I think the parent makes an insightful comment, in that the immersive worlds of SL or any MMORPG are the same bits-and-bytes that more traditional (if you can call something relatively new "traditional") World Wide Web pages, so maybe a "real-not real" distinction isn't the most helpful way of understanding the phenomenon. When I first met my wife (though eHarmony) to most of the older people in my life, in particular those less web-savvy, did not equate our electronic communication as a "relationship" in the same way that they'd evaluate a face-to-face relationship, or oddly enough, the same as letter-writing. It felt real, and there is a point where the electronic relationship effected the rest of my life. It also reminds me of when the lady I work with gives me grief for scripting things she does manually. When I write a script that takes 2 hours, (with research) that I can apply to 50 servers, and it takes 30 minutes to do each server manually, she gets frustrated and says "just do it manually." I think it is because it is outside of her ideas on what things "are." I'd be tempted to say that she just doesn't like being shown up... but the truth is if I didn't do it by scripts, she won't help either way... (deep breath)
I think the temptation is to call the World Wide Web "real" and distinguish it from WoW or SL, is that the WWW is intentional in its intention to effect the rest of your life. Most web services sell goods transferable to life (tangible ones, like sweaters, and intangible ones like insurance, or knowledge applyable to other areas of life). Even most web communities are centered around specific interests beyond themselves, such as a Linux community, or Flickr, or Deviantart (a group of people producting art), etc.
I think the difference is that for instance, a virtual world is implicitly branded as something "external" and "counter" to the rest of life. When someone states this I think those not involved or unaware, are quick to support that notion. I think the diffrence is that to those involved, it does have applicability in the rest of life, as I'm sure people communicate with clan-mates, buy and sell items (illegally or legally), and ask a boss whose employee comes to work dead tierd from an all night raid, the effect of the world is "real." I think you get this idea from popular media when we refer to things such as "The Star Wars Universe." It is itentionally billed as something "other," but when it reaches a critical mass of exceptance, and enough people share the common experience... it effects their interactions in ways outside of simple, direct interaction within the confines of that universe. It is understood by people as a part of our collective conscience, rather than something contained in a "non-real" universe. That is why I can look at a Boba Fett and it seems real where I can say matter of factly "He is a bounty hunter", where more obscure parts of the Star Wars universe are distinctly not-real, even though they are both fantasy and "not-real." I think the social construction of not real things, gives them attributes normally associated with real things.
I think one reason Second Life is so interesting to a lot of people is that it is a blend of a non-real universe, but ecapsulates so many real activities (buying and selling with real money, real celebrity interviews) that are parts of mundane life experienced in a fanticiful way.
I think it is an evolution of the purpose of the internet in relation to Maslov's Hierarchy of needs... in the beggining ARPAnet was for security/defense. The WWW was for efficiency... these worlds a way of doing real things in a way that is fun, and full of astheticism.
My supervisor and I were sent to a Windows Vista course to "get up to speed" where we spent 4 days on all the changes made in Vista. I think within the first 2 hours I'd installed every application we use and some of my FOSS favorites (like Firefox, etc...) and gotten a thumbs up or down on every app. The worst part was that since it was a x86 Debug install of the OS, half of the components didn't work right, and crashed constantly (come to think of it, most of the release version's I've used did almost as poorly.) Where it really lacked though was that none of the computers were joined to any Active Directory so we couldn't see how it behaved from a remote-management perspective which is what we really wanted to know... not "wow! It is a new version of Windows Media Player!" as the entire group were IT professionals wanted to assess it's compatibility and feasiability to implement. My boss and I had to create accounts on our lab machines with identical UIDs and passwords and drop the firewall to test if all our in-house scripts would work properly. (A lot didn't.)
The redeeming part was I was able to show my boss how FireFox, MySQL and Open Office.org ran properly, even on the debug version, and both Adobe Reader and Citrix wouldn't install at all, and IE crashed on 60% of web pages. That and the next 3.5 days were spent playing the actually pretty nice Vista chess game.
In the beginning Google was attractive to me, (and most people I know), because it was "clean." No annoying graphics, just a simple text box, that produced very readable, very good results, with advertising that was textual, and not a eppilepsy enducing "you won a playstation" flashing banner.
Their search products such as Image Search, Froogle, News, etc... all did the same thing... clean UI, easy to use, good results.
For their applications, I think people moved to Gmail because again, the clean UI, they already used Google, and the space was unprecidented. Most ISPs still had 30MB caps, as did most other freemail services. For their other applications, I think it is a combination of brand recognition (like my Aunt, who thinks Yahoo "is" the Internet), Google fanboi-ism, and the assumption that everything they do will turn into gold, and they they won't fold overnight like a lot of services have the potential to do.
With all this stream, its enough to drive advertisement revenue. The difficulty will be if that dries up, and they have pissed off investors, thousands of employees with their hands in all kinds of stuff, trying to find a way to support the massive infrastructure. I think that is why they are looking to diversify their income paths because they know they won't be the hip kid on the block forever.
Definately, I think a robot could be built "get the mechanics right" so to act just like a real person (respond to touch, etc...) with good enough engineering. I think the problem would be in our natural state, fully aware, a person would readily be able to tell "this is not a person" and that fact would always be in their mind. There is a reason that people still have sex with other people, even if they "function" alone, or with toys. If they're thinking of a "pull it out of a box, flip a switch and just go at it", kind of toy, and the customer has that kind of expectation, I think it would sell, but as a replacement, or something to "fall in love with" from the headline, I don't see it.
I think getting a computer over the internet and phone to pass a turing test is hard enough, much less face-to-face. While that could be possible, I think the issue would be getting the mechanics of the robot correct, such as the feel and temperature of skin, breath, programmed fatigue, to be so correct along with the communication skills, that it would be insurmountable.
I'd also think you'd need to "meet" the robot in public, assume it is a human for enough time to develop attraction, and "love", that it would persist even if you did discover it is not human. if you went to the store and bought it, I don't think a normal mind would ever accept it as more than clockwork, even with our tendancy to anthropromorphize, and the natural rapport that would develop "living" with the robot.
Sex, maybe? Love, I don't see it, but I'd love to be proven wrong as what a feat of engineering it would be.
The reason I suggest VR, is that I see it as being more possible to inject sexual imagery and sensory information into the brain in a way that the mind can't know that it isn't real (or even that the procedure would "block" the mental functions that distinguish the diffrence, kind of like some mental "disorders" do naturally) that would cause normal human processes of attraction, etc... to come about unhindered by the knowledge at it "isn't real."
