You know, there's more than a handful of webcomic artists who profit enough off of books, t-shirts, and other merchandise that they basically do it as their day job (or if not that, a part-time job). Sure, very few of them are Penny Arcade rich, but there are more of them that are making minimum wage or better from merch, donations, etc. than you'd think. I know of a few offhand that pull in anywhere from $1000-2000 a month in donations (that doesn't count ads or merch).
If your work can stand on its own merits and you have a tip jar out you can make money. See: buskers and other street performers, who have been doing it for thousands of years and making money just fine.
First and foremost, as an Atheist, I want to say, "Thank you". Just... for everything, man. You have a wonderful perspective on these matters.
That said, there's a reason that so many of us are anti-religion. I am not anti-faith. If you believe that the world or universe has a spirit however you want to define it, that's kosher with me. (Disclaimer: I will not be held liable for any broken irony meters due to my use of "kosher".)
However, any time a cult gets big and turns into a major religion, it is abused horrendously. The major religious organizations of the world have done far more outright harm than good, despite nearly all of them preaching about "good things". To have a church is to have a church hierarchy, and anyone claiming to have the only way into Heaven will wield an undeniably great amount of power over people who have, in my opinion, very little in the way of critical thinking skills in the first place.
The best one can hope for from a religious organization is that they'll end up being ineffective and incompetent.
This is where one might interject about the countless food pantries, homeless shelters, orphanages, schools, etc. run by religious organizations. Nearly every one of them I've seen does their very best to help people, but that help is conditional. Homeless shelters and the like have prayer before meals. What of the unbelievers, or those of a different faith? It might be me, but wouldn't the more noble thing be to help people without making them have to sit down and listen to whatever respective book you want to push on them? To give and ask nothing in return? (Protip: having mandatory prayer or handing out bibles is asking something in return.)
The religious organizations skirt the laws of the American nation as well as the nations of the world. Churches own hotels and apartment blocks and mini-malls, and they get a tax break on the whole thing. Some (although obviously the minority) preachers drive a Lexus or a Rolls and wear Armani or whatever their particular flavor happens to be. It churns my stomach that "In God We Trust" is on our money and that nearly every session of Congress opens with a prayer. These are all grievous violations of the first amendment's establishment clause. I have yet to see anyone make an argument that can reconcile this conundrum; how have these organizations been able to clearly and repeatedly violate our highest law for hundreds of years?
Forgive me if I am indeed preoccupied with trying to take religion down a peg or two. They relentlessly try to infringe on our laws and our natural rights, so of course I'm mad.
Kinda reminds me of the whole Ghostbusters "Don't Cross the Streams (or the Universe will end)" bit. I dunno, maybe it's just because I'm such a fan of Carl Sagan, but things like antimatter and matter colliding will cause space to warp in on itself or something like that just seem patently riduculous. I think a lot of these things where we say absurd scenarios like that are just from a poor understanding of the subject in general, so we greatly highball our estimations, we exaggerate, we dream.
You've got an enemy combatant - a highly trained one at that - alone and unarmed (or, at best, lightly armed) in the middle of the ocean. Why would you kill him when you could just as easily capture him?
In that anime, the world pretty much has unlimited power thanks to a ring of solar panels around the earth which are tethered to the planet with three equidistant orbital elevators. Three superpowers form around these elevators, and there are more than a few straggler countries who don't play ball and therefore are shut out of the free energy. The superpowers are in a deadlocked cold war with one another. Meanwhile, private military countries fight wars for their benefactors all over the world.
Enter Celestial Being with their giant robots. This being Gundam, of course everyone has giant robots, but CB's are vastly more powerful. Imagine a fighter jet that had unlimited ammo and flight time and had armor tough enough to take dozens of missiles and thousands of bullets - even if it were just a small strike force of four of these fighters, how many air forces in the world could stand against them? Think that, but instead giant 30 foot tall robots whose pilot aim to end war by (ironically) blowing up any advantage any one side has.
Technically, this should be the United Nations, I suppose. Someone starts a war and all the other countries should smack them the fuck down. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
When someone who everyone thinks is a pretty big asshole punches another guy in the nose and says, "MAN, that guy is a fuckin' asshole!", wouldn't that give you pause for a moment?
