Slashdot Mirror

Not that this doesn't leave room for them to re-implement this at a later date, but that's a pretty definite 'no.'

I disagree. I see Blizzard still chasing this dream of moderation through identity and drastically reducing their moderation. I would bet we shortly see a scheme where RealID is opt in with the catch being that if you aren't using RealID then each of your posts has to be read by a moderator before it is approved as viewable by anyone else. Community regulation can be a difficult and touchy subject with gamers and I suspect this is only the beginning of a very long trial run where Blizzard tries to find the happy medium between anonymity and self regulation.

Well, you're right about that, but single player versions don't quite illustrate the rise of the online assholes that I was talking about. Even Doom which came 3 years after Ultima 6, only was realistically playable on a LAN, and even then better not be on the work LAN, the way it broadcast packets. And really, on a LAN the whole thing is a lot less conducive to breeding assholes. What you need, is, well, best illustrated by Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. You can't really skip the middle ingredient. Acting like an antisocial asshole at a LAN party would just get one not invited any more.

(Note however that I would doubt that it just turns a normal people into a fuckwad, like in the comic strip. More likely it's just created a situation where a sociopath can act like his natural self. Sorta like Dave Barry's rule: Someone who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.)

Clearly you don't know how to grab something in motion (hint: it involves anticipation, matching, parallel interception (or alternatively arc terminus interception) and twisting toward the attacker where the grip is weakest), but it's not something you can teach through a text box on the internet. If you don't have the instincts, well, I'm sorry, but you're going to need to head downtown.

Luckily, I grew up before all the hyperprotective insulation and coddling was in full effect, and I've had lots of things swung at me, including metal pipes. Disarming is about technique, not the weapon (though you have to be a little more creative with edged weapons... that's what cloth is for).

The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. People are less likely to act like an asshole if they don't have anonymity to hide behind. The only people who will be idiots any more are those who are idiots already.

I'm not in the business of acting like an idiot on any given forum although I am sometimes inclined to troll. My problem is that I do NOT want a page full of WoW forum links on a Google search for my name.

In that case, either:

1) Don't be a jack-ass on the Blizzard forums.

2) Don't use the Blizzard forums.

I'll probably do the latter.

Why shouldn't I seperate my online persona(s) from my real life identity? What problem is Blizzard trying to solve here?

The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. People are less likely to act like an asshole if they don't have anonymity to hide behind. The only people who will be idiots any more are those who are idiots already.

Another example of a game using real names is iRacing, though real names are used throughout the game, instead of just on the forums. Again, the idea is to discourage anti-social behavior (intentional wrecking, profanity, etc), and this is part of their aggressive policing against griefers. In this case, such a prevention is especially necessary for a racing game of this type. I don't frequent the Blizzard forums, so I'm not sure if there are enough douchebags there to justify such measures.

I make it a point to avoid any forum identity that could be easliy traced back to my real name, because stuff comes back to haunt you. Do you really want somehting you said 20 years ago in some gaming forum to come up in a job interview?

In that case, either:
1) Don't be a jack-ass on the Blizzard forums.
2) Don't use the Blizzard forums.

That said, I've given my screen name which I've used for the last decade as part of a background check for an interview, so I'm well aware of the issue. However, nothing I said in the past (I've said a lot of stupid stuff) was an issue. If it is a concern to you, don't use the forums (it's an optional part of an optional game you play, you can deal with it), or simply police your behavior before it is recorded for all posterity on the Intertubes.

Your post made me think of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/2/

Clearly you've never heard of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

I agree, my experience has been the opposite. In practice I've found that the less anonymity there is, the more cordial the discussion, not the reverse.

Cue: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

You know we can see these shelves, right?

Or in other words:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

Anybody remembers John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory?

Kinda related.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/4/

captcha: profits.

There should be a last line of defense for important computer systems throughout the nation (military, government, essential services like water and electricity, emergency services). It's called an Air Gap.