I could see young people being particularly attracted to the idea of Robotic Sex. Anecdotally I know that many youth get their "first crush" on television personalities, and I'd imagine a smaller subset, but a significant one on animated women, even more so in today's age with the increased popularity anime (as the illistrations tend to be more human-equivalent than most american animation) and extremely realistic video games. (Think Dead or Alive 3 Extreme Beach Volleyball or whatever it was).
I think if a culture develops where this is possible, or even accepted, young people whom demonstrate sexual attractiveness to non-real (or unattainable, such as teenie-bopper crushes on boy-bands) the line would be blurry enough that it might not replace the desire for sex with humans, but would be explored and maybe even embraced due to availability, diminished risk of disease/pregnancy/ass-kickings from angry dads/brothers, and the social cost of finding a partner in rejection and unavailability.
I don't think it will change relationships as a whole, but I think emotionally impressionable youth or lonley adults, might first experiment and embrace this kind of thing. In anything you've always got early adopters, and if it sticks, there might be a place for this.
Though, if I were investing, I think virtual reality sex has more potential for economic prosperity in the end if it could "trick" the brain into thinking that the VR image, which could be taken from a real-human source, is *real* and the sensory IO is *real.* I would think if it could overcome the mind, that it would be more fulfilling and people would gravitate to it more mostly because, I don't personally see robots ever being so-human (like the Replicants in Blade Runner, even in the next 100 years, or maybe ever for a normal person) that you can't tell from a distance, and even more that you can't tell doing something as multi-sensory as sex.
The nice thing about being a public employee (or any classified shop with a decent union), is that even if you carry a blackberry, the second your fingers touch a keyboard from home, and its work related, you get instant overtime. If they say "no overtime" you can easily say "no work" and there isn't a foot for them to stand on. (see above caveat). The real luxury is that some shops (like mine) give you on-call pay of $3.40/hr if you're carrying a BB even if you don't get called, which turns into about $400 extra a paycheck. Getting a message here or there from the boss asking you to do something first thing in the morning, or server alerts is kind of nice, and better than a call from home for me.
All that being said, it would be a cold day in hell before I'd carry one of these things if it was "just expected" that if my boss gets some crazy idea at 11:30 at night that I'm on the hook to do whatever he wants by 8AM the next day all the time, and I didn't have a union that would ensure that I got OT it, and cover me when I say "No" if he gets it in his head that he's entitled to my services, for free, after hours.
I know that this insertion of propoganda was not appropriate but hypothetically speaking on the idea of US Government representatives writing in wikipedia, I'd argue this is a good thing (if they can follow the guidelines).
Maybe my understanding is off, but wouldn't the US government be the perfect entity to write encyclopedia article given that they are the primary source in the scope of their job? Would the US Forest Service agent who was present in the California Wildfires in 2007 be the perfect source to write (if he could be objective, and without bias) of the factual events of the fires, such as "At 8PM 27 fire engines from 6 counties began working on and achieved containment at 10PM". Or In a "perfect" system, would not an encyclopedia only contain factual data such as "On 12/12/2007, this person was quoted as saying..." or "The current cost of the war according to the GAO is ". I'd rather hear it from "the horses mouth" than the condensed version from news organizations who report the news as it meets an agenda.
Even from elected officials, such as congressmen, I think it would be great to have themselves or staff or a Gov't official append their voting record to their wikipedia page. I think having a wikipedia page for every bill voted on in congress with a short summary, the bills sponsor, the committee's vote, and the houses of congresses voting record, along with any Congressional Record indexing information would be a very useful resource, and one that would give Wikipedia's flexibility and limitless nature (as opposed to a print encyclopedia) a real advantage.
Just having the data there is a valuable work as other contributors help grind the content down to a consensual view. Someone just has to get the ball rolling and if the original author does a great job, we'll get a solid article sooner than if we start with a crap one.
I'd say the only problem would be is that politicians and "neutral-point-of-view" don't usually go hand in hand, but you have a certain level of bias in any peice of writing.
I've done helpdesk and desktop support for several years mostly in academia, and dealt with all 5 archtypes, but all are managable if you have buy-in from management.
With the novice, you've got management hiring people in clerical positions that should have never gotten past the civil service exam. If you can't use Microsoft Word (or whatever productivity applications the institution uses), you shouldn't be hired if that is a significant job responsibility. Period.
With the "entitlement" king, you've got to have management that can say "Look, $EMPLOYEEE, your work is important but we've got 1 geek for every 200 employees, and there is a a 2-day SLA on this kind of work that IT has negotiated with upper management. You've known this for years, so if you're calling to get Excel installed the day the budget proposal is due, not only are you not doing your job proactively, you're completely out of line by asking IT to violate practices designed to keep the entire company running smoothly." Not only that, you have to have managers that understand that yes, even though you are a VP, your blackberry not working shouldn't be tasked higher than multiple users down due to a failed server.
With the thinks-they-know everything, you need a manager that trusts that IT truly knows best, so when he goes to his boss and says I need $SOFTWARE, (goes for the Whiz Kid too), and IT has already said "NO, $REASON", there needs to be an implicit level of trust that IT has a good reason. I've seen departments go out and buy Norton AV because their "ad hoc computer guy" said they should, even though McAfee was site licensed. In another case $PROFESSOR buys an unsupported scanner with grant money, and now IT is implicitly expected to support it because it is to be used in "university-blessed research." Not that IT is always in line, but management has to know that IT is stretched really thin and even if the rank-and-file geek installing $SOFTWARE says no, if there is a bona-fide business necessity for a software product, IT management should be on board.
This is especially true in academia where almost any IT best-practice can be thrawted by "academic freedom" (even though I love the doctrine, it is abused ad infinitum). MySpace.com choking down 95% of the campus bandwidth "Can't block it or QoS it, because academic freedom."
If I may, let me add one, the "I keep 20GB of baby pictures on the network because I can't go 30 seconds without looking at my kids and even though IT has told me to knock it off." -- I know they won't do anything because.JPG is to generic of a filter since there are legit.JPG files on the server and they can't just wax them all. Also, I know management is just going to say "just increase the quota and we'll ask her to 'stop' (even though they never will because they've got every screensaver, desktop toy, 50GB of ripped CDs, their iPod and a personally owned off-brand PDA/Smartphone you're expected to just "configure out of the box" while they drop it on the desk and disappear for 30 minutes leaving you no account information and just don't get it.)
Don't even get me started on "musical offices", the "I need my whole office packed up because I'm moving into the branch office today" with no previous warning, only to move back 2 weeks later because "Oh, I'm just filling in for someone and I know where everything is at on this computer." Its almost enough to make a poor geek weep.
