Policing Virtual Reality. Wired reports on Sociolotron(NSFW). A MMORPG
that allows gamers to rob, rape, and kill other players. Being a
gamer, I understand that actions in an MMORPG aren't "real"
but how far can you take it?
"Lord Foucault is an admitted rapist. He does it on impulse --
for the thrill of it and for the feeling of control he has over his
female victims."
Is this any different than running around and killing dwarves?
Twisted sisters04/14/2004 07:43 AM In her new book, Alexandra Robbins goes undercover as a sorority
sister at an anonymous university. What she found was very little
sisterhood -- but a lot of hardcore hazing, public humiliation, binge
drinking and extreme peer pressure.
How History Gets Twisted
How History Gets Twisted08/15/2004 11:47 AM A short way into this review of a new book about Microsoft, a
Boston Globe correspondent writes:
"A guilty finding
was overturned on appeal, and the government settled with the company,
imposing restrictions on its business practices. The resulting
introspection persuaded Gates to stand aside as chief executive in
favor of Steve Ballmer, who would be his partner in remaking the
company."
The number of misstatements in just these
two sentences is fairly amazing.
The judge's ruling that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the law
was not overturned. (And there are no "guilty" or "not guilty"
findings in civil antitrust cases to start with; this wasn't a
criminal matter, though it probably should have been.) The appeals
court specifically agreed with Judge Jackson that Microsoft was a
serial offender, though it did back Microsoft's position in a small
portion of the charges.
The Bush administration's "settlement" was a cave-in, giving back
what it had already won in court.
The "impositions" on Microsoft's business practices are widely
seen outside the company (and probably inside) as next to meaningless,
and certainly haven't had any visible effect on competition in an
industry that Microsoft still controls.
Ballmer became CEO in 2000, before Judge Jackson ordered
the breakup of the company, and long before the appeals court
overruled him.
I bring all this up mainly to point back to the first item -- the
notion that the company was cleared of wrongdoing. This has become
popular "wisdom," and it's incorrect. Every judge that has had to rule
on this has agreed that Microsoft broke the law to maintain its
monopoly.
Let's at least remember that much.
Twisted "Cedar"
Twisted "Cedar"03/23/2005 10:19 AM As crucial elections approach, the Lebanese opposition is divided
about its next move. Are these differences merely tactical -- or could
they plunge Lebanon back into chaos?
Twisted 2.0 (Default branch)
Twisted 2.0 (Default branch)03/29/2005 11:54 AM
Twisted is an event-based framework for Internet applications. It
includes a Web server, an SMTP/POP3 server, a telnet server, an SSH
server, an IRC server, a DNS server, a generic client/server pair for
remote object access (Perspective Broker), and APIs for creating new
protocols. It supports integration with GTK+, GTK+ 2, Qt, Tkinter,
wxPython, Mac OS X (PyObjC) and Win32 event loops. It also supports
TCP, SSL and TLS, UDP, Unix sockets, multicast, and serial ports.
Supported protocols include HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, TOC, OSCAR
(AIM and ICQ), SSH, DNS, IRC, NNTP, Jabber, SOCKSv4, Telnet, SIP (for
VoIP), and XML-RPC and SOAP using external packages. Most protocols
are supported as both servers and clients.
Changes:
Major new features in this release include the
replacement of the home-grown component system
with zope.interface, a split of subprojects into
separate packages with separate release cycles,
project-wide relicensing to the MIT license,
Python 2.4 compatibility fixes, and major
efficiency improvements in the TCP buffering
algorithm and DelayedCall handling. Many other
minor feature enhancements, bugfixes, and
documentation improvements are also included.
The Macintosh's Twisted Truth
The Macintosh's Twisted Truth01/10/2004 07:17 AM Apple's CEO Steve Jobs and the Macintosh are intertwined in most
people's minds. But contrary to many popular histories of the machine,
the Mac wasn't Jobs' idea at all. In fact, he wanted to kill it. By
Owen Linzmayer.
The Register's Andrew Orlowski analy
zes the latest, and perhaps most serious, threat from the
copyright cartel. The legislation,
sponsored by senators from both major U.S. political parties (here's
my previous posting about this horrid bill), is aimed
at peer to peer technology but has a much wider application.
As Andrew notes, citing warnings from critics of this legislation, "It
may soon be possible to carry around an AK-47 assault rifle and an
iPod with you down the street - and be arrested for carrying the
iPod."
He asks how this could be happening, given that Orrin Hatch, the key
sponsor, once seemed to be on the side of fair use and other users'
rights. Part of it is money, no doubt.
Andrew aims a well-deserved barb at the technology community for not
taking its case to Congress in a more organized way, and this is also
true. But I think he underestimates two things.
First, the tech industry's leaders have not just stopped fighting
Hollywood and the record companies. They've embraced the
cartel. This spectacular piece of cowardice, driven by a warped sense
of what's in the tech moguls' best business interests, means that
technology innovation must essentially be approved by the cartel or
modified so as not to annoy the copyright industry.
Second, technologists have a remarkably short attention span. They
flit from idea to idea, changing products and business models at the
drop of a hat because they live in an ever-morphing universe where
rapid change is the norm.
The copyright cartel has, if nothing else, a deep and abiding
motivation to maintain control. It is relentless. It has basically one
issue, and pockets deep enough to stay with the fight.
I tend to respect Hollywood and the music companies for their
single-mindedness, even though I have little respect for their
position on this matter. I have growing distaste for the technology
industry, which seems to have few principles of any kind.
