Well, it has been a while since I have written, partly due to having to find work again and then getting work, dealing with WoW Cataclysm.
But what I want to write about is Tron Legacy.
Just to put it in perspective, I was a kid when I saw Tron. In fact, I loved it to death right next to Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and other Sci-Fi stuff. And like some, I was anticipating the movie to see what they had in mind with it.
Of course, Ebert posted a scathing review of it... Boring as hell and probably find a beer label more entertaining.
Well, to be honest, it is a Disney Movie. It wasn't setup to be a major adult movie, hell, the Pirate series hasn't exactly been one to be one for a lot of adults either, although it did try to stay true to the pirate motiff and didn't exactly follow general 'morals' either.
But back to Tron Legacy.
One of the things I will state, this post will have some spoilers, so if you don't want to read the spoilers, stop reading. If you are one who doesn't care or read Wikipedia entry about it which probably has the plot distilled already...
But one thing that was interesting, and probably ignored by some, is something we should be aware of. In Tron Legacy, Kevin Flynn, one of the heroes from the Original Tron movie, sought to create the 'perfect system'. And for those people who are not Tron Fans, probably didn't look to get the comics that sort of lead up to the movie, one of which sets up what happen when Kevin Flynn disappeared that fateful night. It is retold by Kevin to Sam, but there was a little more to it.
Clu, the movie's Villain, is a second generation program. Created by Kevin Flynn to 'take his place' according to the graphic novel. As Kevin was running Encom, and in the graphic novel, he had a wife who was having his child. He wanted to spend more time with his wife as his daily Encom Business and his work in the Grid was making him constantly late. In the Grid, there were problems that Tron and he could not keep up, mostly 'bugs' in the system. Clu was created to help build the perfect system that Flynn was striving for.
However, the problem with 'perfect' is that 'perfect' is relative to the person. And while Tron makes 'programs' seem like people within the computer, the inevitable problem with a directive is how does one define 'perfect'.
Now I will point to Babylon 5 for a second... Jeffrey Sinclair mentioned to the weapon that was to 'destroy anything that was not pure Ikaran (Or whatever the name of the race was)' But he pointed out what is 'pure'... There is always someone who is too short, too tall. Too dark, too light... The definition of pure is blurred.
Perfection is the same problem. In both the graphic novel, the game and the movie, the introduction of ISOs (Isometric Algorhythms) are programs that were not created by Flynn. They are programs that evolved from the system. Clu's directive believes that this disrupts the Perfection of the system. They were not part of the original system.
And here is where the moral of the movie points out. The corruption of the 'good intention' that most might not understand. People driven by purpose, for the 'good', will be corrupted into doing something that is no longer for the good but for the self interest.
Clu becomes like the evil that Flynn once fought in the original Tron. He takes programs of the grid and repurposes them, as he cannot create programs, he takes their 'function' and changes them to something else, in this case to make them into an army. In the beginning of the movie, we hear Flynn's speech about how the computer world is where our destiny is... This is echoed by Clu, where he wishes to 'perfect' the User world. All of this is driven around the fact that when the ISOs come to the Grid and how Flynn is in awe of it and focusing his attentions on them and then almost literally abandoning Clu to do his job while taking care of his son.
Like many other stories, it shows how the creation given the task to do the most difficult, only to be ignored and never appreciated. And much like our own history, Clu also twists it so that he makes others 'hate' or take down what he considers imperfect, which is the ISOs.
Does this sound familiar from our own history?
Now, again, the plot wasn't really 'great', but then again, depending on how you look at it, the movie does point out something interesting. The duality of man. Just as in the first movie, Flynn talks to Tron saying, "You know, you run around doing what you think you are suppose to be doing?" "That is how it is for us programs." "Well, I hate to break it to you, Tron, but that is how it is with Users as well." The good and evil in all people. Clu was made with good intentions, trying to do good, but in the end, became evil, corrupted and focused on the wrong principles, just as many others have in the past and will in the future.
I am sure many won't care about one possible meaning of the story. The visuals were pretty good, although not so sure about the 3D effects if you went to see the 3D showing of it. But remember this, there could be a deeper point in the movie, of course, my interpretation of it might be reaching a bit.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The joys of certain programs... And people...
