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Gurubear

Listed below are comments made by Gurubear between Wednesday, 11th November 2009 and Tuesday, 24th November 2009 (11 Hours Ago) .

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Why did Bank of England keep shtoom? 8:58pm on 24 Nov 2009 I think what REALLY upsets you is that something happened and no one told you about it.

And of course, you and your colleagues are the very people that King WANTED to keep out of the loop, or you would have made things worse - again.

Interestingly, the city seems to think that this is very old news, that many people in the city, including major share holder groups were aware that this was happening. It is just that the media were not invited to the party.

Oh, and of course, this was a short term loan, it was paid back in a timely fashion and the tax payer made a profit.

You are in the privileged position of being able to say anything you like and spin it anyway you choose. The Bank of England does not have that luxury - they actually have to run the finances for real.

A very, very senior economist at a huge company once said to me when he was meeting with my father.

"The difference between a chief economist and a chief financial officer is that no once cares if the economist gets it wrong."
The Digital Economy Bill - does it add up? 4:32pm on 20 Nov 2009 Just a thought:

In the old days of the GPO, if you were abusive or carried out any illegal activity over the phone, then the GPO had the right to cut you off. As far as I know, that is probably still the case.

This was a very well know aspect of the system and was used, often and quite happily without anyone from the press or anyone from human rights group muttering a single word about it.

So, what is the difference between someone being cut off then and being cut off now?

It strikes me that the person from BT ought to be careful about this subject if someone decides that illegal file sharing is contravening BTs own terms and conditions...
Facebook v Ceop 5:06pm on 19 Nov 2009 Calaba wrote:

good points, but first, why does a 14-year-old have a laptop in their bedroom, with internet access?

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Oh, I quite agree. For instance we have PCs downstairs in our house (except in my office). That way we can have some vague chance of monitoring possible problems and it has the advantage that the family still share the occasional conversation.

My point is, whether it is Facebook, Bebo, a game or whoever, if the company KNOWS that their service is used by people younger than intended, especially if it is thousands and thousands, then they have to take responsibility somewhere down the line. You should simply say, well, they should not have been on anyway. They are on, and will continue to be on, with or without parental knowledge.

It is not a simple issue, and the opinions of the users can make it an even bigger headache. I quote one user on Wurm Online who was furious that he had been muted for swearing on the main chat channel:

"I thought this was meant to be a game for adults!!!! Why are you censoring me?" Or, ummm, words to that effect.

The answer was simple - An adult is someone who knows when not to swear.
Facebook v Ceop 12:07pm on 19 Nov 2009 ravenmorpheus2k wrote:

Oh and gurubear you are right of course with regards to the way 18+ games and the like are marketed but who's more at fault, the ill-informed parent for buying the game and then allowing their child(ren) to play it or the equally ill-informed shop staff for selling the game to said parents?

I know which I'd pick.

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I agree, the first responsibility is with the parent. However, many parents are lousy at this, or just give in a lot. The choice then is either someone else has to take responsibility, or we let the kids suffer the consequences - that latter just does not seem right.

The companies have a role - if they are earning income (either directly or from advertising) because at least part of their user base is young, then they MUST take responsibility. They are earning from it after all.

And the government has a role here too. This government (and previous governments) have been accused of the Nanny State because they do something that parents should be doing. The problem is, however, that many parents often are NOT doing their job, if you will, so what other option is there?

Take the case of the parents who objected to Jamie Oliver's school dinners campaign and were handing over pie and chips to their kids across the school wall (with some tabloid encouragement, I suspect). How do you deal with that? You cant ignore it, but if you try and solve it you are accused of interfering. No win.
Facebook v Ceop 11:59am on 19 Nov 2009 Calaba wrote:

Ohh and gurubear - those games ARE aimed at the 18-30's. Most online games are (even if they don't state it), "pro" players will often restrict access to clans/guilds to 18+. This isn't because they don't want little kids to play online games, but because under 18's tend not to have control over their own lives...

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Sorry, I have been marketing these sorts of products for years and years. And worked on games from Takeru (many years ago) to Wurm Online now.

There is a massive difference from what they say publicly and in their terms and conditions and what they bank on actually happening.

