Our worker productivity isn't simply a measure of how hard we work. It's also dependant on how many hours we're willing to work in a given day. Our high worker productivity is largely due to the fact that we have a low marginal tax rate. Much of Western Europe had high productivity after WWII, back when they had lower tax rates. As taxes increased, however, worker productivity decreased. See Prescott's "Why do Americans Work so Much More than Europeans?" for the full explanation. Puritansim probably plays some minor part, but money is the primary incentive to work hard.
Economics programs vary more than most people think. Some programs are designed to teach business skills and qualitative skills for legal/political people. Others are designed to do serious mathematical modeling, and involve a tremendous amount of math, and it's often math that needs to be actually understood (not produced by rote). As an example, my nearest econ program requires: Calc I, Calc II, Linear Alg. and Diff eqs., two calc-based stats courses, and an econometrics course that lists all the other math as prereqs. And of course, upper-division econ courses actually use this math extensively. But I could probably find econ degrees from universities that don't even require any calculus. In short: don't generalize.
I'm sure that this review was limited to either current or potential ZDNet advertisers. Tech journalism (web or print) has absolutely no credibility. The entire article is a thinly-veiled ad for the "contestants."
From a webmaster perspective it's not as easy as you would think to keep sites (such as blogs) out of google's index.
I think it could be done. Let the normal database and blog database be mutually exclusive. Tell the bloggers that they have to put a special line in their robots.txt to get into the blogging database. Once they're in, remove them from the normal web database. The sheep-like mentality of the blogging community would save us. Once a mildly famous blogger does it, the rest will follow. Or, better yet, we could just get one of those idiots to walk off a cliff...
So, I can just sit home and subscribe to mailing lists, flag them as spam, and watch the checks roll in? And if that doesn't work, how many EULAs will I have to click through to get a business to send me any email at all?
We would need someone to police this system, and that someone would need legal power in every country from which email is sent. No one has such legal authority. And we're back at square one...
Yes, the United States wants our trading partners to levy huge taxes on our exported goods. The higher the tax, the less units sold. This amounts to less revenue from export, which has been a key component of our recent economic recovery. I can imagine all the pressure US officials are putting on the dutch to decrease US export revenue.
If anything, the US would be putting pressure on the Dutch to lower these and other similar taxes. Your conspiracy theory makes no sense.
In the story regarding Longhorn, he posted something interesting regarding Linux: Better at what? I'm having a hard time thinking of things that Linux can do at all, much less better than something else.
I suspect--but I cannot prove--that he is one of the more clever trolls to come along this year. If that's the case, more power to him. Of course, he could just be Apple's worst astroturfer. Check out his post history and decide for yourself.
You are absolutely correct. I have no idea why you are (currently) modded "funny". It's common to adopt the l33t spelling in the security community as a way of poking fun at the script kiddies.
Four hard drives in four years? I'll admit modern disks are built poorly, but that seems excessive. It's possible that you have had a string of bad luck, but if they all failed in the same machine, you might want to check you power supply and/or cooling setup. The drives might have been killed.
North Dakota, my home state, might not be a great place to outsource to. It pains me to say it, but unless something happens soon, it will turn into one giant retirement home. A good USA Today article hereoutlines the problems with the state: it has the highest percentage of high-school grads, the highest percentage of students going to college, and the highest dollar-per-student spending in higher-ed, but it doesn't have enough jobs to hold them. People, like me, are fleeing the state for job opportunities. It's the only state with a declining population in the last few years. Living in North Dakota is a daunting prospect for many; you might have a degree, and a good job, but there are few other work opportunities. The prospect of losing your job in a market that rarely hires people of your discipline is scary. In the bigger cities (towns, really), it's not too bad, but in the largely rural areas, there's just not enough professional work.
In a desperate attempt to hold on the college grads, the state has been offering to pay lump sums to get people to stay in the state (last I heard, it was a few hundred dollars to high-school grads--coupled with an emotional plea about the future of the state). Before I left, people were talking about raising the payout, and even the possibility of state-funded incentives for mortgages and such (although I don't know if that ever materialized).
To be fair, I think it would be a good place to outsource to right now. The state has a low cost of living and many cities have very friendly business-oriented incentives to bring business in. But the long-term prospect is scary. Educated people are leaving in droves, and most don't return. The town I left was projecting to double or possibly triple their retirement-home capacity within the next fifteen to twenty years. Many kids move away, and the average age keeps getting higher. Attracting outsourcing work might very well be the state's last-ditch effort to modernize the economy.
