"Putin is Lawful Evil, guys. He wants to control the Internet! He wants to rule over it, and over YOU, and you should hate and fear and oppose whatever he does because that's what's good for America!"
It may be largely true, maybe, that Putin believes that Russia should have domain over the Internet as it exists within Russia's borders, and there's certainly some precedent for that. Even sense. Nation-states exist to further their own interests, and the interests of their citizens.
The USA installs leaders in third world nations all over the globe based on the single, sole criteria of how loyal they are to the USA.
Russia does the exact same thing.
Great Briton did the exact same thing in the past.
The People's Republic of China will do the exact same thing in the future.
It's not news at all that governments seek to control the affairs of their citizens domestically and as much as they can internationally. This is the world of global politics. It's not different simply because it deals with the Internet; that's not to say it's necessarily good, or moral, or even wise, but that's how the game is played.
I'm getting pretty sick of this too. What happened, Slashdot? We used to be all about the tech, right or wrong. Now it's just "M$ suxx and are evil!!!" in every thread that Microsoft's mentioned.
It's annoying, and even self-defeating for Microsoft haters; it makes it a lot harder to take their serious points, well, seriously. If they're always going to be critical of Microsoft no matter what, and are willing to go total ad hominem when nothing else works, how can an uneducated observer take anything they say seriously?
You're right, to an extent, which is why I pointed it out. There IS justification for increasing taxes at a time when the economy is strong, for all the reasons you outlined.
The issue is that the GST (+10% tax on all goods and services, as its name might imply) isn't the fairest way to tax a population. As I mentioned, it's a stealth tax on low income earners, assuming that the other (higher) taxes are removed and the GST put in their place.
Now, I don't think for a moment that'll happen. That promise was made decades ago. Might as well have been made by cavemen with stones, in the political landscape.
See, the introduction of the GST was to coincide with the bundling of a bunch of other taxes into one. For some goods, most notably electronics and "luxury items", they actually got cheaper. This was because it's truly a stealth tax on the poor, by taxing commodities like bread and orange juice (which previously would have been taxed at lower rates or even subsidized), and lowering the tax on luxury goods to only 10% (where they would have previously commanded much higher taxes).
So, of course, it's possible that Steam games and Netflix and other such things are about to get a whole lot cheaper. After all, most software is more expensive here; in some cases this is simply because "it's what the market will pay" (read: foreign companies gouging us for our high quality of life), but in some others, it's because of taxes. So in theory, prices could actually drop.
In theory.
It won't actually happen, because our economy is roaring along thanks to the mining boom, and the powers-that-be want to slow it down a bit and rake in some of the dough while the going's good.
Besides. That election promise is so many governments ago nobody gives a fuck anymore, but it's nice to dream. Dream the fevered dream of a madman; that taxes will even once go down, and that Australia might, one day, pay "only" as much +10% of digital products as the US, UK, and other places.
I'm an Australian author. I recently published my 10th novel. I make my living from selling books, primarily on Google Play, but also Amazon and Apple.
How do I opt out of this scheme? How do I request that even if someone downloads a copy of a book I normally request payment for without doing so, that they face no legal harm from anyone? The article mentions "rights holders" can get in contact with potential "infringers"; how would they notify me? I work from home, is my street address on file somewhere?
I found that when I ask these kinds of questions it leads to conclusions that should embarrass the people trying to implement them. The truth is; invariably, these kinds of schemes do absolutely nothing "for me" as downloads of my books would not even be detected by whatever system they want to put in place, even if I was stomping and shouting and demanding all the evil pirates ceased immediately.
This is, and always is, solely an effort to protect a foreign industry, Hollywood. An industry which gives the common Australian absolutely no consideration at all. Digital downloads are often more expensive here than the US, simply because "that's what the market will pay", which is code for, "Australia's high standard of living means we can gouge the shit out of them". Shows arrive late, miss our holidays, are screened out of order or are incomplete.
Why is this good for Australia and Australians in any way? If nothing else, and setting aside my own personal objections: why are we actively protecting a foreign industry and doing absolutely nothing to protect our domestic productions?
Please list examples in Western societies today where there is a power imbalance between the genders. Including ones where women are given preferential treatment.
Well, there are a few places. For example: I write in speculative fiction, especially sci-fi, and it's hard for female sci-fi authors to be taken seriously in that field. The reverse is true in other fields (I write paranormal romance under a female pen-name, because nobody will buy romance written by a man), but that is one example of where men and women are given preferential treatment based on their gender, where I've observed the difference first hand and been affected by it. In this case, based on potential revenue, it's probably better to be a best selling romance author than a sci-fi author, but romance is a heavily crowded market and it's hard to stand out whereas sci-fi is a lot more niche-y.