Wait, we already have an Air Gap between essential systems and the internet? (Except NASA and the US army, according to Mr McKinnon). You mean... Joe Terr'rist can't fire up his Mac and shut down the entire power grid to the US from Iraq? Was Die Hard 4.0 a total brain fuck?

What about mobile data and satellite?

Putting it on Twitter is not like making a comic strip out of the event and joking about it. It's just another form of communication.

Not all forms of communication are equal.
Call me old fashioned, but "Okay poop is coming out now" should never be alongside
"I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution"

Tweeting something like this puts it on the same level as the idiot twittering "I just took a huge crap LOL WTF!!111oneone!"... it's NOT appropriate.

Obligatory Penny Arcade Twitter Shitter comic.

Reminds me a bit of this classic strip:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2009/20090501.jpg

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/6/17/

Hopefully this remake will cover the vital "keep people from stealing your umbrella" survival skills.

We provide a web based application to our users, many of which are in-house, but located in a distant office call center. Lets say call center folks decide to play an internet based streaming radio station (yes, instead of a radio, MP3 player, etc). Now some of these folks instead decide to entertain themselves on YouTube or other streaming video site. maybe some others decide to download the latest Quake demo on the company network because he doesn't have broadband at home, more will download the latest viral video/flash game from their gmail account.

Real soon all these leeches start to impact the web based application's performance, ironically driving even more people to use the bandwidth to entertain themselves while the application loads.

Yes we can (and have) tracked down offenders and fired them. Or, we can spend a some money and just prevent them from doing so in the first place, akin to locking the doors of your car rather than procescuting evey idiot who tries to steal an unlocked car with teh keys in the front seat. We know people can get around it, but there's also a lot more satisfaction firing someone who went to a lot of trouble to defeat the porn filters than making an example every 3 months of the idiot who thought browsing porn on his computer was OK because he could.

Fun fact - i used to work for a company that dealt with a lot of porn (literally these guys http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/10/29/); we had to fire someone who set their computer to a porn theme. Why? because there's a difference between porn you have to look at (its my job), and decorating your office with porn.

If you want to make it a little more accessible, why not something like ``Google-discovered HCP vulnerability exploited?'' Maybe ``Google-found flaw seen in the wild?''

What you have for the headline now sounds about as intelligible as the mock-Slashdot headline that Penny Arcade came up with, ``Linux crypto hackers open-sourced the BSD Microsoft monopoly''

You aren't the only one who think Move is goofy.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/24/

Trolls will troll. Showing your junk to the camera is the easiest and most obvious way..

I think most of them are just exhibitionists since they've actually reported me for a nature documentary. (read: I've successfully trolled them) I suppose they could have been trolls themselves if my video annoyed them then they were rather 'weak'. You are right about it just moving onto the next thing though; that's just the nature of the environment. Penny Arcade summed it up nicely: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Penny Arcade said it best:

Normal person + anonymity + audience = total fuckwad.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

(Posting this as anonymous coward for irony value.)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20061019.jpg

And oblig Penny Arcade

Okay poop is coming out now

I'm amazed a reference to this got modded troll here. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/

That's okay, it's back up to 0, Informative.

Um, someone with mod points should check out the comic parent linked before modding him "Offtopic". I'm just sayin' ...

Okay poop is coming out now

Quoting penny arcade is trolling now?

Once you've been on the Internet for a couple of months you'll learn about trolls. Don't feed the trolls. See also GIFT.

But what I seriously can't believe is that what is stopping is water too muddy to see.

I think this about sums it up...

Maybe you should post under your actual account instead of granting credence to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

I mean, come on...if you are going to flame someone, at least have the balls to do it under your username.

Reminds me of something I saw on Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/25/

No, no, no... you want to break them of the habit you make them game testers.

They'll want to chop off their own hands and gouge out their eyes before using a computer again.

Microsoft gets a kudos for having the balls to submit the patent.
USPTO gets an Epic Fail for approving it.
And Penny-Arcade can cry at the down fall of Mr Period and his friends.

