of the people I know. Likewise not everyone I know is a gamer, or necessarily interested in recreational activities. Not everyone is keen on shopping or networking.

Different interests, different foci, and that subdivides the community right there.

But if you stand anywhere in Second Life long enough, a discussion will start up about the Lab, or some particular Linden, or about some new policy or some enforcement action in-world (gone right or wrong). Talking about Linden Lab seems to be the favourite pastime of the majority of Second Life users, and there's an astonishing amount of misinformation going around.

Just yesterday I walked into an argument where a bunch of people believed that all non-G-rated content was being banished from the grid next week. Earlier that morning, someone was telling me how Linden Lab was merging Teen Second Life with adult Second Life today. Simple misunderstandings and misinterpretations run through communities like wildfire and feed on themselves. Sometimes people just spread tales to laugh at how far they will go.

Still, the Lab and its doings remain among the most popular talking points with users in-world, and that's something that's hard to ignore.

Bordering on an obsession

I'm wondering what it says about a lot of writers that they can't seem to venture near a social or non-game virtual environment without spending paragraphs talking about genitalia and sex, and trying to figure out how avatars have sex, even in virtual environments that are, essentially, G-rated and technically have none.

Oh, sure. A lot of folks are interested in that sort of thing, but the propensity with which I've seen it crop up in newspaper columns and in particular in some games-writers columns, it seems to be bordering on the obsessive.

A whole host of games-writers, particularly, don't seem to be able to look at a non-human (alien, robot or anthropomorphic) avatar without immediately focusing on sex. A few writers seem to suffer some severe cognitive disconnect, where non-human avatars and a non-sexual environment are somehow completely inconceivable and nonsensical -- a combination that they can neither grasp nor comprehend.

Some newspaper columns outline the writer's visit to strip clubs in Second Life, within minutes of registration, and give no sign that the writer went anywhere other than locations focusing on sex.

Sadly, at the end, they generally conclude about the virtual environment, "I don't get it."

Maybe what they really meant was "I didn't get any",  because based on their descriptions and reported conversations, that outcome seems a whole lot more likely.

Circumstances beyond our control

Due to a... let's call it a glitch for the moment (and one which I hope will be resolved very soon and very satisfactorily), there's not going to be any new content here for another day or two. You've probably noticed the sudden gap where you probably expected to see some rambling philosophical waffle, a comic, a picture of a cat, or an observation about Jack Thompson philosophically turning a cat into a comical waffle.

Bear with me, and hopefully this will be sorted out pronto, and I'll be back to posting real soon now.

Voice direction for word splicing

Ever been really hacked-off by those machines that put sentences together by splicing words? Telephone recordings, elevators, that sort of thing? Even if you've got a good ear, they're generally really annoying to listen to.

The solution to them is also very simple, yet nobody seems to ever do it.

There are two major ways of stressing a word in normal speech. Say "nine seven nine".

No, really. Give it a try.

See how the first nine sounds different from the last nine? The first nine and the seven use ongoing stress emphasis. That's the way we say a word when another word is going to follow it. The last nine uses a different emphasis, because you're going to stop speaking. It's how we sound words that occur at the end of sentences, or when we're otherwise done speaking. So there are two ways to say a word: Regular and final.

Those devices that speak by splicing together words always use only finals. Essentially, the person they recorded spoke each word as a standalone (final) word. Those were recorded, and chopped up and stored for the software to reproduce.

Wrong!

To get it to sound right, and to sound more natural, you record the speaker using regular emphasis.

Get them to repeat the word several times as a sentence, and chop out one from the middle that you like. Then you take the last one, and record that as a final. That gives you two sound-banks of recorded words. One set of regulars, and one set of finals. Then it's just a matter of setting up your data tables for each sentence to select a regular for each word, except the last word of a sentence, and pick the sound out of the list of finals for that one.

