Running as Root

Dictionary Dancing

As I mentioned previously, my wife plays a lot of Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom. VMK has been targeted at kids and is therefore "kid friendly." This means that they run everything you type through a very limited dictionary to prevent all that dirty talk. You can't talk about any personal details, exchange any personal information, or try to intentionally circumvent the filter. You can't even use numbers since a kid could give out their phone number to a pedophile.

This leads to the art of "dictionary dancing" where players use words that are in the dictionary to try and communicate information. For example, I might say my high score in a game was "too ate tree though sand" for 283,000. The staff mostly looks the other way on these types of exchanges, but you can still be warned or temporarily banned for such things. The more interesting thing is that certain word combinations are flagged and sent to an event log. The live log monitored by some Sulake staffer sitting at home. Phrases like "yeah who" are sent to them so they can evaluate the conversation and determine if, for example, that person is trying to communicate their Yahoo! name to someone. If that's the case you can expect a ban of some duration.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place

All of this leads to some pretty tame conversations in game. If you read my other post you know that a lot of adults wind up playing VMK. Since people crave better conversations and since VMK closes at midnight CST the "after hours" discussions have to happen somewhere. At some point a lot of players started having chats via IRC.

On one of the channels, any time a new person showed up (that no one knew) the regulars would put them through the ringer of questions. It's kind of like hazing. They'd ask them about their hair removal habits with regards to their genitals, anal / oral sex, penis / breast size (usually one person doesn't get both of these questions), public sexcapades, etc. After the introductory period the conversation was pretty normal, with slightly sexual tendencies.

IMVU

After a while more of the players migrated to something called IMVU. It's 3D avatar chat. You can buy more adult clothes, perform more adult moves, etc on there. One of the more interesting aspects of IMVU is that players can "develop" their own in-game items.

They have a set of developer tools you can download that will allow you to create our own items based on anything in their catalog that is marked as "derivable." You can then use a simple paint program to change the opacity of areas of the item and the color of the item. Making your own t-shirt with some custom text would take you a few minutes. You can then pay IMVU credits to list the item in their catalog so others can buy it for a price you set. You then get a portion of those credits on every sale.

You can also completely create new items if you have more skill and access to a copy of a 3D modeling program like 3D Studio Max. The other cool thing is that IMVU makes it easy for developers to sell their in-game credits to other players for cash.

Numerous copyright enforcement issues aside, this is just plain bad ass. By making it easy for people to create stuff you have a nearly endless army of developers. Developers that in this case are paid for directly by your other customers. The lure of "easy" money as well as a fairly cool creative outlet keep the new ideas gushing in.

IMVU itself makes money by selling things like credits, the ability to have a permanent name, and adult passes (extra moves, full nudity, more access control to your IMVU home page, etc). And because it's not a game, people never "win" and stop playing. It isolates the social aspect of massive multiplayer online games. Of course the absolute king of doing all of these things is Second Life. I'll have to go into its strange details in another post.

X-Men: The Last Stand – 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

I'm not a reader of the many, many comic books for X-Men so my opinion is not affected by the movies possibly not living up to the original material. That being said, my minor problem with all of the movies is the feeling that there is too much back history to squeeze into a 1 1/2 to 2 hour movie. It leaves me feeling like I'm the only one not laughing at many of the inside jokes.

As always with the X-Men movies I feel that Ian McKellen completely eclipses the other actors and their characters. My thoughts while watching any of them vacillate between "where's Magneto" and marvelling at how much Wolverine gets his ass kicked.

The bigger disappointment with this movie is the DVD version. The deleted scenes and alternate endings are just plain weak. The 10 or so deleted scenes amount to things like Beast emitting a growl when meeting Wolverine or of two versions of Pyro telling Magneto they've found Mystique. One of the versions has Magneto with a beard. Well whoopety-fucking-doo. That aside, I like the entire series and it's one of the better movie trilogies around, though there is still plenty of room for the greatest of all time to emerge someday…

Junebug – 4 out of 5 stars

This movie is pretty much a character study of weird people in a North Carolina family and the outsider that married into it. That's exactly what I like about it. It's probably not for everyone. It moves pretty slowly at times, some of the shots are held too long (but again, I think that's some of its charm), and it doesn't go for the cheap joke by making fun of its characters.

Like everyone, my wife and I have some pretty odd family members. It was enjoyable, for me at least, to savor the awkward silences, baffling directionless anger, and downright "what the fuck are you thinking" moments between the characters. There are also some priceless, very subtle moments (very well acted, too) involving the presence of religion in some of the characters' lives. The uncomfortable reaction of the main character is one I've experience many, many times. Thanks to my recent acquisition of a Netflix account I'm getting to see more of these movies that I consider sleeper hits.

