This new system of markets and currencies that were established and run in a peer-to-peer setting by the producers of value in society. That is the peasants, the working men and women. And the feudal lords were not participating. They didn’t know how to produce value. So they decided to force their way into the market. Essentially stealing from the poor by forcing prohibitive laws that limited trade, that limited currencies, and prevented one individual or company from being the end-to-end producer of products and services.

I highly recommend reading this excellent article by Mr. Rushkoff. By the end he is concluding that we (the 99%) need to help the 1% and teach them to use their wealth to become producers of value. To re-invest in the economy all the wealth that they have sucked out of it. But I disagree. The problem is that these people are not going to be willing to change by and large.

The 1% not only don’t know anything about producing value, but they refuse to do so even when given the chance. They like living high on the hog and don’t appreciate true hard work. They are nothing but a hindrance to the rest of us. All they care about (most of them anyway) is making more money and power for themselves and being served.

I think it is time that we stop serving them entirely. We are the ones that give them the power. We do this by cooperating with them, by following their orders and their rules and their petty laws. We LET them control us and our lives because we don’t know any other way to live. This is how it has been for as long as we can remember.

We already have a foothold here though. We have established farmers markets, flea markets, garage sales, person to person exchanges through Craigslist and other online classifieds. We have started, once again, to cut out the 1% from controlling our lives. But we need to do more.

Currently the 1% is lobbying Congress and governments around the world to pass laws that will keep them in power and in disgusting amounts of wealth. They push for laws like SOPA and PIPA. They try to get international trade agreements like ACTA and TPP passed in multiple countries. All of these are attempts by the elite individuals and corporations to maintain a high level of control of the world’s markets, something that has been quickly slipping away from them due to the Internet (which gives us many more tools for communication and new markets) and the higher level of knowledge and education that everyone worldwide is gaining.

They make claims of health and safety, of fairness, and they speak about what everyone owes them. They ask us to have some compassion and have some respect. Yet they show us none and they deserve neither.

I am done catering to the rich and letting them steal from the rest of us. It is time we establish solid peer-to-peer local economies again. For a long time now I have been thinking that we need to get back to what made our communities so strong and wealthy in the first place. We used to trade amongst each other. To exchange goods and services. To produce everything we need for survival within the local community. We would then trade what is left with other communities. And we never borrowed more than we could afford.

We need to get back to self-sustaining communities. Back to local pride and production. Back to being neighbors. We need to stop relying on distant outsiders that we never meet and start relying on each other and ourselves again.

We can still do great things and the 1% can participate. But they can only participate by lowering themselves to our level and becoming producers again for the first time in almost a millennia. They would learn to appreciate real hard work and the rest of us would appreciate the newly established friendships and brotherhood, the new community that brings us all together.

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Recent figures claim that up to 8% of the prison population have had previous military service, even though precise number of veterans passing through the justice strategy is not currently known.

To help examine why this countless servicemen are being released front in the courts probation services are helping learn as soon as possible whether suspects and those found guilty of criminal offences have served their country within the army, navy or air force.

Once with these records it’s hoped that the probation services will be better equipped to know why former service personnel arrive at commit crime and just how advisable to help them when they enter the judicial system. It’s hoped once probation services realise why the unusually high proportion of ex-service personnel become proven to the courts chances are they could probably offer insight prior to the behaviour displayed by former armed personnel encounter the police.

Dave Ankers can be a Parachute Regiment veteran who now works in the probation service. Speaking of de-mobbed service women and men, he admits that: “The great majority ones crack lets start on life, but there’s a percentage who don’t.” he continued to convey that individuals leaving the military can face many problems as they attempt to return to civilian life, problems including finding work and accommodation, dealing with everyday tasks for instance paying your bills and making sure they’re eating properly, these are things that were handled for them by some-one else whilst serving.

These day to day problems, often together with the mental stress which comes from knowing active service may cause problems such as substance dependency or anger management and violence issues.

Once identified, former servicemen could be referred to organisations offering specialist support, those organisations include Combat Stress, The British Legion and also the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association.

