Gotta echo that. I loved reading the books, I have reread them many times, but I always skip over Tim Benzadril. I hated that character and worse, he seems at odds with the rest of the storyline to me.
Re:Obviously it was the Italians...
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Stuxnet Worms On
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Chekov supposedly has a Russian accent. However, he pronounces/v/ as if it was/w/. Russian has a/v/ and lacks a/w/. So we are basing our most famous Russian accent on someone who has a speech impediment?
Or is it just Americans who can't recognize some sounds properly (the way they think us Canucks say "oot and aboot" which we do not. Up here its "owt and abowt" if anything).
I did this many years ago. I built and maintained a yahoo style directory of Pagan and Wiccan websites called Omphalos. I added a search engine that indexed all the sites in our directory, using an open source search engine called UDMsearch. I had a pretty extensive index by the time I was done, and the site was fairly popular, given the small size of the potential audience. Sadly, I lost the domain name and then lost the ability to host it eventually, and the whole thing died. The domain name belonged to a squatter last time I looked (Omphalos.net).
It was a lot of work and took a lot of my time up. I still have a backup of the site itself somewhere on my HD I think. Certainly I have the old text files I had posted there from my BBS days kicking around. I am sure Omphalos must have been superseded by something better by now, but at the time it was the only pagan search engine.
I think the pioneers die off a lot yes, because they had the vision to create something new, but not the business savvy^H^H^H Ruthlessness to pursue it in the business world. Microsoft can stand as the poster child for business ruthlessness of course, but they are not alone. Its the companies that are willing to do ANYTHING to beat their competition into the ground, often by violating the law, using threats, blackmail etc, that get ahead, not the companies that produce something new and innovative. There are lots of exceptions of course, but lots who are only there because they were nastier than their competition. Capitalism is more or less the antithesis of morality in this regard, IMHO.
Paying a subscription fee to play a game like an MMO - that is paying for entertainment. Everyone has to pay the same fee, and its remarkably good value for money if you enjoy playing the game
Paying money to get something that lets you win the game more effectively. That is unbalancing and ensures those with more money to blow get ahead of those who are unable/unwilling/not stupid enough to pay extra money to get the edge on their competition.
To use an example from a more standard game (which I don't play at all mind you), how much fun would poker be if you got dealt 5 cards, but if you wanted to pay $15 more you could get a 6th card that other players didn't have? It would unbalance the game, and everyone who wanted to compete would be forced to also buy extra cards to keep the balance up. Only the rich would play and the real winner would be the house, selling off the extra cards. That is the model many MMO game companies want us to accept. Sadly there are a lot of players who see the fact that they have cash on hand as justification for their lack of sportsmanship and willingness to get ahead of other players who are better, by buying the edge required.
The two are not directly related. Our current society is growing enamoured of info-bites, we get assaulted by tons of little bits of information that may or may not be of any value (See Twitter and Facebook for instance). What we don't necessarily learn is how to use that data in solving problems
As well Google may provide results but it provides no ability to determine the veracity of the information it produces links to, and a lot of the information on the web is just outright wrong.
Now I use Google to get notes on programming syntax when required myself, and its often far more useful than having a paper manual on my desk, but that is of limited utility. When I go to read about issues of a more complex nature, Google doesn't help me think.
I think what schools used to try to teach, even with all the memorization by rote that was pushed on students, was the ability to assimilate all that data and think with it. That doesn't seem to be the case as much these days, although I could be wrong I admit.
To me "cof" makes a hell more sense than "cough". And "swimmed" is more logical than "swam" or "swum".
Except that "cough" likely arose in English from an earlier form where the/gh/ was pronounced and came out more like/kokh/ (sorry I can't use IPA here). English is full of such relics that exist only because the language has changed. Now, you could argue we need to update the spelling to reflect the current pronunciations - but then you hit dialects where these relics are still pronounced and you have a different problem. By sticking with the existing legacy spellings (as illogical as they may seem) at least we have a commonly agreed upon spelling for the words, regardless of your dialect of English.