And the public interest gets squashed.
Twisted Tale of Art, Death, DNA06/04/2004 05:50 AM Steve Kurtz is an artist who works with DNA. His wife's recent
unexplained death has suddenly made him a very interesting man to the
FBI. By Mark Baard.
Free registration is required to read the Science abstract.
“Researchers from the City University of New York, Queens and
Chiral Photonics have devised a way to control light inside optical
fiber communications lines. The method involves putting periodic
twists in fiber to select the polarization of light that is
transmitted through the fiber. The electric field of an unpolarized
light pulse or beam is oriented on a plane perpendicular to the pulse
or beam. When…
microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/dec03/12-12FontLetter.asp<
br />track
this site | 7 links
Religious picture book remixed into twisted alien-invader primer
Religious picture book remixed into twisted alien-invader primer02/05/2005 09:25 PM Cory Doctorow:
The Cuddly Menace is a remix of a saccharine picture-book called "My
Little Golden Book About God." The author has replaced the revoltingly
sweet captions with his own twisted, angry ones, to very very good
effect.
Link
(via Waxy)
Our Reality05/25/2004 11:56 AM I was interviewed by Bambi Francisco on Reality TV for her Net Sense
collumn, which leaves me a little explaining to do. In Bambi's other
life she is hosting a Reality show on personal finance, which is
admirable because the...
Re-Pet a Reality
Re-Pet a Reality12/24/2004 12:44 PM Slashdot Dec 23 2004 5:30PM GMT
New Reality TV
New Reality TV05/20/2004 08:44 AM Television networks look to reinvent the wheel this year.
Beta: Roku PhotoBridge HD1000 Version 2.0 Beta 1
Beta: Roku PhotoBridge HD1000 Version 2.0 Beta 101/06/2005 11:49 AM The beta software for Roku's networked media player adds AAC support,
UPnP AV support, DVD-style MPEG-2 program streams, Internet radio
support, support for all PAL modes, and other changes.
Making the new reality
Making the new reality04/29/2004 12:01 PM From Chris Nelson's blog: The following is what one of the Bush
administration's representatives told journalist Ron Suskind,
regarding their philosophy behind the administration's actions and
their relationship with journalists. I'm quoting from an Air America
Radio interview with Suskind: Suskind: He says, you know, "You,
Suskind, you're in what we call the 'reality-based community'" —
that's actually the term he used. I said, "The WHAT?" He says, "The
'reality-based community'.". He said, "you all believe" — now
let me see if I can get this right — "You all believe that
answers to solutions will emerge from your...
Global reality
Global reality03/06/2004 02:06 AM One sure sign that people are getting into real-world web services
projects is when you start to see timezone awareness ...
Reality is Corrosive05/04/2004 03:30 PM Bill de hÓra: From the MC Escher school of standardization It
seems
that there is a feeding frenzy over this tasty morsel which was tossed
in the shark infested waters of the internet. I'll not sure what I am
about to say is either agreeing with or disagreeing with Sean McGrath
on
this subject, but here goes: Reality is Corrosive.
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality07/06/2004 01:56 AM Augmented Reality uses computer graphics that are placed over the
“real world” in front of the person viewing it. It is the
latest thing in mapping technology, allowing you to see it from the
map’s perspective.
Surviving Reality TV
Surviving Reality TV01/22/2004 03:11 AM As CBS launches "All-Star Survivor," we look at what past winners have
done with their money.
.NET reality check
.NET reality check01/27/2004 02:51 PM
There's been some pushback recently, in the .NET blogging community,
about Microsoft's habit of living in the future. For example:
It is abundantly frustrating to be keeping up with you guys right now.
We out here in the real world do not use Longhorn, do not have access
to Longhorn (not in a way we can trust for production), and we cannot
even begin to test out these great new technologies until version 1.0
(or 2.0 for those that wish to stay sane). I know there's probably
not a whole lot you can do, but this is a plea to you from someone "in
the field". My job is to work on the architecture team as well as
implement solutions for a large-scale commercial website using .NET.
I use this stuff all day every day, but I use the 1.1 release bits.
Here's my point, enough with the "this Whidbey, Longhorn, XAML is so
cool you should stop whatever it is you are doing and use it". Small
problem, we can't. Please help us by remembering that we're still
using the release bits, not the latest technology. [Michael Earls]
In the spirit of Michael's plea, I'm working on an upcoming article in
which I'll compare what was promised for the .NET platform (er,
framework), two and three years ago, with the current reality as it
exists today. Examples of the kinds of issues I want to consider:
...
Hacking Reality
Hacking Reality01/16/2004 10:59 AM "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent
one." --Albert Einstein
Cracks of Reality 1
Cracks of Reality 104/18/2004 01:49 AM A high-quality fractal image renderer.
A Reality Check
A Reality Check08/18/2004 01:05 PM Do we really need a plethora of reality-TV networks?
Three cheers for reality TV
Three cheers for reality TV09/13/2004 08:47 AM Pundits can tut-tut all they want, but reality shows rule television
for a simple reason: The best of them are far more compelling than the
worn-out sitcoms and crime dramas the networks keep churning out. Grok Description matches for Twisted Reality 0.1 Beta GrokA matches for Twisted Reality 0.1 Beta
Twisted Reality 0.1 Beta
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
The Cuddly Menace is a remix of a saccharine picture-book called "My
Little Golden Book About God." The author has replaced the revoltingly
sweet captions with his own twisted, angry ones, to very very good
effect.