Of Wikipedia and WoW...

Last post of the semester. Scary.

To end the semester, I read the article "The Book Stops Here" by Daniel H. Pink. It is a fascinating discussion of the rise and growth of Wikipedia. The fact that Wikipedia has exploded to such an enormous degree that the Encyclopedia Britannica feels threatened amuses me greatly. That something as huge as Wikipedia could develop from entirely voluntary contributions, and remain open to all to add to, yet stay, for the most part, accurate, is mind-boggling. UserFriendly, an online geeky comic strip, actually has featured both the Britannica/Wikipedia rivalry, and the fact that anyone can add/edit entries on Wikipedia (check out Dec 9-12 cartoons). Both spot-on. At this point in time, I'll usually go to Wikipedia before I hit a printed encyclopedia, at least for general information. If I'm just curious about something, odds are pretty good that the wiki information will be sufficient, and probably accurate enough.

On an entirely different note, I figured I'd bookend my blog for the semester with an update on my WoW characters, just like I started the semester with. Jamoyah, my paladin, is level 70 now, and has picked up her epic flying mount. Here's a pic of her with her new ride (plus my current UI, which I know I said I'd post a pic of.)


Oooo, ahhhh. Starstalker, my hunter, has also hit level 70. It actually took far less time to get him up, since I was already familiar with some of the quests, plus he had plenty of rested bonus to work with. That really speeds things up.

Apotheosis (my guild) is currently working on Karazhan and Gruul's Lair. We're up through the chess event in Kara (working on Shade of Aran currently), and we've killed High King Maulgar in Gruul's. Best attempt on Gruul himself was 47%. We've still got some learning to do, but we're having a blast with all the new content.

A Moment of Silence...

Obviously the events this week at Virginia Tech have been on a lot of people's minds for the past few days. Why, how, so many unanswered questions. Yet amidst all the tragedy and unanswered questions, a few points of difference in this generation and their use of technology have arisen.

As was reported by more than one new agency, people tried to find out about how friends and loved ones were, whether they were okay, through more than just calling them. And the students on the inside, hidding in their classrooms, reached out in the same way. They posted to places like facebook and other such social sites, blogging about their thoughts and feelings and what was going on. Odd to the older generation that the Internet was their first thought of a way to find out about friends, but hey, we are the digital generation, so they say.

Web 2.0 -- Evolution

I read the article "Why the Web is Like a Rain Forest" by Steven Johnson. It highlights the fact that the Web as we know it is evolving from a thing of basic text hyperlinks into something far more versatile. Information feeds on itself, expanding out to touch far more people than it would reach with just static hyperlinks. The world of blogs has exploded, and is a huge part of this change. People are becoming more and more connected, despite having never actually met in the real world in most cases. The world is becoming a smaller place. I remember making my first webpage using raw HTML. It was amazing at the time. It will be interesting to see just what the future brings.

My mother is actually eyeball deep in all this, amusingly. Check out her blog here if you've got time.

Cyber Security (Hah!)

A lot of people just don't realize how easy it is for hackers to steal information these days. It can happen to anyone, and it happens all the time. Check it out... Here are a few articles from the last 2 weeks from various news sites regarding security:

cnn.com - Credit Card info theft from TJX
news.com - Security hole in Vista patched
nytimes.com - EMI to sell music in iTunes without anti-piracy software
latimes. com - More on the credit card info theft from TJX

Do I find all this surprising? No, not really, especially not the hole in Vista being a new version of an old hole in the other Windows OS's. That really does invite hackers to go to town double-checking all the old holes in the previous OS's to see if they were reintroduced in Vista. The TJX credit card theft is not anything new really; it just happens to have been the largest perpetrated thus far. It certainly won't be the last.

Google Books

I recently read "Throwing Google at the Book" by Farhad Manjoo. The piece examines the debate about Google's attempt to digitize entire libraries of books. Google feels that this will bring greater accessibility and exposure to books, especially to lesser-known titles. Many authors feel that Google's attempts are a violation of their rights, and sued to stop the project.

I think probably the biggest sticking point in the whole debate is money. Many people see the amount of money Google stood to gain from ad revenue, etc. as the real reason they have undertaken the project, rather than any enlightened interest in bringing literature to the masses.

