Keeping myself honest

I’ve been meaning to blog for a while and have even missed my modest pace of blogging once a month that I’ve been on since the summer.  This week a few things caught my interest while catching up on news over the weekend and listening to this week’s episode of This Week in Tech (also know as TWiT and probably the best technology podcast around).

The stories that were most concerning were Facebook once again changing their privacy settings in such a way that if you haven’t looked at the settings before you could potentially now be sharing all of the information you thought was private to the world. If you really want to see a breach of what you thought was private try taking the What Do Quizzes Really Know About You? Facebook quiz and prepare to be shocked as to what you’re friends can give away without you knowing. The second somewhat infuriating story stems from comments by Google’s CEO.

Eric Schmidt said this last week in an interview: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities”.

This has prompted more than a little uproar including one Mozilla exec urges Firefox users ditch Google for Bing (Which I’ve done). Now either he is totally naive when it comes to privacy or actually believes that people don’t deserve to have any and Google’s motto of ‘Do no evil’ sounds more than a little glib after a statement like that. Google is quickly turning into a giant that seems to have little regard for the toes that they are stepping on and I am continually dumbfounded by the unconditional love they get from the public while Microsoft is often labelled as being an evil corporate empire.

Now people might say I’m overreacting to this but considering how much information Google has and how much they have the potential to save without user consent this could pose a huge risk. Imaging all your search results, IM conversations, email, news feed, photos, location of your cell phone, maps looked up and more all being used against for any number of reasons; and not just from yesterday this information could be saved for years. The point is this the majority of people who use the “If you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about” defence are the heads of police states and those who want to spy on you all the time in order to use that information against you.

The bottom line is that even though the internet is a new frontier where we could easily monitor everything that someone does, privacy is still a basic human right that we should hold on to and not give up because some guy in a suit from Google thinks we should be ashamed of not wanting the world to know everything about us. Privacy is about trust and decency and Google apparently doesn’t deserve the former or have the latter.

Links:

• John C. Dvorak has an interesting spin on this story saying that it is less about you and more about the people in power and their ability not to be blackmailed here: Eric Schmidt, Google and privacy
• There is also a good article here on the topic of privacy: Facebook and Google: Contrasts in Privacy
• And for those looking for one Ixquick is a great search engine that stores no information about you or your searches.

Stay safe out there because apparently you never know who is watching you.

Scotty B Commentary, Technology

Like usual it has been a while since I blogged but a few things came up this week (Now technically last week) that caught my attention enough to make me want to write up something here. The second issue is going to send me off on a rant so I’ll save that excitement for later in the week.

There were a few stories related to Net Neutrality this week which gave me a wide range of emotions from optimism, to disappointment, to pulling out my hair frustration. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Net Neutrality is basically the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally and none of it should be blocked. This is somewhat of an oversimplification of terminology but also underscores one of the problems with Net Neutrality in that it means different things to different people but in general the IT community and end users are in favour of it and internet providers are against it.

The First article from Ars outlines the CRTC’s ruling that traffic shaping (the act of slowing down certain types of traffic or all traffic to a specific user) should be a last resort for ISPs who are having network issues. The ruling says that economic measures like investing in network infrastructure, data caps and discounts should be taken before any shaping occurs. While it doesn’t lay down strict net neutrality rules the ruling does set out a framework for traffic management measures which gives me optimism that the telecommunication companies won’t get free rain to do whatever they want if it isn’t in their best interest. Also this week the FCC announced that it had come to an agreement with most of the US ISP’s about implementing a new net neutrality proposal which is also great as it looked like everyone was coming to an agreement that would be mutually beneficial for both the users and the ISPs.

Then we get to the to the paragraph that should be titled “Don’t quit your day job Senator because you obviously don’t have any idea what you’re talking about here.” In the midst of all of this Senator John McCain introduces a bill that would ban all internet regulations (except when the government needed them for security). In his words the bill looks to:

“allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment,” and that  “Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy.”

This statement is more then a little absurd as one of the goals of net neutrality is to continue to allow for innovation that could be stifled if the ISPs get to control what traffic is allowed. It is true that up until now there has been no government regulations on ISPs but there also hasn’t been any traffic shaping and block (or not on a wide scale). Normally laws don’t get created until there is a problem as there is no way when something new (the the internet) is created to anticipate everything that may happen and to create a set of laws for proper usage.

I could go on about this but I’ll leave here with two final ideas. The reason why the internet has had so much creativity is because it is an open platform and letting the big telecommunication companies decide what works best for the internet will probably mean they decide to do what is best for them and not the end user. If Rogers (my internet provider) has the ability to block me from streaming TV shows on my xbox so the only way I can watch my shows is by buying their cable subscription that is an inherit conflict on interest and definitely not good for me as a consumer. Also it seems like McCain is doing the same and only looking out for himself as the reason he is backing this bill is most likely because AT&T (a large US ISP) is such a large contribute of his.

