The worst thing about censorship is **********

The UK government is trying to institute a "policy" of blocking internet content that would make the Chinese dictatorship proud.  As with "filtering software" of the 1990s, the UK government's censorship is not about blocking "obscenity", it is about blocking content that differs from the governing party's religious and political views.  Allowing sites that promote hate while censoring sites that promote human rights is not the act of a free and democratic state, it is the act of a group of thugs.

Alan Turing has been pardoned...sixty one years too late

Crack the Enigma code and enable the allies to defeat the Nazis?  Nope, not good enough.

Inventing modern computing?  Nope, not that either.

The only gross indecency was the false conviction and hypocrisy by his own government.

And as for "suicide", even that is debatable and questionable.  I won't be surprised if it's someday revealed that he was murdered.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/alan-turing-granted-royal-pardon-for-gay-sex-conviction-1.2474916

Alan Turing granted royal pardon for gay sex conviction

Mathematician Alan Turing, who helped Britain win the Second World War by cracking Nazi Germany's "unbreakable" Enigma code, was granted a rare royal pardon on Tuesday for a criminal conviction for homosexuality that led to his suicide.

Twenty years on, I'm still in the MOOD for DOOM

On December 10, 1993, a two megabyte file was uploaded by a six-person software company in Texas onto the computer systems of University of Wisconsin–Madison.  What was done as a favour by U W-M's sysadmin turned into an event which crashed their system.

DOOM was released.  And the world would never be the same again.

DOOM was remarkable as a computer game in four significant ways:

1) It was the first widely-popular First Person Shooting game (FPS).

Yes, there were others before it (Catacomb, Wolfenstein 3D), but it was DOOM that popularized the genre and changed gaming.  The sense of being in the game was unlike any other on the market.  The only other widely player first person types of games at the time were car racing games.  DOOM added fear and paranoia, sound and lighting to make gameplay seem almost real.

2) It proved that shareware was a viable and profitable method of distribution

DOOM's shareware release (today, it would be called demoware) meant people could download the program and play before paying, able to get a taste without buying the whole meal.  And because the meal was so tasty and new, people did pay.  Sure, there was a shareware market and distribution system, but it was used mostly by individual programmers, not large computer companies who continued to sell programs in packaged boxes.

3) DOOM introduced modding to the world

Other people had modded games before id (e.g. Ms. Pac-Man), but DOOM made it easy for less technically proficient people to create and insert their own graphics, sounds and level design into the game, something never before possible for most.  Modding spawned (pun definitely intended) its own industry of add-ons that people made and sold.

4) DOOM introduced networked gaming

Before DOOM, "multiplayer gaming" meant either taking turns (playing until you "died" and then handed the controller to another player until that person "died") or two players looking at the same screen with the same view (or worse, a top/bottom split screen with a smaller view).

DOOM's appearance meant that two people could now play against each other with full computer power to themselves.  And not just separate machines, but separate viewing and playing.  It meant you could play someone across a room, in another room, another building and eventually, another country.  DOOM make the internet a near necessity for multiplayer gaming.

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Whether you like DOOM or not, you have to respect its place in history and its influence.  Just as the Lord Of The Rings movies could not exist without Dungeons and Dragons, so too could today's gaming not exist without DOOM.

DOOM is likely to remain popular for the next decade given John Carmack's decision to release the source code.  There are many high quality ports of DOOM still in development, with additions of sound, graphics, player movement and many other features.  And with the plethora of fan-made WAD files to use, there's no end to customization.  DOOM is nowhere near the end of its playability.

DOOM World has a list of ports to various computer systems including DOS, Windows, Macintosh, Linux and several others.   ZDOOM, Brutal DOOM, and Chocolate DOOM are among the more popular and recently updated versions.

http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/ports/

One genius maniac obsessed individual person went so far as to create a Flash side scrolling verion that can be played in a browser.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/470460

Are software makers becoming more considerate to left handed people?

No.  If they were, they would have included left handed options from the get-go.  Hey, who cares about 10-15% of the users anyway?

http://www.droid-life.com/2013/11/25/latest-swiftkey-4-3-1-update-brings-new-left-handed-options-and-bug-fixes/

http://www.vg247.com/2013/11/29/killzone-shadow-fall-ps4-patch-1-05-adds-left-handed-support-more/

They seem to be responding to user concerns, but only after complaints come in.

Here's one about a right handed person reporting his use of a mouse with the left hand.  He switched hands due to a repetitive motion injury.

http://techreport.com/blog/25590/adventures-in-left-handed-mousing

Feminist Frequency and Tropes vs Women: 4 for 4

Anita Sarkeesian has hit for the cycle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqYLfm1rWA

http://www.feministfrequency.com/

"Ms. Male Character" is the fourth in her series on video games and tropes against women.  Some try to question her methods and conclusions (she is not another Malcolm Gladwell, thankfully), but her arguments are sound.  They are provocative and eye opening, definitely worth a viewing.

Obituary: Opera web browser, 1994-2013

Opera was an innovative and customizable web browser.  It created many features adopted by other browsers (e.g. tabbed browsing, gestures, extensive right-click menus among others).  It never attained a large market share for a variety of reasons, none related the browser's functionality or reliability (see also: Beta videotape).

Opera's demise was a voluntary decision of the company to stop making a web browser, and instead create an overlay for Google's Chrome browser (similar to Rockmelt and Iron, or Maxthon based on Internet Explorer).  It is no longer a browser, but instead an attempt to cut costs, an admission of defeat by a company that once led the field in innovative thinking.

Life Imitates Bad "Art"

It is the height of irony (or inevitability of the product coming to life) that a man in England has been violently assaulted, stabbed and mugged by thieves who wanted his copy of "Grand Theft Auto 5".

Old technology #1: AT-101 Keyboards

I grew up with a typewriter in the house.  I had learnt to type before my family had its first computer...a TI99-4/A (which should tell you how long that has been).

I liked how the keys felt on a typewriter, how it took a lot of force to strike one.  Making a mistake was difficult because you had to put in a lot of effort to hit the key.  When the Apple II and later PCs came into vogue, they had much the same keyboards.  Even the early Macintoshes were that way.

Early computer keyboards weren't just hard to hit, they were hard to break.  They were heavy but well made, and not prone to breaking down or breaking, period.

Feminist Frequency and Tropes vs Women: 3 for 3

The third part of Anita Sarkeesian's "Tropes vs Women" series was released, and like the first two parts, it's brilliant and insightful.  It is also appalling because of the sheer number of examples of sexism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjImnqH_KwM

Equally appalling is that Ms. Sarkeesian needs to block ratings and comments on her videos.  It's not because she is afraid of feedback or disagreement.  On the contrary, unlike certain feminists (not named here), Ms. Sarkeesian is willing to listen to and answer those who disagree with her, and she does not arrogantly assume she has all the answers.

But just because she is willing to listen to reasonable disagreement, it does not means she will be met with reasonable disagreement.