Only 1% of the population are now farmers, yet they somehow manage to overweigh their influence on the US government due to our founding fathers lack of vision - they probably just assumed that the US was going to be a rural country forever.
If you lack the basic knowledge of how our country works, you shouldn't be advocating any sort of change to the system.
If you don't eat, you'll starve to death. We would like to have our necessary food grown domestically, as to minimize global market influences on our food prices. Furthermore, our domestic food production means we don't have to worry about some trading partner threatening to withhold our food supply.
Farmers and ranchers don't have any particular favoritism. They're both, way more often than not, far from wealthy people. They are allowed subsidies and sometimes even tax-free land so we may satisfy the above points. The "inbred redneck trailer trash" you hate so much doesn't care about the food producers. They care about the food.
Let's do it. A business has to pay 25% of the product's sale price to the government. So far, so good. Well, this might raise food prices. That would disproportionately harm the poor. Ok, 25% for standard goods, 12.5% for food. Well, those poor people might want some sort of transportation too. 25% for cars values at $20,000+, and 10% for any car under 20k (alright, we would need to create a marginalized tax system here, but I'll ignore that for sake of simplicity; the general idea remains the same). You know, we coule also raise the tax on yachts a little while we're at it. Only a few would be affected, and they can afford it. Ok: 30% on a yacht, 25% standard goods and automobiles over $20,000, 12.5% for food, and 10% for inexpensive transportation.
These figures might work for a healthy business, but what about some entrepreneur just starting out with his savings? How can he compete? Hey, we'll give him a tax break! Half-off all taxes for his first three years of operation. But then he can use quick growth to gain a big edge over his established competitors. We don't need venture capitalists jumping on a new business every three years to destroy its competitors. Alright, businesses only get the tax break until they're profitable. That couldn't be exploitable.
We can play this game all day. Taxes are used as a means to redistribute wealth and encourage certain types of business. Taxation rates are one of the key components of governmental oversight on our economy. You can't simply advocate a flat tax. You need to come up with a whole new socio-economic system (mind you, that may or may not be a bad idea, but it's more complicated than a single taxation digit).
I was doing a tech support call to Dell the other day to replace a DOA monitor. This item had a warantee under Dell's "Higher-Education Service Contract." Now, I only spoke to one person, so I can't comment on the entire situation. But for what it's worth, the guy on the other end spoke clear english, but he had a certain emphasis on vowels that struck me as odd. And when he was reading me back the letters, expanding each with a word for clarity, he said "...and 'p', as in Pierre."
It's impressive that the robot can go through the physical actions of a drummer, however, they've still got a few more features to add. Here's a list of features typical in a drummer:
1) An obnoxious t-shirt. My favorite is the old "Snatch: the Greatest Food on Earth". Of course, there are plenty of others. Alternatively, a lesser drummer might resort to an old hockey jersey, but make sure it has a dozen holes and pizza stains on it.
2) Abhorrent smell. When your eyes water, you're getting close. The smell should be enough to kill a small animal.
3) Repulsive to women. This is more attitude than anything else. Make sure the robot takes credit for everything. The robot should act like Gods' gift to music; he wrote/composed everything and is really the key to the band's success. Also, if there are any guitar robots around trying to hit on bar-bunny robots, make sure drummer robots inturrupts with embarassing stories about the guitar robots.
4) Completely insane tastes in music. Make sure the robot likes nothing more than some obscure late-60's bluegrass band that sold a hundred albums. As a bonus, the robot should get violent when said band's musical ability is questioned. Drummer robot should insist that this band's entire catalog be performed at every gig.
5) Alcoholism. The robot should start drinking in the morning, and won't stop till the next. Make sure the robot whores all the free beer at gigs. For the best realism, make sure this alchohol intensifies all of the other mentioned points. But most importantly, a good drummer always lets alcohol cause him to play poorly. It's never his own fault, of course.
6) Always late. Rehearsal, Gig, Practice, Weddings, ii-V changes, second verse, etc.
Frustrating to whom? I suspect you're the only one who gets angry when a cellphone starts ringing. As a student, I can safely say that neither myself nor my friends are disrupted by a cell ringing (and for the record, I've never had my phone ring audibly in a classroom). We're all comfortable with the sound of a cellphone. Yes, it's impolite, but it's nothing to get upset about. What really disrupts us are obnoxious professors who can't have to stand their perfect little world shattered by a three-second ringing. I've long suspected the fact that professors get angry at cellphones has nothing to do with the noise. I think they get angry because it seems disrespectful, and many (not all) professors seem to think they have some sort of entitlement--how fucking dare a student disrupt Him.
