Monthly Archives: September 2006

On the Ethics of Ganking

Posted on by
Reply

Steven Levy has a longish and not terribly-illuminating article about World of Warcraft. The problem is that Levy (like a lot of others) want to make WoW out as the nexus of some new virtual social revolution. Levy actually claims that,

What distinguishes Warcraft from previous blockbuster games is its immersive nature and compelling social dynamics.

Riiigght. I guess Levy’s never spent a couple hours monitoring the various public chat channels in WoW. I guess if the constant chatter of 12 year olds deciding whether this or that is “gay” qualifies as “complex social interactions” then wait till someone turns him on to IRC!

Nor, as fun as the game is, is it particularly immersive. It is basically an incredibly well-done 3D Diablo that thousands of other people are playing along with you. Actual in-game interactions are frankly very limited compared to a genuinely interactive game like say, Second Life. Of course Second Life is fun to read about but not so fun to play.

But this paragraph did grab my attention,

Though WOW is a fantasy world, the interaction between guilds and individuals relies on human choices and morals. The first thing one does when joining the game is to choose an avatar from one of eight “races,” split between two factions: the human-looking Alliance and the more bestial Horde. Edward Castronova (Level 42, Priest), an Indiana U professor and author of “Synthetic Worlds,” once roiled the WOW community by a blog posting entitled “The Horde Is Evil,” in which he charged that only the antisocial at heart would pick that darker side. Castronova believes that if someone behaves badly in the game—an example would be the WOW equivalent of spree killing, where someone ganks a character of a much lower level, just for the hell of it—that person should be judged harshly in the real world as well.

First, I’d wager that all but a very small percentage of WoW players have never even heard of Castronova.

Second, Castronova’s argument (assuming Levy has accurately conveyed it here) is absurd. Of course, my defense of “the Wow equivalent of a spree killing” is a bit self-serving since that’s pretty much all I do in WoW these days.

Originally I rolled a warlock and spent the first 8 months playing the game taking my warlock to level 60. For the most part, I only played with my wife and occasionally a small group of friends at work. I got to 60 essentially playing WoW solo with some small-group co-op (which you could do with many non-MMO games, but damn WoW is a sweet game).

Pretty much the only thing left to do when you reach 60 is spend time doing large instanced dungeon raids, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. So I quit playing for several months — and then created a gnome rogue.

I’ve managed to get my rogue up to level 43, but for the most part what I do with my rogue is gank other players. In between every level, I’ll spend 20-30 hours in Stranglethorn Vale or South Shore killing every Horde player I can, and attempting to hide/run away from higher level players against whom I don’t have much of a chance.

After 12 days, 10 hours of in-game time, I’ve amassed almost 1,000 honor kills (players score an honor kill when they kill a player of relatively the same level — a level 42 won’t get an honor kill for ganking a level 24). Getting 1,000 honor kills would be pretty easy to do much more quickly in any of the Battlegrounds, but players have a tendency to leave areas once they know a rogue’s in the area ganking — either that or they log off and log back on with their level 60 characters and play “lets kill the rogue” (ah, but finding the rogue can be next to impossible).

Honor kills are nice, but I’ll kill pretty much anything. If I’m riding through South Shore and I see a level 20 with only half his hit points, I’ll dismount and kill him. And then camp him.

Unlike Castranova I consider this sort of behavior a feature, not a bug. I am on a PVP server and as Blizzard notes in its description of PVP servers, being on a PVP server means that in most areas of the world you are a legitimate target to be killed by the other faction. In fact, the company’s FAQ on in-game harassment notes that some things that would be considered harassment on Player-Vs-Environment servers (where you have to essentially have the consent of opposing players to engage them in combat) are okay on a PVP server,

Actions that would typically be considered “dishonorable actions” such as, but not limited to; corpse camping, graveyard camping, or instance zone camping are considered acceptable PVP tactics and are not considered harassment.

Care Bears should find another server.

Castranova seems to think that, despite this, someone who would spend their time ganking and camping other players might still be worthy of moral approbation. But since this occurs with the pre-defined constraints of the software, I would argue instead that my gnomish rogue says as much about me as Al Pacino’s version of Tony Montana says about him. After all, this is still at heart a role-playing game — I just happen to be role-playing a character with abilities such as Cheap Shot, Murder, Gouge, Backstab, and the always-popular Eviscerate.

Hate the game, not the player.

Source:

Living a Virtual Life. Steven Levy, Newsweek, September 18, 2006.

PDF Web Conferencing? Blah

Posted on by
Reply

In Adobe’s ongoing efforts to continually bloat PDF, the next version will feature webconferencing. Ugh.

According to CNET News.Com,

The company on Monday detailed its refreshed Acrobat line and pricing. In tandem with the product upgrade, Adobe will launch a hosted service called Acrobat Connect, which will allow individuals to click on a button in a PDF file to start a Web conference.

. . .

“The motion forward is around personal and project spaces where people can communicate around certain issues and topics,” said Ricky Liversidge, a product marketing manager at Adobe. “It’s like having my personal meeting room–a URL where you go forward and store documents.”

