MUCKing about.

I started a new medication a while ago, and for whatever reason, since I started taking it I have felt especially... playful. So I started hanging out on internet chatrooms with furries a lot role-playing involving some fairly extreme fetishes. Sometimes I fear I man be way to close to being a furry myself. Though I am not exclusively attracted to anthropomorphic animals, it is among the things I am attracted by (which to be fair, is nearly everything), and it is nice to have a group with so many... open-minded members.

It was when I was exploring this little dark underbelly of internet culture, that I was alerted to Voregotten Realm. Voregotten Realm is a MUCKwhich is a particular kind of text-based virtual world. And it's primarily focused on vore. What is vore you might ask? Basically eating people. Though there is a bit more to it then that. Although I am not really a fan of vore (Though I am a fan of unbirthing, which is a type of vore), there is a lot of other sexual stuff going on there too.

But what has occupied most of my time I think, is the building and scripting. Simply put, you can basically make anything you want. In some ways it reminds me of a text-based Second Life (which I already talked about). I have gotten quite good at the lisp-like MPI scripting that it uses, though I haven't touched the more advanced MUF scripting stuff.

Honestly Voregotten Realm's biggest problem is there is just not enough people on. Which is a shame because it has a lot of neat features. One of the most interesting I think are the "vp" and "wixxx" commands that basically let a player tell people what kinks they are into and what they are not. It also has a lot of interesting features I like. I also like the "bellyroom" system it uses to define what happens when you swallow someone, and works with... multible orifices. It also supports full ansi color on everything. I did try checking out another MUCK with more people called Tapestries (though I was slightly miffed that you cannot play a human, and I didn't really want to be a furry all the time, so I became a slime creature) but it isn't anywhere near as advanced, and most of my scripting I did broke. It's still pretty fun sometimes for just role-playing.

I think another problem though is MUCKs aren't so much games as scripted chatrooms. And while I do like the freedom of play compared to MUDs, it also leaves a bit less to do, especially if no one is on or you can't find anyone to roleplay with. Honestly I am tempted to script an optional combat system (or make one with the bellyroom system) just to have a bit more game that people can play if they want to. It seems more reasonable to have a creative role-playing with optional gaming extras then the reverse.

Internet Art is Deviant

The other day I uploaded a new picture to my deviantart account which is in of it's self is a rare enough occurrence and has a long enough of a rambling nonsensical description that it might be worth a blog post of it's own (you might be interested in the picture or description if your interested in my silly romhack). In fact I am not sure how many people even know or remember I have a deviantart account. It's certainly not something I pay a lot of attention too. In fact, I mostly only got it to be able to view mature images and decided to upload a few of the old things I had laying around there.

Part of the reason for my lack of attention is because I have long ago given up on ever being an artist, since the only art I seem to be capable of making is either simple pixel art or stuff about on par with the pictographs I use on this blog (minus the ones that are blatantly traced). Most of the work I have in my deviantart account is either collage work or pixel art (and the new picture I put up counts as both), and none of it is very engaging I think. But another big part is because I am very apathetic about sites like deviantart in general and the type of art usually hosted on them.

Now I make no secret of the fact that I like porn, mainly hentai, cartoon, and furry smut, all of which is drawn art rather then actual live action porn. But Outside of x-rated art though I find I very rarely take a interest in much art online. But there is another side to it too. I quite like art used in comics, videos, games, and such, x-rated or not (but it's still better as smut, of course). Really it's only static images that usually fail to hold my interests without smut.

I think the thing is, when a artist draws fanart, or even original art, of random characters who sit there and look pretty, it seems to lack any real context or point. It just becomes a image. It doesn't move me, it doesn't inspire me, it's just there. There are exceptions to this of course, especially for interesting landscapes or interesting character design, but mostly it seems to run a little flat. Smut of course gives me a reason to care for more then the image it's self, but it has to be real hardcore stuff. Simply having a pretty girl doesn't do much for me, and sexy pinup poses rarely work either. Sometimes nudity isn't even enough. I guess I have just been exposed to so much really smutty stuff that it takes more to really wind me up.

Having a story or a game to go along with the art does the same for the mind as smut does for the body. It gives me a reason to really care more then just pretty pictures. And it works in reverse too, in that the art that goes along with the story or game gives the story or game more style and helps craft the world with the art. In fact, music acts much the same way in this regard. I am not quite as interested in music when it's just music, but when the music is put in to enhance a story or a game, it becomes a lot more powerful (but music and sex results in too much bad techno). But I suppose a lot of the time, at least with art, there is usually a story there I don't know about. A lot of original characters made by online artists seem to have roots in roleplaying chats or in progress works of fiction (in fact so does Jiggles, on both counts), and a lot of fan works seem to focus on exploring different aspects or ideas not seen in the original work (homestuck fan works tend to do a great job at that sometimes).