There's a fair number of other instances, too. For example: women in the military must face challenges that men in the military just don't have to worry about to the same extent. That's not to say that male servicemen aren't sexually assaulted, both by their own side, by allies, and by opposing forces, but it happens to a lesser degree. Female soldiers, sailors and airmen are much more likely to experience violence, sexual violence, and harassment simply because of who they are. However, that said, reporting structures for male victims tend to be a lot thinner on the ground, there's a social stigma against male victims that isn't present for female victims, and because it happens more rarely is less likely to be taken as truthful. Again, it's not a situation where it's always 100% bad to be a woman, but as an overall trend, it's less advantageous.
The role of women and men in our society is a complex, nuanced one where we can't just simply boil things down to a soundbite, where there's no consistent narrative and the only thing that is known for certain is that "problems exist".
I can't say I disagree, and I have a few opinions about that (some of which are fairly popular and well received, others not so much). Recently I've been trying to understand more about Feminism and it's been a fairly rough learning process which has probably cost me some friends, but I'm still pushing on with it. I see a lot of good there, but I'm also seeing a lot of bad, too.
I think the main problem is... there is no Pope of Feminism, so anyone can adopt that label and claim to represent it. This makes it hard to judge the intentions of that person because while most Feminists are genuinely committed to reaching true equality, some are not, and those happen to be the loudest, most confrontational, most aggressive ones who also tend to be the ones most vocally claiming to represent Feminism.
And some of those people are remarkably bigoted.
As a movement, in general Feminism makes some really excellent points, some of which have caused me to rethink a fair few important parts of my life and my own behaviour -- and that's good. Some self-reflection and introspection is an important part of living a healthy life and I really recommend it for everyone.
The problem is, it just seems like no matter how much we agree, whenever I speak to anyone who describes themselves as a "radical feminist" (the self-described part is important) it inevitably becomes a negative experience for me. This is surprising for me because of how much we agree on.
For example, I acknowledge there is a power imbalance between women and men, favouring men. It's hard for me because, as a man, I can't control how other people act, only myself. So I do my part and treat women equal to men. I have a female gym trainer, female IT head, female editors for my books and I have both female superiors and subordinates in almost all aspects of my life, as well as a large number of female friends. I treat them as I would men in their respective positions -- as cool people to hang out with, as people to follow my instructions or give me instructions respectively, or people who fix the errors in my books. Women are worthy of praise and criticism equally, and when I develop a negative opinion of someone, it's because they're incompetent, or rude, or any other attribute that's not related to their gender.
That just doesn't seem enough for the self-described "radical feminists" I meet. Whenever gender issues come up, we can usually have a great discussion -- up to the point I bring up anything that might be described as favouring men over women, even when women aren't the "cause" of it (such as the male suicide rate being twice that of women, and the suicide rate amongst trans* people twice that again). When this happens, even raising the point immediately puts them on the defensive. Suddenly I'm trying to deny that there's problems for women. Suddenly I'm the 'straight white cis guy with an opinion'; which seems to be the enemy. There's an expectation of bad faith there that means that anything I say that's not overtly stating that women are an oppressed slave-like underclass with no rights is seen as a misogynistic attack.
Ultimately, this kind of behaviour undermines the often good, legitimate points that feminism makes, making it easy to dismiss the whole movement. For feminists (male and female) who don't self-apply the "radical" term, I can almost always have a good, positive, helpful discussion with them about a broad range of issues and I usually come out feeling that there's a genuine move towards acknowledging that life is sometimes shitty for a lot of people irrespective of gender, colour or creed and that we should all work towards fixing the inequalities in our society together, as a species, and that makes me really happy.
Discussions with self-described radical feminists, though, usually end with me getting angry that my (smaller, less critical problems) are dismissed quite casually, and then as the anger fades, unable to shake the nagging feeling that the "quest for equality" is a sham and that instead
Do you think that if the Republicans (or any other political party) were in power, this mess would have never happened?
If your answer is an affirmative, unconditional yes, you're probably not thinking rationally. The Republicans started this whole mess after all. The Democrats continued it. Both are bad, neither is blameless. To believe otherwise is to be an unthinking automaton.
1) The influx of content will overwhelm 4Chan's very few mods. 2) Trolls will flag every single image and overwhelm 4Chan's very few mods. 3) 4Chan's very few mods will not care.
It is my experience, locally, that everyone and their dog has moved to Pathfinder.
My local university gaming club, and almost all major conventions in Australia, were 100% Living Greyhawk (which is D&D) until the end of that campaign. These days, they are almost all 100% Pathfinder.
Are you kidding? Today is the absolutely best time to be an indie game system developer, ever.
Back in the day, the only way you could get your stuff into the hands of the players was brick-and-mortar stores, word of mouth, or occasionally mail-order systems in magazines and stuff. That was it.
