Well, teachers are also people in authority, and while you should weigh information in some part based on the source (a person who is a physicist by trade will probably have better info than a bus driver regarding physics, for example), you should also consider that established science is frequently called into question by ongoing research. The point is, accepting science as taught by scientists is probably a better idea than science as taught by divinity majors, but it doesn't mean that the science you're being taught should be accepted as gospel (sorry, couldn't resist). You should probably take it as more reliable than not, but it shouldn't prevent you from further inquiry.
I see your point about kids learning what they're able to handle at a given age, and what they're likely to need if they aren't going into a career in science, but there's a problem with that style of pedagogy. If you say that most kids aren't going to be ready or able to handle the whole of evolutionary science, or that most of them won't need to know it past a fairly shallow depth, then you may as well go with Creationism. Functionally, if you're not a scientist, it doesn't matter if you think Jesus hid dinosaur bones to keep us on our toes. That really only matters, going with that particular pedagogy, to people who will be doing research in that field. So, tell the kids whatever, and then, when you whittle it down to a core group who is ready for the real story, you teach the actual science, which you now have to begin by saying that, essentially, what you learned in elementary, middle, and high school was not correct.
There's no problem with that if the goal of science education is to just teach basic facts. But, if the goal is to teach a scientific way of thinking, i.e. to teach inquiry, then it's more important to teach the method of thought than it is to teach "established science." American schools have traditionally taught science as a series of facts, like you're talking about, and the result has been, in part, a reduction in "science literacy." Teaching science as a list of things to know is in part why Creationism and ID seem like reasonable alternatives. The new movement is towards teaching inquiry, using science as a medium. The goal is to produce students who are equipped to discover facts through the "doing" of science, making them better at learning the more complex science. A secondary goal is to increase the ability of all students to think "scientifically", making them more technically literate, so that even if they aren't going to become research scientists they'll still be able to understand at a basic level scientific concepts, and question things like Creationism using tools and methods they've been taught their whole academic lives.
"I didn't know gazpacho soup was meant to be served cold. I called over the chef and I told him to take it away and bring it back hot. He did! The looks on their faces still haunt me today! I thought they were laughing at the chef, when all the time they were laughing at me as I ate my piping hot gazpacho soup! I never ate at the captain's table again. That was the end of my career."
On the one hand, ID and Creationism are...beliefs, I guess...that compete against the theory of evolution. While the evidence lines up in favor of evolution, I'm willing to concede that, from a purely skeptical point of view, there isn't compelling direct evidence that you could present to a skeptic which would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that life on Earth evolved as a result of natural selection. I happen to be convinced, mainly because the competing...erm...ideas are predicated on either aliens or some supernatural agency fiddling around. But, fine, if you talk about evolution and natural selection, part of the conversation probably should include a mention of the other explanations for speciation, including their rationales.
And, whatever else, I believe that it's important, especially in a science class, to teach students to be skeptical. You shouldn't just accept what someone in authority tells you as true beyond question. You should be in the habit of questioning and investigating everything that you learn, especially in science.
On the other hand, Creationism and ID all involve the supernatural, which, by definition, has no place in a science curriculum. And they're not being discussed as an example of religious objections to scientific evidence, they're being posited as equally possible explanations of natural phenomena. That's the equivalent of saying that rain either occurs as a result of meteorological phenomena, or because magical fairies sprinkle water from the clouds, and either explanation is equally true. I don't think that this law was passed to benefit students, I think it was passed to pacify Bible-thumping evangelicals, and I have a huge problem with that.
Besides which, for many things like stolen credit cards, stolen checks, etc., part of your defense against having to honor the checks or the card purchases is to show that you took reasonable steps to mitigate the damage, i.e. reported the theft to the police ASAP. Otherwise, you could just as easily have spent the money yourself and reported the charges as fraudulent to avoid having to pay.
Well, for one thing, it has a chilling effect on potential informants. If this guy's telling the truth, he's a fantastic lead on a child porn distributor. But if anyone who stumbles across child porn on the internet is terrified to report it for fear of being suspected themselves, well, how many people do you think will step up and do the right thing?
It's a little hyperbolic, but Fallingcrow's got a point. If you're a cop and you get called to the scene of an alleged crime, you might not get a chance to arrest the suspect(s) again. So if it's not blatantly obvious that one person is the assailant and the other is the victim, for example, the SOP is to pick everybody up and sort it out later. Get all the evidence you can before it's hidden, tampered with, or otherwise compromised. It's the judge's/jury's responsibility to sort out who did what.
