US Election, NaNaWriMo/Gaming, IT Issues

[tcpip]

The election of Obama was pretty convincing, although I would hope that American conservatives are beginning to understand why their electoral system needs preferential voting and proportional representation, in the same way that Canadian liberals are hopefully beginning to understand. Many are having problems (hat-tip to jhubert), to which schadenfreude pie is on offer. To many conservatives this was a "referendum on socialism" - which was lost. Whilst there is some socialist orientations in Obama, in the centre-left, European social-democratic model but more realistically one must avoid the twin errors of cynicism and overconfidence. It is also worth keeping on eye on what Bush will do in his remaining days of office.

My NaNaWriMo game-design project is going very well; so far I'm pushing 20,000 words which is reasonably good for the four days although I did have a fair amount of notes and material to draw upon. It is certainly easier to write about something that one already has an interest and background in without the strict requirements of veracity as I discovered in 2006 when I started a historical fiction novel. The greatest strength of the process is, of course, providing one a discipline habit of concentrated writing. On a related topic I have started bringing articles together for the next issue of RPG Review. One of the nice discoveries over the past few days is to find that I have been listed as a playtester for most recent edition Traveller; something I didn't know about! It would be good to get into some sf gaming, it's kind of a big glaring empty spot in the various genres I'm involved in at the moment. Blue Planet would be a nice choice, although I'm also fond of Traveller 2300/2300AD. Any others?

The past couple of weeks in IT has been very interesting. Minister Conroy must now realise that almost nobody supports his proposed clean feed (156 against, 1 for). Andrew Keen has established himself as a person who appears not to understand technology or economics; "Economy to Give Open-Source a Good Thumping". In enormously good news (hat-tip arjen_lentz), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has thrown out most software patents! Has your Internet feed been slow in the past 36 hours or so? Mine has at work and at home; that's because Sprint and Cogent are having a little dispute.

Comments

[msss.livejournal.com]

Well, yes and no on Minister Conroy. He's unlikely to give a lot of weight to comments on a particular website. If we are going to stop this, we need everyone to write to him. And Rudd. And Gillard. And Barnaby Joyce and Steve Fielding and so on. We need to point out all the ways that this is bad for their particular constituency, whatever that maybe - small business, families, etc.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely. He's mostly motivated by power politics which, in a sense, makes him incredibly easy to manipulate. The more people who tell him rather bluntly that this will cost more politically than it will gain, the greater the probability it will be sunk.