But as I said, I am not an artist, I do not know the mediums and techniques, and I tend not to pay that much attention to style or ability aside from a vague sense of aesthetics and some basic skill. I probably just don't appreciate all of the details that people tend to obsess over in art. I like well done art better then sloppy and badly proportioned art, but I can't say that's something I look for so much as something I notice when done wrong.

Social Noise Reduction

There is a particularly common criticism of today's society I hear a lot. I am not sure what the term for it is, but I think it is a core part of the larger ideas of Postmodernism and Cyberpunk. The criticism is that nowadays, thanks mostly to the internet and mass media, people are bombarded with so many opinions, alleged facts, works of fiction, ideas, and memes, that people have become either terminally unable to separate the "signal" from the "noise" in the information we process, and/or are incressingly distracted by the trivial.

And yeah, I can see that. But before we go around claiming Ludd was right and throwing out all our communication technology, maybe we should consider that maybe PEOPLE are the problem, not the information. First of all, I think the problem with people being unable to tell the difference between fact and fiction is simply that most people don't have the critical thinking skills needed to parse information in an optimal way. What's more, most people don't have a broad enough perspective to realize that sometimes it doesn't even matter. People are often more interested in picking a side and being right then anything else. Sometimes, especially with controversial or heavily contested subjects, you just have to admit that some things may or may not be true. This doesn't mean you can't draw conclusions, you just need to think about logic in a different way.

As for people being distracted by the trivial, I actually take it as a sign that what a lot of people say is important, isn't really that important to a lot of people. That doesn't mean it isn't important in the grand scheme of things, but people so rarely look or care about the the grand scheme of things. I think, for example, kids getting distracted from school by video games is not a problem with the games. It's a problem with the school or maybe the parents. People shutting themselves in and playing MMORPGs all day is not a problem with the MMORPG. It's a problem with our society. As for the people who get distracted themselves, it's hard for me to make an argument that they are at fault if they honestly don't care. I mean, yeah, they are doing it to themselves but that is a choice. They pay the consequences for that choice. Though I may be bias because that is more or less what I am doing, allowing myself to get distracted fully understanding that there is a price to pay. Some times it's worth it, sometimes it's not.

I feel personally, like I have spent the last ten or so years of my life mostly just gathering information and working it out in my head. Trying to build a sort of cathedral of images and thoughts in a manner similar to how Carl Jung worked out his issues by writing his Red Book. I have been interested in that sort of thing for a while, probably ever since I was a kid and saw parts of The Wall, and perhaps even before that with my childhood games of imagination.

But, Carl Jung stressed the need to write these things down, so that they become contained and objectified, and I have done very little in the way of actual writing and art. I have a powerful urge to do so, which is part of what my hack was intended to do actually. To give my ideas and outlet and to make them more 'real' so to speak. I suppose in the back of my mind, there is a third criticism of today's society that saps me of the motivation to do much work on it. And that criticism is that there is so much of that kind of stuff out there. Stuff that both intentionally and unintentionally explores these themes I want to explore. And while they might not do it in the same way, they cover a lot of the same ground.

Lately I have been reading a lot of random webcomics and watching videos of a lot of random games. And it gets to the point where there are just so many works of fiction with so many themes and ideas, that even if a few of them still make me take notice of something or reevaluate my ideas slightly, I don't really think there is much room for me. Which is a stupid way of looking at it really. I talk all the time about being the butterfly that starts the storm, of how I would be happy if my ideas were remembered even if I were not. After all, I am sitting here writing this in a blog that I am not sure anyone actually takes the time to read. And maybe this blog is like my red book. Maybe blogging in general will help people deal with there problems just knowing, even if it is never read, that it is out there somewhere for people to randomly find.

I can always hope, and I guess hope is enough to live on.

It Just Dosn't Ad Up

I was reading an old article criticizing Google's advertisement service, and while I think a lot of the criticism is somewhat valid, it strikes me as sort of like a business man getting money out of an idiot because the idiot was to spaced out to actually pay attention to what they were doing. I mean yes, it might be sort of exploitive, but I often feel like smacking the idiot almost as hard as I do the business man. But really, it's not surprising to me in the least, because as far as I am concerned, advertisement in general is more or less a scam. Especially on the Internet.