Nice to see politics never change even in the digital age.

Scotty B Commentary, Technology

Well once again my new blog post starts not with me writing but with me updating all of the software that runs the blog, such is the life of the once a month blogger. My last weekend was filled with the awesome nerdyness of the Fan expo in Toronto where I got all of the Gaming, SciFi, Anime and Cosplaying I could want with some hilarious cameos from the soup Nazi, Honkey Tonk Man and the Iron Shiek as well as a list of some SciFi regulars. I’m planning on getting into costume for next year but more on that later…

Even though I’m not in school anymore September is an interesting month were everything gets ‘back on track’ from T.V., work schedules and people not being on vacation every other week. Parliament also goes back in session and the fact that the Liberals are throwing about the idea of an election is absurd in my opinion. For a long time I tried to give Stephen Harper the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t eat children and was just getting a bad wrap because a lot of people hate conservatives. At the very least I thought he was a decent strategist who, even if he did have a crazy conservative agenda knew that in order to stay in power (especially with a minority) he would have to be a moderate. He was also the best leader to be PM at the time.

While Harper hasn’t done anything I would consider part of a secret conservative agenda he has broken a few promises (Senate reform anyone) and tried to kick the opposition parties with the funding cuts (while also needed their support to stay in power) which was a major strategic error. Most of my goodwill has been eroded and now that the Liberals have a strong new leader I thought eventually Harper would be outed and we would get a Liberal majority. I was also happy to see them all realize that they needed to play nice and do their jobs instead of insulting one another and bringing down Parliament when Ignatieff took over.

So I was somewhat shocked when Michael Ignatieff said that he plans to topple the Conservatives at first chance. This will be 4 elections in 5 years (or the time span you normally find one, possible 2 normal elections) which is not only stupid it’s downright irresponsible given the current economic climate. Ignatieff was recently quoted as saying “It’s a question of principle, not a question of the polls” which is great on the level of keeping the government honest and being ideological, buts let’s be honest politics you can’t afford to be ideological when you don’t have support to back it up.

Now he’s says he won’t form a coalition which once again is a nice sentiment but I wonder if 1) He’ll stick to that plan and 2) If he does will it end up helping his cause. At the end of the day I could keep going on about this (and usually do) but the point here is that I question whether anything will change or if the whole process of politics has turned into a futile exercise where only the liars get anywhere and the few good ideas that surface are shot down from reasons that range from greed to ignorance. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out, and that may be the scariest thing of all.

Scotty B Commentary

One of the nice things for me about being on vacation is that I do things that I enjoy but seem to never do during my normal day to day routine. One of these things is reading books. It’s not that I don’t like books but I normally find something instantly more gratifying to do with my time (usually video games) then spend the time to get invested with a book.

So with most of my technology purposefully away from me last week I was able to finish (among other things) a book I had started after I got it last Christmas. The book is “Hitman: My life in the cartoon world of wrestling” by Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart.

For those who don’t know Bret is a former pro wrestler and real Canadian hero in my opinion. His father was a old school wrestling legend who ran Stampede wresting out of Calgary for many years and over time most of his eleven siblings would be involved in some way or another. Stampede was eventually bought by the WWE (WWF at the time) which continues to be the main face of pro wresting today.

In an entertainment business full of liars, bullshitters, bullies, bodybuilders who couldn’t wrestle their way out of a paper bag and where the lines of reality and fiction are often blurred Bret was constantly classy and stood up for when the business was about the comradery of the boys in the dressing room and giving the fans a great show in the ring while not insulting their intelligence. Before he was a superstar wresting was just starting to get into the main stream with Hulk Hogan leading the charge. Unfortunately Hulk’s clean image of telling kids to eat their vitamins and say their prayers was killed (along with his super hero sized arms) when it was shown he took steroids to get his body to that size. By the time Bret hit his stride main stream wrestling was becoming less of a characterture and fans were beginning to appreciate the in the ring skill that was being displayed.

This was good as while not the greatest at giving interviews Bret was the best working in the ring (many including me would say of all time) and could tell breathtaking stories with incredible skill that could bring you to your feet cheering or make you fall to the ground in tears. Many of you may think I’m crazy for the last statement thinking that pro wresting is just people doing crazy stunts with fixed endings; and while today this is closer than ever to being true there was a time when the matches took priority over the spectacle and there were amazing stories to be told. Unfortunately as the business grew bigger and more profitable it lost its roots and the things you like to romantically link to sports such as commitment, sportsmanship, sacrifice, and being role models were left behind and replaced with backstabbing, sex and shock jock TV.

