The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Anton P. Nym (aka Steve):

Jp, alas I find myself being unclear. (Again. Dammit.) My comment was directed more at Teresa's original post than at yours.

Profanity filters are a great assist (even if they sometimes lead to interesting discussions about aircraft c***pits) but the truly insidious easily find ways to bypass them. Heck, we even started having to examine posts mentioning fast food products, because "BK" became a slang term of derision for "bad kids" used by the unsavoury to incite flamewars. In a large community, terms for intending or delivering offense mutate at a terrifying rate.

Strong moderation also requires ways to filter out sock puppets, and typical forum systems doesn't seem to be terribly good about handling "alt" accounts of users familiar with IP spoofing and cookie manipulation. (Even if they've learned how to do it from script-kiddies.) Again scale becomes an issue; banning a sufficiently large block of IP addresses to get rid of a pernicious individual would, on a large site like CBS, shut out enough of their intended readership that the collateral damage from smiting the troll would do more harm than the troll could do on his own.

If there's some way to automate the process, or at least turn it into a reasonable job for a staff of 20 part-time volunteers on a site with three million daily page views, at a sane price then I think some fairly serious buyers will beat a path to that developer's door.

-- Steve

I wish it was as easy as you make it sound. I'm doing moderating on a high-volume forum (on a volunteer basis) as part of a 20-person team, and it gets away from me (us?) on occasion.

Of course it could be we're doing it wrong, in which case I welcome suggestions on how to improve the process, but from my experience it can be pretty tough to ride herd on that many cats. Even with naughty-word filters and the like.

-- Steve

I must confess to having read Battlefield Earth and somewhat enjoyed it. Admittedly I was in my teens, and it did soak up a good chunk of boredom and kept a few synapses firing during two very long shifts at a self-serve gas station. As far as I can tell it's a big lump of not-particuarly-bad-or-good pulp suitable for neither framing nor wrapping fish.*

Having someone seeking power declare it his favourite novel is akin to having one declare his undying love for Kraft Dinner/Macaroni&Cheese. It's no heinous crime, but it does take one aback.

As to politicians reading SF, I really can't recall any examples from here except for the expedient reading of Margaret Atwood works. It seems to be a patriotic duty in Ottawa or something.

-- Steve

* However the movie is an abomination, a cinematic waterboarding I cannot endure for more than 10 minutes. I'm surprised Travolta wasn't forced to turn in his e-meter after that debuted.

Thank you, Teresa. I will certainly be referring fellow moderators of a (testosterone-sethed) video game fan forum to this certificate. After this week in particular, we need it.

-- Steve

I heartily endorse this product and/or service. And I have since it happened in my home town thirty-two years ago. Plus ca change...

-- Steve's gotta read more Santayana.

Or maybe I should have used "Ecce Bacchus CCCLX", considering how closely the online environment resembles a bacchanalia sometimes.

-- Steve

I was particularly taken with Chaucer's take on my favourite pass-time, "Ich pwne noobs!" Being a hard-core fan of "Auriole" myself, despite not having an "Eccebochs CCCLX" (making do with the aulden model at least until the new year), I found his observations profound.

Now to take a peek at his review of "Serpentes on a Shippe". I wonder if Chaucer's a fan of Samuel, son of Jack?

-- Steve

I've been a signatory on my organ donor since I first got my driver's license. Take what can save lives first; take what can teach next; use the rest for cat-food for all I'll care at that point.

And the next-of-kin are fully aware of my wishes as a donor, too. Strongly encourage folks to take that step, as others have suggested, to avoid unnecessary tangles should the need arise.

-- Steve

I wait for it to all turn out to be a bad dream; and I remember that John M. Ford would never write anything so cliched.

I wish we'd had the expected score-and-one years more with his presence.

Ave atque vale, Mike.

-- Steve

I submit that a rock concert is called "a rage", and that one goes out raging. That a violinist may be jocularly called a gypsy, but a rock singer is called a shouter, and a lead guitarist is called a gunslinger, and that what he does is called thrashing. Perhaps I am wrong in finding those facts suggestive.

That's almost all news to me, Dave.

I've heard the term "rave" used frequently to describe after-hours dance parties (usually with a connotation of illicit drug use and a frisson of naughtiness akin to that of the speakeasies) which often play various decendants of rock... perhaps this is where you picked up the term?

I have never heard the term "shouter" used in this context, though I have heard the term "gunslinger" applied jocularly to guitar players. My understanding that "thrashing" is a specific form of guitar play, and not a general term. I have not yet learned what differentiates "thrashing" from "shredding", as it hasn't been a high-priority research item.

From the above, I would conclude that you would indeed be wrong in finding those facts suggestive.

Now, I like my rock. I even like it loud on occasion (within reason... I enjoy receiving noise complaints even less than having to lodge them) and have for over two decades. (Slow starter.) I still have quite acute hearing, which is a job requirement of mine. My parents' neighbour who played trumpet in swing bands and the occasional orchestra, unfortunately, does not share that pleasure... so deafness is not necessarily a hallmark of rock fandom.

If you don't like rock, fine. That's your taste. However, I'll ask that you don't make sweeping generalisations based upon that taste.

