disobey.com

Welp, I eventually did get a WorldPass for FFXI, so I'm now "Morbyworby" on the Phoenix server. I'm an eight level RDM Tarutaru. Cos they rocky-wocky.

Apparently, you can't use capitols or dashes in your FFXI name. So, as much as I wanted to be "Morbu-Iffsu" (see below), I'm merely "Morbus" on server "Carbuncle". Ah twell.

Long ago, I wrote a column for Fitshaced Magazine (now deadappeared) in which Satan returned to Heaven to maintain the balance between good and evil. The exact mythos need not be rehashed here (read my rather immature first and second installments... oh, how I'd love to reinvent them), but in explaining the tale to someone else, I happenstanced across Mark Twain's Letters From The Earth. It's good stuff, worthy of passing around to those you're trying to convert.

I was in on the FINAL FANTASY XI beta for PC, but never played it past that (it was at a gameshop; I've no decent PCs myself). Now, with FFXI coming out on Playstation 2 tomorrow, I'm giddy and twitchering ("twitchering?" shuddup.) If all goes well, I'll be "Morbu Iffsu", a Red Mage Tarutaru, on the "Phoenix" server. Typically, you need a WorldPass to choose your server, but someone tells me you can just attempt to make your character over and over again until you get where you want.

For naming, read fellow Tarutaru Professor Emanritan's dissertation on the Names of the Tarataru and Mithra in the Vana'diel Tribune: "As you have noticed, the last part of a Tarutaru man's name rhymes with the first. It has been said that this is how ancient spells of the Tarutaru worked." Yup. Obsessed.

Granted, I've convinced myself that this is "the" MMORPG I'll really sit down to play, but with my time restraints, I'll doubt I'll do anything all too exciting. I have, however, been letting go of a lot of my responsibilities: minimizing the amount of writing I have to do, slacking off on email, buying paper plates. You know.

DAWN OF THE DEAD far exceeded my expectations. May be too unsettling for some.

Well, Six Apart has released more information on TypeKey, and it's everything I fear: a centralized login service for blogs creates a "lower barrier to comment registration" and helps "prevent comment spamming". It also has all my privacy and DDOS concerns baked right in. I've come to realize that TypeKey is a death knoll for my commenting on other blogs: if they all hook into TypeKey, I simply wouldn't have a choice BUT to signup with, and use, TypeKey. This does not make me happy, and I'll abstain quicker than to roll over. Shelley Powers, who has been echoing my concerns, agrees.

Sure, sure, TypeKey has a pretty privacy policy that says "we're not evil", but they'll still be able to log what sites I'm visiting and what sites I'm commenting on. As great as that may seem from a recommendation ("well, this person commented on this blog and that blog, maybe he'll like this blog or that one!") or implication ("the following blogs have received the most comments in the last five hours") viewpoint, it still rubs me the wrong way: if someone wants to use Google and find out that I commented on "Serial Killers Anonymous", that's fine. If someone wants to use TypeKey and find that I've commented on that site as well as "Weapon Auctions" and "Hiding Your Identity", that's a little too easy, too worrisome, and just not my cup of tea.

Granted, as before, TypeKey hasn't said they'll do any of this. And they may never get to that point (I suspect, however, they'll offer an opt-in service: it's too powerful of a data collection point to ignore). But the mere possibilities of it make it certifiable for me to never comment on TypeKey-enabled blogs again, not jump for joy at how much easier spam-free commenting will become.

I still worry, as before, about the server going down. If you've ever run mail servers, you've probably used an RBL of sorts - a blacklist of IPs that say "these have been reported as spam and I don't want to receive mail from them". There are tons of RBL's in existance, and last year, they started winking out of existence. Why? Spammers were launching concentrated attacks at them using trojan'd Win32 machines: the sheer amount of traffic the servers received was enough to disable them entirely. This, as well as email messages designed to lessen the effectiveness of Bayesian filters, are all tricks that spammers use to get their mail through. If TypeKey proves effective, it won't be able to stand up to a DDOS attack (if Microsoft, Yahoo, and eBay can't, what makes us think that Ben and Mena will?), and while it runs around figuring out router filtering rules (ha, ha, ha), blogs will be as susceptible as they were before (well, that really depends on MT: if TypeKey is down, will it deny or allow all comments?).

If I could list one thing that incredibly grates on my nerves, it's listening to people who think they're experts about computers and the Internet. About all the great deals they found at the local trade show. About how the new version of Flash has all these great features to calm the angry hordes. About how adding XML in a plain text field of a zone record is gonna solve all our spam problems. Or about the "awards" that our local businesses have won.

Now, granted, I don't think for a second that award shows are honest or about anything besides politics and backscratching (don't even get me started on those that expect payment for site consideration). But when someone calls my job (which hosts a few of the nominated sites), says only "welp, we didn't win last night", and expects me to have a clue what he's talking about, it bears further investigation.

Before I go on, I just want to reiterate that I'd never be caught dead appearing at an awards show, much less consciously submitting my site to one. I got bored with awards, oh, I dunno, back in 1998 when Ghost Sites won its kazillionth web "Hey, Look! The Best Site That Starts With G!". This isn't about loser angst - it's merely a reiteration of critical rebuking you've heard a thousand times before.

The New Hampshire Internet Awards. Oh yes. I've heard about them before, chuckled a few times in the past at their lack of judgment, and moved on without a peep. Today, spurred on by the disappointed "maybe next year" phone call, I can't leave it be. Boy oh boy, looking over the winners makes the baby Jesus cry.