Far more often than not, the best professors I've had are the type who simply ignore a cell phone. It isn't a problem until a professor calls attention to it.
I don't know which type you are, but I sincerely hope you don't disrupt your class by making snide remarks at people's phones.
I started reading Pabst's site way back when his book was still relevant. I quit vising a few years ago due to the stupid advertisement-driven paginations and reviews that were evident of either stupidity or bribery. But if the review team is serious enough about their job to anger the two card manufacturers, I can give Tom's another chance. I, like many, will be watching closely for any signs of favoring certain manufacturers/advertisers (including the suspicious fact that most reviews just happen to take place with a cutting-edge Intel CPU--not like there's a contract in place...).
So I'll put Tom's site back in my bookmark folder for now. If this is some stupid PR stunt, then I'll see it soon enough. But I seriously hope the reviewers over there are trying to bring back the credibility they once had. We really need more honest review sites to break away from the vendor's strong-arm tactics.
I'm more sympathetic to the people involved than I am to the collection agencies. Almost all bills are well-documented transactions. Contracts get signed, services/products delivered, etc. Collection agencies can use the legal process if they want their money back. However, it's cheaper to hire someone to make threatening phone calls. Basically, these threats are a form of least-cost production. They want the money as soon and as fast as possible.
Here in Britain we've just gone from having the hottest August on record in 2003 to the wettest August on record in 2004.
Your "record" extends only to a miniscule sliver of time regarding Britain's history. Nature herself has caused far, far more destruction than a million industrialized revolutions.
Are we contributing to climate change? Sure. Is the difference noticable? Outside of the Religion of Biology, we honestly don't know. So, would you honestly have us hamstring our entire economy based on speculation?
The greatest chance we have at a peaceful world is beginning to unfold. Russia is opening up its economy. They've had massive gains in the last ten years, and are a more peaceful country as a result. China is starting the difficult trek to industrialized status, and our globalization policies can help to bring about positive change in the third world (assuming we become a little more fair towards them and stop using said policies for our own gain). If we were to attempt to bring pollution levels down to what many are demanding, we would have to do so at the expense of the developing world. I know some people think there's a tradeoff, but there isn't a realistic one. The fully-developed world will not give up its creature comforts to create an equitable distribution of resources; the only way the rest of the world will reach our level is to claw their way up like we did. If you have a better plausible solution, I'm all ears. But until science warns me against it, I'd rather have a successful global economy than pretty white moths.
I agree. But I think the whole point is to allow the underhanded marketing tactics from affiliate sites. Apple basically gets to stay clean by simply managing their site and paying for the occasional ad. The dirty work gets done by the usual search-engine spammers, while Apple doesn't directly do anything bad.
As far as I'm concerned, Apple is now participating in the useless spamming of the web. Maybe next week they can start selling v1agra?
Yes, and you can contribute to the crass stupidity that is Gamespy. Their planet sites have often refused to post news regarding non-hosted mods (if you want your release on Gamespy, join up and serve their ads). They've also worked hard to stop third-party browsers from letting you browse online games by getting exclusive contracts will game devs. And Fileplanet has (I don't know if they still do) allowed people to download files that they were never given permission to host for fee (HL maps, models, etc.). And then you have to factor in the large amount of game ads that accompany their "reviews"--I can't prove that they sell high scores, but I highly suspect it.
So yeah, if you think this is ok, then go ahead and pay them for your precious betas. But don't come here thinking you're so smart and getting a great deal by paying for the things the rest of us get for free. Some of us have a baseline standard of business practice we apply before we spend our money somewhere. Some others are just useless fucking tools.
This all assumes, of course, that you're not some bottom-feeding astroturfer. Given the history of Gamespy, that wouldn't surprise me.
It's still running, if you want to play it. Although I do admit AQ2 is on its last leg. There have been some good anti-cheating measures to combat the source code release. But it's getting to the point where everyone wants to snipe urban/jungle/city. And you have to remember that it has the old Quake netcode. Going back from Counter-Strike was very difficult for me. But again, if you want that brief trip down memory lane, go for it. It was my favorite mod of all time, and it's sad to see it die.