These days, there's so many online distribution points like DriveThruRPG, Amazon's KDP, iTunes, Google Play, etc that getting your game out there is easy. Just write your game system, publish it on any/all of the above, and bam. There you have it -- distribution, complete. Almost all these retailers allow discounting, promotions, bundling, etc. The amount of promotion tools available is staggering.
You can set your price, including as low as $0.99 for most retailers. If your idea is really good (and you're good at marketing) you can use Kickstarter or Indie GoGo or any other service to bootstrap a little funding. You can create and publish video promotions for free on YouTube. You can get a website for free, or very minimal cost, and run ads on it to bring in a little extra income.
You have total control over the distribution process. You might choose, for example, to make your core rules set available for free, and then charge for supplements. You can make it OGL if you want, or licence it how you want. You can write and publish electronic tools to help run games. You can even create your own game worlds, adventures, or whatever.
And the best thing is? All the tools you need are available for free or for staggeringly low cost. LibreOffice is your free word processing suite, although I recommend you drop $40 on Scrivener (it's like sex, except I'm having it). GIMP can do covers and basic image work well enough, but again, I'd suggest dropping $40 on Photoshop Elements. On DriveThruRPG you can get gaming stock art, templates, images and all kinds of art beautification your heart could desire, all extremely cheaply. When that fails you, there's ShutterStock, iStockphoto, or any number of stock image websites. Failing that: ask artists on DeviantArt to draw exactly what you want. $200-$500 will get you a sweet digital painting from an awesome artist, which is a good investment for something like your Core Rule Book.
Long time d20 (and variants) player here. Not as long as some, but long enough to have played 2nd Edition when it was still current.
IMHO, 5th Edition's success will come down to their acceptance of the OGL (Open Gaming Licence), which we will discover in the coming days. All signs point to no, but Wizards might surprise us yet.
For those who don't know, the OGL was introduced in the 3rd edition (and continued its minor update, v3.5) of D&D. It was truly revolutionary. The OGL not only permitted players to redistribute the base rule system as they wished, including publishing it online for free almost in its entirety, but empowered players, writers, and campaign masters to edit, change and adapt the rules as they saw fit -- and publish those changes, as long as they too were under the OGL. It's open source for gaming systems.
One of the leading benefits of this was the publication of "Adventure Paths". As the OGL did not cover game worlds, only the mechanics and rules of the game, any writer or publishing company with a solid working knowledge of the game could create, publish, and distribute (freely or for profit) their own adventures, rules variations, optional mechanics, and thousands of various changes. One of the leading companies was Paizo, who specialized in publishing these so-called Adventure Paths. They were not the only ones. For example, I personally published a Pathfinder flavoured novel about a kobold, "Ren of Atikala", set in the original world of Drathari (oblig. plug: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZ...). Using the OGL, I am able to legally use, alter, and draw inspiration from the rules and mechanics of OGL-licensed publications and create original works.
As I said earlier, it's open-source for gaming systems.
Between 3rd edition and v3.5, this was the state of D&D for almost 8 years, until June of 2008, when D&D 4th Edition was released. Unfortunately, D&D 4th Edition used a different version of the OGL, which was much more restrictive in what it permitted players, authors, and creators to edit, change, and redistribute (IIRC, it was essentially, "you may only reprint the *name* of the rule, and then reference the Player's Handbook", which meant if you were playing Star Wars you had to look up Power Attack in the D&D Player's Handbook... ugh).
Because of this change, and the simplifications made to the rules system which were often disfavourably compared to a video game, many players took a distinct, sight-unseen dislike to 4th Edition.
This restrictive change to the OGL also strongly disinsentivised Paizo from publishing Adventure Paths. After some internal discussion, it was decided that 4th Edition was not for them, and released a revised version of v3.5 of Dungeons and Dragons, known as the Pathfinder RPG (sometimes informally referred to by the player base as D&D v3.75), specifically intended to be backwards compatible with v3.5 of Dungeons and Dragons material. It was published shortly after 4th Edition's debut.
For many reasons -- a feeling that v3.5 was "good enough", Paizo's open-beta policy and staunch support of the OGL even for expansion books, and for viewing companies such as Green Ronin as allies rather than competitors -- Pathfinder has flourished in the wake of the relatively-poorly received 4th edition and is now a common staple at Roleplaying conventions and tabletop gaming communities, where previously only Dungeons and Dragons was played.
D&D Next seems, to me, to be squarely aimed directly at bringing Pathfinder converts back into the fold, promising to address some of the issues in both 4th Edition and Pathfinder, by providing a linearly scaling advancement, reducing preparation time for Game Masters, and simplifying many poorly thought out and complicated legacy rules which most players will admit probably need to go.
