Terminally Incoherent

WTF is this?

I just got the November issue of White Dwarf, and I’m still trying to figure out who the hell came up with the brilliant idea for the Chimaerat model… What the hell is that supposed to be? I would understand if this was featured in the crazy conversion corner - a odd model that would count as a Clan Moulder doomwheel or something.

This model was featured in the WFB Chronicles section, as part of the Clan Moulder monster themed variant list. Someone actually sat down, and wrote stat line, and rules for this thing… I totally get Rat-Ogres - they just work, and make sense. Rat-Ogre is to ogre what a skaven is to human. We know that Ogre’s are susceptible to chaos and that they do mutate (eg. Chaos Ogres) so we can imagine how a Rat-Ogre could be created. But you can’t just slap rat head on anything and put it in skaven army!

First of all, this thing looks like a hydra - but I guess whoever was writing these rules wanted to avoid the Hydra(n)t jokes. Either way, both Chimaera and Hydra are already twisted and tainted chaos monstrosities. How do you justify throwing in the rat bit in there? It just seems silly… At least to me…

But then again, what do I know. At least this crap is not official

Heh… I was just blogging about the EULA poll yesterday, and now I discovered the EULAlyzer from Javacool Software.! I haven’t tested this thing, but it seems like a grand idea

It is a solution to an very real problem - reading through long, verbose EULAS is not practical. It is much better to parse it automatically and extract useful info! I’m actually surprised no one cam up with a tool like that before!

The question is - if tools like this one become popular, will this prompt companies to simplify these documents? Or will it have the opposite effect,motivating lawyers to write super-verbose, confusing, unparsable EULAS? Will software companies start utilize CAPTCHA technology for their EULA boxes to prevent automatic parsing, and classification?

I don’t want to say I told you so, but… On Saturday I blogged about Jack Thompson and said:

You know, I kinda hope that some game company answers this challenge, makes that game, pays for the distribution of few thousand copies, then signs over all the copyright and liability to him and then slaps his name on the cover. Then Thompson will have to sue himself for distributing the most violent game in the century

Today’s slashdot headline:

Jack Thompson has rescinded his offer of a $10,000 donation to charity if a video game were made to fit his model. Recently a group of GTA modders cooked up a scenario to fit the bill but apparently Thompson is claiming that his piece ‘A Modest Video Game Proposal’ was intended as satire that the video game community was not bright enough to grasp. Perhaps Thompson was just afraid he was going to have to sue himself?

Am I psychic or what? Thompson chickened out! Ha!

This guy is priceless source of entertainment! I was looking at his exchange with Scott Ramsoomair of VGCats that was linked from Penny Arcade and I have to say wow:

From: “Jack Thompson”
To: scott@vgcats.com
Subject: Re: This sex isn’t hidden, Scott. Wouldn’t want the facts to get in the way or your drawing, now would you?
Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 13:56:23 -0400

No, you emailed me. HOnestly, are all of you gamers on drugs, or what?

This guy is supposed to be a lawyer? Dude, are you 14? This is something that you would expect to see in some adolescent AOL chatroom, not in an email from a lawyer. Geez!

Too funny!

How do you read your EULA?

I found the new slashdot poll amusing. I’m including the screenshot showing the state of the poll when I saw it first. I think this poll illustrates how most people look at these things. Most slashdoters admited to immidiately agreeing to these things. And if you think about it - slashdoters represent the more tehnologically competent crowd (note that I didn’t say intelligent, because that’s debatable ;P). So if the techies click “I Agree” without reading most of the time, think about what the average technophobe does…

I admit I do the same. More often than not I click agree, and move on. From time to time I quickly skim through the thing, but I do not have time to actually read the whole 50+ page agreement. I usually try to glance at the privacy section to make sure I’m not installing spyware, and that this software will not give away my email to spammers.

Speaking of EULA’s, I remember that there was a girl in my high school who’se name was actually Eula (yes, it was actually spelled with an E, not a Y like in that user friendly episode). I think she was in some of my classes, and I always found it amusing when people called her by name. I think it was short for something. Or maybe not… I don’t remember.

How do you read your EULA?

Vanishing Bill of Rights Mugs

Wow! I want one of these mugs! They are awesome! You pour hot water (or coffe) in them and you can watch the bill of rights vanish right before your eyes. Kinda like what is happening right now with the real bill…

I found this on boingboing, but you can buy one of them here.

One thing about this makes me thing though. There was another story at BoingBoing today about a kid who’se anti-Bush poster was confiscated by sectet service. So, does drinking coffe from a mug like this one makes a terrorist out of you? Just to be clear on this, we just saw that the answer is “hell yeah” in the eyes of Bush administration. So if you use one of these at work, please don’t be surprised if the Thought Police visits you one day asking all kinds of questions…