It sounds so much more natural, is easier on the ear and requires less concentration to understand. It's also quite simple, doesn't add much to the time with your voice-actor, and only requires double the storage (and in many of these systems, the storage is vastly underutilized).

So why does nobody ever actually do this?

What the heck is up with sound-cards these days?

Time was, your Wintel PC needed a sound-card to do much more than make a thrilling little beep or click. Early sound-cards were pretty rudimentary, but they did the job. You got sound, and sometimes darn good sound.

More modern sound cards have all sorts of features, chief among which I would think is easing the sound-processing burden for the CPU, and really, that's the primary reason you'd go out and buy a sound-card rather than relying on the audio systems that are built into virtually every motherboard out there. The onboard sound hardware generally seems to rely on drivers that do most of the dog-work at the CPU end.

So, armed with a shiny new machine, I found it would really shovel. It handled pretty much every piece of software I threw at it, and usually on maximum settings. Memory and disk throughput was comfortably huge, and very snappy.

The onboard sound hardware, however, gave all the symptoms of an overworked software audio pipeline: Clicks, pops and stutters, when the system gets pretty busy delivering flashy frame-rates.

Not a great experience.

So, time for a dedicated sound-card to move all that work off onto hardware and give me a nice smooth sound experience. In this case, that was the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-E.

Golly, was that ever a waste of money.

Plugged in, and running the latest drivers it delivers sound that is no better than the software-driven audio hardware on the motherboard.

But I can have advanced audio features with my clicks, pops and stutters.

Woo, right?

Not impressed. Honestly, I don't give a damn about the nifty audio features. I want something that offloads the work from my CPU to the sound-card hardware and keeps the audio system doing what it is supposed to do. Viz: Delivering smooth audio. I have a 10-year-old Creative sound-card that does just that, with efficiency and aplomb, and which never showed any trouble until I choked the system too hard for it to accomplish much of anything. Unfortunately, this system just doesn't have any PCI slots for it.

So, what is it with these newer sound-cards? Are they basically little more than life-support for a bunch of software features and brightly coloured output sockets nowadays?

Play it now: Virtual Apple

For the impatient, let's start with Virtual Apple is awesome and you should run off and tinker with it right away.

For anyone who is still left, Virtual Apple is really awesome. Off you go!

Wait, what? Some of you are still here? Oh, alright then.

Virtual Apple is a Web-site with over 1300 Apple II and Apple IIgs disk images, and an embedded emulator that works on most browsers and systems. You can play a lot of old Apple II games from the 1980s right in your Web-browser, or you can download disk images from the site to work with a local emulator.

For simpler games, you can just load the page and start playing. For more complex ones (games that require custom player disks and the like) you might want to download the images and an emulator for your system... but Virtual Apple allows you to sample most of these treats before committing to the (admittedly microscopic in modern terms) download. One or two of the images online won't work due to copy protection (Earth Orbit Stations comes to mind) but a local emulator may be able to bypass such fuss.

Yes, Apple II games were not the most sophisticated. It was an 8-bit system with limited sound and graphics capabilities, and very little memory to go on with. That said, you can find some real gameplay treasures in the archive (many of which deserve remaking).

The Web-based emulator itself has gone through numerous revisions, so if you've visited the site in the past but have been away for a while, it is worth checking out again.

Now, go on and get out of here and spend some quality time with Virtual Apple.

Play it now: Fallout collection promo

Gog.com is having a Fallout Collection promotion. They're selling the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics, DRM-free for US$14.37. That includes some premium content like soundtracks and the 205 page Fallout bible.

Even if you already bought one or more of the originals years ago on disk, that's a darn good deal.

Fallout is fondly remembered by a generation of gamers, and with good reason. The promo ends on midnight, 27 April.

The migratory habits of the PR flack

I believe there is some genetic instinct at work. Some deep and unreasoning drive, the exact purpose of which remains unfathomable, inscrutable, and involuted.

