I haven't disappeared.

It has been busy at work, but then again it always seems like that.

I have been working on a program (non-game) that I originally thought of two years ago.

Why the long break on the program? At the time I felt that it wouldn’t be accepted even if it was finished (plus I was told it was being worked on), so I burned what I had done to a CD and set it aside.

So why start again? Because it is two years later and same problem is still there and as far as I can tell there has been little progress on addressing the problem much. At this point I’m working to get a simple version working and present it to the “right” people (or just put it in front of a lot of people until I find the right one). If nothing else it is improving my programming skills, I seem to spend more time reading about design and about programming, then I actually spend programming. Also it probably earn me a few brownie points for trying to solve the problem, even if the program I come up with isn’t adopted.

I have to admit that I’m happy that I kept the old code (even as poorly written as it is), because I’m using a free library as part of the program and it saved me from having to re-figure how to use it purely off the manual pages (which aren’t bad in documentation terms, but they lack examples).

I have gotten the basics all pretty much in place and with a much cleaner programming style. Now I have the hard part of me, making it do what I want it to do. ;)

Why the vagueness on what the program will do?
There are a few reasons:
    First: I really don’t want talk in to much detail about work here. *See earlier posts*
    Second: If the program is adopted, it would leave a trail here.
    Third: I don’t want someone taking my work and beating me to it.
    Fourth: If I can’t do it and scrap the whole thing, no one will know I was working on it in the first place. ;)

When I open my mouth, I manage to insert my foot.

A reposting of comment that I made at Terra Nova

Given Al-Qaeda's very nature/principal of being against western influences on the Islamic religion/nations/culture. I find it hard to believe that they would use Second Life, which its core embraces the counter culture. And only goes to show how unknowledgeable people are of the beliefs that these people are willing to kill and die for. We want/need to demonism these people in order to make sense of it, believing that they will do anything to meet their goals, while forgetting that those goals are based on extreme fundamental beliefs. That is not say it isn’t possible that they would use it to hide their activity, just highly unlikely.

As suggested by others, there are more secure ways to communicate the same types of information (private server in friendly/weakly policed country). Also as Dr. Cat said "Any transportation or communication technology is potentially usefully..." and should be part of the discussion "the use of the internet" for terrorism.
As to the money laundering, this could be said about many games. While it might have been slowed by the changes in eBay policies, there would be nothing to stop me from buying X amount of gold in UO/WoW/EQ/etc and giving it to another who then resell it for cash to be used for terrorist activities.

Focusing the spotlight on Second Life as the next hotbed of terrorist activity is short sighted and a case of using the current media/public scapegoat.

I'm not a fan of Second Life, but the original subject matter just short sighed.

Who am I?

Who am I? I couldn't resist after seeing Damion's post.


You are The Joker

The Joker 45% Dr. Doom 42% Two-Face 41% Riddler 40% Magneto 33% Mr. Freeze 32% Venom 31% Dark Phoenix 31% Green Goblin 29% Lex Luthor 27% Apocalypse 27% Juggernaut 25% Mystique 25% Catwoman 18% Poison Ivy 13% Kingpin 13%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

I would like to thank....

I would like to thank the Acad.... err Nerfbat for this award, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in blog land every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talk about..... *crumbling paper*. That’s the last time a ask Clooney to write an acceptance speech for me. ;)

It would be easy for me to jump on the band wagon of beating up Second Life, I feel that is no need for me to jump into that ring. There are plenty of others more than willing and able to do that. As I said on Raph’s blog, “In theory Second Life is great, but in practice it is …. well…. I don’t know.”

I want to look at subjects like these (and others):
Cruise said:

The more I see suggestions like this, the more I move towards the “current MMO's are glorified chat rooms for single player content” camp - while they appear massively multiplayer at first, in comparison to what they /could/ be, they fall well short.

and a deeper look at Mike Rozak’s “Interactive fiction equation” (once I have been able to completely digest it).

So I'll close with displaying my award.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas.

Has it been that long?

I always seem surprised at the amount of time that passes between posts (could be in part due to more poor sense of time passage).

To a certain degree I have been trying to find my inspiration/motivation again and dealing with work.

I will end this post with pointing out this post by Scott Jennings: “I Paid For This Chat Channel!” Which closes with this which blunt, but so true.

Because I’ll just come out and say it - over-regulation can very easily choke the MMO industry in its crib. No company is going to operate an entertainment business with anything close to the liabilities being bandied around. It simply will cost too much. No sane MMO publisher will fund a project that requires more lawyers than world builders. Thus, no MMOs, as we currently know them, will be published.

And that will definitely settle the argument.