As for "swimmed" versus "swum" that is the result of the old Saxon verb structure and is retained in words that have remained unchanged from that period. The newer form using -ed is used in most English verbs - and in fact I think we are slowly moving over to using it universally in any case, its just not a quick shift. I expect the huge number of people learning English as their second language will eventually shift English into a new commonly accepted form that is much simpler and loses the old Strong verb forms like swim/swam/swum. We lost the old plural in -n and replaced it with the newer -s sometime in the past (i.e. Ox versus Oxen) and only a few exceptions remain.
Virtually no language out there makes complete sense as to orthography and grammar. Moreover language speakers are very defensive about their language's peculiarities - and tend to be oblivious to a lot of its inconsistencies. That is probably a good thing as it ensures languages survive in a more consistent format, but it can be a tad frustrating when you got learn them (French with tons of irregularities, Spanish with tons of verb forms, Russian with what, 8 cases?, tone languages for non-tone language speakers, etc).
Besides as I recall, it was Latin grammar they tried to shoehorn onto English, as in our use of Nominative, Accusative, etc for cases. English barely has any cases left. We lost them when Saxon English collided with Norman French
Purhaps u wud prifur us tu uz sensibl speling az u si it, but owr curent sistum wurks just fayn I think
They need to set required standards for automobiles that ensure they are extremely efficient with regards to both fuel consumption, and pollution. Smaller cars only. Ban the manufacture of vehicles over a given size for personal transport. Ban the operation of any other cars.
Then we can just recycle all the fucking Hummers and huge cars from the 80's and earlier. Put Buick and Lincoln out of business until they produce something small and fuel efficient. Same thing with the Ford F25000 trucks etc.
A limited amount of those vehicles could be produced for commercial use I suppose, and of course we need transport trucks and all that, but in North America we seem to have little interest in actually putting our money where our mouth is when we talk about saving the environment and making real changes. Only a handful are really doing so - and the rest of society is not helping the process.
Oh and yeah, I am completely in favour of Nuclear Power. Its needed and I am sure we can find a way to make the end results cleaner and safer if we try harder.
is that like closet space, our ability to burn fuels has increased directly with the capacity we can produce, and we have come to rely on that fuel and its availability. I agree with the idea that when it starts to run out - and those who have it naturally raise the price through the roof - the economies of the world that rely on that fuel (i.e. us in the first world), will suffer the most as we lose our standard of living and eventually reach the standard that the rest of the world experiences at the moment. Along the way millions will likely die, although that will start slow and increase over time I am sure.
At some point the US and other powers will decide that they deserve the existing resources more than anyone else does, and start taking them militarily. I can easily imagine this being the Casus Belli of a few new conflicts.
China wants control of the Yellow Sea and all its resources already. Expect China to start getting very bellicose in the east, since their economy is just starting its boom big time. I think its going to be ugly out there in a few decades.
I think the same thing every time I hear about Sarah Palin. Michael Palin I respect, however Sarah Palin is (in IMHO) just a dangerous, highly ignorant, vindictive and apparently violent US politician. She's an idiot and I am amazed she every got elected. Apparently her former staffers are too frightened to talk about her - a recent Vanity Fair writer tried to interview a few of them and none of them would speak about her, in fact the locals in her town didn't want to be interviewed either, as apparently she has a vengeance streak a mile wide. It would be the worst thing possible for the US to give her any responsibility. Sadly, my cynical side thinks that means she likely has a good shot at the Presidency. If the US can elect Bush Jr, then they can elect anyone.
From the Wikipedia article on Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_Two_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms):
"2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association."
Also from that article: "The fundamental freedoms are freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association. They are guaranteed but can also be limited by the section 1 of the Charter, and they can be temporarily invalidated by the notwithstanding clause of the Charter."
So there are some exceptions, but generally speaking we have similar rights to citizens of the US.