Well, I must show some disdain for some programs... Such as McAfee... To add to my trials and tribulations, I was forced to get a new laptop, in this case, a Dell Inspirion 17R. It is a nice laptop, works reasonably well. What I have disdain for McAfee is how I tried to uninstall it, it didn't uninstall nicely.
McAfee tries very hard to help in keeping viruses out, however, it left itself on there for vbscript. When you have programs making use of vbscript and McAfee leaves its registry information in there, you can't run vbscript without making sure you get a program remover cleaner to fix the entries it changes or leaves behind because the installer doesn't de-install cleanly.
Lately, a lot of programs have become very sloppy. Programs designed for computers with more than necessary memory and CPU requirements. Not surprising as nowadays, the need to write programs faster takes priority over programs done properly. The old way of writing programs have become rather unnecessary as programming tools are put out to make things easier.
The real problem is, today's programmers and people who make the modern code these days never consider the 'idiot factor'.
The 'idiot factor' is situations where some one will do something idiotic that will make a program break down. Most programmers assume, "No one would do this..." And a hacker will go, "Hey... I can do this and use it to bypass something."
Sad thing is, a lot of people also fail this, as they assume people won't know your password or what not, and use very simple or easy passwords that they can remember, but fail to understand certain password security and the need for strong passwords as well.
McAfee tries very hard to help in keeping viruses out, however, it left itself on there for vbscript. When you have programs making use of vbscript and McAfee leaves its registry information in there, you can't run vbscript without making sure you get a program remover cleaner to fix the entries it changes or leaves behind because the installer doesn't de-install cleanly.
Lately, a lot of programs have become very sloppy. Programs designed for computers with more than necessary memory and CPU requirements. Not surprising as nowadays, the need to write programs faster takes priority over programs done properly. The old way of writing programs have become rather unnecessary as programming tools are put out to make things easier.
The real problem is, today's programmers and people who make the modern code these days never consider the 'idiot factor'.
The 'idiot factor' is situations where some one will do something idiotic that will make a program break down. Most programmers assume, "No one would do this..." And a hacker will go, "Hey... I can do this and use it to bypass something."
Sad thing is, a lot of people also fail this, as they assume people won't know your password or what not, and use very simple or easy passwords that they can remember, but fail to understand certain password security and the need for strong passwords as well.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Inception - The Movie
People have liken the movie to "The Matrix".
Well, I have to say, this is not the case. While yes, The Matrix has one person defying the machine's reality, changing things to his liking, but it is actually more bending the Machine's reality. Even ignoring the last two movies which people found to be sort of an attempt at the Messiah level... I have to say that Inception leans a little more to the following Movies:
Dark City
Dreamscape
The Thirteenth Floor
Total Recall
Dreamscape - Old 80s movie featuring Dennis Quaid where people delve into people's dreams. The Cell sort of touches that, but focuses more on Comatosed people, Dreamscape focused on psychics delving into normal people's dreams, then going into the fantastic.
Dark City - A surreal Sci-Fi Story about aliens changing people's dreams and perceptions.
The Thirteenth Floor - A virtual reality upon Virtual reality... This one is closer to what Inception is in concept.
Total Recall - Yes... I point to Total Recall because one of the things they kind of harp on it is "Is this a dream or is this reality?"
Well, not to go too far into the movie to ruin it for people, I will say this:
This is not a Matrix Rehash. Yes, there is the whole slow motion stuff, but not the "dodging of bullets". No super power play. The movie will make you wonder though at the end. I won't say more than that.
I would recommend the movie. The concept is interesting, it combines some of the elements of the movies I mentioned. The style is also pretty interesting as well.
Well, I have to say, this is not the case. While yes, The Matrix has one person defying the machine's reality, changing things to his liking, but it is actually more bending the Machine's reality. Even ignoring the last two movies which people found to be sort of an attempt at the Messiah level... I have to say that Inception leans a little more to the following Movies:
Dark City
Dreamscape
The Thirteenth Floor
Total Recall
Dreamscape - Old 80s movie featuring Dennis Quaid where people delve into people's dreams. The Cell sort of touches that, but focuses more on Comatosed people, Dreamscape focused on psychics delving into normal people's dreams, then going into the fantastic.
