#1ReasonWhy Gamers Should Care About This Trend

I tried really hard not to write this post.  I've touched on gender in two posts before, but this subject is so big, and so delicate, that I was legitimately worried to write it.  But the #1ReasonWhy trend on Twitter today has convinced me that I need to approach this topic.  This post is going to be long.  It might be uncomfortable.  And, while I have tried to keep the language here tame and analytical, it might be difficult for some people to read -- and some of the content I link might contain triggers.

I don't develop games.  In gaming, I am strictly a consumer.  I have, however, been playing console games since 1991 and online games since 1997.  Gaming, in its many forms, is a hobby of mine and an important element in my social life.  I'm also a fan of pencil-and-paper roleplaying games and tech culture in general, two areas that share a large portion of their populations with the "gamer" culture.

In case you haven't seen the Internet for the past 24 hours, #1ReasonWhy is a massive trend in social media today discussing why women are (drastically) underrepresented in the game design industry.  It started with one simple question, and has resulted in a torrent of tweets about sexism in the industry, a movement to create mentoring relationships, and many blog posts on the subject.  The movement has thrown a light on some truly disturbing trends (and also a series of heartwarming stories).

However, people outside the gaming industry -- and particularly men -- may be struggling to see the relevance of this trend.  As a male gamer, I have found the #1ReasonWhy trend very striking, and I'm writing this post to explain why other male gamers should care about it.

The reason is this:  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, The Sith Lords.

No, really.  I'm serious.

Take This DRM. It's Dangerous to Distribute Games Alone.

(I am back after a couple of weeks of intense thesis immersion.  So let's talk about The Legend of Zelda.)

Let's be honest: If you never wanted to erase Navi, link's fairy companion in The Ocarina of Time, then you never played The Ocarina of Time.  If I had to make a list of the top modifications I wanted to otherwise great games, deleting Navi would top the list, and it wouldn't even be close.  If I had the time, energy, and technical skill, I would go back and erase Navi from the game myself, just to be able to go back and play the game without her.

Entrepreneur, gamer, and candidate for Dad of the Year Mike Hoye recently modded his own copy of The Wind Waker, Link's first adventure on the GameCube in the Legend of Zelda series.  He didn't remove the fairy companion; to the best of my knowledge (I don't own a GameCube), there is no fairy companion in The Wind Waker.  Instead, he painstakingly changed the dialogue to change protagonist Link's gender from male to female.

Hoye enjoys playing video games with his daughter, but was frustrated by the lack of positive female role models in games.  So he did the sensible thing, and built one.  He didn't change the plot or the function of the game, just a few words here and there to make the game more accessible to his daughter.  He also made his modifications available to the public for other concerned parents.

But this isn't a post about gender in video games.  Everyone knows that video games have done a terrible job of handling gender in any sensible way, with very few and limited exceptions.  No, I want to talk about copyright.  Mike Hoye's labor of love is demonstrative of why our copyright system isn't just broken; it's insanely broken.

Why?  Hoye's brilliant Zelda hack is probably illegal.

Italy's Assault on Science? Not Necessarily.

I have seen a lot of ink over the conviction of six Italian scientists (and one other government official) in L'Aquila last week. The coverage, to put it mildly, has been bad. A serious injustice has occurred here, but most of the English-language media have been too busy sensationalizing to comment meaningfully on it.

For anyone not familiar with the situation, a 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, caused the deaths of more than 300 people. In the days leading up to the earthquake, tremors in the area appeared to indicate a coming earthquake. One Italian official, on information from the Italian National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, stated that an earthquake was unlikely. After the quake, the official and six scientists at the Commission were charged with manslaughter on the theory that their "inexact, incomplete and contradictory" statements caused people to stay when they should have fled the area. Last week, the Italian court handed down a verdict of guilty and a potential sentence of 6 years.

Make no mistake about it: This is a bad thing. Seven people who do not deserve imprisonment look likely to get it. (Although, under Italian law, the sentence must be reviewed.) But the English-language press, out of the United States and United Kingdom, has largely missed the point. They have focused on largely on two things: 1) This conviction bends the definition of "manslaughter" and 2) This conviction is an attack on science that will have a chilling effect on how scientists do business.

I am not really convinced that either one is true.