Its a matter of disrespect. By burning copies of the Koran, which 1.3 billion people hold as sacred, he is just going out of his way to create hatred for the USA and the West in general. By most people's standards that's wrong, not to mention offensive. The fact is as well that it will endanger lives all over the world. The fact that those lives will be endangered by fanatical assholes who don't even understand their own religion and are using it as an excuse to justify their fanatical desire for power and in some cases (Taliban) merely to defend their control of the drug trade etc, is really irrelevant IMHO.
To put it in a more American setting, how would most Americans feel if someone was organizing a protest that involved a group's members shitting on a copy of the US Constitution in public? I can see a few taking very great offense at that, since they hold that document as being all but sacred. Technically, under that document people probably have the right to do so (other than the fact that they would be violating local statutes involving defecating in public of course). It wouldn't be any less disrespectful though, and just as offensive (and note: I am Canadian, the document doesn't mean anything to me personally).
I am not saying we should cater to the sensibilities of religious fanatics who like to murder people in the name of their beliefs. Fuck 'em. However, engaging in an activity that ALSO offense the other 1.399999999 Billion Muslims who are not religious fanatics who like to murder people in the name of their beliefs, is completely beyond the pall of sensibility.
Bravo to Rackspace in my opinion. I hope they lose the backups of the site as well then delete it. Actually I would like to see the domain name itself passed off to some organization like ReligiousTolerance.org so they can put up a message on the issue intended to deflate the hatred.
The one thing this world does not need is more excuses for religious hatred, violence and divisiveness. Its bad enough already I think. Sadly, its primarily the religions that claim to be peaceful that are the cause:(
Which is why some Government agency and not ICANN should be administering the domain names, or at the least some governing body with members posted from each of the major nations on the net or something.
Rough cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 (based on http://www.costofwar.com/ at the time I viewed it) and rounding to the nearest billion: Iraq: $745,000,000,000 Afghanistan: $330,000,000,000 Total: $1,075,000,000,000
So if nothing had been spent on either war (and who knows how they are calculating the figures of course), each US citizen could have been paid: $3465.66 - or alternatively saved that much in taxes:P
Yeah, it seems to me that whether or not a foreign government gets to stay in power or is overthrown depends primarily on whether or not its willing to allow Big US Corporations to sack the country of its resources in exchange for a few well placed bribes. If US business interests are threatened, in go the Marines (i.e. US Sugar in the Dominican Republic). It seems to me that the US military is frequently thrown into conflicts, not to defend US interests or foreign policies, but to defend US corporations and their profit margins. I have tremendous respect for those in uniform, but I hate to think of people dying or being injured in some foreign country so that the VP of Finance for Haliburton can record another record quarter. That's just criminal.
Of course, on the political spectrum worldwide, even the most left-wing leaning Democrats in the US would likely be considered Conservatives elsewhere. So if a left-leaning government comes into power it will look positively communist to many US politicians. I have been told that calling someone a "liberal" in the US is a pejorative, whereas here in Canada its just a political party (which is of course, extremely conservative and no longer liberal, as we are imitating the US up here north of the border these days). Even our New Democratic Party is pretty mainstream these days (and irrelevant mostly).
Its funny but the cynical side of me can't actually visualize the US wanting the Cuban's to revolt and replace their government with a democracy friendly to the US and its interests. Instead what I see is a lot of corporations wanting to reassert control over Cuba so they can rape its resources and access a source of cheap labor. I no longer believe the US has any interest in promoting democracy I guess, recent decades of foreign policy under Bush I and II seem to have disabused me of that notion. Obama hasn't done much to fix the situation either, although I recognize it will likely take years to try to fix the US after the Republicans have had years to seriously screw it up and twist the US into something it wasn't intended to be by its founders.
I hope Cuba gets access to the Internet so we can see what effects it has on the country and its people. I don't think Communism works very well, but it might just be that it has served the interests of Cuba well enough. Capitalism sure wasn't working before the revolution, the country was being run by big US corporations, the Mafia, and corrupt government officials. I can understand why some people in Cuba might not want to see that return.
