Webcomics from Agent-X Comics

Retirony

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Retirony – ‘to die shortly before one’s retirement”

This is a pretty common plot device in movies and on TV, but one that most people do not know the term for.
You see it a lot in police dramas, when a (usually fairly unknown) character gets killed a few days before they are due to retire from the force.
Anybody in a dangerous job who’s only a few days away from retirement or flying one last mission before going home, is absolutely doomed to death by Retirony. This then gives the star/s of the movie a reason to go after the perpetrator of this evil deed, normally blowing up half a city and causing millions of dollars of collateral damage along the way.

Examples of retirony in movies and TV are:

– We Were Soldiers
   A soldier announces that his wife is due to give birth that day, then gets killed by napalm

– Carlito’s Way
   Carlito is on his way to escaping his life of crime when he’s killed

– To Live And Die In LA
William Petersen’s partner is about to retire but decides to try and bust a ring of counterfeiters before he does

– M.A.S.H
   Col. Henry Blake was sent home from the Korean War by plane, which crashes on the way home

– CSI: Miami
Horatio warns Speedle his motorbike may kill him soon. Speedle ignores this and two minutes later he is dead.

It is such a well used plot device, that it is often parodied.
Possibly none do it better than this trailer for the Mcbain movie, which Homer watches when in a video store:

This one has nearly all the cliches in it –
– mentioning how far off retirement is
– discussing future plans
– a photo of family/wife/sweetheart
– a plea to the hero to avenge the death

Many other Simpsons episodes also parody ‘retirony’. (refer to the list of other retirony references here)

This even happens in real life. Imagine being the last man shot in World war two
Even worse, getting killed at your retirement party by your co-workers.
And for some related trivia to end on – Charles Schultz died the day before the last Peanuts comic strip was published

Nym Wars

Nym Wars published on 1 Comment on Nym Wars

The Empire does not require your true name.

But Google+ does.
So does Facebook (up to a point)

The uproar online regarding Google’s policy of requiring you to use your real name to join their G+ network has spawned the term “Nym Wars.
Many are concerned about the reasons they need to give their true identity away to some of the social networks, as they prefer to use an alias when performing online activity.

As you may have noticed, I don’t use my real name for most of my online identities. However, I am not precious enough to insist that Google and Facebook have no rights to know what my given name is.
In my opinion, if they REALLY want to know it, they either;
a) already know it
b) will be able to find it out pretty easily

I can understand why people are getting upset over this, but I think they also need to step back and think for a minute about a few things.
1 – These social networks are free. You don’t pay them so you need to realise that ultimately you do not get to dictate their rules and guidelines for them.
2 – These social networks are a “nice to have” and not a given right. They don’t have to play your game if they do not want to.
3 – Pseudonymity is NOT anonymity. Just because you use a Pseudonym does not mean that no one will ever find out your real identity.
4 –   If you don’t want to give your real name to Google or Facebook, then don’t and choose not to use their product. It really is that simple.

But I do agree that control over our identity matters online. It will be interesting to see who wins these wars – us or them.

Of course, the points above are just my personal opinions.
In the interests of providing a balanced argument, please read this article about the reasons why pseudonymity is important : On Pseudonymity, Privacy and Responsibility on Google+

 

Changes

Changes published on 2 Comments on Changes

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

People say they want changes, but when they are given what they ask for, the masses tend to react badly.
Often there are nasty comments, protest websites and aggressive facebook pages.

Common people don’t REALLY like change. They especially don’t like changes to how things work on the internet.
Which is interesting, since the internet is made to be an agent of change.

If nothing else, the internet does offer one thing to the masses that they are all happy about – it gives them a voice.

Sadly, the bad thing about the internet is also that it gives everyone a voice. EVERYONE.
Good , Bad or Uneducated and Ignorant.

 

 

Restricted space

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Once again, facebook is in the news and on the blogs, because of recent changes they have made.

The change getting the attention this time  around, is the “Gestures” feature that facebook has implemented.
Facebook wants you to believe that they are making sharing easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on Facebook-connected apps.This auto-sharing functionality is called “Gestures.”

From now on, when you add an app,you will choose “Add to Timeline” and that app will have permission to share your activity to facebook. Instead of having to “Like” something to share it, it will just do it for you every time you interact with it.
You give permission to the app ONLY ONCE EVER, and it handles the rest.

For example, the apps could be sharing news articles you read, game scores and achievments, videos you watch, music you are listening to,etc.

This sounds great, but it does raise some concerns. Users are likely to forget they have given permissions to share, and then suddenly those articles you read about the latest movies star’s leaked sex-tape is posted on your wall for everyone to see.

All of this is really part of Mark Zuckerberg’s Open Graph API. They need to have open access to data to achieve the ultimate plan.?

So what is that plan?  Put very simply, Mark wants facebook to BE the internet.
He wants everything  you do, say, listen to,read or watch, to be somehow done via facebook.
And they way things are going now at present, it seems feasible.

Yet, this all seems so familiar…
A global monitoring of all the things we do by a private corporation? You may be thinking “Hey, wasn’t that the basic premise of “1984” by George Orwell?
Yeah, probably. But I was thinking about Google…

 

 

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