FTC Gets Crowdsourcing Right, Sets Example for Rest of US Government

When I interned in the federal government in 2010 and 2011, the government was experimenting with crowdsourcing to its employees. Every once in a while I would receive an e-mail soliciting ideas for what the department could do to save money and eliminate waste. The best idea each round would receive some recognition, and the department would implement it. (I can't remember if there was a cash bounty attached.) Submissions usually involved saving on electricity by turning off electronics or reducing paper waste by changing printing policies. I appreciated the idea, but it wasn't generating any landscape-changing policies.

Around the same time, the Government Services Administration (with input from the Office of Management and Budget) rolled out Challenge.gov, an online platform for soliciting ideas from the public. Much broader in scope, Challenge.gov is available for any government department to post challenges to the entire public. Challenges on the site range from video essays on responsible saving to launching nano-satellites to orbit. Again, this idea is an intriguing step, but limited exposure and lack of focus have limited its appeal.

This week the Federal Trade Commission has changed the game, I believe. The just-announced FTC Robocall Challenge has all the elements to get the viral attention a crowdsourcing initiative really needs.

The FTC wants you to "Be a hero." I think people will answer the call.

Dinosaur Poaching: A Crime Against Scientists and Children

(See edit below for one archaeologist's reaction to this post.)

Dinosaur piracy.

There, I said it. Today I am writing about dinosaur piracy.

A man was arrested today in Florida on suspicion of smuggling illegal goods and the sale of illegal goods. The "goods" in question are the skeleton of a Tarbosaurus bataar, a dinosaur related to the ever-popular Tyrannosaurus rex. (Most news sources are identifying the skeleton as "Tyrannosaurus bataar". This designation is currently disfavored. There is some disagreement about whether Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus should be considered the same genus or separate. They are currently viewed as two separate genera. Now you know more than you ever thought you would about Tarbosaurus.) The Tarbosaur has been impounded by the U.S. government.

So what exactly is dinosaur piracy? I am glad I rhetorically asked that question on your behalf.

The Real Beginning of the Commercial Spaceflight Era

We've been waiting for commercial spaceflight ever since the Pan Am Orion III space plane lifted Dr. Floyd to Clavius Base in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I'll admit to having cheated and looked up the name of the base.) By 1997, commercial companies were using the Eastern Test Range regularly to test rockets. In 2004, Virgin Galactic formed with the intention of using private money to put private individuals into space. But time marched on, no one bought a ticket to space, and commercial spaceflight looked like it was always on the horizon, never getting any closer.

Pan Am won't be flying us to the moon any time soon (especially since it was shuttered in 1991), but this week we crossed the threshold into an era where commercial spaceflight exists.

At 8:35 Eastern Time on Sunday, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral to bring supplies to the International Space Station. Like many missions before it, this flight, officially labeled CRS-1, will bring cargo and supplies to the space station. The difference is, this time the rocket and capsule are entirely built and operated by a commercial company.

The rocket was the SpaceX Falcon 9, and the capsule was the SpaceX Dragon. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell had the following to say about the launch: "It's just awesome."

Yes. Yes it is.

Who Says Internet Surfing Harms Attention Spans?

Not Congress, apparently.

The Senate voted unanimously this week to recommend that the President oppose any regulation by the International Telecommunications Union of the Internet. The resolution states that the government should "promote a global Internet free from government control." In his statement explaining the vote, Senator Marco Rubio noted that "I just want to be clear that America is on record as being in favor of Internet freedom and that we don't want to see any internationally recognized right for government interference on the Internet and the free flow of information on the Internet."

Senator Rubio authored an opinion piece in advance of the vote in Politico, discussing how important "Internet freedom" is:

"A top-down, international regulatory model goes against the very nature of the Internet. An international regulatory regime, and the politics and red tape that go with it, directly conflict with the Internet’s purpose of sharing ideas and connecting people. Governments and international bodies cannot keep pace with the Internet, and they should not try to do so." (emphasis mine)

There is a lot of room for debate about what "Internet freedom" means, and how we should react to that politically. Senator Rubio knows that as well as anyone: He co-sponsored PIPA.

Yep. That happened.

Science Professors Show Gender Bias; Only Science Professors Shocked

The headline in the New York Times yesterday read, "Bias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds." * I think calling that an understatement would be an understatement.

