Dev Imperium

George R. R. Martin’s recent post Grey Days on his Not A Blog blog, is setting off alarm bells. What does this remind me of: author of an epic fantasy series with thread control issues, about 60 years old, and “sick” — Eeeek.  A Song of Fire and Ice has been a wonderfully unique addition to a genre that has gotten a bit stale — it needs to be completed…

Fortunately I’m still employed, but three companies that employ friends and family laid off staff last week.  Zymogenetics cut 52 jobs, including my Mom’s — she took a voluntary early retirement package and is happy about her situation.  Wetpaint also cut a bunch of jobs, laying off a friend from high school who had escaped from Microsoft for a much better environment — which turned out to be several rounds of layoffs.  And Wizards of the Coast continues their holiday tradition of shedding talented staff via layoffs, luckily I haven’t heard of anyone that I personally know getting the axe.

This is all worrying.  My job is pretty safe until the summer and will know more after the state confronts its large budget crisis.  If the state heaps on additional cuts to the higher education budget I might be at risk.  With the Democrats firmly in control at Olympia and already talking about a tax increase there is a good chance that I’ll be fine.  The discussion of tax increases leaves me quite conflicted.  I am philosophically against such increases as very bad policy — but I have a lot to gain in the short term from tax increases.  Hopefully, I am not so selfish and self-absorbed as to compromise my evaluation of the wisdom of these tax increases…

Let’s see:

1. The movie Avatar is coming out
2. Avatar is a fantastic movie
3. If you are a geeky, smart guy, you should wait in line for days to see Avatar because hot chicks with tattoos will flash you and then desperately want to, as they put it in the show, “pitch a tent” with you.

I’m fine with product placement even if it is a bit obvious, but when the product placement is the entire ‘B’ plot of an episode you’ve basically jumped the shark.  Five seasons is more than enough (particularly for a show with no arch) — come to and end and move on.  Oh and I forgot to add that I also learned that a normal sex life involves having sex 10-15 times per week.

OK, so it was January when I last posted.  Will try to be better.

Microsoft is getting back into the Music business (after abandoning it and screwing their customers because the DRM’d music stopped working) with the launch of the MSN Mobile Music Service.  Music is a good business now so that makes some sense, though they’ll have to compete with iTunes and Amazon for paying customers.  PCPro (UK) interviewed the guy in charge.  The key features of Microsoft’s new service:

1. Tracks cost 2x as much as on iTunes and Amazon
2. Tracks are DRM’d
3. Tracks will only play on the mobile device you bought the track on

Essentially, you are being asked to pay 2x as much for the ability to play a track on a single device — one that you will likely be replacing in less than 2 years.  And I’m sure that if your phone breaks and you get a warrantied replacement, you’ll have to buy the track again.  When asked about this puzzling plan:

What is your message to consumers – why should I come to you instead of Amazon or iTunes? What do you offer that none of your competitors do?

There’s a whole bunch of people who are very loyal to MSN on the web and there’s now almost a million users of MSN Mobile every month, within the space of 12 months of it being launched.

So there’s a whole bunch of people who are using MSN on their mobile phone for a whole variety of reasons. And we’re saying to them, if you want to download music, it’s available here. If you don’t, that’s fine.

It’s a consumer’s choice and they will decide if they’re happy with the MSN Music service or if they want to go somewhere else.

So what they are offering is to milk the fools who use MSN for as much cash as they can get.  Nice…

Today Microsoft announced that they’ll be firing laying-off 1,400 employees today.  While the prevailing economic climate has a lot to do with the layoffs, launching products that don’t provide a competitive advantage but rely on customers being locked into your brand can not have helped.

Seen on Slashdot.

P.S. I still HATE Exchange.

There are fewer things more vile than the persistent accusations of Truthers that the US Government perpetrated the attacks of 9/11.  The ignorant suppositions of these fools do nothing to expose truth but just feed paranoid fantasies.  CounterKnowledge put together a list of 15 questions for Truthers, and then 5 more questions.  These “questions” are an attempt to point out the counter factual and entirely illogical basis of the Truther dementia.

