Tuesday, 16 August 2011 by Marcus Aquinas.

Note: I began this posting at the time that Gibbs wrote his column in November 2010, but it got buried in an out-of-the-way “Drafts” folder and did not see the light of day until now. The question is still relevant, so here it is, for what it’s worth. The link was still good, though. Glad to see that someone is better than me about keeping track of these things.

In this week’s “Backspin” column at “Network World,” Mark Gibbs tackled some very good questions regarding the relationship between being good citizens in the real world and being good citizens in the virtual world. I think his assessment comes very close to the central problem: “…the issue is about people and not technology.”

Someone wiser than me once observed that if you want to see a person’s true character, watch what they do when they don’t think anyone is watching. In the case of online behavior, perhaps that could be tweaked to something along the lines of “watch what they do when they think they’re anonymous or think that something cannot be traced back to them”.

In a person-to-person engagement, there can be immediate (and possibly painful) repercussions to anything that you say or do. In an online engagement, however, you’re dealing with people who are somewhat removed from the conversation or action and perhaps reveal more of their true selves than they would in a person-to-person encounter. I’m immediately reminded of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” as raising relevant points. (digressive question: are there really online actions or is it all just different forms of conversation?) I’m sure that people can come up with a variety of reasons for this behavior and there are undoubtedly dissertations galore addressing or touching the topic. But I think it boils down to many people, especially among the younger generation, who frankly have no idea of how to carry on a meaningful dialog with someone who does not share their viewpoint.

Perhaps I am influenced by some of that Southern gentility in my view of the issue. We tend to use a lot of euphemistic expressions to convey meaning, but which aren’t overtly offensive. One of my favorites is “bless his heart”, which pretty much translates to “he’s dumber’n dirt, so make allowances”. I don’t see much of that in online conversation. Instead, people pretty much say what they’re thinking (or sometimes not thinking) because the recipient is either not immediately present or perhaps they figure that if it’s really offensive a moderator will quash it first. I note that on the discussion boards where I participate, these folks are among the loudest screamers when something does get quashed, so maybe that observation is off-target.

At any rate, I might advise that a good approach could be to treat each online conversation or action as if it were person-to-person. While that won’t fix all of these problems (frankly, there are a lot of people out there who exhibit no manners, even face-to-face), it should fix most of them.

To be honest, I do hide behind my “Marcus Aquinas” handle, but not for anonymity reasons. It’s a nickname given by a dear friend many moons back, I believe it captures my approach to questions, and it does not directly reflect back on my family or employer. On the other hand, I’m not prone to saying things online that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Or in the words of Sheriff Bufford T. Justice, “…you can think about it…but don’t do it.”

Posted in tech, External, Whatever | No Comments »

Friday, 15 July 2011 by Marcus Aquinas.

Like many of you, I receive several emails per day from various people that are humorous, inspirational or just plain weird. Several weeks back I received a link to a YouTube video entitled “Keynes vs. Hayek, Round 2”. This turned out to be a follow-up to a video from early 2010 called, “Fear the Boom and Bust, a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem”. The original video deals with some basic macroeconomic theory in an accessible way and the follow-up video questions the role of government spending in the economy. Both videos are cute in a thought-provoking kind of way. I used them in my summer school course and the students got a kick out of it. Last week, the “Q&A” segment on C-Span interviewed the producers of the videos.

While the interview is pretty much what you’d expect, a couple of references to works by Hayek led me to his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech entitled, “The Pretense of Knowledge”. It’s not terribly long or complicated (some background in economics is helpful, but not required) and I commend it to your consideration.

Posted in economics, Philosophy, External, Whatever | No Comments »

Saturday, 14 May 2011 by Marcus Aquinas.

On Wednesday, Courthouse News reported a lawsuit by a former Navy pilot against Bethesda Softworks. As also reported by G4TV, the pilot’s suit claims that TESIV: Oblivion caused him to suffer a grand mal seizure, break a bone and lose his flight status. He wants damages (translation: gimme lotsa Benjamins)

Bethesda’s policies do not allow discussion of ongoing legal actions on its forums, but they can’t complain about my commenting here. I understand the reasoning, but there are some actions that just deserve to be included in a rousing game of “Finger the Moron” (that’s where we not only laugh, but also point).

Legal action is a serious business and free legal advice is worth what you pay for it, so here’s my take (keeping in mind that I am not a legal expert in any sense of the term):

To Bethesda’s detriment:

• photosensitive epilepsy has been known for 40 or 50 years; I have personally been aware of it since “The Andromeda Strain” came out in 1971 (it was used as a minor plot device)
• video games have been accused of triggering seizures since the early 80s, most especially those played on television sets and lower-end CRTs (2 meters or more distance between you and the screen minimizes the chances of an episode)
• photosensitivity warnings are commonly included with every video game. I do not recall a warning in any of the manuals or materials that came with Oblivion (I have the PC version), but it might have been on an insert that got tossed. There was undoubtedly one if he was using a XBox360 version. Here’s Microsoft’s warning. I don’t know about PS3.