For me, though, D&D Next will live or die the same death 4th Edition did, based on its acceptance of
FatLittleMonkey is correct, the Ukraine has many Buk SAM systems. The one that allegedly shot down MH-17, however, appears at the present time to be a Russian-supplied and crewed loaner to the separatists they are backing.
Not that a Ukrainian error of identification would have been any more or less tragic, although it's less plausible since the separatists are not operating any air assets that I'm aware of so the Ukrainians are much more likely to be very conservative with regard to their anti-air grid.
It's important to note: At this stage it is clear that neither the Russians, nor the separatists, intended to shoot down a civilian airliner. They were targeting military assets. That point should be remembered. It's not like Putin's on his dark throne, cackling away at all of this. In fact I suspect he's currently having his men find and quietly dispose of whoever ordered the missile launch.
That doesn't change the fact that the Russians are clearly supplying the separatists with weapons and trained crews, and that in war people die, including people who had no horse in the race at all. Supplying rebels with state-of-the-air medium range anti-aircraft systems is a significant escalation of the previous conflict which has, as we've seen, the potential to cause all kinds of misery for third parties.
I'm seeing this a lot. Minor point of order: The craft that was shot down was an SU-25 Frogfoot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25), which is a ground attack aircraft; the Eastern Bloc equivalent of the A-10 "Warthog" Thunderbolt II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II).
I agree with the broader point though that it seems clear that whoever was operating the Buk SAM system was aiming for Ukrainian air assets, based on their previous actions, but they dun goofed and shot down a civilian aircraft.
At this particular point in time, it does not seem to be a deliberate action. The fact that the agencies involved (Russia for supplying the expensive, specialist equipment with crew trained in its use; Russian-backed Separatists for ordering the anti-air action) are going to great lengths to attempt to cover up their involvement speaks volumes in support of this conjecture.
Fellow author here. The problem is, it requires Prime, and the payment is only a borrow. Expect the borrow rate to increase. Of course, that's fine if Amazon increases the pool accordingly; they might treat Kindle Unlimited as a loss-leader and just accept that some people will read 50 books a month and accept the loss, or recoup it on those who buy subscriptions but never read anything.
Prime just isn't worth it for me, because it requires KDP Select, which is essentially Amazon exclusivity. I make about equal amounts between Amazon, Google Play, and Apple. Last month I did particularly well on Google Play and it doubled my Amazon revenue. This month, due to a Bookbub promotion on my best selling novel, Amazon's equal to Google Play + Apple. But that's rare.
Even if Kindle Unlimited takes off and doubles my Amazon sales, I'll still lose money, and exclusivity always makes me nervous. Back in 2012, when I started publishing, I was exclusive and it meant heart-attacks every time Amazon did something messed up like de-activate my product page, or put me in the wrong category, or ranking problems, or whatever.
I might give it a shot with some of my smaller series such as my paranormal romance serial, or my fantasy novel, but I'm not going to put my cash-cow into Amazon exclusivity without something more than Kindle Unlimited behind it.
The book is genuinely DRM free. The.mobi file format, which is what Amazon uses, is well documented by FOSS projects such as Calibre. You can transcode your DRM free.mobi files into.epub (which is just a.zip with HTML in it), into PDFs, Word documents, even plain text.
All of my books are DRM free for this reason (and many are also free-as-in-beer).
I'm not really sure why this whole thing is offensive.
My Mum had sex. At least once because, you know, I'm here. This much should be clear. And if she wanted to have sex with you too? Well, she's a grown woman, she can do whatever she wants. Hell, I hope that at age 60 I'm still getting some as well, especially from people who are around a third my age.
I mean, really. That's some high grade success there. Having earth-shattering sex with nubile young 20-something's when you're 60. That's hardly an insult.
I love my Mum a lot. I want her to be happy. If that means having all the crazy sex she wants, by all means. She can. I'm not going to judge her.
And another thing... what does that say about you? "Yeah bro, I had intercourse with a 60 year old woman! Fuck yeah!". I mean, by all means, if that's what you're into then whatever mate, go for your life. Some people like that. It's fine. Some people are into having sex with blowup dolls. That's weird but if it's their thing, then I'm cool with it. They tend to brag about it a lot less though.
Honestly, the most offensive thing about that is the waterbed. Those things are a piece of shit.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. Just because the NSA does it doesn't make Russia doing it right, and just because the NSA does it doesn't make Russia doing it wrong.
Russia interfering with the Internet is wrong because it's wrong.
The NSA interfering with the Internet is wrong because it's wrong.
I am also Australian. I have no love for Putin, but I also have no love for blatant propaganda dressed up as news.
But this reads purely as propaganda.
"Putin is Lawful Evil, guys. He wants to control the Internet! He wants to rule over it, and over YOU, and you should hate and fear and oppose whatever he does because that's what's good for America!"