It’s recognized that a high proportion of homeless people have served inside the armed forces, at a few points in the past decade possibly a complete quarter of people sleeping rough or taking advantage of shelters and hostels have been in the help. Research shows how the numbers of homeless former servicemen can come upon the thousands. It’s belief that having problems adjusting to independent living and working with day by day events again, can have a greater emotional impact.

Due to training they received while serving their country, ex military staff is tough and resilient but ill equipped to cope with problems which fall beyond their direct control. If not offered the proper support and advice these problems can simply lead to antisocial and criminal behaviour or allow people to drift into homelessness.

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Recently Facebook made a decision to make improvements to its web page and setting in order to deal and work with the many problems experienced by the team. There have been individuals who appeared to be misusing Facebook. For that reason, an increasing number of people are abandoning Facebook and this in-turn indicates business decline for the owners. Facebook has been blamed for many things one of these is that it brings about extra relationship affairs and infidelity. Even though I really don’t agree with that simply because just how can some website influence an individual. Religious issues likewise came about. Comments concerning religious figures did raise some eye brows from diverse religious communities. Enthusiasts get troubled with these things and some ones made a decision to leave Facebook completely. People still have uncertainties about how much of their personal data is really private.

The purpose of these adjustments fairly recently applied in Facebook is to guard its end users and make sure that inappropriate contents are not authorized in the site.

Facebook has given the opportunity for people to sign in as the business owner rather than themselves. In cases like this, the site owner talks with others as a company rather than as an individual account. This feature is available under account settings from wherein you can choose to whom you want to sign in to. In the past, this was not allowed. In addition, a team is designated to evaluate comments made on Facebook. This staff flags inappropriate content and can take it off or suspend the owner’s account.

If you are fond of improving Facebook pages using tabs, you might not like how the new adjustments would affect you. People began adjusting tabs to customize their pages, to reflect their hobbies and interests and regularly used applications. With the alteration in effect however, individuals need to drop tabs and use iframes. There’s even a huge possibility that you will have to buy a Facebook kit to make this work. For this reason alone, many individuals simply do away with designing webpages. Because individuals before required minimal experience to create their tabs. These new modifications to with iframes favor web-developers for they have much more flexibility in editing pages using CSS and XHTML for web page layout.

The Facebook web page structure also looks confusing now as the links are presented down the page now and your photos are viewable at the top. People are also facing a number of concerns with privacy. For example, if we like fan pages our personal information gets exposed to other users. It also lets you know which other sites and social networks other users have joined. These new policies and protocols have even more puzzled the users of Facebook making it troublesome for people to use it.

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"Waiting for Superman"

I just finished watching the movie “Waiting for Superman” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/). It is so damn sad and the fact that this is really going on makes me want to cry.

What I learned from this is that everyone in this country needs to change their attitudes when it comes to education and to the teachers behind them. The attitude of entitlement these teachers have is a big problem that keeps horrible teachers in the job. The attitudes of all these competing agendas that the adults involved have shows a real lack of concentration on the most important ones in this equation, the children. And the attitudes of those in the community, the giving up, the lack of responsibility needs to be changed.

But how can we change the culture of our entire nation? Those in power act like this is important, but most are really indifferent to those most severely effected by this tragedy. I am talking about the poorest amongst us. Maybe its time to rewrite all the rules. To cancel all the contracts, eliminate tenure and start over. No more politics, no more power struggles, everyone treated equally.

Can this happen? Of course. Will it happen? No, unless someone takes charge and stifles the objections to the changes that have to be made to make this possible.

I would love to hear what others think of this.

Even more appalling are the intentional information leaks. A famous person is treated at a medical facility and one of the medical staff copies their file and sells it to a magazine. Believe it or not, a relative of a medical worker stole a spreadsheet that contained patients’ contact info and contacted them to to tell them they were HIV positive as a joke. Some of these situations make us wonder in disbelief.

