Jailbreaking

I think “jailbreaking” the iPhone is something Apple secretly supports. I think it’s a good thing that those who are willing to take the risks can do interesting things with the platform. I think it’s good that it looks very risky too.

Nerdfotainment

This is an interesting article that explains the appeal of Lost, Star Trek, and Pride & Prejudice as being the same.

Rands In Repose: Nerdfotainment

Nerds are systematic thinkers, which means, for entertainment, we want to exercise our systemic comprehension muscles. We want to stare at a thing and figure out what rules define it. In the case of Lost, Abrams get this. He sprinkles hints of systems within the system of the show. He tinkers with time and with personalities to paint brief glimpses of clues. And then he changes everything because he knows that if we ever feel we’ve figured it out, we’ll bail.

The danger for Lost, however, is that things may get so convoluted we stop believing that he does have a way it all makes sense rather than just making up random things as he goes.

Sector

a sociological, economic, or political subdivision of society

When young science-fiction fans get to the study of geometry, they are often bothered by how the use of the word “sector” in science-fiction doesn’t match the technical use of the term in geometry.

In fact, people generally seem to have a problem that when they learn the technical meaning of a term in a particular field of study, they have trouble with the plain use of the term.

Mearls plays original D&D

Mike Mearls—lead developer of Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons—posted about his experience playing the original D&D recently.

OD&D and D&D 4 are such different games that they cater to very different needs.

— Original D&D Discussion - Kardallin's Palace, Session 1, 2/15/08

See! Those of us who think they are different games are not insane, overly nostalgic, crotchety grognards, or such.

Well...OK...we may be all of those things, but that’s not why we think the ancient and modern editions are different enough to be considered different games. We think that because it’s true!

A lot of the fun parts of the session (the talking skull; the undead and their bargain) were possible under any edition of D&D. However, I think that OD&D’s open nature makes the players more likely to accept things in the game as elements of fiction, rather than as game elements. The players reacted more by thinking “What's the logical thing for an adventurer to do?” rather than “What’s the logical thing to do according to the rules?”

Exactly! This is the thing I’ve been trying to get at myself. As much as I enjoy mastering a complex set of rules, that’s not what I want in a role-playing game. Besides, when it’s about playing the rules, most people at the table end up not having as much fun—in my experience—as a few people at the table. When it’s about playing the role rather than playing the rules, the game becomes more enjoyable for everyone at the table.

The real internet

Daring Fireball: Just the Internet

Apple has been getting some heat for saying the iPhone gives you “the real internet” since it lacks Flash or Java.

Well, first off, they really mean “the real world wide web”. Although “e-mail and the web” comes pretty close for me. (Well, have IM in June it seems.)

What constitutes the real web?

• HTTP
• HTML
• JFIF (a.k.a. JPEG)
• PNG (& GIF if you insist)
• CSS
• EcmaScript (a.k.a. JavaScript)

That might cover it for me. I’d be happy to leave Flash & Java out of it. Not that I don’t think both can be put to very good use, but I don’t think you should work on the assumption that they’re there.

For that matter, I think you should try to make things work reasonably without CSS or EcmaScript.

Hackin' & slashin'

Let’s be clear about this:

1. People were having fun role-playing and doing many things besides hack & slash with D&D long before the knock-offs created to “fix” it appeared.

2. People have used just about any role-playing game produced for mindless hack & slash play.

The fault (if fault there is) is not in our rules, but in ourselves.

Besides, mindless (or mindful) hack & slash is a perfectly valid style of play if that’s what the people around the table enjoy.

Oh, and compare the “alternative” combat system in the original three little D&D booklets to Steve Jackson’s Melee and Wizard and then tell me which designer emphasized combat more. (Gygax has said many times that he always used the “alternative” system rather than Chainmail when playing D&D.)

The iPhone AppStore

I thought it was quite interesting and insightful the way Apple spoke of the iPhone AppStore.

“The developers are going to register with us if they want to distribute them. If they write a bad app, we can both track them down and we can turn off the app’s distribution.”

—from Gizmodo’s live blog

Apple isn’t going to try to fully vet every iPhone app up-front. That would be slow, expensive, and foolish. Instead, they want to be able to squash any problems as soon as they appear. (“Squashing the problem” may be notifying the developer of it so they can fix it. Having the ability to stop distribution of the bad app as a back-up solution, however, is nice to have as well.)

Of course, there are perfectly good arguments against this, but I think it is both smart and reasonable.

(Though I would still like to see riskier alternatives to the AppStore for those willing to accept the risk.)