So yeah, cops are great for stuff like asking for directions, or getting a homicidal lunatic to stop chasing you. Not so good for areas where you might be suspected of culpability.
Well, yeah, the number as a mathematical entity doesn't belong to anyone as such, but the number in its capacity as an identifier "belongs" to the agency or company. It's a number, yeah, but it's also the label that they use to associate a person with an account, and, in that sense, belongs to the company/agency/whatever. I'm not talking epistemology, here. The proof is that a credit card company can assign you a new credit card number at will; you can't just call Visa up and tell them that you've decided your new number is "49".
Everything listed in the "Privacy Bill of Rights" is common-sense, caveat emptor-type stuff, or is easily handled by a standard contract. But by making it part of a "Privacy Bill of Rights" enforced by some government agency, it implies that these "rights" are bestowed by the government, which means that they can be repealed in the future, which would actually harm privacy.
Maybe Barry should start small. Say with the whole indefinite detention thing, or maybe just something simple, like taking it easy with the drone strikes on American citizens abroad.
Actually, a credit card number, along with most identifying numbers associated with everything from Social Security to your bank account, belong to the issuing institution, just like (if you read it closely) your driver's license and your SS card. You don't own it. You can't change the data in question. Which, I think, goes to your original, and very valid, point.
I disagree. The assumption is that each writer's time is of equal worth, and that the use of that time results in a product of equal value. If I spend an hour writing a postmodern analysis of the film Real Steel, and you spend an hour writing the Great American Novel that everyone loves, the thing you produced with that hour is more valuable than the thing I produced with that hour, making your hour worth more. If writing were like tightening nuts on bolts, then sure, all writers' time would be about equal. But, the only way you can really determine the value is by the interest audiences have in reading it.
Yes. Otherwise, there would be no possible way publishers would allow libraries to lend digital copies. Think about it: reverse the earlier question. What's the difference between a library that "lends" infinite, permanent digital copies of books for free to anyone with a login, and a pirate site? A library that can distribute ebooks with no limitations whatsoever is no different than a pirate site, essentially, and renders the idea of copyright moot. If you think that the very idea of copyright is in and of itself immoral or unethical, then that's probably fine with you, but even if you think authors should produce work without copyright in the hope and expectation of what would amount to donations from motivated readers, putting libraries in a position to distribute along such a model would just make it that much less likely that the original author would ever see a dime from readers.
Not only have I never received spam originating from a Gmail address, I might have seen spam make it to my inbox once in the past year. This is an address I've used for six years, and splattered all over the Interwebs. I also had three different Hotmail addresses, which I canceled to avoid spam.
Equally allegorical and equally convincing to me, I went through an episode with my mother-in-law where spam began to be sent from her email address to everyone, and I mean everyone, in her address book, multiple times per day. Now, she doesn't typically engage in risky Internet behavior, being the kind of person who is skeptical of ATMs because she's afraid they'll withdraw the money without actually giving it to her. Suffice to say it caused a bit of a problem. She's sticking with Hotmail because, as she says, "that's the address everyone has for her", against all advice to the contrary.
"Hi, I noticed you'd left your front door unbolted, and your big-screen television is clearly visible from the street. Also, just to check, I climbed over your back fence and tried the back door, which you left unlocked. When I got inside and heard your dog barking I was a little worried, but it turns out he's really friendly. I've taken the liberty of writing up a list of suggestions for you to make your house more secure; it's taped on the front of your fridge. Incidentally, I just happen to sell alarm systems, if you're interested..."
"...companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how."
Tell you how, Curt? Sure. Ever hear of used book stores? Music stores? Used DVDs? Pawn shops? Amazon.com? All of these sell used books, CDs, and DVDs/Blurays, and none of them turn a penny of that profit over to the original creators. Now do me a favor, Curt, and tell me why the game industry (not even the software industry as a whole) is special? Why should a consumer not feel like you're using DRM to squeeze as much profit out of your customers as possible, rather than to protect yourself from unethical behavior?
I own a PC, so, unfortunately, most of this argument is academic for me, now that digital distribution is the predominant model, and there's no drive on the part of distributors (Green Man Gaming notwithstanding) to develop a reselling mechanism. But for console owners, the whole "Gamestop and private resales are decimating the gaming industry" is the biggest pile I've ever heard.