Probably the cost of the investigation in lost hours, the price of notifying all those whom where among the 130,000 and all that comes with it (lawsuits, credit checking, the cost of the corrective actions...)
I went to a university of 11,000 at first that paid for 90 days of credit monitoring for all effected students after someone hacked into the student information system that stored SSNs. I'm sure the state had to deal with some more heat than a small university.
I was working tech support a couple of years ago for a major university. One of our duties was being "available" if someone came to customer service to try to recover data off removable media. It was a free service on a best-effort basis.
One day, I had a lady come in in tears that she "couldn't open her dissertation" off her floppy disk. I asked her if she had another copy on her computer at home, to which she said no. I used every disk utility we had and none would read it. I tried Windows, Linux, nothing. As a last ditch effort, I put it in a old G4 Macintosh with one of those Imation SuperDrives (Floppy + Zip Like disks), (OS 9.0.2 or something like that) at the suggestion of one of the other techs and it actually worked. It loaded the whole filesystem, and we recovered the document.
The corrupted document fortunately didn't have any graphs/graphics or COM objects, so opening it in a programmer's text editor we were able to pull out all the text so all she had to do was reformat it.
I wish that was the only time I had to recover lost thesis or disertation from graduate students who should have known better.
I wished the Super Game Boy would have continued for GB Color/Advance/etc... I had one for the original game boy and loved it. After a couple of hours I'd get a really jacked up neck from looking down at the GB, but had so many games (as they tended to be a little less expensive and we traveled a lot), it was awesome to play them on the regular TV. In fact a lot of the Super Game Boy "ready" games, colorized really nicely with the device, to where they were pretty close to NES games (still commonplace at the time).
I wish they would put a DS Cartridge port on the Wii's next revision to play the games using the Classic Controller. The DS games are so small, I think they could "get it in" without harming the asthetic. (maybe below the SD card slot). People will still buy DSes for travel, lunch hours and the bathroom. (yeah I said it.:)).
No Dial Up? I would venture a guess that "casual user" or the "cost conscientious" user who buys a $200 computer at Wal-Mart isn't going to drop $40/m for broadband when they can get NetZero for $9.95. Some people just want (and are happy with) the bare minimum. My parents are like this, I bought them a $500 IBM (Lenovo?) desktop with my employee discount and they still use the thing for dial-up. Mom uses loading time to rip CDs to her iPod (probably helps that she's known no diffrent.)
On the other hand (if I may play the devil's advocate), it might actually force Windows developers to code applications that flip out (under limited accounts) because they just "assume" you have full-unconstrained use of the system.:)
I can't list how many times when I was in desktop support/Active Directory admin gigs where I couldn't drop the boom on all kinds of asshattery because there is "this one (poorly written) business critical application." (Why a terminal emulator needs local admin is beyond me to begin with... thanks Datatel).
I definately agree with the parent on points 2,3, that in a perfect world, they shouldn't actively try to block people from using it on homebrew and hobbyist equipment. The problem lies with Apple's marketing in that they are billed as a platform that "just works."
If you have a contingent (think, a "vocal minority") running OS X on non-supported hardware, and it "doesn't just work" or worse, runs worse than Windows, you will loose the "polished image" they've been dead-set on creating. When the "demons" come out of the code when it runs on unanticipated hardware and it "goes beep beep beep and eats your term paper (thanks Ellen Fiess)" you'll have a lot of buzz in forums, etc... that will negatively influence purchasing decisions. Part of the allure of the platform for me was playing with it at the apple store (seeing the apps run, experiencing the GUI, etc...), and eventually saving enough to get into a Mac Book Pro, and breaking free of windows. It was such a rewarding, effortless experience to switch, and to use that I'm aware I've won 3-4 converts not really even trying.
At the end of the day if Apple doesn't at least on the surface try to stop OSX on non-Apple hardware, you'll get the same hobbyist buzz as you do with low-to-moderate able folks who "want" to run Linux... " It was hard to get this $HARDWARE to work or find a replacement for this $APPLICATION and I got pissed off and just switched back (and blogged or told my friends that $DISTRO sucks.)
I hope someone mods the parent up because I can identify with his statement. I'm someone who would self-identify as a Christian, but someone whom has serious concerns with most of the theories (which last time I checked are `theories` not absolute dogma), presented by both sides of the table. I definately belive in microevoultion (differentiation in specices), but recognize that there is more data than the average BIO101 professor would like to content regarding data that `does not fit` the macroevolutionary model most are fighting for or against. (e.g. irreducable complexity, cataclysmic geological events, etc.)
By education, I am a student of Sociology and it is so frustrating to me that so many sciences (such as the social sciences) there is an implicit understanding of the world based entirely on evolutionary biology. For example, there are a number of Sociological precepts that are born assuming the immutibility of evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, since these researchers aren't evolutionary biologist, they don't get presented with data that would impact `higher order` theories from which theirs implicity or explicity depents upon.
I think it is a sad state of affairs when sciences are so unwilling to debate, content with theories, hypothesis and even data that challenge the status quo. I know this is a debate that is often veiled by religion, but... what about AIDS/HIV, in that there is a large body of evidence (data) and conflicting theory (that HIV is not the cause of what we call AIDS,www.aliveandwell.com) which is almost unheard of in mainstream society where the masses should be making informed decisions regarding their health. I'm not saying I'm totally convinced by this theory but we live in a time when an alarming number of competing scientific theories (in particular with `central theories`) are relegated to the fringes rather than engaged with.
I was encouraged that I wasn't the only one whom sees "plugins" as a drawback. As a developer and Help Desk contact, the things I disliked about both IE and Firefox were the 3rd party add-ons, because depending on what they do, or were designed to do, can interfere with the proper operation of the page.
This is bad because I have to support the usage of a page that should "just work" on a standard browser configuration. The eternal conflict comes from "My 1337 friend told me I should be using Firefox because IE is 'dangerous' and now when I check my college webmail, when I click the compose link, nothing comes up. I don't know how many NoScripts i've removed because users had no idea what was going on.
There is also very little to let end users know what plugins have a community of developers, or are tested to work properly, and which ones are hacked together by first year university and do stuff like "FOX FACEBOOK PIMPAH 1.9".
I guess the plus with Firefox is, is that most people that end up with plugins on their computer intended on them being there.
I for one, am against censorship and as a principal would never filter the Internet coming into my house but would use the Internet WITH my young child and certainly read the logs on my hardware firewall for the older ones, but the real problem here is that the Wii doesn't have the features (or ability as of yet) to have the same features that a desktop PC has when it comes to download blocking, content filtering, etc. The average parents have been sold on AOL, Microsoft and Apple's "built-in" parental controls as the end-all-be-all "computer police" that will keep their darlings away from the pr0n, ultra-violence, gambling, etc.
