Dwell On It » Opinion

The golden rule of arts and sciences

Tateru Nino — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:14:57 +0000

SOPA isn’t dead. Far from it.

The people behind that bill and a host of other bills over the years are able to bring that bill, or its equivalent, back as many times as they please, until they have a legislature and president willing to pass it and sign it.

SOPA primarily is supported by money, but it is primarily only opposed by speech.

Money buys votes, essentially. It buys the votes of the legislature, because money buys your vote.

The end of the world (as we know it)

Tateru Nino — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:44:33 +0000

I’m an end-of-the-world survivor. Through my life, there have been dozens of dates set for doomsday. Magic comets, mysterious asteroids, the second coming, planetary alignments, the rapture, you name it. People keep picking dates and years that the world will end – so many that I don’t think I’ve lived through a single year when there has not been at least one prediction that the world would end that year.

Stubbornly, the world has refused to end, much to the embarrassment and chagrin of many doomsday prophets.

Welcome to 2012.

The greatest danger to our teenagers

Tateru Nino — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:30:31 +0000

The piece that I’m about to reproduce here first appeared in The Age newspaper, on 9 May, 1956. In it, a fiendish danger to society and our youth is laid bare. I’ve left the original article emphasis in place.

Ubisoft is right, but for the wrong reasons

Tateru Nino — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:31:47 +0000

Citing 95% PC piracy rates, Ubisoft seems to be quitting the PC games market. The problem with games piracy statistics are manifold: Nobody actually knows what the piracy rates really are (though they seem to be likely to be on a par with console piracy rates – probably – since there’s certainly no shortage of console games piracy), and there are other factors involved like release-timing, product quality and pricing that all play their part.

Ubisoft’s PC versions of their games have become increasingly so slapdash and cack-handed that it isn’t really surprising that PC gamers simply don’t want to buy them. I don’t have to tell you that this does not make for a good business model for the PC games market, but someone should probably tell Ubisoft.


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The unwisdom of crowds

Tateru Nino — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:01:52 +0000

Much has been made, in recent years, of the so-called “Wisdom of Crowds.” That is, that a diverse group of people with differing opinions and ideologies can produce some surprisingly accurate results in certain situations – with even crowds of non-experts being able to produce a combined result that exceeds the accuracy of individual experts.

Heck, that should not come as much of a surprise, really. Ballots and polling are based around that very principle, even before we were able to concisely articulate it, or demonstrate it with research.

There’s one important condition, though that breaks the whole idea down.


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Big publishers’ AAA focus is good for Indie game devs

Tateru Nino — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:19:03 +0000

There are essentially two broad classes of games that sell. There are the so-called ‘AAA’ titles, which might be big financial hits or big financial flops, and there are ‘ordinary’ titles – games with a lower production value, but significantly less financial risk involved. In times past, those ordinary titles have been the mainstay of the games industry, sometimes incurring modest losses, but more often providing the steady income that offsets the big flops in a publisher’s ‘AAA’ stable.

With big publishers increasingly focusing on those ‘AAA’ titles and shying away from those mainstay games, money is left on the table. Money that Indie devs are well-suited to pick up.


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Caring and caregivers in the 21st century

Tateru Nino — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 04:16:45 +0000

When I’m not writing on this blog – or being half dead of pneumonia, say – I’m the caregiver for two disabled people, 24 hours per day, every day of every year. That’s the sort of thing that keeps you indoors a lot. I’m far from alone in this. Second Life, notably, has a disproportionately large population of users who are either disabled or infirm, or who are caregivers for them.

At one time, this community was estimated to be in excess of 60% of Second Life’s active general population. Second Life is an amazingly useful tool for making and maintaining social contacts and having an active social life when you just cannot get out much – or at all. Leastways, when the platform stability isn’t driving you up the wall, anyway.

Second Life isn’t the actual thing that I’m talking about here today, though.

When did love get weird?

Tateru Nino — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:58:27 +0000

My great-grandmother communicated with her husband-to-be for years.

By post.

With 6-8 weeks delivery time each-way. They met the day before the wedding.

Not a one of her peers thought that was the least bit odd, peculiar or unusual.


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The loss of a great man

Tateru Nino — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:30:33 +0000

This month, we lost one of the greatest technologists in generations. From humbling beginnings (and working with two other great men) he helped push the boundaries of computing possibility. His contributions ultimately helped breath life back into an ailing Apple Computer, brought us more powerful devices, better software, converted the Internet from a clunky hobbyist’s toy to the communications platform we know today, and reworked the infrastructure of telephone, television and even filmmaking.