There's a Penny Arcade for just about anything:

Use Yahoo! instead?

What?

The lies about WMD

What in the world does alleged lying have to do with empathy? Poor performance of the intelligence community hardly seems relevant, but at least you're making your bias clear from the get go I suppose.

the lies about drugs

Which lies? That they often unhealthy (both legal and illegal ones), that they're unnecessary and even counter-productive to live a happy and productive life? Or some other lies?

people telling you that is perfectly normal to own a gun

What is abnormal about owning a gun? Of course, if you're hopped up on drugs you probably shouldn't own a weapon.

that it is normal to shoot at someone just for trespassing/burglary

I see, maybe we should punish them with love instead? Breaking into someone's home is akin to invading another country. All bets are off when it comes to protecting family and property. If you come into my home with violent intent, just how much violence is too much? Baseball bat? Knife? Gun? Should I just ask you to leave nicely and hand over my wallet if you won't?

That is cool to join the army and fuck up another sorry son of a bitch that you had absolutely no conflict with

That's kind of the definition of war. How many Nazis did WWII soldiers have personal conflicts with?

The people who are selfish are the people that drive the ferrari's around at wallstreet

Being wealthy and choosing how you want to spend your wealth is selfish?

They are being held up as icons by a complete generation

People on Wall Street are about as far from an "icon" for young people as is possible.

No I am not surprised. Just very worried.

No reason to be, I doubt humans are less empathetic in general now than ever before, only that people are more honest about it now. I imagine this might be from a certain amount of the GIFT extending from online communities into real-world interactions. We've gone from interacting only with a small local community to dealing with thousands/millions of people online plus our local community. It's harder to feel empathy with so many anonymous people communicating only with text so it isn't too surprising that some apathetic feelings creep in.

When you're actually dealing with somebody sitting in front of you, face-to-face, I think most people would exhibit a higher level of empathy.

People who buy EA games?

It's not gay if it's with an elf

Will it get the Hollywood treatment and everything we know and love about it is raped and murdered before our eyes?

I've never understood the sentiment that "if it's turned into a movie, that ruins the source material." The movie mario bros was bad even by videogame movie standards, yet over a decade later I'm still loving Mario games. It didn't ruin anything. No matter how bad the movie is, Mass Effect is out there, it can't be "murdered" by a movie.

And they really need to change some things about it. Specifically the elevators.

They didn't make a film of The Watchmen; They made the Watchmen comic book move.

The only adaptation was the ending, presumably because explaining Barbastus to the peons who think Die Hard 4.0 is technically accurate would leave most cinema goers with a sore head. The rest was, scene for scene, the comic book main story.

obligatory http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/

I kind of feel this is obligatory :)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/5/28/

This one comes to mind.

But aren't you at least a little concerned that Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012? And what of the Bats eating kids? Won't anyone think of the children?

Seems like a lot of obscure collaboration tasks could take huge advantage of Wave. Like Mike's D&D email sessions.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/5/19/

In Wave you could have lots of people acting their roles and adding to the story while a plug-in handles random number generation for combat and such. It could use a Google Maps plug-in to run the map and position characters.

I imagine it's closer to this PA strip: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/5/

"Our users are complaining when we fuck them in the ass."

"Well, we could use lube or we the ball gag."

"Hmmm..."

A lot of people have made the obvious comments about not being a know-it-all and about having good hygiene, but this all leads from the golden rule of "Don't be a dick." Accept help where you can get it, give help where you can get it, and in general, do your job well.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/10/26/

Or is that too silly for even Apple and Nintendo?

Maybe not.

Doesn't work for a game like WoW

Some people have ideas though.

Before someone mods this Troll or Offtopic, can someone kindly explain why people make posts like these? It's not even spam that tries to advertise anything like penis enlargement pills or Nigerian bank fraud scams. I don't get it.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

HTH. HAND.

This should definitely happen, and all porn be forced into 'xxx' domains. This is the most eloquent argument; kids today have it too easy. They should have to work for their porn.
 
  Penny Arcade