Dark City - A surreal Sci-Fi Story about aliens changing people's dreams and perceptions.
The Thirteenth Floor - A virtual reality upon Virtual reality... This one is closer to what Inception is in concept.
Total Recall - Yes... I point to Total Recall because one of the things they kind of harp on it is "Is this a dream or is this reality?"
Well, not to go too far into the movie to ruin it for people, I will say this:
This is not a Matrix Rehash. Yes, there is the whole slow motion stuff, but not the "dodging of bullets". No super power play. The movie will make you wonder though at the end. I won't say more than that.
I would recommend the movie. The concept is interesting, it combines some of the elements of the movies I mentioned. The style is also pretty interesting as well.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Speaking of different ways of tackling problems...
One of the things I found interesting is one of the popular Free Mailclients, Mozilla Thunderbird, has made me wonder how 'good' it is. And to be honest... I find it short on some things.
Now I know many hate Microsoft. I will also admit, I'm sort of a Microsoft user, with Windows and all, but I do have to harp that Windows' problems stem mostly from bad programming, not well thought out issues (Which is par for the course for any program rushed out.) and just plain Borg of Microsoft assimilation of various things and ideas.
One thing I have to say about how Outlook handles mail, though, it has its good points and bad points.
One of the annoying bad points is how it handles IMAP servers. I have noticed with some IMAP servers, it tends to have some issues on updating IMAP flags at times or in cases of very large mailboxes, the lag time it takes for it to deal with mail. That and the fact that it wants to cache mail, so large mailboxes... Be prepared to watch your system crawl at times while Outlook tries to sync large number of messages for the first time. (Trust me... It's like watching paint dry.)
Thunderbird isn't necessarily as bad, but it does have an annoying bad habit with archiving. Such as... Its concept of archiving... You pull down e-mail from the server, and save it in some file on your computer. Unless you took the time to specify where your 'Local Folders' are... You will be hard pressed to know where they are if you want to save them somewhere else. And what more, the fun thing about it is, you won't be able to make reasonable organized file folders, cause each folder is considered a 'file' and if you have 'subfolders' those create a folder of the main folder and files for the folders containing messages.
What more, if you want to bounce between mail clients, IE: You want to take mail you archive from Outlook or from Thunderbird... Your options from outlook to thunderbird are lots. Thunderbird to Outlook - Practically trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Now, where I work, my section will be moving to another group's Exchange server, mostly because this other group will take over the IT position at my section. That's great, I wanted to move people to use an Exchange server for a few reasons. Only one problem... Majority of the users are on Thunderbird with YEARS worth of data in their Local Folder.
Well, doing a little research, and the fact that we were doing mail through an IMAP server, the solution to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook had to be looked into. What I found funny was the group who we were joining to, their research into it was a little behind. I did this research a little before I found out about this change, mostly because on of the division's heads was getting tired of how Thunderbird handled her archiving, usually resulting instability because of slow reaction with the IMAP server and her getting impatient due to it seeming like it froze up.
My solution was taking the mail from the Thunderbird client and uploading it to an IMAP server, in my case, I had to upload it to another one since our mail IMAP server has limits and years worth of data can sometimes be in the gigabyte range.
Well, I can tell you, free IMAP servers you put on some piddly desktop machine with some SQL server on it... Painfully slow, especially pulling back down on Outlook. Never want to do it again, especially with large data.
What I found interesting, was how the other group wanted to import this stuff. Similar idea, but strangely enough, wanted to also go through a Macintosh Mail Client, which made no sense to me. Of course, they also claimed they never worked with Thunderbird. So I told them, from my experience with Thunderbird, and with Exchange... Exchange has IMAP capability. While I lacked the ability to setup my own Exchange server to test the idea out, I felt that having Thunderbird making a connection to the Exchange Server via IMAP, is more likely to be faster than trying to do it some other way.
