Author: Zubon

I received the following message: “[Tell]NAME: do u have timothy raymand???”

Part of me wants to send an unhelpful message back, or taunt him with the fact that I know exactly what he wants but have already exhausted it. I want to explain to this poor, delicate soul what impression you create when you want something from someone but cannot be bothered to capitalize, spell it correctly, or be polite. If you are going to spam everyone in a level range, you can take the time to write out something like, “/tell $target, Excuse me, but I am looking for the Exterminator badge mission (Eliminate Kit’Vul), which I need to finish an accolade. By any chance do you have it or the contact Timothy Raymond available?” Maybe if I just mentioned the effect created by using three question marks?

But mostly I am thinking that this fellow is going to get a date someday. Some poor girl is going to look at him and think, “This is really the best that I can do.” My heart aches for her.

: Zubon

Having been referred to xkcd by multiple sources, I wanted to share some of the amusing strips done there, but I was having trouble finding my gaming link. But wait, City of Heroes players, we have Hami-Os! Or close enough…

And then, while typing this, I remembered that there are several strips about Katamari Damacy and the internet. But hey, why go for the easy link when we can struggle for relevance?

: Zubon

[Second Life] My wife gave her presentation about MySpace in libraries in Second Life last night. That part of Information Island has a cap on how many people can be there, to prevent lag/crashes/whatever. Attendance was so high that they had to increase the cap. Yes, my wife beat the level cap in Second Life. No Anshe-esque activity was observed.

I have been wondering what organizations with a Second Life presence will do when the inevitable backlash hits. At some point, the story will be that there is sex! in a game! on the Interweb! that children could be playing! and no one is doing anything to stop it! Do you want your child to be cyber rape porned?! We must do something about it! For the children! “Excuse me, but why has your company/library/whatever set up shop in a ‘virtual world’ that is trying to lure children into sexual games? Is that what your company/library/whatever is all about, child molestation and kiddie porn?” The librarians I know would probably see this as a great educational opportunity, in which we can teach people about the internet and virtual worlds and other things that do not fit in a snappy soundbite like “library facilitates child molestation.” Who wants to place bets on “reasoned discussion and education” versus “internet perverts are coming for your children”?

: Zubon

Our dear friend Grouchy Gnome has said a nice thing about us. Accordingly, Ethic has enshrined it before he thinks better of it. Mike Nichols, director of Spamalot, perhaps said it best:

My love to those who have not won tonight and I just want to remind you of my motto: ‘Cheer up, life isn’t everything!’

: Zubon

Abandoning all pretenses of responsible journalism, I am taking this blog post with no links or sourcing as an explanation of what happened with net neutrality and AT&T. Quickly: net neutrality for two years was a concession allowing a telecom merger. This prevents AT&T from either setting up a protection racket to extract funds from content providers or building additional premium services for those providers. Well, they can add more specifically for Google or Amazon, they just cannot charge more for it. Well, they can charge you more for it, just not the content providers. Also, it does not apply to wireless or video services.

We will see what happens in two years. Re-re-regulating something before it sunsets seems easy enough, so I do not know whether we should expect AT&T to be acting as if net neutrality were permanent or going away in two years. Unless you have a lobbyist of your own, you can wait to see which company’s lobbyists win the next round; AT&T is probably the favorite in that fight. Franchise reform is going better than I had hoped, so it may be moot in two years, but that is currently for cable TV not cable modems. The earlier post seems to think the problem will move in the other direction, with our series of tubes becoming too clogged for e-mail to get through.

: Zubon

Lake Superior State University has called for the retirement of the word “pwn” in 2007. Those are surely our people on the committee deciding such things, because I promise you that my mother, boss, and state senator do not know the term. Then again, they called for the demise of “blog” for 2005, but I hear this blogging thing is catching on. “LOL” and “bots” are still going strong, but after eight years, large parts of the online world have wiped out “that’s gay,” in favor of “that’s ghey.” Progress!

: Zubon

[World of Warcraft] Did they ever roll back the useless Paladin and Shaman drops, or was the final decision that was “working as intended”? If so, did it have as big an effect on raiding as expected? Remember, it was explicitly done to allow faster problem fixes in paid-beta post-release Burning Crusade, so you get to be more demanding and vocal about any problems then.

: Zubon