Logo by Kay Partain

About 24 hours ago I had the privilege to push the proverbial switch on launching http://sociologyplus.com/  and I swear I had no idea that Google was planning on opening G+ to the public the same day as well. Sometimes things just work out like that.

A lot of people worked some long, tireless hours on this site and we’re all really excited about it. It’s not only a great resource for G+ Tips & ideas, but it’s a wonderful look on the culture and sociology behind Google Plus and social networking in general.

Google+ over the past couple months has really grown like no other social network I’ve seen before, especially with the Art & Photography crowd. This probably has a lot to do with picasa and the ability to share images and control who sees them, but I digress.

We’re all real excited about SocioloG+, +Ryan Crowe, +Christina Trapolino, +Christopher Watson, +Drew Nicholson and +Johnathan Chung put a lot of work into the site.

Current featured artists are: +Nathanael Card, +L. Gray, +Vivienne Gucwa, +Cayenne Linke, +Kay Partain, +John Phillips, +Rodney Pike, +Amy Redstone and +Graham Tiplady If you’d like to have your art featured, contact +Drew Nicholson

I encourage all of you to go check it out, comment, post, etc. We’re all really proud of this! Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Edit: Follow all of these people. I command it.

(this is a direct copy from my G+ feed.)

A few months ago I decided to hop into a few IRC channels I used to frequent many years back to catch up with old friends. Instead of running a windows client (mIRC) I went with my old standby, irssi, a console-based linux client with Perl scripting. I’ve used it in the past and I love it.

Anyway, a lot of links are posted on IRC and the disadvantage to a text-based client is that I have to highlight to copy the link, then paste it into a browser. Being the typical sysadmin that I am, I’m a lazy bastard and copying/pasting is just to much work.

So, what does a lazy git like me do? I have a choice. A: just ignore links (My link OCD would not allow this). B: move to a windows-based IRC client (ugh) or C: continue cutting & pasting (:effort:).

Google comes through with the answer! http://blog.ryara.net/2011/07/14/putty-0-61-with-clickable-links/

This kind Swedish gentleman pulled the URL code out of PuTTY Tray (http://haanstra.eu/putty/) which hasn’t been actively developed in about 4 years, ported it to C from C++, and put it in a patch. He also provides a download of the PuTTY executable with the patch included on his page “If you trust him”.

I glanced at the code and everything seems to be in order, there doesn’t seem to be any malicious calls to anything where some dude is going to steal your SSH keys. However, I am not a programmer so don’t take my word for it, look at it yourself

I spent the last day or so testing out both VirtualBox, which is new to me, and VMWare Player, a free version of VMWare, the program I’ve been using for many years. and the results are interesting.

I did a default installation of Linux Mint, Both with 10GB Drives, 2GB RAM, and 2 CPUs from my 4-core Intel i7 920.

I did my first installation on VirtualBox ( http://www.virtualbox.org/ ) and it was surprisingly easy.  I selected a Debain x86_64 based system and installed off the x86_64 ISO DVD image I downloaded from http://www.linuxmint.com. I only ran into one minor glitch in the beginning where I was unable to modify the Virtual Server hardware settings after I initially created the new Virtual Server. This was fixed by closing and re-opening VirtualBox.  From initial system boot to the final reboot installation of Linux Mint under VirtualBox took 11 minutes.

Virtual Machines also have “tools” that need to be installed on the guest operating system. VirtualBox makes this very simple, you go to “Devices->Install Guest Additions…” and VirtualBox forces the operating system to mount an ISO image with the tools required.  It includes an autorun script on the ISO so they install automatically. Overall this was probably the least painful Linux installation I’ve ever done. VirtualBox also has a really useful walkthrough when creating a virtual machine that’s good for relative newbies.  I still suggest you at least browse the documentation though!

The next installation was done with VMWare. VMWare is very similar to VirtualBox, but a little more difficult to use. Even with that though, it’s a far more mature product and that showed in the benchmarks I did.  Unfortunately the interface is lacking. From initial boot to final reboot the installation on VMWare took only 7 minutes. There were a few problems, though…

First, unlike with VirtualBox, sound didn’t work right away. That seemed to clear itself up with a reboot, though.  I have had issues with sound and VMWare in the past, but it’s never been a big concern to me. Regardless, it cleared itself up.

The “VMWare Tools” package was a bit more difficult to install.  VMWare, like VirtualBox mounted an ISO for me on Linux but there was no autorun, it was just a tarball (tar.gz) on a CD.  You have to copy the tarball to your home directory, uncompress it, then run the install.sh via a terminal. You also have to answer a bunch of questions about locations and what you want to install from it.