I see things like this, and I find myself thinking that we are just lacking the means to connect people who want to learn some ancient technology like this with those who *are* willing to learn. Retro is so "in" these days, I would think it would take very little time to find someone who wants to learn how to do a "punching" and is willing to spend the time. Its just the lack of communications between those who would be interested in the skill and those who are in need of trained employees.
Oh I don't deny something will be lost - I was raising the point to see what others thought, and I think the current model is doomed. It needs replacing. With what I am not sure.
I could point out that the recording industry more or less doomed the sheet-music industry, and now filesharing is more or less dooming the recording industry. I believe when sheet music became popular, musicians were complaining about that too.
Yeah, I like the concept. Not sure it would work but I like the concept a lot.
Make a good demo to get people excited by the game and as you said, if they want more, they have to commit to a donation. Its really more like a pre-order to my mind.
"Like what you just played? If you want more, send us $20 towards future development costs. We estimate we need another 34,500 people to donate and we will begin production. If we don't receive the money we require, your money will be automatically returned to you by Sept 14th 2012, less the cost of producing the check we will send you and the cost of mailing it. Join our mailing list to receive automatic updates on the fundraising and our message board to have your say on how the game is shaping up or to provide feedback on the demo itself."
It only takes 50,000 players each donating $20 to raise $1 million for production of the next expansion.
Actually, I was more or less just raising the point that the ability to record music and sell the recordings was a recent achievement in history, and that perhaps it wasn't going to survive the advent of easily shared recordings.
I think the recording industry that has spawned as a result of the invention of this technology is doing a lot of musicians more harm than good. A few make lots of money (regardless of whether or not they are talented in many cases it seems), and great musicians with loads of talent go unremarked and remain unknown because the industry bombards the public with the stuff they want them to buy, not necessarily the best stuff. I don't think the music industry as a whole is really doing the average musician much good generally speaking.
Filesharing, easy and effectively free production costs for reproducing music in file format has changed everything. Now once a piece of music has been recorded, producing individual recordings for sale has become effectively cost free. Yet the industry still wants to sell them to us for a substantial profit - and like Hollywood Accounting - ensures that the industry itself garners most of the profits. The musicians see very little of the money that their music generates.
Were I professional musician, I would produce my works as best I can, put em up on the web for free, and then do my best to promote myself and hope I gain an audience. Giving away the music for free to my audience will only help spread and popularize my music. Live performances that let the listeners know they can get the music online for free will also help spread the word the music is available freely. With luck, and if I have any talent, I would expect that might help spiral into popularity without the need for a label. Of course, I would produce CDs for sale because some people would want to buy them to help support me etc, but the market is in using the free music to promote the live performances I think. I don't think the old model of "record-once, sell millions of copies to people, repackage the same tunes in different best-of collections every few years etc" is going to be viable much longer, if it still is. DRM doesn't work as manifestly demonstrated by many attempt to enforce it. It mostly alienates your fans.
Of course, I am not a professional musician and perhaps my comments are completely uninformed and erroneous. As I said, I was merely raising the point to see what others had to say in response.
Musicians making money from performing music to live audiences. You know, the way they did for thousands of years (figuratively speaking).
Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.
I don't download music at all. I also don't buy it. I barely ever listen to it outside of occasionally turning on a rock station in the car. I don't miss it much either.
Honestly, since there is no way they are ever going to stop filesharing, its not a bad idea to legalize it IMHO. Its like legalizing marijuana. It wouldn't hurt anyone if they did that in my opinion, but it would let the government tax the sales. Perhaps thats a solution? Let the government tax your time on a P2P network? Nah
Its a good idea when planning a class action lawsuit to ensure that your target actually has any money to be paid out. I think/. likely fails in this regard:P I am sure its generating some money, but I doubt its huge...
Slashdot Mirror
Gotta echo that. I loved reading the books, I have reread them many times, but I always skip over Tim Benzadril. I hated that character and worse, he seems at odds with the rest of the storyline to me.