I would be lying if I said that at the time I wasn’t excited by the turn in wresting. As I was moving into my teenage years wrestling was moving from family oriented fun that I would watch with my Dad, Brother and Uncle to something more ‘gritty’ and ‘real’ with bra and panties matches, more over the top stunts and anti heroes telling everyone off being who the crowds cheered for and it seem to fit the entertainment bill perfectly. What I didn’t understand then was that most of the skill and deeper in the ring aspects of wresting that would made it more interesting then a brawl in an episode of COPS were slowing being moved out in favour of sometimes good, sometimes bad promos and people hitting each other over the head with trash cans.

While I said earlier that Bret wasn’t the greatest at interviews, he improved at lot and this ended up being what made him the most enduring to me and I would assume a lot of other fans. His interviews were almost never the perfect, heavily edited, over the top promos that many wrestlers of the day used. Even when he had a scripted interview there would always seem to be weird pauses and words that could have been better chosen but it all added to the honestly of his character as he was always talking from the heart and never just blankly reading a script. After a long and hard road I was elated to see him win his second WWF heavyweight title at Wrestlemania X (although the belts are thrown around a lot these days, back at that time winning it meant that you were the top guy in the company and were looked to for leading the dressing rooms and to be the one who drew fans to the shows so everyone could make their money). He would later to go on to win it 3 mores times, which once again at the time was almost unheard of.

It was a shame that one of the nicest, hardest working and most talented guys in the business also was on the receiving end of the most infamous screw jobs ever perpetrated by a man who had made millions of of his blood and sweat. The Montreal screw job as it has been come to know as was where the old school lines about respect in the business were shattered forever and signified a change that I would not comprehend until years later. Bret was about to leave for the rival WCW promotion which was at the time beating the WWF and throwing huge contracts around to get people to work for them. After the WWF re-nagged on his contract (this is somewhat over simplifying things) Bret decided to sign with WCW in a decision I never understood as a fan at the time but can see now that he was looking out for his best interest long term and that of his family, and thought this was the best way to do it in an industry where nothing is certain.

Bret lost the title that night in the most embarrassing way possible with his opponent using Bret’s own finisher and the ref calling the match without even a hint that Bret was going to give up. The fans were livid as it was a literal screw job not just one from the storyline and in the aftermath Vince McMahon (The WWF chairman and architect of the screw job) got knocked out cold in the dressing room by a single punch from the Bret.

Wrestling is full of tragedies, I couldn’t begin to count the number of people I read about in the book who died well before their time of drug overdoses, steroid abuse, pain pills, alcohol, injuries from working and other things associated with the lifestyle and there are dozens more who are mere shells of themselves after all the abuse. Unfortunately Bret was no exception and was a severely concussed by good natured, but far too green Bill Goldburg which eventually lead to him having a stroke. While Bret was able to recover and is continuing to live outside the business there are so many others that didn’t make it even my limited time being a fan including Eddie Guerrero, Owen Hart (Bret’s brother who died doing an ill conceived stunt from the rafters) and Christ Beniot (even though everything around his death was horrible I will continue to believe he was a good guy who’s brain was literally destroyed by what he put himself through to wrestle).

This blog post is kinda long and has more history and less opinion in it but I wanted to say a few (ok maybe more than a few) words about something that at one point in time was something I enjoyed but can never really go back to again. I know I say this a lot, but I’m pretty sure you will never get around to this corner of the internet Bret but even so I wanted to say something to you as a fan. You were always my hero from the first day I heard the ring announcer have to added Canada into your home town so people would know where it was. Your honestly, commitment and talent rang true even to a nine year old kid who wasn’t sure how real wrestling was. At the time it was great to cheer for someone who had taken the long road to get there and was finally getting what he deserved. After reading the book it was great to get to know more about you and I was cheering again even though I already knew most of the story. Although your image is not as squeaky clean as it was when I looked up to you as a boy you are more than worthy both then and now to be a role model and a hero, you are still the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be.

Scotty B Personal

Well I came on tonight to finish up a post I’ve been writing for a while and just have been too busy to get done (I’m still writing essay posts) but have just spent the last 45 min updating wordpress and all of my plugins (and now another 10 min writing this post).  The moral of the story here is to blog more often so I don’t have such a backlog. I’m also playing around with making ‘pretty’ permalinks in the blog but I’m not sure I can do it with my current hosting strategy.

As I’m not sure when I’ll finish the other post (hopefully before I go on vacation next week) I’ll quickly recap the busy last week that I’ve had:

- The Bluesfest concerts were great and I will go into more detail in my next blog post about that but suffice to say I can see why people say KISS is the biggest spectacle in rock.

