The Lurker
On the eve of the federal election, one thing is quite clear: Australia is irredeemably fucked
One of the founders of the Australian Sex Party quotes advice he received from a prescient Don Chipp:
The first thing you've gotta give it a name that no-one forgets. And make sure to stay true to your core issues, which are censorship and personal freedom. In the years ahead, Labor and Liberal will desert that whole area because they're being increasingly infiltrated by church and morals groups and the Greens will probably go the same way as they get bigger and start to take on those kind of trappings. For the next twenty years Australia is going to need a really strong civil liberties party.
At the close of the most disappointing election campaign in my lifetime, I find the policies and priorities of the governing party and the opposition abhorrent and embarrassing. Instead of trying to inform the public and persuasively argue for what they stand for, today these parties are trying to guess what will appeal to the masses. I see no cause for hope that it will be different in the future.
I have given up.
The Great Australian Internet Blackout
The Great Australian Internet Blackout is a protest against the federal government's ineffective, wasteful and dangerous proposal to censor the Internet.
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Web Politics
Rights inhere in people; they are not granted by governments
These are all activities that are illegal for individuals in the real world so why ask governments to give people the right to do them virtually?
I don't think that anyone who believes that rights are something we have to "ask governments to give people" understands democratic government, let alone is fit to serve in one. Sadly, these are the words of South Australian attorney-general Michael Atkinson.
I mean, I'm offended by the insulting terms in which he describes people who play games. I'm troubled that he believes that 62% of Australians in these gaming households "say the classification of a game has no influence on their buying decision"
somehow proves that games which would receive an adult classification if one existed must be banned (when if anything it proves that Australians have so little confidence in the OFLC that it may as well be abolished). And I'm almost embarrassed for him that he thinks a Leisure Suit Larry game is something serious people should be concerned about.
But all of that is trivial compared to what truly scares me about Atkinson: a man responsible for upholding the law in an Australian state believes that freedom is defined by things he hasn't decided to prosecute anyone for yet.
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Politics Games Rants
Inverted thinking
What is it about Mirror's Edge that inspires people to defend it on such contrived grounds? A lot of reviews acknowledged the game's potential but called out its flaws — in particular, that the game is both repetitive and very short (a very unfortunate combination).
The first aggravating essay I encountered about the game is Persuasive Games: Windows and Mirror's Edge, which argues that these mundane concerns are not sufficient to respond to this game. In fact, such failings somehow become virtues because asking that a game does exactly what its player expects risks eliminating the possibility that it might offer a new way of understanding the world
.
In other news, down is up.
And again, today Digital Déjà Vu somehow argues that being forced to replay the same sequence of game over and over again is not using checkpoints as a crutch to string out more play time from as little original level content as possible, but an opportunity to realise a time travel fantasy: whenever we lose, we get to go back and try again, never having to live with failure or regret
.
Buerkle even compares the experience to Groundhog Day —
There's something immensely pleasurable about this experience - going back and reliving the same moment over again. And over again. And over and over, until I get it right. It's Groundhog Day.
— which suggests that he has forgotten about Phil Connors' innumerable suicide attempts. (Note to the author: in Groundhog Day, we're watching Phil; when we play a game, we are Phil. If I want to kill myself, the game is a failure.)
More importantly, he misses the point that the pleasure of replay only comes when you want to play again. I've greatly enjoyed replaying Deus Ex several times over the years; it's a classic, and every time I constant find something new or something brilliant that I'd forgotten. Repeated failure, on the other hand, is nowhere near "immensely pleasurable". It turns a game into a chore.
Yes, it's satisfying to beat a frustrating game despite its flaws. But that experience doesn't make turn those flaws into virtues.
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Games Rants
Senator Stephen Conroy creates and distributes child pornography
This is what political discourse in Australia has sunk to. Just make any old bullshit up about people. It's fun!
Senator Conroy has himself accused critics of his filtering policy of supporting child pornography - including Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates this week.
On the grim future of the web
Benjamin Mako Hill writes about staying at a hotel that provides free wireless with a very restrictive whitelist:
You can use Google search (but not click on the links), use GMail, Google Talk, Google Reader (but not see any images on the blogs you are reading), Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Checkout, Google Docs, and so on.
A few people at the conference seem only barely inconvenienced by the arrangement and most seem to be able to get work done! I can't help feel like I'm experiencing some dystopian version of the Internet from 10 years in the future.
I'm not sure I've got much hope that we can avoid a future Internet that looks a lot like the television industry does today. Danny O'Brien argues we find ourselves where Richard Stallman was a couple of decades ago:
If we want people to have the same degree of user autonomy as we've come to expect from the world, we may have to sit down and code alternatives to Google Docs, Twitter, and EC2 that can live with us on the edge, not be run by third parties.
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Web Quote of the day
ORM and the conventional wisdom
It's refreshing to see this Reddit discussion — Am I crazy to create a mid-sized web app without an ORM? — where the comments range from strong support for skipping ORM to very mild pro-ORM positions. When I saw the question I expected the guy would be flamed for questioning the ubiquity of ORM, since I have the impression that the majority of developers I've worked with wouldn't even consider accessing a database except through ORM.
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation
From the "no fucking shit" files
THE first home buyers' grant has forced house prices up in recent years, working against its aim of making new homes more affordable, a Senate inquiry has found.
Urging an overhaul of the scheme, the Senate Committee on Housing Affordability found that the system of $7000 grants for all first home buyers had "benefited existing home owners rather than those seeking to enter the market". The committee, comprising Coalition and Labor senators, also found that negative gearing and state fees such as stamp duty were compounding the affordability crisis.
In other news, water remains wet.
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Politics Rants
A dead keyboard
I'm very happy with my Unicomp USB buckling spring keyboard. While doing some cleaning recently I decided it was time to get rid of its (now almost frighteningly dusty and grimy) predecessor, which was the worst keyboard I've ever owned. It was squishy instead of clicky, which was bad enough, and it had bad layout (the type where the Enter key spans two rows, leaving the backslash cramped in against the right Shift).
Occasionally people who can't touch type would have trouble using it because many of the keys were blank, their labels worn away over a couple of years of use (abuse?). What I found more disturbing, though, was...
... not only had the D key (like many of the keys around it) lost its labelling, it somehow ended up dented. I'm sure I don't type that hard...
Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation
All timestamps are Melbourne time.