Scrolling down to the bottom of the winner's page (because, you know, putting the "Best of Show" 10 pages past the point of boredom is a testament of good design), we see that the winner of "overall design, conception and creativity in a Web site, personal or commercial" is Lavallee / Brensinger Architects. To quote one of the judges, "Among the best Flash-based Web sites I've seen."

I should have known. I should have known a Flash site would win.

In a world where web accessibility is all the buzz, where the government issues laws that state agencies must conform to, it makes obvious, perfect, "duh!" sense to issue the "Best of Show" to a site that ignores even a modicum of disability. No text-only links (hell, there's no text anywhere). The spinner/image bar at the bottom makes it nearly impossible for arthritic, slow-moving, or elderly hands to pinpoint anything of import. The phone numbers are illegibly small. Big blocks of text which should be copyable aren't. There's no way to bookmark a specific page you're interested in. This is not an award-winning site: it's a site sorely in need of a redesign.

Checking out the rest of the awards, with an eye toward usability and accessibility, only makes things worse: well-designed third place entries are pre-empted by overly-designed incompetents. These awards, and their winners, are an art museum: they'll wow you with colors, glitz, and movement, but they serve no other purpose then to sit on a wall somewhere collecting dust.

Listen, I don't imagine the award show will get any smarter. But, please try. Commenting on stuff that has, years ago, proven to be bad design ("nice intro page") does not make you look smart. "Pretty cool application" is a comment you'd make about the latest b-link on a blog somewhere, not on a third place winner in the "best of technology" section. The judges don't even know that "Flash" is a proper name that should be capitalized (you can't xerox a xerox on a Xerox, nor can you rollerblade, white-out errors, or google for answers).

Man alive, you're making New Hampshire look like idiots.

As infrequently as I actually use my TiVo, I've come to realize that it affects natural conversation by making it too easy to knowingly annoy someone. Similarly, it gives high-definition (heh, heh) to the finite end of a discussion.

Say you walk in on someone watching TV and start talking. One of two things will happen: they'll either begin interacting, or they'll pause the show they're watching. If they pause the show, that's an admission that either a) they want to concentrate on the show and you're bothering them, or b) they want to give you their full attention.

Now, the cynicist in me rules out b) easily enough: I know of *no one* who has ever shut off a normal television during idle chit-chat. Shutting off a television (silencing the distraction) is equivalent to pausing TiVo (though, TiVo can certainly inspire some "bwahhahaha, look at her face!" comments).

Continuing on with the pausing eventuality, you're chittering away when there's a lull in the conversation. Suddenly, they unpause the show. This is dramatic: they are done talking to you. This also means you must think twice about talking again: starting anew creates an awkward "pause the show; what was that?" moment. Likewise, with the other person in control of the remote, they can determine the end of a conversation you yourself started.

This is different than sitting down and watching a Movie: that is an Event. Whether you're renting a movie, or watching the clock, you're Planning to sit through two hours of fixed concentration, where plots (can) be a lot more involved then situation comedies. TiVo is about futzing with live TV, the Great Detritus, the thing to do when there's nothing to do. Giving TV more power over conversations, even with fringe benefits like pausing and Season Passes, isn't a good thing, but rather equivalent to the disappearance of regular meals at the dinner table.

I don't get it. Granted, it's still very early in their explanation, but if Movable Type's TypeKey is going to be an integral part of comment registration, I can't see myself ever using it. It certainly is founded on the right ideals: if we "know" that I'm a happy user, then all blogs using TypeKey will allow me to comment on them without me having to re-register. The corollary holds true: if I've spammed other blogs and been reported, I won't be able to comment on yours. Fine.

But, I still won't use it. Based on what little SixApart has reported, it's a centralized service... the exact same reason I left Blogger many years ago. What happens when the TypeKey server goes down? Can spammers comment, or would everyone be shut out? If 20 people report Dave Winer as an idiot, who decides whether to revoke his rights? If Kung Lui Pao Kang spams my blog, but has posted 100 valid messages elsewhere, what does that mean for my redemption? What does this mean for my privacy? If I don't want anyone to know that I comment on some erotica blog, a centralized service like TypePad would be able to track that I do. Hell, I don't doubt that they'll be a "Morbus Commented On" RSS feed about two days after 3.0 is released. I'd want to opt out of that for certain blogs, which pretty much invalidates the whole feature (a broken Winer Watcher is no watcher at all).

I've been getting steadily disillustioned with Eudora, my email program of 6+ years. It's not going anywhere really: it still has the same crappy interface, the same filter engine that only allows two conditions, the same Mac developer who takes pot shots at Apple whenever he can. With the recently released 6.1 beta for Windows, however, there's yet more fuel to the fire. According to the Win32 release notes:

Eudora now makes it easier than ever to search with the introduction of a new "Search Bar" in the toolbars and new context menu items that search for the current selection. Both allow you to search inside Eudora or start an Internet search.

Contextual searching has shown up in other applications before, and it is helpful - right-clicking a selection in Mozilla and 'oogling for it is pretty handy. And right-clicking a selection in a mail message and auto-searching through my entire Eudora mail directory, folder, or box is pretty handy too.

But, for all the goodness of the internal searching, the "search web" portion is the devil: it sends your IP address as part of the sponsored search in Google:

http://eudora.google.com/hws/search?client=eudora
&ip=xx.yyy.xxx.yyy&adtest=off&q=search%20term%20here

UPDATE: In hindsight, and with a belly full of chicken, putting the IP in the query string is rather ridiculous. Has the fine art of web server log analysis been forgotten? What happens if I bookmark or blog a URL with my IP, and someone else accesses it? What does that mean? And what about internal IPs versus public - which is reported?