And given the fact we were planning on going to Outlook and on an Exchange server, wouldn't it be more prudent to have the users push their email archive first onto Exchange and then bring it back down on Outlook's PST folders, especially lacking any nice tool to do thunderbird to outlook pst conversions.
That idea is getting adopted for the transition, which is cool. Of course, now Mozilla just needs to be willing to allow their users to archive off mail in a different way, one that is a bit more user friendly.
Now I know many hate Microsoft. I will also admit, I'm sort of a Microsoft user, with Windows and all, but I do have to harp that Windows' problems stem mostly from bad programming, not well thought out issues (Which is par for the course for any program rushed out.) and just plain Borg of Microsoft assimilation of various things and ideas.
One thing I have to say about how Outlook handles mail, though, it has its good points and bad points.
One of the annoying bad points is how it handles IMAP servers. I have noticed with some IMAP servers, it tends to have some issues on updating IMAP flags at times or in cases of very large mailboxes, the lag time it takes for it to deal with mail. That and the fact that it wants to cache mail, so large mailboxes... Be prepared to watch your system crawl at times while Outlook tries to sync large number of messages for the first time. (Trust me... It's like watching paint dry.)
Thunderbird isn't necessarily as bad, but it does have an annoying bad habit with archiving. Such as... Its concept of archiving... You pull down e-mail from the server, and save it in some file on your computer. Unless you took the time to specify where your 'Local Folders' are... You will be hard pressed to know where they are if you want to save them somewhere else. And what more, the fun thing about it is, you won't be able to make reasonable organized file folders, cause each folder is considered a 'file' and if you have 'subfolders' those create a folder of the main folder and files for the folders containing messages.
What more, if you want to bounce between mail clients, IE: You want to take mail you archive from Outlook or from Thunderbird... Your options from outlook to thunderbird are lots. Thunderbird to Outlook - Practically trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Now, where I work, my section will be moving to another group's Exchange server, mostly because this other group will take over the IT position at my section. That's great, I wanted to move people to use an Exchange server for a few reasons. Only one problem... Majority of the users are on Thunderbird with YEARS worth of data in their Local Folder.
Well, doing a little research, and the fact that we were doing mail through an IMAP server, the solution to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook had to be looked into. What I found funny was the group who we were joining to, their research into it was a little behind. I did this research a little before I found out about this change, mostly because on of the division's heads was getting tired of how Thunderbird handled her archiving, usually resulting instability because of slow reaction with the IMAP server and her getting impatient due to it seeming like it froze up.
My solution was taking the mail from the Thunderbird client and uploading it to an IMAP server, in my case, I had to upload it to another one since our mail IMAP server has limits and years worth of data can sometimes be in the gigabyte range.
Well, I can tell you, free IMAP servers you put on some piddly desktop machine with some SQL server on it... Painfully slow, especially pulling back down on Outlook. Never want to do it again, especially with large data.
What I found interesting, was how the other group wanted to import this stuff. Similar idea, but strangely enough, wanted to also go through a Macintosh Mail Client, which made no sense to me. Of course, they also claimed they never worked with Thunderbird. So I told them, from my experience with Thunderbird, and with Exchange... Exchange has IMAP capability. While I lacked the ability to setup my own Exchange server to test the idea out, I felt that having Thunderbird making a connection to the Exchange Server via IMAP, is more likely to be faster than trying to do it some other way.
And given the fact we were planning on going to Outlook and on an Exchange server, wouldn't it be more prudent to have the users push their email archive first onto Exchange and then bring it back down on Outlook's PST folders, especially lacking any nice tool to do thunderbird to outlook pst conversions.
That idea is getting adopted for the transition, which is cool. Of course, now Mozilla just needs to be willing to allow their users to archive off mail in a different way, one that is a bit more user friendly.
VBScript Programming...
So... At my current job, I took it upon myself to do a little learning of VB Script for Logins.
I do a search, and one of the links is to Microsoft's Technet, namely, this one:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758918%28WS.10%29.aspx
It helped me figure out how to make a VBScript, but one of the more annoying things was... The script was semi-generic and kind of assumed a few things... Things that could go HORRIBLY HORRIBLY wrong, with little explanation.