The only valid point is that parents don't necessarily "get" the potential for the Wii to be a vector for the boobies just like most of our parents never blinked twice over National Geographic. I am *hoping* all this group hopes to do is educate like-minded parents that maybe they shouldn't the Wii, or have the Wii connected to the inter-tubes in 12 year old Johnnie's bedroom with the locked door. It is sad that they've made it an explicitly "Christian" vendetta when I think it is in the interest for all parents to at minimum be aware of the relative risks/rewards of any new technology, fad or social construct in our kids lives. Most parents don't want hardcore interspecies erotics flashed before their 12 year olds eyes. (Again, I'm a realist, and know that I'm hoping against hope.)
I am a practicing Christian and always am disqusted to see those whom I'm inevitably lumped with make all of us look like complete and udder assholes that are going to write their congressman or picket GameStop (et.al.) because they believe their goal is to get our 14 year old girls on the coke and knocked up. I wish we'd simply vote our (informed) conscience as any member of a democratic society should and then run our house as we see fit and leave everyone else to their own, but... what can I do?
I have to say from reading all these comments that I've felt quite the same way, as some commenters, that the video games (and digital life) is a bit unfulfilling as the "real world" counterpart.
I recently went home to my parents house, and sifted through a box of things I left when I moved to California (I only could take 4 suitcases on the plane). I found my old Final Fantasy III cartridge with 100+ hours of play time, Lv. 99 characters with every possible relic, and I found a few odds-and-ends I'd built and a few Lego spacecrafts that took me maybe 3-5 hours to build. I have to say... I felt far more nostalgic with the Lego models than my FF cartridge.
When I got home to California, I was playing Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on Virtual Console, while my wife was making wire-sculpted jewelry. I felt a little jealous because she had something she could hold (and is planning to sell), and I had bits and bytes on a console that will eventually break, end up on eBay, or in a box in the attic. My perfect game, didn't really matter much outside of myself, and "knowing" I'd won. I get that playing in the dirt, burning some energy, discovering a unique rock, catching a frog, or getting lost with green-army men, has a lasting significance and fulfillment that getting the 8th red-coin or the high score on Mario Party i++; doesn't compare. I thought about it more and realized what a feeling of accomplishment I feel when I finish a dead-tree book on military or religious history, in comparison to the 40-50 Wikipedia articles on the same topics I read every day. Shooting my Glock 23 at paper targets is a lot more fun than shooting *anything* on Call of Duty 3, or any FPS i've ever played. Watching a film (even better, attending a screening and discussion) is more fulfilling than YouTube.
Maybe I'm becoming a Neo-Luddite, but I have to say, as I get older, I find the digital-lifestyle less and less fulfilling to the point where I don't even want to go to work (as a programmer.)
I want to thank you all, who've helped convince me-- I just submitted my application for the police academy!:)
I used to work for a large Midwestern University, and we blocked outgoing connections to some services, such as VPNs and some proxies. The reason we did this was during the outbreak of the virus (can't remember the name), that hammered Windows on Port 135, we blocked incoming Port 135 connections at the University border. It was hypothesized that if users VPNed to other networks, they would circumvent the port block and become a vector.
I know everyone worth their weight in IT realizes that a secure border isn't enough. We had virus protection available for free for every seat on campus, however, in a huge distributed environment (where departments and colleges were "islands" in a network ocean, with their own IT staff) we couldn't gaurantee the integrity of these machines. But we were sure going to be the ones to take the hit when their "nice kid that they liked to much to see them move on after graduation system admin" didn't bother to CHECK to see if the definitions his AD-out-the-box for dummies was pushing those defs.
We also disallowed some of these services because it became harder to effectively monitor our network. When some s5r1pt k1dd13 in CIS 201 decides that he is now a UNIX god is and is going to put "Bush Sucks - $college_name is #1, fark $rival" on whitehouse.gov to impress his pink haired, pot smoking, PETA member across the hall in the dorms who only talks to him when he removes the spyware she got trying to download off KaZaa, we look like complete dickheads when the Feds show up (or the **AA) and the best we can do is say "I don't know... what goes on in them there tubes" the suits tend to get pretty agrivated.
On the other hand, even if they are SSHing into an intermediary (which we strongly encouraged over telnet), we can at least say "Well, we had an outgoing SSH connection from 4 machines on campus at that time going to these 4 addresses, do any of those ring a bell? We happened to have authenticated WPA, so we can tell you who these folks are even if the machine name is PoPPySeeD420 and done from the student union.
Privacy is wonderful, but when the shit hits the proverbal fan, IT would like to know who is pulling shenanagins on the network. The rest of the time, 99.9999% of the time, we'd rather NOT know what you're up to, and every one of us in the office (except for that one windows fanboi MS office specialist who we used to throw beanbags at) had our open source/linux/free as in beer and freedom/crypto-privacy street cred.
I'd have to say... with razor thin profit margins video games have to meet, it is infinitely safer for companies to launch lines on next-gen consoles with proven game francises. I mean, no matter how bad the next Sonic re-hash is going to be, its going to outsell a cohort of obsure, but avant-garde games whose developers' venture capitalists might already be wary of the business model the industry is following.
Its easier (and safer) to bastardize previous works for a C-/D+ than risk "original thought."
But with that said... it disappoints me that there is no real venue for low budget/indie games on consoles like MP3 and FOSS has given underdogs a fighting (and sometimes winning) chance despite the odds.