My wife always asks me why I "throw away my vote" by voting for a third party. I ask her why she bothers to vote at all *unless* it's for a third party. Otherwise it's just picking between different flavors of vanilla.
Actually, I don't think I missed the point at all. Beyond actual distribution, one of the benefits I mentioned was promotion, or marketing. And, to be honest, the apocalyptic scenario you're describing is essentially what the "indie" movement is all about.
Rather than selling your rights to Sony and allowing them to handle management, marketing, and distribution in exchange for an upfront buyout and royalties, artists have the option to promote and distribute via social marketing tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and even email lists. All of which depend heavily on initial exposure, like live shows, to attract interested parties, or by proactively promoting yourself using existing connections, again through tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and even more conventional hype-building methods such as posters, fliers, and stickers.
That's what local musicians have been doing in my area for at least thirty years (obviously Twitter is more recent, but you get what I'm saying). There aren't many FM radio stations that cater to the independent music scene, true, but there are local stations that promote local music even while they play mass market, and local businesses want to be associated with local acts that are popular in the area *because* they are popular in the area.
Dealing with big record labels isn't the only possible model, it's just the one that dominated for the past forty years or so. Technology has, to some extent, made change possible. You're not going to have a Katy Perry sort of music scene where some label-generated act is groomed for pop radio from the outset and makes money hand over fist, but I'm ok with that. I'm much more comfortable "discovering" new music because I heard it in a local club or bar, and can actually go talk to the band.
Copyright isn't the issue. The issue is that technology limited the artist's ability to distribute work, and so the SOP became selling your own rights to your own work to a publisher in order to try and reach a larger audience, and, hopefully, make some money. In all art (music, film, lit), publishers became the gatekeepers because artists weren't able to compete on a logistic level.
Now that the Internet has, to some extent, changed that, we just need to find a model that works for everyone involved. As it stands, it's still very difficult to self-publish, or to offer your own content in such a way that you can still make money from it. Just from a writer's perspective, you can run an ad-based website (almost a television model), you can run a subscription-based website, you can ask for donations (good luck with that), you can put samples of your work up for free and offer either full-length works or entirely different works for sale on a case-by-case basis, but most of those options are pretty difficult to get off of the ground.
Contrast that with getting in bed with a publisher, who will give you money up front, royalties, and handle the marketing. You're still not going to make a mint (I know one writer who has been published frequently, can be found in most major bookstores, and has a book optioned, who is making about $35k a year), but it's not as risky.
If you get rid of copyright entirely, artists won't be able to afford to be artists. Like it or not, everybody's gotta eat. But if you develop a distribution model whereby artists can produce and maintain control of their products without having to sell their souls to a third party, you'll see more reasonable types of copyright licensing, and you'll see much more reasonable pricing.
Well, modern education is certainly dead if that's what passes for capitalization these days. (Zing!)
Seriously, though, of course Doom had a plot. A plot is a sequence of events in a narrative. A plot can be very simple, or very complex. And, yes, even Ms. Pacman had a plot, after a fashion, it's just that the player provided the plot during gameplay. Due to the nature of games, plot is generated during play to a greater or lesser extent by the player(s). Now, did Doom have a lot of backstory? That's different than plot, and I think most people would file that under "setting".
Meanwhile, War and Peace?? You're not even trying. The Dune series buries the needle, plot-wise.
The alternative is to use your own bank's electronic bill paying service. It's usually not as shiny as the biller's, but it has the advantages of allowing you to control when and how much money is taken out of your account, letting you monitor spending from your own bank's website, and facilitates record-keeping if you need to dispute a bill. And, if you have a good bank (or, even better, a credit union), it's free.
You said that you were made to understand that there was virtually no chance that you would be compensated for this project; don't expect to be compensated now that you've completed it. What I don't understand is why you wrote it if, as you say, you feel that you shouldn't be asked to do so. If you want to try to sell it, that's fine, but having something so specific to your workplace already created and ready to go, and then holding on to it until the price is right, seems like a bad idea. It would be one thing if you were submitting a proposal for something above and beyond your job description. This is going to seem like you're not fully invested in your job, and you're looking to hustle something on the side. If I were a manager at your school, I would look askance at this. It smacks a bit of the old fire-fighting companies that would show up in front of a burning house and wait until the owner put up some money until they put the fire out.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, teachers are also people in authority, and while you should weigh information in some part based on the source (a person who is a physicist by trade will probably have better info than a bus driver regarding physics, for example), you should also consider that established science is frequently called into question by ongoing research. The point is, accepting science as taught by scientists is probably a better idea than science as taught by divinity majors, but it doesn't mean that the science you're being taught should be accepted as gospel (sorry, couldn't resist). You should probably take it as more reliable than not, but it shouldn't prevent you from further inquiry.