To the plaintiff’s detriment:

• this is a Navy pilot. That means college graduate, flight-school graduate, best-of-the-best and all that. At a bare minimum, he would have to be 23 or 24 years old. What rock has he been hiding under if he did not already know about photosensitivity by this point in time?
• at a minimum of 23 or 24 years old, you could not convince me that this was his first video game
• Oblivion has been out for a bit more than 4 years, so you’d have a very hard time convincing me that this was his first play-through (or even his second or third)
• at a minimum of 23 or 24 years old, you could not convince me that a college graduate, Navy pilot has never been clubbing (with all of the attendant flashing lights, disco balls and whatnot)

Epilepsy is not caused by video games; seizures can very rarely be triggered by them, but the cause of epilepsy in adults is usually brain-related. Stress (stress-levels can be pretty high when you’re a jet jockey), central nervous system problems, tumors, drug/alcohol use/abuse, brain injury… in short, there are a variety of causes, all of them relating to the physical brain, not to any sensory input (I’m not a medical expert, either, but I tend to trust Wikipedia on general topics).

While I admit that I do not have all of the evidence in front of me, and will assume that the plaintiff’s factual allegations are more-or-less true, Judge Marcus says (1) the plaintiff should be thankful that his seizure happened in his living room rather than in his aircraft while he was flying over someone’s neighborhood, (2) the loss of his flight status is because of his epilepsy, not because of his seizure, (3) the plaintiff should have listened to his mother when she told him not to sit so close to the television, (4) if the plaintiff is actually going to claim “failure to warn”, he’s too dumb to be responsible for a multi-million dollar piece of equipment anyway and (5) if the plaintiff is is claiming excessive stress over his Oblivion character as the proximate cause, he needs a life and Bethesda Softworks is under no obligation to provide him with one. Case closed.

The sad part is that Bethesda will have to fork out for their lawyers to go make those arguments, although I’m fairly sure they’ll be more tactful about it than I was.

Posted in Philosophy, External, Whatever | No Comments »

Monday, 9 August 2010 by Marcus Aquinas.

Amidst much brouhaha and fanfare, Google announced the creation of a new collaboration system called “Wave” about 18 months ago. As with many of Google’s applications, participation was by invitation only. On August 4, Google announced that it was shutting down the Wave service at the end of the year. This morning, eWeek ran a short piece giving their reasons for the demise of Wave, but I have a few of my own.

First off, let me be clear that I believe the concept behind Wave is outstanding. It was the implementation that doomed Wave. The ability to do real-time collaboration from any Internet connection has so much potential in so many fields that its benefits should be apparent to any but the most rabid Luddite. So here, then are my reasons for the crash of Wave.

Finding out about Wave was hopelessly complicated and Google made it virtually impossible to learn more. Being the kind of guy that tries to stay current on what’s going on in the industry (emphasis on “tries”), I found out about Wave within a day or two of its demo at a developers’ conference last year. I’ll confess that I was really jazzed about it and immediately put myself on the waiting list for an invite when it went live a bit later in the year. I never heard back from Google, never received an invitation, and even Googling “Google Wave” only took me to the page where I first asked to get in. Zero marketing and zero linkage to GMail or Google Apps. Google was relatively good about updating their Wave blog, but that didn’t do anything for getting hands-on with it.

Connecting with Wave was hopelessly complicated from the outset and the Google developers didn’t make it any easier. Unlike Facebook, which makes it rather simple to connect with friends, family and coworkers (and people that you don’t know and probably don’t want to know – a topic for a different rant), connecting on Wave was pretty much limited to people who were (1) already contacts through Google and (2) subscribers to GMail and/or Google Apps. If you wanted to Wave with your Great Aunt Bea, you had to send her an invitation (of which you had only a limited number), which she had to accept and then create a Google account. Then you had to work your way through getting onto each others’ contacts so that you could then invite her into a Wave.

Using Wave was hopelessly complicated from the outset and the Google developers didn’t make it any easier. No documentation to speak of and finding the answer to any particular question using the online help articles is often like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It’s pretty bad when someone outside of Google has to write a users manual for the product (and a rather lengthy one at that).

Becoming a Wave user was hopelessly complicated and Google didn’t do anything to make it any easier. Think about it. Here we have a product that Google wants people to use, but they make it by invitation only and then make getting an invitation difficult. Remember that I asked for an invitation right after they demo’d it? I finally got an invitation. Not from Google, but from one of my students and about 5 months after it went live. And I wouldn’t have received that one if I hadn’t just happened to mention it to someone who had an invitation to give. We want you to join the club, but you have to know the secret handshake before you can join. Oh, and we’re not going to tell you where to find someone who can show you the secret handshake.

I’m still jazzed about Wave’s potential, but Google handled the marketing and implementation of this great idea so badly that I don’t think it ever really had a chance. But at least they’ll get a good tax write off on the R&D.

Posted in External, Whatever | No Comments »