Observe the career PR flack. As a press-release approaches actual... well, release the PR flack is overcome with a restless sort of urge. Once the material is released unto the wild lands of journalists and writers, there seems to be some irresistable, and ineluctable prepossession that takes hold.

It is a migratory instinct that cannot be deferred or denied, driving our hapless flack to a seminar, a a conference, a cruise, a flight to Nepal, or a hiking trip to Guam. Pretty much anywhere where you can't actually contact them by any means more swift or certain than a carrier-snail.

What bizarre and recondite twists of genetic predisposition underpin this unstoppable, and indeed almost axiomatic force? Perhaps the world will never know.

Thompson loses appeal

Judging by the reader figures, Florida ex-attorney Jack Thompson is a popular topic among readers. Given a lifetime disbarment in September 2008 for 27 counts of professional miscondunct, Thompson appealed to the Supreme Court.

Now, these sorts of disbarment appeals happen from time to time. The appeal is first heard by a panel of judges who decide if the appeal will take place. Less than one in 25 are actually permitted so it represented some pretty long odds.

Well, it seems that Thompson doesn't get to be one of the special snowflakes this time around. I can only wonder what he's going to do next. I'm pretty sure he's not going to just let it slide. I can't imagine why you'd want to be a part of a professional association that doesn't want you as a member, though.

There's always a darn catch, isn't there?

So, let me get this straight. The health-centre says that to get an assessment for case-management, one has to have a referral from one's specialist. So, they encourage us to do obtain that. We do that thing (with a bit of scheduling awkwardness) and later, while grocery-shopping, they call with a time and a date for an assessment.

When we return home and check the calendar this turns out to clash with an appointment that we already have. So, we call back and they say they'll call the following day to rebook the assessment. This doesn't happen.

So, we call them and they can't find the appointment to cancel, but book a new assessment anyway (for the 21st). Whatever it is that they actually booked is wrong, but nobody there figures it out for three weeks. More on that in a moment.

Three days later, they call about rebooking the original assessment. We tell them about the new assessment booking. Well, they can't find that. They book another for the 27th.

Three weeks or so goes by, until today, when someone finally finds the bogus assessment appointment for the 21st, and calls to let us know that it is canceled. Okay. That's fine. Dandy. About time, really.

This evening, we get another call. The appointment for the 27th, we are told, is also being canceled.

Why?

Because we've got a specialist. Remember the specialist in the first paragraph that we need to get the referral from? That one. Without the referral from the specialist, we can't get an assessment. Apparently with the specialist, we're not eligible.

Since the call came after-hours, there's no possibility of talking to anyone who knows anything today. Tomorrow, apparently we'll get to talk to an intermediary who won't be fully briefed on the situation either.

Presumably by the time we sort the situation, the appointment slot will have been filled by someone who has been moved up, and we'll be waiting another month or so.

Did IQs suddenly plummet when I wasn't looking?

Live feeds/dead feeds

No word about the broken statistical feeds. On the JIRA side, Coco Linden reopened an old JIRA ticket about it. On the PR side, still waiting for a response.

The end of April is coming along, so I'm going to assume that the feeds are shut down as a matter of policy (rather than say incompetence). They're not getting fixed, and they're not getting talked about, even though statistics are quite the PR focus at the moment. Even if they were a lower priority than the slightly balky wheel on Harmony's chair, you'd have at least expected to hear about that by now.

What's left, but to assume that the change is intentional? (Or that the breakage wasn't, but leaving it broken is?)

I've updated the charts page, moved live charts towards the top, and marked the defunct information more clearly.

CORRECTION: The Last-60-days active user data sputtered erratically back to life a few days ago, and is reporting again. My scripts, alas, ignored it because the signup data itself had ceased. That graph is working again - though the feed has been silent for almost all of Q1 2009.

Play it now: Gemcraft Chapter 0

A web-embedded Flash game. GemCraft Chapter 0 is fun and clever, with rather a bit more depth to it than it seems at first. It can suck away a goodly chunk of your time without you realizing it, though.