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Our worker productivity isn't simply a measure of how hard we work. It's also dependant on how many hours we're willing to work in a given day. Our high worker productivity is largely due to the fact that we have a low marginal tax rate. Much of Western Europe had high productivity after WWII, back when they had lower tax rates. As taxes increased, however, worker productivity decreased. See Prescott's "Why do Americans Work so Much More than Europeans?" for the full explanation. Puritansim probably plays some minor part, but money is the primary incentive to work hard.
Maybe I have a skewed view of the typical Mac user[...]
What makes you say that? Your views are perfectly in line with what Apple's marketing team wants you to think.
Economics programs vary more than most people think. Some programs are designed to teach business skills and qualitative skills for legal/political people. Others are designed to do serious mathematical modeling, and involve a tremendous amount of math, and it's often math that needs to be actually understood (not produced by rote). As an example, my nearest econ program requires: Calc I, Calc II, Linear Alg. and Diff eqs., two calc-based stats courses, and an econometrics course that lists all the other math as prereqs. And of course, upper-division econ courses actually use this math extensively. But I could probably find econ degrees from universities that don't even require any calculus. In short: don't generalize.
I'm sure that this review was limited to either current or potential ZDNet advertisers. Tech journalism (web or print) has absolutely no credibility. The entire article is a thinly-veiled ad for the "contestants."
From a webmaster perspective it's not as easy as you would think to keep sites (such as blogs) out of google's index.
I think it could be done. Let the normal database and blog database be mutually exclusive. Tell the bloggers that they have to put a special line in their robots.txt to get into the blogging database. Once they're in, remove them from the normal web database. The sheep-like mentality of the blogging community would save us. Once a mildly famous blogger does it, the rest will follow. Or, better yet, we could just get one of those idiots to walk off a cliff...
What makes you think the submitter and author are different people?
So, I can just sit home and subscribe to mailing lists, flag them as spam, and watch the checks roll in? And if that doesn't work, how many EULAs will I have to click through to get a business to send me any email at all?
We would need someone to police this system, and that someone would need legal power in every country from which email is sent. No one has such legal authority. And we're back at square one...
Yes, the United States wants our trading partners to levy huge taxes on our exported goods. The higher the tax, the less units sold. This amounts to less revenue from export, which has been a key component of our recent economic recovery. I can imagine all the pressure US officials are putting on the dutch to decrease US export revenue.
If anything, the US would be putting pressure on the Dutch to lower these and other similar taxes. Your conspiracy theory makes no sense.
In the story regarding Longhorn, he posted something interesting regarding Linux:
Better at what? I'm having a hard time thinking of things that Linux can do at all, much less better than something else.
I suspect--but I cannot prove--that he is one of the more clever trolls to come along this year. If that's the case, more power to him. Of course, he could just be Apple's worst astroturfer. Check out his post history and decide for yourself.
You are absolutely correct. I have no idea why you are (currently) modded "funny". It's common to adopt the l33t spelling in the security community as a way of poking fun at the script kiddies.
Four hard drives in four years? I'll admit modern disks are built poorly, but that seems excessive. It's possible that you have had a string of bad luck, but if they all failed in the same machine, you might want to check you power supply and/or cooling setup. The drives might have been killed.
North Dakota, my home state, might not be a great place to outsource to. It pains me to say it, but unless something happens soon, it will turn into one giant retirement home. A good USA Today article hereoutlines the problems with the state: it has the highest percentage of high-school grads, the highest percentage of students going to college, and the highest dollar-per-student spending in higher-ed, but it doesn't have enough jobs to hold them. People, like me, are fleeing the state for job opportunities. It's the only state with a declining population in the last few years. Living in North Dakota is a daunting prospect for many; you might have a degree, and a good job, but there are few other work opportunities. The prospect of losing your job in a market that rarely hires people of your discipline is scary. In the bigger cities (towns, really), it's not too bad, but in the largely rural areas, there's just not enough professional work.
In a desperate attempt to hold on the college grads, the state has been offering to pay lump sums to get people to stay in the state (last I heard, it was a few hundred dollars to high-school grads--coupled with an emotional plea about the future of the state). Before I left, people were talking about raising the payout, and even the possibility of state-funded incentives for mortgages and such (although I don't know if that ever materialized).
To be fair, I think it would be a good place to outsource to right now. The state has a low cost of living and many cities have very friendly business-oriented incentives to bring business in. But the long-term prospect is scary. Educated people are leaving in droves, and most don't return. The town I left was projecting to double or possibly triple their retirement-home capacity within the next fifteen to twenty years. Many kids move away, and the average age keeps getting higher. Attracting outsourcing work might very well be the state's last-ditch effort to modernize the economy.