(5) We are being asked by the truthers to believe that the 19 hijackers were “patsies”, or non-existent. If that was the case, and if the intention of the real plotters in the US government was to justify military interventions to overthrow hostile regimes in the Middle East, why were 15 out of the 19 ‘bogus’ Al Qaeda terrorists given Saudi nationality? The other four hijackers consisted of an Egyptian, a Lebanese and two citizens of the UAE. We are being asked to believe that the conspirators behind 9/11 decided that they would make the hijackers citizens of allies of the USA, not enemies. Why were they not given Iraqi, Iranian or Syrian identity? Why were they not given forged links with terrorist groups (such as the Abu Nidal Organisation, the PLFP-GC or Hizbollah) with closer links to Tehran, Damascus and above all Baghdad? If we are supposed to believe that the Israelis had a hand in 9/11, then why were none of the patsies Palestinians linked to Fatah or Hamas? What kind of conspirator sets up a plot to frame an innocent party without forging the evidence to implicate the latter?

(10) If the WTC towers in New York City were destroyed by controlled demolitions rigged by US government agencies, then why were the fake terrorist attacks used to cover up these controlled demolitions so insanely convoluted? Why concoct a scenario involving the hijacking of planes which are then crashed into tower blocks (involving complicated planning involving remote controlled flights timed with explosives detonated in the towers, which allow plenty of opportunities for gliches and technical errors)? Why not use a more simple means, such as a truck bomb?

This isn’t really the official scientific list of the Top 10 Signs of Evolution in Man, but it has some very cool points.

#6) The plantaris muscle is used by animals in gripping and manipulating objects with their feet – something you see with apes who seem to be able to use their feet as well as their hands. Humans have this muscle as well, but it is now so underdeveloped that it is often taken out by doctors when they need tissue for reconstruction in other parts of the body. The muscle is so unimportant to the human body that 9% of humans are now born without it.

Reality is often weirder than fiction…

I have long despised Santayana’s advise: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, because while there may be some superficial truth to the statement it is usually invoked by one drawing a parallel to between a historial incident and a current event despite being ignorant of the full context of both.  Without understanding the facets of a historical event you can not understand the true reasons for success or failure, nor can you apply leasons learned to a current event if you do not have a fair understanding of its facets.  In essence: Context Matters.

So to aide the few out there that read this, I will point you to David Bernstein’s post on the USSR’s malignant role in the Middle East.  There is no grand wisdom or lesson to be applied directly to the current battles in Gaza — just an understanding of one of the key facets of the conflicts in the Middle East

I’ve had a chance to use the current demo version of the D&DI Character Builder (which is limited to only the first three levels), and it is a decent tool for making the choices necessary to create a character. The program filters out options that you don’t have the prerequisites for thus making choices easier, but this will become more difficult as more races, classes, powers, feats, and equipment becomes available. So it would be very helpful if there was an additional way to filter down the presented options. But that isn’t my main issue with the app — it is the output.

In Digital Insider (#18), Bill Slavicsek includes the first page of the character sheet and one page of power cards for a level 30 ranger. And while the demonstration that the app goes that high is nice the pages clearly show that the Character Builder does not generate useful data.

1) The Feats, Race Features, and Class Features sections:

The first failure here is that Wizards is trying to combine two sets of useful data resulting in a useless blob:

1. List of all the character’s abilities and selections
2. Quick reference summary of available abilities or bonues

When constructing a character or referencing the build it is always useful to have a list of all the feats (or any other selections) made for the character, but during play this information can be largely useless.  For example, under class features Prime Shot is listed and under Feats Improved Prime Shot is listed — but when in combat all I care about is that I have a +2 bonus to hit with ranged attacks if no ally is closer to the target.  The result is that even with ~30% of the page devoted to these sections, there is still not enough space to include the full list of feats and features and the necessary descriptive text to understand what the feat or feature provides.