Grab some Seshat

Are you following Seshat Czeret's blog? If you're interested in texturing, making clothing or her products, then you probably should be!

Smart, witty, cogent and educational! Grab an eyeful.

Breaking a habit: No more RL for me

I've been thinking about it for years. The whole RL (Real Life) thing is blitheringly daft. Your life is your life whether your computer is switched on or not. You don't suddenly tell someone that you're on the phone with ("Telephone Life"? No way!) that you've got to go do something in Real Life. Well, except by force of habit.

Well, this is a habit I'm going to try to break. Being online is my job, and a large part of my play. It's where I earn my living. I pay my bills online. I prepare and pay my taxes online.

No more RL for me. Just AFK. AFK is the part of my life when I'm not at the keyboard (and coincidentally, not actually earning money or working at my jobs), but AFK makes more sense overall.

Beta-ing

Another week another beta. This time for [can't say because of the NDA]. On the plus side it looks interesting. Whether it holds my attention once I start fiddling with [the other beta I'm supposed to be accessing over the weekend, but can't mention because of the NDA].

On the plus side, there's a lot of exciting stuff in beta at the moment, and I'm more or less looking forward to the release of all of them. On the downside, the restrictions about even mentioning them on my own blog are a bit of a pest.

Sure, the restrictions make sense. Some of this stuff is still pretty shaky in some ways, and they deserve a chance to get that hammered out and polished smooth before release. But still. It'd be nice to say that I'm interested and a bit excited about them, right?

Not being able to mention them puts tedious holes in the social media stream.

Maybe if they'd called it something else?

The operators of The Pirate Bay torrent site have been found guilty of assisting copyright infringement by a Swedish district court. A fine of 30 million kronor and a year in jail will likely be appealed, of course.

While the defendants didn't store or host any infringing material on the site and an alleged 80% of the material linked to wasn't infringing material ... still, if you call it "The Pirate Bay" that sort of makes any claims of innocence seem rather specious and far harder to defend.

The most interesting aspect of the verdict is that it appears to give industry groups leverage towards laying actions against other file-sharing hubs.

Ironically, the verdict was apparently leaked to the press before it was presented in court.

Massively's Free Realms beta key giveaway

Over on Massively, we're giving away 100 beta keys for Sony Online Entertainment's Free Realms! If you want one, head on over and get an entry in. You have until 9am ET on Saturday April 18.

Fallout, the television show

Bethesda/Zenimax (you know those folks, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, that sort of thing) registered some new trademarks just recently.

On 5 February 2009, Bethesda Softworks LLC applied for the Fallout trademark for "Entertainment services in the nature of an on-going television program" (s/n 77663853) and for "motion picture films about a post-nuclear apocalyptic world" (s/n 77663852). Obviously they already own all the other US trademarks to do with this game property at present.

Fallout, the film. Or the TV series. Hmm. Interesting notion.

New comic - Dissonance

You'll find a new comic in the archive, though perhaps it is more of an observation. Dissonance. I find it amusing anyway, insofar as dichotomies tickle my fancy.

It goes with my column on The Metaverse Journal this week.

The other kind of piracy

Just to keep things in perspective, let's mention the other kind of pirates. Not the software or music or movie kinds. Not the publishers-swiping-intellectual-property kind.

Actual real pirates, armed with guns, automatic weapons and in some cases rocket-propelled grenades. Some of you might be surprised that they're still in operation today. Indeed just the last few months there seems to have been something of an increase in pirate activity.

If you've ever scoffed at the captain or crew of a container vessel or bulk carrier, think again. It can be an awfully dangerous job, and these people literally risk their lives to carry food and goods across the open seas. The crew of a ship may be injured or killed just for a lifeboat, their food stores, or their personal possessions, let-alone their actual cargo.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) keeps a live piracy report with the most recent incidents.

