The Surfacescapes team at Carnegie Mellon is doing some interesting work using Microsoft Surface to support tabletop D&D games. In some online discussion, someone claimed that having a computer adjudicate would be bad, since a GM couldn't "cheat" "in favor of a good story." The commenter claimed that if the GM were to fudge with such a system, the resulting override would be obvious and the atmosphere would be destroyed. There were unhealthy assumptions built into that claim, and it gelled into two Twitter posts. The first was:

If the GM needs to fudge die rolls for the sake of fun or story, you're using the wrong game system.

A bold, direct statement. A rule, if you will. Like any real rule, you need to know when to bend and break it. One of the strengths of a tabletop RPG is that rules are relatively safe and easy to bend. Problems that would hurt a computer game or strictly interpreted wargame can be easily patched over.

However, each time you do this, you're modifying the game, creating a new, slightly different game from what was published. And that's also okay. The hobby is rich in part because people have been modifying games since minute one. But in this case you're not agreeing as a group to a modified rule, you're sneaking one past the other players. That's not inherently wrong, but it's a dangerous, seductive tool. One little fudge here and a pointless, random death disappears. Another fudge there and a frustrated player becomes reengaged. Another fudge and an accidental weakness in your plot doesn't cause the entire thing to shatter when a PC missed a key roll. Without realizing it, you stopped playing D&D and now you're playing "Whatever the GM wants, happens." That's a fine game, but you didn't mention to your players that you've changed rules sets. The players are under the illusion that their character's fates are in the hands of themselves, the rules as published, and the dice, but you've lied to them.

The better solution is to find a game system that supports what you want. It might be an entirely different game. It might be an agreed upon modification to the game system you're already playing.

Now, this rule does assume an ideal world. It assumes that your group has similar enough tastes that there is a single system, or modifications to some system, that would match their desires. It assumes that your group is open to experimenting with modifications or other systems. It assumes that your group has the time for that search. That's a hell of a lot to ask. When you're in the middle of a climactic scene and the dice demand that you replace awesome with inane, it's hard to justify interrupting play to engage in a bit of improvisational game design. So in reality, you fudge.

I've fudged before. I'll fudge again. But I'm playing with a loaded bazooka and will do so cautiously and sparingly.

I almost sent out the above tweet as, "If the GM needs to fudge die rolls for the sake of fun or story, you're probably using the wrong game system," but decided against. In addition to not being as pithy, it weakened the rule, providing an unearned Presidential Pardon for fudging. Yes, there are exceptions, but like the exceptions that die fudging inherently is, it's best left unstated.

.

All of this lead into my next tweet, "If a possible die roll result is unequivocally bad for the game as a whole, why are you rolling? Why is it an option?" I hope that one stands well enough on its own. I erred on the side of caution and added "unequivocally," which I think fairly covers things.

(I cannot claim that these ideas are original to me. They almost certainly came from my reading into RPG game design, and I'm sure have been stated by others in other forms. I like to think that this specific phrasing is original to me.)

VSP is managing the state of Wisconsin's vision insurance. As a potential member, I must say that my experience with them has already been terrible, making me less likely to use them.

Apparently somewhere on their site is a web page to sign up for the state plan. Our department benefits manager sent along a link to it. It doesn't work. Instead I'm told to call member services. I'm guessing the site is using some sort of session state that makes it difficult to share links. Not a promising start.

I was directed to check out "Find a VSP Doctor" to see if the doctor I wanted to use was covered. Bonk! No help for you. Okay, I'll try the "doctor" link. Bonk! I can't log in because I'm not a member, I'm considering becoming a member. Okay, I'll try "Not a member" Bonk again! I get a warning that they can't reliably tell me which doctors are on my list unless I'm already a member. How can I make an intelligent decision about choosing VSP if I can't find out who the doctors covered are? But I'll try to "Continue as a Non Member" anyway. In we go. So, where do I download a full directory? Oh, I don't. All I can do is search. Worse, I need to fill out a CAPTCHA to search. Why do I need to fill out a CAPTCHA? "This helps us prevent unauthorized use of our doctor information." How do you use a list of doctors in an unauthorized way? My health insurance offers a PDF download and a searchable form, neither of which are hidden behind a CAPTCHA. Oops I got the first two wrong, so it wipes out my address, forcing me to retype it.