It may be largely true, maybe, that Putin believes that Russia should have domain over the Internet as it exists within Russia's borders, and there's certainly some precedent for that. Even sense. Nation-states exist to further their own interests, and the interests of their citizens.
The USA installs leaders in third world nations all over the globe based on the single, sole criteria of how loyal they are to the USA.
Russia does the exact same thing.
Great Briton did the exact same thing in the past.
The People's Republic of China will do the exact same thing in the future.
It's not news at all that governments seek to control the affairs of their citizens domestically and as much as they can internationally. This is the world of global politics. It's not different simply because it deals with the Internet; that's not to say it's necessarily good, or moral, or even wise, but that's how the game is played.
I'm getting pretty sick of this too. What happened, Slashdot? We used to be all about the tech, right or wrong. Now it's just "M$ suxx and are evil!!!" in every thread that Microsoft's mentioned.
It's annoying, and even self-defeating for Microsoft haters; it makes it a lot harder to take their serious points, well, seriously. If they're always going to be critical of Microsoft no matter what, and are willing to go total ad hominem when nothing else works, how can an uneducated observer take anything they say seriously?
You're right, to an extent, which is why I pointed it out. There IS justification for increasing taxes at a time when the economy is strong, for all the reasons you outlined.
The issue is that the GST (+10% tax on all goods and services, as its name might imply) isn't the fairest way to tax a population. As I mentioned, it's a stealth tax on low income earners, assuming that the other (higher) taxes are removed and the GST put in their place.
Now, I don't think for a moment that'll happen. That promise was made decades ago. Might as well have been made by cavemen with stones, in the political landscape.
But it's worth pointing out.
Yes! (in theory)
See, the introduction of the GST was to coincide with the bundling of a bunch of other taxes into one. For some goods, most notably electronics and "luxury items", they actually got cheaper. This was because it's truly a stealth tax on the poor, by taxing commodities like bread and orange juice (which previously would have been taxed at lower rates or even subsidized), and lowering the tax on luxury goods to only 10% (where they would have previously commanded much higher taxes).
So, of course, it's possible that Steam games and Netflix and other such things are about to get a whole lot cheaper. After all, most software is more expensive here; in some cases this is simply because "it's what the market will pay" (read: foreign companies gouging us for our high quality of life), but in some others, it's because of taxes. So in theory, prices could actually drop.
In theory.
It won't actually happen, because our economy is roaring along thanks to the mining boom, and the powers-that-be want to slow it down a bit and rake in some of the dough while the going's good.
Besides. That election promise is so many governments ago nobody gives a fuck anymore, but it's nice to dream. Dream the fevered dream of a madman; that taxes will even once go down, and that Australia might, one day, pay "only" as much +10% of digital products as the US, UK, and other places.
One day...
One day.
Since you asked, here you go. :)
https://play.google.com/store/...
I'm an Australian author. I recently published my 10th novel. I make my living from selling books, primarily on Google Play, but also Amazon and Apple.
How do I opt out of this scheme? How do I request that even if someone downloads a copy of a book I normally request payment for without doing so, that they face no legal harm from anyone? The article mentions "rights holders" can get in contact with potential "infringers"; how would they notify me? I work from home, is my street address on file somewhere?
I found that when I ask these kinds of questions it leads to conclusions that should embarrass the people trying to implement them. The truth is; invariably, these kinds of schemes do absolutely nothing "for me" as downloads of my books would not even be detected by whatever system they want to put in place, even if I was stomping and shouting and demanding all the evil pirates ceased immediately.
This is, and always is, solely an effort to protect a foreign industry, Hollywood. An industry which gives the common Australian absolutely no consideration at all. Digital downloads are often more expensive here than the US, simply because "that's what the market will pay", which is code for, "Australia's high standard of living means we can gouge the shit out of them". Shows arrive late, miss our holidays, are screened out of order or are incomplete.
Why is this good for Australia and Australians in any way? If nothing else, and setting aside my own personal objections: why are we actively protecting a foreign industry and doing absolutely nothing to protect our domestic productions?
Someone has clearly not been to a big convention like Supanova and seen the ludicrous amount of sex that goes on there after hours.
Source: Went dressed as Pikachu, ended up making out with a Hetalia cosplayer.
It wasn't about hearing something I disagreed with at all, just turn on -1 and see.
Just see.
Please list examples in Western societies today where there is a power imbalance between the genders. Including ones where women are given preferential treatment.
Well, there are a few places. For example: I write in speculative fiction, especially sci-fi, and it's hard for female sci-fi authors to be taken seriously in that field. The reverse is true in other fields (I write paranormal romance under a female pen-name, because nobody will buy romance written by a man), but that is one example of where men and women are given preferential treatment based on their gender, where I've observed the difference first hand and been affected by it. In this case, based on potential revenue, it's probably better to be a best selling romance author than a sci-fi author, but romance is a heavily crowded market and it's hard to stand out whereas sci-fi is a lot more niche-y.
