Tannishblog

Sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences expresses itself in strange new ways. Few ways could be stranger than the emerging digital shadow-industry of Gold Farming. No, this is not what the ancient alchemists were dreaming about, although is is a way of creating wealth out of nothing.

Gold farming is what happens when you mix the insane addicting popularity of online games, or MMO’s, Asian ingenuity and their insane work ethic, and Western laziness and penchant for instant gratification. Most people outside of a coma have heard allusions to World of Warcraft, the online titan of Massively Multiplayer Online role-playing games Over eight million players inhabit iterations of it’s virtual world of Azeroth. Each is required to hack, slash and quest his or her way to greatness over months or years of subscription-bought real time.

Azeroth and it’s clones, variants and alternates are intricate, detailed complicated and - ultimately - addicting. (Ask any cyber entrepreneur or your neighborhood tobacco executive of the joys of selling an addicting product, and you’ll understand how great this is as a business model.) Humanity’s quest for power, wealth, magic, notoriety, so hardwired into our psychologies, is the drug these games push. That the rewards are virtual is beside the point; reality matters less than perception.

What non-gamers don’t realize is the complex economies inherent to any MMO. For any would be adventurer, the as-yet undiscovered world must have means for acquiring and spending treasures, ever more challenging obstacles to overcome, and endless supplies of bigger-and-better must-haves (armor, weapons, magic spells, ad nauseam) to spur the player on. If done well, the game will induce a just-one-more-hour feeling. To ensure long commitments from gamers, developers must create vast and detailed worlds.

But not everyone wants to bother with the endless grind of leveling up their virtual selves. Some don’t have the patience, some lack the time. Enter the resourceful Chinese. With a few computers and a work force willing to work twelve hours a day, Chinese startups are inhabiting these virtual economies, grinding out the kills and gathering the virtual treasures to sell for dollars or pounds sterling. The impatient westerner then buys riches to quickly advance his online character’s bank account. In a very real sense, the Chinese laborers are creating money from metaphors.

Read the NY Times take on Gold Farming for more information. The article details the work life of the young level grinders and the social ramifications of this fledgling industry. The article notes the backlash from gamers for the process, but it doesn’t tall the gamer’s point of view. Anyone who exerts the effort to level up a character builds an emotional connection to their avatar that deepens over time. For many, this is the lure, the satisfaction of the game.

Ask yourself: if you were to pay to escape to an alternate universe, would you want to cheat after you get there? Perhaps the people who would answer "yes" aren’t the type of long-term citizens the game developers hope for. But the owners of the game farms are almost guaranteed to be long-paying customers as long as the cheaters remain. For now, the game companies side with the gamers against gold farming, but will it stay that way? A paying customer is a paying customer - even the ones who come to a metaphorical world to work.

Why should the US troops have all the fun? Let’s bring civilian contractors into the fray.

Twice this week employees of Blackwater USA, a private "security firm" based in Moyock, NC holding over $100 million defense contracts, we involved in confrontations in Baghdad. From Washington Post:

A Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver Thursday near the Interior Ministry, according to three U.S. officials and one Iraqi official who were briefed on the incident but spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pending investigation. On Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle in which the security contractors, U.S. and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing in a congested area.

I remember when we weren’t afraid to call these "security contractors" by their real name: Mercenaries. But in these post-politically-correct times of argument framing, a spade is no longer a spade, it’s a "landscape facilitator" (or something.) So a Mercenary soldier is now a "security consultant." Pfeh!

Is this how "the Surge(tm)" is implemented? This carefully planned war that the White House insisted didn’t need as many troops as Central Command suggested, which has redefined the word quagmire, has lasted longer than a Hollywood marriage. Early on, it was assumed that only 5,000 troops would be stationed there by December 2006. Now we’ve got "civilian contractors" playing along.

Blackwater’s security consulting division holds at least $109 million worth of State Department contracts in Iraq, and its employees operate in a perilous environment that sometimes requires the use of deadly force. But last week’s incidents underscored how deeply these hired guns have been drawn into the war, their murky legal status and the grave consequences that can ensue when they take aggressive action.

