Simon Woods

No one is forcing these game developers to take these jobs

– @frostedechoes, on the effects felt by developers when creating violent video games.

Whilst I understand this isn’t the core of Robert’s point, I will note that I see this kind of qualifier quite a lot across different issues, and I think it’s important for all of us to also make note of the fact that there is an agent influencing the decisions of, well, everybody. That agent is the socio-economic system, the culture we prop up with our many decisions, for which there is no current alternative. If we had a better alternative then things could be different; for example, introducing both universal healthcare and universal basic income would create significant foundations upon which we could all make better decisions.

To put it bluntly, in many cases these developers are in the USA and these terrible jobs are still preferable to having no job, almost entirely due to the punitive treatment of unemployment in said country.

Also, looking at what Jason has said, he ends with the idea of questioning whether to support certain art or not. Again, an easy thing, Jason is taking the much easier route of looking at this small insignificant piece… those pieces do nothing when compared to the foundational issues here, even if they are much easier to talk about.

I think people neglect to write blog posts because the feedback loop is not as tangible as the onslaught of (sometimes mechanical) likes or faves that you can receive on a social network.

– Daniel Jalkut, Blog a Little

It’s a shame people believe what those at Facebook, Twitter, and such like would prefer them to believe; specifically, just because the audience seems to be all on those closed networks that it is therefore the best option to just post everything there and never have an independent, self-owned option as the core of whatever you are posting.

Instead, it’ll be great even if people just change how they think about the whole system, to realise that the closed networks can be useful for specific types of broadcasting but that’s about it. Even then, with regard to messaging not only do we have feed technology but also email and the unbelievable flexibility of open web software as a whole.

It has been encouraging to see the influential voices of the web become louder about these issues in the past few years. It might not be obvious at first but the truth is that we can only build a better world if we learn from our history, identify the good in what we have done, and then attempt to build on that. I truly believe that we can maintain the internet as a force for good, specifically with the web, so long as we hold close to the values of independence, generous spirit, and free thinking; all of which are possible with a web that itself is as open and independent as possible.

#LongLiveTheOpenWeb is another good piece in a movement well worth your time, doubtless there will be more to come and we will all be here, ready to blog a lot.

There’s an interesting conversation here regarding Apple and support documentation, specifically with regard to what is missing.

This is embarrassing. “It Just Works” should more than cover documentation. I don’t know how many people I’ve read and heard in revered tone about “The Most Holy HIG” and so on… seriously, they are a trillion dollar company and don’t have the resources to make comprehensive guidance across ALL formats? That is utter bullshit and completely user hostile.

Oh, also, don’t forget that “you’re doing it wrong” will make an appearance from time-to-time whenever the executives have been lowered to our level in response to something on which the company has fucked up.

I see a lot of “they’re premium” whenever somebody brings up Apple being expensive. Irrespective of the realities of premium or not, Apple certainly screams premium with everything they do but the deep holes in their user documentation, whatever the format, is terrible and counter to even the slightest notion of a premium experience.