It'd be like Mike "The Situation" Sorentino calling someone a douchebag, Ballmer telling someone not to throw a chair, or (in one of those cases where life is stranger than fiction) Charlie Sheen telling Lindsay Lohan, "Work on your impulse control. Try to think things through just a little before you do them."
They precisely one quadrant over. There's only four: Alpha Quadrant, Beta Quadrant, Delta Quandrant, and Gamma Quadrant. (You know, "quad" means four?). It's pretty much one fourth of the galaxy sliced in four equidistant places for some arbitrary reason for all I know.
Oh, I'm sure they can get sued one way or another to prevent its release.
In the modern American justice system, this is how I see it going down:
1) Party with an interest in not seeing the data get out (ISP, record label, whatever) sues. Yeah, the case probably won't win, but that's not the point; the point is to get a legal injunction stopping its release while the case goes to trial. Their lawyers will do everything they can to drag it out - release thousands of documents, line up dozens of "experts" for testimony, etc.
2) In the meantime, get their own study together with data that's favorable to their side.
3) Release their study with so much media hype that it would drown out the original study.
4) By the time the actual speed report comes out, it will be considered "old news" and a lot of people will ignore it, possibly in favor of the interest-supported study.
I see kids in 3rd, 4th grade with iPhones and Blackberrys. They've got 20s in their pockets because their parents just hand them wads of cash and don't make them work for it.
School is practically like prison (especially junior high/middle school and high school/secondary school). EVERYBODY hustles.
In my example, I used to get bus tickets because I lived 2 1/2 miles from school; enough to get me most of the way there and back. Instead I'd sell them for a buck (about $0.30 less than the bus), trade them for favors, homework, etc. One enterprising group of people managed to steal a stack of the whole things. Bus tickets were the high school equivalent of cigarettes in prison.
Trust me, even if they didn't have money they'd figure things out. They'd intimidate some other kids into doing it or bribe them with favors, booze, drugs, sex, whatever.
It's not, but if Steve Jobs were to be seen using an Android or Windows 7 phone, what would that say about him? It shows at best that he believes there's a superior product to his own, and at worst he doesn't believe in his product for one reason or another.
Of course it will raise that high eventually, and people will have to pay it.
There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources...
Yes, there absolutely are. The businesses who make money off of non-renewable resources will spend all the money they can to buy up the research or squelch it entirely.
You know why I really doubt we'd see 100% renewable energy by 2050? Because there's not a whole lot of money in it. =/
You can only file a patent on a physical object. You must have a working prototype, or a set of schematics that can be followed to build a working prototype. Specifically illegal to attempt to patent anything that was not created yourself, or by an authorized representative of you. Attempting to patent something that you did not invent will now be a felony.
No more patenting software, game mechanics, or ideas on how to accomplish things.
I agree, but don't blame Valve for that. If HL2 is one price in Britain and another in France, okay then that's Valve's fault. But the prices of all of the non-Valve games are dictated by the publishers as well as the rights-holders of each individual country, not Valve.
I for one agree that region-locking is bullshit as well. Part of the appeal for PCs (to me) is that (in theory) you shouldn't be able to "region-lock" them, and then someone had to go and figure that shit out.
He's a businessman. He's in it for the money, and maybe to have fun making games. (As far as I can tell from interviews and the like, he still actually enjoys that part.)
The day that people would get Linux for a Linux-exclusive AAA title (like people bought 360s for Halo, or PS3s for MGS4) is the day that a Linux client is even a possibility.
And also, drinking industrial alcohol makes you go blind, which is something they left out of the American version of Drunken Master (which was actually the second movie).
Slashdot Mirror
You know, there's more than a handful of webcomic artists who profit enough off of books, t-shirts, and other merchandise that they basically do it as their day job (or if not that, a part-time job). Sure, very few of them are Penny Arcade rich, but there are more of them that are making minimum wage or better from merch, donations, etc. than you'd think. I know of a few offhand that pull in anywhere from $1000-2000 a month in donations (that doesn't count ads or merch).
If your work can stand on its own merits and you have a tip jar out you can make money. See: buskers and other street performers, who have been doing it for thousands of years and making money just fine.