There's a fair number of other instances, too. For example: women in the military must face challenges that men in the military just don't have to worry about to the same extent. That's not to say that male servicemen aren't sexually assaulted, both by their own side, by allies, and by opposing forces, but it happens to a lesser degree. Female soldiers, sailors and airmen are much more likely to experience violence, sexual violence, and harassment simply because of who they are. However, that said, reporting structures for male victims tend to be a lot thinner on the ground, there's a social stigma against male victims that isn't present for female victims, and because it happens more rarely is less likely to be taken as truthful. Again, it's not a situation where it's always 100% bad to be a woman, but as an overall trend, it's less advantageous.
The role of women and men in our society is a complex, nuanced one where we can't just simply boil things down to a soundbite, where there's no consistent narrative and the only thing that is known for certain is that "problems exist".
I can't say I disagree, and I have a few opinions about that (some of which are fairly popular and well received, others not so much). Recently I've been trying to understand more about Feminism and it's been a fairly rough learning process which has probably cost me some friends, but I'm still pushing on with it. I see a lot of good there, but I'm also seeing a lot of bad, too.
I think the main problem is... there is no Pope of Feminism, so anyone can adopt that label and claim to represent it. This makes it hard to judge the intentions of that person because while most Feminists are genuinely committed to reaching true equality, some are not, and those happen to be the loudest, most confrontational, most aggressive ones who also tend to be the ones most vocally claiming to represent Feminism.
And some of those people are remarkably bigoted.
As a movement, in general Feminism makes some really excellent points, some of which have caused me to rethink a fair few important parts of my life and my own behaviour -- and that's good. Some self-reflection and introspection is an important part of living a healthy life and I really recommend it for everyone.
The problem is, it just seems like no matter how much we agree, whenever I speak to anyone who describes themselves as a "radical feminist" (the self-described part is important) it inevitably becomes a negative experience for me. This is surprising for me because of how much we agree on.
For example, I acknowledge there is a power imbalance between women and men, favouring men. It's hard for me because, as a man, I can't control how other people act, only myself. So I do my part and treat women equal to men. I have a female gym trainer, female IT head, female editors for my books and I have both female superiors and subordinates in almost all aspects of my life, as well as a large number of female friends. I treat them as I would men in their respective positions -- as cool people to hang out with, as people to follow my instructions or give me instructions respectively, or people who fix the errors in my books. Women are worthy of praise and criticism equally, and when I develop a negative opinion of someone, it's because they're incompetent, or rude, or any other attribute that's not related to their gender.
That just doesn't seem enough for the self-described "radical feminists" I meet. Whenever gender issues come up, we can usually have a great discussion -- up to the point I bring up anything that might be described as favouring men over women, even when women aren't the "cause" of it (such as the male suicide rate being twice that of women, and the suicide rate amongst trans* people twice that again). When this happens, even raising the point immediately puts them on the defensive. Suddenly I'm trying to deny that there's problems for women. Suddenly I'm the 'straight white cis guy with an opinion'; which seems to be the enemy. There's an expectation of bad faith there that means that anything I say that's not overtly stating that women are an oppressed slave-like underclass with no rights is seen as a misogynistic attack.
Ultimately, this kind of behaviour undermines the often good, legitimate points that feminism makes, making it easy to dismiss the whole movement. For feminists (male and female) who don't self-apply the "radical" term, I can almost always have a good, positive, helpful discussion with them about a broad range of issues and I usually come out feeling that there's a genuine move towards acknowledging that life is sometimes shitty for a lot of people irrespective of gender, colour or creed and that we should all work towards fixing the inequalities in our society together, as a species, and that makes me really happy.
Discussions with self-described radical feminists, though, usually end with me getting angry that my (smaller, less critical problems) are dismissed quite casually, and then as the anger fades, unable to shake the nagging feeling that the "quest for equality" is a sham and that instead
Browsing at -1 in this thread is fucking terrifying.
Do you think that if the Republicans (or any other political party) were in power, this mess would have never happened?
If your answer is an affirmative, unconditional yes, you're probably not thinking rationally. The Republicans started this whole mess after all. The Democrats continued it. Both are bad, neither is blameless. To believe otherwise is to be an unthinking automaton.
This probably won't work, because either:
1) The influx of content will overwhelm 4Chan's very few mods.
2) Trolls will flag every single image and overwhelm 4Chan's very few mods.
3) 4Chan's very few mods will not care.
The problem is, if he's a sociopath he sleeps like a baby every night.
It is my experience, locally, that everyone and their dog has moved to Pathfinder.
