I guess, but in the same way there are lots of people who speed on the roads, and yet not all of them are pulled over and given tickets. They're given tickets when they're caught.
I guess my point is that in real life, sometimes you have rules that aren't enforcable 100% of the time. But the fact that they aren't enforcable 100% of the time doesn't mean that the punishment is unfair when a person does happen to be in violation of the rules.
To make a rather hyperbolic comparison, since there are battered women out there that don't report the assault, does that mean that assault shouldn't be a crime?
I don't play WoW anymore, but I do agree that the rules should be more uniformly enforced. I think that any MMORPG thats going to have some onerous naming policy should invest a reasonable amount of time in some sort of filtering/flagging system, which can be easily human reviewed. Surely theres a way to apply some combination of AI, blacklists, and whitelists to narrow down the list to something human checkable.
FFXI's policy was rather lax. As long as you didn't put something offensive (cursewords, racial slurs) in your name, you were ok. Every person I knew who had their name changed obviously knew their name was innapropriate when they made it.
I do remember one guy who named their character "Nuclear Bomb" in Japanese trying to explain why it was appropriate in a thinly veiled attempt to play the victim. Kind of like when people in WoW break the policies and then in the forums come up with horribly contrived justifications for their names.
In addition to your proposition, I think that there should be a global whitelist/blacklist of names. If a GM has reviewed a name and determined it to be valid, its added to a whitelist, so that all further name petitions are ignored, and the name isn't flagged for review. The blacklist exists so that a known invalid name is not accepted in the first place. You could even compare names to the blacklist and flag names that are similar (and thus trying to get around the blacklist) for a higher priority review. Its not a panacea, but since there are a lot of common names it could greatly relieve the burden and make it feasable for a human to review names as they are created.
To be fair, I agree. At the time I didn't notice it was under editorial. I just saw games, so obviously I'm mistaken in my stance. However, I'm still not sure that it should belong on the front page.
Because they don't actively search out name violations. There are too many characters being created to make it practical to do so. So what they do is they only change them when they notice it, or when someone complains about the name. If you want to keep your invalid name, better not submit any GM tickets.
Yes, WoW has meta-GMs. There is a email address at which you can complain about GM actions.
As far as the argument, people who have played WoW and bothered to read the forums have heard about this many many times. People make names that break the rules all the times (and yes, CmdrTaco breaks the naming rules in several places), and then complain on the forums when they're changed. I'm not sure how this rant is going to change anything.
Erm, no offense, but his name clearly violates the policy, and even he admits that. The naming policy is clearly spelled out, and Blizzard was just enforcing it. I don't see how that qualifies as "heinous." I would have changed his name too. Being an editor for a large site doesn't give you a pass on the rules.
I don't see why Blizzard should have to apologize. Their naming policy has been set since the start of the game, and Taco's name clearly violated several parts of it (no titles, must be pronouncable, must not have several "words" stringed together). Ignorance of the rules is no excuse.
If you wanted people to think about the importance of virtual identity, you could have done so without making a personal rant. The fact of the matter is that it is a personal rant, it has no signs of trying to promote discussion about virtual identities, its certainly not news, and its on the front page of Slashdot. I know Slashdot isn't exactly a shining example of excellent or unbiased journalism, but this is a new low.
It doesn't matter how well-thought out and written it is. Its a personal rant being posted as news on what is supposed to be a tech news site. Its an abuse of power as an editor, as its painfully obvious that it doesn't belong on Slashdot at all, much less the front page. They have journals for this kind of rant.
If I were to submit my complaining about my online name being changed, would that make the front page too?
Sure it may be a good point, but its buried in an entire article ranting and bitching about losing his name, on the front page of Slashdot. And never mind he could have avoided losing the name by following the rules in the first place.
The problem with such a naming scheme is that you're once again equating GHz with performance, which isn't a valid assumption. Many processor architectures will sacrifice clock speed for instructions which accomplish more work per processor cycle. AMD does this, and its why it adopted its naming scheme in the first place: because people associated cycles/second with overall speed, and so thought that Pentiums were faster, even though AMD processors used a lower clock speed which did more work per cycle.
And really, so many things come into play when it comes to processor speed (not only cache, but branch prediction, memory latency, etc.) that it doesn't make sense to name them all. So there's really no way to get across performance by putting specs in the name. Might as well just slap a number on it and let people sort it out through benchmarks.
So now you have to pay for not only the GM, but also people who review the GMs. And thats hardly a sure bet against a GM doing something stupid and messing up game balance. And is $25 a month really enough to pay for it? Maybe if you outsource it, but that brings in language and quality control issues. Its definately not practical if you're hiring Americans. As much as people would like dynamic personalized worlds, in truly massive online rpgs, its a bit impractical.
I think its a matter of "first things first." The climber currently is the most attainable technologocal component. The cable will require breakthroughs in new materials to be viable, and I doubt a contest for $50,000 is going to speed that up.
You can't own ideas, but you can own an implementation of an idea. I would imagine if they are lifting and copying exact functionality from Civ then there would be an issue, but from what I understand this isn't what they're doing.
Is it really? While I wouldn't advocate giving porn to 7 year olds, there's very definitely something that doesn't sound right about there being a law telling parents what type of content is ok to pass by their children.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously I'm mistaken then, that it was posted as news. I didn't notice that it was marked as an editorial, so I hope you can forgive me my post.
I guess, but in the same way there are lots of people who speed on the roads, and yet not all of them are pulled over and given tickets. They're given tickets when they're caught.
I guess my point is that in real life, sometimes you have rules that aren't enforcable 100% of the time. But the fact that they aren't enforcable 100% of the time doesn't mean that the punishment is unfair when a person does happen to be in violation of the rules.
