The Eastern Oregon Blue Mountain Humane Association had been providing dog-bite safety classes in the La Grande school district; classes which have already saved one student who,
remembering what he was taught, he pretended he was rock, curling up with his head down. He received a certificate Monday from his school commending him for bravery and following the safety lessons.
But no more. Members of the organization are offended that the school superintendent would prevent them from using a pitbull in these classes, out of concern for the children’s safety. According to the Association’s president,
we feel that we need to take a stand. We should not be condemning a dog just because of its breed.
This is misguided in more ways I can count. Putting aside the fact that this particular dog isn’t “condemned”, I say, of course we should make smart decisions about animals we expose other peoples’ children to. The superintendent is thinking about the children’s safety first and foremost. And so should the Humane Association.
Occupy PDX: A Second Look
I first went to Occupy Portland for a meeting on a rainy Oct. 13 and took a series of pictures.
But I felt that I hadn’t captured its true spirit: the organization, the attention to detail.
So I went back on the 17th to document what I had missed:
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- A revolution doesn’t run on ketchup alone
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- Vegetables growing in the community garden
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- Dinner Roll Diversity
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- Recycling, Compost, and Trash Ready to Go
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- Fuel, Safely Stored
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- A public stance against drugs and alcohol on site.
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- The Medical Tent
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- City Hall
Ask anyone who’s been to a doctor (i.e. anybody): you’re responsible for the bill if your insurance company for some reason doesn’t pay. Indiana Ice doesn’t seem to get the concept:
1. The Indiana Ice hockey team and United States Hockey League sponsor a nearly-impossible-to-win $50,000 “hit the puck into the hole” contest.
2. Instead of putting prize money aside, they purchased insurance in case someone actually manages to win the prize.
3. A 73-year-old hockey fan is brought down to the ice and put into position alongside the mascot, who goes first. The fan vows to donate any winnings to charity. He then successfully hits the puck into the incredibly small hole on the opposite side of the rink. Click to watch:
4. The team’s insurance company denied the team’s claim because they did not position the fan in a certain location — contracted for between the team and its insurer. Specifically: they’d only cover contestants standing behind the red line.
5. The hockey team’s owners and the USHL throw their hands up: “Sorry! The insurance company won’t pay. There’s nothing more we can do. No prize for you.”
6. The team doesn’t seem too upset about this: They refuse to name their insurance company, and also refuse to pay the promised prize money in full. Instead, “they plan to make a donation of an undisclosed amount.”
This story does appear to support the claim that wealthy corporations can break the rules that we as individuals cannot.
So I saw the news item about an 8-year-old ringing up $1,400 in charges (for “Smurfberries”, no less!) via the Smurfs’ Village iPhone game. All of the reporting has focused on how such a thing could happen: Via a “15-minute loophole”? An older sister passing along the iTunes password? An 8-year-old not understanding real vs. game dollars?
I decided to look at the design of the game itself for clues. Spoiler: they weren’t hard to find.
A Little Context: In-App Purchase Done Right
Here’s the excellent game, geoDefense Swarm. It comes with many levels and is great to play from the moment it’s installed. But players can also buy more levels within the game itself. Here’s what that looks like.
First, one sees the normal menu for choosing a level to play:
Tap “Hard Levels”, and then scroll all the way to end (i.e. you’ve played all of them as I have), and you’ll see geoStore / Get More Levels:
Tap that and finally, we’re shown the geoStore with a “Level Pack” product description, and the very soberly displayed cost, $0.99:
Smurfs’ Village In-App Purchase Experience
So is Smurfs’ Village pretty similar? Did these kids go clearly out of control, finding their way to the in-app store to purchase more items? I decided to take one for the team and install the app. I can now say that the answers to these questions are NO and NO.
Here’s a pretty typical screen in Smurfs’ Village. I’m “purchasing” a house to build on a piece of land. The link into the real-dollars shop is the graphic on the bottom right:
Tap that, and you’ll see a nearly identical screen — for purchasing (no air-quotes this time) Smurfberries:
At this point, one may wonder why any children’s game should have something for sale for $4.99, let alone $99.99. Why would we even want Smurfberries? It doesn’t take long to find out. Leaving the shop, we tap our garden to see when the blueberries will be ready:
Intermixed with the info that 3 seconds are left, are instructions for using Smurfberries to force the blueberries to appear instantly. The cynical among us will see this as a thinly veiled ad, taking up 1/3 of the message display. But perhaps this is an isolated case? Unfortunately, NO. Over and over again, the game stops us and tries to sell Smurfberries:
The pattern becomes obvious: every step along the way, Smurfberries “help” our Smurfs work faster and better. (Scary…) Smurfberry “use” is woven into the fabric of the game in a variety of places:
Summary
This isn’t a game; it’s a money-extraction tool marketed to children ages 4 and up.
Git and github are awesome pieces of software. Last year, I happily switched from subversion to git just like, years ago, I switched from CVS to subversion. Another evolutionary step. I use github for lots of reasons. The biggest is that it’s the best front-end to git that I’ve found. And so now I use git+github for 15 or so projects; some open source like HTTP Assertions, and some private code, like the OregonLaws.org web app.
The one little problem
Everything goes along happily until git decides you need some help. And so, in a fit of well intentioned verbosity, git coughs up three terminology-packed paragraphs of text that we’ve all seen:
You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you want to merge with, and 'branch.newlayout.merge' in your configuration file does not tell me either. Please specify which branch you want to merge on the command line and try again (e.g. 'git pull <repository> <refspec>'). See git-pull(1) for details.
If you often merge with the same branch, you may want to configure the following variables in your configuration file:
branch.newlayout.remote = <nickname>
branch.newlayout.merge = <remote-ref>
remote.<nickname>.url = <url>
remote.<nickname>.fetch = <refspec>
I collected the following git-specific terms from this one message:
branch, fetch, git-pull, merge, newlayout, nickname, pull, refspec, repository, remote, remote-ref, url
What’s the difference between a <refspec> and a <remote-ref>? Between a <repository> and a <nickname>? Between a pull and a merge? (I asked for a pull, but git’s giving me merge info.)
My guess: several of these terms are used interchangeably, and git’s docs should be made more consistent. Note how the terms in the text paragraphs do not match the terms in the config file template.
Problem #2: The second paragraph says to add the info to the config file. But the info isn’t in config file format; it’s closer to command line git config format.