I highly recommend this movie for people that like that indie film feel, don't need a laugh track or the joke pointed out for them, and like characters over plot. It makes a good rental, but if you wind up not liking it I won't be surprised. Again, it may not be for everyone. I also can't recommend Netflix highly enough. If you feel like adding me as a friend on there let me know and I'll let you know the account name (it's my gmail address).

I am constantly fascinated by the myriad of subcultures that pop up everywhere. These little groups have their own hierarchies, vocabulary, etc. These communities are centered around various hobbies, collectibles, professions, and any other of a variety of interests and pursuits. Like most people, I've experience some of these odd little groups first hand and thought it might be interesting to post about.

Virtual Magic Kingdom

Being a big Disney fan my wife enjoys playing Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom. In short, VMK is a free multiplayer online game that is Disney themed and targeted at pre to early teens, even though an awful lot of adults seem to play it. There are in-game games like fireworks (a little like Missile Command) and Pirates of the Caribbean (ship to ship combat) that allow players to compete and earn credits. Credits are spent buying clothing, rooms, and furniture for the rooms. And that's pretty much it.

Although the game is free, Disney tries to use it to drive interest to other products. For example, when Herby Fully Loaded came out on DVD it came with a VMK card that had a code on it. Using the code in the game got you a helmet, shirt, pants, shoes, poster, and a couch that looked like the car. All of this in-game–no physical items other than the card. They've also done Disneyland vacation packages that included virtual clothing items.

Disney has printed a whole line of actual physical cards that have codes on them. You get the cards through a variety of promotions and use them in game to get virtual items in the game. They also give away "rare" virtual items in the game during different contests (like who can make the best looking room) also in the game.

The Haves Versus the Have Nots

Some of these virtual items are rare. Sure, another copy can easily be made, but they're not. (There was a short lived hack tool that allowed people to clone items directly from the trade window, but this was fixed. Plus the tool was being used to harvest passwords.) The number of a particular item in the game may be very low and because of this it becomes a prestige item in the game. Players that have them show them off while the players that don't have them desperately want them. Luckily players can trade items with each other.

A great example of a rare item in the game is a pair of green flip flops or simply "green flips." When VMK opened around May 2005 they were in beta. Some of the items available for sale for credits during the beta period were no longer available when the game officially opened. One of these was green flips though other color flip flops were still available.

The game is hosted for Disney by a company named Sulake (which also runs Habbo Hotel from what I hear). Sulake employees have avatars in the game to help players out by answering questions, settling disputes, etc. After the game opened they thought it'd be great to have a uniform to make themselves more easily identified. They picked a green t-shirt, green baggy pants, and green flips all of which had been made unavailable to normal players. The "value" of all of these items instantly shot up. Anyone that had acquired the item before it was taken out still had it. Unfortunately the number was very small with the order of rareness being shirts, pants, then flips.

Getting green flips in the game was next to impossible unless you were willing to trade a plethora of hard to find items and could find someone willing to part with such a prestigious item.

And Then There Was EBay

Some people finally began to clue in to the fact that you could sell these 1's and 0's on EBay. Strangely you could also sell the cards that had the codes on them, even though the code had already been used. Ah, the instant collectibles market. Is there anything sweeter?

The highest amount I've heard of green flips selling for was $1500. Here's a semi-recent screen cap of some closed EBay auctions for VMK items. Keep in mind that, besides the cards, none of these items are real.

One thing I found funny is that it is against your EULA to sell items from the game. This lead to many of the auctions listing a condition of sale being that you are not an employee of Disney or Sulake. Since the transfer of the item happens in game you could theoretically be banned for the sale. Sure you could try to use a second character to trade the item, but since all IPs are logged you'd have to jump through even more hoops.

It really doesn't seem to matter all that much to Disney though. VMK people are aware of the EBay auctions. Even though they're against the rules they are good indicator that people will spend money in promotions related to the game. On top of that it alludes to the fact that many more adults are playing the game than originally thought, despite the effort to market to 12 year olds.

Time to Cheat

Of course as soon as you start seeing real money rear its ugly head it's time to work the system. One way that VMK handed out super rare codes was to have web based games and quests external to VMK proper. These games would randomly hand out the "good" code in addition to spewing out plenty of codes for less valuable items. Eventually some people have figured out the URL patterns for the rare item codes and were able to skip the randomness altogether. They then turn around and sell the items for money to less industrious players.