A note on giant Hogweed in the local news this morning; a family in (Goderich, I think, up near Lake Huron anyway) has two children still being treated for skin blistering caused by the weed three weeks ago. Nasty stuff, that.

Those looking for an interesting take on the Kansas school board fiasco, er, conference may wish to read this open letter to the KSB, just brought to my attention on LiveJournal. I believe this letter brings a new and interesting viewpoint to the debate on teaching intelligent design in the classroom.

(Did I manage to keep a straight face all the way through that?)

Yay! A toast to the revenent spirit of H. Beam Piper! (Or his reincarnation, if he was right.) Carniculture is on the horizon.

Though I must admit that I'm more eager to see the medical applications come with allografts of more complex structures than skin. (And I'm dreading the sound of a "add toner" warning on the meat-jet printer they talk about... it's hard enough to get Central Stores to cough up in a timely manner when it's just carbon dust.)

Graydon, right now there is a voting system in place for Xbox Live... the actual operating parameters are kept secret to avoid players gaming the system, but it certainly is a weighted voting system based on "gamertag" diversity and diversity of feedback generated. (I suspect it's inversely related to diversity to limit the damage of "grief" voting.) Since the mechanics are secret, I don't know if the the act of voting is expensive in game terms, though it's likely that feedback votes count for less from those who give out the most.

Alas, the problem is that players aren't using it properly... and then complaining to the administrators when it doesn't work. There may be problems with implementation on a large scale, too; the system may be saturating with half a million unique users per day logging anywhere from 3-5 million sessions of up to 16 players each.

Is this an implementation problem? Or is there something else going on?

It didn't take long at all for exploitive gameplay to kick in, and while there have been some ingenious technical patches, the overall problem is one of deliberate transgressive behavior.

This is also an ongoing blight in all online play, alas. (And in much forum behaviour, too.) The problem is so elegantly described on Penny Arcade yet again (not entirely safe for work, due to harsh language) but the solution still eludes us gamers.

Any new ideas on how to make the online games more self-constraining would be greatly appreciated.

Abi, London certainly tried to exert political pressure on the US to clamp down on IRA fundraising... alas, I don't have any figures or dates. (Research project for the weekend, I guess.) That it was private individuals doing the donating complicated the matter, as does the extent of private donations to Al-Quaida.

However, we do agree that we have to work with people and not gadgets in order to constrain the use of terror... the politics of talk can be just as useful (and far cheaper) than power politics. So long as it's made clear to all involved that driving around blowing up things isn't civilized behaviour. (And I'm not limiting that to private individuals either, Mr. W. Shrub of Pennsylvania Ave.)

Has anybody noticed a common trend to recommendations in the wake of these attacks? Build a wall. Set up metal detectors. Issue new ID cards. Buy sophisticated face recognition software suites. Install more cameras. Explosive sniffers. X-ray machines.

Gadgets. All of them The Solution to Terrorism, now on sale at Sears.

I get frustrated by this "electronic scutage" we keep resorting to when adversity strikes... spending more on devices because we can point to them and say, "See? We're Doing Something." There are crises where this is appropriate, when the problem is due to mechanical or natural causes. But terrorism comes from *human* causes, and gadgets aren't a good way to deal with behaviour. (As witnessed by so many weight loss machines.) Humans are just too good at circumventing the gadgets.

Let's stop trying to buy our way out of this with comet pills and ED-209s, and look at human solutions to human problems? Better international intelligence sharing, informational campaigns to undercut domestic support for the terrorists, multilateral political (and military, when necessary) actions against nations giving militants safe-harbour; these are far more likely to result in long-term gains against terrorism than building the Great Wall of London.

The timing of the attack clearly indicates a desire to maximize fatalities.

Not necessarily. It could also indicate a desire to maximise inconvenience and disruption; that magnifies the political effect by spreading the "that could've been me" out as far as possible. Trapping several million people in rush hour traffic does that rather well.

It's called "terrorism", not "murderism". The goal is to induce terror by striking in a spectacular manner... in their eyes killing a few bystanders is a means towards that end but the more people they can frighten by a close brush with death, the better.

Dead voters don't petition their governments to change policy. Frightened ones do.

I don't play MMORPGs but I do have some friends who do. There is an element of "crafting" that can come into play, where player-characters can have some sort of skill to create game items (weapons and healing balms most commonly) which they can exchange amongst each other.

Star Wars Galaxies was notorious for having an entire player character skill set for Cantina Dancers... they could bump-n-grind for players in order to gain experience, and players could recover from fatigue by watching the hootchie-cootchie. (George "Pimp Daddy" Lucas, anyone?)

And, of course, there's always virtual real estate speculation as a side item. Heh.

Incidental trivia item... I was at GenCon in 1993 where Bond gave a Q&A session, in which he complained/stated that The Enemy Within was ready for publishing but had been delayed because of the political climate; the truck bombing of the World Trade Center parking garage, to be specific.

It just goes around in circles, this history thing. Really. I get dizzy watching.

(He also said that his biggest disappointment at the time was that he and Clancy hadn't held onto the Red Storm Rising film rights a bit longer, so that it could've been made into a movie at a reasonable budget when the fUSSR military was essentially for-hire. *shrug*)

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