But quagmires are supposed to be murky, right? I guess the Iraqis have showed us Yanks how to use lawlessness to great advantage. What legal status has a corporate mercenary? How can someone be held accountable for war crimes if that is his job description?

Mohammed Mahdi, 37, an employee at a veterinary drugstore, said the combined American forces unleashed a fury of gunfire near the Amanat, the municipal headquarters located in the heart of downtown Baghdad. Before taking cover in his store, Mahdi said, he saw two people killed and one wounded near the city’s legal registry.

A U.S. Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Blackwater contractors "did their job," enabling the State Department employees to be extracted without injuries. The U.S. military said no American soldiers were killed or wounded during the attack.

Mahdi said that the battle lasted for nearly an hour and that when he emerged he saw four mini-buses, a taxi and an Opel sedan containing dead and wounded. He said that he saw "at least four or five" people "who were certainly dead" but that he did not know how the people were killed, who killed them or whether they were civilians or combatants.

It gets really opaque when we toss in corporate official-speak rhetoric:

[Matthew Degn, a senior American civilian adviser to the Interior Ministry’s intelligence directorate,] said he was concerned the incident "could undermine a lot of the cordial relationships that have been built up over the past four years. There’s a lot of angry people up here right now."

"Cordial relationship?" So says a "senior civilian advisor". Are we framing again?

Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company did not discuss specific incidents. In a statement via e-mail, she wrote: "Blackwater investigates any reports of hostile action in Iraq. Per the terms of our US Government contracts, as a matter of routine, Blackwater is required to file after action reports on any such incidents."

That should take care of that. An "incident report" to the US government is just the thing to appease the families of the dead and wounded. Make no mistake about the realities on the ground in Iraq: war is big business and war profiteering is just another aspect of the American economy.

Doesn’t that make you feel proud?

One aspect of my job is to make delivery runs throughout four-city quadrangle of Chicago and Rockford, Illinois and Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve been known to drive to Minneapolis/ St. Paul occasionally. Such experience, as well as constant comments from my out-of-town colleagues, cause me to rename home turf as Gridlock City. I’m sure there are worse cities in the world in which to drive, but for the upper mid-west, Chicago is the toughest commute for your money.

And it takes a lot more money, too. The Chicago Tribune today features Gridlock City’s Number 1 status at the gas pump: we pay the most in the nation for our juice. A separate article tries to explain the whole mess. Refinery problems, local taxes, extra fuel processing to counter act smog - I’m not convinced.

Two things keep creeping into my mind, things the stories don’t cover: War uses fuel, and Unprecedented profits by oil companies last year. Why isn’t that on the table? Hush-hush, closed door meetings between Vice President Halliburton and the energy moguls a few years back might have something to do with why I’m gouged for gasoline every summer.

In Gridlock City, not only will you pay a premium for gas, but you’ll spend more of it while sitting in traffic jams and breathing the brown haze. Such are the perils of modern times.

Do you listen to the radio via the Internet? Enjoy it while it lasts, because it’s doomed:

I like Accuradio.com. They provide the best selections of genres I have found yet. They’re always thinking of new ways to mix the music and appease the eclectic in all of us. Today, I received a desperate email from them:

Dear AccuRadio listener,

We’re organizing a campaign today that may save AccuRadio, and we need your help.

AccuRadio is facing a very serious issue that could silence us forever. As you may know, a recent government ruling has dramatically increased the royalties that Internet radio stations must pay to record labels and recording artists. In our case, it’s an almost 1,200% increase — jumping to about 150% of revenues in 2006 and beyond.

Since no business can survive if it has to pay 150% of revenues for a single expense, AccuRadio and most other webcasters will be bankrupted on July 15th when payment is due. (You can read more about this in a Seattle PI article here or Chicago Tribune article here.)

Fortunately, there is a solution on the horizon! A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress called the "Internet Radio Equality Act" that would overrule the new rates and keep Internet radio alive.

Our goal today is to flood Congress with phone calls from AccuRadio listeners. Please, click the button below (between 9AM and 5PM ET) and call your two Senators and your Congressman and ask them to please co-sponsor the "Internet Radio Equality Act." (After you type in your zip code, you’ll be given the phone numbers to call and a sample script to use.)