I see your point about kids learning what they're able to handle at a given age, and what they're likely to need if they aren't going into a career in science, but there's a problem with that style of pedagogy. If you say that most kids aren't going to be ready or able to handle the whole of evolutionary science, or that most of them won't need to know it past a fairly shallow depth, then you may as well go with Creationism. Functionally, if you're not a scientist, it doesn't matter if you think Jesus hid dinosaur bones to keep us on our toes. That really only matters, going with that particular pedagogy, to people who will be doing research in that field. So, tell the kids whatever, and then, when you whittle it down to a core group who is ready for the real story, you teach the actual science, which you now have to begin by saying that, essentially, what you learned in elementary, middle, and high school was not correct.
There's no problem with that if the goal of science education is to just teach basic facts. But, if the goal is to teach a scientific way of thinking, i.e. to teach inquiry, then it's more important to teach the method of thought than it is to teach "established science." American schools have traditionally taught science as a series of facts, like you're talking about, and the result has been, in part, a reduction in "science literacy." Teaching science as a list of things to know is in part why Creationism and ID seem like reasonable alternatives. The new movement is towards teaching inquiry, using science as a medium. The goal is to produce students who are equipped to discover facts through the "doing" of science, making them better at learning the more complex science. A secondary goal is to increase the ability of all students to think "scientifically", making them more technically literate, so that even if they aren't going to become research scientists they'll still be able to understand at a basic level scientific concepts, and question things like Creationism using tools and methods they've been taught their whole academic lives.
"I didn't know gazpacho soup was meant to be served cold. I called over the chef and I told him to take it away and bring it back hot. He did! The looks on their faces still haunt me today! I thought they were laughing at the chef, when all the time they were laughing at me as I ate my piping hot gazpacho soup! I never ate at the captain's table again. That was the end of my career."
On the one hand, ID and Creationism are...beliefs, I guess...that compete against the theory of evolution. While the evidence lines up in favor of evolution, I'm willing to concede that, from a purely skeptical point of view, there isn't compelling direct evidence that you could present to a skeptic which would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that life on Earth evolved as a result of natural selection. I happen to be convinced, mainly because the competing...erm...ideas are predicated on either aliens or some supernatural agency fiddling around. But, fine, if you talk about evolution and natural selection, part of the conversation probably should include a mention of the other explanations for speciation, including their rationales.
And, whatever else, I believe that it's important, especially in a science class, to teach students to be skeptical. You shouldn't just accept what someone in authority tells you as true beyond question. You should be in the habit of questioning and investigating everything that you learn, especially in science.
On the other hand, Creationism and ID all involve the supernatural, which, by definition, has no place in a science curriculum. And they're not being discussed as an example of religious objections to scientific evidence, they're being posited as equally possible explanations of natural phenomena. That's the equivalent of saying that rain either occurs as a result of meteorological phenomena, or because magical fairies sprinkle water from the clouds, and either explanation is equally true. I don't think that this law was passed to benefit students, I think it was passed to pacify Bible-thumping evangelicals, and I have a huge problem with that.
Ditto, freakin' warm. Maryland.
Besides which, for many things like stolen credit cards, stolen checks, etc., part of your defense against having to honor the checks or the card purchases is to show that you took reasonable steps to mitigate the damage, i.e. reported the theft to the police ASAP. Otherwise, you could just as easily have spent the money yourself and reported the charges as fraudulent to avoid having to pay.
Well, for one thing, it has a chilling effect on potential informants. If this guy's telling the truth, he's a fantastic lead on a child porn distributor. But if anyone who stumbles across child porn on the internet is terrified to report it for fear of being suspected themselves, well, how many people do you think will step up and do the right thing?
It's a little hyperbolic, but Fallingcrow's got a point. If you're a cop and you get called to the scene of an alleged crime, you might not get a chance to arrest the suspect(s) again. So if it's not blatantly obvious that one person is the assailant and the other is the victim, for example, the SOP is to pick everybody up and sort it out later. Get all the evidence you can before it's hidden, tampered with, or otherwise compromised. It's the judge's/jury's responsibility to sort out who did what.