First and foremost, as an Atheist, I want to say, "Thank you". Just... for everything, man. You have a wonderful perspective on these matters.
That said, there's a reason that so many of us are anti-religion. I am not anti-faith. If you believe that the world or universe has a spirit however you want to define it, that's kosher with me. (Disclaimer: I will not be held liable for any broken irony meters due to my use of "kosher".)
However, any time a cult gets big and turns into a major religion, it is abused horrendously. The major religious organizations of the world have done far more outright harm than good, despite nearly all of them preaching about "good things". To have a church is to have a church hierarchy, and anyone claiming to have the only way into Heaven will wield an undeniably great amount of power over people who have, in my opinion, very little in the way of critical thinking skills in the first place.
The best one can hope for from a religious organization is that they'll end up being ineffective and incompetent.
This is where one might interject about the countless food pantries, homeless shelters, orphanages, schools, etc. run by religious organizations. Nearly every one of them I've seen does their very best to help people, but that help is conditional. Homeless shelters and the like have prayer before meals. What of the unbelievers, or those of a different faith? It might be me, but wouldn't the more noble thing be to help people without making them have to sit down and listen to whatever respective book you want to push on them? To give and ask nothing in return? (Protip: having mandatory prayer or handing out bibles is asking something in return.)
The religious organizations skirt the laws of the American nation as well as the nations of the world. Churches own hotels and apartment blocks and mini-malls, and they get a tax break on the whole thing. Some (although obviously the minority) preachers drive a Lexus or a Rolls and wear Armani or whatever their particular flavor happens to be. It churns my stomach that "In God We Trust" is on our money and that nearly every session of Congress opens with a prayer. These are all grievous violations of the first amendment's establishment clause. I have yet to see anyone make an argument that can reconcile this conundrum; how have these organizations been able to clearly and repeatedly violate our highest law for hundreds of years?
Forgive me if I am indeed preoccupied with trying to take religion down a peg or two. They relentlessly try to infringe on our laws and our natural rights, so of course I'm mad.
Kinda reminds me of the whole Ghostbusters "Don't Cross the Streams (or the Universe will end)" bit. I dunno, maybe it's just because I'm such a fan of Carl Sagan, but things like antimatter and matter colliding will cause space to warp in on itself or something like that just seem patently riduculous. I think a lot of these things where we say absurd scenarios like that are just from a poor understanding of the subject in general, so we greatly highball our estimations, we exaggerate, we dream.
You've got an enemy combatant - a highly trained one at that - alone and unarmed (or, at best, lightly armed) in the middle of the ocean. Why would you kill him when you could just as easily capture him?
The PC market does fine without subsidies
Does it? Last I checked, damn near every PC you could pick up in a store is laden with bloatware and its been that was for the last 10-15 years.
Personally, I think "I don't know" is one of the smartest things in the world to say. Better than "Nuh uh, I'm right no matter what you say!".
It's not the size of your UID that matters...
You'd probably enjoy Gundam 00.
In that anime, the world pretty much has unlimited power thanks to a ring of solar panels around the earth which are tethered to the planet with three equidistant orbital elevators. Three superpowers form around these elevators, and there are more than a few straggler countries who don't play ball and therefore are shut out of the free energy. The superpowers are in a deadlocked cold war with one another. Meanwhile, private military countries fight wars for their benefactors all over the world.
Enter Celestial Being with their giant robots. This being Gundam, of course everyone has giant robots, but CB's are vastly more powerful. Imagine a fighter jet that had unlimited ammo and flight time and had armor tough enough to take dozens of missiles and thousands of bullets - even if it were just a small strike force of four of these fighters, how many air forces in the world could stand against them? Think that, but instead giant 30 foot tall robots whose pilot aim to end war by (ironically) blowing up any advantage any one side has.
Technically, this should be the United Nations, I suppose. Someone starts a war and all the other countries should smack them the fuck down. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
When someone who everyone thinks is a pretty big asshole punches another guy in the nose and says, "MAN, that guy is a fuckin' asshole!", wouldn't that give you pause for a moment?