I'm a borderline case. I probably don't need vision coverage beyond what my health insurance normally covers, but I am interested in it. So I came to VSP's site to learn more. They had an opportunity to show me how great they are. Instead they set up a series of roadblocks. This doesn't bode well for the service I'd receive as a member. So I'll pass. Congratulations on shooting yourself in the food, VSP.

Then, each year after implementing smoking bans (at least for the first three years, the longest period studied), smoke-free communities have an average 26 percent decline in heart attacks, compared with those areas that still allow smokers to light up in public places.

...

Nonsmokers have a 25 percent to 30 percent higher risk of heart attack if they inhale smoke at home or at work....

The new research suggests that a nationwide ban on smoking in public and workplaces could prevent 100,000 to 225,000 heart attacks each year in the U.S.....

If I ran an interior painting company, and it was discovered that my employees had a 25% higher chance of having a heart attack than the general population, politicians would leap on the opportunity to pass regulations to make the work environment safer. If banning interior paint would prevent 100,000 heart attacks a year, it would be illegal (and wallpaper sales would likely go up). But...

"Opponents have argued that smoking bans drive away customers.

How is this even seriously on the table? There is a major health risk here! According to the American Heart Association, about 35% of heart attacks end in death, so we're talking about 35,000 to 78,750 people dying ever year! Many of these people know that smoking is dangerous, so they don't smoke! But they need a job, and working in smoking-allowed business may be the only job available, or the only job that actually pays enough to feed their family. You're killing thousands of innocent people because you don't want to drive away customers!

And it may not drive away customers!

"Study results have been mixed, with most indicating that the impact on bars and restaurants is neutral or may actually improve business, says Schroeder.

I expect that businesses on the edge of any ban take a hit as smokers move a bit further out of the ban area. Of course, this means that as smoking bans get wider and wider, the number of businesses on the edge shrinks. At a state level, relatively few get hit. If we pass a ban at the federal level a smoker needs to bring his passport to move outside of the ban zone.

Some smokers will decide to pass on going out at all. They'll refuse to exchange a few hours of not smoking (at least not without heading outside) in exchange for socializing and drinking at a bar. They'll decide to have people over at home, or to socialize less. But people like going to bars, and I'm guessing the number who significantly cut down on their visits will be small. Also, some people who hated smoky bars or in some cases were actively made ill by them will be willing to go. I suspect the end result will be nearly a wash once the transition period is over.

A smoking ban in indoor, public spaces where people work is a good idea. We already ban a wide variety of useful materials (like asbestos) that present a serious risk to worker health. We will save innocent lives. We will cut medical expenses that we all pay for.

I at least hope that anyone against a smoking ban in workplaces are consistent enough to also argue that we should eliminate OSHA, allowing businesses to knowing endanger their employers in a wide variety of ways.

CNN recently published the article "iPhone apps help track sex offenders, spot crime." In it, CNN is cruel to a woman with mental illness.

The opening subject is Tracy Rodrigues. This poor woman is mentally ill. She is paranoid, and it's interfering with with ability to live a normal life. It's cruel of CNN to parade her mental illness in front of the world, then to lie to her and tell her and other paranoid people that they are actually healthy.

Obsessively checking every location that your children are going to for registered sex offenders provides no protection. It may cause you harm as you uselessly keep yourself away from perfectly safe locations, or erroneously believe a location is safe before there are no registered sex offenders nearby. Ms Rodrigues is letting her irrational fear seriously impact her life and the lives of her children.

What does Ms Rodrigues do with the additional information she is gathering? Does she tell her kids to be extra careful about potential assailants? Does she forbid going to areas with more sex offenders? Neither tactic helps protect her children.

There are plenty of sex offenders who haven't been caught or in some cases convicted. There are sex offenders who are visiting other places, legally or not. There are sex offenders who have illegally moved without informing the authorities. Children should learn basic rules to minimize the risk of being attacked: keep your eyes open, be wary of strangers, don't follow a stranger into their vehicle or away from public places, if someone grabs then, yell. That will protect Tracy Rodrigues's children. What she's doing now is just spreading her paranoia to her children. CNN is helping to normalize her paranoia, causing others who are paranoid like Ms Rodrigues to believe they are normal instead of seeking the help they need.

I have an link to another site in one of my articles. I was curious to re-read the link, so I followed it. What did I get?

Error Document 403

Complications Ensued

OUR SITE IS A-OK so if you've tried another browser and you still see this page, please visit our private troubleshooting page. Thank you!