Just as an FYI, here in Ohio (as it was explained to me by my HR contact), it is illegal to profit from State owned (e.g. public university) resources such as IT equipment, vehicle, telephone, e-mail box, etc. (ORC 102.04) For example, forwaring "you@yourbiz.com" to the University Central Mail system and making personal business transactions, is (at the opinion of the University) a violation of (ORC 102.02) If what you are doing is of "academic or not-for-profit" interest, it's up to the IT folks/university lawyers what they construe as "within the academic mission of the university." The problem comes when your friend of a friend's boss asks if you'll host his stuff for $juicy_sum_of_money, and you risk it or need to get a 3rd party host if you want to get his business anyway,. You also have to worry about hosting content for a social/political group whom the university (or mid-tier sysadmin) doesn't want on the subnet, you're in a real pickle.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the parent makes an insightful comment, in that the immersive worlds of SL or any MMORPG are the same bits-and-bytes that more traditional (if you can call something relatively new "traditional") World Wide Web pages, so maybe a "real-not real" distinction isn't the most helpful way of understanding the phenomenon. When I first met my wife (though eHarmony) to most of the older people in my life, in particular those less web-savvy, did not equate our electronic communication as a "relationship" in the same way that they'd evaluate a face-to-face relationship, or oddly enough, the same as letter-writing. It felt real, and there is a point where the electronic relationship effected the rest of my life. It also reminds me of when the lady I work with gives me grief for scripting things she does manually. When I write a script that takes 2 hours, (with research) that I can apply to 50 servers, and it takes 30 minutes to do each server manually, she gets frustrated and says "just do it manually." I think it is because it is outside of her ideas on what things "are." I'd be tempted to say that she just doesn't like being shown up... but the truth is if I didn't do it by scripts, she won't help either way... (deep breath)
I think the temptation is to call the World Wide Web "real" and distinguish it from WoW or SL, is that the WWW is intentional in its intention to effect the rest of your life. Most web services sell goods transferable to life (tangible ones, like sweaters, and intangible ones like insurance, or knowledge applyable to other areas of life). Even most web communities are centered around specific interests beyond themselves, such as a Linux community, or Flickr, or Deviantart (a group of people producting art), etc.
I think the difference is that for instance, a virtual world is implicitly branded as something "external" and "counter" to the rest of life. When someone states this I think those not involved or unaware, are quick to support that notion. I think the diffrence is that to those involved, it does have applicability in the rest of life, as I'm sure people communicate with clan-mates, buy and sell items (illegally or legally), and ask a boss whose employee comes to work dead tierd from an all night raid, the effect of the world is "real." I think you get this idea from popular media when we refer to things such as "The Star Wars Universe." It is itentionally billed as something "other," but when it reaches a critical mass of exceptance, and enough people share the common experience... it effects their interactions in ways outside of simple, direct interaction within the confines of that universe. It is understood by people as a part of our collective conscience, rather than something contained in a "non-real" universe. That is why I can look at a Boba Fett and it seems real where I can say matter of factly "He is a bounty hunter", where more obscure parts of the Star Wars universe are distinctly not-real, even though they are both fantasy and "not-real." I think the social construction of not real things, gives them attributes normally associated with real things.
I think one reason Second Life is so interesting to a lot of people is that it is a blend of a non-real universe, but ecapsulates so many real activities (buying and selling with real money, real celebrity interviews) that are parts of mundane life experienced in a fanticiful way.
I think it is an evolution of the purpose of the internet in relation to Maslov's Hierarchy of needs... in the beggining ARPAnet was for security/defense. The WWW was for efficiency... these worlds a way of doing real things in a way that is fun, and full of astheticism.
My supervisor and I were sent to a Windows Vista course to "get up to speed" where we spent 4 days on all the changes made in Vista. I think within the first 2 hours I'd installed every application we use and some of my FOSS favorites (like Firefox, etc...) and gotten a thumbs up or down on every app. The worst part was that since it was a x86 Debug install of the OS, half of the components didn't work right, and crashed constantly (come to think of it, most of the release version's I've used did almost as poorly.) Where it really lacked though was that none of the computers were joined to any Active Directory so we couldn't see how it behaved from a remote-management perspective which is what we really wanted to know... not "wow! It is a new version of Windows Media Player!" as the entire group were IT professionals wanted to assess it's compatibility and feasiability to implement. My boss and I had to create accounts on our lab machines with identical UIDs and passwords and drop the firewall to test if all our in-house scripts would work properly. (A lot didn't.)
The redeeming part was I was able to show my boss how FireFox, MySQL and Open Office.org ran properly, even on the debug version, and both Adobe Reader and Citrix wouldn't install at all, and IE crashed on 60% of web pages. That and the next 3.5 days were spent playing the actually pretty nice Vista chess game.
In the beginning Google was attractive to me, (and most people I know), because it was "clean." No annoying graphics, just a simple text box, that produced very readable, very good results, with advertising that was textual, and not a eppilepsy enducing "you won a playstation" flashing banner.
Their search products such as Image Search, Froogle, News, etc... all did the same thing... clean UI, easy to use, good results.
For their applications, I think people moved to Gmail because again, the clean UI, they already used Google, and the space was unprecidented. Most ISPs still had 30MB caps, as did most other freemail services. For their other applications, I think it is a combination of brand recognition (like my Aunt, who thinks Yahoo "is" the Internet), Google fanboi-ism, and the assumption that everything they do will turn into gold, and they they won't fold overnight like a lot of services have the potential to do.
With all this stream, its enough to drive advertisement revenue. The difficulty will be if that dries up, and they have pissed off investors, thousands of employees with their hands in all kinds of stuff, trying to find a way to support the massive infrastructure. I think that is why they are looking to diversify their income paths because they know they won't be the hip kid on the block forever.
Definately, I think a robot could be built "get the mechanics right" so to act just like a real person (respond to touch, etc...) with good enough engineering. I think the problem would be in our natural state, fully aware, a person would readily be able to tell "this is not a person" and that fact would always be in their mind. There is a reason that people still have sex with other people, even if they "function" alone, or with toys. If they're thinking of a "pull it out of a box, flip a switch and just go at it", kind of toy, and the customer has that kind of expectation, I think it would sell, but as a replacement, or something to "fall in love with" from the headline, I don't see it.
I think getting a computer over the internet and phone to pass a turing test is hard enough, much less face-to-face. While that could be possible, I think the issue would be getting the mechanics of the robot correct, such as the feel and temperature of skin, breath, programmed fatigue, to be so correct along with the communication skills, that it would be insurmountable.
I'd also think you'd need to "meet" the robot in public, assume it is a human for enough time to develop attraction, and "love", that it would persist even if you did discover it is not human. if you went to the store and bought it, I don't think a normal mind would ever accept it as more than clockwork, even with our tendancy to anthropromorphize, and the natural rapport that would develop "living" with the robot.
Sex, maybe? Love, I don't see it, but I'd love to be proven wrong as what a feat of engineering it would be.
The reason I suggest VR, is that I see it as being more possible to inject sexual imagery and sensory information into the brain in a way that the mind can't know that it isn't real (or even that the procedure would "block" the mental functions that distinguish the diffrence, kind of like some mental "disorders" do naturally) that would cause normal human processes of attraction, etc... to come about unhindered by the knowledge at it "isn't real."
I could see young people being particularly attracted to the idea of Robotic Sex. Anecdotally I know that many youth get their "first crush" on television personalities, and I'd imagine a smaller subset, but a significant one on animated women, even more so in today's age with the increased popularity anime (as the illistrations tend to be more human-equivalent than most american animation) and extremely realistic video games. (Think Dead or Alive 3 Extreme Beach Volleyball or whatever it was).