Only 1% of the population are now farmers, yet they somehow manage to overweigh their influence on the US government due to our founding fathers lack of vision - they probably just assumed that the US was going to be a rural country forever.
If you lack the basic knowledge of how our country works, you shouldn't be advocating any sort of change to the system.
If you don't eat, you'll starve to death. We would like to have our necessary food grown domestically, as to minimize global market influences on our food prices. Furthermore, our domestic food production means we don't have to worry about some trading partner threatening to withhold our food supply.
Farmers and ranchers don't have any particular favoritism. They're both, way more often than not, far from wealthy people. They are allowed subsidies and sometimes even tax-free land so we may satisfy the above points. The "inbred redneck trailer trash" you hate so much doesn't care about the food producers. They care about the food.
Let's do it. A business has to pay 25% of the product's sale price to the government. So far, so good. Well, this might raise food prices. That would disproportionately harm the poor. Ok, 25% for standard goods, 12.5% for food. Well, those poor people might want some sort of transportation too. 25% for cars values at $20,000+, and 10% for any car under 20k (alright, we would need to create a marginalized tax system here, but I'll ignore that for sake of simplicity; the general idea remains the same). You know, we coule also raise the tax on yachts a little while we're at it. Only a few would be affected, and they can afford it. Ok: 30% on a yacht, 25% standard goods and automobiles over $20,000, 12.5% for food, and 10% for inexpensive transportation.
These figures might work for a healthy business, but what about some entrepreneur just starting out with his savings? How can he compete? Hey, we'll give him a tax break! Half-off all taxes for his first three years of operation. But then he can use quick growth to gain a big edge over his established competitors. We don't need venture capitalists jumping on a new business every three years to destroy its competitors. Alright, businesses only get the tax break until they're profitable. That couldn't be exploitable.
We can play this game all day. Taxes are used as a means to redistribute wealth and encourage certain types of business. Taxation rates are one of the key components of governmental oversight on our economy. You can't simply advocate a flat tax. You need to come up with a whole new socio-economic system (mind you, that may or may not be a bad idea, but it's more complicated than a single taxation digit).
I was doing a tech support call to Dell the other day to replace a DOA monitor. This item had a warantee under Dell's "Higher-Education Service Contract." Now, I only spoke to one person, so I can't comment on the entire situation. But for what it's worth, the guy on the other end spoke clear english, but he had a certain emphasis on vowels that struck me as odd. And when he was reading me back the letters, expanding each with a word for clarity, he said "...and 'p', as in Pierre."
It's impressive that the robot can go through the physical actions of a drummer, however, they've still got a few more features to add. Here's a list of features typical in a drummer:
1) An obnoxious t-shirt. My favorite is the old "Snatch: the Greatest Food on Earth". Of course, there are plenty of others. Alternatively, a lesser drummer might resort to an old hockey jersey, but make sure it has a dozen holes and pizza stains on it.
2) Abhorrent smell. When your eyes water, you're getting close. The smell should be enough to kill a small animal.
3) Repulsive to women. This is more attitude than anything else. Make sure the robot takes credit for everything. The robot should act like Gods' gift to music; he wrote/composed everything and is really the key to the band's success. Also, if there are any guitar robots around trying to hit on bar-bunny robots, make sure drummer robots inturrupts with embarassing stories about the guitar robots.
4) Completely insane tastes in music. Make sure the robot likes nothing more than some obscure late-60's bluegrass band that sold a hundred albums. As a bonus, the robot should get violent when said band's musical ability is questioned. Drummer robot should insist that this band's entire catalog be performed at every gig.
5) Alcoholism. The robot should start drinking in the morning, and won't stop till the next. Make sure the robot whores all the free beer at gigs. For the best realism, make sure this alchohol intensifies all of the other mentioned points. But most importantly, a good drummer always lets alcohol cause him to play poorly. It's never his own fault, of course.
6) Always late. Rehearsal, Gig, Practice, Weddings, ii-V changes, second verse, etc.
Frustrating to whom? I suspect you're the only one who gets angry when a cellphone starts ringing. As a student, I can safely say that neither myself nor my friends are disrupted by a cell ringing (and for the record, I've never had my phone ring audibly in a classroom). We're all comfortable with the sound of a cellphone. Yes, it's impolite, but it's nothing to get upset about. What really disrupts us are obnoxious professors who can't have to stand their perfect little world shattered by a three-second ringing. I've long suspected the fact that professors get angry at cellphones has nothing to do with the noise. I think they get angry because it seems disrespectful, and many (not all) professors seem to think they have some sort of entitlement--how fucking dare a student disrupt Him.
