I’ll take it.

I’ll begin and end by saying this:  public wireless is a good thing.

But…

I have to note how the details involved point to servicing commercial rather than public interests.

First, the speed.

We’re going to be getting something more than dial-up and less than DSL.  See here.  I would judge maybe in the 200-400k range, though hopefully a bit better.  Is this enough for email?  Yes.  For random browsing?  Yes, most of the time.  For games?  Yes, most of them.  But it will be noticeably slower than your home cable connection — which still provides Cox the opportunity to SELL you that connection.  I do suspect, however, that most will be able to get by just fine on the announced public wireless speeds (in the beginning).

Next, the coverage.

These sorts of systems are notorious for providing spotty coverage — true of the pay systems in Sydney, for instance.  Blanket coverage could — and should — be possible, but often, it seems, it is not.  Cynically, I suspect this an intentional design feature that may again push the public away from the free and toward the commercial.  Already, I notice, some caveats are in place:  "…its reach could be limited by physical obstructions such as buildings, interference from other wireless devices and distance from system transmitters" — from the TP article.

Next, capacity.

No mention of this, and I am at an immediate loss to comment.  Obviously, capacity shouldn’t be a problem — i. e., the system should scale and show no degradation as the number of users increases.  Tropos, which is donating much of the equipment, makes such claims concerning its pay services here.  But then there is this trend toward giving the paying customers the good stuff and the masses the hand-me-downs.  If so, then capacity could conceivably become a problem.  Unknown at present.

Next, security.

The police are using (some version) of the system now, apparently.  So this must be solid.  But throw in thousands on their little wireless whatnots and there will be issues here.  Unknown consequences at present.

Next, the future.

Here’s the rub.  Planned obsolescence.  As soon as "the state of emergency" dissolves, the public wireless speeds will become ARTIFICIALLY restricted to somewhere around (I estimate) 100k/sec — still better than dial-up, but now VERY noticeable in comparison to commercial services.  Thus, virtually without exception, the public system will NOT be the first choice within any high-powered business office.

***

So, in summary, the commercial internet providers are going to rant and rave — they already have and already do — and they are, already, getting their way.  Instead of a viable alternative to commercial services, we will get an effectively crippled service that will be designed primarily to give us a preview of what we can get for a monthly fee.  Good and welcomed, but not really that great.

And there is always the ongoing possibility of propagating a new New Orleans Levee Wifi Board.

Still, all in all, public wireless is a good thing.

Jet-lagged plus this.

I’ve posted about the Katrina windfall for Bourget’s custom motorcycle shop, owned and operated by the father and uncle of LA State Representative Gary Smith (D-Norco), before. 

Now there’s more from the Times-Picayune:

In Louisiana, state law requires recreational vehicle dealers to possess one state license to sell new trailers and a franchise agreement from the manufacturer to sell its products. But in a matter of weeks, after contracts between Bourget’s, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and trailer manufacturers already had been signed, the state commission charged with regulating the market solved both obstacles for Bourget’s.

First, the Recreational and Used Motor Vehicle Commission granted a state sales license in October to Bourget’s, even though at least two established Louisiana recreational vehicle dealers already had filed complaints with the commission about the outfit’s September contract with FEMA. Then, in an undated memorandum revealed to a surprised commission at its meeting last week and sent to most Louisiana dealers this week, the commission’s executive director, Jack Torrance, suspended the franchise agreement law. Torrance vehemently disputed the charge that he favored Bourget’s in any way…

"I’m doing this to help all the dealers," he said, threatening to quit his post if complaints mounted.

As documented in the above story, the complaints have mounted.  Add mine to the list.

So I now wait for John M. "Jack" Torrance to quit his post.  I guess if you quit your post and/or pay the money back (after taxes), you don’t have to go to jail.

So that would sound like a good deal for Jack.

I also note that you can send Jack email here if you’d like, but he might not have time to read it, being involved with the disaster and all.

So you might want to cc a copy to his staff.

All of them.

***

Meanwhile, in the same time it’s taken our marvelously multicultured and officially sanctioned multiple rebuilding commissions to find their name tags, the Urban Land Institute has come up with, I judge, an apolitical rebuilding plan (accompained by an easy-to-understand powerpoint summary) that local politicians don’t really like that much.

In tough times, they say, the tough get going.  And leaders makes tough decisions.

