A Comment On Discrimination

A few days ago I came across this little gem of insight regarding a Swedish school that decided to confiscate birthday invitations because they weren’t passed out to everyone. Just for some additional background, there was a recent bash on father’s day as well, declaring that it would emotionally harm children who are raised by a single mother, or a same-sex couple.

People have been throwing out this ‘discrimination’ word out a lot, in defense of what these schools so far have put restrictions on, and against. The schools saying that it would be discrimination and a violation of children’s rights if each student didn’t get an invitation, as well as a violation against kids who don’t have a father.

It’s really become a huge joke. Schools not only are forgetting about their importance and the end of their authority (for example: edumicating) and are in effect turning to the ‘kid police’. I’ve had a bit of a revelation myself about discrimination and it is a bit of a double-edged sword, a gray area if you will, despite the white and black of politics. (No pun intended.)

Humans use discrimination everywhere. We use it when we decide what to eat, what to drink, what to play, where to work, who to talk to, and who to spend our time with. We discriminate based on factors such as our personal taste (I like reading a book over watching television), what is available (I’d like to go to Hardees, but it is closed so I have to go to McDonalds), how expensive it is (I can’t afford that model, but I can for this one), and past experience (That broke on me last time, it’ll break again.)

Point being is that not all discrimination is bad. A police officer, judge, or any other civil servant must use these kinds of things daily. In fact, it seems that discrimination itself has just become the word to encompass basing decisions on things that cannot be changed and are of no fault of the discriminated person.

Age (debatable), Gender, Race, Orientation (debatable) are the most common forms ‘bad discrimination’. These types of discrimination are protected by (admittedly, United States) law and punishable by fines, and even jail-time. Most people agree that discriminating on these factors is something that should be always avoided, and even looked down on. However, let’s consider this: Am I violating someone’s rights by not liking them? (It seems like the extremist left like to think that.) No, I just don’t like that individual. Why would I spend time and resources for him/her/it if I don’t enjoy being around that person.

Discrimination isn’t bad inherently.

Discrimination on uncontrollable factors is.

More immunities for Telcos?

I thought the whole fight for retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies was over. Apparently not. A new immunity bill was just released to the public with the House voting on it tomorrow. I can’t support any bill that makes this kind of move, quite simply because what these companies did was illegal when they did it, and for the government to go around and say “It’s okay” seems laughable. Too bad it’s very real.

Senator Orrin Hatch,

It has recently come to my attention that a new “FISA” compromise bill has been put forth to the House of Representatives. As your constituent I find that giving retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that broke our nation’s laws is just the same as if I as an individual were to steal corporate documents and retroactively get protection against penalties and jail-time before I can be prosecuted.

What these telecommunication companies did is wrong, regardless of the reason. As such, these companies ought to be held responsible for what they did, and not be able to get away with supporting internal spying efforts on US citizens that are “believed” to be linked with terrorist cells around the world.

Britain is known as a surveillance state. Cameras are everywhere, police brutality and totalitarianism is a massive problem with our ally. Citizens rally, fight, petition to make sure that their rights are not eroded. With that said, I refuse as an American citizen to allow that to happen to my country, and this “FISA” compromise bill is one step towards that same surveillance state.

Turn down any bill or any “loophole” that the federal government or telecommunication companies are trying to use to escape penalties to which they deserve for violating our laws.

Driving In Iraq

It’s an old video to be sure, when violence against Americans and insurgents were high, but this video seems to get reposted more and more with some rather sad comments.

People have responded with irrational things like “What an asshole.” or “He should be shot for doing that.” The sad thing is that these people are willing to let politics get in the way of making sure these soldiers stay alive. It’s important, and it makes me just a little sad to hear people devaluate their lives for other’s decisions.

Might Makes Right: In Video Games

I’ve been playing Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures for the past week or so, and have fallen into a rather enjoyable role. I am an assassin, a brigand, a liar, and generally not a nice guy. The reason for this is primarily because I play the “Good Guy” in any other game and it was time to just do something else.

The way I do this? I have an ability to hide (and hide very well). Doing that I can do a “Sneak Attack” to ‘try’ (Assassins are very weird when it comes to damage) to hurt a lot on a single person, and keep them just at the brink of dying. Doing that, I usually demand some sort of money, whether it is 50 copper (about 80 silver in World of Warcraft) or seventy-five copper (about 1.3 gold in World of Warcraft) in order to let them live and go on their way.