To make a rather hyperbolic comparison, since there are battered women out there that don't report the assault, does that mean that assault shouldn't be a crime?
I don't play WoW anymore, but I do agree that the rules should be more uniformly enforced. I think that any MMORPG thats going to have some onerous naming policy should invest a reasonable amount of time in some sort of filtering/flagging system, which can be easily human reviewed. Surely theres a way to apply some combination of AI, blacklists, and whitelists to narrow down the list to something human checkable.
FFXI's policy was rather lax. As long as you didn't put something offensive (cursewords, racial slurs) in your name, you were ok. Every person I knew who had their name changed obviously knew their name was innapropriate when they made it.
I do remember one guy who named their character "Nuclear Bomb" in Japanese trying to explain why it was appropriate in a thinly veiled attempt to play the victim. Kind of like when people in WoW break the policies and then in the forums come up with horribly contrived justifications for their names.
In addition to your proposition, I think that there should be a global whitelist/blacklist of names. If a GM has reviewed a name and determined it to be valid, its added to a whitelist, so that all further name petitions are ignored, and the name isn't flagged for review. The blacklist exists so that a known invalid name is not accepted in the first place. You could even compare names to the blacklist and flag names that are similar (and thus trying to get around the blacklist) for a higher priority review. Its not a panacea, but since there are a lot of common names it could greatly relieve the burden and make it feasable for a human to review names as they are created.
To be fair, I agree. At the time I didn't notice it was under editorial. I just saw games, so obviously I'm mistaken in my stance. However, I'm still not sure that it should belong on the front page.
Because they don't actively search out name violations. There are too many characters being created to make it practical to do so. So what they do is they only change them when they notice it, or when someone complains about the name. If you want to keep your invalid name, better not submit any GM tickets.
Yes, WoW has meta-GMs. There is a email address at which you can complain about GM actions.
As far as the argument, people who have played WoW and bothered to read the forums have heard about this many many times. People make names that break the rules all the times (and yes, CmdrTaco breaks the naming rules in several places), and then complain on the forums when they're changed. I'm not sure how this rant is going to change anything.
Erm, no offense, but his name clearly violates the policy, and even he admits that. The naming policy is clearly spelled out, and Blizzard was just enforcing it. I don't see how that qualifies as "heinous." I would have changed his name too. Being an editor for a large site doesn't give you a pass on the rules.
I'm sure that Blizzard can take a slashdotting, given their user base.
I don't see why Blizzard should have to apologize. Their naming policy has been set since the start of the game, and Taco's name clearly violated several parts of it (no titles, must be pronouncable, must not have several "words" stringed together). Ignorance of the rules is no excuse.
If you wanted people to think about the importance of virtual identity, you could have done so without making a personal rant. The fact of the matter is that it is a personal rant, it has no signs of trying to promote discussion about virtual identities, its certainly not news, and its on the front page of Slashdot. I know Slashdot isn't exactly a shining example of excellent or unbiased journalism, but this is a new low.
It doesn't matter how well-thought out and written it is. Its a personal rant being posted as news on what is supposed to be a tech news site. Its an abuse of power as an editor, as its painfully obvious that it doesn't belong on Slashdot at all, much less the front page. They have journals for this kind of rant.
If I were to submit my complaining about my online name being changed, would that make the front page too?
Sure it may be a good point, but its buried in an entire article ranting and bitching about losing his name, on the front page of Slashdot. And never mind he could have avoided losing the name by following the rules in the first place.
Seriously. This belongs in the WoW forums, or in your journal, not on Slashdot as a legitimate article.
It would also make porn a lot easier to censor. I know plenty of people who thought it was a bad idea, and they are hardly religious.
The problem with such a naming scheme is that you're once again equating GHz with performance, which isn't a valid assumption. Many processor architectures will sacrifice clock speed for instructions which accomplish more work per processor cycle. AMD does this, and its why it adopted its naming scheme in the first place: because people associated cycles/second with overall speed, and so thought that Pentiums were faster, even though AMD processors used a lower clock speed which did more work per cycle.
And really, so many things come into play when it comes to processor speed (not only cache, but branch prediction, memory latency, etc.) that it doesn't make sense to name them all. So there's really no way to get across performance by putting specs in the name. Might as well just slap a number on it and let people sort it out through benchmarks.
So now you have to pay for not only the GM, but also people who review the GMs. And thats hardly a sure bet against a GM doing something stupid and messing up game balance. And is $25 a month really enough to pay for it? Maybe if you outsource it, but that brings in language and quality control issues. Its definately not practical if you're hiring Americans. As much as people would like dynamic personalized worlds, in truly massive online rpgs, its a bit impractical.
I think its a matter of "first things first." The climber currently is the most attainable technologocal component. The cable will require breakthroughs in new materials to be viable, and I doubt a contest for $50,000 is going to speed that up.
Wouldn't a "less-than-glowing writup concerning that company, product or service" constitute personal opinion or a review, thus being non-NPOV?
Except that in the US electricity is produced by burning coal, not oil. I don't think anyone actually burns oil for electricity.
You can't own ideas, but you can own an implementation of an idea. I would imagine if they are lifting and copying exact functionality from Civ then there would be an issue, but from what I understand this isn't what they're doing.
Here in the good 'ol USofA you can sue anyone for pretty much any reason.
Is it really? While I wouldn't advocate giving porn to 7 year olds, there's very definitely something that doesn't sound right about there being a law telling parents what type of content is ok to pass by their children.
As far as I know, there's nothing of the sort.
Jack Thompson? Is that you?
Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it.