I think if a culture develops where this is possible, or even accepted, young people whom demonstrate sexual attractiveness to non-real (or unattainable, such as teenie-bopper crushes on boy-bands) the line would be blurry enough that it might not replace the desire for sex with humans, but would be explored and maybe even embraced due to availability, diminished risk of disease/pregnancy/ass-kickings from angry dads/brothers, and the social cost of finding a partner in rejection and unavailability.
I don't think it will change relationships as a whole, but I think emotionally impressionable youth or lonley adults, might first experiment and embrace this kind of thing. In anything you've always got early adopters, and if it sticks, there might be a place for this.
Though, if I were investing, I think virtual reality sex has more potential for economic prosperity in the end if it could "trick" the brain into thinking that the VR image, which could be taken from a real-human source, is *real* and the sensory IO is *real.* I would think if it could overcome the mind, that it would be more fulfilling and people would gravitate to it more mostly because, I don't personally see robots ever being so-human (like the Replicants in Blade Runner, even in the next 100 years, or maybe ever for a normal person) that you can't tell from a distance, and even more that you can't tell doing something as multi-sensory as sex.
The nice thing about being a public employee (or any classified shop with a decent union), is that even if you carry a blackberry, the second your fingers touch a keyboard from home, and its work related, you get instant overtime. If they say "no overtime" you can easily say "no work" and there isn't a foot for them to stand on. (see above caveat). The real luxury is that some shops (like mine) give you on-call pay of $3.40/hr if you're carrying a BB even if you don't get called, which turns into about $400 extra a paycheck. Getting a message here or there from the boss asking you to do something first thing in the morning, or server alerts is kind of nice, and better than a call from home for me.
All that being said, it would be a cold day in hell before I'd carry one of these things if it was "just expected" that if my boss gets some crazy idea at 11:30 at night that I'm on the hook to do whatever he wants by 8AM the next day all the time, and I didn't have a union that would ensure that I got OT it, and cover me when I say "No" if he gets it in his head that he's entitled to my services, for free, after hours.
I know that this insertion of propoganda was not appropriate but hypothetically speaking on the idea of US Government representatives writing in wikipedia, I'd argue this is a good thing (if they can follow the guidelines).
..." or "The current cost of the war according to the GAO is ". I'd rather hear it from "the horses mouth" than the condensed version from news organizations who report the news as it meets an agenda.
Maybe my understanding is off, but wouldn't the US government be the perfect entity to write encyclopedia article given that they are the primary source in the scope of their job? Would the US Forest Service agent who was present in the California Wildfires in 2007 be the perfect source to write (if he could be objective, and without bias) of the factual events of the fires, such as "At 8PM 27 fire engines from 6 counties began working on and achieved containment at 10PM". Or In a "perfect" system, would not an encyclopedia only contain factual data such as "On 12/12/2007, this person was quoted as saying
Even from elected officials, such as congressmen, I think it would be great to have themselves or staff or a Gov't official append their voting record to their wikipedia page. I think having a wikipedia page for every bill voted on in congress with a short summary, the bills sponsor, the committee's vote, and the houses of congresses voting record, along with any Congressional Record indexing information would be a very useful resource, and one that would give Wikipedia's flexibility and limitless nature (as opposed to a print encyclopedia) a real advantage.
Just having the data there is a valuable work as other contributors help grind the content down to a consensual view. Someone just has to get the ball rolling and if the original author does a great job, we'll get a solid article sooner than if we start with a crap one.
I'd say the only problem would be is that politicians and "neutral-point-of-view" don't usually go hand in hand, but you have a certain level of bias in any peice of writing.
I've done helpdesk and desktop support for several years mostly in academia, and dealt with all 5 archtypes, but all are managable if you have buy-in from management.
.JPG is to generic of a filter since there are legit .JPG files on the server and they can't just wax them all. Also, I know management is just going to say "just increase the quota and we'll ask her to 'stop' (even though they never will because they've got every screensaver, desktop toy, 50GB of ripped CDs, their iPod and a personally owned off-brand PDA/Smartphone you're expected to just "configure out of the box" while they drop it on the desk and disappear for 30 minutes leaving you no account information and just don't get it.)
With the novice, you've got management hiring people in clerical positions that should have never gotten past the civil service exam. If you can't use Microsoft Word (or whatever productivity applications the institution uses), you shouldn't be hired if that is a significant job responsibility. Period.
With the "entitlement" king, you've got to have management that can say "Look, $EMPLOYEEE, your work is important but we've got 1 geek for every 200 employees, and there is a a 2-day SLA on this kind of work that IT has negotiated with upper management. You've known this for years, so if you're calling to get Excel installed the day the budget proposal is due, not only are you not doing your job proactively, you're completely out of line by asking IT to violate practices designed to keep the entire company running smoothly." Not only that, you have to have managers that understand that yes, even though you are a VP, your blackberry not working shouldn't be tasked higher than multiple users down due to a failed server.
With the thinks-they-know everything, you need a manager that trusts that IT truly knows best, so when he goes to his boss and says I need $SOFTWARE, (goes for the Whiz Kid too), and IT has already said "NO, $REASON", there needs to be an implicit level of trust that IT has a good reason. I've seen departments go out and buy Norton AV because their "ad hoc computer guy" said they should, even though McAfee was site licensed. In another case $PROFESSOR buys an unsupported scanner with grant money, and now IT is implicitly expected to support it because it is to be used in "university-blessed research." Not that IT is always in line, but management has to know that IT is stretched really thin and even if the rank-and-file geek installing $SOFTWARE says no, if there is a bona-fide business necessity for a software product, IT management should be on board.
This is especially true in academia where almost any IT best-practice can be thrawted by "academic freedom" (even though I love the doctrine, it is abused ad infinitum). MySpace.com choking down 95% of the campus bandwidth "Can't block it or QoS it, because academic freedom."
If I may, let me add one, the "I keep 20GB of baby pictures on the network because I can't go 30 seconds without looking at my kids and even though IT has told me to knock it off." -- I know they won't do anything because
Don't even get me started on "musical offices", the "I need my whole office packed up because I'm moving into the branch office today" with no previous warning, only to move back 2 weeks later because "Oh, I'm just filling in for someone and I know where everything is at on this computer." Its almost enough to make a poor geek weep.