If you never gave a second thought to this sort of thing, you might find it rather chilling.

Spare a thought for the unsung mariners who are daily risking their lives to transport books, magazines, pencils, food, plastic food containers, and a whole lot of other things we all tend to take for-granted. Sometimes people are killed for ballpoint pens.

Amazon got gamed?

Remember Easter's Amazon Fail?

A person has come forward and claimed that they exploited Amazon's "Report as inappropriate" feature with a bit of a cross-site-scripting to get many thousands of users to unknowingly and unwittingly report a large list of titles as inappropriate, removing their sales ranking and excluding them from search results.

Amazon have yanked the feature during the fixup process which makes the story quite a bit more credible.

All in all 57,310 items were affected. Not just gay-themed books, but "a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine and Erotica."

The Day Online Reputation Died - Attacking Amazon's Ranking System (playnoevil)

Amazon refers to this as a "ham-fisted" cataloging error, which doesn't feel like it holds water. Someone was working on the Amazon databases over the Easter Weekend (a time when Amazon says it didn't have anyone to respond to the problem), and decides to classify most items (but apparently not all) that are tagged gay/lesbian as porn?

That doesn't seem very likely, to be honest.

Bettina's Blue Mars

There's been all sorts of scraps of information floating around about Blue Mars, lately - a virtual environment that (for a change) does hold some interest for Second Life users. Bettina Tizzy over at NPIRL has a more concentrated chunk of information in one place than you're likely to find in a day.

Blue Mars has some interesting things going for it, but its very model may prove to present some unexpected barriers.

Internet Explorer marketshare

Judging by the website stats that I have to hand, more of my readers are using Internet explorer than back in January 2007, when it was a mere 2% plus change. It's about 20% of you these days, so that's about an order-of-magnitude increase. There's even some folks using MSIE v8 (err, both of you).

Seems like Microsoft's not too happy with the take-up of v8, and is going to push it through the automatic update channel. It's still completely opt-in. It'll ask you, and presumably respect your decision.

Interestingly it seems like few users who still run v6 have migrated towards v7 or v8. V8's only really taking users away from v6, and Internet Explorer seems to be losing marketshare globally, while other web-browsers surge at the moment.

v6 seems to be the standard version of IE maintained in corporate offices with few of them using v7 or v8.

Corporate IT administrators can add values to the registry to suppress installs or offers of later versions by automatic update:

reg ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0" /v DoNotAllowIE70 /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f

reg ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\8.0" /v DoNotAllowIE80 /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f

MSIE users - you're still happy with your browser -- I assume so, anyway, otherwise you'd likely not be using it. I'm curious as to why you're sticking with the version you have (or why you upgraded).

Jack spams Utah legislature?

Unhappy with the fate of his the bill he drafted, disbarred Florida attorney Jack Thompson apparently sent enough emails to the Utah senate president Waddoups that he was asked to stop, including an image of GTAIV's protagonist character getting a lap-dance, essentially calling it pornography.

Interestingly enough, the Utah legislature might agree with him in part, because when he sent that to the whole legislature, Waddoups decided to pass the matter on to the State Attorney General to see what action may be taken.

In a sense, Waddoups might be playing into Jacks hand (argh! Did anyone else just go to a scary visual place just then?) with this one. Is it offensive material, or is it not? Or is it just that it is inappropriately out-of-place?

See also:

Utah Senate President Wants to Prosecute Jack Thompson Under CAN-SPAM Act

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12142617

Steam now on Steam

Let me run up at that phrase again. A steampunk machines/cogs/steam/puzzle game on Valve's Steam for Windows. There's also a demo. Tricky, kinda cool, steampunk and relatively cheap. What's not to like?

It's called Cogs, and you should try the demo before making any purchasing decisions. Maybe it's not for you.

Lessons in Future Publishing

So, Edge Online's staff appear to have all quit? Why? Because editorially, it appears that Future Publishing basically wanted the online arm to work editorially just like the print arm.