So, Interface-wise, I really prefer VirtualBox. It just seemed easier to use and manage over VMWare Player.

However….

When it comes down to raw benchmarks, VMWare seems to have it in the bag. I didn’t do any graphical benchmarks, but instead tested some more quantitative things using phoronix test suite, CPU, memory & disk access.

The comparison between the two systems can be found here: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1109086-DAIT-MINTVMW79,1109082-DAIT-VIRTUAL59
(I’ve been having some issues with Chrome crashing on that site, If you do as well, just refresh it until it pops up. It’ll work, I promise)

Both machines had the same settings. 2GB RAM, 2 CPUs with VT-x enabled (Intel’s Virtual machine technology) and 10GB drives. In nearly all categories VMWare beat VirtualBox. Some categories VirtualBox was just crushed (like the Apache connections test) but most were very close  The only tests in which VirtualBox won were  Encryption (GnuPG) and image conversion (dcraw), both CPU-based.

So, in the end if performance is what you need out of your Virtual Machine, VMWare is probably the way to go.  Honestly though, if you’re in it for performance you shouldn’t be using a virtual machine anyway, you should just be dual booting then.

I’m personally going to play around with VirtualBox for awhile. It’s great for a testing environment and as long as you make snapshots of your virtual machine before you do anything drastic you can’t screw things up.  It’s the perfect system for those who want to test Linux without giving up their Windows installation.

Up until a few years ago, Linux and Windows were like night and day. Two very different creatures that required very different software to do the same thing. You could use Microsoft Office on Windows, but had to use Star Office or OpenOffice on Linux. There were very few Linux-native video games, image editing and creation was limited to mostly GIMP which left Photoshop users wanting, and there was no decent Flash plugin for Linux either.

Since then we’ve drastically changed how we use computers. This is mostly because of “The Cloud.” I’m writing this post in Google docs right now, and I’ll just copy & paste it into my G+ stream when I’m done. This allows me to work on it from any computer at any place. I mean, let’s be honest, how many of you use your computer for more than a glorified web browser most of the time?

Even though the way we use computers has changed, just about everything I do on Windows I can now do on Linux, and Linux has gotten easier to use with “desktop distributions” like Ubuntu, Mint, Jolicloud, and a few others, I still prefer to use Windows on my main OS. I can play the games I love through Wine or any of it’s various forked projects and I can run most of my .Net applications through Mono, There is still one main reason I use Windows:

Windows just “works.”

I know, shock, horror, blasphemy, etc. etc. Linux is a tinkerer’s OS. I don’t want to have to spend 3-4 hours configuring and troubleshooting things just so I can play a video game. In 15 years I have never used a distribution of Linux that I didn’t have to Google a solution for at least a few times a week. Many years ago I was OK with that, but now that I’m older I just want stuff to work.

Now my problems here may stem with the fact that I work with Linux every day, as my entire livelyhood is based around it. I spend hours every day tweaking, updating, adjusting, changing, backing up, restoring and scripting things in Linux all for a paycheck. When it’s time to relax I don’t want to do it all over again just so I can play Eve Online.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love what I do and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. About 5 years ago I gave in and quit my job so I could focus on being a Linux Sysadmin full time from home. So far it’s working out pretty well. I made enough money that I was able to sell the small shack I lived in and buy a nice 4 bedroom (ok, 2 bedroom, 2 office), 2 1/2 bath house with a finished basement. My wife occasionally wants to kill me because I’m around way too much,and the 24-36 hour “I need 12 servers set up by Friday” marathons are murder but I don’t think I’d ever go back to a traditional job. I like being able to take a vacation almost whenever I want way too much.

On the other hand, I’m still a tinkerer by nature. I do have 3 other machines that run Linux, Ubuntu on an ancient laptop which is hooked up to my 3rd monitor (I use it strictly for an Instant Messaging client), Ubuntu on my netbook, and a version of Slackware (called unRAID) which functions as a 6TB fileserver for my home network.

Windows is not without it’s problems. My current installation has about 2 years on it, and my AppData folder (where most programs keep their settings) is from my original XP installation. My computer is in desperate need of a reformat and reinstall but it still does what I want it to do when I want it to.