In New Orleans, leaders say "I hear ya, brother," a couple of times and then give a little speech about gumbo and jazz.  And pass out the name tags.

***

Meanwhile, hoho, there’s this in my inbox:

REMINDER: PLEASE SEND OUT FROM Fr. Si Hendry, S.J.

Hello everyone,

Welcome Back!

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week the Jesuit
Center will sponosr an open house from noon until 2:00 p.m.
Bring your lunch and eat in the Jesuit Center. We will
provide soft drinks, coffee, tea, and dessert. This could
be a good opportunity to reconnect with colleagues, share
and listen to stories, encourage and support one another,
and in general reconstitute the Loyola community.

Hope to see you in the next few days in the Jesuit Center,
Bobet 110, between noon and 2:00 p.m.

Si Hendry, S.J.
Director
The Jesuit Center

Well, let’s see.

Got no house.  Got no trailer.  Got no latest word about housing whatsoever.

That would be about the beginning and end of my little story.

I should prolly just file it with the rest of the spam.

***

Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.

***

I know I’m being a real downer here, but I really was going to say something almost super-positive about this, which is actually kinda useful regardless of what I say.

But then I noticed its most officially nonprofit status, and then I noticed its connection to the United Way.  And then I noticed that it doesn’t really provide public access to data; it provides public access to fairly specific data categorization schemes.  In pdf files even.

So now, overall, I’m getting a little suspicious like I always do with the most obviously and officially sanctioned good guys.  Particularly when their funding depends on their most obvious and official goodness.

Still, gotta admit it, the front page of the site is fairly useful — particularly for the zip code map.  Nevethless, I remain spooked.

***

Play with this a while.  Helps the jet lag, I think.

I didn’t get an aisle seat.

<– Made in the USA.  From here.

Not much new news in the report, but some interesting pictures — which means the file takes some time to load. I can only note that the same bunch of screw-ups — the Army Corps of Engineers — who built the levee mistakes are now in charge of rebuilding them. So good luck, New Orleans.

***

Things fail, like they failed in New Orleans, not because of some rare and unusual circumstance (like Hurricane Katrina, for instance), but because those same things fail ALL THE TIME.

Those things are, in brief, SYSTEM failures.

During normal times, people put up with these failures, or make up for these failures, or step around these failures. Then, during abnormal times (like Hurricane Katrina, for instance), people can’t do that anymore and those people die.

Based on my most recent trip, I have a long series of examples of how American Airlines — and the air industry system, in general — fails. Sure, the air industry gets us from here to there. But that happens during normal times.

I won’t bore you with an EXTREMELY long and ranty litany of what went wrong with my trip. You sorta had to be there. But here’s a last single example.

Arrived at DFW about 6:30pm (an hour late) yesterday. Scheduled to catch flight to JAN at about 8:30pm.

High winds in the Dallas area evidently forced a reduction in the number of usable runways, forcing a backlog of flights. My flight was postponed every forty-five minutes from 8:45pm to about 11:30pm, when a plane was made available to the fifty (fully booked) passengers in waiting.

At that point, the plane was weight-restricted (another sad story entirely) and couldn’t take 12 of its fifty booked passengers.

No volunteers stood down, so the AA automatic bumping process went into effect.

First, everyone with a cheap, no-refund ticket was bumped (including me). And then, on a second calculation, a couple (including me) of those who were originally bumped were allowed on the plane based on how early they had bought their cheapo tickets.

And the rest were left behind. As much, I’m sure, to their dismay as mine.

Now there’s always a way to play the system. For instance, here’s one: http://home.netcom.com/~rcowen/getting_bumped.htm.

The good and interesting thing about games and play is that, if there is a way to beat the system — ANY system — then play finds it. That is, play finds system FAILURE. Some people call that sort of play "bad" play and want to prohibit it — which is what my presentation in Sydney was all about.

Take the New Orleans Levee Board.  Please.

New Orleans Levee Board members haven’t done a very good job finding failures in the levee, but they have found some significant failures in the political and (supposedly) ethical system we call "the law." The law that puts these suits and smiley faces on the Levee Board is, quite simply, a failure.

During normal times, the smiley faces and the suits on the Levee Board put the money in their pockets and walk away. And then, during abnormal times, people die.

So, you can fix the Levee Board if you want. You can eliminate the bad play if it makes you feel better. You can ban the bad players — put them in jail, read their names on the radio, get out the tar and feathers, whatever.