I mean Stux is a variety of linux from Italy:
http://gpstudio.com/
Chekov supposedly has a Russian accent. However, he pronounces /v/ as if it was /w/. Russian has a /v/ and lacks a /w/. So we are basing our most famous Russian accent on someone who has a speech impediment?
Or is it just Americans who can't recognize some sounds properly (the way they think us Canucks say "oot and aboot" which we do not. Up here its "owt and abowt" if anything).
Too bad the hordes of PC types out there can't accept this. Kids will only learn from a game if its enjoyable.
I did this many years ago. I built and maintained a yahoo style directory of Pagan and Wiccan websites called Omphalos. I added a search engine that indexed all the sites in our directory, using an open source search engine called UDMsearch. I had a pretty extensive index by the time I was done, and the site was fairly popular, given the small size of the potential audience. Sadly, I lost the domain name and then lost the ability to host it eventually, and the whole thing died. The domain name belonged to a squatter last time I looked (Omphalos.net).
It was a lot of work and took a lot of my time up. I still have a backup of the site itself somewhere on my HD I think. Certainly I have the old text files I had posted there from my BBS days kicking around. I am sure Omphalos must have been superseded by something better by now, but at the time it was the only pagan search engine.
I think the pioneers die off a lot yes, because they had the vision to create something new, but not the business savvy^H^H^H Ruthlessness to pursue it in the business world. Microsoft can stand as the poster child for business ruthlessness of course, but they are not alone. Its the companies that are willing to do ANYTHING to beat their competition into the ground, often by violating the law, using threats, blackmail etc, that get ahead, not the companies that produce something new and innovative. There are lots of exceptions of course, but lots who are only there because they were nastier than their competition. Capitalism is more or less the antithesis of morality in this regard, IMHO.
There is a difference between:
To use an example from a more standard game (which I don't play at all mind you), how much fun would poker be if you got dealt 5 cards, but if you wanted to pay $15 more you could get a 6th card that other players didn't have? It would unbalance the game, and everyone who wanted to compete would be forced to also buy extra cards to keep the balance up. Only the rich would play and the real winner would be the house, selling off the extra cards. That is the model many MMO game companies want us to accept. Sadly there are a lot of players who see the fact that they have cash on hand as justification for their lack of sportsmanship and willingness to get ahead of other players who are better, by buying the edge required.
The two are not directly related. Our current society is growing enamoured of info-bites, we get assaulted by tons of little bits of information that may or may not be of any value (See Twitter and Facebook for instance). What we don't necessarily learn is how to use that data in solving problems
As well Google may provide results but it provides no ability to determine the veracity of the information it produces links to, and a lot of the information on the web is just outright wrong.
Now I use Google to get notes on programming syntax when required myself, and its often far more useful than having a paper manual on my desk, but that is of limited utility. When I go to read about issues of a more complex nature, Google doesn't help me think.
I think what schools used to try to teach, even with all the memorization by rote that was pushed on students, was the ability to assimilate all that data and think with it. That doesn't seem to be the case as much these days, although I could be wrong I admit.
To me "cof" makes a hell more sense than "cough". And "swimmed" is more logical than "swam" or "swum".
Except that "cough" likely arose in English from an earlier form where the /gh/ was pronounced and came out more like /kokh/ (sorry I can't use IPA here). English is full of such relics that exist only because the language has changed. Now, you could argue we need to update the spelling to reflect the current pronunciations - but then you hit dialects where these relics are still pronounced and you have a different problem. By sticking with the existing legacy spellings (as illogical as they may seem) at least we have a commonly agreed upon spelling for the words, regardless of your dialect of English.
As for "swimmed" versus "swum" that is the result of the old Saxon verb structure and is retained in words that have remained unchanged from that period. The newer form using -ed is used in most English verbs - and in fact I think we are slowly moving over to using it universally in any case, its just not a quick shift. I expect the huge number of people learning English as their second language will eventually shift English into a new commonly accepted form that is much simpler and loses the old Strong verb forms like swim/swam/swum. We lost the old plural in -n and replaced it with the newer -s sometime in the past (i.e. Ox versus Oxen) and only a few exceptions remain.