An important question is raised when it comes to privacy violations, whether it’s unintentional or not. Is there ever an instance that makes it ok be in violation of HIPAA rules? Is there ever a time when there is something more important than protecting a patient’s privacy? Are there times when keeping a patients’ information private might cause them—or others—more harm than good?

First, we need to acknowledge a couple things. The previous examples are undoubtedly wrong on the part of the HIPAA violators and harmful to the victims—psychologically, emotionally, and financially. Many times it is obvious that HIPAA regulations result in protecting patient privacy. Personal financial gains should never be the result of exploiting someones medical information. In addition, spreading inaccurate information about someones health should never be done by anyone. That is clear. However, what about the gray areas?

What about public safety? Is there ever a time when it is better for the safety and health of the public to disclose health information about an individual? What about highly contagious diseases – should schools and workplaces be notified in order to protect others? Due to HIPAA, you are required to protect that persons privacy, but what about the health of others that could be negativly affected by being around them? Certainly the health of those individuals are not any less important.

What about the patient’s own safety and well-being? Physicians have access to a large amount of personal information. According to HIPAA, he must keep that info private. What if a doctor is aware of a recent suicide attempt and thinks it would be beneficial to notify a family member to have them keep an eye on the patient and offer support? Is it better to guard the patient’s privacy or his life?

These questions are not easy to answer. But in a world that has become so obsessed with safeguarding the privacy of the individual, maybe it is time to stop and ask ourselves “Is there a downside to so much privacy?”

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Whilst most people are thrilled for the recently engaged couple, the cynics amongst us might be thinking otherwise.  With separation and divorce rates higher than ever before, many people are looking at pre-nuptial legal agreements to ensure that their assets continue to be secure should a divorce or separation ever come to pass.  To many, this would appear to be taking out the romance and undermine the vows.  Nonetheless, needless to say, life is unpredictable and you will never be certain exactly what the future has in store.

The Royal family has seen cases of divorce previously and although ex-members of the royal family are certainly not necessarily left in the lurch, the marriage next year may be the most contemporary wedding party yet.  With present times come modern day conventions and pre-nuptials are increasingly getting to be common in Western culture.

What might a royal pre-nup be like then?  Royals have many public obligations but perhaps more significantly, an exponential surge in general public curiosity and coverage.  However, we have seen that when a royal marriage does result in separation and divorce, whilst it can lead to a profitable speaking career, it can also lead to financial uncertainty when individuals have become comfortable with a certain lifestyle.

Pre-nuptial contracts work through making sure that if a couple get divorced, their assets continue to be their own and are not split amongst the parties.  Conventionally, each party would be eligible for 50% of the earnings from the marriage period.  That is to say, if one of the parties didn’t generate income over the marriage, they might still be in a position to receive a large percentage of their partner’s income.  This has resulted in divorce settlements going above $100 million.

Arguably a royal divorcee would still be taken care of to some degree by the Royal Household, even if there wasn’t a pre-nuptial agreement.  Despite all this, a royal couple getting married would almost certainly not obtain a pre-nuptial agreement – especially given that pre-nuptial agreements have contested legitimacy in the uk. 

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Late yesterday afternoon, news broke out of riots on the streets, with the Millbank building a key target. Students managed to shatter the ground floor window of the building, sending glass shards cascading down onto the street. The students got into the inner sanctums of Tory HQ, one even making it into the main office, some got to the roof where they dropped objects on the police below.

Police with shields attempted to contain the crowds, but with just two hundred officers send to a protest made of up around thirty thousand people, they were powerless to make an impact, and focused on protecting staff in the Millbank building. Of course the rowdy mob are to blame for these unacceptable scenes of violence and destruction, doing nothing to help their cause, but the Met police should have planned better for the event.

It was in fact a small number of students causing the trouble, tarnishing the protest as a whole. While the students certainly got publicity, rather than winning public sympathy for their supposed peril, they earned detractors who condemned the way the protest went. If students want to go to uni now they will need to take out large loans, or személyi kölcsönas a Hungarian student would say, to pay for it.