I mean, yeah, I can understand the basic idea (even if I don't like it), street vendors calling out in a crowded marketplace, shops putting up some posters on some walls, events being posted on a bulletin board for people to see, but any more then that gets sort of iffy. The problem sort of started with television and radio advertisements, which interrupts the programing every now and then to have some ad play. Despite it being a bit disruptive, I can understand why it happens. For television and radio, there is no real "product" to sell to customers, so they make money by letting advertisers run ads from time to time. But this sets up a strange triangle of relations between the broadcasters, the advertisers, and the customers which can end up doing more harm then good at times.

In general, the problem often becomes a mutual animosity or lack of respect because each of the players in the game have very different and mutually exclusive aims. Customers want content, and are generally not interested in sitting through advertisements to get it. Advertisers of course, want to convince customers to go out and buy stuff and are not interested in the content or the customer's wants beyond what it takes to get them to buy stuff. Broadcasters generally want to sell advertisement time, and often are only are interested in the content as a way to get customers to watch the ads, and don't care if the advertisers actually sell anything.

What all this leads too, I think, is an environment where the kind of more disruptive and exploitive advertisement practices thrive. If a vendor is being too disruptive or a business is putting posters or notices in the wrong place, customers are free to confront them in person or call the authorities. But in an environment where the very medium is owned by someone who uses it to sell advertisement time, advertisers are free to do almost whatever they want to get people's attention. They can funnel more and more money into something and make bigger, longer and more disruptive advertisements without regard for the customer's wishes.

But also, advertisers themselves are also a victim in a lot of cases. Street vendors can see face to face the kind of reaction they are getting, and a poster or notice can be placed in a position most likely to be looked at by someone who is already interested in finding the business it's advertising (though billboards and such are much more like tv/radio ads in this regard). But an advertisement that is just put out there randomly even if it's in a time slot most likely to be seen by it's target audience, has little guarantee that anyone who sees it will pay any attention or be interested. Often times it can just waste money.

But all of this is nothing compared to the sometimes downright abusive tactics in internet advertisements. Really for all that article above disses on Google, it might be one of the more honest and safe ad providers (I also think Project Wonderful is fairly honest and safe, or at least seems so, but I would rather they do everything via server-side scripts and not javascript). Part of this is because it's just so unregulated and doesn't have any sort of barrier to anyone doing what they want with it, and part of it is that there is too much information being gathered about people who browse it, but I think it's mostly just a lack of responsibility on everyone's side.

But it's more complex then that. With tv and radio, broadcasters and content providers are usually more or less identical. The broadcasters don't necessarily create the content, but they fund it's creation or buy the rights to show it (though I am not a fan of copyright, but that's a discussion for another day). Sure, often there can be a lot of strife between broadcasters and content providers on TV and radio, but for the most part they act as the same group. On the internet, almost anyone can create content, but not everyone can host it (or at least, host it reliably, quickly, or easily enough to be worth it for most people), and the people who can sell content creators space for hosting. So now, you have four groups of people and not three, each also with often mutually exclusive goals. The rift between web hosts and content providers is much deeper. They are no longer generally in the same group and this can come with all sorts of complications.

Not only are there more groups, the role of the groups is much less solid. Content providers often are also advertisers, and sometimes web hosts are as well, the people who browse the web can become content providers easily even if it's just in the forms of comments or forum posts. One particular absurdity I have noticed is that often content providers will advertise to get more hits to make more money with their advertisements to pay for hosting that charges for the extra bandwidth they use for the extra hits, and a number of the ads they use are for other content providers who are doing the same thing. It makes me wonder how such a system could ever work, but most of the sites that do that are just making enough anyway, even if they have to resort to donation as well.

And really, this would be all fine and good to the browsers to just have a banner or something, if it didn't end up attracting an even worse escalation of disruptive advertisements that used flash and javascript to be as disruptive as possible, and if it people with more ethical flexibility didn't decide to use well-meaning technical tricks to gather as much information as possible from the person browsing, or hackers using bugs and security holes on unwitting victims, or people taking advantage of stupid people by offering things through advertisements and directing them to malware or gathering their personal information, or any of the million other problems with internet advertisements.