Virtually no language out there makes complete sense as to orthography and grammar. Moreover language speakers are very defensive about their language's peculiarities - and tend to be oblivious to a lot of its inconsistencies. That is probably a good thing as it ensures languages survive in a more consistent format, but it can be a tad frustrating when you got learn them (French with tons of irregularities, Spanish with tons of verb forms, Russian with what, 8 cases?, tone languages for non-tone language speakers, etc).
Besides as I recall, it was Latin grammar they tried to shoehorn onto English, as in our use of Nominative, Accusative, etc for cases. English barely has any cases left. We lost them when Saxon English collided with Norman French
Purhaps u wud prifur us tu uz sensibl speling az u si it, but owr curent sistum wurks just fayn I think
They need to set required standards for automobiles that ensure they are extremely efficient with regards to both fuel consumption, and pollution. Smaller cars only. Ban the manufacture of vehicles over a given size for personal transport. Ban the operation of any other cars.
Then we can just recycle all the fucking Hummers and huge cars from the 80's and earlier. Put Buick and Lincoln out of business until they produce something small and fuel efficient. Same thing with the Ford F25000 trucks etc.
A limited amount of those vehicles could be produced for commercial use I suppose, and of course we need transport trucks and all that, but in North America we seem to have little interest in actually putting our money where our mouth is when we talk about saving the environment and making real changes. Only a handful are really doing so - and the rest of society is not helping the process.
Oh and yeah, I am completely in favour of Nuclear Power. Its needed and I am sure we can find a way to make the end results cleaner and safer if we try harder.
is that like closet space, our ability to burn fuels has increased directly with the capacity we can produce, and we have come to rely on that fuel and its availability. I agree with the idea that when it starts to run out - and those who have it naturally raise the price through the roof - the economies of the world that rely on that fuel (i.e. us in the first world), will suffer the most as we lose our standard of living and eventually reach the standard that the rest of the world experiences at the moment. Along the way millions will likely die, although that will start slow and increase over time I am sure.
At some point the US and other powers will decide that they deserve the existing resources more than anyone else does, and start taking them militarily. I can easily imagine this being the Casus Belli of a few new conflicts.
China wants control of the Yellow Sea and all its resources already. Expect China to start getting very bellicose in the east, since their economy is just starting its boom big time. I think its going to be ugly out there in a few decades.
I think the same thing every time I hear about Sarah Palin. Michael Palin I respect, however Sarah Palin is (in IMHO) just a dangerous, highly ignorant, vindictive and apparently violent US politician. She's an idiot and I am amazed she every got elected. Apparently her former staffers are too frightened to talk about her - a recent Vanity Fair writer tried to interview a few of them and none of them would speak about her, in fact the locals in her town didn't want to be interviewed either, as apparently she has a vengeance streak a mile wide. It would be the worst thing possible for the US to give her any responsibility.
Sadly, my cynical side thinks that means she likely has a good shot at the Presidency. If the US can elect Bush Jr, then they can elect anyone.
From the Wikipedia article on Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_Two_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms):
"2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association."
Also from that article:
"The fundamental freedoms are freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association. They are guaranteed but can also be limited by the section 1 of the Charter, and they can be temporarily invalidated by the notwithstanding clause of the Charter."
So there are some exceptions, but generally speaking we have similar rights to citizens of the US.
Its a matter of disrespect. By burning copies of the Koran, which 1.3 billion people hold as sacred, he is just going out of his way to create hatred for the USA and the West in general. By most people's standards that's wrong, not to mention offensive. The fact is as well that it will endanger lives all over the world. The fact that those lives will be endangered by fanatical assholes who don't even understand their own religion and are using it as an excuse to justify their fanatical desire for power and in some cases (Taliban) merely to defend their control of the drug trade etc, is really irrelevant IMHO.