It used to be that with people under 18 you sold to parents because the young person did not have disposable incomes. That has changed now, and many of the online games have very intentionally moved their payment system to include those that allow young people without paypal or credit card access to pay online.

At Wurm Online, where we have young teens as well as adults play openly, we are constantly nagged to have young person friendly payment systems like all the other online games.

And we know these young lot play loads of your adult only games because they chat about them constantly; bores me silly, in fact! :)

As for having no control over their own lives, young teens often having laptops, and using them from their bedrooms, we find the average 14 year old spends twice as much time playing than most adults (and Wurm is a VERY time consuming, difficult game), and are often much more highly skilled than the adults. If there is an area where they can fall down (though adults do this too) it is in getting on with people. Wurm, being a game where you can set up villages with others, terraform the land, build houses, farm and so on, it works best when people get on with each other and are patient with each other. Even on the warring Wild server.

To be honest, the other worry I have had is with some of the excessive time of play. I am not the only person who has nagged younger village members to go and do their homework because we are aware they are spending too much time in the game.
BBC HD on Freeview: rollout dates 10:36pm on 18 Nov 2009 The shame about this whole HD thing is that on HD flat screens, the picture quality is still no where near as good as the original analogue HD played on 1175 line CRT monitors.
Pic of the day: iPlayer on the Wii 10:32pm on 18 Nov 2009 Just watched a couple of progs on the new iPlayer for the Wii. About time that was sorted properly.

Unfortunately the sound is about 1 frame out of sync to the picture.
Facebook v Ceop 3:59pm on 18 Nov 2009 A subject as important as child protection.

And what does Facebook come up with? A cheap jibe at a competitor.

So glad to see they take the subject seriously.

Although FB is meant to have a minimum age of 13, I notice that a lot of the apps seemed to be aimed one hell of a lot younger - certainly visually. Consequently, parents will often let younger children use it, despite the 13 restriction, because in reality it looks like it caters for younger children.

Maybe I am too cynical from being in the media for 30 years, but this is like the video games that are aimed for people over 18 - yeah, right! Sure they are. That is why they do action figure merchandising to go along with them.

Sites like Facebook WILL get used by younger people. FB are very well aware of this and should take responsibility rather than hide behind their terms and conditions.
The anonymous bullies 4:16pm on 16 Nov 2009 There are two issues here - one is the rather horrific content of Have Your Say, and the other is proper cyber bullying which is a sustained attack on one individual.

Ignoring the first, however, you are right to say this goes beyond the realms of kids and includes adults too.

In our online game Wurm Online, the moderators have had to deal with a lot incidences of harassment of one player by another - both in game and in the forums, often even by private message. The bullies are frequently people in their 20s, 30s, 40s even who seem to get their kicks from making peoples lives as miserable as possible. This is not the result of in game wars or anything like that, just one person deciding to make life hell for another.

I have had this myself. On an old, now abandoned, blog I criticised those who were against the smoking ban. Within hours I had personal attacks from people - not questioning me on what I wrote, but threatening me, insulting what they thought I might look like, saying they knew where I lived and they would "come and get me" and so on.

I suspect many other people have suffered the same sort of thing. One comment said, well, its your fault for writing a blog. But that is wrong; it is the bullies fault for being plain nasty for no real reason.

Bullying amongst adults has been common in the work place for years, so it is no surprise that it is becoming common on the internet. Indeed, the internet allows for people who would be too cowardly otherwise to bully others. Anyone who works in online games or other communities knows the true scale of the problem, but also knows how little sympathy there can be from the community as a whole for those who have been victims.

And that is another hang over from real life, and something I remember from my school days of many years ago. It is common for victims to feel that every one else believes it is their fault they are being bullied.

For some reason, no one ever seems to blame the person who actually does the bullying!

PS: One other thing to note, the growth of bullying on the internet which has been there since it was very much the domain of the tech demonstrates how middle class bullying often is.
Computing for older users: Patronising or practical? 12:09pm on 11 Nov 2009 I think there is a market for a system that makes computing dead simple for straight forward uses - what ever the age of the person using the thing.

Outside my office/studio environment, where I am drowning in IT, I would love a machine that I turned on and pressed the big "email" button.

Oh, look - Google Chrome

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