But the good thing about the Levee Board’s bad play is that it shows us precisely where THE LAW fails.

And so, if you don’t fix THE LAW, if you continue to place your faith and trust in the political system that creates and supports THE LAW, if you simply ban the bad players without learning from their bad play, then you’re a fool.

Or maybe you’re American Airlines.

Or maybe you’re Louisiana.

Hope I get an aisle seat.

9am, Sunday.

On my way back.  Just checked out of hotel, should be on airport shuttle bus in another couple of hours of so.  Still awkward to manipulate the e-waves, so not much more than this brief note.

<– View from my hotel room.

Anxious to get back, even unto the unsettlement of New Orleans.

Looking for evocative in the definition of fun.

8 am, UTS campus.

Conference doesn’t start till 9:30, but I’m sitting solo in a dark and silent auditorium in order to use the conference’s free wireless for an uninterrupted while.

Naiveté, I said earlier. Some examples.

Tracey Fullerton spoke yesterday on the need for player feedback during the game design process. I documented, described, and explained the necessity (and theoretical reasons) for iterative and recursive game design while describing the Bruce Shelley – Sid Meier collaboration on the original design of Civilization. That was back in the 1990s sometime. And this analysis was then extended in The Nature of Computer Games (2003). Tracey mentioned the feedback process as a necessary component of game design that would allow more changes to be made more often to game software prior to release. No mention whatsoever of whether the game design creative process is therein distinguished from creative processes in other, non-digital media. As are most comments at the conference, Tracey’s are of a very practical, non-theoretical and primarily anecdotal bent.

Mark Meadows, author of Pause and Effect, summarized world literature for us in 4 easy categories, which he then extrapolated onto the current (well, past 10 years or so) evolution of computer games. This is, I guess, an example of a Big Thought. A bit more permanently indelible, however, was Mark’s comment that he prefers to see game characters “fucking rather than fighting.” But then he’s really, he admits, a portrait painter. So I guess that explains it.

Mark treated the audience to a brief segment of his own “narrative” game design: a piece of animated chain-link fence called Saint Elmo. There was indeed something about a story inside the Saint’s clanky dialogue. I missed the part that was supposed to be about a game.

***

Biggest disappointment at the conference so far, I think, is the degree to which game designers and designer types wish to reproduce narrative forms and experiences without fully exploring either the much broader potential of digital media or the actual play behavior and experiences of those who actually play computer games. Disappointing because we’ve dealt with this all before — not only why narrative DOESN’T work, but why it CAN’T work as an aesthetic model for computer games as art. It’s all, for instance, in the Nature of Computer Games.

But, of course, Tracy and Mark and all god’s chillun have their own books now.

My suggestion is, as always, to judge for yourself. Just as I suggest you do, for instance, with the widely praised and inevitably unfun Façade. We certainly shall, I predict, based on the tone of this conference, continue to see various similar (and equally doomed) pretenders to the perennially unoccupied game narrative throne.

***

Alas, not many links to any of the above stuff (e.g. Fullerton and Meadows) are being allowed through my current connection. Maybe I’ll add them later. But then you can always google away on your own. I think the Fullerton game she demo’ed was at something like www.thatcloudgame.com. Brief personal review: evocative narrative-like intro; rather pedantic and unimaginative game play wrapped in a bit of ecospeak about pollution and whatnot.

Of course, as always and thank goodness, perhaps that’s just me.

You can be a day early, and still a dollar short.

Currently at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Good news here, though I would like to hear more of the details.

City-wide internet access will be an improvement over Sydney, where wireless internet access is most commonly pay as you go in the $5 AUD per hour range. The free UTS wireless I’m using — kindly set up by the conference organizers — is limited in several respects. Have to download the UTS client and install it on your machine. Some sort of firewall then ensues which is blocking my normal use of outlook express and aol instant messenger. Fortunately I can still check and use email directly through the gmail, hotmail, loyola.edu, etc. sites. And the service is very slow — I’m measuring it somewhere around 100kb/sec, which is roughly dial-up speed.

The conference is interesting, though not as directly focused on my particular cups of tea as was the earlier aesthetics conference in Bergen. The presentations here are oriented toward on-going implementations of digital games and such. While the technical knowledge displayed therein is impressive and valuably dispensed, it often seems that dispensation is a bit self-congratulatory, naïve, and unsophisticated in its consideration and even, apparently, in its awareness of aesthetic theory and values beyond those involved in the funding and economic justification of individual projects. Now, admittedly, there are some tattered jibs of theory fluttering about, but these are largely of the rah-rah,,blue-sky, and, gad, pleasures-of-the-narrative kind.