Far more often than not, the best professors I've had are the type who simply ignore a cell phone. It isn't a problem until a professor calls attention to it.
I don't know which type you are, but I sincerely hope you don't disrupt your class by making snide remarks at people's phones.
I started reading Pabst's site way back when his book was still relevant. I quit vising a few years ago due to the stupid advertisement-driven paginations and reviews that were evident of either stupidity or bribery. But if the review team is serious enough about their job to anger the two card manufacturers, I can give Tom's another chance. I, like many, will be watching closely for any signs of favoring certain manufacturers/advertisers (including the suspicious fact that most reviews just happen to take place with a cutting-edge Intel CPU--not like there's a contract in place...).
So I'll put Tom's site back in my bookmark folder for now. If this is some stupid PR stunt, then I'll see it soon enough. But I seriously hope the reviewers over there are trying to bring back the credibility they once had. We really need more honest review sites to break away from the vendor's strong-arm tactics.
Spinsanity is a good site that takes some pretty hard swipes at each side.
I'm more sympathetic to the people involved than I am to the collection agencies. Almost all bills are well-documented transactions. Contracts get signed, services/products delivered, etc. Collection agencies can use the legal process if they want their money back. However, it's cheaper to hire someone to make threatening phone calls. Basically, these threats are a form of least-cost production. They want the money as soon and as fast as possible.
Here in Britain we've just gone from having the hottest August on record in 2003 to the wettest August on record in 2004.
Your "record" extends only to a miniscule sliver of time regarding Britain's history. Nature herself has caused far, far more destruction than a million industrialized revolutions.
Are we contributing to climate change? Sure. Is the difference noticable? Outside of the Religion of Biology, we honestly don't know. So, would you honestly have us hamstring our entire economy based on speculation?
The greatest chance we have at a peaceful world is beginning to unfold. Russia is opening up its economy. They've had massive gains in the last ten years, and are a more peaceful country as a result. China is starting the difficult trek to industrialized status, and our globalization policies can help to bring about positive change in the third world (assuming we become a little more fair towards them and stop using said policies for our own gain). If we were to attempt to bring pollution levels down to what many are demanding, we would have to do so at the expense of the developing world. I know some people think there's a tradeoff, but there isn't a realistic one. The fully-developed world will not give up its creature comforts to create an equitable distribution of resources; the only way the rest of the world will reach our level is to claw their way up like we did. If you have a better plausible solution, I'm all ears. But until science warns me against it, I'd rather have a successful global economy than pretty white moths.
I agree. But I think the whole point is to allow the underhanded marketing tactics from affiliate sites. Apple basically gets to stay clean by simply managing their site and paying for the occasional ad. The dirty work gets done by the usual search-engine spammers, while Apple doesn't directly do anything bad.
As far as I'm concerned, Apple is now participating in the useless spamming of the web. Maybe next week they can start selling v1agra?
Yes, I'm pirating game patches and demos. That's what a fileplanet subscription "buys" you. Way to pay attention, ac.
Yes, and you can contribute to the crass stupidity that is Gamespy. Their planet sites have often refused to post news regarding non-hosted mods (if you want your release on Gamespy, join up and serve their ads). They've also worked hard to stop third-party browsers from letting you browse online games by getting exclusive contracts will game devs. And Fileplanet has (I don't know if they still do) allowed people to download files that they were never given permission to host for fee (HL maps, models, etc.). And then you have to factor in the large amount of game ads that accompany their "reviews"--I can't prove that they sell high scores, but I highly suspect it.
So yeah, if you think this is ok, then go ahead and pay them for your precious betas. But don't come here thinking you're so smart and getting a great deal by paying for the things the rest of us get for free. Some of us have a baseline standard of business practice we apply before we spend our money somewhere. Some others are just useless fucking tools.
This all assumes, of course, that you're not some bottom-feeding astroturfer. Given the history of Gamespy, that wouldn't surprise me.
It's still running, if you want to play it. Although I do admit AQ2 is on its last leg. There have been some good anti-cheating measures to combat the source code release. But it's getting to the point where everyone wants to snipe urban/jungle/city. And you have to remember that it has the old Quake netcode. Going back from Counter-Strike was very difficult for me. But again, if you want that brief trip down memory lane, go for it. It was my favorite mod of all time, and it's sad to see it die.