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Baffled By the Obsession With Pretend-Business Games
theodp writes "Newsweek's Daniel Lyons confesses to being mystified by all the people tending to their virtual farms and virtual pets on Facebook. Even stranger, he says, is their willingness to spend real money to buy virtual products, like pretend guns and fertilizer, to gain advantage in these Web-based games. Pretend products are a serious business, estimated to grow to $1.6B next year, and have captured the attention of economists and academics who view the virtual economy as a lab for modeling behavior in the real world. Still, Lyons can't help but question whether the kind of people who spend hours online taking care of imaginary pets are representative of the rest of the population. 'The data might be "perfect" and "complete,"' says Lyons, 'but the world from which it's gathered is anything but that.'"
You are one cruel, mean man. And depending on the ability of the workers it might even be the bigger security risk. Trust me on this one, filtering popular pages in a company filled with highly skilled network engineers who couldn't care less whether they get fired is ONLY a good idea if you're trying to figure out whether your firewall is actually secure. But I wouldn't do it in a production environment...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.