(Alternatively: If you came via a link, please try our home page directly. OR: Are you using a Google feature/desktop search/whatever or the Ask Toolbar? Try disabling it and retrying our home page directly.)

"OUR SITE IS A-OK"? It clearly isn't, since they denied me with a cryptic message. I manage to visit mind boggling numbers of web pages every day without problems, so clearly the problem is on their end. But I humored them and tried a different web browser on a different computer with a different IP address and running a different operating system. I got the exact same message. I run none of Google gizmo/feature/desktop search/whatever or the Ask Toolbar on either computer/browser. Okay, off to to the "private troubleshooting page". Before I even arrive, I get a popup message box:

Please follow the instructions on the page you are about to see. Thank you! (Click the OK button.)

I understand their frustration. People don't read instructions. But if they don't read instructions, why will adding instructions to read the instructions help? This isn't helpful, it's just whining. Anyway, clicking OK...

Details, Details

OUR SITE IS A-OK but something's iffy between your browser OR connection and our site, sorry. IF you've tried another browser and you still see this page, THEN please e-mail us with ALL of the following --

[Irrelevant technical information deleted - Alan]

Chances are we just need to whitelist you after we look at our logs. If you DON'T hear from us Monday through Friday, after approx. 24 hours (check your Junk Mail filters, just in case), please feel free to re-visit. Thanks!

BEFORE e-mailing, PLEASE note:

Here are three frequently quick fixes:

1.) Again, please try another browser. 2.) Some people have access to more than one Internet Service Provider (ISP), for example, at work and at home. If you have more than one ISP account, try your other one. (Some ISPs require white-listing regardless of browser because they're havens for spammers and such. This applies to a LOT of ISPs in Australasia, Middle Europe and South America.)

3.) Are you using a Google gizmo/feature/desktop search/whatever? Or the Ask Toolbar? Try disabling it and retrying our home page. Or you can try our home page directly. Thank you!

That's a lot of words. It can be a bit much, so let me summarize: "Piss off." That may not be their intent, but that's what they said. Really, is someone following a random link going to jump through all of these hoops just to see some content that might be good? Try another browser, try another ISP, disable useful software, send them some email, and try again in 24 business hours? Of course not. "Piss off."

Why was I blocked? No idea. I used two different computers, with different IP addresses, different operating systems, and different browsers. Neither of the computers has the software they warn against. (And we'll ignore that it's popular software that many people like and that the overwhelming majority of the web allows.) I can view the entire bloody web except for this joker's site. The only possible reason left? Apparently my "ISP" is a "haven for spammers and such." Apparently it's worth blocking the entire University of Wisconsin Madison! This isn't a cautious defense, this is carpet bombing a neighborhood because there is a shoplifter living somewhere in there.

I'm done. The article in question wasn't, as best I remember, worth this amount of work. It certainly isn't worth my linking to their article. It makes me look bad to link to insane people like this. Similar enough content can be found elsewhere (it's a summary of a work now in the public domain), so to hell with them. They lose a link and some visitors. Given their insane defenses, I can only conclude that this is their intent. Soon I trust they'll have no one linking to them and they'll have accomplished their goal of disappearing from the internet. I wish them the best of luck in their bizarre quest for anonymity.

Edited 2009-09-08: Web site name expunged (and comments naming it will be deleted.). I have since learned that it's essentially an single person's site that I gather grew beyond what was expected. After chatting with the webmaster, I still feel the blocking system as implemented is wildly overkill and poorly considered, but I don't think it's worth singling them out.

When people think college sports, they're typically thinking of the big players: men's football and men's basketball. These are the most popular sports, the ones that fill the stands, draw the alumni, supposedly increase alumni donations to the school, and are aired on television.

I hate them.

These two sports, at least for the bigger schools, are professional sports. The team management, the schools, engage in unethical collusion to artificially deflate athlete salaries. Clearly these are professional sports. If they were just for fun and school spirit, would their coaches be some of the highest paid people in the university? Would schools build massive stadiums to house gthem? But by falsely labeling the athletes are "amateur" the schools can unethically impose restrictions on the athletes to keep their costs down. Schools get many of the benefits of a minor league football and basketball team, but don't have to pay what the market would bear. (Of course, the free market, like a cockroach, is hard to keep down. Thus every few years there is a crackdown and it's discovered that schools are breaking the rules to attract top players, offering them cars, prostitutes, cash, and more.) The professional leagues appreciate this because they get the benefits of a minor league without having to actually manage it.