My local university gaming club, and almost all major conventions in Australia, were 100% Living Greyhawk (which is D&D) until the end of that campaign. These days, they are almost all 100% Pathfinder.
Are you kidding? Today is the absolutely best time to be an indie game system developer, ever.
Back in the day, the only way you could get your stuff into the hands of the players was brick-and-mortar stores, word of mouth, or occasionally mail-order systems in magazines and stuff. That was it.
These days, there's so many online distribution points like DriveThruRPG, Amazon's KDP, iTunes, Google Play, etc that getting your game out there is easy. Just write your game system, publish it on any/all of the above, and bam. There you have it -- distribution, complete. Almost all these retailers allow discounting, promotions, bundling, etc. The amount of promotion tools available is staggering.
You can set your price, including as low as $0.99 for most retailers. If your idea is really good (and you're good at marketing) you can use Kickstarter or Indie GoGo or any other service to bootstrap a little funding. You can create and publish video promotions for free on YouTube. You can get a website for free, or very minimal cost, and run ads on it to bring in a little extra income.
You have total control over the distribution process. You might choose, for example, to make your core rules set available for free, and then charge for supplements. You can make it OGL if you want, or licence it how you want. You can write and publish electronic tools to help run games. You can even create your own game worlds, adventures, or whatever.
And the best thing is? All the tools you need are available for free or for staggeringly low cost. LibreOffice is your free word processing suite, although I recommend you drop $40 on Scrivener (it's like sex, except I'm having it). GIMP can do covers and basic image work well enough, but again, I'd suggest dropping $40 on Photoshop Elements. On DriveThruRPG you can get gaming stock art, templates, images and all kinds of art beautification your heart could desire, all extremely cheaply. When that fails you, there's ShutterStock, iStockphoto, or any number of stock image websites. Failing that: ask artists on DeviantArt to draw exactly what you want. $200-$500 will get you a sweet digital painting from an awesome artist, which is a good investment for something like your Core Rule Book.
We are living in the publishing future.
Long time d20 (and variants) player here. Not as long as some, but long enough to have played 2nd Edition when it was still current.
IMHO, 5th Edition's success will come down to their acceptance of the OGL (Open Gaming Licence), which we will discover in the coming days. All signs point to no, but Wizards might surprise us yet.
For those who don't know, the OGL was introduced in the 3rd edition (and continued its minor update, v3.5) of D&D. It was truly revolutionary. The OGL not only permitted players to redistribute the base rule system as they wished, including publishing it online for free almost in its entirety, but empowered players, writers, and campaign masters to edit, change and adapt the rules as they saw fit -- and publish those changes, as long as they too were under the OGL. It's open source for gaming systems.
One of the leading benefits of this was the publication of "Adventure Paths". As the OGL did not cover game worlds, only the mechanics and rules of the game, any writer or publishing company with a solid working knowledge of the game could create, publish, and distribute (freely or for profit) their own adventures, rules variations, optional mechanics, and thousands of various changes. One of the leading companies was Paizo, who specialized in publishing these so-called Adventure Paths. They were not the only ones. For example, I personally published a Pathfinder flavoured novel about a kobold, "Ren of Atikala", set in the original world of Drathari (oblig. plug: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZ...). Using the OGL, I am able to legally use, alter, and draw inspiration from the rules and mechanics of OGL-licensed publications and create original works.
As I said earlier, it's open-source for gaming systems.
Between 3rd edition and v3.5, this was the state of D&D for almost 8 years, until June of 2008, when D&D 4th Edition was released. Unfortunately, D&D 4th Edition used a different version of the OGL, which was much more restrictive in what it permitted players, authors, and creators to edit, change, and redistribute (IIRC, it was essentially, "you may only reprint the *name* of the rule, and then reference the Player's Handbook", which meant if you were playing Star Wars you had to look up Power Attack in the D&D Player's Handbook... ugh).
Because of this change, and the simplifications made to the rules system which were often disfavourably compared to a video game, many players took a distinct, sight-unseen dislike to 4th Edition.
This restrictive change to the OGL also strongly disinsentivised Paizo from publishing Adventure Paths. After some internal discussion, it was decided that 4th Edition was not for them, and released a revised version of v3.5 of Dungeons and Dragons, known as the Pathfinder RPG (sometimes informally referred to by the player base as D&D v3.75), specifically intended to be backwards compatible with v3.5 of Dungeons and Dragons material. It was published shortly after 4th Edition's debut.
For many reasons -- a feeling that v3.5 was "good enough", Paizo's open-beta policy and staunch support of the OGL even for expansion books, and for viewing companies such as Green Ronin as allies rather than competitors -- Pathfinder has flourished in the wake of the relatively-poorly received 4th edition and is now a common staple at Roleplaying conventions and tabletop gaming communities, where previously only Dungeons and Dragons was played.