So I guess it all boils down to the fact that I am a very, very lazy person. I don’t want to do any more “work” than I have to. Windows lets me get away with that. If I really want to tinker I can (and have) set up virtual machines with VMWare or VirtualBox, or I can play around with one of the other easily wipe-able machines in my home.

Today another “leak” came from CCP, claiming to be an e-mail from CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson.

Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:16:54 -0400
To: riverini@gmail.com
Subject: ccp ceo global msg sent today
From: evewatch@hush.com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=.UTF-8.
Message-Id: <20110623221654.CF1E76F438@smtp.hushmail.com>

sent by hilmar to ccp global list-

(strt)

We live in interesting times; in fact CCP is the kind of company that if things get repetitive we instinctively crank it up a notch. That, we certainly have done this week. First of we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry. We have communicated our intention here internally in very wide circles through the Virtual Economy Summit presentation at the GSM, our Fearless newsletter, sprint reviews, email lists and multiple other channels. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable. That is not saying nothing will change, on the contrary, in fact we know that success in this space is through learning and adapting to _what is actually happening_ and new knowledge gained in addition to what we knew before and expected.

All that said, I couldn’t be prouder of what we have accomplished as a company, changing the world is hard and we are doing it as so many times before! Stay the course, we have done this many times before.

I really don’t know what to think right now.  I know #tweetfleet is exploding with people cancelling their accounts.  I really think this could be CCP’s “NGE” moment, and I’m not sure if CCP is taking this seriously enough.

I guess I can just lean back and watch the fireworks. I’m not planning on cancelling my accounts at this point, but if CCP introduces things that allow people to get an edge up if they pay real money to do so, I may just conveniently ”forget” to renew.

Edit: My buddy @winterblink posted a great summary of the eve-o drama over at his Warp Drive Active blog.

The HTPC software I’ve poured thousands of dollars into and built my entire household’s media viewing experience around — SageTV — has just been bought out by Google. The software and hardware media extenders are no longer available for purchase on the SageTV website, and to top it off, you can’t get to the support page by clicking “support”. You can get to the SageTV Support page with a URL found in the SageTV Forums, but who knows if anyone will answer.

I know Google’s unofficial motto is “Don’t be evil” but you can’t help but freak out a bit when something you depend on is bought out by a giant corporation. Google’s been trying to push their GoogleTV for quite awhile, and it hasn’t really taken off. My main concern probably lies deep within the old Meedio / Yahoo fiasco, where Yahoo bought out a promising HTPC software startup, released their own branded version of it (Yahoo GoTV), and a year later deleted all traces of it. I’m worried that Google will just take out the parts they want of SageTV, get it to run on Android, and the rest will fall by the wayside. I mean, that’s what corporations do, right? They cannibalize smaller companies?

I really don’t know what to do right now.  I’ve been having some issues with my HTPC, and I’ve been thinking of doing a full reinstall of it.  I’ve dabbled with other HTPC software including Microsoft’s own Media Center, and it just doesn’t do what SageTV does.  MythTV may be my only remaining option, but I know it doesn’t work with my existing TV Tuners very well, not to mention one of the best parts of SageTV were it’s hardware extenders for other TVs in the house.

I guess there’s not much for me to do but sit and wait to see what becomes of it.  Whether I buy the Ceton InfiniTV 4 Digital Cable Quad-tuner Card which I’ve had my eye on for over a year now is still up in the air.

This month’s topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised “To Boldly Go” blog. Katia asks: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I’ve found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you’ve found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it’s the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it’s the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you’ve found it, write about it and post an image.” Don’t be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?

As always, I’m late to the party.  I didn’t get CrazyKinux’s original e-mail about this one for some strange reason.

Fortunately, having been late to the party, I’ve had a chance to read some others’ thoughts about what is “beautiful” in Eve. I’m enjoying the outside-the-box thinking.   I was originally going to write some crazy nonsense about how awesome Planets in Eve look.  Then I thought about writing about the Eve Community, but I did that last week. Then @TheMittani (MY CEO) directed me to this wonderful, delicious article at Massively, a website which is apparently read by – judging by the comments – thousands of people who take video games way more seriously than anyone I know does.

That article is one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen written about Eve. Not in a damaging way, but it’s just a Really Bad Post™, and I know a thing or two about Bad Posting.  However, in that horrible post, lies one of the most beautiful things about Eve Online.  the never-ending buckets of tears and rage of pubbies.