This makes me very angry.

Baseball gets it right. There are professional minor leagues. Minor league players typically aren't paid much, but they can charge what the market will bear. The player and a college don't need to lie about giving a damn about a good education; it's all about the game. Players who are skilled enough move up to the major leagues whenever they are ready, a player who isn't can fall back to the minor leagues.

This was all bad enough, until I learned something new, but something I should have realized. Colleges are paid to use their student athlete's likenesses. (backup) To play, a student must sign away the rights to their very face. This sickens me. At this point a college can't make any plausible claim that this is an amateur sport. Third parties are willing to buy, and the colleges are willing to sell, the right to use a player's name and face in a video game. The colleges are trading on the commercial value inherent to these players. This is overt professional use. It is shameful, unethical, and absolutely should be illegal.

I am absolutely sickened.

(I bear no ill will toward the less commercial college sports, nor honestly professional sports, just few cases where the label "amateur" is used to abuse the poor athletes. And I have nothing but pity for the poor college athletes who much suffer under this system. A career in professional sports is rough on the body, and an athlete generating value for their parent organization deserves the right to negotiate for as much pay as they can. Having years of one's inherently limited career stolen by a college is foul.)

A recent road trip reminded me of the festering dung that is the Illinois Tollway.

1. Charging double for paying tolls with cash is outrageous.

2. Preserving I-Pass travel records indefinitely is a privacy problem.

3. Turning management over to the private company is a privacy problem.

4. When your I-Pass runs low, they email you. How helpful. They email you daily. Not helpful.

5. Why didn't I put more money on immediately? Because the online site has an invalid security certificate. My iPhone (my only internet access) couldn't tell me why, so I refused. When the I-Pass telephone option was available, when it was open I was in a public space and so reading my credit card number aloud was a bad idea. Upon returning home I confirmed that Firefox also hates getipass.com. Internet Explorer likes it. Conclusion: The people running getipass.com are typical "Internet Explorer is the Internet" idiots.

6. If there is construction in the few miles preceding a tollbooth, please do the human thing and close the tollbooth. Just put up signs "NO TOLL THIS STATION. USE LEFT LANES."

7. (Added later) Their web site will confirm usernames with bad passwords, making breaking into someone's I-Pass account a bit easier. I see you got a C- on Login Security 101, Illinois Tollway.

8. (Later yet): I can't enter my actual license plate number. Apparently the dash is too complicated for their 1975 era technology.

9. I have to pick from a long list of license plate categories, some of which are RANDOMLY ALL CAPITALIZED. Really, is it so important to distinguish between "Automobile" (which isn't at the top of the list) and the dozens of cause license plates. Aren't they all license plates for automobiles?

10. (Later still. Maybe I should finish the process before posting, since every single step has bonus stupid.) The system wants my credit card number without spaces.

11. I have to give them a minimum of $40. Why? Because they're douchebags. It will take me years to spend that much. I'm essentially giving them an interest free loan for two or three years. They can take that money, invest it, and make a profit. No, it's not much per person, but across the hundreds of thousands of I-Passes, it's enough money to be worth raising the minimum from a reasonable $10 to an unreasonable $40.

12. Session length is apparently less than 10 minutes. In the time it took to type entries 10 and 11 above, I was logged out midway through paying.

I would like to applaud Illinois for making nearby states seem better by sucking so much. Every trip through your state is tainted by memories of your craptacular toll system. Your toll system, which is one of the first things I interact with in your state, is obviously an abusive monopoly run by incompetent scum. It's only human to assume that the rest of your state is abuse, incompetent, and scummy. This unfairly tarnishes the rest of your state, so why do you allow your highway system to do so?

(Edit: Added several items and rewrote last paragraph since original post.)

Buying Amazon Kindle books? Amazon may take books you "purchased" away from you. (backup) From the article, "As one of my readers noted, it's like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we've been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table."

Amazon can take your books away from you. In the future more and more books will be published in online form only, and if they all have DRM systems like Amazons, a book can be unpublished. It's as if you never had it. You can learn about the dangers of a society where history can be rewritten in this way in Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But don't look for it on your Kindle, since that's one of the books that was unpublished.

