Law and the Multiverse

This is a blog run by a couple of lawyers who try to apply the rules of modern law to the comicbook multiverse. For example, American law has specific provisions for what happens to a person's estate when they die. What happens if they come back to life, as many superheroes are prone to do? Or what about property laws if they're immortal?

Some interesting stuff, and fairly easy to read.

http://lawandthemultiverse.com/

The Return of the Web Bug

Web bugs are interesting little creatures. They are a 1 pixel graphic, easily hidden within an HTML email. If you open the message, your browser dutifully retrieves the graphic from the host server, and that action can be tracked and linked to the email sent to you.

This was used by spammers to confirm an active email account. They would blast out a million emails, and the ones that opened the ones containing web bugs would be flagged as 'known active' and subsequently further targeted for spam or for hacking attempts.

It is a universally reviled practice.

And AT&T is doing it again, probably in the name of market research.

http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=1137

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/03/1845212/Web-Bugs-the-New-Norm-For-Businesses

The solution: if you receive an email from AT&T, don't open it. You can usually tell from the subject if it's marketing spam or something important. If it contains a bug, they cannot track whether or not you received the email, they can only tell if you open it. (obviously they'd know if it bounced as undeliverable) You can also program most email clients to block embedded graphics, which is also a good solution. The Outlook client lets you block and includes a button to show graphics, as does Yahoo Mail.

How to Balance an MMO

An interesting article that I found from the blog of game reviewer and designer Paul Tevis. It discusses the challenge of balancing a game, specifically a massive multiplayer online game, but I think it conceptually applies quite well to any form of game design.

http://www.eldergame.com/2010/11/how-to-balance-an-mmo-and-how-to-stop/