Eccentric Flower talk:201005/The Wrong Battles

Columbina:

Unrelated to the above, mostly: This is a brilliant document that shows most MMORPG and virtual-world problems were well-understood, if not solved, by or before 1990. (Some game designers would do well to realize this, alas.)

An example, which will be familiar to anyone who's ever played in a game or world that had its own economy:

-- 16:07, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

This one IS germane: The Tragic Story of the Cussing NPCs

Interesting comment at the beginning that implies maybe the reason game companies get MMOs so wrong is that statistically it is likely to be their first try, and running an MMO is not like running anything else on earth:

(In a MMO, 100+ calls about a topic is nothing.)

Of course that doesn't explain why some game companies have made many, many MMOs and they've all stunk (I'm looking at you, SOE).

-- 16:18, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Nonelvis:

Let's start at the beginning, with a quote from one of the Flutterby comments: Yes, it's a great bit of hardware, with some very nice bits of software, but it doesn't permit me to develop and deploy software in the way I would like, nor does it allow a lot of my friends to do so.

I have said this a hundred times, but I'll say it again: the iPad was not designed for hackers. It was designed for people who want to do a few basic things – read e-books, surf the web, watch movies – and who want the best and simplest possible user experience while doing it. THAT'S IT. That is the core of Apple's iPhone OS development principle: do a few things beautifully, and leave the rest out. If you want the perfect hacking tool, this isn't it, nor was it ever meant to be.

Second, while you know I disagree with Chairman Jobs' position on porn, it does not, in fact, prevent anyone from viewing or consuming porn on an iPad or iPhone. All it does is state that adult apps cannot be sold on the Apple Store. Authors of adult apps can make web apps, accessed via a browser, that are almost every bit as functional as a standalone app; these don't have to go through Apple at all. Similarly, anyone is free to write, read, or view pornography on their iPad or iPhone as long as they load it up themselves, which is (unsurprisingly, as these are Apple devices) extremely easy to do using built-in or free applications. Stanza will read porn just as well as it reads the latest mainstream best-seller, iTunes will play that porn film you ripped just as easily as it plays an episode of Lost and so on.

You forget that Apple is making a statement here not so much about what it wants to make money from, but about its brand identity. Just as Disney wants to be seen as squeaky-clean, so does Apple. Porn pretty much *is* antithetical to the Apple brand, if you think about it; so while I don't care for the stance Jobs is taking here, it also doesn't surprise me at all, or even disappoint me. It's the logical step taken by someone whose primary concern is brand identity.

-- 16:20, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Don't everybody else be afraid to discuss issues of content control, and whether it is a good idea to try to police content at all - which is what this is really about - just because Nonelvis has come in with the Apple bomb (as she does every time I say something mildly critical of the company).

It's amazing we don't kill each other.

-- 16:49, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Nonelvis:

Oh for fuck's sake, did you miss the part where I said I disagreed with Jobs' position? TWICE?

*smooches*

-- 16:56, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Jette:

I do think that comments at NYT, etc. should be moderated ... but not for profanity. Certain sites where I contribute articles have become a comments cesspool, with appalling sexist and racist comments and personal attacks. But because they are not using actual profanity, they are not removed ... okay, possibly also because they are a traffic draw. Even though the cesspool is user-contributed content, it's still not something I enjoy having associated with my writing, and if I were in charge of such a site I'd be in there demanding a standard for discussion. Profanity would be allowed, attacks would not.

On the other hand, just moderating a neighborhood association Yahoo Group sometimes drives me to want to throw things and despair for the human race, so I suspect moderating a large media site's comments would be dangerous for my cardiac health.

-- 16:59, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Mrissa:

I thoroughly approve of that 14-year-old boy.

-- 17:28, 18 May 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

In re. Being a 14-Year-Old Boy:

Nathan has an alphabet centipede with a button for every letter that, when pushed, makes the sound of the letter. If you push the G and O buttons in quick succession, you get a sound like "Guh-Oh" that's close enough to "go" to be understandable as such.

My first attempt after discovering "Guh-Oh" was to push, in quick succession, F, U and K. The centipede thereupon emitted a giggling sound. The manufacturers had evidently foreseen this improper use of the alphabet centipede and programmed it to giggle when a three-letter obscenity was entered. (A, S, S produced the same result.)

Not to be deterred, I decided to up the ante and dextrously entered C, U, N and T in quick succession. Apparently, the manufacturers had not anticipated four-letter obscenities -- a shocking omission, if you think about it -- the centipede happily chirped, "Kuh-Uh-Nn-T."

I subsequently demonstrated this experiment to my wife, who was suitably interested and amused, providing further proof that I married the right woman.

-- 19:13, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

This proves something, Robert, but I hesitate to speculate on what.

(Sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me that my first reaction to toys or situations like that is not to spell out rude words.)

-- 19:38, 18 May 2010 (BST)

Rhonda:

I have nothing to add to the discussion other than that Jobs should have known better than to get into the discussion in the first place. He knows full well that the iPhone/Pod/Pad experience is never going to be porn-free (...as free as the wind blows...) as long as there is a data connection.

I agree, in theory, that I do not want porn or cussing right where my kid can see it (which is why I am deeply annoyed at YouTube for making it impossible to hide user comments anymore, but I never fooled myself for a second that if she wanted to read the profane user comments she's perfectly capable of going and looking at them for herself).

However, his idea that one might want the world to be porn-free once one becomes a parent... um, I'm a parent and I like erotica a lot. When my kid is around, I gladly sanitize my language and my viewing habits. but after she goes to bed/school/elsewhere I want to be free to read/watch/discuss/do adult stuff, and some of that is going to involve porn/erotica, because my husband and I are still consenting adults.

Having said that, we will have to add that sentence to our pillow talk, and soon. That's right up there with "lifting your luggage."

-- 19:49, 18 May 2010 (BST)