The article refers to the tediously-named article "Science Faculty's Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study itself was elegantly simple. The organizers sent one-page descriptions of potential job candidates to university professors in the sciences and asked them to assess the candidates for apparent competence, hireability, and potential for mentorship, as well as recommend a starting salary. Some professors received descriptions of male candidates, and others received descriptions of female candidates.

The catch? Every single job candidate was identical except for gender. Word-for-word, the female applicants were identical to their male candidates, except that the name "Jennifer" replaced the name "John".

The results are striking. Male professors rated female applicants as 17% less competent, 21% less hireable, and 16% less desirable for mentorship than male applicants, with a recommended salary 11% lower. Female professors were even harsher, rating the female applicants 19% less competent, 27% less hireable, and 17% less desirable for mentorship, with 15% lower recommended salaries.

Wait ... what?

Space Leadership Act: Innovative Government or Constitutional Minefield?

This week, five members of the House of Representatives introduced a bill that is being called the "Space Leadership Act". The proposal has gotten a lot of press this week, but some basic highlights of the bill include:

• a ten-year tenure for NASA Administrators
• an eleven-member Board of Directors whose duties would involve nominating Administrator candidates and proposing the NASA budget
• a quadrennial review of all NASA programs
• "for cause" removal of Board members and Administrators.

The five Republican authors of the bill claim that the measure will reduce politicization of NASA and provide for long-term stability and predictability in NASA programs. (It is worth noting that at least one Democrat is apparently prepared to cosponsor the bill.)  It should come as no surprise that all of the five representatives proposing the bill come from Texas (John Culberson, 7th District; Pete Olson, 22nd District; Lamar Smith, 21st District), Florida (Bill Posey, 15th District), and Virginia (Frank Wolf, 10th District).

Current NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke this week, and, although he didn't address the bill directly, it was obvious from his remarks that he was defensive of the current structure:

“Such talk undermines our nation’s goals at a very critical time. . . The truth is we have an ambitious series of deep space destinations we plan to explore and we are hard at work exploring the hardware and the technologies to get us there.”

It is easy to argue that NASA reform is necessary: over-budget and underfunded programs are frequently in the news, and the Administration's recent challenges have given it a lackluster reputation at best. However, this bill raises a lot of potential problems.

"Hello World! It's Me, the Internet!"

Big news today for the Internet -- and for the lobbying world. A group of organizations from the "Internet infrastructure industry" announced a new policy advocacy organization, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition.  i2, as they are calling themselves, claim to "support[] those who build the nuts and bolts of the Internet". They don't define exactly what those "nuts and bolts" are, but their members list includes software-as-service, remote hosting, and spectrum organizations.

An informal browsing of their members seems to indicate that most are related to cloud computing or other remote services. I question whether this is really representative of the "Internet infrastructure" without network owners and ISPs. Regardless of what they call themselves, though, i2 has stated that they believe in a robust and growing Internet environment to encourage innovation.

The most interesting part of i2's site is the explanation of their policy positions. Most of their positions are not particularly surprising for businesses relying on the Internet for their business models. I'd like to highlight a few interesting implications of their positions, though.

Is Not Even Space Safe ... from Fake Nigerian Princes?

So, I really don't even know what to say about this, except for the fact that I couldn't help but laugh:

Won’t you help a poor Nigerian astronaut who just wants to come home from space?

In reality, this type of scam, known as a "Nigerian 419 scam", is a huge deal on the Internet. It's a modern-day version of the classic Spanish Prisoner scam, an advance fee confidence fraud where the con convinces the mark to send him money on a promise that he will be repaid at a premium later. We laugh at 419 scams (in at least two episodes of The Office, Michael Scott has revealed that he is a continuing victim to them), but in reality they are very effective.

50 Years Ago, We Aimed for the Moon

Today is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's famous "Moon Speech". On September 12, 1962, Kennedy spoke at Rice University in Houston, Texas, to explain the goal of getting to the moon. During the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had launched a hollowed out ICBM shell into space as the U.S. watched. The most well-known segment from his speech is this:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

This kind of challenge, he said, would push the United States to be better, to be stronger, and to advance the cause of peace over the shadow of war. Space would be won for peaceful nations, and it would be a place for peace and knowledge.