It'd be like Mike "The Situation" Sorentino calling someone a douchebag, Ballmer telling someone not to throw a chair, or (in one of those cases where life is stranger than fiction) Charlie Sheen telling Lindsay Lohan, "Work on your impulse control. Try to think things through just a little before you do them."
many quadrants
They precisely one quadrant over. There's only four: Alpha Quadrant, Beta Quadrant, Delta Quandrant, and Gamma Quadrant. (You know, "quad" means four?). It's pretty much one fourth of the galaxy sliced in four equidistant places for some arbitrary reason for all I know.
Oh, I'm sure they can get sued one way or another to prevent its release.
In the modern American justice system, this is how I see it going down:
1) Party with an interest in not seeing the data get out (ISP, record label, whatever) sues. Yeah, the case probably won't win, but that's not the point; the point is to get a legal injunction stopping its release while the case goes to trial. Their lawyers will do everything they can to drag it out - release thousands of documents, line up dozens of "experts" for testimony, etc.
2) In the meantime, get their own study together with data that's favorable to their side.
3) Release their study with so much media hype that it would drown out the original study.
4) By the time the actual speed report comes out, it will be considered "old news" and a lot of people will ignore it, possibly in favor of the interest-supported study.
"Never argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
Are you shitting me?
I see kids in 3rd, 4th grade with iPhones and Blackberrys. They've got 20s in their pockets because their parents just hand them wads of cash and don't make them work for it.
School is practically like prison (especially junior high/middle school and high school/secondary school). EVERYBODY hustles.
In my example, I used to get bus tickets because I lived 2 1/2 miles from school; enough to get me most of the way there and back. Instead I'd sell them for a buck (about $0.30 less than the bus), trade them for favors, homework, etc. One enterprising group of people managed to steal a stack of the whole things. Bus tickets were the high school equivalent of cigarettes in prison.
Trust me, even if they didn't have money they'd figure things out. They'd intimidate some other kids into doing it or bribe them with favors, booze, drugs, sex, whatever.
It's not, but if Steve Jobs were to be seen using an Android or Windows 7 phone, what would that say about him? It shows at best that he believes there's a superior product to his own, and at worst he doesn't believe in his product for one reason or another.
Of course it will raise that high eventually, and people will have to pay it.
There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources...
Yes, there absolutely are. The businesses who make money off of non-renewable resources will spend all the money they can to buy up the research or squelch it entirely.
You know why I really doubt we'd see 100% renewable energy by 2050? Because there's not a whole lot of money in it. =/
How is that hypocritical?
It's like that picture of a Pepsi driver drinking a Coke. If Facebook is so awesome, why isn't he using it?
I think skippy has it right:
Patent Reform:
Patents Are For Inventors Act
You can only file a patent on a physical object. You must have a working prototype, or a set of schematics that can be followed to build a working prototype. Specifically illegal to attempt to patent anything that was not created yourself, or by an authorized representative of you. Attempting to patent something that you did not invent will now be a felony.
No more patenting software, game mechanics, or ideas on how to accomplish things.
Patent Trolling will result in Federal Prison.
If we never had remakes, reboots, etc., then the legacy of the Batman films would have ended with polyurethane nipples.
I dunno, I'd call that a successful test, wouldn't you?
Well, the Canadians told them to get away from their shitty firewall, but the Chinese wouldn't listen.
I agree, but don't blame Valve for that. If HL2 is one price in Britain and another in France, okay then that's Valve's fault. But the prices of all of the non-Valve games are dictated by the publishers as well as the rights-holders of each individual country, not Valve.
I for one agree that region-locking is bullshit as well. Part of the appeal for PCs (to me) is that (in theory) you shouldn't be able to "region-lock" them, and then someone had to go and figure that shit out.
He's a businessman. He's in it for the money, and maybe to have fun making games. (As far as I can tell from interviews and the like, he still actually enjoys that part.)
The day that people would get Linux for a Linux-exclusive AAA title (like people bought 360s for Halo, or PS3s for MGS4) is the day that a Linux client is even a possibility.
What happened to HBGary is like a fire station burning down because the smoke alarms didn't work - you'd think they, of all people, would know better.
And also, drinking industrial alcohol makes you go blind, which is something they left out of the American version of Drunken Master (which was actually the second movie).
It's no big deal, all of Florida's seniors are just going on a cruise.