 
Please, if you can, call today and help us save AccuRadio. Thanks for your help!

Sincerely,
Laura Holt
Editor

We’ve all heard about Digital Rights Management, a euphemism for Feed the Fat Cats, wherein entertainment media conglomerates are shaking in their Puss-N-Boots over the freewheeling technologies of the twenty-first century. To protect their market shares, companies like Sony BMG and Time Warner are creatively trying to limit the rights of paying customers to play music and video on any device they prefer. You can’t download from iTunes, burn it to CD to play in your car, nor can you buy Ghostbusters and copy it to your laptop to watch it after hours on a business trip. In order to protect the rights of the "owners" of the media, consumer rights are infringed.

If I remember my civics, free market trade is a cornerstone of Republican values. Regulating commerce in favor of the big guys is the antithesis of a free market. Not only is the White House loading the dice in favor of political contributors, it is betraying a long-held value of its constituents.This is just one of many ways the Bush administration has favored big business over all other considerations: The Best White House Money Can Buy.

Show your support of free markets and call your congressperson on behalf of consumer’s right to chose. And listen to the radio on the Internet, buy from their links and show the Fat Cats that online radio can be their friend.

Reuters reports a BushCo deal to sell Iraq 400 million rounds of ammunition for a proposed cost of $500 million.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the Iraqi government had asked for up to 100 million rounds of both M855 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammunition for small arms, as well as about 200 million other bullets.

"This proposed sale directly supports the Iraqi government and serves the interests of the Iraqi people and the U.S., as well as offering hope for a more stable and peaceful Middle East," said the agency that handles government-to-government arms sales.

The package would help Iraqi forces "sustain themselves in their efforts to bring stability to the country and prevent overflow of unrest into neighboring countries," a statement said.

Where did the money come from? Iraq’s economy is trashed, the people don’t even have water or electricity, how can the government extract taxes from am impoverished and besieged people? Maybe their buying the bullets with all the millions of wasted and missing money the bush administration lost last year. That would explain much.

And really -

The notice of a proposed sale is required by law. Congress has the power to reject it. The deal could be worth up to $508 million if all options are exercised.

As part of the proposed package, the United States would sell 170,000 40mm HEDP grenades, 80,000 C-4 1-1/4 pound plastic explosive packets and 4.2 million feet of detonating cord.

The deal would also involve up to 75 million gallons (341 million liters) of diesel, 2.9 million gallons (13 million liters) of JP-8 jet fuel and 56.4 million gallons (256 million liters) of motor gasoline, the statement said.

The administration, in a separate notice to lawmakers, proposed to sell to Turkey Raytheon Co.-built AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and related gear valued at up to $71 million if all options are exercised.

- is this the path to peace? I supposed of they’re all dead, rotting in the desert sand and feeding the vultures, it would get mighty peaceful for a while. Later, after a few sandstorms bury the corpses, Exxon-Mobil-Connoco-Phillips-Citgo can move in and - using US troops as industrial security - pump all the oil from the dead ground. In a millions years or two, all the dead Iraqis will become another layer of petroleum themselves. Let the circle be unbroken…

Ahh …the inverse verbosity of the Bush administration: failure equals progress, war equals peace, culture of life equals Department of Defense, Department of Justice equals political cronyism, clean air act equals relaxed pollution controls, patriot act equals erosion of freedom… Had enough yet?

This from ActForChange:

On May 1, 2003, in a highly staged photo-op, President Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Four years later, the war is still raging — with no end in sight. The mission has not been accomplished.

In honor of all those who have been killed, whose lives have been destroyed in this terrible war of choice, Robert Greenwald has created a short film that will not let the president’s misguided declaration go unnoticed.

Watch: Mission Accomplished:

That’s what the Google link said: The Saddest Thing On The Internet. So I clicked. It took me to http://www.poverty.com/. At the top of the page, a world topographical map is overlayed by images of people and their names, which also scroll along the right side of the map.

About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.

