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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."
NEWSFLASH: US GIVES 10,000,000,000 GIL in AID, 300 DEXTERITY POINTS, and 5,000 HEALING POTIONS
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
Your argument has one flaw. You are assuming that if they donate, they won't play anymore. This is clearly not necessarily true. If someone will play regardless, they can produce extra contributions by turning their in-game items into more cash, possibly more than their subscription cost.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
a) You assume that they haven't already given through traditional means already.
b) It is quite possible that they don't have any spare money. Some people playing UO do that as their only or almost only form of recreation. I know (or knew) people without cable or cell phones who play UO.
c) It is a fun gimmick that is raising money for a charity that can really use it. Why are you upset about it?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Look, these problems with foreign countries cannot be solved by force of arms. We need to take every opportunity to reach out within reason. Giving aid to millions of innocents struck by a natural disaster is the definition of humanity.
"Health economy, outsourcing, poverty, education" are nearly trivial at this point for people struggling for survival. I hope no one takes this attitude with you should you, God forbid, ever be in a similar situation.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
Except for 'Big natural disaster', this applies equally well to the USA's own cinema-style terrorist attack on 11/9/2001 -- would you have been happy if the rest of the world had shrugged their shoulders and carried on as normal? And that was less than 4000 people. The tsunami has *killed* over 100,000, with many times more injured both physically and mentally.
It's the biggest natural disaster for many years. If it had killed on US soil we'd be hearing about it continuously for *decades*.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Actually a force of arms will help. Believe it or not, if the benevolent countries did not swoop in with aid and arms small not so benevolent groups would and try to take advantage of the sitution. These people need food,water,shelter and protection. The rebuilding they can take care of themselves, otherwise we would be putting them out a job if we did it all for them.
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'.
Sri Lanka and Israel;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4
Sri Lanka and rebels;
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st
India refusing outside aid;
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050102/asp/n
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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.
There's a world of difference from being a Nazi (or even any variety of anti-semite) and trying to be prudent.
It's a bad thing for your country to reject aid workers because of their national origin (and in this case, religion).
It's worse, however, if you allow those workers into your country-- and are unable to keep suicide bombers from attacking them and killing innocent people.
A simple fact of the matter is that Sri Lanka is predominantly Muslim, which as a faith is largely benign, yet does seem to have the largest share of people who are willing to die as long as they take who they perceive as an enemy to their faith with them.
It's just irresponsible to basically create a situation in which a local extremist can easily and cheaply attack some Israelis -- espescially since extremists are not noted for minimizing innocent victims. ('The victims were not innocent. They shouldn't have accepted help from [Israelis]'). Extremists tend to have an 'If you're not with us you're against us' mentality, leaving no room for anything in between.
An attack on an Israeli aid group is probably the most likely in this Muslim country, and an attack on ANY aid group make other countries providing aid think twice about continuing support.
Yeah, it looks really bad; but the alternative is quite likely to end up being worse.
There are plenty of countries that need help, and many don't have anything against Israel. It's not like Israel won't be providing aid. I prefer this headline to 'Islamic extremists destroy Israeli aid station in sri lanka, hundreds dead'.
Yes, it's unfortunate that humanity still carries this kind of hatred around. But pretending that it doesn't exist won't make it go away.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Do you have a credit card? I'm just curious, because you seem to have some fundamental misconception on how they work. They're not magical-money-cards (even though some people treat them like they are). Just because you have a credit card does not mean you can spend money on it willy-nilly. You are still subject to the normal budgetary constraints in your life. Just because these people are paying $15/month for a game, doesn't mean they can afford even another $1 as a donation. Maybe they can cancel their subscription, but that's pretty idealistic if you expect anyone to actually do that.
Perhaps I misunderstood you, and you're referring to the people who are buying the 'gold' who could make the donation directly. If that's what you're suggesting, then you've missed the point: the people who are buying the gold aren't doing it as a disaster relief effort. They're simply BUYING the gold. They're paying real money, and they want gold for their character. It's a simple business deal. The people doing the donation are the people who are giving their in-game gold, for free, no strings attached, so this guy can sell it and get real money to donate. The people buying the gold probably couldn't care less where the money is going, besides out of their pocket.
Random and weird software I've written.
>How dare you compare a few people around the world "feeling bad for america after 9/11" with America reaching out
i bb on
The rest of the world did things for America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellow_R
And, if I recall correctly, European countries and Israel offered their services in going through the building ruins for survivors, since they have experience doing that sort of thing.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
No, a portion of the 'left over' money will be used to pay the millions that the Red Cross uses to pay the executives and to fund said execs perks. All the Red Cross expense records are public, so look it up for yourself and I think you will be suprised.
Ah, I see. You're living in idealism world. It's a lovely place. Unfortunately, for various reasons both just and unjust, the real world does not work that way. If you expect that all people must help those in more need than themselves (which on its face certainly seems like a very enlightened view), the result is communism. Wonderful in theory, but it simply doesn't work in practice. People are still very much base animals in some ways, and require direct positive feedback regarding their choices and actions. Communism provides no mechanism for this -- in fact, specifically rewarding any one person for anything is entirely contrary to the whole goal of equality for the masses. Once people refuse to participate in it, the system will break down.
Is it fair that the tsunami killed all those people and destroyed so much? No, of course not. Is it fair that the people who weren't hit by the tsunami should be obligated to suffer as well, even something as small as not buying that next video game? Not unless you truly believe that the world should be communist. Generosity is about sending a gift of your own free will, not doing so because you feel obligated to. Life's not fair... but that's life, and that's how it is.
Random and weird software I've written.