For example:
I get this part. Create a nice little Object and assign it to ADSysInfo, create another Object that gets User object info and set it to CurrentUser.
But here is the twist.
strGroups... It's an object. You use the function LCase, which puts everything in a STRING into lower case. What throws everything off is the Join function.
The Join function expects certain information, in this case, an Array and it takes an array of things and joins it into one string.
Little does the explanation of this page does is tell you what CurrentUser.MemberOf returns. In fact, I had to find it in other webpages. What happens is that it can kick out 3 different kinds of answers.
1) If the user is not part of any groups, just Domain Users, which is also a default, catch-all group for a user in a Domain. CurrentUser.MemberOf returns "". That's right... A null string.
2) If the user is in ONE group, other than Domain Users... It returns a STRING of that group.
3) If the user is in more than one group, other than Domain Users... It returns an ARRAY of those groups.
So... This part wasn't really well thought out, at least, not logically.
So we come up to the next interesting part that I found entertaining on how many programmers of this tackled this.
Many used a lot of methods, that I felt was a bit over the top. My solution to how to handle this three tier issue was to do the following:
It took me a bit of digging to find a function that could simplify the whole "Is it an Array or Not?" part. A lot of the other solutions seemed to want to do something more elaborate or complex when it could just be done this way. And believe me, do a search on this, you will find some that seem to want to do a lot more than just this to simply get the groups in something that is a little more usable and overly complex.
Now I will admit, I didn't exactly make my own login script any more 'simpler', but then again, every place has their own way of handling things, my job is no different with that regard as well. Also, I won't claim to be a VBscript expert... I just find it interesting that out of all the posts I saw, a lot of them focused on a very complex, overly coded way to do something that I finally figured out how to do with one simple function and broke it down to a simple if then else type setup.
Course, it could also be that the IsArray function came a little later on some of the posts, but then again, different ways to figure out problems.
I do a search, and one of the links is to Microsoft's Technet, namely, this one:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758918%28WS.10%29.aspx
It helped me figure out how to make a VBScript, but one of the more annoying things was... The script was semi-generic and kind of assumed a few things... Things that could go HORRIBLY HORRIBLY wrong, with little explanation.
For example:
Set ADSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")
Set CurrentUser = GetObject("LDAP://" &
ADSysInfo.UserName)
strGroups = LCase(Join(CurrentUser.MemberOf))
I get this part. Create a nice little Object and assign it to ADSysInfo, create another Object that gets User object info and set it to CurrentUser.
But here is the twist.
strGroups... It's an object. You use the function LCase, which puts everything in a STRING into lower case. What throws everything off is the Join function.
The Join function expects certain information, in this case, an Array and it takes an array of things and joins it into one string.
Little does the explanation of this page does is tell you what CurrentUser.MemberOf returns. In fact, I had to find it in other webpages. What happens is that it can kick out 3 different kinds of answers.
1) If the user is not part of any groups, just Domain Users, which is also a default, catch-all group for a user in a Domain. CurrentUser.MemberOf returns "". That's right... A null string.
2) If the user is in ONE group, other than Domain Users... It returns a STRING of that group.
3) If the user is in more than one group, other than Domain Users... It returns an ARRAY of those groups.
So... This part wasn't really well thought out, at least, not logically.
So we come up to the next interesting part that I found entertaining on how many programmers of this tackled this.
Many used a lot of methods, that I felt was a bit over the top. My solution to how to handle this three tier issue was to do the following:
If IsArray(CurrentUser.MemberOf) then
strGroups = LCase(Join(CurrentUser.MemberOf))
Else
strGroups = LCase(CurrentUser.MemberOf)
End If
It took me a bit of digging to find a function that could simplify the whole "Is it an Array or Not?" part. A lot of the other solutions seemed to want to do something more elaborate or complex when it could just be done this way. And believe me, do a search on this, you will find some that seem to want to do a lot more than just this to simply get the groups in something that is a little more usable and overly complex.