Articles like that are one of the main reasons I still play Eve.  The writer’s impotent rage where he pounded angrily away at his keyboard for what must have been hours,  trying tell me that I’m a terrible person in real life based on what I do in a video game.  I am, in essence, a role-player.  I play a role in Eve that is not only allowed, but also glorified by the creators of the game. The future is a horrible place, and it’s up to you to navigate the land mines that are people like me.

Should one of those landmines hit someone, we get anything from long winded psychological evaluations of why we’re bad people, to illegible all-caps keyboard mashing in local.  A couple years back I decided to try my hand at recruitment scamming. I managed to get someone to fall for it, and made about 200 million ISK off the guy.  I just found that it was way too much effort and I really didn’t want to invest the time in it.  However, the 200 million ISK was nothing, I got an eve-mail where the guy threatened to come to my house and harm me.   I of course fired a petition off to CCP with the contents of the evemail as I didn’t quite know how stable this individual was. I added him to the watch list of my alt, but never saw him, or any of his alts log in again.  Eve was obviously not the place for him.

Eve Online is the ultimate griefing game. In World of Warcraft, if you die, you lose nothing aside from a little gold. In other MMORPGs, you have similar, or even lesser death penalties.  In Eve, you lose your ship, all it’s modules, and possibly any implants you had in your clone if you’re podded.  This should never make you angry enough to pound over a thousand words trying to psychologically evaluate why the person that podded you is the scum of the earth in real life.

On a similar note, I recently re-joined Goonswarm’s Blackops group (The group that they named the ships after). We’re AFK cloakers that you hate so much, and I think it’s funny as hell to check NPC kills in a system on Dotlan, park there for a few hours, and watch the NPCs killed go from hundreds to 0.  Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you’ll get people raging in local about cloaking ships, and how dishonorable it is.  It’s great.

So, does this all make me a terrible person in real life? No, because I have a wonderful sense of reality vs fantasy. And video games, as much as some people hate to admit it, are a form of fantasy.

I continued to talk to my fellow goons on jabber, while watching the live stream from MSNBC on one of my monitors. Slowly the news came out, Osama Bin Laden was dead. Fox News at first reported that he was killed a week ago, but we pretty much agreed that the President would have probably waited until tomorrow to announce if that was the case. After about an hour, President Obama popped up on my screen to inform me about what we all now know what happened. Osama Bin Laden was dead, killed by a US specops team. Facebook went nuts, twitter went nuts, pretty much everyone went nuts.

Now to the morality of it. No, I’m not talking about the morality of ordering what was basically an assassination on another human, but the morality of feeling joy, at his death.

If you’ve been following the news, you saw people in the streets celebrating, shouting, chanting, singing, all because one tremendous shitbag was killed, and I don’t know how to feel about that.

Revenge is human nature. Someone gets you, you have to get them back. It’s especially common in Eve, where some people plot their revenge for weeks, months, or possibly even years. You feel good when you’re able to exact your revenge, anyone who says they don’t is lying, or something’s wrong with their brain. It’s programmed into you, and hey, it’s just a video game, right?

Last night, it wasn’t just a video game, but goddammit, I still felt good. Even though very little of it touched me personally, I felt, not a sense of revenge, but accomplishment. We accomplished something. (For those of you who watch The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said the same thing tonight, fuck you Jon Stewart, I had this half written before I ever watched your hilariously entertaining show.)

Now, as I mentioned, students were “raging”, people were gathering and chanting all because the world’s biggest cockmonger was shot in the eye (in the fucking eye!) and I really don’t know how I feel about it. That’s probably why I’m writing this, is I’m trying to sort out those feelings.

On September 11^th, 2001, we saw people in the middle east dancing and celebrating much in the same way many Americans were last night, and it was really just salt in the wound. How should I feel about that? Does that not make us just as bad as them? Or are they, in hindsight, not as bad as we labeled them?

Roughly 80% of the United States population, according to the 2010 census are religious. I know the Christian Bible and Jewish Torah tell you not to rejoice in the death of an enemy, and I’m pretty sure other such moral guidelines exist for other 10% of spiritual peoples. However, I’m an atheist, so I’m not guided by principles written down thousands of years ago. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a set of morals though.

Video games give me a bit of an outlet, I guess. I can be immoral and uncouth in Eve. It’s almost expected of me. Heck, there are plenty of games where you get to play the bad guy, and you’re even rewarded for it. I think it’s a grand outlet, and helps keep the monster in check in real life.

This isn’t a video game though. This is real life.

Will those that were out partying last night eventually look back and say “You know, I shouldn’t have done that!” or will they find a way to justify it by saying “I was celebrating my country, not the death of another human.” It still seems a bit hollow to me, and I genuinely feel bad and quite embarassed because of it.

