Slashdot Mirror
UO Players Donate Virtual Gold for Tsunami Victims
J. R. Cook writes "A man by the name of Crazy Joe recently set up a site to start taking donations of virtual gold to convert them to real life gold on ebay. All proceeds made from the auctions are being sent to the Red Cross for help with the Tsumani fund in Asia. Crazy Joe has houses set up on every server in Ultima Online to accept the donations. You can take your character to the houses to donate your gold in-game. He's raised hundreds of millions of gold which in turn can be converted to thousands of dollars."
Nihir Nighthawk: Great thing you're doing with the gold donations. If my UO account were still open, I'd give you what I have. :-P
CarnivorousJoe: thanks for the kind words!
CarnivorousJoe: http://games.slashdot.org/
Nihir Nighthawk: Yep, that's where I heard about you.
CarnivorousJoe: my host may go down soon, so say hi to it now!
Nihir Nighthawk: It's responding fine to me, but you did make the front page, so we'll see how long it takes to fry
CarnivorousJoe: haha
CarnivorousJoe: i warned my host
Nihir Nighthawk: they respond?
CarnivorousJoe: not yet. may call
Nihir Nighthawk: Maybe your host is more resilient than you think, it's still responding fine. By now, the server should be on fire.
CarnivorousJoe: ya they are awesome
CarnivorousJoe: but i like to cover the bases
Nihir Nighthawk: How much have you received so far? I didn't see it listed anywhere
CarnivorousJoe: http://www.crazyjoe.us
CarnivorousJoe: and go click on "Status"
He's gotten over 310 million gold, which amounts to a few thousand $USD. Assuming all of it sells, he'll have donated at least $5,000 to the Red Cross.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Then there is Sri Lanka refusing aid from Israel. What a bunch of nazis.
Not just aid from Israel (which I don't think they would have any objection to per se, dispite the checkered past between the two nations), but aid from yltra orthadox religious group it should be said (not all that welcome amoung the largely Muslim population I don't imagine, indeed likely seen as rather antagonistic in their eyes).
I'd have told them to bugger off too quite frankly (more extreme crusading religious zealots of any persuasion the world does not need - they are NOT short on volunteers), I'm sure they went into this just how antagonising they were being too. After all, Israeli been known open fire on Red Crescent ambulances attending to the wounded (including several instances captured on film, one by a BBC reporter), even resulting in the death of patients as ambulances were detained, so we know the hostility towards unwelcome aid goes both ways.
Aid from a religious group is one thing (not something I'd ever fund through charitable donations, but stomacheable) air from an en extremist religious group is another matter entirely.
Ebay only allows charity auctions through 'MissionFish', and will pull any other auction that mentions charity contributions.