Now I will admit, I didn't exactly make my own login script any more 'simpler', but then again, every place has their own way of handling things, my job is no different with that regard as well. Also, I won't claim to be a VBscript expert... I just find it interesting that out of all the posts I saw, a lot of them focused on a very complex, overly coded way to do something that I finally figured out how to do with one simple function and broke it down to a simple if then else type setup.
Course, it could also be that the IsArray function came a little later on some of the posts, but then again, different ways to figure out problems.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Why the hoopla on Real Name Posting...
This week, there was a massive player response to Blizzard's intentions of having Real Names be part of the player's posting which you will see here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1
If you took a few hours, (Yes, hours) to read some of it... A fair deal of people have had issues with it, myself included. There were some who felt there was nothing wrong with it.
Their reasoning: It makes the trolls fear or not post on the forums.
Well, here is the thing. Yes, anonymity has 'empowered' people to be jerks, feeling like they can do whatever they want without repercussions of retribution. However, the Real Name associated with posting introduces a new problem, one listed off with many people posting in that forum.
For instance, several of the players on that forum have mention the following concerns:
Being a Female (On a Gaming Forum)
Being a Minor
Being of a Minority Ethnicity
Having been Harassed
Have been stalked
Having been Hacked
Being Transgendered (In the game)
Many of you wonder, what do these things have to do with having your name on a forum?
Well, first off, let's point to the first two items, being either a Female or a Minor.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/06/predator-met-16/
http://exgamer.net/blog/?p=1314
These are two articles relating to Minors and one being a minor and a female. While real names are not in place, these incidents happen. The introduction of real names allow predators, stalkers and the like to find their targets easier.
The most common response to this concern, "You are overreacting." Unfortunately, the above is only a small sample of things found on the internet. The other thing to consider is the fact that there are numerous people who read forums that cater to minors, such as games, that allow sexual predators to seek minors. It happens all the time.
There are also people who have low impulse control. Case in point:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/01/2003248619
One could say, "It's the chinese... They aren't Americans..." Need I remind people that Columbine happened. I am not one to say games make people killers, as I am a gamer. But to say "It's someone else..." is not something we can say. Anyone out there can have their fit of rage, their snapping point. Having the name of another person, to help in tracking down a person down to do vile things... Things like this can happen.
Again, it isn't overreaction, but the necessity to protect people from others.
Now, there is a mention of the South Korean Law made back in 2009 about Real Names to help stop cyber-bullying. A couple of the articles I have read point to the necessity for the law. However there is something I noticed with the articles referencing the law.
On Youtube forums, the following came up:
I live and work in Korea but am an American. My user name is piriajeoshi, but my full real name, Allen Bruce Ray is on view in my profile. In the past couple of months, I noticed that every time I try to comment on videos or respond to comments on my own, I get this error message: "본인확인제로 인해 한국 국가 설정시 동영상/댓글 업로드 기능을 자발적으로 비활성화합니다. We have voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law." I searched HELP for a way to circumvent this and saw a post that suggested I change my country to United States. I did this, but it didn't help. I'm on a Korean IP. Is there now no way I can effectively use text to communicate with my subscribers or make comments? This is extremely frustrating!
Basically, South Korean law says that anyone signing up to a website with more than a certain number of members must officially verify their real name -- just putting it in a profile isn't enough, you actually need to produce ID
From this posting, the Username was not given as theirs, just in the profile they put in their Real Name. The clarification given for the law, however, is that for the user, it wasn't JUST the name, but some verifiable proof that the person is who they say they are. IE: Some form of verifiable ID to link your name properly to the account posting.
This is what YouTube and Google viewed as a breach of personal privacy. It required 'more' information to 'prove' who you were, not just the name. And the reasoning for this is to prevent protesters and cyber-criminals from posting anonymously, IE: without some form of 'proof' of who you were, especially if you abuse a system in such a way.
Now, this is something that has to be addressed and understood. I am not advocating that people should be completely anonymous, but at the same time, people should have the choice of what is shared. The proof of who you are should also be limited. This is for protection of the users, to avoid leaving people 'open' to elements that neither we nor the company who is hosting the forum, can control.