Luckily, unlike TV where the best you can do usually is hit the mute button (or pay more for premium cable channels), there are programs to block ads, like this firefox plugin. The sad thing is, so many content providers only means of support is advertisements, although a good number of them do collect donations too. But it's kind of hard for me to feel bad for a lot of them to be honest, because again, I often feel like smacking the idiot almost as hard as I do the business man. I know most of these content providers have very little choice, but I can't help but feel that too many content providers don't think about what advertisements or advertising services they have. It's too often lately that sites just use advertisement servers they have no control over and that may do any number of underhanded things, or may allow the people who advertise to do underhanded things. I don't trust internet advertisements anymore. It used to be you could ignore them. Not anymore. Even Project Wonderful, which generally seems safe, uses javascript, and javascript and flash in ads is one of the main reason why they are allowed to abuse a lot of security holes (I also use the noscript plugin btw). So no. Of the sites I frequent, I made an exception for only one, and only because I am so heavily involved in the community.

And I feel bad, I really do, for all the owners of all the pages out there that I look at that rely on advertisements. But the fact is, it's an abusive relationship on all sides. I understand why it's necessary, but every once and a while, someone is going to walk away with a black eye, and it isn't going to be me. If you take that to mean I don't love you enough, I am sorry you feel that way.

Sex mess

I stumbled across this video presentation about a study about sexual attraction on the Internet which I found extremely interesting. If partly because it amused me that they found that she-male porn is outrageously popular with strait men. Men like dick apparently. IT'S SCIENCE!

Over all though I have some objections to some of the conclusions they reach. Not necessarily because I doubt the results, because it's pretty much mostly stuff I already knew just from poking around in the dark corners of the Internet, or most of the core theory. It just seems to me that they tend to segregate people, though I am sure that's not the intent.

It sort of reminds me of a forum discussion about gay tolerance that I got involved in arguing. primarily for the sake of my strong belief in free will, that the argument that people are born "gay" is wrong and ultimately just hurts the cause of gay rights activists.

I guess it's kind of a different topic, but I sort of generally feel the kind of clinical, detached, social or evolution based explanations for sexual attraction and relationships ultimately do nothing but encourage people to think of it only in narrow inflexible ways. It's like relationships as described by stand up comics and Ladder Theory are the only valid kinds, and it's impossible for men and woman to ever understand each other.

I once made a thread on the Homestuck fourms as a sort of rebuttal to the comic's own troll relationship system which every one says is much more confusing and complex then human relationships. And really I missed some stuff (like pet/human relationships) and it was probably not really very helpful, but my point was that you can't really divide relationships so evenly into strict categories, only mix and match descriptors to get a good approximation. I feel the same way about sexual attraction.

To say for example, guys like breasts, butt, dick, and feet, I think is misleading. Having a cue-based theory is a valid one, but I think it has to be a much more subjective set of cues for each person. Now I will admit, I like all four of those things, but I also like a lot of the more "female" cues, like confidence and competence, if not as much. And I am sure they are not saying everyone is the same, it just became a sort of self-enforcing idea when you say stuff like "this is what men like, this is what woman like". It's a standard that people live to because that's what people say is 'normal'.

And I suppose it again, for me, comes down to free will. I guess being free to be attracted to what you choose to be attracted to is a kind of an odd idea given that choice and attraction are on totally different levels, but I firmly believe people learn fetishes after being exposed to them, and people learn different ideas of attractiveness too. I guess that's the problem of doing a sexual study on Internet porn in the first place, because you can't tell if a fetish reflects an acquired taste or an intrinsic one.

I think with me most everything has been the former. I think my whole experience started with Ranma ½ which got me into anime, which got me into hentai, which got me into furry crap, which got me into all sorts of weird stuff. I mean if I had not heard of hentai, and not had this idea that that's what male porn was, I might be into fanfiction, and hear about shipping and do all sorts of that kind of crap. I donno. I just don't think my maleness really had as much to do with what I like as the cultural environment and expectations. I don't know.

I am a firm believer though, that men and woman are fundamentally the same, and the pressure of society as well as admiringly a few hormones decide their role more then anything else. Or at least I think people should look at it that way. The more you try to convince people men and women or straits and gays, or anyone and anyone are different, the more I think they will be different. And maybe that's not how life works, but I rather people choose to be who they are then just being born that way.

Div-ided Over Tables

A debate has been raging for years and years on the web, the great tables vs divs debate. The idea is tables are meant for "tabular data", you know like spread sheets, and shouldn't be used for layouts. That's all well and good, but what it's meant for and what it does are two different things. It makes grids. Grids can be helpful for layouts. Hence using tables for layouts seems fine to me. When they are used right. This layout on my blog here for example, really would probably work better and be less hacky with a table. Just one. But then again with a layout like this it doesn't make that much of a difference.