To put it in a more American setting, how would most Americans feel if someone was organizing a protest that involved a group's members shitting on a copy of the US Constitution in public? I can see a few taking very great offense at that, since they hold that document as being all but sacred. Technically, under that document people probably have the right to do so (other than the fact that they would be violating local statutes involving defecating in public of course). It wouldn't be any less disrespectful though, and just as offensive (and note: I am Canadian, the document doesn't mean anything to me personally).
I am not saying we should cater to the sensibilities of religious fanatics who like to murder people in the name of their beliefs. Fuck 'em. However, engaging in an activity that ALSO offense the other 1.399999999 Billion Muslims who are not religious fanatics who like to murder people in the name of their beliefs, is completely beyond the pall of sensibility.
Bravo to Rackspace in my opinion. I hope they lose the backups of the site as well then delete it. Actually I would like to see the domain name itself passed off to some organization like ReligiousTolerance.org so they can put up a message on the issue intended to deflate the hatred.
The one thing this world does not need is more excuses for religious hatred, violence and divisiveness. Its bad enough already I think. Sadly, its primarily the religions that claim to be peaceful that are the cause :(
Which is why some Government agency and not ICANN should be administering the domain names, or at the least some governing body with members posted from each of the major nations on the net or something.
Well, using the internets:
Rough cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 (based on http://www.costofwar.com/ at the time I viewed it) and rounding to the nearest billion:
Iraq: $745,000,000,000
Afghanistan: $330,000,000,000
Total: $1,075,000,000,000
US Population:
310,186,000 (based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States)
So if nothing had been spent on either war (and who knows how they are calculating the figures of course), each US citizen could have been paid: $3465.66 - or alternatively saved that much in taxes :P
Its a long way from $75,000 per year.
Well, its very difficult to estimate numbers for this sort of thing without doing some in depth research, but from just a quick scan of the internet:
Iraq War:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
- 97,000 - 106,000 Civilian deaths
Afghanistan:
http://icasualties.org/oef/
- A few thousand military casualties on our side, didn't see civilian casualties or taliban ones.
Cuban Revolution:
http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/forum/dominicans-abroad/latin-america/2203/VICTIMS-OF-THE-CUBAN-REVOLUTION
- Call it 85,000 deaths for the listed items.
Yeah, it seems to me that whether or not a foreign government gets to stay in power or is overthrown depends primarily on whether or not its willing to allow Big US Corporations to sack the country of its resources in exchange for a few well placed bribes. If US business interests are threatened, in go the Marines (i.e. US Sugar in the Dominican Republic). It seems to me that the US military is frequently thrown into conflicts, not to defend US interests or foreign policies, but to defend US corporations and their profit margins. I have tremendous respect for those in uniform, but I hate to think of people dying or being injured in some foreign country so that the VP of Finance for Haliburton can record another record quarter. That's just criminal.
Of course, on the political spectrum worldwide, even the most left-wing leaning Democrats in the US would likely be considered Conservatives elsewhere. So if a left-leaning government comes into power it will look positively communist to many US politicians. I have been told that calling someone a "liberal" in the US is a pejorative, whereas here in Canada its just a political party (which is of course, extremely conservative and no longer liberal, as we are imitating the US up here north of the border these days). Even our New Democratic Party is pretty mainstream these days (and irrelevant mostly).
Its funny but the cynical side of me can't actually visualize the US wanting the Cuban's to revolt and replace their government with a democracy friendly to the US and its interests. Instead what I see is a lot of corporations wanting to reassert control over Cuba so they can rape its resources and access a source of cheap labor. I no longer believe the US has any interest in promoting democracy I guess, recent decades of foreign policy under Bush I and II seem to have disabused me of that notion. Obama hasn't done much to fix the situation either, although I recognize it will likely take years to try to fix the US after the Republicans have had years to seriously screw it up and twist the US into something it wasn't intended to be by its founders.
I hope Cuba gets access to the Internet so we can see what effects it has on the country and its people. I don't think Communism works very well, but it might just be that it has served the interests of Cuba well enough. Capitalism sure wasn't working before the revolution, the country was being run by big US corporations, the Mafia, and corrupt government officials. I can understand why some people in Cuba might not want to see that return.