Connect is a rebranded edition of a Web conferencing product formerly called Macromedia Breeze.

From a PDF file, a person can use Connect to let someone else view a document or a person’s entire desktop through a Web browser. Connect, which runs with the Adobe Flash Player, also lets a person start a chat with instant messaging or send an invitation via e-mail.

All for the low low price of $39/month for individuals! Holy crap, do they think it’s still 1997? Will they throw in a free blink tag?

Source:

Adobe brings Web conferencing to Acrobat. Martin LaMonica, CNET News.Com, September 18, 2006.

Star Trek Gets the George Lucas Treatment

Posted on by
Reply

It was bad enough that Gene Roddenberry and his successors chose to neuter the Star Trek universe with monstrosities like Jean Luc Picard (see “Homeward” for all the proof you’ll ever need of Picard’s depravity), but now Paramount is finishing the job of stabbing the original series in the back with a “remastered” version featuring new special effects. Ugh.

According to a Wired story on the changes,

CBS Paramount says the make-over is intended to enhance the show’s visual appeal while staying true to the original look and feel of the series.

“Nothing really has changed except for the fact that it’s just prettier to look at,” said John Nogawski, president of CBS Paramount Domestic Television, in a recent conference call with reporters. “Right down to placement of stars, it is being resimulated to be exactly what was there in the first place.”

Hmmm…lets run that corporate-speak through the universal translator,

“Nothing has really changed,” said John Nogawski, “we’re still milking Star Trek for whatever we can get out of it, and we no enough fanboys will tune in to watch the remastered version and buy the DVD to keep us in the manner we’re accustomed until the next crappy Star Trek film is ready to go. After all, what really mattered about the original Star Trek was the special effects.”

Source:

Original Star Trek Gets Upgraded. Wired, September 15, 2006.

Seagate Envisions 2.5 TB HDs; Brian Envisions Storage Nirvana

Posted on by
Reply

In a press release, hard drive manufacturer Seagate announced that it had broken there record for storing the most bits per square inch on magnetic media and said that 2.5 TB hard drives could be a reality by 2009.

According to the press release,

At the demonstrated density level, Seagate expects the capacity ranges to result in solutions ranging in 40GB to 275GB for 1-and 1.8-inch consumer electronics drives, 500GB for 2.5-inch notebook drives, and nearly 2.5TB for 3.5-inch desktop and enterprise class drives. At 2.5TB capacity, a hard drive would be capable of storing 41,650 hours of music, 800,000 digital photographs, 4,000 hours of digital video or 1,250 video games. Seagate anticipates that solutions at these density levels could begin to emerge in 2009.

Take four of those, put them in a RAID array and you’ve got enough space to rip 1200 DVDs at full quality. Still not enough space, but at least they’re making progress.

Source:

Seagate Breaks World Magnetic Recording Density Record – 421 Gbits Per Square Inch Equivalent to Storing 4,000 Hours of Digital Video on Your PC. Press Release, Seagate, September 15, 2006.

Marvel Alters “Essential” Tomb of Dracula Comics

Posted on by
Reply

Marvel has been collecting the run of its 1970s-ish Tomb of Dracula in relatively cheap softcover volumes. Groovy Age of Horror has the lowdown on how Marvel has been altering the comics as it reprints them.

The originals included a number of scenes featuring bare-breasted women, but in the “Essential” reprints, either new artwork has been added to cover the offending parts or the frame is cropped to eliminate the nudity.

Yet another reason to simply stick with downloading comics.

Focus on Being F’n Amazing

Posted on by
Reply

MVP handed me a copy of this excellent post from Creating Passionate Users about the ass-backward way that most performance evaluations tend to focus on cataloging employees’ weaknesses and improving them, rather than cataloging their strengths and focusing on enhancing and exploiting them to benefit the organization.

Too many companies (and managers, spouses, etc.) focus too much on bringing everyone up to some level of competency in a laundry-list of attributes including time-management, communication skills, writing ability, filling out TPS reports, teamwork/teamplayer, attitude, organization, sensitivity, adhering to corporate goals and policies, etc. Clearly, there is some minimum threshold for each attribute beneath which a person might be impossible to work with no matter what the situation. But too often those minimum thresholds are set MUCH TOO HIGH and not specifically tailored enough to the individual.

By focusing on “areas of improvement”, we’re putting a square peg in a round hole. What do we end up with? A crappy, rounded off peg who meets the minimum thresholds at the expense of their most kick-ass attributes. What if let ourselves (and those we manage) spend a lot more energy in the areas where we are–or could be–amazing? I suggest taking a very hard look at the “areas of improvement” list and see if we can rearrange the context so that those things become less important. In other words, why don’t we try to make a square hole?

The comments to the post are also worth reading. I don’t seem to be able to directly link to any single post, but there’s an excellent one that is in the form of a memo about the manager’s responsibilities that was really good,

Functions of your manager

In support of the above goals, your manager will assist in the following ways:

1) Eliminating Assholes. If anyone or anything is standing in the way of you meeting your objectives, please seek assistance to get the obstacle cleared. It is his role to absorb uncertainty and to provide the environment where you can deliver your projects unhindered. We want you to enjoy your work and to be proud of your achievements.