And I know some people might bring up how screen reader software treats tables and blah blah. Personally I don't see what the difference is. Without the visual layout information it's all just blocks of text anyway. I feel sorry for blind for all the stuff they miss out on, but I really cannot imagine the difference, as long as it's done in a reasonable way.

But I think this whole debate is just a symptom of a more pressing problem, that webpages have become to reliant on complicated markup and stupid hacks. Or maybe that was always the problem since someone decided that making HTML as vague as possible about everything. Honestly it took me ages to get used to using divs and CSS. Mostly because I am always intentionally like 5 years behind. I hardly ever use CSS3 because it's just not supported enough. JavaScript I got used to, but lately I have been browsing with it off because more and more security problems are reported with it, and god does it annoy me how over used it is. For lulz I put a message in this blog when it's turned off the other day.

Here is an experiment for you. Using firefox? Go to the "View" menu. Go to "Page Style". Select "No Style". Notice a problem?

Entertainment Tomorrow

I am sure anyone who bothers to read this blog has noticed I fixate mostly on games, and occasionally other forms of entertainment. A lot of my political views and such are also related to things like copyright and consumerism. So I want to take this time to sit down and share some of my views on the subject:

Why entertainment is important:

Entertainment in some form or another has been a important part of human civilization for almost as log as it existed. People may not thing the entertainment industry is a big deal, but if you think about how much time and money is spent by people on entertainment, and how passionately people follow this stuff, you may change your mind. Who tend to be the famous celebrities that most people recognize? Actors, musicians, sports athletes, writers, etc. All entertainers in some form. Sure powerful leaders may have the same fame, and a handful of inventors and scientists, but there are still tons of people who don't do much but entertain.

Along with that, I feel it's very possible that as science and progress grew and religion seemed more and more silly by a lot of people, fiction started to replace myth, and fandom started to replace old religious practices. Where before myths of spirits and gods motivated people to do strange rituals in the woods by the full moon, now fans start elaborate little cults to worship their favorite show, with rituals such as conventions and dressing yup as there favorite character. I am sure a whole essay can and has been written on that subject, and I probably mentioned it before, so I will say no more, except that entertainment is no longer entertainment to most people.

The difference between entertainment and art:

Entertainment by it's self doesn't have a much grander goal then giving a person a way of occupying time without doing actual work. And in fact the reason entertainment even exists is because when building early civilization mankind suddenly started to need to work less and less, and had more free time for which to do things. Entertainment is often treated as an alternative to work, but that's not it's function.

I have said before that "art is about invoking an experience or idea though different mediums. It is an act of reflection of experience or ideas". Perhaps it would be better to narrow that definition a bit, at least in this case. Art also probably was mostly invented to fill a gap, and that gap was meaning. At the same time entertainment started to emerge, art did to. This time the question was not so much "what should I do with my time" as it was "what does what I do what my time mean". By coming up with ideas of beauty and other things, and trying to express those ideas some way, art attempts to come up with a meaning that people can connect to, a drive to do things. I could go on and speculate that science, religion, philosophy, and other things are all also related to this revolution of free time, but thats besides the point.

The point is, entertainment and art are not the same thing yes, but they are deeply connected in a very fundamental way and come from the same root source, that human civilization has long since stopped being driven simply by survival. Thats simply not enough for us anymore.

Why entertainment might not be enough either:

Entertainment is a necessary thing to have of course. Even pets to be taken care of need more then just food, water, and a place to poo. Playing is an important part of a pets life. However few I think would dispute that humans can't be satisfied with such a simple life. Humans need meaning. Humans need art. Or do they? How much on TV and in films can you truly say give you a concept of meaning? Probably more then you might think, but there is a lot of "mindless entertainment" out there that is little more then the equivalent of jigging keys at a baby. Not that that is bad really, it just serves a different function.

Werther or not humans need art or entertainment, probably just depends on the person. If a person has no personal need for meaning, ether because they already came up with a meaning for what they do, or if they simply aren't introspective enough to care, art becomes mostly pointless. We could go into a whole discussion on if people should strive to find meaning or not, but that's not really relevant right now, even though in general, I would say yes.

But even discounting art, the same entertainment can get old and stale. Entertainment is constantly being driven by a need for more. More movies, more music, more games, more books, more everything. And most of it is pretty bad, but it's still worth it to people to do more. But just more of the same isn't enough for people I think, we also want something new, something to innovate and to inspire. If we didn't we would just be satisfied playing pretend with rocks like a small child.