So yeah, cops are great for stuff like asking for directions, or getting a homicidal lunatic to stop chasing you. Not so good for areas where you might be suspected of culpability.
...authorities in Beijing are perplexed by a dramatic increase in the number of burn-related ear injuries.
Well SOMEbody didn't have a successful day at rehab...
Well, yeah, the number as a mathematical entity doesn't belong to anyone as such, but the number in its capacity as an identifier "belongs" to the agency or company. It's a number, yeah, but it's also the label that they use to associate a person with an account, and, in that sense, belongs to the company/agency/whatever. I'm not talking epistemology, here. The proof is that a credit card company can assign you a new credit card number at will; you can't just call Visa up and tell them that you've decided your new number is "49".
Everything listed in the "Privacy Bill of Rights" is common-sense, caveat emptor-type stuff, or is easily handled by a standard contract. But by making it part of a "Privacy Bill of Rights" enforced by some government agency, it implies that these "rights" are bestowed by the government, which means that they can be repealed in the future, which would actually harm privacy.
Maybe Barry should start small. Say with the whole indefinite detention thing, or maybe just something simple, like taking it easy with the drone strikes on American citizens abroad.
Actually, a credit card number, along with most identifying numbers associated with everything from Social Security to your bank account, belong to the issuing institution, just like (if you read it closely) your driver's license and your SS card. You don't own it. You can't change the data in question. Which, I think, goes to your original, and very valid, point.
...you must be new here.
I disagree. The assumption is that each writer's time is of equal worth, and that the use of that time results in a product of equal value. If I spend an hour writing a postmodern analysis of the film Real Steel, and you spend an hour writing the Great American Novel that everyone loves, the thing you produced with that hour is more valuable than the thing I produced with that hour, making your hour worth more. If writing were like tightening nuts on bolts, then sure, all writers' time would be about equal. But, the only way you can really determine the value is by the interest audiences have in reading it.
Yes. Otherwise, there would be no possible way publishers would allow libraries to lend digital copies. Think about it: reverse the earlier question. What's the difference between a library that "lends" infinite, permanent digital copies of books for free to anyone with a login, and a pirate site? A library that can distribute ebooks with no limitations whatsoever is no different than a pirate site, essentially, and renders the idea of copyright moot. If you think that the very idea of copyright is in and of itself immoral or unethical, then that's probably fine with you, but even if you think authors should produce work without copyright in the hope and expectation of what would amount to donations from motivated readers, putting libraries in a position to distribute along such a model would just make it that much less likely that the original author would ever see a dime from readers.
Not only have I never received spam originating from a Gmail address, I might have seen spam make it to my inbox once in the past year. This is an address I've used for six years, and splattered all over the Interwebs. I also had three different Hotmail addresses, which I canceled to avoid spam.
Equally allegorical and equally convincing to me, I went through an episode with my mother-in-law where spam began to be sent from her email address to everyone, and I mean everyone, in her address book, multiple times per day. Now, she doesn't typically engage in risky Internet behavior, being the kind of person who is skeptical of ATMs because she's afraid they'll withdraw the money without actually giving it to her. Suffice to say it caused a bit of a problem. She's sticking with Hotmail because, as she says, "that's the address everyone has for her", against all advice to the contrary.
No moral or legal basis for being upset, huh?
"Hi, I noticed you'd left your front door unbolted, and your big-screen television is clearly visible from the street. Also, just to check, I climbed over your back fence and tried the back door, which you left unlocked. When I got inside and heard your dog barking I was a little worried, but it turns out he's really friendly. I've taken the liberty of writing up a list of suggestions for you to make your house more secure; it's taped on the front of your fridge. Incidentally, I just happen to sell alarm systems, if you're interested..."
"...companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how."
Tell you how, Curt? Sure. Ever hear of used book stores? Music stores? Used DVDs? Pawn shops? Amazon.com? All of these sell used books, CDs, and DVDs/Blurays, and none of them turn a penny of that profit over to the original creators. Now do me a favor, Curt, and tell me why the game industry (not even the software industry as a whole) is special? Why should a consumer not feel like you're using DRM to squeeze as much profit out of your customers as possible, rather than to protect yourself from unethical behavior?
I own a PC, so, unfortunately, most of this argument is academic for me, now that digital distribution is the predominant model, and there's no drive on the part of distributors (Green Man Gaming notwithstanding) to develop a reselling mechanism. But for console owners, the whole "Gamestop and private resales are decimating the gaming industry" is the biggest pile I've ever heard.