***

Currently listening to a panel on the hot coffee controversy, and having some trouble with the accent of Paul Hunt, Deputy Director, Office of Film & Literature Classification.  I’ll have to stop this and try to concentrate.

More later from the conference — if I get the chance.

Gone.

Earlier, I mentioned this, much of it parroted in the presentation given by a Missouri professor here.

It’s not like it’s surprising news, after all.

So where to go if we relocate? Check out where not to go in the map.

No ice and snow for me, so, based on that map, I’m thinking either the western tip of South Carolina or west Texas/east New Mexico.

So, toss a coin — and let’s go to the San Angelo – Sonora – Junction – Eden, Texas area.

There’s already a University nearby: Angelo State.  So what about the Big Bend area?

***

I’m checking out.

Paper.

Presentation.

Back sometime after the 27th. 

***

Note to students:  I’ve cleared all your registration flags.

Note to self:  I still haven’t received a password for this.

***

And this just in.  Okay, but still missing Step One:  Get rid of the politicians.

***

Now, quickly, which is which?

 

Going twice…

Okay, since I’m hearing nothing from the usual suspects, here are some rebuilding plans I’m giving away for free.

1. Succeed (in seceding — ty Dr. D) from the Union. I know we tried it before, but that was with all those other stupid states. This would be a much stealthier secession. And we really wouldn’t need to tell anyone about it, since I doubt anyone would notice.

2. Put ourselves up for adoption. The Dutch seem to have that big successful dike thing going for them, so maybe they could annex us. Dutch names are pretty hard to pronounce, though. So maybe those wild and crazy secessionists in Montreal would be interested. New Orleans, southern port of the Free State of Quebec. Sound good?

3. Put the city out for bid. Seriously now. Dissolve the government. Take all the politico salaries (including Ora Watson’s $185,000), pool them with all the FEMA money, and say, look, here’s the cash, corporate America. Show us your stuff. We will be accepting Renew New Orleans proposals on Christmas Eve in the Superdome. Powerpoint preferred. And then, on Christmas day, we pick a winner.

4. Sell naming rights to the city. Now this is a good one, I think. Many possibilities. The City of New Oreos (brought to you by Kraft). The city that care forgot — but Americare didn’t. Let the Bulova times roll. Stuff like that.

I think these last two might be very attractive propositions to many a corporate financier.

***

From here.

They say everything can be replaced,
Yet every distance is not near.

http://bobdylan.com/songs/released.html

http://bobdylan.50g.com/midi.htm (version 2 is sorta alright)

I had the Bette Midler album with this version.

Before the flood.

Going once…

Students,

I will be gone to IEC Nov 20-27.  And wireless access doesn’t look overly promising at the moment.  Broadband is something like 25AUD per day at the hotel where I’m staying — or 14AUD per hour at McDonald’s — so I’m hoping for some conveniently placed free hotspots.  Funny.  Seems like lots of the hostels have free internet, but not so many of the no-shared-bathroom-plz hotels.

This seems like a decent shot.  Not too close though.

In any case, I hope everyone is not waiting until the last moment to register.

***

From here…

Taxi drivers can accept tips, but it is not normal practice to tip in Australia and therefore there is no requirement on the passenger to do so.

Hoho.  My kind of town, Sydney is.

And if you give it back, you don’t go to jail?

"I assure you," says Levee Board President Jim Huey, "that you will find that all of our money was appropriately expended." — September 25, 2005

Former Orleans Levee Board President Jim Huey has refunded his after-taxes share of a controversial, $91,000-plus back pay settlement that Attorney General Charles Foti recently branded a clear violation of state law. — November 16, 2005

After-taxes?

Just call him Jack.

***

Update:

St. Tammany Parish Councilman Joe Impastato has been arrested for allegedly extorting a $100,000 kickback in connection with a Hurricane Katrina debris removal contract, a case that authorities called the opening salvo in a corruption crackdown by a task force charged with weeding out fraud in storm-related contracts worth tens of billions of dollars. 

From the TP today.

Don’t worry, Joe.

Pay your taxes with the booty.  Write a check for the rest.

You should be fine.