D&D Next seems, to me, to be squarely aimed directly at bringing Pathfinder converts back into the fold, promising to address some of the issues in both 4th Edition and Pathfinder, by providing a linearly scaling advancement, reducing preparation time for Game Masters, and simplifying many poorly thought out and complicated legacy rules which most players will admit probably need to go.
For me, though, D&D Next will live or die the same death 4th Edition did, based on its acceptance of
FatLittleMonkey is correct, the Ukraine has many Buk SAM systems. The one that allegedly shot down MH-17, however, appears at the present time to be a Russian-supplied and crewed loaner to the separatists they are backing.
Not that a Ukrainian error of identification would have been any more or less tragic, although it's less plausible since the separatists are not operating any air assets that I'm aware of so the Ukrainians are much more likely to be very conservative with regard to their anti-air grid.
It's important to note: At this stage it is clear that neither the Russians, nor the separatists, intended to shoot down a civilian airliner. They were targeting military assets. That point should be remembered. It's not like Putin's on his dark throne, cackling away at all of this. In fact I suspect he's currently having his men find and quietly dispose of whoever ordered the missile launch.
That doesn't change the fact that the Russians are clearly supplying the separatists with weapons and trained crews, and that in war people die, including people who had no horse in the race at all. Supplying rebels with state-of-the-air medium range anti-aircraft systems is a significant escalation of the previous conflict which has, as we've seen, the potential to cause all kinds of misery for third parties.
> shot down a Ukrainian fighter
I'm seeing this a lot. Minor point of order: The craft that was shot down was an SU-25 Frogfoot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25), which is a ground attack aircraft; the Eastern Bloc equivalent of the A-10 "Warthog" Thunderbolt II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II).
I agree with the broader point though that it seems clear that whoever was operating the Buk SAM system was aiming for Ukrainian air assets, based on their previous actions, but they dun goofed and shot down a civilian aircraft.
At this particular point in time, it does not seem to be a deliberate action. The fact that the agencies involved (Russia for supplying the expensive, specialist equipment with crew trained in its use; Russian-backed Separatists for ordering the anti-air action) are going to great lengths to attempt to cover up their involvement speaks volumes in support of this conjecture.
Some things might, like serials. Means you can just read through.
Fellow author here. The problem is, it requires Prime, and the payment is only a borrow. Expect the borrow rate to increase. Of course, that's fine if Amazon increases the pool accordingly; they might treat Kindle Unlimited as a loss-leader and just accept that some people will read 50 books a month and accept the loss, or recoup it on those who buy subscriptions but never read anything.
Prime just isn't worth it for me, because it requires KDP Select, which is essentially Amazon exclusivity. I make about equal amounts between Amazon, Google Play, and Apple. Last month I did particularly well on Google Play and it doubled my Amazon revenue. This month, due to a Bookbub promotion on my best selling novel, Amazon's equal to Google Play + Apple. But that's rare.
Even if Kindle Unlimited takes off and doubles my Amazon sales, I'll still lose money, and exclusivity always makes me nervous. Back in 2012, when I started publishing, I was exclusive and it meant heart-attacks every time Amazon did something messed up like de-activate my product page, or put me in the wrong category, or ranking problems, or whatever.
I might give it a shot with some of my smaller series such as my paranormal romance serial, or my fantasy novel, but I'm not going to put my cash-cow into Amazon exclusivity without something more than Kindle Unlimited behind it.
Kindle author here (and other platforms too).
The book is genuinely DRM free. The .mobi file format, which is what Amazon uses, is well documented by FOSS projects such as Calibre. You can transcode your DRM free .mobi files into .epub (which is just a .zip with HTML in it), into PDFs, Word documents, even plain text.
All of my books are DRM free for this reason (and many are also free-as-in-beer).
I'm not really sure why this whole thing is offensive.
My Mum had sex. At least once because, you know, I'm here. This much should be clear. And if she wanted to have sex with you too? Well, she's a grown woman, she can do whatever she wants. Hell, I hope that at age 60 I'm still getting some as well, especially from people who are around a third my age.
I mean, really. That's some high grade success there. Having earth-shattering sex with nubile young 20-something's when you're 60. That's hardly an insult.
I love my Mum a lot. I want her to be happy. If that means having all the crazy sex she wants, by all means. She can. I'm not going to judge her.
And another thing... what does that say about you? "Yeah bro, I had intercourse with a 60 year old woman! Fuck yeah!". I mean, by all means, if that's what you're into then whatever mate, go for your life. Some people like that. It's fine. Some people are into having sex with blowup dolls. That's weird but if it's their thing, then I'm cool with it. They tend to brag about it a lot less though.
Honestly, the most offensive thing about that is the waterbed. Those things are a piece of shit.