"Edge-Online's editorial control has been brought in line with the magazine in an effort to create a "strong, consistent voice" for the brand, according to Future Publishing."

Now, Future Publishing... I like you folks. We've got history. You and I go way back, and I'm fond of you. So I'll be gentle.

Dumbass move.

I think that's about as gentle and diplomatic as it gets in this particular case.

What you've basically suggested is the equivalent of saying that there's no effective difference between TV and the cinema screen. Your print arm and your online arm have as much in common as television and cinema -- which is to say a whole lot. The things that they have in common make them strong. The things that they don't have in common make them useful and appropriate and relevant. Each to their own.

Gloss over those differences and you lose usefulness, appropriateness and relevance -- and you'd be economically better off shutting one of those arms down. In fact, that's pretty much what you just did, effectively. Staff gone, and most of the readers will go with them.

Future, you should know better. I always thought you did, in fact. You can have a strength and consistency, but you need different voices for different media. That's an old, old lesson now, from before many of us were born. I believe it's written down somewhere.

Comic commentaries added

Every strip in the Comic Archive (well, I think I got them all) now has some commentary about the strip, the joke, and/or the shooting or writing of it.

Watch out for those carrot-eating cyclists on TV

Given that the number of gamers worldwide who have played or presently play violent video games is roughly estimated to be somewhere around 250 million, and the number of shootings, school shootings and violent crimes associated with violent video games is (roughly) 10-20 per year....

Would that not suggest that there is some alternative explanation for these outbursts of violence than the video games?

In fact, there's a far stronger correlation between violent crimes and eating carrots, or riding bicycles than there is for video games.

Besides, didn't we used to blame these shootings on television? When did we stop blaming TV for violent crimes?

Illnesses, work and projects

Fighting off a bout of the sick, so feeling generally woeful. Still, the launch of the comic archive seems to have been very successful judging by the figures. Perhaps I can patch some per-strip commentaries into that as well.

Let me know what you think, and what you might like to see. There's a rather larger project in the works that I'm not going to talk about until it is finished or very close to. Quite a lot to do, both in and out of Second Life. A whole chunk of it involves writing, of course, and hopefully some of it has a few delicious surprises.

If you've been paying attention you'll see a roughly weekly column over at The Metaverse Journal, plus still doing the regular thing with Massively. That's all definitely helping keep the wolves from the door (though sometimes I wonder if wolves are tasty, or can be readily converted into biofuel).

As a part of ongoing plans, I've refit the advertising and analytics here, as a part of getting the comic archive site up and running, along with another one from the unannounced project. The site seems to be performing quite well despite a fair bit of neglect. As a result you'll likely see a lot more here.

The Mark III Travel machine

From the second day at Supanova. Awesome work. Original post and more images.

Dwell On It: The Comic gets its own site

Well, it took me long enough, but long and arduous minutes after hazily making the decision, Dwell On It: The Comic gets a little Web-site of its own, with all 68 strips thus far (except a few that remain over at Massively.com) and in a more readable size than on the blog here.

New strips will get added there as they come out, but you'll still see them previewed here in the smaller size.

Either click here, or on the new image above the blog posts to go there.

Land of the weak, home of the broken

Ari Blackthorne carries a post by a commentator called Charles, titled Second Life: Land of the WEAK home of the BROKEN. Now, Ari doesn't necessarily agree with all of it, and I must admit that there's very little in it that resembles anything that I experience in Second Life myself.

For those of you who also spend substantial lengths of time in SL, does any of it ring true for you?

Piracy is stealing. Not!

Just about every time I put a DVD in, or tune in to commercial television, I see a cautionary advert that says (either) "Piracy is theft" or "Piracy is stealing", or "Piracy is a crime". These relate to movies, music, software. You hear and see these messages a lot.

Now, it might seem unreasonably pedantic, but those statements are misleading. That is, taken literally, they are false.