I see things like this, and I find myself thinking that we are just lacking the means to connect people who want to learn some ancient technology like this with those who *are* willing to learn. Retro is so "in" these days, I would think it would take very little time to find someone who wants to learn how to do a "punching" and is willing to spend the time. Its just the lack of communications between those who would be interested in the skill and those who are in need of trained employees.
Oh I don't deny something will be lost - I was raising the point to see what others thought, and I think the current model is doomed. It needs replacing. With what I am not sure.
I could point out that the recording industry more or less doomed the sheet-music industry, and now filesharing is more or less dooming the recording industry. I believe when sheet music became popular, musicians were complaining about that too.
Yeah, I like the concept. Not sure it would work but I like the concept a lot.
Make a good demo to get people excited by the game and as you said, if they want more, they have to commit to a donation. Its really more like a pre-order to my mind.
"Like what you just played? If you want more, send us $20 towards future development costs. We estimate we need another 34,500 people to donate and we will begin production. If we don't receive the money we require, your money will be automatically returned to you by Sept 14th 2012, less the cost of producing the check we will send you and the cost of mailing it. Join our mailing list to receive automatic updates on the fundraising and our message board to have your say on how the game is shaping up or to provide feedback on the demo itself."
It only takes 50,000 players each donating $20 to raise $1 million for production of the next expansion.
Actually, I was more or less just raising the point that the ability to record music and sell the recordings was a recent achievement in history, and that perhaps it wasn't going to survive the advent of easily shared recordings.
I think the recording industry that has spawned as a result of the invention of this technology is doing a lot of musicians more harm than good. A few make lots of money (regardless of whether or not they are talented in many cases it seems), and great musicians with loads of talent go unremarked and remain unknown because the industry bombards the public with the stuff they want them to buy, not necessarily the best stuff. I don't think the music industry as a whole is really doing the average musician much good generally speaking.
Filesharing, easy and effectively free production costs for reproducing music in file format has changed everything. Now once a piece of music has been recorded, producing individual recordings for sale has become effectively cost free. Yet the industry still wants to sell them to us for a substantial profit - and like Hollywood Accounting - ensures that the industry itself garners most of the profits. The musicians see very little of the money that their music generates.
Were I professional musician, I would produce my works as best I can, put em up on the web for free, and then do my best to promote myself and hope I gain an audience. Giving away the music for free to my audience will only help spread and popularize my music. Live performances that let the listeners know they can get the music online for free will also help spread the word the music is available freely. With luck, and if I have any talent, I would expect that might help spiral into popularity without the need for a label. Of course, I would produce CDs for sale because some people would want to buy them to help support me etc, but the market is in using the free music to promote the live performances I think. I don't think the old model of "record-once, sell millions of copies to people, repackage the same tunes in different best-of collections every few years etc" is going to be viable much longer, if it still is. DRM doesn't work as manifestly demonstrated by many attempt to enforce it. It mostly alienates your fans.
Of course, I am not a professional musician and perhaps my comments are completely uninformed and erroneous. As I said, I was merely raising the point to see what others had to say in response.
Musicians making money from performing music to live audiences. You know, the way they did for thousands of years (figuratively speaking).
Its only in the last 200 years or so that we have had the idea that musicians should make money for a recording of their performance. Perhaps that was the real mistaken concept, and filesharing/easily created copies of musical recordings are merely bringing things back to normal.
I don't download music at all. I also don't buy it. I barely ever listen to it outside of occasionally turning on a rock station in the car. I don't miss it much either.
Honestly, since there is no way they are ever going to stop filesharing, its not a bad idea to legalize it IMHO. Its like legalizing marijuana. It wouldn't hurt anyone if they did that in my opinion, but it would let the government tax the sales. Perhaps thats a solution? Let the government tax your time on a P2P network? Nah
Its a good idea when planning a class action lawsuit to ensure that your target actually has any money to be paid out. I think /. likely fails in this regard :P
I am sure its generating some money, but I doubt its huge...