As far as whether the project should proceed or not, I'm a fence-sitter. I see both sides of the debate. Google Books would be a hugely useful resource as a student. However, I also understand that authors would like to protect their intellectual property (although I don't doubt that many would be fine with the whole project if they could get a slice of the income pie that Google would earn.) Under current copyright law however, its not likely that the project will ever move forward.

City-wide Wireless in the Future?

There's been a lot of talk (and newspaper articles) of late about the possibility of establishing city-wide wireless coverage, allowing cheap or even free internet access for all. Its being discussed in several cities nationwide, not just Los Angeles.

As a PR move, it seems like a good idea on the surface. I'm just not so sure about the practicalities of trying to cover an area as vast as Los Angeles. Ironically, my boss' boss' boss was asked to join the committee tasked with figuring out how to handle making LA a giant wireless hotspot. Wireless coverage on this sort of scale has the same problem as cell phone coverage; there will be dead zones aplenty, and always in the most inconvenient places. Another thing to think about is that the folks who can't afford an internet connection also probably can't afford a computer to connect to the wireless. Plus of course there's the ever-present oxymoron of the technology: wireless security. The vast majority of people out there have no idea just how unsecure wireless is. Give them free internet access, and they'll jump at it, sending credit card info and all manner of other important information flying through the air. At that point, one doesn't even need to be in a building to steal stuff; sitting parked on the street at a meter would be quite sufficient. In something of this nature, its unlikely WEP or VPN will be employed, and while neither provides complete security, both offer more protection than completely unencryted packets flying through the air.

Will we be seeing wireless like this in the future? Absolutely. Wireless is spreading like wildfire (one only has to look at this university campus to see that demonstrated in graphic detail). Are there still kinks to be worked out? Absolutely. We'll see what the future brings.

Eh, so I have to post...

Internet Technologies... well, I've covered wireless 1,000 times over, so I'll do something else this time.


One of the things I spend waaaay too much time on is World of Warcraft. Over 9 million people pay to slay pixels now, all over the "tubes" the Internet is made of. WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that has exploded since its launch two years ago. People from all over the planet connect to game servers using everything from dial-up to broadband (although I dare say I wouldn't want to actually try much beyond fishing over a dial-up connection... yes, you can fish in this game). This game is real-time. Of course, those of us with a fast pipe and a 4 ms ping time to the server have rather an advantage over those who are trying to play with a 2000 ms ping time and who are dropping packets left and right. That's just the nature of online gaming though. If you want to know more about the actual game, check out Blizzard's website.

One of the things that arose out of WoW is entire communities of people that call each other friends and meet nightly... all without ever having set eyes on each other in real life. People join guilds in-game. Most guilds have (back to the Internet again) their own website set up somewhere. My primary character is Jamoyah, a level 67 human paladin, who belongs to the guild "Apotheosis" on the Windrunner US server. Apo has its own website and forums here. We've even got a wiki set up, which lets us whip up pages to do just about anything we want. Another thing Apotheosis has is its own Ventrilo server. We may not have met each other in person, but we've certainly heard each other's voices. Ventrilo is a program that allows you to have voice communication with other people, all using your computers rather than your phones. Its main target is the online gaming community. (TeamSpeak is another popular voice program for gaming.) Both these programs are similar to Skype.

One of the great things about WoW is that the game interface is customizable. Don't like the default UI? Download UI modifiers (mods) or make your own. WoW supports user-created mods using the LUA scripting language. There are even websites out there (such as curse-gaming.com and ctmod.net) who specialize in hosting mods other people have written.

Even that isn't the end of it. Want other people to be able to check out all about your character with a click of a button, without even having to log into the game world? Easy. That's what sites like CTprofiles and RPGO are for.

So, some examples. Here's Jamoyah's CTprofile and RPGO link (admittedly out of date, but I've had other things to worry about besides updating profiles.) I also have a level 64 night elf hunter named Starstalker who you can see here (and yes, that's him in the pic up above).


Yes, she's standing on a table. At least her horse isn't standing on the table too. These pics had the game user interface hidden. So, since I mentioned customizing the interface, I figure I might as well put some pictures of that too.


So the above pic is the default UI. Here's roughly what I'm using these days (my actual UI is a little different, but I don't have a screenshot handy for it. Maybe if I find time I'll take another screenie and add it. 10 points to anyone geeky enough to identify the encounter in the below screenshot.