Protesting students may be getting more than they originally bargained for however, images of the riot were caught on CCTV and those who caused damage or harm to others will be found and prosecuted, possibly compromising their  future studies. Students have really given themselves a bad name.

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I recently commented on an online Newsweek article about the informants who have leaked government documents and I thought that I would expand upon myself even more here. The issue is whether or not these informants are heroes or villains. The problem with this issue is that the line here is so very blurry.

On one hand this man was trusted with military secrets and he betrayed that trust. This, in and of itself, would define him as a traitor. But the problem with this definition is that in reality the definition forgets the many nuances of life and the fact that whistle-blowers and leakers have to betray the trust given to them in order to report the wrong doing of others. This is also where the concept of a snitch comes from. No one likes a snitch, but those that the snitch reports back to consider that person a hero.

The Good, The Bad, and The Just Plain Wrong

Any time wrong doing is exposed there is going to be two sides to the coin. The side that looks at the whistle-blower with gratitude and the side that wants to make that person pay or be punished. If you think about it, in most cases, even when the situation is sensitive, the person who reveals the wrong doing by others isn’t the bad guy. These people are exposing an ugly truth. The people that should be getting punished are the ones that committed the wrong doing that was revealed.

The problem is when it comes to a government situation, the politicians turn on the propaganda machine and start hiding behind national security claims or whatever claims will most highly sway the public. In most cases the real truth is that the only danger is to the career and freedom of politician and other people that are committing the crimes in the first place.

Basically what I am saying is don’t shoot the messenger. We don’t bury paid professional reporters for revealing big government secrets. Of course often times the big organizations will run it by a government office to see if they can get away with it. Seems like Gestapo-like practices to me. But when real people that are not getting paid to reveal these secrets actually take the initiative to do the right thing we try to crucify them. Thats not right, its stupid and lunacy.

Citizen Heroes

These are the same types of people that broke open the Enron case, that revealed the horrible practices of gold collecting companies that buy your gold. These people are doing the right thing. Just because it involves the government or even the military does not mean that it is any less the right thing. It just means it is more complicated and has further reaching implications, mainly for the careers and freedom of those behind the crimes being reported.

Has everyone already forgotten Abu Ghraib? This case was busted wide open by informants that reported the torture and sexual abuse of prisoners there. These informants were labeled heroes and the soldiers that committed the crimes criminals. You want to know why? Because the soldiers that committed this crime were nobodies. They were not important. They were not connected nor were they politicians or diplomats or generals. The military and the government were able to wash their hands clean of the matter.

Crucifying The Messenger

But then look at the informants such as Bradley Manning or Julian Assange or what about Daniel Ellsberg? These guys leaked some pretty big issues to the public eye. Right now Julian Assange’s reputation is getting torn to pieces because he made big scary documents available to the public. He didn’t do anything wrong. Heck, he did’t even promote the information. News agencies world-wide are the ones that introduced the public to the documents. Should those agencies leaders and reporters be arrested and punished?

This whole situation is absurd. If we allow the government to get away with locking up these people for revealing criminal actions by the government then we are moving more towards a Nazi-like state. We cannot allow our fears and doubts control us. We can’t keep giving up our freedoms in the name of security. Remember what Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, once said “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”.

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Imagine if you could own a house filled with furniture, with a pool in the backyard and a big flat screen in your living room; all for under 50$ a month. Well, this is not possible in reality; but it is possible in Second Life.

Although Second Life (SL) is typically called a “game” it does not fit the definition of the game. There is no challenge, goal or objective in it. You are not required to face some sort of monster to “win”. Instead, you’re able to fully customize your avatar to your liking and live a lifestyle you cannot live in real life. Beyond the many things you can become and participate in, you may also earn real life money in Second Life.

The Birth of a Second Life

In 2001, a California based company called Linden Labs, led by Phillip Rosedale created a game called “LindenWorld”. During its creation and early stages, LindenWorld was not open to the public. The game was very weapon focused and the avatars were made out primitives. A primitive (also known as prim) is a single part object. If you have a multiple part object, together they are called “prims”.