Probably the cost of the investigation in lost hours, the price of notifying all those whom where among the 130,000 and all that comes with it (lawsuits, credit checking, the cost of the corrective actions...) I went to a university of 11,000 at first that paid for 90 days of credit monitoring for all effected students after someone hacked into the student information system that stored SSNs. I'm sure the state had to deal with some more heat than a small university.
I was working tech support a couple of years ago for a major university. One of our duties was being "available" if someone came to customer service to try to recover data off removable media. It was a free service on a best-effort basis.
One day, I had a lady come in in tears that she "couldn't open her dissertation" off her floppy disk. I asked her if she had another copy on her computer at home, to which she said no. I used every disk utility we had and none would read it. I tried Windows, Linux, nothing. As a last ditch effort, I put it in a old G4 Macintosh with one of those Imation SuperDrives (Floppy + Zip Like disks), (OS 9.0.2 or something like that) at the suggestion of one of the other techs and it actually worked. It loaded the whole filesystem, and we recovered the document.
The corrupted document fortunately didn't have any graphs/graphics or COM objects, so opening it in a programmer's text editor we were able to pull out all the text so all she had to do was reformat it.
I wish that was the only time I had to recover lost thesis or disertation from graduate students who should have known better.
There is always "Raise the speed limit to 75MPH in front of schools and let Darwin sort the wheat from the chaff". Things will work themselves out.
I wished the Super Game Boy would have continued for GB Color/Advance/etc... I had one for the original game boy and loved it. After a couple of hours I'd get a really jacked up neck from looking down at the GB, but had so many games (as they tended to be a little less expensive and we traveled a lot), it was awesome to play them on the regular TV. In fact a lot of the Super Game Boy "ready" games, colorized really nicely with the device, to where they were pretty close to NES games (still commonplace at the time).
:)).
I wish they would put a DS Cartridge port on the Wii's next revision to play the games using the Classic Controller. The DS games are so small, I think they could "get it in" without harming the asthetic. (maybe below the SD card slot). People will still buy DSes for travel, lunch hours and the bathroom. (yeah I said it.
No Dial Up? I would venture a guess that "casual user" or the "cost conscientious" user who buys a $200 computer at Wal-Mart isn't going to drop $40/m for broadband when they can get NetZero for $9.95. Some people just want (and are happy with) the bare minimum. My parents are like this, I bought them a $500 IBM (Lenovo?) desktop with my employee discount and they still use the thing for dial-up. Mom uses loading time to rip CDs to her iPod (probably helps that she's known no diffrent.)
On the other hand (if I may play the devil's advocate), it might actually force Windows developers to code applications that flip out (under limited accounts) because they just "assume" you have full-unconstrained use of the system. :)
I can't list how many times when I was in desktop support/Active Directory admin gigs where I couldn't drop the boom on all kinds of asshattery because there is "this one (poorly written) business critical application." (Why a terminal emulator needs local admin is beyond me to begin with... thanks Datatel).
I definately agree with the parent on points 2,3, that in a perfect world, they shouldn't actively try to block people from using it on homebrew and hobbyist equipment. The problem lies with Apple's marketing in that they are billed as a platform that "just works."
If you have a contingent (think, a "vocal minority") running OS X on non-supported hardware, and it "doesn't just work" or worse, runs worse than Windows, you will loose the "polished image" they've been dead-set on creating. When the "demons" come out of the code when it runs on unanticipated hardware and it "goes beep beep beep and eats your term paper (thanks Ellen Fiess)" you'll have a lot of buzz in forums, etc... that will negatively influence purchasing decisions. Part of the allure of the platform for me was playing with it at the apple store (seeing the apps run, experiencing the GUI, etc...), and eventually saving enough to get into a Mac Book Pro, and breaking free of windows. It was such a rewarding, effortless experience to switch, and to use that I'm aware I've won 3-4 converts not really even trying.
At the end of the day if Apple doesn't at least on the surface try to stop OSX on non-Apple hardware, you'll get the same hobbyist buzz as you do with low-to-moderate able folks who "want" to run Linux... " It was hard to get this $HARDWARE to work or find a replacement for this $APPLICATION and I got pissed off and just switched back (and blogged or told my friends that $DISTRO sucks.)
I hope someone mods the parent up because I can identify with his statement. I'm someone who would self-identify as a Christian, but someone whom has serious concerns with most of the theories (which last time I checked are `theories` not absolute dogma), presented by both sides of the table. I definately belive in microevoultion (differentiation in specices), but recognize that there is more data than the average BIO101 professor would like to content regarding data that `does not fit` the macroevolutionary model most are fighting for or against. (e.g. irreducable complexity, cataclysmic geological events, etc.)
By education, I am a student of Sociology and it is so frustrating to me that so many sciences (such as the social sciences) there is an implicit understanding of the world based entirely on evolutionary biology. For example, there are a number of Sociological precepts that are born assuming the immutibility of evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, since these researchers aren't evolutionary biologist, they don't get presented with data that would impact `higher order` theories from which theirs implicity or explicity depents upon.
I think it is a sad state of affairs when sciences are so unwilling to debate, content with theories, hypothesis and even data that challenge the status quo. I know this is a debate that is often veiled by religion, but... what about AIDS/HIV, in that there is a large body of evidence (data) and conflicting theory (that HIV is not the cause of what we call AIDS,www.aliveandwell.com) which is almost unheard of in mainstream society where the masses should be making informed decisions regarding their health. I'm not saying I'm totally convinced by this theory but we live in a time when an alarming number of competing scientific theories (in particular with `central theories`) are relegated to the fringes rather than engaged with.
I was encouraged that I wasn't the only one whom sees "plugins" as a drawback. As a developer and Help Desk contact, the things I disliked about both IE and Firefox were the 3rd party add-ons, because depending on what they do, or were designed to do, can interfere with the proper operation of the page.
This is bad because I have to support the usage of a page that should "just work" on a standard browser configuration. The eternal conflict comes from "My 1337 friend told me I should be using Firefox because IE is 'dangerous' and now when I check my college webmail, when I click the compose link, nothing comes up. I don't know how many NoScripts i've removed because users had no idea what was going on.
There is also very little to let end users know what plugins have a community of developers, or are tested to work properly, and which ones are hacked together by first year university and do stuff like "FOX FACEBOOK PIMPAH 1.9".
I guess the plus with Firefox is, is that most people that end up with plugins on their computer intended on them being there.
I for one, am against censorship and as a principal would never filter the Internet coming into my house but would use the Internet WITH my young child and certainly read the logs on my hardware firewall for the older ones, but the real problem here is that the Wii doesn't have the features (or ability as of yet) to have the same features that a desktop PC has when it comes to download blocking, content filtering, etc. The average parents have been sold on AOL, Microsoft and Apple's "built-in" parental controls as the end-all-be-all "computer police" that will keep their darlings away from the pr0n, ultra-violence, gambling, etc.