Granted, I’m not a complete jerk either, I usually let them know that if they have any problems with someone else trying to kill them, to let me know and I’ll pop up. (It’s one service I render to people who pay me.) However, increasingly people just respond with massive length of whining about how “It’s unfair!” “You ganker!” “Ur KOS [Kill on Sight] to evy1 in my guild1!”. I would like to take this time to say:

“MIGHT MAKES RIGHT“

Player versus Player fighting is what makes the game so fun, especially as an assassin or rogue. You have the ability to stalk a target, render him to the point of wishing he didn’t make the choice to travel alone. On top of that, the assassin class is relatively underpowered when exposed, they mainly do their damage in the first hit, which makes it even more easy to deal with an assassin/thief.

How about a few tips regarding what to do if you are held up:

1. If you are approached, or you receive a sneak attack from an assassin that identifies himself as a thief, do not run away.
2. If you have the money the thief demands, and you aren’t willing to walk back (or go elsewhere, since he will likely try and charge you if you didn’t pay before), open a trade window with a “Shift-Click” and select trade.
3. Enter the money he demands and accept the trade. Don’t take too long, since it will seem as a delay to try and get help from passersby or from a guild member.
4. Don’t smacktalk even if you don’t pay him. This will only make the thief angry with you, and you may end up not even getting the choice.

There are many ways to avoid getting caught by a thief in the first place, or to draw him out.

1. Travel in packs of two or more.
2. Bring guildmates.
3. Listen for shouts, or other people talking about an active thief on a given road.
4. Let others know.
5. Select another instance.
6. Go to another zone.

It isn’t hard to do any of those, and it certainly is fair if you happen to get caught by a thief. In Age of Conan, might makes right, and to make yourself right, you have to get more than the thief.

Hope you don’t find me on Cimmeria (RP-PvP)

Someone wants me to socialize, or not.

Let’s take a look at what MMORPGs I am currently subscribed to/active with.

EvE Online: Paid by Timecards (Active through June)

World of Warcraft: Paid By Timecards (Active through July)

Age of Conan: Paid by Initial Purchase (Active through June)

—-

I apparently won a random drawing of doom for an online site for a Dungeon Runners promotion. After which I completely forgot about and went on with my life. Some bad things happened, some good things happen, until I get an e-mail from someone in San Fransisco alerting me to my win in the drawing. I got a second e-mail asking for my name and address so they could ship “something” to me, and I gave it to them. (What were they gonna do? Send me Anthrax? Haha.) I then forgot about it for another couple weeks.

After awhile I get a second e-mail from the same guy in San Fransisco asking for my phone number so he could ship it via Fed Ex. I provided it, and a few days later got a tracking number. Again, I was forgetful, so I went on with things and actually started playing Age of Conan.

This afternoon I heard a thump at my door and went to see what it was, only to find a box.. A big box. It said “Belkin” on the side so I wondered if my father had ordered anything that I wasn’t aware of before I looked at the address label, and found it was for me, and then found that the return address was to the guy that had asked me for my information. Curiously, I opened it with a key and found a good set of boxes inside that made me laugh loudly.

It came with:

Guild Wars
Guild Wars: Factions
Guild Wars: Nightfall
Guild Wars: The Eye of the North
Lineage 2 (Client or 60-day Card, I can’t tell.)
Tabula Rasa

——

So, The bad news is that I already own Guild wars up to Nightfall. The good news is that I can easily use The Eye of the North without batting an eye (pun unintentional). I can’t tell if the Lineage two addition is the client itself (allowing activation of the full product) and 60 days, or just a 60 day time card.

Don’t know what I’ll be doing with the stuff I already own yet. I do have a sudden urge to rip open Tabula Rasa though.

Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Factions, and Guild Wars: Nightfall have been made available as a bundle on KSL.com for residents of Northern Utah.

Homophobia: Everywhere

With a recent news article about how a person playing under the name “theGAYERgamer” resulted in his gamertag getting banned, followed by a Mr. Richard Gaywood getting his name banned afterwards, I’ve come to the conclusion that good portion of the people I talk to are bigots and hateful. It’s sad to think about it this way, but this is just one of those frustrations I have.