Further along the left sidebar, the header reads: What You Can Do. First choice? Print A Letter. Here’s the American Letter:

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
USA

We respectfully ask our government to help stop the tens of thousands of preventable deaths that occur every day from hunger and poverty-related diseases.

Specifically, we ask our country to honor the agreement it made and signed at the 2002 Monterrey Conference and again at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit to make concrete efforts towards giving 0.7% of our national income in aid to poor countries.

The United Nations estimates that when all 22 countries that signed the agreement meet the 0.7% goal, the resulting $195 billion each year will be enough to effectively end hunger and extreme poverty in the world.

We commend the countries that have already reached the 0.7% goal: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

We also commend the countries that have set up a schedule to meet the 0.7% goal and encourage them in their efforts to reach it as soon as possible: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

We respectfully ask the six remaining countries to honor their agreement and set up a schedule to reach the 0.7% goal: Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States.

Thank you.

2006 International Aid Donated

COUNTRY	Aid as % of income	How close to the 0.7% goal
Sweden	1.03	Already reached goal
Luxembourg	0.89	Already reached goal
Norway	0.89	Already reached goal
Netherlands	0.81	Already reached goal
Denmark	0.80	Already reached goal
Ireland	0.53	Scheduled for 2012
United Kingdom	0.52	Scheduled for 2013
Belgium	0.50	Scheduled for 2010
Austria	0.48	Scheduled for 2015
France	0.47	Scheduled for 2012
Switzerland	0.39	No schedule yet
Finland	0.39	Scheduled for 2010
Germany	0.36	Scheduled for 2014
Spain	0.32	Scheduled for 2012
Canada	0.30	No schedule yet
Australia	0.30	No schedule yet
New Zealand	0.27	No schedule yet
Japan	0.25	No schedule yet
Portugal	0.21	Scheduled for 2015
Italy	0.20	Scheduled for 2015
United States	0.17	No schedule yet
Greece	0.16	Scheduled for 2015
		Source: OECD

Today is another Cynical Sunrise for me: My first impulse is to holler "Yeah, George! Your Godforsaken War is killing even more people that we thought. Live up to your agreements, and give the money to these people." Then, upon a second glance at the included table (above), I note that the only industrialized nations that have lived up to their promises are Scandinavians and a few neighbors. What’s wrong with the rest of us?

I’m sick of this world. I’ve always thought it was going to Hell. It’s taking too long to get there. We humans deserve the Armageddon the Dominionists are angling for. Let’s just release the nukes and get it over with. Until and unless we start behaving civil toward each and every other human on this planet, then our "civilization" is only a poor and pathetic jest.

Please take a few minutes, an envelope and a stamp and send this letter to George Warmonger Bush and friends. They won’t care, but you’ll have done a good deed anyway. Then look into your soul, your pocketbook, your dreams for a better future, and give to an international hunger organization. Failing that, visit theHungerSite and click away… Do something - especially since our government won’t.

Three dollars a gallon - already!

The annual Gasoline Gouge season is upon us and, similar to the newly extended presidential primary season, it’s early. CNN reports average prices to be $2.87 a gallon. It’s always higher than average in Chicagoland. Here in the County of Cook - what with all the layers of taxation accrued - the cheapest gas is $2.89. Or is was yesterday. Last night the gasoline price gremlins went to work raising the bar by ten cents. The "Premium" grades are thirty cents more. (What makes them premium besides the premium price?)

I usually use the good stuff to keep my fifteen year-old engine as clean as possible. See: I’ve bought into (literally) the marketing flim-flam. As I squeeze the nozzle, I’m being squeezed for more money in return. Squeeze me some more, show me you love me.

CNN also mentions the eventuality of $4-per-gallon. Unprecedented profits derive from unprecedented prices.  If that ain’t magic, I don’t know what is…

One wonders what they’re going to do with all that money - start a war? Oh. Yeah…

Shouldn’t they be buying their own soldiers?

King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan plans to abdicate the throne next year. He is, after all, 100 years old. His vision is to modernize his tiny nation, and for the past decade he has brought in modern imports such as cable television and the Internet. Too, he has ordered his nation to begin mock elections in preparation for installing a Democracy.