The only valid point is that parents don't necessarily "get" the potential for the Wii to be a vector for the boobies just like most of our parents never blinked twice over National Geographic. I am *hoping* all this group hopes to do is educate like-minded parents that maybe they shouldn't the Wii, or have the Wii connected to the inter-tubes in 12 year old Johnnie's bedroom with the locked door. It is sad that they've made it an explicitly "Christian" vendetta when I think it is in the interest for all parents to at minimum be aware of the relative risks/rewards of any new technology, fad or social construct in our kids lives. Most parents don't want hardcore interspecies erotics flashed before their 12 year olds eyes. (Again, I'm a realist, and know that I'm hoping against hope.)
I am a practicing Christian and always am disqusted to see those whom I'm inevitably lumped with make all of us look like complete and udder assholes that are going to write their congressman or picket GameStop (et.al.) because they believe their goal is to get our 14 year old girls on the coke and knocked up. I wish we'd simply vote our (informed) conscience as any member of a democratic society should and then run our house as we see fit and leave everyone else to their own, but... what can I do?
I have to say from reading all these comments that I've felt quite the same way, as some commenters, that the video games (and digital life) is a bit unfulfilling as the "real world" counterpart.
:)
I recently went home to my parents house, and sifted through a box of things I left when I moved to California (I only could take 4 suitcases on the plane). I found my old Final Fantasy III cartridge with 100+ hours of play time, Lv. 99 characters with every possible relic, and I found a few odds-and-ends I'd built and a few Lego spacecrafts that took me maybe 3-5 hours to build. I have to say... I felt far more nostalgic with the Lego models than my FF cartridge.
When I got home to California, I was playing Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on Virtual Console, while my wife was making wire-sculpted jewelry. I felt a little jealous because she had something she could hold (and is planning to sell), and I had bits and bytes on a console that will eventually break, end up on eBay, or in a box in the attic. My perfect game, didn't really matter much outside of myself, and "knowing" I'd won. I get that playing in the dirt, burning some energy, discovering a unique rock, catching a frog, or getting lost with green-army men, has a lasting significance and fulfillment that getting the 8th red-coin or the high score on Mario Party i++; doesn't compare. I thought about it more and realized what a feeling of accomplishment I feel when I finish a dead-tree book on military or religious history, in comparison to the 40-50 Wikipedia articles on the same topics I read every day. Shooting my Glock 23 at paper targets is a lot more fun than shooting *anything* on Call of Duty 3, or any FPS i've ever played. Watching a film (even better, attending a screening and discussion) is more fulfilling than YouTube.
Maybe I'm becoming a Neo-Luddite, but I have to say, as I get older, I find the digital-lifestyle less and less fulfilling to the point where I don't even want to go to work (as a programmer.)
I want to thank you all, who've helped convince me-- I just submitted my application for the police academy!
I used to work for a large Midwestern University, and we blocked outgoing connections to some services, such as VPNs and some proxies. The reason we did this was during the outbreak of the virus (can't remember the name), that hammered Windows on Port 135, we blocked incoming Port 135 connections at the University border. It was hypothesized that if users VPNed to other networks, they would circumvent the port block and become a vector.
I know everyone worth their weight in IT realizes that a secure border isn't enough. We had virus protection available for free for every seat on campus, however, in a huge distributed environment (where departments and colleges were "islands" in a network ocean, with their own IT staff) we couldn't gaurantee the integrity of these machines. But we were sure going to be the ones to take the hit when their "nice kid that they liked to much to see them move on after graduation system admin" didn't bother to CHECK to see if the definitions his AD-out-the-box for dummies was pushing those defs.
We also disallowed some of these services because it became harder to effectively monitor our network. When some s5r1pt k1dd13 in CIS 201 decides that he is now a UNIX god is and is going to put "Bush Sucks - $college_name is #1, fark $rival" on whitehouse.gov to impress his pink haired, pot smoking, PETA member across the hall in the dorms who only talks to him when he removes the spyware she got trying to download off KaZaa, we look like complete dickheads when the Feds show up (or the **AA) and the best we can do is say "I don't know... what goes on in them there tubes" the suits tend to get pretty agrivated.
On the other hand, even if they are SSHing into an intermediary (which we strongly encouraged over telnet), we can at least say "Well, we had an outgoing SSH connection from 4 machines on campus at that time going to these 4 addresses, do any of those ring a bell? We happened to have authenticated WPA, so we can tell you who these folks are even if the machine name is PoPPySeeD420 and done from the student union.
Privacy is wonderful, but when the shit hits the proverbal fan, IT would like to know who is pulling shenanagins on the network. The rest of the time, 99.9999% of the time, we'd rather NOT know what you're up to, and every one of us in the office (except for that one windows fanboi MS office specialist who we used to throw beanbags at) had our open source/linux/free as in beer and freedom/crypto-privacy street cred.
As a new Californian my answer is always the same when the People's Republic gets its panties in a knot over something-- Nevada.
I'd have to say... with razor thin profit margins video games have to meet, it is infinitely safer for companies to launch lines on next-gen consoles with proven game francises. I mean, no matter how bad the next Sonic re-hash is going to be, its going to outsell a cohort of obsure, but avant-garde games whose developers' venture capitalists might already be wary of the business model the industry is following. Its easier (and safer) to bastardize previous works for a C-/D+ than risk "original thought." But with that said... it disappoints me that there is no real venue for low budget/indie games on consoles like MP3 and FOSS has given underdogs a fighting (and sometimes winning) chance despite the odds.
I think avoiding "pink boxes" is going to get your sexuality called into question more than owning a Wii. ;)
Just as an FYI, here in Ohio (as it was explained to me by my HR contact), it is illegal to profit from State owned (e.g. public university) resources such as IT equipment, vehicle, telephone, e-mail box, etc. (ORC 102.04) For example, forwaring "you@yourbiz.com" to the University Central Mail system and making personal business transactions, is (at the opinion of the University) a violation of (ORC 102.02) If what you are doing is of "academic or not-for-profit" interest, it's up to the IT folks/university lawyers what they construe as "within the academic mission of the university." The problem comes when your friend of a friend's boss asks if you'll host his stuff for $juicy_sum_of_money, and you risk it or need to get a 3rd party host if you want to get his business anyway,. You also have to worry about hosting content for a social/political group whom the university (or mid-tier sysadmin) doesn't want on the subnet, you're in a real pickle.