The USS Quad Damage

I’m going to post the interview, the comments on the interview and the webcomic before Michael does. I don’t really need to add any more to it, do I?

Business welcomes reform

“Business in Australia has welcomed the election of a Rudd Labor Government…”

“The warm welcome of a Rudd Government by the BCA and other leading business groups reflects the increasing frustration of the business community with the Howard government over the past few years.”

My understanding of the tv ads during/prior to the election was that the Australian business comunity was living in fear of a Rudd victory. Mostly because they were afraid of 3 built “union” guys storming their tailoring businesses and staring at them while the business owners screamed “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”.

Oh how times have changed. Not only do they welcome Rudd but they didn’t like Howard in the first place. I suppose next week we’ll find out that the short fall in the production of boots has been replaced by an unexpected increase in the production of boots.

Like Harpy and Nathan.

Anyway I thought I’d add something to the reason. Every guild I join uses a DKP system where the person whom has the highest dkp gets the first pick at items that drop and it costs them basically nothing. Then the next highest and so on.

I remember a while back Sunny said that on Good Game they looked at the difference between the way guilds function on the USA servers vs the European servers. One of the differences was that the guilds on the USA servers acted alot like guilds in Asia.

Anyway what I’ve found is that guilds have created in effect senority systems much like the way the Japanese ran their economy leading up 2000 and possibly still now. The longer you’ve been at a company the more you get paid. They’d recruit people right out of collage and you’d have a job for life within the company ending way up in upper management with a large pay packet if you stayed long enough.

The problem is that your pay is not linked in anyway to your ability or anything you’d bring to the company when hired. It becomes next to impossible to recruit people into anything but a starter role and having to pay a bloated middle management section of the company. Meaning that companies were just not performing as they should.

A nice article I found called Jobs for Life and Seniority Traditions Are Dropped for Western Models : Rules Change as Japan Inc. Downsizes illustrates the point.

The reason I bring it up is because thats exactly how these guilds are functioning. Not only that but they have the whole us and them mentality of gangs much like I sterotypically see Japanese businesses as having. If you leave or question the status quo then your dishonoring the company/gang and must be vilified as an example to anyone else whom thinks of following your example. Doubly so if your point is valid.

Anyway the reason I’m leaving WoW is because I’ve already leveled up so many characters to 60+, spent a ton of time in BGs and don’t really feel like paying $15 a month to PvP for gear when I could buy a full priced game which is specifically tailored to PvP such as an FPS shooter which doesn’t require me to spend days and days worth of time farming gear to become competitive vs other players.

But probably most importantly if I buy a PvE game such as Oblivion or NWN I don’t have to enter some sort of politcal PvP ring in order to see the end of the game which is how WoW is done now via raiding guilds at the moment.

I think Joel is a boring dude. In my feedreader his stuff is always left till last. Contrast with Coding Horror which I fear and loathe which still only ever has 2 or 3 posts unread. It looks like I prefer fear and loathing to boredom.

I don’t think it’s the fact that he’s a boring writer. Well, then again, maybe he is, but it could also be that the content doesn’t really click with me. The only reason I subscribe to his blog is that sometimes it does. In many ways I hate his software, FogBugz, because he does nothing but talk about it all the time. It’s as bad as a dude talking about his kid: “oh she took her first steps” “he called me ‘dada’”; FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR KID ALREADY. HE DID A SHIT, HE DID NOT CURE FUCKING CANCER!

err… anyway, the thing about his software is that it’s actually pretty good. FogBugz is meant to be a project management application par excellence. It also contains the features of an issue tracking system, a wiki, collaboration, and maybe a couple of other things to tie it down. The main selling point, from what I can see, is regarding Evidence Based Scheduling, which is as reasonable as it is decent. If I was going to spend a bunch of time making some “project management” software (it’s really more just the estimates tracking portions of software project management) it would be something similar to FogBugz. If I had my own decent sized company and it wasn’t writing a competitor to FogBugz (even if it was), I would probably use it. I don’t, and I can’t, and due to where I work it would take some effort to get some project to use it, I can’t even make my company use it, but that’s another thing.

