Things That Make You Go Gagh!

I sometimes borrow the expression, Things That Make You Go Hmm. It refers to those things that cause me amusement, bemusement, head-shaking, confusion, or other minor forms of mental disturbance. Sometimes though, that’s not enough.

So what are Things That Make Me Go Gagh?

Gagh! is the internationally and parentally recognised term for disgust. That and it’s also a Klingon delicacy.

This morning I awoke and checked my feed reader and found myself universally disgusted by the self-entitled douchebaggery being perpetrated against the developer of the Minecraft game, Marcus Persson by a bunch of criminals/script kiddies/12 year old/crybabies who think that they can ruin someone elses livelihood because they’re not happy with the pace of the games development.

These people who want Notch to increase the frequency of updates to once a week have been running a DDOS attack on the Minecraft servers now using a botnet of some 80,000 hijacked computers. It took a while apparently for Notch to figure out that it was in fact a DDOS attack, and then a message appeared on the 4chan message boards.

Minecraft is currently experiencing a stimulation provided by us.

It’s purpose is to send Notch a clear message of how the future of minecraft will turn out unless he gets to work, namely by influencing the amount of sales taking place, due to the attacks.

Start providing your customers with the updates that you promise them.

We have roughly 83,000 bots available, and preserved for this seizure, we could if we wanted to keep this going for weeks, however we have decided to give it a week, and see whether or not your attitude, and commitment will change, we believe it will when money stops rolling in for the time being…

anyhow, no we’re not from roblox, or any other minecraft clone, not to mention none of us have been around 4chan for years, and nor has any real 4channers for that matter, its all newfags now, and has been for quite a few years.”

The stupidity of this statement astounds me.

First of all, Notch is providing the updates the he has promised. There’s a Halloween update due out on the 31st of October, which I am sure he has been working hard on. Although now with the time he has had to devote to dealing with this DDOS attack, will the Halloween update be ready? Notch has said on his blog that he is behind schedule.

Second. As Living Worlds points out, Notch is a single developer working on this project, he’s getting married sometime soon, and he is forming a company to continue the development of Minecraft. While I don’t agree with the characterisation of the DDOSers as terrorists (I think the term is tossed around too freely these days) since there is no terror involved. However, the activity is certainly criminal in several ways. But I digress.

• Programming is hard. It’s also not an exact science. Sometimes implementing features or fixing bugs take as long as they take. This is so much more the case with only one developer  when you can’t run a bit of code past some other eyes.
• The guy is getting married. Even though the bride does most of the planning and work on getting the day right, the groom also takes on a lot of time consuming responsibility. Unless he is Raymond. How selfish is it to demand Notch put the wedding on hold just because you think he’s not working hard enough?
• Setting up a company takes time, depending on where you live. I know. I did that myself late last year, and while Australia makes it easy to set up a company, it’s not set and forget. I understand the US also makes it easy to start a company, but Persson hails from Sweden and I believe many of the European countries make it very difficult to start a company. That’s got to take time away from development.

A third point. While Notch may be the sole developer on Minecraft, currently, he is taking on developers to work on the game. That alone will slow down the pace of development, at least initially. These new developers will have to be brought up to productivity and that will take time. Notch will be the one training them, and that will take his time away from development. It’s well known in the software industry that adding programmers to a late project only makes it later, and that is the reason.

While Minecraft is not late since it doesn’t have a release schedule, adding developers will slow it down for a while. Anyone with half a brain would know that.

And finally. This whole attack is the epitome of the saying, cutting off your nose to spite your face.

It’s purpose is to send Notch a clear message of how the future of minecraft will turn out unless he gets to work, namely by influencing the amount of sales taking place, due to the attacks.

Putting the future of Minecraft in jeopardy because you want more updates to the game you’re playing, and you want them now?

At the very least, they’re delaying the very updates they want more of.

These people are dense.

So yeah. Currently full of disgust for these self-entitled idiots who think the world revolves around them.

Gagh!

Idiots!

Regular readers will know that I periodically rant against stupid censorship laws, being a strong believer that people not only have a right to make up their own minds about what they read, watch, or play, but that they are generally capable of making those decisions being adults.

Still, sometimes one must wonder.

One of the big gaming issues in Oz at the moment is the undemocratic blocking of an R rating for games by the South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. I’ve made a few comments about that on this blog, but that’s not what I want to rail at now.

Apparently, some in the gaming community have been sending death-threats to the AG, not only threatening him, but his family.

Are these idiots really so dense as to believe that a death-threat will make someone in a high-level government position cower in fear and change their position?

If anything this kind of stupidity only entrenches the opinion and position of your opponent. Worse still, it turns the reasonable members of society who may have been leaning towards supporting our position against us. It can only harm the cause of getting an R rating for games, and supports the position of the censorship advocates. Idiots!

The point of being anti-censorship is to support a system where everyone has the right to express themselves freely, and where everyone can choose what expressions they partake in. One of the constant features of repressive societies is the censorship of expression, often through the use of violence or the removal of individual rights.

Someone who chooses to threaten someone with violence or death in order to get his or her own way isn’t choosing the path of freedom. They’re choosing the road that dictators and censors so often like to take.

Maybe there really are some in the gaming community who should be denied access to games.

Idiots!