VMK (Sulake specifically) became aware of the cheating and decided to ban all players that entered more than a set number of these super rare codes. Unfortunately the cheaters didn't enter the codes themselves–they just sold / traded the code. So, the wrong people were banned (and eventually unbanned with stern warnings).

Instant Devaluation

The disadvantage of the value of virtual property is that it can lose its value very easily. Recently VMK has been re-introducing super rare items from its beta period. Despite the fact that this makes the have-nots happy it sure pisses off the people that spent a lot of time and effort getting the item. This is especially true given the fact that VMK doesn't seem to communicate with its players very well. One day you log on and find out the item you paid $500 for on EBay is now selling for 500 credits (a very low amount). This has a tendency to piss people off, to say the least.

I know of two people that have made over $10,000 apiece selling these virtual items. When you think about the possibility of having $10,000 in virtual inventory instantly become worthless it might make you start to think about selling that shit off. So, not having a clear policy / agreement with their players about re-introducing rare items has caused Disney to drive its players to break their EULA, even though Disney doesn't seem to care.

More to Come

Like I said, I'm fascinated by these subcultures. I'm even more fascinated by virtual communities, the value of virtual property, how hosting companies manage their customer relations, and the new legal implications of it all. With that in mind I'm sure I'll have another couple of posts on related topics.

I found a few links on the history of video games via the We Make Money Not Art blog that I read. In particular, The Dot Eaters is full of interesting little facts. Like Pac-Man originally being named Puckman. The name was changed when the game came to America to avoid vandalism that would likely change the 'P' to an 'F'. Or that Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card company (the site also gives more detail on Nintendo's early business successes with Disney). The other site is a timeline that has a nice concise overview of things in addition to some tasty facts of its own. Like Sega originally being named "Services and Games", a company that imported pinball machines from U.S. to military bases in Japan. Both pages make for some interesting reading if you don't consider such things a waste.

Gambling Problem?

I was just idly wondering about how much poker I play. I play online while watching television (a bad thing to do) most evenings and I play at multiple tables. Last month I played in 202 sit-and-gos. These are 10 person tournaments that if played to completion, meaning I get 1st or 2nd, last about an hour and a half. My average finish last month was a dismal 5th (I usually do better, etc). Assuming that 5th will take you roughly 45 minutes to get, that means I played around 150 table hours of poker. Hands, on average, take about a minute apiece. This time gets shorter the deeper in you go but it'll work for my calculations. That means for each 5th place finish I see about 45 hands or roughly 9,000 hands last month. My flops seen percentage is conservatively around 15 percent. So, I probably saw 1,350 flops last month. As the title says, that's a lot of poker. Again, there is some wild ass guessing in there, but I think it's probably a fairly accurate number.

Now, do I have a problem? I, of course, say no as it's an entertaining hobby for me. I lost a whopping 65 units of some type of currency last month with all that hot poker action. Some months I win, some I lose, but for the most part I think I've been treading water or trending slightly upward over the past 2 years. The extent of my gambling problem is that I can't get donks to lay down their inside straight draws to pot size bets despite the fact they're 10 to 1 to hit it. I mean, I lost to a 1 outter inside straight flush last month to finish 1 out of the money (I already had my flush). Okay, no one wants to hear or read a bad beat story.

Oh, and my other problem is that internet poker is considered gambling while the state lottery isn't. Poker isn't even in the same category as blackjack, roulette, keno, or the fucking lottery. It is a game of short term luck and long term skill where correct play is more likely to be rewarded over the long haul. The more you play any of those other games (with the exception counting cards in blackjack) the more likely you are to lose.

The Future of Poker

Poker is about making the correct decision more often than the people you're playing. It's also about making your opponent make incorrect decisions or do things they would never do if they could see all of the cards. If you just do that, all of those bad beats (statistical anomalies) will even out. You do this by knowing the odds, knowing people, and knowing a little psychology.

You can read about the odds (The Theory of Poker is muy badass for this), but the people part of the game (which is huge in no limit) has to be learned by playing. If you go to a brick and mortar casino you'll be lucky to see a quarter of the hands an internet player will see in an equal amount of time. Sure, you get to study your opponent's physical mannerisms and ticks (and learn to hide your own), but in my opinion serious players soon begin to hide those fairly well and even start throwing off a lot of false signals. Once they do this, you need to rely less on which way they lean in their chair when they make a bet, how confident they seem, etc. You need to start paying attention to their betting pattern. Incidentally, Caro's Book of Poker Tells is a good start on picking up tells.

