[Gold farming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming) in MMORPGs is a trendy topic, so there are countless superficial articles about it. This is a partial attempt to sift out the drivel, and summarise the real information. I doubt I’ll do this regularly, but maybe I’ll try to revisit it now and again.

PhD Student Ge Jin has [filmed](http://youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4) several Chinese sweatshops. It’s been discussed everywhere, most interestingly at [Terra Nova](http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/03/disembodiment_h.html)

PC Gamer has [refused](http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/technology/14018209.htm) to carry ads from real-world traders like IGE:

“PC Gamer’s official stance on these types of companies is that they are despicable: Not only do they brazenly break many MMOs’ End-User License Agreements (EULA), but they all too often ruin legitimate players’ fun. As a company, we have agreed to turn down what literally amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual ad revenue so that you, as a reader, can game easy knowing that we’ve got your back.”

In Gamestudy there is an [interview](http://gamestudy.org/eblog/?p=34) with a Korean gold farmer, translated from a Korean gaming magazine. Interesting points: the confirmation that “hacking tools tuned for a specific game make it possible to handle incredibly many accounts/characters per worker”, and the discussion of how Korean shops are mostly priced out of the market. I’m not surprised; comments elsewhere have claimed that gold farmers are even being priced out of Beijing, so how they could survive in a city as expensive as Seoul is beyond me. He also says that almost all sweatshop characters are automated. I wonder how true this is beyond Lineage; presumably the mechanics of each game will determine whether it’s worth a real person running a character.

Meanwhile, games have been cracking down on the gold farmers in public: RuneScape have [adjusted their game mechanics](http://news.runescape.com/lang/en/aff/runescape/newsitem.ws?id=571) to reduce one common way for farmers to profit. They also claim that “

Over the last few weeks we have banned literally hundreds of accounts a day for macroing at the rune essence mine

“. Earlier Blizzard too banned or suspended some 15,000 players for “

participating in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items.

”

The main news from Iraq this weekend was that Jawad al-Maliki is now Prime Minister of Iraq, following the US-UK campaign to keep Jaafari out of the job.

You won’t learn much from the papers, where journalists are having a visibly hard time filling up their biographies of Maliki. Here they are anyway: [Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1759783,00.html), [AP](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060421/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_al_maliki_profile;_ylt=AokX5K6udPHoiMB1bW6FpBQLewgF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA–), [New York Times](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/23/africa/web.0423profile.php), [Times](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2149366,00.html). Slightly better is [Juan Cole](http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/al-maliki-acceptable-say-kurds-sunni.html) ‘s dump of old news articles referring to Maliki’s work on the constitution and elsewhere.

But [Helena](http://justworldnews.org/) is about the only person putting the appointment into context. She has followed it through from the [nomination of Jaafari by the UIA](http://justworldnews.org/archives/001727.html) back in february (a surprise choice, the pundits were expecting Abdul-Aiz al-Hakim to be Prime Minister), to what she identified as a [campaign by Britain and the States to block Jaafari’s appointment](http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/election/2006/0405impasse.htm).

With that background, Maliki looks like a face-saving candidate, keeping power within Jaafari’s Daawa party while removing the man himself. Nothing wrong with a compromise choice, of course, but remember that Jaafari will still be the power behind the throne. I just looked at my notes on Iraqi politicians, and the entry for Maliki said one thing only one thing: “close to Ibrahim al-Jaafari”.

As for actual policies, there isn’t any difference between him and Jaafari. The US ambassador [describes](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/23/news/iraq.php) him as “tough-minded” and “strong”, which sounds ominous in terms of democracy. The best that the Iraqi Islamic party has to say is that he is “more practical” than Jaafari. Because he’s an unknown they don’t have much to throw at him, but what there is doesn’t look good. In particular, it can’t be long until Maliki’s opponents bring up his role in the debaathification program, which has angered many by turning into a de-Sunnification program.

That said, this isn’t a bad compromise, and the chance that Iraq will finally form a government is a Very Good Thing.

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As Francis has helpfully pointed out, large chunks of this blog are defunct – including comments, individual entries, and all the archives. I’ve not worked out why yet, but bear with me and eventually things will be back to their usual semi-functionality.


UPDATE

: I’m still not sure what was causing this, but I’ve turned off dynamic publishing and now things are mostly working. if you find things still broken.

Oops!

Reading this article, I find myself desperately struggling to find an innocent explanation – and failing. The gist is that the US can’t hand over control of prisons to Iraqis, because the Iraqi government has too much respect for human rights.

The commander of U.S. prison operations, which include Abu Ghraib and three other sites, said he could not predict when the Iraqi government will match U.S. standards of care for detainees

and pass laws allowing it to hold people without trial

— key conditions for handing over detainees, numbering 14,700 today.

The US authorities believe that they, unlike Iraqis, do have the right to waive due process:

while the United States points to a United Nations Security Council Resolution allowing it to detain people without charge as suspected guerrillas, the Iraqi government would need to pass its own legislation to do that

I’m not sure where they think this legal authorization comes from. All I can see is that Resolution 1511

authorizes a multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq

Resolution 1546

Decides that the multinational force shall have the authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq

If that’s all there is, this is as legally dubious as it is morally dubious – but quite possibly I’ve missed something elsewhere. Anybody want to see what information Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have collected on this?

I won’t go into the ethical and political dimensions to why this is bad; no doubt anyone reading this post will already be convinced that giving people a trial before jailing them is a Good Thing.

[

Cross-post from the [Iraq Analysis Group blog](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/blog)

]

Over the Easter weekend I don’t have to go into work until 2am. This is a Good Thing.

So, I spent yesterday evening at Church of Noise, with i_am_marky, innocent_irony and killingpuritans. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the music – a year of WUS had convinced me that I didn’t much like rock, but this was hour after hour of stuff I could dance at, and not all the tracks sounded identical to each other. Another of those times when I do something, and then wonder why I didn’t try it a year ago.

Current plans involve spending tomorrow evening in the Castle with gothsoc, then Saturday at the Indie Thing. Anybody have better suggestions, particularly for Saturday? Spending three nights at the Kambar in one week feels a lot like overkill.

Common People, with vocals from the automated Tom Baker voice that reads out text messages. I can’t think of any better way to end the Calling than that; it’s a pity so many people missed it. Fortunately there’s an mp3 for you all to revel in. Others are here – the version of God Save the Queen is absolute genius.

The rest of the music at the Calling was also unusually great. I’ve been wishing I danced more; one day I’ll work out the art of dancing

and

talking. Really I will.

Before that, thanks to Roo, Kai, and the assembled LARPers in the Druids for making Dan have an extremely enjoyable afternoon and evening.