Why the way we entertain ourselves should change:

The thing is, something new and innovative is exactly what the entertainment industry bad at, and they seem to often be even worse at doing art at times. The industry is run in the name of profit not in the name of entertainment or art. It likes safe investments, predictable trends, sequels, genres, and doesn't really care about how good the product is as long as it sells well, and will often meddle in it's own product to get a few extra sales.

Furthermore, entertainment has become way too expensive and addicting. We no longer seem to use it to enrich our lives, but instead let it control our lives. I do think fiction of various forms such as games and films are valuable besides their entertainment value, for artistic merit, or for the spread of cultural memes, but I don't think all our time and money should be spent on them either.

The real problem I guess, is that we live in a culture where entertainment is a big and binding thing, something people flock to in droves and use to define who they are as much as their political or religious beliefs. And the industry pumps more and more money into bigger and bigger things, without really delivering much substance or innovation. Entertainment is to most people no longer something people can do on their own within a reasonable budget.

Things that may help:

First, one thing that is happening already is a number of people are moving away from big budget industry entertainment. People in the "indie" crowd for various media are growing stronger, and entertaining things can be found online for free which are growing in popularity. The internet is full of ways to entertain yourself for nothing or almost nothing. Cell phones often come with free or low cost games, music and other options. The biggest problem is that as these alternate entertainment venues become more popular, the industry will try to get in on it. This has already started to happen on the internet as more and more things become commercial or copied by bigger budget cooperations. Even free ones are often plagued with advertisement and other meddling. In the end, unless we don't stop this trend, we will have changed the medium but not the problem.

There is one way we can attack the industry at it's core, and that is by reforming (or even ignoring) copyright laws. Copyright laws were created to give people an incentive to innovate by guaranteeing a brief time where you could produce the work without competitors. The problem is, that brief time was extended again and again and is used more as a way of controlling something and forcing others to do things the way you want to do it then protecting innovation. If copyright was extremely reduced or demolished, the industry would no longer have an excuse to profit on entertainment as much. Would this mean that no entertainment would be created? No not at all. There are plenty of people who are still willing to create, and plenty of people still willing to donate to have things made. It would simply mean the end of the massive bloated monster that todays entertainment has become.

But really, when it comes right down to it, people don't need to change or break any laws, all they need to do is become more proactive and more choosy about how they entertain yourself. Do you really need to see that new blockbuster movie, get that new album, or play that new game? Can't you write or draw or something? Can't you browse the internet for free things to do? Can't you try dreaming up something, or going somewhere with friends? And I am not saying never spend money or anything either, I am just saying, let's choose how we entertain ourselves more carefully.

Really I guess most people are totally content with the way things are now, but this is just how I feel about it.

Net Chaotic Neutrality

I was watching C-span again, and I saw a FCC debate about "Net Neutrality". I really hate the Net Neutrality debate, because it's bullshit. 100% bullshit.

The basic debate is that someone got the idea that ISPs could boost some sites or services over others. That caused everyone to freak out and scream about censorship and the end of the Internet. Okay it's a tad more complex then that, but that's the basic idea.

There are two main reasons why the whole argument is bullshit:
1. If a ISP does something to block or slow down sites in ways that consumers don't like, those consumers are more then free to choose another ISP.
2. People WILL find a way around any sort of block or slowdown. Any attempt to make some programs work faster will be emulated with other programs. Hackers will always find a way to bypass anything thrown at them.
3. People on the internet do not play by the rules. Attempt to control them and they will destroy you. Period. You really thing any company will survive 4chan's rage when they are put on a shit list?

In short, Net Neutrality is bullshit because the net is already neutral. In fact it's chaotic neutral. Laws and rules mean nothing to the internet, nor does money or social status. The internet will not die unless it's users abandon it.

Exploring the Metaverse

Virtual Reality is one of those things people used to think was cool, but now is almost universally acknowledged as a stupid idea. Even putting aside the silly goggles and huge gyroscope equipment made to make you feel in the game, which isn't necessary anyway because, as anyone who plays games seriously will tell you, it's easy to get caught up in the experience on your own (I have felt the heat of Norfair plenty of times without fancy neural interfaces). Despite (or maybe even because of) all the silly Hollywood crap where people become trapped in some virtual reality, the interest in that kind of thing is rapidly draining away. Maybe I will feel different when there is a non-invasive full neural interface that let me feel sex over the internet or something, cause goodness knows I am not getting any in real life. Also I would be a girl of course. Er I mean... anyway moving on...