 Four political parties presents directional choices for the new Democracy, each named for the national symbol a Druk, or thunder Dragon: Druk Green, Druk Blue,  Druk Red and Druk Yellow. The citizens are to vote for the party that best represents their priorities for the fledgling  government.

The elections test the democratic process on a people that love their king, so much so that they will vote because he tells them to. It is because of this affection, and the precepts of Buddhism that keep this small society orderly. And, perhaps, their monarch’s interest in a non-western ideal of Gross National Happiness. As the NY Times reports:

“The objectives are to ensure national security, national sovereignty, well-being and prosperity, which will lead to gross national happiness also,” the prime minister said. “His Majesty believes this is the best form of government, and the people of Bhutan are ready to launch this.”

How the strange lures of modernity will affect the gross national happiness, the unusual yardstick the king invented to measure his nation’s progress, is a matter of uncertainty and wonder in this country. Gross national happiness includes criteria like equity, good government and harmony with nature.

How refreshing. A possible Democracy devoted to the pursuit of happiness. That sounds vaguely familiar…

Using such a yardstick to progress is revolutionary. No other Democracy has one. That’s the Buddhism philosophy shining through; the recognition that everyone seeks happiness and avoids suffering. Imagine a government actively seeking to improve the happiness of its citizens instead of it’s wealth? Fascinating!

But little Bhutan must be strong to not let the capitalism /consumerism message seep into and pollute their high ideals. Just the inclusion of foreign television may be enough to turn a grand experiment sour. Brainwashing people to mindlessly consume, a mainstay of broadcast programming here, has done little toward America’s Gross National Happiness. And I wonder how these tame Buddhists-types will react to Internet porn?

You know what they say…Stay Tuned.

I’m sick of the Baby Boomers. We all know of them - the children of the Greatest Generation, born after WWII and before 1960 (roughly), who found themselves, by virtue of numbers, a force to be reckoned with early in their lifecycle. Clearly, it went to their heads.

During the Summer of Love, America gave the keys to our nation to a group of hippies. The media taught them they mattered, they were powerful, they were the future. Now we live in that future, and the Boomers, cannot hide the effects of wanton capitalism, reckless consumerism, exploitation of developing nations, and pollution. These are the same issues the hippies were denouncing 40 years ago. Instead, they conformed, reformed, and accelerated the same vicious cycles.

So many of them, draft dodgers and war haters in their youth, became chicken hawks when they realized how wars can affect stock portfolios. So many of them, once advocates of affirmative action, desegregation and civil liberties as defined by the 1960’s, have reversed themselves or - as Don Imus represents - exposed their inner racist and innate misogyny to the world. Too many children have been born to Boomer parents who ignore them in favor of selfish monetary pursuits, fleeting sexual adventures, and narcissistic preoccupation with angst never outgrown.

People refer to those born after the Baby Boomers as "the ME generation." This is an error perpetrated by members of the Boomers, who themselves are the greediest, most selfish generation in American history. Just look at the people in power now, how they comport themselves. Read the news. Our government is run by a generation of bloated self-worth, fed by a media designed for them in mind, now run by them, too. Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the New American Century, has been found to have secured his girlfriend a fat pay check using clout gain by his patronage-begotten position as head of the World Bank. His response was to refuse the option of stepping down. Selfish bastard.

And then there’s the Bush Administration… Every thing they touch, from the Iraqi Oil Grab debacle and the breaking of the Geneva Conventions to the firing of US attorneys for political gain, shouts out their greed and selfishness, their convictions that they can do whatever they want, just as they were told when they were children. In fact, in many ways they still are children: just watch the pouting tirades of our President. (Anyone who flips the bird at a running camera and thinks it’s funny is truly unfit for public office.)

Now we learn that Boomers aren’t as healthy as their parents. Perchance a a lofe of drug abuse, rehabilitation and excessive consumerism is hard on the body?

The world may still survive them, but the whole of the 21st century will be dominated by reparation for the damage done by one generation of people. It’s good that they are finally dying off, to leave the world a shambles for their estranged offspring to try and fix. Humanity can learn from them what not to do in the future. Sometimes negative lessons are the most potent.

Good Riddance.