Amazon claims the books were never legal in the first place. They were essentially digital bootlegs. However, if Barnes & Noble were sloppy and accidentally sold bootleg books to customers, they would have no right to break into your home and take them back.

If you purchase something locked with DRM, you don't actually own it.* You have a license to access it. That license can be revoked for a variety of reasons, all out of your control.

* To be clear, if you buy a random book off the shelf at Barnes & Noble, you legally own that specific copy. You do not receive, nor do you need a license to read it, lend it out, resell it, quote from it, or use it as bird cage liner. Copyright law limits your right to make copies, it does not eliminate ownership.

(2009-07-24: Typo fix.)

It's been a while since we last heard about legal customers being screwed by DRM, but Amazon and Microsoft have stepped up to the plate to help.

Turns out that Amazon's Kindle ebooks will lock you out after you replace your Kindle a few times. Exactly how many times you're allowed to replace your Kindle is a secret, and varies from book to book. A book could be locked to a single Kindle. But if you get onto the Kindle train, eventually you'll upgrade and one or more of your books will no longer be available to you.

Microsoft won't stand to be outdone. Microsoft has gone further and taken paid for music away from a customer. Microsoft lost the license to distribute some music and reached out to destroy copies on their customers devices. This particular user had "purchased" $100 of music. Now it's gone. Microsoft didn't even give him a refund, although presumably he doesn't want $100, he wants the music he paid for.

In both cases we are reminded: if you download an illegal copy from the internet, not only is it free of charge, but it's free of these encumbrances. That HTML copy of a book from Usenet, or that MP3 from P2P will continue working just fine. This is the DRM model: offer you crippled goods are a higher price. I'm in favor of copyright and paying creators, but I'm also in favor of not kicking the customers in the face.

Academic journals are, on the whole, a scam.

The reviewers aren't paid. The authors aren't paid, and have to pay for copies of their own article. Worse, the author usually has to transfer copyright to the journal. The entire paid staff for many academic journals amounts to a secretary who essentially emails drafts back and forth. With monstrous subscription prices, these academic journals are easy money for publishers. Because these journals are respected, this has proven a self perpetuating scam; authors need to published in respected journals, so they participate. Reviewing articles can help build contacts and reputation. So everyone dutifully hands over piles of money to publishers who do almost nothing.

It's now been revealed that Elsevier, an academic journal publisher, has been publishing fake journals to help drug companies. This is sickening.

Fortunately I gather that some fields of study are realizing that they can cut out the middleman and everyone benefits.

I just spend two hours of my life fighting Charter Communications, trying to accomplish the simple task of updating my credit card information.

About a month ago, someone acquired my credit card number and made several fraudulent charges. (That is "identity theft".) My bank (USAA) was on the ball. They called me within hours of the fraudulent charges to confirm that they were invalid. I confirmed that they were fraudulent, my card was canceled, and within a few days had a new card. Great.

Of course, at this exact same time, I started moving to a new house. So updating all of the places with recurring charges slipped my mind. I dealt with them as the individual companies had the number bounce. Each one sent me a polite email asking to promptly update their records, and I did.

Then Charter contacted me. They did by sending a letter asking me to update my records. Oh, and letting me know they would be charging me a "$25.00 processing fee for the returned payment."

Assholes.

Fine. Okay, strictly speaking that was the terms of the auto pay. (Oddly, if I had been paying by check and simply failed to pay, I believe the late payment penalty is much smaller. Way to encourage your long-standing customers to set up automatic payments, idiots.) I'll take my lumps. I'll just use the web site and...

Oops, I never created an account. No problem, I'll set one up now. So I plug in my account number and security code. Account found. It asks me to pick a username, password, and the like. Great. Submit and...

An account has already been created.

Well, I must have created an account and forgotten about it. I'm usually really good about keeping track of that sort of thing, but no problem. I'll just ask the system to find my login name. Let's see how do I do that? I have to contact customer service. Annoying. Well, I'll try the online service. It takes a few minutes to get a representative, but at least there is no hold music. I spend ten or so minutes chatting with the person, and they have no idea what's wrong. They tell me to call the number. Fine. Onto the phone I go.

The nice woman on the phone has some problems. My account is listed as disconnected. That's no good. Fortunately we quickly sort it out: instead of transferring my existing account to the new address, my old account was closed and a new account opened. She helpfully gives me my new account number and security code. I plug them into the web site and...