It has it’s downsides, though. One is it’s “kitchen sink” approach. In many ways, the dudes it’s marketed towards (small or medium businesses with some flexibility in how projects are managed) want the kitchen sink. They don’t want to buy 5 pieces of tiny software, just one that does everything. However, if you’re already using a wiki and bug tracking software, and have some email / forumey software already set up, the inability of FogBugz to automagically interact with that stuff is a bit gay. I also wish they had a tiny desktop app which sat in my system tray and acted a bit like MusikCube instead of forcing me to have a browser constantly open.

I guess the other thing is that it doesn’t offer assurances to larger businesses which have processes already in place (gating, ISO, etc.) that it’s somewhat compatible with them. Depending on what processes they have exactly (esp. proj management related ones) it’s actually not that compatible. That’s a hard thing to sell to a company unless you do it straight to the CIO or CTO.

Still, good luck to him, and I hope he talks about something else once in a while.

It’s on tonight at 8:30pm channel 7

Need I say anymore?

Here on ./

Holmes is a comet whos current coma or gas and dust cloud radius, is larger than the size of our sun.

Anyway the comet is viewable near Perseus. More specifically the star Alpha Persei, which an breaks the horrizon at around 10pm and becomes unviewable at 2pm. It’s at it’s highest at midnight and is almost due north at that time.

Oh yeah does anyone have a decent telescope?

This is one of the better websites I have seen in a long time.

Yes, I know, the subject of the website may be bore you to tears, but I still think it’s a pretty nicely set up website. Of course you have to be actually interested in the upcoming federal election to find it of any use.

If you do happen to be interested, like me, in finding out information about how polling is going, how swings will effect different seats and the outcome of the election, as well as just general election issues, I guarantee you will like this website.

Gabriel is a movie that someone who I worked with wrote and produced. He doesn’t work here anymore (moved on to bigger and better things, so to say), but was a really nice guy and kept us updated as to post-production and negotiations with Sony Pictures in the US etc. The movie came very close to being forgotten about and dumped.

I would really like to see this movie, even if just for the fact that I knew the writer/producer. If you guys are also interested, even if it does have Margaret and David at odds over whether it’s a good movie or not, let me know.

Amazingly, it’s been pushed quite hard by Sony, and it’s playing at major Cinema’s across Australia, including Greater Union in Campbelltown. It certainly wasn’t a high budget film, so this is great news considering movies made by smaller independent moviemakers normally end up in the independent cinemas.

It may not make it to Dumaresq Street Cinemas if you are hoping for a cheaper option. The website certainly doesn’t mention it as upcoming, but then again, you never know.

I had a strange dream last night, and despite the fact that I should be sleeping right now I want to write it down before it leaves my mind completely. Everyone should know that as soon as you wake up you forget your dreams so if you remember them that’s great. The other good thing about this dream is that it made some sense in a twisted way.

Anyway, I was the fastest gun in the west. I didn’t wear a cowboy hat but I figure I can do what I like. Anyway, I had a wife and she was a few months pregnant (barely showing). I “remember” being so in love with her. I think she looked a bit like the girl from Equilibrium. This guy, a hitman maybe, killed her in a terrible way. The hitman was the second fastest gun in the west. I can’t remember the details of it but I think it was a little bit mexican stand-off-ish, but he basically claimed he was faster than me, and he was wrong. Oh right, I should mention before we get any further that this story is gory and really screwed up.

Did I mention I was also a doctor? Anyway, the guy I killed for vengeance, as it turns out, was part of a Mafia, and he was only following orders. I find out that the head of the Mafia is this woman who was a star soccer player, like David Beckam but a girl. So anyway I swear to give her a dance with my bullet, and she finds out. As I take a trip to the city in a zeppelin, two hitmen get on. The pilot is also in kahoots with the mafia, and lets one on, but isn’t aware that there’s another one, so he gets that other one arrested. He later gets in trouble for not letting the hitman on, and I notice, so I think I’m safe. However the other hitman tries to take a shot at me.

It was a close combat battle and we both had our guns pointed at each other, but I had my left hand out, and he had his right hand, only my hand was on the inside. We both shot but as I shot I moved a little to the left, taking out his right ear. I put him in a lock and some threatening remarks later I’m sure no one is going after me again. I look over the city at the building I’m headed towards. A mansion, in which the mafia boss resides.

Cut to the mafia boss. She looks sort of like Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s teaching a little boy soccer, but it ain’t her son (for some reason, she’s also indoors, in a place way too small to play soccer in). She’s getting a bit old for soccer now, and needs someone to pass her skills to. She confides in the child that despite that he isn’t her son, she loves him like one, because she cannot conceive. I don’t know anything about the son other than that he hangs out with her and she teaches him soccer.