Now I do expect the company to give up information about users to the law when it is shown that the user in question is a danger to him/herself or to another user, however it there is no justification to sacrifice a user's real name to give a false sense of security for some, and open people to be singularly targeted.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1
If you took a few hours, (Yes, hours) to read some of it... A fair deal of people have had issues with it, myself included. There were some who felt there was nothing wrong with it.
Their reasoning: It makes the trolls fear or not post on the forums.
Well, here is the thing. Yes, anonymity has 'empowered' people to be jerks, feeling like they can do whatever they want without repercussions of retribution. However, the Real Name associated with posting introduces a new problem, one listed off with many people posting in that forum.
For instance, several of the players on that forum have mention the following concerns:
Being a Female (On a Gaming Forum)
Being a Minor
Being of a Minority Ethnicity
Having been Harassed
Have been stalked
Having been Hacked
Being Transgendered (In the game)
Many of you wonder, what do these things have to do with having your name on a forum?
Well, first off, let's point to the first two items, being either a Female or a Minor.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/06/predator-met-16/
http://exgamer.net/blog/?p=1314
These are two articles relating to Minors and one being a minor and a female. While real names are not in place, these incidents happen. The introduction of real names allow predators, stalkers and the like to find their targets easier.
The most common response to this concern, "You are overreacting." Unfortunately, the above is only a small sample of things found on the internet. The other thing to consider is the fact that there are numerous people who read forums that cater to minors, such as games, that allow sexual predators to seek minors. It happens all the time.
There are also people who have low impulse control. Case in point:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/01/2003248619
One could say, "It's the chinese... They aren't Americans..." Need I remind people that Columbine happened. I am not one to say games make people killers, as I am a gamer. But to say "It's someone else..." is not something we can say. Anyone out there can have their fit of rage, their snapping point. Having the name of another person, to help in tracking down a person down to do vile things... Things like this can happen.
Again, it isn't overreaction, but the necessity to protect people from others.
Now, there is a mention of the South Korean Law made back in 2009 about Real Names to help stop cyber-bullying. A couple of the articles I have read point to the necessity for the law. However there is something I noticed with the articles referencing the law.
On Youtube forums, the following came up:
I live and work in Korea but am an American. My user name is piriajeoshi, but my full real name, Allen Bruce Ray is on view in my profile. In the past couple of months, I noticed that every time I try to comment on videos or respond to comments on my own, I get this error message: "본인확인제로 인해 한국 국가 설정시 동영상/댓글 업로드 기능을 자발적으로 비활성화합니다. We have voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law." I searched HELP for a way to circumvent this and saw a post that suggested I change my country to United States. I did this, but it didn't help. I'm on a Korean IP. Is there now no way I can effectively use text to communicate with my subscribers or make comments? This is extremely frustrating!
Basically, South Korean law says that anyone signing up to a website with more than a certain number of members must officially verify their real name -- just putting it in a profile isn't enough, you actually need to produce ID
From this posting, the Username was not given as theirs, just in the profile they put in their Real Name. The clarification given for the law, however, is that for the user, it wasn't JUST the name, but some verifiable proof that the person is who they say they are. IE: Some form of verifiable ID to link your name properly to the account posting.
This is what YouTube and Google viewed as a breach of personal privacy. It required 'more' information to 'prove' who you were, not just the name. And the reasoning for this is to prevent protesters and cyber-criminals from posting anonymously, IE: without some form of 'proof' of who you were, especially if you abuse a system in such a way.
Now, this is something that has to be addressed and understood. I am not advocating that people should be completely anonymous, but at the same time, people should have the choice of what is shared. The proof of who you are should also be limited. This is for protection of the users, to avoid leaving people 'open' to elements that neither we nor the company who is hosting the forum, can control.
Now I do expect the company to give up information about users to the law when it is shown that the user in question is a danger to him/herself or to another user, however it there is no justification to sacrifice a user's real name to give a false sense of security for some, and open people to be singularly targeted.
Monday, July 5, 2010
High School of the Dead
So, it has been a while since I have posted, and now I have something to post to those who might actually read this.
High School of the Dead
I mention this little thing, as it is one of the subjects I enjoy, Anime/Manga. Just recently, Japan has put out the Anime for the Manga titled 'High School of the Dead' for people to check out.
