Consider GOD for a moment. No no no, this is not one of those "who would Jesus hostilly take over" posts. I'm talking about the Gathering of Developers.
GOD is, after a fashion, a merger. It's a merger of a component of the development houses (the publisher portion, often publisher-negotiator) into one large group to provide funding and such, blah blah blah.
After playing their games for a while now, how does the/. community rate GOD? I'd say they've done a very good job so far. They've definitely altered the way a few things work in the game publishing biz.
I'm not going to lapse into giving a huge list of examples, but instead say that mergers don't always hurt. They tend to with large companies, mostly because those companies get so wrapped up in their internal affairs that they forget that part of their business is, well, business. But that's not always true. Any time that a merger takes place between two companies with similar needs but different resources, things tend to improve (provided that the management isn't incompetent, of course).
It used to be that Gamecenter had extremely interesting and poigniant editorials. The editors had personality, creating within the mass that was Gamecenter several small subcultures.
A while ago, they squelched the editors (except GamerX, whom they kept on as a much-toned-down reflection of his former self, to provide blurbs and sidebars).
The Top10 lists that Gamecenter does are one of the few vestiges of their former "interesting" status.
What happened? Did people lose interest in the editorial lines? Did Gamecenter Corporate decide that they wanted a homogenous front?
In my opinion, they killed off Gamecenter a long time ago. This is merely making it official.
Question one: how did this website appear on the police department's radar? As a rule, an organization does not seek out its detractors and attempt to squelch them.
Question two: What steps did the police take BEFORE they seized property? I have no doubt that a random judge would be easily persuaded to give a warrant for evidence, but for "slanderous material" the evidence is already in public view. This is akin to seizing the printing press used to make a mocking poster plastered on a billboard.
The argument that they discourage further abuse in this manner by depriving the "hacker" of his property would seem to pale beside the implications of a civil suit.
Question 3: this kind of thing doesn't happen alone. Does the "hacker" have any priors with Salem's Finest?
Then again...I wonder if we'll ever hear anything more about this. The media generally just likes the outrage of police squelching people. They get bored with it soon enough, and forget to report the outcome.
I'm terribly sorry, but taxes are not the way to "feed some of your money back into the system." The "system" that you refer to is the economic body of the country of which the government is a part, but it is NOT the whole.
As such, when you are taxed, your money goes into a directed entity which decides what the economy is, and spends accordingly (rather bass-ackwards, but it's the way it is).
That is called a "planned economy," and is not an object of capitalism. That is either good or bad as you view it.
So what is the alternative to taxation? Well, money that a person has made does not go in their mattress, to be squirreled away forever. Usually, it goes into the non-government financial system (banks, stock, etc), where it pays for investments. Do you have a mortgage? The interest rates on loans are dependant upon the amount of money that is invested in that bank. Not by the government. If you increase taxes, you also increase interest rates on loans.
And one other thing. Many people forget anything beyond the fact that the national debt is owed to Americans (mostly). The form in which this is "owed" is government bonds. Government bonds are bought as long-term investments by people. Not tax dollars. It's where government money comes from (that's not garnered through taxes).
So, if you want to "feed some of your money back into the system" do nothing with it. Leave it in the bank. Or invest in the stock market. Go crazy down at the shopping mall (remember: increased cash flow from consumer spending does more for the economy than the government). Whatever.
Taxes merely reduce freedom of choice (doing what you want with your resources) and increase costs all around.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider GOD for a moment. No no no, this is not one of those "who would Jesus hostilly take over" posts. I'm talking about the Gathering of Developers.
/. community rate GOD? I'd say they've done a very good job so far. They've definitely altered the way a few things work in the game publishing biz.
GOD is, after a fashion, a merger. It's a merger of a component of the development houses (the publisher portion, often publisher-negotiator) into one large group to provide funding and such, blah blah blah.
After playing their games for a while now, how does the
I'm not going to lapse into giving a huge list of examples, but instead say that mergers don't always hurt. They tend to with large companies, mostly because those companies get so wrapped up in their internal affairs that they forget that part of their business is, well, business. But that's not always true. Any time that a merger takes place between two companies with similar needs but different resources, things tend to improve (provided that the management isn't incompetent, of course).
It used to be that Gamecenter had extremely interesting and poigniant editorials. The editors had personality, creating within the mass that was Gamecenter several small subcultures.
A while ago, they squelched the editors (except GamerX, whom they kept on as a much-toned-down reflection of his former self, to provide blurbs and sidebars).
The Top10 lists that Gamecenter does are one of the few vestiges of their former "interesting" status.
What happened? Did people lose interest in the editorial lines? Did Gamecenter Corporate decide that they wanted a homogenous front?
In my opinion, they killed off Gamecenter a long time ago. This is merely making it official.
Question one: how did this website appear on the police department's radar? As a rule, an organization does not seek out its detractors and attempt to squelch them. Question two: What steps did the police take BEFORE they seized property? I have no doubt that a random judge would be easily persuaded to give a warrant for evidence, but for "slanderous material" the evidence is already in public view. This is akin to seizing the printing press used to make a mocking poster plastered on a billboard. The argument that they discourage further abuse in this manner by depriving the "hacker" of his property would seem to pale beside the implications of a civil suit. Question 3: this kind of thing doesn't happen alone. Does the "hacker" have any priors with Salem's Finest? Then again...I wonder if we'll ever hear anything more about this. The media generally just likes the outrage of police squelching people. They get bored with it soon enough, and forget to report the outcome.
As such, when you are taxed, your money goes into a directed entity which decides what the economy is, and spends accordingly (rather bass-ackwards, but it's the way it is). That is called a "planned economy," and is not an object of capitalism. That is either good or bad as you view it.
So what is the alternative to taxation? Well, money that a person has made does not go in their mattress, to be squirreled away forever. Usually, it goes into the non-government financial system (banks, stock, etc), where it pays for investments. Do you have a mortgage? The interest rates on loans are dependant upon the amount of money that is invested in that bank. Not by the government. If you increase taxes, you also increase interest rates on loans.
And one other thing. Many people forget anything beyond the fact that the national debt is owed to Americans (mostly). The form in which this is "owed" is government bonds. Government bonds are bought as long-term investments by people. Not tax dollars. It's where government money comes from (that's not garnered through taxes).
So, if you want to "feed some of your money back into the system" do nothing with it. Leave it in the bank. Or invest in the stock market. Go crazy down at the shopping mall (remember: increased cash flow from consumer spending does more for the economy than the government). Whatever.
Taxes merely reduce freedom of choice (doing what you want with your resources) and increase costs all around.
This is basic economics, folks.