Even writing this, I can’t get the smug look off my face.  I’m happy the fucknugget is dead, and a quote from Mark Twain that’s been passed around the internet like herpes the last day really sums it up:

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

People.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t having to deal with people that made me quit, it was the lack of people. All my “friends” quit playing, so the game was boring.

In the fall of  ’06 .  My first 4-5 months were spent in a small corp running missions.  We moved to lowsec and started living out of a POS.  I continued to run missions to try and earn ISK, but kept getting blown up by lowsec pirates.

I ragequit for 4-5 months.

I went and did other things, even trying to go back to SWG for awhile. But during this time I became more and more addicted to a couple internet forums, mainly due to the fact that keeping one of them running was what paid my bills. I eventually came back to Eve.

I joined up with Goonfleet, as I had been a long on-again-off-again member of Something Awful. This was about a month after CCP ‘fixed’ remote doomsdays, and Goonfleet killed Shrike.

Most of you probably know the history of the Great War, and have seen it told 50 different ways, so I don’t need to bore you with how it went from my end. Besides, that’s not what this post is about.  If you’ve made it this far, you probably want to know why I keep playing, even after getting (and losing!) a titan.

It’s the people.

I’ve become good, real-life friends with a lot of eve goons. we get together and hang out a few times a year en-masse, and have smaller get-togethers in between.  I spend more time talking about eve to people than I do actually logged in, playing the game.  I’d let quite a few of them crash at my house should they ever need a place to stay, and I’d even happily let just about any of them fuck my sister if I had one.

So really, the anti-climatic end to this is, people make Eve fun. I would have quit playing this terrible, terrible game a long time ago were it not for my daily interactions. People from all walks of life play Eve Online, Lawyers, 20-somethings living in their parent’s basement, IT professionals, unemployed stoners, that guy bagging your groceries and quite probably even you.

So, if you’re contemplating quitting eve because you find it boring, it’s because you haven’t found the right group of people to hang out with in game. Keep trying. The Eve community is really just a collection of smaller groups of people with their own interests. Find a group of people that share similar interests, and it’ll be like playing a whole new MMORPG.

do you wanna date my avatar?

Today, for the first time in eve, I’ve done something I’ve been promised I would be able to do since 2008.  I walked in a station.

That’s right, I just spent some time playing around with Captain’s Quarters in Eve.  While it’s still very much alpha-test quality, I can sort of see where CCP is going with it.

You start off in a room standing on a raised platform with three large screens on a wall in front of you. the middle screen shows data about the system & station you’re in, as well as incursion information.  I’ll assume it’ll eventually show more things such as market data.  The screen on the left basically opens your corporation menu, and the screen on the right opens your planetary interaction menu.  I’ll also go ahead and assume they will show more pertinent information at a later date as well.

You can walk around the area a bit, and even sit down on a “sofa” (which looks more like a bench on some form of public transportation).  Walking is currently horribly un-intuitive and you get stuck on just about everything that comes within two meters of you, but hey, that’s not too bad for an 8 year old video game where you’ve been nothing but a ship.   There’s a hall behind you that leads to a balcony where you can overlook your ship.  I wandered out to look at MY ZEALOT in all it’s majesty.  Basically it’s just a different version of the current station view.

I’m optimistically pessimistic about this.  I’m very confident that CCP will find a way to fuck it up somehow.   It’s nowhere near ready for a release.  You can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.  For example, ou can only push one button at a time while walking. You push “W” to move forward, then you have to let go of “W” in order to push “A” to turn left.  If you try and push “A” while pushing “W”, nothing happens.  Even mouse controls are wonky, and require you to stop walking in order to turn.

Edit: Apparently this is only true if you’re holding down a mouse button like a retard.  I tend to hold down my right mouse button when walking around to adjust the camera. However, let’s not get into camera controls, and just leave it at “they’re really bad”. When you’re not holding down your mouse button, you can turn about 45 degrees while walking.

As I mentioned, this is an alpha-test version.  It does worry me that CCP was confident that they were going to have this pushed out to Singularity before Fanfest last month, as I think there’s quite a bit of work to do before it’s ready to go be moved there.

I do wonder if this is how far CCP is along with properties like Dust and World of Darkness.  I mean, if this is the state World of Darkness is in, I fear that game will take another 5 years to come out.  But, I shall post some other time about my love of the original WoD.