In Second Life, all physical objects in the virtual world are made out of prims. This includes things such as houses, vehicles, jewelry, shoes, hair, and occasionally some clothing parts. Typically, objects made in Second Life are made out of prims that are built in world. However, with some 3D graphics programs, you can make things called sculpts. Sculpts can be uploaded in world as a texture and put into a prim, to make something seem more realistic and smooth.

Every avatar in the system had a gun and you could throw grenades to terraform the land, which back then was the only way to alter the land’s shape, hills, etc; also known as terraforming. The grenades interacted with prims, making them explode when a grenade was thrown at them. Eventually, LindenWorld was further developed and Linden Labs decided it was time to release a Beta version of the game for others to test.

Linden Labs, also known as LL, decided before the Beta they would give the game a name that fit it better. After looking at several names, LL settled on the name “Second Life” (Nino). LL released the Beta of Second Life and on March 13th, 2002; Steller Sunshine was the first non-Linden employee avatar created (Nino).

Seven months later, LL opened a public beta. In the public beta, the SL Grid had 16 regions, a majority of which had been named after alleyways that LL knew in San Francisco. In Second Life, a grid refers to an integrated system that provides a networked collection of servers, some of which are simulators that implement the presentation of land. Those are arranged in the form of a rectangular mesh.

In addition, the SL grid provides a set of other services, including presence, inventory management, and asset store, that integrate with but are independent of the simulators. In the grid, there are individual sims which are a named 256m x 256m (65,536 m²) area hosted by a single simulator process, also called a “sim” (Linden Research).

In common usage, the term “simulator” or “sim” may also refer to a region, but in fact a single server process can host multiple regions (Linden Research). The first region created was called “Da Boom” (Linden Research). April 2003, Second Life’s first beta viewer was opened to the public.

Eventually, the LindeX system was put into place, which is the economy for SL. You could purchase Lindens by using a real life credit or debit card, or by earning them in the game through various means. LL also opened a blog for SL, and the viewer received updates, changes and overall improvement.

When SL was first opened to the public all members had to pay for memberships, that is until LL focused on land sales. Residents were able to begin purchasing land, and put down houses, businesses, etc. Residents began to pick up on the idea, and began purchasing massive amounts of land that they broke into parcels that other residents could rent. In 2006, SL user Anshe Chung became the first millionaire whom made their money solely off of profits from a virtual game (Hof).

What You Can Do With Your Second Life

There are a multitude of things you can be and do in Second Life. There are hundreds of different kinds of avatars in Second Life, some including adult human, teen human, child human, elves, nekos (Human like creatures that have human features except they have tails and ears.

Occasionally their skin may be look like a cat and they may have claws, but still wear human clothing), furries (Creatures that walk and talk like a human, but are furry all over with tails, ears, an animal like nose, and paws), vampires, lycans, dragons, dogs, cats, and many more. Some people choose their avatar to look how they wished they look in real life. Others may choose their avatar to be a virtual version of themselves.

There are residents of second life who chose to be a child avatar, and get adopted by a family and interact with them like a child would, because they did not have a good childhood- or they would simply like to relive their childhood.

Since buying Lindens in Second Life is relatively cheap, compared to how much things cost in real life, many people like to purchase land, a house, furniture, etc to make a home in Second Life. Those with creative talent may actually be the ones who build the houses other residents purchase.

Some residents choose to own other types of businesses, such as clubs, role-plays, hangouts, and other various miscellaneous places to entertain residents. Many famous real life places have been recreated in Second Life. You can visit Hollywood and Los Angeles in the virtual world, or climb the Eiffel Tower. There is also a few SL McDonalds floating around. The possibilities are limitless.

Virtual Money… Into Real Money?

A few of the people who chose to open a business or place of entertainment in Second Life, have actually either made a large profit off of it, or at least get a vast amount of traffic. For example, SL resident Katey Coppola owns a popular pose store in SL called Glitterati. Coppola is a woman who originally came to SL for the fashion culture, and eventually started playing around with making her own animations.