Strangely enough, the Manga is not as popular as Naruto, by that, I mean, it is not out on a weekly basis as Naruto, one of Jump's more popular Manga or Bleach which is also another popular manga.
Synopsis - Well, we have all seen the Zombie Apocalypse movies, like all of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and the rest of the Dead series... The silly 'Return of the Living Dead' series, even 'Shaun of the Dead'. High School of the Dead is, by no means, too different from these series, well, with the exception of the Return of the Living Dead was pretty bad to begin with.
The setting takes place in Japan, right around spring time, as the first Chapter and Episode both titled 'Spring of the Dead' lends to the title. The focus happens to be set on a School in the middle of the outbreak, 3 students fighting for their lives. We then flash back a little to the main character and the girl before the outbreak starts, setting up the scene for what happens next.
Suffice it to say, the focus of the series is about this variation of the Zombie Apocalypse, and of course, the authors of the series make no bones on saying it is limited to just Japan itself.
The reason why I mention this series is how the author tries to keep the series going, showing different sides of the situation and even putting the one thing Romero tended to show in his own series, how the world begins to fall apart and how people react to the situation.
Now this is not to say we all wouldn't react the same way or should be prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse, but it does show that sometimes, people have different rationalizations, or handle the situation in different ways.
Of course, as noticed in the manga and the anime's first episode, it does lend a lot of fan service for the male population, the gratuitous underwear flashing like crazy or the bountiful showing of female nudity which probably has given it some popularity among the males, despite its sporadic showing.
The one thing I can say, is that Max Brooks might be subtly impressed with this series, being the author of both 'Survival Guide to Zombie Attacks' and 'World War Z' in the world fashioned by this manga group, as his book, "World War Z" did relate stories of things during the Zombie Apocalypse, this even goes farther than that as well as farther than some of the snippets of the Romero movies.
Should the manga hit the US market, I highly recommend getting it if you are a 'Zombie' type fan.
I mention this little thing, as it is one of the subjects I enjoy, Anime/Manga. Just recently, Japan has put out the Anime for the Manga titled 'High School of the Dead' for people to check out.
Strangely enough, the Manga is not as popular as Naruto, by that, I mean, it is not out on a weekly basis as Naruto, one of Jump's more popular Manga or Bleach which is also another popular manga.
Synopsis - Well, we have all seen the Zombie Apocalypse movies, like all of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and the rest of the Dead series... The silly 'Return of the Living Dead' series, even 'Shaun of the Dead'. High School of the Dead is, by no means, too different from these series, well, with the exception of the Return of the Living Dead was pretty bad to begin with.
The setting takes place in Japan, right around spring time, as the first Chapter and Episode both titled 'Spring of the Dead' lends to the title. The focus happens to be set on a School in the middle of the outbreak, 3 students fighting for their lives. We then flash back a little to the main character and the girl before the outbreak starts, setting up the scene for what happens next.
Suffice it to say, the focus of the series is about this variation of the Zombie Apocalypse, and of course, the authors of the series make no bones on saying it is limited to just Japan itself.
The reason why I mention this series is how the author tries to keep the series going, showing different sides of the situation and even putting the one thing Romero tended to show in his own series, how the world begins to fall apart and how people react to the situation.
Now this is not to say we all wouldn't react the same way or should be prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse, but it does show that sometimes, people have different rationalizations, or handle the situation in different ways.
Of course, as noticed in the manga and the anime's first episode, it does lend a lot of fan service for the male population, the gratuitous underwear flashing like crazy or the bountiful showing of female nudity which probably has given it some popularity among the males, despite its sporadic showing.
The one thing I can say, is that Max Brooks might be subtly impressed with this series, being the author of both 'Survival Guide to Zombie Attacks' and 'World War Z' in the world fashioned by this manga group, as his book, "World War Z" did relate stories of things during the Zombie Apocalypse, this even goes farther than that as well as farther than some of the snippets of the Romero movies.
Should the manga hit the US market, I highly recommend getting it if you are a 'Zombie' type fan.
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