Slashdot has another article on Microsoft's Smart Tags, which are dynamically created links generated by the browser. They point to a Newsbyte article where an EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation -- the ACLU of the Internet) attorney says that Smart Tags "could violate both copyright law and federal rules prohibiting deceptive and unfair business practices." Shawn Sanford, group product manager for Microsoft's Windows Client responded that web sites will be able to add a meta-tag that disables Smart Tags.

Why are we getting more and more into the opt-out mode of thinking? Why should people have to do something to protect their privacy and rights? Doubleclick does the same thing, they keep track of your web habits unless you opt-out, which unless you happen across mention of it you're not even going to know that's an option. It just seems to me like these should be opt-in options, where the default is to do the decent thing and not violate people's privacy...

I'm reading "The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon" which is quite an interesting book. Not at all as boring as I thought it would be. I'm sure if you're not into Military History it's not going to be a fun read. But I find it interesting to read about life in the field and the political atmosphere and the different weapons and tactics, all of which affected combat during that 20 year period when Napoleon was a major figure.

The book mentions Freemasonry and that Freemasons from different countries did their best to comfort Freemason prisoners once those prisoners flashed the secret signs. I've always associated Freemasons with a bad connotation since in American history Freemasonry and Anti-Semitism seem to go hand in hand. But, not knowing exactly what Freemasons were (or are) I looked up the entry in Encyclopedia Britannica. It's just a big secret society of stone masons (originally), nothing inherently good or bad about it. So my opinion of Freemasons was wrong -- they're not a monolithic evil entity...

I saw the first episode of Witchblade tonight. Not too bad. A bit stylistic at times (some people would say that's a good thing, I think it's a bit pretentious). Fairly good action scenes, character development, mystery. The only problem with the show is the problem with any show where there's a gimick -- the almost pathological need to use that gimick in every episode.

Ever notice that Voltron always killed the bad guy monster with his Blazing Sword? I saw just about every Voltron episode when I was a kid and only two or three times did the big monster not die by the Blazing Sword. Highlander has the same problem -- there's almost always a sword fight and the bad guy's head is cut off. With Witchblade she has the whole magic sword and armor thing, which they used in the television movie (forgiveable then) and at the end of this episode.

It's probably just me but I don't like knowing that every episode is going to end the same way. I guess I'll have to see if the rest of the show is good enough to watch even with that albatross...

Shannon had an idea that we could play Rune for our next campaign. This is an RPG based on an upcoming computer game, the RPG being produced by Atlas Games, current owners of Ars Magica. It's a Viking setting where everybody has a character of the traditional Viking warrior type. The system is at least somewhat based on Ars Magica (abilities from -2 to +2 and skills from 1-5 with skill rolls being d10 + ability + skill).

The distinguishing characteristic of the game (and I've only looked through the preview pak) is that everybody takes turns being a GM. Nothing new there. But the GM has to design an adventure using so many points, where traps and monsters cost points and treasure gives you points. The objective for the GM is to design an adventure that almost kills players without actually killing them. At the end of the evening people get points and the highest score wins.

Not a bad concept until I looked at the trap form. Almost three pages where you detail everything about the trap, adding up the costs along the way. And that leads me to realize that a good point-based dungeon design system is going to be very detailed and a lot of work to use. And there are also rules to govern how monsters and NPCs behave, so that the encounters are fair. I'm thinking it's a lot of paperwork and mechanics and it's not going to be that fun for most people. It's just a problem with making an open ended game and trying to codify so that it can be more like a boardgame, and that's very hard.