The Top Ten Sexiest Female Robots

YesButNoButYes (Man, I love that blog name) has a list of the top 10 sexiest female robots, or at least, their opinion on the matter.

Thank god, Small Wonder doesn't make a showing (Sorry, V.I.C.K.I.'s Uncle... shudder).

But what about the Svedka bot, people? Transluscent AND drink bearing! No love for the All Is Full of Love bots either, though I'm not sure if those were female, but who cares, Bjork! (Bjork, were you brought by the stork, or were you created from butter and cork...)

via Sexblo.gs

USB Vibrator Ranks #1 on Weird Device List

In a list of 10 weird USB devices, 3 of them vibrate, and one of those things that vibrates made the #1 spot.

Now, granted, we here at Slashdong actually do own the USB Vibrator. It's great for testing using 5v supplies because it can be assumed that it was made to run on something giving it under the 100mA low power limit as specified by the USB standard (even though we've proven this ain't always true), so you aren't gonna blow up, say, an XBox Controller with it.

However, what worries us is the fact that someone thinks this is weirder than a USB Grill, which came in DEAD LAST. Hooking something that vibrates to your computer is weirder than cooking hamburgers with your computer?

Wonder if we could make the grill vibrate...

Originally written by qDot for mmorgy.com

Wow, what an internet wirefire this has turned into.

So, as of our last post (which was last weekend, before Blizzard a chance to clear things up like you know they would...

'cept they didn't.

Here's the exact wording from Blizzard, since I like making my posts look long:

Apologies for the length of time it took to get this information out
to you.

We encourage community building among our players with others of
similar interests, and we understand that guilds are one of the
primary ways to forge these communities. However, topics related to
sensitive real-world subjects — such as religious, sexual, or
political preference, for example — have had a tendency to result in
communication between players that often breaks down into harassment.

To promote a positive game environment for everyone and help prevent
such harassment from taking place as best we can, we prohibit mention
of topics related to sensitive real-world subjects in open chat within
the game, and we do our best to take action whenever we see such
topics being broadcast. This includes openly advertising a guild
friendly to players based on a particular political, sexual, or
religious preference, to list a few examples. For guilds that wish to
use such topics as part of their recruiting efforts, our Guild
Recruitment forum, located at our community Web site, serves as one
open avenue for doing so.

We will be clarifying some of the language in our game policies in
order to help avoid such confusion in the future.”

So, that made no one happy, and the internet has blazed with the light of a million flames since. Joystiq, Kotaku, ShackNews, and other places around the net (check the Joystiq article for more news sources) are seeing heated debate over this issue. Here at MMOrgy, I still stand by what I originally said, and now WolfOfTheAir is weighing in:

Basically, the fact that some number of people (who are probably in
the majority) don't care doesn't mean this is a topic that can be
swept under the carpet.

They desire not to have to hear about it, and become offended when I
shove it in their face. I desire not to have to hear things that I
find offensive, but which others shove in my face.

What makes them more special than me?

I see the homophobia-as-humor shtick to be creating a hostile
environment to me specifically, and to anyone of the alternative
preference set in general. As was mentioned, they're opening
themselves up to massive lawsuits if they make homophobic-type remarks
available in their own software, and then censure anyone who tries to
create an even remotely non-homophobic environment in-game.

The "homophobic-type remarks in the game" issue comes up from the aforementioned post on Shacknews, with the relevant part as follows:

Speaking of innocent sexual language being used in the game, Blizzard
built plenty of it into the shipping product, which makes this
situation even more absurd. There is a "/flirt" emote with many
prerecorded lines of dialogue, including one that states,
"Homogenized? No way, I like the ladies!" In fact, when I was just now
in the game cycling through the pre-recorded "/flirt" emotes in order
to find that one, another male character walked up to me and
repeatedly invoked the "/sexy" emote, which appeared to me as
"Circuitjerky thinks you are a sexy devil." Should I have reported
this behavior to a GM? Somebody could have been insulted!

Research on the IGDA Sex In Games Mailing List found that this quote comes from the Male Tauren character, but could be construed enough ways that it would break Blizzards own policies.

GamesIndustry reported that the Stonewall gay rights group had already called on Blizzard to change their policies. Kotaku is now reporting that a gay rights group has jumped into the fray, with one of their attourneys helping out the WoW players that got the inital warning.

Get your flame-retardant suits, popcorn and lawn chairs, kids. This ain't gonna end any time soon.

Happiness is a busy desk.

Originally uploaded by qdot76367.

This is what a desk is MEANT to look like, damnit.

This is the desk of a man with a mission.

This is the desk of a happy engineer.

Fuckin' A.

(Yes, that is the SeXBox v5 layout. Things are going well now that I have a chip that will work with my serial communication code. PROGRESS.)

Originally written by qDot for mmorgy.com

Hoo boy.

For those of you too lazy to click out of your newsreaders, here's the situation:

Someone decided to put "GLBT Friendly" (Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgendered) as part of their guild name in World of Warcraft. One day, they sign on to find themselves flagged with a policy violation. After firing off an email to Blizzard, they find out that having terms indicating the sexual orientation of the guild is against policy. Quoting from the article:

The response from Blizzard was, "While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a 'GLBT friendly' guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to 'be temporarily suspended from the game.' However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning."

So, long story short: If you have a guild called "God hates fags", then you're violating this policy. If you have a guild named "GLBT friendly", you're violating the same policy.

If you have a guild named "My name is Gay. No, really, like Gay, as in the First Name, is Gay"... Hey, someone with a WoW account wanna try this? Hell, they let The Spreading Taint through.

Since I'm the only one around (updating a sex blog on a Friday night... But my mom thinks I'm cool!), I guess I'll throw in the first MMOrgy opinion:

Man, Blizzard.

WTF, dude. Seriously.

Shit like this is what turns virtual worlds into day care centers, and you're seeing why. Yes, gamers, for the most part, are an insensitive bunch of asses. I know, I'm one of them. But you try to clamp down on everyone, and ain't no one gonna be havin' a good time.

'course, you've got 5.5 million players now, you can probably pull crap like this and laugh at the 1% drop in your servers as people continue to level grind mindlessly so they can ebay their lvl 60 character. But watch as the interesting people leave due to crazy ass rules, the fun people leave due to creative stiffling, even in guild names, and see how nifty your world is then.

You'll still have players, hell, you'll always have players, but how fucking fulfilling is a world without interesting, diverse players who let others KNOW they are, and are willing to stick up for it, eh?

Other people's opinions (I'm gonna keep updating this as these come in):

Fellow Sexy Geek Jason Schultz Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing Terra Nova Thread