If the flop puts up a pair and your opponent bets a lot into you, you have to know that if he's inexperienced it usually means he's bluffing and you may be able to go over the top of him and take the pot right there. However, if he's more experienced he knows that you know that so he bets into you anyway, hoping you'll make the hyper-aggressive re-raise. You also have to learn to identify the maniac or the rock by their betting patterns. Their play 20 hands ago may be a good indicator of what they're holding now.

The way to learn this is to play hands. A lot of hands. Which you can do with zero travel time, virtually no waiting list, a smaller rake, with a higher volume of hands, and from the comfort of your own home on the internet. And that's why the so-called "internet players" have been doing unbelievably good in real life tournaments despite the fact that they're so much younger and supposedly less experienced than the older guys.

To sum up, 1) I play a lot of poker and 2) poker is like sex in that it should be done at home with the assistance of the internet, sometimes in large groups, and occasionally in public. Oh and some people make a lot of money at it.

Disclaimer: I only play poker on the internet for "play money" for entertainment purposes because gambling is wrong (except the lottery). And since this post has the word "poker" in it a bazillion times I should have just titled it "Spam-a-lama-ding-dong."

The Aristocrats – 3 out of 5 stars

This is a documentary by Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette. The subject matter centers around a joke that has a beginning and an end but no real middle. The middle of the joke is improvised by the teller and the goal is to make it the most shocking and offensive joke you possibly can. I'm a huge fan of Penn Jillette's radio show as I've mentioned before, so I typically enjoy anything with which he's involved. I like this movie a decent amount but it falls just short of greatness.

The main drawback of the movie is twofold. The first is that many of the comedians retelling the joke approached it in pretty much the same way. After hearing 10 or so variations of "piss and shit everywhere" along with combinations of incestuous pedophilic anal sex you long for something more. The second problem is that it has gotten much more difficult to shock people. As such, I didn't find most of the material shocking or disgusting (although my wife certainly did).

I still enjoyed the movie as a documentary. Hearing stories from entertainment industry insiders was fairly interesting. In addition, the DVD extras (especially the "other jokes" section) were very entertaining. It's always fascinating to me to hear analysis of why something is funny. I'd definitely recommend renting it, though it's not for the faint of heart.

North Country – 2 out of 5 stars

This movie stars Charlize Theron (who was smoking hot in Monster) as a single mother who takes a job in a coal mine. It's inspired by the true story of a group of female miners that brought sexual harassment charges against the mine in which they worked. During the course of their employment, the female workers are constantly harassed and menaced by their male counterparts. Theron's character makes several attempts to address the situation only to be knocked back down by both her male and female co-workers.

I didn't find the movie particularly entertaining. Sure it depicts how cruel and overbearing men can be in situations lacking true authority figures. It shows how inherently misogynistic most males are. Fantastic. I already knew that. My cub scout troop and I used to beat the smaller scouts with pillow cases full of chili cans, crucify hobos, and incinerate female carnies when the scout master wasn't looking. That doesn't make us bad people. I digress. Watching two hours sexual harassment followed by typical corporate strong arm courtroom tactics followed by shocking and awful revelations from the main character's past just don't make for entertainment.

Now if you want to see a good, entertaining movie with some coal mining in it rent Zoolander.

I think I got the black lung, pop. — Derek Zoolander

World Poker Tour – Legends of Poker

I watched the Legends of Poker tournament on the Travel Channel last night. Another very good tournament in the WPT series. If you haven't watched this or any of the other WPT tournaments, I highly recommend them on entertainment value.

Generally though, you won't learn any sound poker strategy for several reasons. The first is that out of a field of hundreds of players, you're watching the 6 player final table. At this point in the tournament it is a very different game than what makes up 95% of your tournament time. Patience, a high tolerance for boredom, and a love of folding make up most of a typical massive multiplayer tournament. Also the hands you are allowed to see are usually very carefully selected, with huge bluffs and all-in showdowns taking priority.

If you plan on watching the show and hate people ruining the end for you, you should stop reading now.

Spoiler Time

Kenna James played some very good poker, demonstrating his very accurate reading ability and his willingness to let go of big hands when there is a strong enough possibility that he is beat, no matter how good his hand looks. For example, he folded AK off suit to a junk board against the big blind, who could have had just about anything. That's discipline. Although I think he should have raised earlier in the hand to determine where he was exactly.

The final two came down to Kenna James and Alex Kahaner. Finishing in 1st place is worth $1,125,900 while 2nd is worth a mere $588,210. A difference of $537,690.