I bust into her mansion and kill practically everyone there. The thing with the mafia is that as long as they know they’re gonna die they’ll pretty much cower away, so it’s not hard for me to get to the top. We fight, and I tell her about how she destroyed everything I held dear. I don’t know exactly what happened after that but I end up chasing her to a flight of stairs going up a set of flats (sort of like fire escape stairs).

I grab her and say some things, but I don’t remember what. She says something to justify her actions, but I don’t remember what. Her skin feels soft and for some reason she reminds me of my wife. It only makes me angrier. I dangle her from the second story window and some random stranger comes to her aid. I say something (again, I don’t remember what, but it was poignant) and I drop her. The main thing is, she doesn’t seem fazed at anything I’ve said. It’s like she expects these arguements or something.

Next thing, she’s in the hospital. I come in and tell her that I could kill her, but I wouldn’t get what I want. I could just keep putting her in pain and bringing her back to life, because I’m a doctor. Again, she doesn’t seem fazed. I take her out to the balcony and give her a cigarette. I say some shit about life and my son and how she took him away from me. As I say this a winch slowly lowers her “son”, upside down, with a slit throat, down the balcony. The cigarette drops, followed by her. Her soul is completely crushed and she’s crying like crazy.

I tell her she’s going to carry my seed, and after that I’m going to kill her, and that’s how I’m going to get back at her for good. She tells me she can’t have children. I tell her I’m a doctor and I’ll figure it out. For some reason she nods. I do doctorey things, and we have sex.

The next nine months are quiet. No one tries to kill me, and she doesn’t say much. However, things seem calm, and she seems almost happy, kinda serene. She has my baby, she holds her for a bit (turns out it was a girl) and hands it to me. With a smile on her face she tells me that the baby’s always going to remind me of her. I tell her “I know” and I shoot her in the face. The baby starts crying. I look at my gun. My hand’s shaking.

I think we should start a band. At first I thought that this was a stupid idea, since I’m the only one amongst us with any musical talent. But then, why should you, the reader, let the rest of the band down?

Both Sunny and Harpreet have an interest in the guitar, and I am a complete champion at playing Sing Star, so a band isn’t totally unrealistic. Who do you all think should be in and filling what role? What (actually existing) genre do we play? What do we call ourselves?

World of Warcraft when launched was game that’d you’d primarily solo and temporarily group with other players for short durations to accomplish a specific goal. If someone didn’t live upto their end of the bargain the damage was minimal. Sure you missed out of smites hammer but hey you can always run it again.

From that game sprung up World of Warcrafts legal system defined by Blizzard. They enforced trades via the trade window, auctions via the auction house, enchants and lockpicking until it was built into the trade window and the crafting of items when you trade someone the materials required for something. The idea being that complex legal contracts are not enforced as there was no requirement with in the context of the game.

However a few things changed since launch. No longer are you only required to enter into temporary agreements with a few other players for clearing dungeons. Your required to enter into longer term arangments with many people to clear raid instances. Guilds which used to just be a chat channel for either your friends or people around your level as a global LFG channel are now complex organisms with rules governing how players are supposed to act with the payment of loot and WoW’s legal system hasn’t caught up and infact supports those who do socially unacceptable acts. People making off with a guilds bank contents, taking pretigious items from bosses they want but aren’t entitled too under the rules layed down by their guild and then leaving. This is also helped by paid server transfers, name changes and the soul bound items thwarting any sort of player lead attempt to fill in the major gaps ignored by Blizzard.

The problems will continue to exist until either Blizzard redesigns how end game content works with much smaller dungeons or less demands on gear. Alternatively they could simply begin to enforce the rules put forward by guilds to govern their members instead of simply leaving it upto the good will of those whom legally (within the game) own the resources and are under no obligation to share.

The increased focus on heroic badge rewards is a start as all players in a group are rewarded for completing a dungeon. Personally I’d like to see it and quest rewards for downing bosses be the major way people get loot. Bosses should then only drop a few different standard items or even a single item which can be turned into several different items such as the heart of hakkar. The focus being shifted away from who gets the loot after a boss dies and the whole DKP mess that preceeds and follows it to just fucking killing the boss because everyone gets or moves closer to getting loot.