Second, this information is also frequently a duplicate of data stored elsewhere on the first page of the character sheet: the bonuses for Defensive Mobility and Combat Anticipation are in the Defenses section, Sneak of Shadows is reflected in the Skills Section (training in Thievery) and should create an additional power card, the bonuses for Improved Initiative and Skill Focus (Perception) are included in the Initiative and Skills sections.  Space on the first page is very precious and should not be wasted on unnecessary duplication.

Third, the data is not categorized in a way that makes it useful during play.  During play grouping abilities by origin is not useful.  This requires me to look in several locations on the character sheet to find a particular ability which at high level might be modified by data that has another origin.  As in the example above, Prime Shot and Improved Prime Shot are listed in two different sections of the page instead of being grouped together or, preferably, combined into one line item.  Wizards seems to partially recognize this, because as I point out above much of the information is duplicated in domain specific sections, but they failed to follow through.

2) Wasting space with Addition

The current character sheet is the same sheet that was designed to be filled out by hand, thus it has boxes to add the expected bonuses for a particular score to ease computation.  But for a computer generated character sheet this becomes wasted space. The skills section takes up about 1/6th of the first page of the character sheet but it could easily be reduced by half with the removal of the unnecessary computation space.

I do appreciate being able to see where a particular score comes from (such as a +29 to Acrobatics), but that can be accomplished by a separate printed page that can be carried with your character sheet and referenced as needed.  This reference page would also be able to have significantly more space to explain all of the applicable bonuses and their origin.

3) Healing Section is too small

In 4E encounters take longer, which results in more damage taken and healed during combat.  This means that it is necessary to have a large box for tracking the character’s current hit points.  The box on the WotC Character Sheet is very small, which requires that the player write very small or make frequent use of an eraser — both are suboptimal solutions.  Several classes also make extensive use of temporary hit points (Helllock, Barbarian, Battlerager Figher) and will need significantly more space than is provided.

Even at the start of the Heroic tier of play, characters will encounter numerous temporary conditions (buffs and debuffs) with short durations.  The single Current Conditions and Effects line isn’t even close to be able to track your buffs let alone your debuffs — which means that the DM has to keep track of the debuffs and several of the buffs can fall through the cracks unless someone remembers.  By providing a large space with room for info on a condition and its duration players are better armed to track their own state.

4) Conditional & Additional Effects

On each attack power card there is an Additional Effects section that includes some optional or conditional bonuses/effects that could be applicable to the power.  Unfortnately this space is quite small.  There is room for three short lines of text, which is sufficient for the first few levels of play, but it will quickly become inadequate.  This 30th level ranger has 10 feats/features that provide conditional bonuses or optional effects (3 attack bonuses and 7 damage bonuses).  There is no way to know about most of them from the tiny provided space, and as I pointed out in my first point above, the character sheet doesn’t display that information either.

It is far more efficient to have your conditionals stored in a single easily referenced location rather than trying to repeatedly cram them onto each power card.

5) The Senses Section

Wow this has to be one of the most pointless sections of the character sheet.  Even the most math-illiterate newbie can add 10 to get the passive senses score — and more importantly this is info that the DM should have on hand without having to ask the characters for their score.  It just needs to be cut.

Doing it right

Soon I’ll follow up with a post showing my current character sheet and how I resolve these issues.

From Reason:

This Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will host a reenactment organized by the Supreme Court Historical Society of the 1908 case Muller v. Oregon, a landmark Progressive Era decision where the Court unanimously upheld Oregon’s law limiting female laundry employees from working more than 10 hours a day.

This “progressive” victory was made on the following basis:

The Brandeis Brief made much the same point, claiming that since women were responsible for bearing future generations, their bodies were in some sense collective property. “The overwork of future mothers,” Brandeis wrote, “directly attacks the welfare of the nation.”…

Writing for the majority in Muller, Justice David Brewer followed Brandeis’ lead. “As healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring,” Brewer wrote, “the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.”

Although shocking this isn’t much different from other oppressive views imposed on us be government for our own good: smoking bans, fatty food bans, campaign finance reform, gun bans, etc. All are efforts, largely by “progressives”, to sacrifice our freedom for the good of the state.

Meet the new tyrant, same as the old tyrant.