Theft, and stealing are crimes (actually, they're not always crimes, but they usually are). Theft is... well:

1. A person steals if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
2. A person who steals is guilty of theft; and "thief" shall be construed accordingly.

Look closely: "with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"

If someone takes your keys, they are stealing. If someone shoplifts a product from a shelf, they are stealing. If someone takes your car, they are stealing. Each of these deprives the owner of the thing that is stolen. Watch? Wallet? Shoes? Fanny-pack? Jewelry? Luggage? Stealing.

If someone rips your texture, photocopies your book, copies your files or plagiarizes your words, that is not stealing. You have not been deprived of your texture, data or words.

What it actually is, is an infringement of your civil rights. That's unlawful, and there's no question about it.

Technically though, it isn't actually a crime. It's a civil infringement and not a matter for criminal law (though there are some circumstances where it can be, but they're not really the sorts of circumstances you're likely to run into commonly).

Saying that Piracy is theft/stealing/a crime is what we call hype (exaggeration for effect). It's essentially a false statement. It's also an insulting one, to some degree, because it suggests that you don't know any better. You can say that someone's future profits are being 'stolen', but that's something they don't have yet, and that's a civil action as well, and not stealing as the law defines it.

I guess saying that "Piracy is a violation of the civil rights of others" lacks the sort of punch that gets it onto the front of tee-shirts. But we're not really talking about catchy tee-shirt slogans here.

Trivia note: Until relatively recently, in historical terms, the term piracy (in the intellectual property sense) wasn't applied to what consumers did. It was something that publishers did. A pirate was a publisher who used your work, music, or ideas and didn't compensate you fairly (or at all) for it.

Now I'm not saying that the violation of the civil rights of others is right. I'm just a bit fed up with being bombarded by false statements. Are you?

Amazon fails

Apparently Amazon has started stripping sales rankings from a lot of the books in its catalogue. A hint of homosexuality, it seems, is the trigger. Gay or lesbian characters or themes.

In response to an enquiry from one of the authors, they indicated that this was due to policy. Publisher's Weekly calls it a glitch, but at least one Amazon employee seems to think it is intentional. If it is a glitch it is a very unfortunately specific (and apparently homophobic) glitch.

I'm seriously not at all sure I'd buy the glitch story. If it is, then I think Amazon needs to stop just saying "Yeah, it's a glitch" and start telling people when they expect things to be corrected.

Sick cat solution

It occurs to me that I should update the status of the sick cat. You may remember the unusual neurological seizures that she was having that seemed to be characteristic of either a drug overdose or a tumor.

Well, the problem seems to have pretty much gone away. The problem seems to have been Metacam, the medication that she was being given for her arthritis. Now that she's off it, she's back to her old self. The seizures stopped happening a few weeks after she was taken off of the drug, and she seems just fine now.

She's still not a young cat, and prone to some cautious movement. Maybe the original prescription was incorrect, or the dosage was too high or she was having a bad reaction to it or whatever. She gave all the signs of a cat in distress and nearing the end of her life. Nowadays she's a lot perkier. Old, as I said, and cranky in the cold weather, but her old affectionate self.

It's good to have her back.

Brass knuckles

Since there's no controversy about violent video games, and violence and video games, of course Electronic Arts figured it would be a great idea to send out brass knuckles with the promo material for Godfather II.

That's like bungee-jumping using a length of iron chain, you know, to prove it's safe - or some other staggering, self-harming non-sequitur.

As a promotional item, it would come from their marketing department, so we must assume that the marketing department hasn't read a newspaper or watched any TV in, oh, the last ten years or so. Leastways, nothing about - you know - games.

Now EA is trying to take the things back. Turns out that possession of them is a crime in a lot of places in the USA. Sending them across state lines, too. Of course, if they're trying to get people to send them back, are they not now inciting the recipients to break the law by sending the items across state lines a second time?

What the heck was anyone thinking?