But although the idea of hooking yourself up to a computer sounds sillier and sillier, using computers to make neat virtual worlds to play around with has not. Games seem to be going more in the wide open sandbox direction, and MMORPGs are becoming as much if not more for the social interaction then the game it's self.

But sometimes it goes farther then that. There are programs like Second Life which, while they have gameplay elements, really have no game to them at all. A long while ago, I played around with Second Life. It was fun to build and script things and occasionally to play with people in various role playing games that people liked doing. The problem was in my mind that it didn't really go anywhere. Everyone I met there I only knew from in the world, and while I fiddled around designing stuff I had no real goal or artistic vision. So I got bored and left, as I tend to do with all online things after a while. I lasted longer then some games though. Maybe cause I liked building stuff.

Second Life had some noticeable problems though. For one thing all the world is user constructed and almost everything can be brought with real money. I guess MMORPGs are doing that too and you can often find players selling in-game things for money, but in this system your not paying for something you have to grind to get, your paying for essentially art and/or tools.

A fairly interesting digital rights management system is in place that remembers the owner and creator of each type of object, and assigns permissions to them. The owner can restrict your ability to change or copy the object as they wish (along with other things). There is one important difference between this system and most digital rights management systems. Most others try and control something you have on your computer, but this only is for connecting to the shared world. Honestly if digital rights management worked in such a way with other things it might not be a problem.

Surprisingly enough, it actually sort of WORKS this way, although some programs can capture copies of the object, but I am not sure if all the information can be retained. Scripts are run on the server, so you may never see them, but almost everything else can be captured on a client I guess. But if you abuse copying other people's stuff, they will just kick you off the world and won't let you back in.

For this reason, whole companies can spring up providing virtual world content, and even some real life companies get into it, especially clothing manufactures and fashion designers. The problem is, almost everything sold is useless. Not only is there a lot of free stuff that does the same thing, it's a frigging imaginary world for goodness sake. Do people really care about making up their digital avatar that much? I guess so but it seems silly to me. Even some of the more "useful" tools really aren't worth any thing. The most useful thing I ever made was a special invisible ball that could let me hear things people said from far away and could also say things so I could make it look like something else was talking if I was clever. I also made commands to make it vanish with a command if I needed. Honestly it was a pretty cool thing, but I am sure others have made something better and I never got all the bugs worked out. Even still about the only think I could use it for is spying and pulling pranks.

And that brings me to another problem. The users. Half of the people in it join stupid little clubs and spend time dressing up and doing stupid stuff. A few play games, but they arn't really very interesting ones and most of the users are either sex freaks who like to do things with fake 3D dongs and fake vaginas, which you can buy in vending machines... beat that Japan! You may have panties but Second Life has whole private parts! Others usually sit around and talk about stupid stuff or just do nothing. Sometimes you can even earn money by sitting and doing nothing. No joke. But it takes forever so unless you want to stay online 24 hours a day for a dollor, don't bother.

And worse, Second Life has such a bad reputation and people have nothing better to do so there are often waves of greifer attacks which fill the map with self replication penises or send people in to orbit. You think the first would be easy to fix by having replication limits and commands to mass delete items for admins, but apparently they never thought that far ahead. Also there is a combat system but no one ever uses it because users are basically unrestricted with what kind of objects they can make and how powerful they can be. Funny thing, objects and users do have an "energy" number that is used when they do something, and in theory you should be able to use this to enforce some sort of limit on things, but they don't.

Still, I have often thought about looking into it again, now that OpenSim exists. It is nice to make things, but if I could do that by setting up a private local OpenSim server to play with is there a point to the whole online thing? And without some game features and such I think I will quickly be bored. Maybe I should look more into Gerry's Mod instead, I hear that has interesting movie features, but I would have to install steam and stuff again.

Eh too lazy for both anyhow. Should get back to hacking.

WAH! POKE!

I was browsing this page on TVTropes when I came across this image talking about why people hate furries.

Now a little background might be in order. On the Internet, several groups and communities have formed form the protoplasm over the years. Three of the most infamous are Goons, /b/tards, and of course, furries.

Both Goons and /b/tards hate furries. Said image was made by /b/tards complaining about furries. One of the comments where it is liked too on the TVTropes page is "4chan needs to have a speech aimed back, cause there's at least half a dozen reasons why they're worse". Of course most people know /b/tards are trolls, so doing so may would just be taking the bate.