On the last hand Kahaner is dealt JT off while James gets A4 off. Now, forgive me a bit, I'm doing this from memory. But I believe James is first to act and he puts in a large raise. Kahaner thinks a bit and raises 1.5 million chips. James goes into the tank for a while and finally re-raises all in (the "I just got caught" look on Kahaner's face at that moment is priceless).

Now that's a very good read, to know your weak ace is good. He should also be pretty sure that his opponent can't call because he's represented such a strong hand. Yes, he is correct mathematically making this move (but only slightly). He's somewhere in the neighborhood of 54% to win the hand. His real value in this hand comes from being aggressive and putting a tremendous amount of pressure on his opponent.

I'll Flip You For It

Now Kahaner should fold if he's a typical professional player. He should wait for a spot where he's an overwhelming favorite. He should bide his time. However, he doesn't and I like it and I'll tell you why. Kenna James demonstrated his ability to read people and make correct, difficult decisions all night at the table. I think he was the best poker player there, especially considering several of the finalists were amateurs.

If Kahaner can just make the leap that James doesn't have two overcards or a pair higher than 9s, he really should just call the all in bet. Why? Because if Mike Tyson demanded I bet him a sum of money on either a) the outcome of a boxing match between me and him or b) the outcome of a coin flip then I'm going to have to go with option b. It's not just that he's going to beat the shit out of me, it's that I stand NO chance in the boxing match. At least with the coin flip I'm 50/50.

I think Kahaner was in a similar situation. Given enough time and enough hands, Kenna James was going to outplay him before and after the flop on a regular basis. Sure, Kahaner may have gotten lucky enough to pick up pocket aces in the big blind while James was being overly aggressive, but it's doubtful. More than likely he would just get bitch slapped around the table for 15-20 hands until he finally made a desperation move with something that looks like aces to short-stacked amateurs like me. I'd say without a coin flip situation his chances of winning are somewhere around 20%. If you'd like me to pull more numbers out of my ass, just let me know.

So, given that, I think he has to jump on the opportunity to flip a coin (or very close to it) for $500k.

And the Winner is

Kahaner flops an open ended straight draw. He then completes the upper end on the turn and the lower (completely unnecessary) end on the river. He wins over a million dollars on his "bad" move.

Kenna James was of course in disbelief at the call and the beat. However, unlike someone like Hellmuth, in his closing interview he complimented both the Bicycle Casino for putting on a great tournament and Kahaner for being a class act. He's becoming one of my new favorites to watch.

Penn Jillette

I've been getting back into listening to podcasts at work. After quickly working my way through everything decent that I had missed on IT Conversations I found my self hungry for more stuff to which to listen. I used iTunes to subscribe to a few promising looking podcasts (although I don't use iTunes to listen to them–it's a jumpy, glitchy CPU hog) I found Penn Jillette's podcast of his radio show. I've always found him to be an entertaining individual, and his radio show is no exception (for me anyway). If you find yourself with too much dead air in your day, I highly recommend grabbing a few of his podcasts.

The most recent Gilbert Gottfried episode, where they're making fun of Jerry Lewis (15 minutes in), was laugh out loud funny.

Jillette is a very vocal atheist, so if that sort of thing bothers you, don't listen. One of tasty tidbits he dropped on the show I just listened to is that "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is under 50 years old. Very entertaining and even slightly educational.

Breaking the Spell

I also recently listened to a Tech Nation podcast (very good series by the way) with Daniel Dennett, author of Breaking the Spell. Briefly, it's a book about using science to study all aspects of religion.

Dennett makes an interesting point that the concept of feeling guilty about "losing one's faith" is absent in most folk religions (not sure about that) and that it is when religion became more organized and competed with other religions that this concept naturally works its way in. Religions that had the concept that it was wrong to stray from the religion were more likely to propagate and therefore spread the concept while those that didn't "punish" loss of faith slowly died out.

He also attacks the idea that the only people qualified to study religion are on the inside. He suggests that this is absurd and that we'd never accept that from something like the banking industry or any other concept being studied for that matter.

Yet another interesting topic he brings up is that in the modern world natural barriers are disappearing and wreaking havoc with ecosystems. The same is happening with religious ideas. People and cultures are finding it harder to isolate themselves and their ideas from everyone else because technology (television, radio, etc) are eliminating the "natural" barriers between cultures.

One final thing he brought up that I liked is a quote from the Dalai Lama: "I have often said that if science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly." That's not the whole thing, but I still like it. You can read more of the text the quote is taken from here. It's a great example of a religion treating itself and science as having the same goal–to find the truth. Good stuff.