In December of 2008, Coppola lost the SL job she had and decided to open a small store selling the poses she had already created. Much to her surprise, the little store exploded into something much bigger. Now the store has its own full sim and more traffic than Coppola would have ever imagined. Although it does not happen for a lot of SL residents, Coppola was lucky and actually makes a real life living out of her SL profits.

“My store has been my RL income for over a year now. My goal was for it to break even in month one, which was a big ask anyway, but instead of breaking even it made a five figure profit. So my goal for the months that followed it was for it to double its profit each month, and every month it exceeded it hugely. My biggest monthly sales to date occurred in December 09.” (Coppola)

Virtual Nightlife and Entertainment

Although some residents use SL as a money making venture, others simply use SL to entertain other residents, and pay for it out of their own pockets. Some residents have opened clubs, typically themed for certain residents in Second Life. In example, SL resident, Hera Emms opened the Greek Gold Lesbian Resort. GGLR is on a whole sim (island). On one part of the sim, is a club with a dance floor where DJs and Hosts hold events with prizes almost 24/7.

Contests are general themed and the prizes are typically around 1000L$, which converts into about 4$ USD. The club is exclusive to women only, to provide a safe environment to women in SL who like other women and just want to have a good time. Typically, clubs such as GGLR are not profitable to the owner, but they may actually be self-sustaining while providing entertainment for like-minded SL residents.

Another form of entertainment that SL residents enjoy is role-playing. Role-playing is when you play the role of a character you or someone else has created and you pretend to be that character. SL has many sims that are dedicated to themed role-play. There is many role-play sims, such as one popular one called “Toxia”. Toxia was created by SL resident, Miss Wright. The sim is an urban decaying destroyed city environment, based in the future. The storyline for Toxia follows as such:

“A hell hole in its prime this blue collar port town was home to one of the largest chemical manufacturing plants in the country.  The people were riddled with illness and early death for years only to be ignored by the local authorities.  Along a very active fault line, the city wasn’t a stranger to occasional tremors; the buildings were built to withstand such things.

The chemicals dumped into the grounds for decades near the edge of town ate away like acid miles and miles straight down reaching the depths of hell.  Shaking the earth on its axis a volcano tore its way up through the ground causing the largest earthquake in the city’s history, partially collapsing the town and pushing it out into the sea.

The massive earthquake ignited a chemical explosion at the factory; mass quantities of toxic chemicals were pumped into the air causing delirium, sickness, mutations, and complete madness.

Hell’s creations released upon the town fused and evolved into unimaginable monstrosities.  After a poor attempt of containing the disaster the authorities seized this opportunity to erase their sins from history, out of the books and off of the maps. “  (Wright)

Besides shopping, going to clubs, and role-playing, there is so much more you can do in SL. Second Life has become increasingly popular, and even real life organizations and schools now hold events and classes in SL. Harvard, MIT, Virginia Tech and many more universities and schools have dipped their toes into SL.

Along with real life schools, a handful of big and small corporations have brought their organization to SL. As it is evident, Second Life is more than just a game. It is a virtual world that you can explore, create and imagine in. Although some play Second Life for its entertainment purposes, there are also many who play it and can make a real life profit out of it, as well as do things they can and cannot do in real life in the “game” of Second Life.

You may not become the next Second Life millionaire once you join the game, but there is a high chance that you can make new friends, have great experiences and enjoy an alternate reality for yourself, and have your very own Second Life.

Sources

Coppola, Katey. Interview. Sara C. Thurmond. 14 September 2010.

Hof, Robert D. “My Virtual Life.” Business Weekly (2006).

Linden Research. History of Second Life. 8 September 2010 <http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/History_of_Second_Life>.

Land – Second Life Wiki. 8 September 2010 <http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land>.

Nino, Tateru. The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life. 26 June 2010.

<http://www.massively.com/2010/06/26/the-virtual-whirl-a-brief-history-of-second-life/>.

Wright, Miss. Legend of Toxia. 2006. <http://www.toxiancity.com/about/legend>.

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