Hands up anyone who thought I was talking about business magnate Steve Jobs.

The terrors of my youth

Tateru Nino — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:51:41 +0000

When I was young, Gaddafi was a striking figure. Not handsome by any of my measures, but straight-backed, uniformed, in a military cap and dark glasses. He projected an aura of confidence and of power and of credibility – whether any of that was true or not. He appeared in any number of news stories with the implied subtext: “This is your enemy”

And it was easy to believe.


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Sony insists on the right to be irresponsible and negligent without legal penalty

Tateru Nino — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:06:58 +0000

Sony was recently – and quite rightly – subject to lawsuits from its Playstation Network users for an almost unprecedented level of negligence with customer data.

Now Sony has been scrambling to improve its PSN security, but the recent changes in the PSN terms of service make it seem as if it doesn’t really give a damn about it.


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What will you be doing to remember?

Tateru Nino — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 03:21:35 +0000

As this particular day comes around each year, people often ask “What will you be doing to remember 9/11?”

My answer, this year, is the same as every year.

There are no cyber-bullies

Tateru Nino — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:25:06 +0000

There are no cyber-bullies. There are only bullies.

(There are no cyber-criminals either, just criminals, but that is perhaps a topic for another day).

There are many problems with so-called ‘cyber-bullying’, but one of the worst is sticking the prefix ‘cyber-‘ on the front and pretending that it is somehow something different to just plain old regular bullying.

The level 20 rule

Tateru Nino — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 03:22:05 +0000

It’s been a while since I wrote about MMOGs professionally, but that doesn’t stop me having an interest. I have half a dozen MMOGs installed, and was recently ‘comped’ a copy of Star Trek Online and 60 days of game-time. I’ve just hit the equivalent of roughly level 20 (Commander, grade 1), and that set me to thinking.

Once you hit approximately level 20 in an MMOG, you’ve essentially seen all of the gameplay innovation that the game is going to offer, in all of the combinations that it is going to be offered.

Google eliminates appeals option for names and service infractions

Tateru Nino — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:09:21 +0000

Remember that if you ran afoul of Google’s incomprehensibly capricious policy application for Google Profiles – the same policies that appear to be punishing more people using their real names than people using pseudonyms – you had an opportunity to appeal? Well, say good-bye to that option, because the administrative sanction chute has now been greased.

Google insists on the right to choose your name

Tateru Nino — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 09:51:11 +0000

And also to change its mind at any time.

Whatever the reason Google gives for its policies regarding names on its profiles, new social network services (and whatever other services it chooses to bring under that banner over time), whether it is making people feel ‘safer’, eliminating spammers and scammers, or for mining marketing data; the practical result of all of how it works out is that Google wants to pick which name you get to publically use when you use those services, and to renege on that decision and force you to select another, should it change its mind.


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BBC, News Limited, others, gulled by hoax study into IQ/Browsers

Tateru Nino — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:54:58 +0000

So, a big and controversial story circulating at the moment is a study by Aptiquant, where 100,000 people were invited to take an online IQ test, and their results correlated with the make and model of Web-browser that they were using. The results played into popular prejudices, indicating that users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 had IQs in the ‘moron’ range.

A juicy story indeed, with graphs and charts and all-sorts. Except that it took less than one minute to determine that the company behind the study, Aptiquant, doesn’t appear to exist.


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Uncharted waters

Tateru Nino — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:35:30 +0000

One of the things that we tend to have overlooked over the last three decades – which, if you do a little research, turns out to have been a surprisingly calm and untroubled period compared to the years preceding it – is that nobody actually knows how to make a sustainable economy… well, sustainable.

There’s a number of reasons for this, but anyone telling you that they can do that is talking out of their hat. Throughout mankind’s history, we’ve never figured this out.

New research tells us what we already know about avatars

Tateru Nino — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:15:05 +0000

I’m not actually sure if this is a problem with the research or the reporting.

Basically, what it boils down to is that it is possible to tell if the person who is using an avatar account is the person who usually uses that avatar account by checking to see if they behave differently to how they usually do.

Well, thank-you Captain Obvious.


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A clear reduction

Tateru Nino — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:17:34 +0000