A little background information first, “theGAYERgamer” was originally removed due to a multitude of complaints against this person’s account, resulting in a requirement to change his name. Things to consider are that it was a play off of a slightly known website (that I can no longer find).

Second: Richard Gaywood apparently had the nickname “Gaywood” on Xbox Live, which of course resulted in the same action as the first scenario. The difference here, it is his real name. Richard Gaywood apparently sent a photocopy of his ID to Kotaku in an attempt to help prove that Microsoft’s steps in trying to control this stuff has gone too far.

A lot of questions are being raised now as to where the line should be drawn, what is the reasoning behind removing these nicknames, and how to deal with exceptions. It is depressing to see that enough complaints about these names managed to cause the operator to pull the names, especially when you actually talk to most player on Xbox Live. Xbox Live is not family friendly, and never was. There are many comics that depict just how bad it can be on there, whether it is racism, sexism, homophobia, or religious bigotry, it’s all there black and white, clear as crystal.

The main question is: Why isn’t anything done about it when it’s just as (if not more) offensive hearing it in game? Well, for one, a good deal of players have come to accept that it is the way people talk. Another reason could be that if someone spent all their time filing complaints, they’d never actually get to play or participate as well as the possibility for being suspended for flooding the queues.

It just seems to me that there is a general intolerance of homosexuality. It seems that more and more people aren’t willing to allow others to live their life as they want to in the United States (read: The Home of the Free), and instead wishing to impose their own will on their lifestyle. Some good questions came up earlier as to what would happen if someone came up with a name like “theNAZIgamer” or “theniggagamer”? What would happen there?

My bet is nothing would happen because of the general attitude of the fellow players. This isn’t just isolated to one service though. PC Games, Chat Networks, and even public conversations seem to have the same tone. I hear random people all the time saying things like “That’s so gay.” or “You’re a fag.” In fact I had this presented to me yesterday and it’s been occupying my mind. Does the other person who said that really understand the interpretation behind those statements? I, on the receiving end, understood what the person meant, but it was still frustrating in the end.

I understand that some people just won’t accept that people choose to live like they do, and refuse to understand that it is their life. I understand that it’s caused from years of religious teachings, and social majority, but I will say this; if you are going to support the irrational homophobia, you might as well support the irrational mantra of religious bigotry and racism.

Everyone is a person, and deserves human respect.

Nothing Takes Priority Over Chocolate Rain

United States Enforcing Laws On Other Countries?

So, I’m not sure how I cam across this little tidbit, but apparently the United States government is attempting to pass a bill that will require the executive branch of government to enforce anti-trust laws against current members of OPEC.  The bill numbered S.2976 (PDF) which has only been introduced to the Senate is apparently trying to hold countries like Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait to United States trade laws.

Introduced by Frank Lautenberg (D) of New Jersey, has managed to apparently get it passed by the House of Representatives and now waits for the Senate’s view on it. I can’t help but wonder why Senator Lautenberg believes that OPEC is a member of, or operates in the United States. I can’t help but shake my head as this bill has even gotten further down the line than just a glance.

The Bush administration has already indicated that it will attempt to veto the bill, and I hope it is. The economic backlash against the United States for this bill against OPEC could easily damage the US economy even worse, and despite the fact that it can even damage the world economy terribly (although I will freely admit that the United States is not the center of the world and not the only economy on earth), I don’t think I can put it past OPEC to see that it has got something that the United States is not willing to get itself. (See ANWR.)

It kind of seems like this bill is intended to be something for senators and representatives to raise thier hands emphatically and shout, “I did something about the energy crisis!”. While I can understand the need to change something, I certainly think they are a little late to suddenly be worried about it. Oil prices have been climbing a good deal for awhile now, and it feels like our representatives have finally snapped.

If this is a problem the United States government wants to pursue, then they ought to take aim at OPEC through the World Trade Organization, as it seems half of the countries involved are member nations, and the other half are observing nations.

It just makes me laugh as much as seeing lolcats.

Energy Independence: ANWR and the Environmentalists

I was listening to the radio earlier today, and caught Sean Hannity’s show on KSL. It was an interesting listen as Hannity was raving about how gasoline prices were up to about $4 a gallon. It seemed interesting to me how he mentioned that Bush went over to the oil producing countries, asking them to produce a little more to help reduce the cost of energy in the United States.