My wife always asks me why I "throw away my vote" by voting for a third party. I ask her why she bothers to vote at all *unless* it's for a third party. Otherwise it's just picking between different flavors of vanilla.
Actually, I don't think I missed the point at all. Beyond actual distribution, one of the benefits I mentioned was promotion, or marketing. And, to be honest, the apocalyptic scenario you're describing is essentially what the "indie" movement is all about.
Rather than selling your rights to Sony and allowing them to handle management, marketing, and distribution in exchange for an upfront buyout and royalties, artists have the option to promote and distribute via social marketing tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and even email lists. All of which depend heavily on initial exposure, like live shows, to attract interested parties, or by proactively promoting yourself using existing connections, again through tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and even more conventional hype-building methods such as posters, fliers, and stickers.
That's what local musicians have been doing in my area for at least thirty years (obviously Twitter is more recent, but you get what I'm saying). There aren't many FM radio stations that cater to the independent music scene, true, but there are local stations that promote local music even while they play mass market, and local businesses want to be associated with local acts that are popular in the area *because* they are popular in the area.
Dealing with big record labels isn't the only possible model, it's just the one that dominated for the past forty years or so. Technology has, to some extent, made change possible. You're not going to have a Katy Perry sort of music scene where some label-generated act is groomed for pop radio from the outset and makes money hand over fist, but I'm ok with that. I'm much more comfortable "discovering" new music because I heard it in a local club or bar, and can actually go talk to the band.
Well, right now the middlemen are the publishers. When the Internet becomes the distribution medium, ISPs will become the middlemen.
Copyright isn't the issue. The issue is that technology limited the artist's ability to distribute work, and so the SOP became selling your own rights to your own work to a publisher in order to try and reach a larger audience, and, hopefully, make some money. In all art (music, film, lit), publishers became the gatekeepers because artists weren't able to compete on a logistic level.
Now that the Internet has, to some extent, changed that, we just need to find a model that works for everyone involved. As it stands, it's still very difficult to self-publish, or to offer your own content in such a way that you can still make money from it. Just from a writer's perspective, you can run an ad-based website (almost a television model), you can run a subscription-based website, you can ask for donations (good luck with that), you can put samples of your work up for free and offer either full-length works or entirely different works for sale on a case-by-case basis, but most of those options are pretty difficult to get off of the ground.
Contrast that with getting in bed with a publisher, who will give you money up front, royalties, and handle the marketing. You're still not going to make a mint (I know one writer who has been published frequently, can be found in most major bookstores, and has a book optioned, who is making about $35k a year), but it's not as risky.
If you get rid of copyright entirely, artists won't be able to afford to be artists. Like it or not, everybody's gotta eat. But if you develop a distribution model whereby artists can produce and maintain control of their products without having to sell their souls to a third party, you'll see more reasonable types of copyright licensing, and you'll see much more reasonable pricing.
Well, modern education is certainly dead if that's what passes for capitalization these days. (Zing!)
Seriously, though, of course Doom had a plot. A plot is a sequence of events in a narrative. A plot can be very simple, or very complex. And, yes, even Ms. Pacman had a plot, after a fashion, it's just that the player provided the plot during gameplay. Due to the nature of games, plot is generated during play to a greater or lesser extent by the player(s). Now, did Doom have a lot of backstory? That's different than plot, and I think most people would file that under "setting".
Meanwhile, War and Peace?? You're not even trying. The Dune series buries the needle, plot-wise.
The alternative is to use your own bank's electronic bill paying service. It's usually not as shiny as the biller's, but it has the advantages of allowing you to control when and how much money is taken out of your account, letting you monitor spending from your own bank's website, and facilitates record-keeping if you need to dispute a bill. And, if you have a good bank (or, even better, a credit union), it's free.
You said that you were made to understand that there was virtually no chance that you would be compensated for this project; don't expect to be compensated now that you've completed it. What I don't understand is why you wrote it if, as you say, you feel that you shouldn't be asked to do so. If you want to try to sell it, that's fine, but having something so specific to your workplace already created and ready to go, and then holding on to it until the price is right, seems like a bad idea. It would be one thing if you were submitting a proposal for something above and beyond your job description. This is going to seem like you're not fully invested in your job, and you're looking to hustle something on the side. If I were a manager at your school, I would look askance at this. It smacks a bit of the old fire-fighting companies that would show up in front of a burning house and wait until the owner put up some money until they put the fire out.