2) Your manager will do his best to provide an environment where you are learning (and helping the company learn) every day. Requests for training are welcome. Sharing of ideas and distribution of your learnings to your manager and your colleagues, ideally in small digestable chunks, is encouraged. And you are expected to make mistakes. That’s the way we all learn.

3) Seek forgiveness, not permission. In the same way you can escalate issues to your manager, there will be times when the data, or key staff, aren’t available for us to hit a key decision deadline. Time to market is key; having weighed up the pros and cons, make the decision that you believe is right for the company, our customers and preferably both.

So Which Is It? Is 3,000 Deaths A Big Deal Or Not?

Posted on by
Reply

There’s an amusing hypocrisy on the part of some critics of the Iraq war since some of them overlap with the “terrorism isn’t really that big of a threat” group. Unfortunately for them, this tends to lead to some very incongruous complaints.

Take popular Internet weblog Boing! Boing!. On September 12, 2006, Boing! Boing!’s Mark Fraunfelder posted a copy of an e-mail noting that total American deaths in Iraq had finally equaled the total number of Americans killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

One implication of this is that the death rate of U.S. soldiers, especially combat-related deaths, is actually very low in Iraq in comparison to other American wars (a point I made earlier). Five times as many American soldiers were killed in Vietnam in 1968 alone as the Iraqi insurgency has managed in almost 3 and half years. Instead of confronting the Americans, Iraqi insurgency seems to focus most of its effort on killing and terrorizing civilians in hopes of igniting a sectarian civil war.

Back to Boing! Boing!, though, it is a little odd that Fraunfelder thought the 3,015 deaths as of September 9 was noteworthy. After all on August 7, 2006, Cory Doctorow lauded the Cato Institute for dismissing the relevance of the 9/11 terrorist attack,

The bottom line is, terrorism doesn’t kill many people. Even in Israel, you’re four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.

Of course, those folks who hijacked four planes and flew three of them into buildings a few years ago might have had a little something to do with “convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism.”

Ultimately, though, it would be nice if people would make up their minds. If 3,000 or so deaths in a single day from a terrorist attack means that “terrorism doesn’t kill many people,” then the logical conclusion is that neither do Iraqi insurgents.

The Horrors of Men with New Testaments

Posted on by
Reply

Like most student newspapers, the one at the university where I’m pursuing my Master’s degree in is pretty lousy, but this editorial to kick off the start of the semester was a new low in pathetic quotient.

Ever since I can remember (at least back to the mid-1980s), several times a year a number of gentlemen show up on campus and station themselves at heavily trafficked points on campus. They then hand out a small New Testament. Typically as you approach them, they’ll try to hand you the book.

A bit annoying, especially if you’re walking across campus and you get propositioned repeatedly, but the sort of thing that’s fairly common on a college campus (along with people handing out flyers for their bands, etc.)

If you believe the student newspaper, however, these men handing out half a Bible were disrupting the entire campus,

Many students encountered problems this week when non-students were handing out bibles or other literature in an aggressive manner. These people might in fact belong to an RSO, but their motives do not seem to be in the best interest of the student body.

When I walked into the student center and man offered me a New Testament, that was nowhere near aggressive. Everywhere I walked on campus, the Bible people were very polite and as unobtrusive as one can be when attempting to hand out unsolicited materials.

And the Western Herald putting itself in the position of judging which RSOs have the proper motives is downright absurd — I don’t remember anyone electing that rag as the diviner of proper motivation for student groups (if I missed it and someone did do so, perhaps the newspaper could publish a list of all of the student groups with a 1 to 5 ranking on the purity of each group’s

Some people hand out flyers without approval, such as the solicitors for credit cards and fast food chains. Of course, they are not adhering to the guidelines set forth by the SALP and the university, but those who do have approval from the university should be held to stricter guidelines.

God forbid any spontaneous acts of speech ever occur on campus.

And then the Western Herald goes from stupidity straight into insanity (emphasis added),

Freedom of speech is important, and should not be hindered, but freedoms should be restricted when they interfere with the rights of others. These solicitors are blurring the lines of free speech and posing potential harm to students.

Students walking from class to class often have very little time to spare. The last thing on their minds should be politics, religious beliefs, or whatever else these groups are trying to sell. In some cases, these people have been so aggressive that they have put bibles in people’s hands without permission, or even put them into backpacks.

Let the Christians hand out the New Testament on street corners and outside building entrances, and the next thing you know they’ll be doing drivebys and beating down students for their iPods.

Come on. The big question is how the moron who wrote the two paragraphs above was ever accepted into a university. Someone fell asleep when handling that application.

In January 2005, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation released a survey on the First Amendment views of more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators. Disturbingly, more than 1/3rd of the students thought that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting free speech.

Apparently such attitudes become hardened and are carried with students to college, where even college newspapers tell the First Amendment to go to hell.

Source:

Editorial: On Campus Solicitors. Western Herald, September 7, 2006.