Inevitably the whole ANWR drilling topic came up. It’s interesting as I thought that the ANWR debates were done and over with by the time I hit high-school. Obviously not. Personal interests for my point of view include things like lowering gasoline prices, increasing the amount of time we have to research better fuel sources, and keeping the United States economy slugging through this slow growth period.

I never really understood why ANWR had always been a place that environmentalists have consistently forced the US Government to require oil producing companies to stay off. From what I’ve read on Wikipedia, is that main complaints are pointed entirely at companies like Shell for not promising to reduce the amount of damage to the eco-system, and protecting some whales.

I really don’t understand the problem with re-shaping ANWR, and allowing exploits of where we believe oil to be. Even if we manage to pull 5% of our dependence away from foreign oil purchases, it will help reduce oil costs, and give a decent jolt to our economy despite that it isn’t permanent. Oil isn’t ever permanent.

People complain that doing that would damage the Caribou and various wildlife, but I still believe that if the animals end up with the necessity to move, they will adapt. How else did they keep alive as long as they did. On top of that, we take a look at where we are interested in drilling. It’s a relatively small area, and even then we know that the oil is in certain parts of the 1002 area.

It feels like it’s just a small town that continues to believe that it should dominate the resource and leave it sitting there because they refuse to allow change and progress. I guess it could also be related to nuclear waste dumping here in Utah. The real difference is we don’t know how long it would take for the nuclear waste to become less of a threat, while with oil, we are able to take all necessary precautions.

Let’s drill for oil, and support the economy. Let’s have the animals migrate and adapt, just like we do as humans.

Friday isn’t my Friday

So it’s Friday. Yay? Most people are excited for it. They go home, they enjoy a weekend, or dread getting into a fight of some sort. Me, it’s just another day, just like Valentine’s day, almost like my Birthdays now. I work tomorrow, while I have Sunday off. I figure it’d be best to spend the weekend with my father since it’s the first weekend my brother would be around. Pretty much just a “It’s too quiet at home if I’m gone,” thing.

I just had a conversation with my boss about Age of Conan. I am really skeptical about it’s launch. With every other individual MMORG I hear of, they are pretty much all plagued with issues ranging from hardware problems, latency, gameplay bugs, and overall just a buggy as hell client. The result makes me wonder why a new player should pay a full PC price of $50 USD for a game that will (start off as) a buggy client. World of Warcraft wasn’t perfect, hell I remember hearing and reading about Blizzard giving away days of time because of inconsistent or offline server clusters.

The argument from my boss is that the whole point of charging $50 at the startup is to recoup costs. Fine and dandy, but at the same point let’s compare it to other genres of games. What would happen to a game that is constantly plagued with hardware incompatibilities, latency issues, and unstable clients? That game would be crap, and widely regarded as such. It wouldn’t stay on the shelves for more than a week let alone sell decently. So why is it that MMOs can get away with releasing an incomplete product while charging the full price to play it, and then turning around a month later and shanking you for another $15.

I fully understand why there’s a monthly cost, it helps maintain the servers and help pay for expansion work and the like, (see CCP’s EvE Online). It’s important as Bandwidth is a recurring cost.

Development for a games basically work as a major investment of a large budget (or small budget if you are an awesome group like Stardock), with the hopes of paying it off and making a little more for yourself while generating positive reviews and reputation for your company. It seems like MMOs get to push that off a bit with a “We’re working on it” mentality.

It’s a big problem with PC games these days. A developer, either because of their publisher or running out of money, is pushed to release a game early (for example, Derek Smart’s Battlecruiser 3000) filled with bugs and failures that would have been dealt with if the game were released on time. However, with the penetration of broadband, and accessibility, we end up with more and more companies saying “Release it, and we’ll patch it later.” One of these things I vaguely remember was when I bought a PC title on it’s release date for the full $50 only to find that it wouldn’t work on my laptop because of some bug that I researched on the net. Afterwards, I found that there was a patch released the day before release to fix this specific problem, and it did work. (The game was total crap though.)

This is unacceptable, especially when there are more and more auto-updaters being included with single-player and multiplayer games that don’t give you a choice of updating. (Steam being the biggest frustration with this.) Even worse is that games are starting to end up with DRM that requires authentication at every patch, update, or download of DLC. The DRM then actually gives publishers a reason to “accidentally” leave something out in order to force people to authenticate itself a second time instead of relying on the first auth.