- James and Carrie’s wedding was a lot of fun and it was both an honour and a privileged to be a groomsman for a man that has been a good friend of mine for many years. Other than some questionable song selections from the DJ the entire event was a blast even though I still suck at golf and there are more bad photos of me up on facebook then ever.

- One of these days at work we will release version 3 of the software and I will have a party to celebrate that day, except I probably won’t have time because I will be working on version 3.1 or moving my desk again.

Until my masterpiece post titled ‘On music’ comes out farewell internet, goodnight and good luck.

Scotty B Personal

Before it becomes almost a month since I blogged last I decided to post a little rant here for all of you to enjoy now that I’m not so busy at work.

I was going to blog about this story about people protesting Dante’s Inferno (a new game based on the old stories) but then I found out it was all a PR stunt by the publisher, which I’m not sure is awesome or sad but should be commended as it got the game more press than anything else so far.

This post now will be concentrated on calling out the people in this news story (I apologize for anyone reading this and not interested in gaming but hopefully the rant is angry enough to give you something to be interested in).

Instead of just giving you a wall of text as to why this is moronic I’ve decided to to address each of the points one by one so here goes:

1. Significant content for L4D1 was promised, and never delivered
- Are you talking about content for the game or downloadable content for after release? Either way you are wrong. The game is multiplayer shooting so it wasn’t going to have a single player story and while there are only 4 campaigns you can play them Co-op or versus and they have almost infinite replay ability because of the AI director and the fact that you are playing with other people. Valve also just released an entire new mode not to long ago with a new map all for free. Most publishers don’t even think about doing this and start working on the next game right after the first one ships.

2. Valve put little faith in L4D1 since they almost certainly started working on L4D2 right after release
- See my previous point about them very recently bringing out a free add on for the game as well as frequent balance patches. If they didn’t care about they game they wouldn’t have bothered putting the effort in. Also this is not an exclusive proposition the people working on the DLC are probably also working on the second game, what a shocker people can multitask at work!

3. The fact that L4D2 is nearly identical to L4D1 will decimate the community for both games
- This one you may have a little bit of a point in, but that being said if the game is the same people won’t buy it and the original game will still thrive and if the new one is much better then the majority of the community will migrate over or (another shocker) play more than one game in a given time span. This is also a game in which a full server is 4 or 8 people, so they pool of players can shrink some without it being a huge problem.

4. The announced date is not nearly enough time to polish content or make significant gameplay changes
- Are you making the game? No? Then how the hell do you know? As a developer myself sometimes you don’t even know how long a project will take and the last person who would know is a fan on the internet. You can only tell this only by playing it (which you haven’t) and if it does turn out to be true then don’t buy the game because the quality isn’t there.

5. The new character designs seem bland and unappealing so far
- You saw a 5 minute cut scene which for most of the time was zombies walking around. Might I also remind you that the characters in the first game have maybe 100 lines of dialog (that’s being really generous) and the game isn’t trying to tell a narrative other than you need to get across the street and you need to shoot zombies to do it.

6. L4D2 is too bright to fit in with L4D1’s visual aesthetic
- Really? Were you trying to round out a top 10 list with this one? Because you only got to 9.

7. The fiddle-based horde music is extremely disliked, though the differently orchestrated music is otherwise welcome
- I thought the points couldn’t get more absurd than the last one but they have… I don’t know what to say, there is a volume slider for the music? The devil played the fiddle in that one Charlie Daniels song so it’s and evil instrument? I’m at a loss for how to respond because at this point I thought the post was actually a parody.

8. L4D2’s release will result in a drop in quality and frequency for L4D1 content, even compared to before
- This one is possible as I’m sure it would be a pain to keep making DLC for both games at once. I will say Valve has a reputation for supporting their games post release and not releasing anything that isn’t of high quality but only time will tell with this one. (Haters get only kinda valid point)

9. The community has lost faith in Valve’s former reputation for commitment to their games post-release
- Nothing like an untrue sweeping generalization to make you feel like a man at the end of your list. At the time of writing your group has 25,000 member (not a small amount) but my friend has a Steam groups that is 4 times that size for people who like to casually play mutiplayer games on Steam, so in the grand scheme you are vocal but a minority.

At the end of the day the haters may be right when the games comes out and it may be a cash grab, but Valve has for all the years it has been around only released high quality products and almost been unparalleled in free support for its games after launch so why would you believe this would be any different before seeing any of the facts, if all the free content they give away isn’t enough to get some goodwill from the fans I don’t know what is.

All I’m saying is that the world would be a better place in this (and a lot of other situations) if you sat down and waited for the facts before starting to bitch. Thank you, and goodnight.

Scotty B Commentary, Gaming