My account number is too short. She's given me a 12 digit number, and the web site wants a 16 digit number. She has no idea what is going on. She has me try adding four zeroes to the front, four to the end, two to each side. It doesn't work. She tries from her end. Nothing works. She checks some other things. She has me retry the zeroes again; it still doesn't work.

At this point I've been on the phone for 20 minutes. She decides she needs to transfer me to the next level of support. But first... she tries to convince me to upgrade to digital cable. I've been on the phone for 20 minutes, you haven't solved my problem, and you want to ask for more money? No, I don't think so. (Strictly speaking she was offering my digital cable at a cheaper price. For a year, then the price shoots up dramatically. I've had this conversation before. I even did it once a few years ago. Turned out the hassle of returning the digital box and canceling the service wasn't worth saving a few bucks over a year.)

It takes the women three minutes to transfer me, but eventually I make it. The new woman doesn't clearly explain what is going on, but apparently something needs to be set up. She confirms my security code for security reasons. I have this handy, since the woman I was just speaking to gave it to me! The second woman does some magic and gives me a 16 digit number. Victory! I plug it into the web site and...

It's still angry. It still wants a 16 digit number. It doesn't care that I've given it a 16 digit number. I have angered it and it refuses to be appeased.

After failing at this for a while, the second woman decides to create the account on my behalf. Fine. First, she asks for my security code again. You know, just in case someone else snuck in in the last few minutes. Well, I still have it. She essentially reads me the fields on the web page, I give her answers, and she fills in the site. It works. I end up with a username and password. I log in successfully. Victory! I thank her. She tries to upsell me again (I think not), and after 38 minutes, I hang up.

As expected, Charter's web site says I have an outstanding balance. I click to set up autopay, and get sent to an external site. Fine. I enter in my new credit card number, hit submit and...

Not enough digits! Is this demon of not enough digits following me around!? This is is easy. It's a credit card number. 16 digits. The site wants 16 digits, I entered 16. The stupid little form designed by chimpanzees only accepted 16 digits. I triple checked.

Fine. Let's just try and pay the outstanding bill. This time it inexplicable accepts the exact same credit card number. It asks me to confirm my bill for...

$0.00. Nothing? Moments before you wanted a big pile of money. What's up. I go back to Charter and check. Yup, they want a bunch of money. Try to pay and the balance jumps to $0.00. After a bit of investigation, I notice that while Charter's web site is using my new account number, the bill paying site is using my old account number. The old account is closed, so it has a zero balance. I can't pay my bill using the web site.

Well, at least I can update my address and phone number. Except nothing on the Charter web site appears to let me change my address or phone number. Fortunately, if I go to the billing section, which is the second company, there is a link suggesting I can update my address and phone number. I click it and... am back at Charter's Profile page which doesn't let me change my address and phone number.

Fine. I try paying by phone. I call in. It asks for my phone number. I enter my phone number. It tells me my balance and asks me to press 1 if I want to pay. Sure enough. 1. It asks for my phone number. That's... odd. I enter my phone number. It tells me my balance. Wait, what? Have I found a glitch in the Matrix? It asks if I'd like to enter a credit card number. Oh, please yes. I punch in a bunch more numbers and my bill is finally paid!

Of course, I still need to change my address and phone number, so once more back to a customer service representative. Third time is not the charm; this woman has a thick accent and I have problems understanding her. But we eventually work out setting up autopay and updating my information.

Total elapsed time: about two hours.

I should have known better. My last attempt at dealing with customer service was similarly incompetent. As we spoke, I kept thinking, "Hmmm, I hear setting up a satellite dish isn't that hard" and "I wonder how well the Tivo will work with a satellite tuner box?"

If you're on the fence between Charter and some other option, consider this a reasonably strong vote against Charter. Their support is incompetent.

(Oddly, the local techs I occasionally see are almost uniformly friend, skilled, and professional. I have no complaints for my last five or so years of in-person service men.)

This is my first post with my new AT&T DSL service. I'm unimpressed, but at least it's working.

Problem 1: Getting the DSL set up will take a few days. In the meanwhile, we're jonesin for some internet. We were told that our account also got us access to AT&T wireless at places like Starbucks. Great! So off we go to a Starbucks and we try to log on. We find we lack suitable login information. We call up AT&T and learn that we need to have working DSL service before we can use the wireless. Lame.