Plus it's not as if they don't kinda have a point. Furries are not entirely the most well-adjusted people on average. I could go on with the problems they have, but thats not the point I am trying to make. Here is the thing though. The people who hate on furries don't do it because of that, they do it simply to gratify their own ego and/or make themselves look cool. Furries are mostly just easy targets.

I again have to point out being a troll doesn't make you cool or witty. Anyone can do it. Just go say something bad about something where you know people who like that thing can hear. Instant drama. I will admit you might derive amusement from it, like the first few times, but it just becomes old and tiresome to see a group basically bashed again and again because people think they are slightly annoying.

It doesn't help that the victims basically enables their behavior by giving them what they want. but it's not like I can tell anyone to calm down and ignore it anymore then I can tell trolls to stop trolling. Me, I stay away as much as possible from all the groups. They are all caught up in this cycle of hate that I rather not be involved in.

Though I have a secret lust for furry porn. What? I said nothing!

CSS RAAAAAGGGGGGEEE!!!

Today I was browsing the net when suddenly Google looked different. The search bar had big ugly black text, the buttons also had big ugly text, and the text on the search bar was misaligned. I thought I had accidentally enabled something that made the text bigger and the whole layout was out of wack, but no. No, this was actually on purpose. Surly, I thought, there must be some option to turn it back to normal, but no, there isn't. Even though on my Linux computer with Firefox it looks as it should so the old style sheet must exist somewhere. This isn't the first time this has happened recently, Youtube also decided to change their layout to something god-awful without any way to change back. Before that they did a lesser version with their channel pages which I still refused to use because it's ugly and slow.

The thing is, looking through comments and statements about the changes it is clear 90% of the people hate it. Honestly yes, most of it could be "They Changed It Now It Sucks" kicking in, but it's still ugly to me and there is no way I can see to change it back. It's funny because alternative style sheets have been in the CSS spec since day one as far as I know, and like only one or two sites actually use it... probably mostly because so few uses realize it exists. I doubt very much Google or Youtube (which is owned by Google) is going to do anything about it, no matter how much people complain.

There is a unwritten rule on the net that the more popular a site is, the shitter it's layout is. This was true for myspace, facebook, maybe deviantart, etc. This is the main reason I avoid them (well, that and myspace and facebook being filled with stupid morons). Until recently, google (and youtube, mostly) has been immune. Unfortunately Google got hold of the "attempt to pretty things up and just make them more ugly" bug. Google's charm and it's key asset has always been simplicity, but now they just took a big dump on that. I mean, sure, I worked hard on this blog and like the fancy style stuff I have done, but this is a blog, and I clearly wouldn't use this type of layout for anything even approaching actual utility in the way Google does. Google is not an art project, it is not meant to have anything but basic style elements.

Luckily there is hope. Firefox plugins like Stylish and some sites and services let you completely bypass the crummy layout and replace it with one of your choice. I am a little concerned that Stylish will slowdown my laptop, and a little reluctant to use less reliable third party sites for searching and videos (though Google custom search might work in that regard), but I may have to use this if Google doesn't get it's act together right now.

But until that happens I have one thing to say:
CSS RAAAAGGGEEEE!!!
(although that's more HTML rage, marquee CSS isn't supported in browsers yet.)

Edit: Looks like the font on the text input field was fixed, so that's good. Still don't like the new look in general though.

Edit edit: Upon reflection, the text input field is misaligned only on my laptop. Must be because my laptop and desktop have different fonts installed or something.

QUACK! POKE!

Let's make one thing clear. Being terminally angry doesn't make you cool, or witty, or a better person. People like that aren't popular in real life, so I don't see why they should be popular on the internet. Yet almost every "cool" internet person is like that. They only express hate and anger at everyone else. Also being a troll likewise doesn't make you cool, or witty, then anyone else. It just makes you an ass. Somehow I think the internet fails to realize this. I am not saying n00bs and idiots should be let to multiply and fester, but come on.

Actually I think the root of the problem is people seem to naturally me elitist jerks who naturally tend to segregate themselves into little groups and declare war on everyone else. Why? Because they desperately want some form of control. Some reason to exist. Crap like that.

And stop making fun of my spelling damn you! I have spelling dyslexia (bullshit excuse)!

Blogging is fun!

Every once and a while I find some silly little web thing to do, and then I end up staying up all night fiddling with it and still never am quite happy with it. Oh well, would probably have stayed up all night on TV Tropes if I didn't. Damn you TV Tropes!

I sorta want the rainbow bg to be fixed attachment but I won't because it's baggy and I care about you. See what I sacrifice for my readers? Now if only I had some. Le sigh.