Problem 2: More minor, but irritating. The documentation that came with the DSL modem repeatedly directs me to the AT&T website for help. If I had internet access, I wouldn't need help!

Problem 3: The default way to set up your DSL requires Microsoft Windows, and requires Internet Explorer. In a household where the only two computers are Mac OS X and Linux, this doesn't work really well. Fortunately I had a loaner laptop from work and used that.

Problem 4: The default set up system wants me to download and run software. I managed to set up internet access via Charter cable and TDS Telecom DSL without needing to install software, why does AT&T system require it?

Problem 5: The download fails. Repeatedly. I end up calling. On the up side, the guy on the phone is very helpful and walks me through an installation process that requires no downloads at all. It would have worked fine on our normal computers. (Indeed, I accidentally started using Firefox halfway through, and it didn't cause any problems.)

Problem 6: Giant terms of service. Gee, thanks. Make me agree to terms of service after you've shipped me crap. Also, I've got tech support on the phone, I'm running on laptop battery, my laptop is perched on my lap because the DSL modem is nowhere near a table. Like 99% of their users, I click agree without really looking at it. Contract law is America is a depressing joke.

Problem 7: The freebie DSL modem wants to call the built in wifi router 2WIRE924. How... memorable. And it wants to use a hard coded WEP key. 64 lousy bits. And the key uses a painfully obvious subset of the potential keyspace.

There were, happily two bright spots:

1: The freebie modem has 4 ethernet jacks and built in wifi.

2: Telephone tech support was pretty good, was easy to understand, and they answered the phone relatively late into the evening.

Under the Bush/Cheney administration, America tortured people. We waterboarded someone more than 180 times in a single month. We slammed people into walls. Bush, Cheney, and other scum were so chickenshit that they decided to "protect" America by lowering our standards. We needed to destroy human rights to protect... well, something or another. This was a dark period of American history. We descended so low that far too many people were willing, and sadly still are willing, to defend torture. I'm glad it's over, and I hope we can recover quickly. I want America to again be a shining city upon the hill, a beacon of hope, the highest standards against which all others are compared; not just a cowardly, petty nation lashing out blindly.

(2009-04-23: Typo fix)

I take back almost everything nice I said about Wisconsin's eFiling system. They moved to Adobe Acrobat forms, a proprietary format. They required the most recent version, interrupting my working on taxes to download an update. (I pity people trying to use a library's computer where upgrades may be locked out.) The forms don't let me include dashes in numbers that have them; then mocks me By adding them. Worse, the form clearly warns me "NO COMMAS," then proceeds to add them itself. One of my W2s clearly has letters in the "Employer's FED ID field." I'm not allowed to enter them into the form. I hope that's okay! The form refused the address for one of my employers. That employer with the malformed address? The State of Wisconsin. And yet again I'm asked to remember what school district I live in (not having kids, I really don't care), look it up in a separate PDF, and copy four numbers back into the form. To add insult to injury, after entering the number, it tells me what school district it is! And while the form includes a number of checks for errors, it doesn't check most of them until you submit, at which point it stops after detecting a single problem.

This is a steaming pile of crap. I guess at least it's free, but for the amount of nuisance I'm sorely tempted to go back to filing paper.

My thoughts on 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons are a confused jumble. I love it and hate it, and I'm having difficulty clearly saying why I love it and why I hate it. In some cases the same game element makes me happy and frustrates me. However, Robin Laws, in the article "D&D, GUMSHOE, Compartments, and You" mentioned, almost in passing, a key part of what I simultaneously love and hate. Here's the relevant bit:

A primary goal, if not the primary goal, of fourth edition D&D is to bring balance to fight sequences. The latest build of the RPG mothership seeks balance across several axes:

• between players, so that everyone gets to be effective during a fight
• throughout combat, so that you can do something useful even after firing your big guns
• against enemies, more evenly matching PCs and their opponents
• across levels, so that the game performs equally well at low, mid and high levels

To achieve balance, 4E compartmentalizes its crunchy bits by function, into combat and non-combat categories. A few character elements, like skill checks, cross the line between combat and roleplaying sequences. Most, however, are tuned for either one type of scene or the other. Powers are part of the combat balance. Rituals aren’t.

Also relevant are two posts by Gamer Bling!. In "Two URLs, One Class" and 4th Time's the Charm he discusses how 4e delivers on (some of) the promise of cool magic that earlier editions never did.