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I try to balance the edgier news with calmer stories. I know that my Dialogues With The Devil serialization may appear as a series of evil storm clouds, but I see it as possessing somewhat of a gothic and even humorous tone with the whole idea of Lucifer and Michael the Archangel pitching a fit with each other over the fate of our earth (Terra) by penning letters to one another. What happens to us after death? Do our actions while alive play a role? Surely we're all at least a bit curious for the answers that will only come with – the final episode.
In a similar vein as the old Vincent Price movies that a boy would take his date to so she would be scared and cuddle closer, the story could also be eerily reminiscent of the goofy 1966-1971 Dark Shadows soap opera (which I loved and watched regularly).
More seriously, it's like happening upon a fatal car accident on the highway and not wanting to look but looking anyway. One way is looking to purposely be chilled in order to cuddle closer to loved ones. The other way is looking – and seeing – to make aware, to make more cautious and courageous toward an extended journey along life's road for us all. Courage and fright. Yin and yang. Broken lines dividing the highway. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Life is like that, not all roses but not all fertilizer either. It's good to consider that roses rise from out of fertilizer. We can't have the bouquet scent of one without the other, nor can we have either without stopping to take notice, to inhale the moment.
By now, I'm sure many are wondering what this all has to do with hippies. Flowers? Yin and yang? A bummer?
I worry a bit that I may seem like a bummer sometimes with my posts that remind us of the other side of this highway that we all travel.
So, I thought I would post a much lighter (still heavy as in "heavy, man!" though not heavy as in "bummer, man!"), brief history of hippies that I wrote back in December in an email response to my lovely sister, who called me a hippie after receiving a new photo of me last Christmas [see photo at: Helplessly Hoping…for each other]. In fact, most of my family and friends have been calling me a hippie lately. I don't mind. I just want to dance!
Hippies are mostly to the left. Politically, I'm non-partisan. I can't for the life of me understand why people would poke themselves into a political box, right or left. It's like convincing oneself that truth only exists inside one's four walls and everyone outside is stupid and just doesn't get it. How is it possible for each of all of the political boxes out there to contain exclusive rights to the truth? It's not.
If the American election were held today, however, I would vote for Ron Paul. He represents nearest to my political beliefs, although I'm not in the Libertarian box. I'm not in the hippie box either, despite the below photo which was taken within the four walls of a carnival photo booth in 1973 when I was eighteen. 🙂
I researched the meaning of hippie recently with fascinating results. The word itself, according to Malcolm X's 1965 autobiography, comes from white zoot-suiters in early twentieth-century Harlem who loved "Negro" music and fashion and wanted to associate with them at clubs — to be hip like the Negroes.
Jack Kerouac, in his iconic 1955 book, On The Road, stated it quite starkly: "I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night".
Negroes like Malcolm X referred to these jumpin' whities as "hippies."
Similarly, there were many cover versions of Negro music by whites such as Elvis, Pat Boone, The Beatles, British Invasion musicians like The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and The Animals. They played the hell out of Negro music in order to live the Negroes' hell. Sounds fairly messed up to me at this point in my life.
Brett Dennen, one of the newest hippie musicians, released a single in 2006 entitled "There Is So Much More," in which he sang "I wonder how so many can be in so much pain / while others don't seem to feel a thing / then I curse my whiteness / and I feel so damned depressed / in a world with suffering / why should I be so blessed." It's an incredibly beautiful and well-written song with undeniable talent at its heart. I just think his lyrics are somewhat off-center from the true hippie path.
Kerouac embraced the art of pain by seeing the Negro world as blessed with "life, joy, kicks, darkness, music" and plenty of "night." He saw the life of whites as boring. True hippies, like Kerouac, just wanna dance.
Brennen sees the non-white's world as full of too much pain and suffering and calls the life of whites "blessed." He sees inequality and seems to want to extinguish the pain from which the joy pushes it's way out of in order to equal things out. People are, I believe, equal in nature — by common birth, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, but there is no equaling out of pain or joy. There's joy in life, along with the pain — or there's no joy. No fertilizer. No roses.
Aside from the word itself, there's the edenic, hippie lifestyle which begins (no surprise) with the garden of Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve. They were nude, ate fruits, veggies and basically a vegan diet. There were no barbers in Eden, so long flowing hair was the norm. After the fall, clothiers, meat-eaters and barbers set up shops.
Individuals who thought that an Eden-like, pre-fall existence more perfectly manifested the ideal of living a Godly life began to congregate. These congregations, which eventually included some of the first-century Gnostic groups, worshiped God through nudism, eating and living off the land and letting their hair grow free.
More groups followed, such as the Adamites and followers of mystics such as Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c.1327) in Middle-Ages Germany, as well as the Brothers and Sisters (Brethren) of the Free Spirit.
In the late nineteenth century, groups formed in Germany such as the lebensreform (life-reform) movement.
Many of them immigrated to America in the early twentieth century. They mainly congregated in various canyons near Los Angeles such as Topanga and Laurel Canyons where many counterculture musicians such as The Doors, Alice Cooper, Randy California of Spirit, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills and Nash later hung out. They called themselves the Nature Boys, living off the land, practicing nudity and wearing their hair long — free spirits, all of them.
The two most famous Nature Boys were eden ahbez (he purposely used all lower-case letters in his name and created a last name beginning with "a" and ending with "z" — alpha and omega) and Gypsy Boots.
Eden, in 1947, penned the one-hit wonder of one-hit wonders ballad "Nature Boy," first and uncomparably recorded in 1948 by Nat King Cole. The recordings followed by a seemingly unending stream of A-list artists such as Cher, Grace Slick, David Bowie, Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra, Jose Feliciano, Celine Dion, Johnny Mathis, Miles Davis, Stan Getz and George Benson to name a few.
The song has also been used on the soundtracks of film-after-film-after film, first in the 1948 movie The Boy With Green Hair (based on a 1946 Betty Beaton short story specifically about racial tension and prejudice toward Negroes but in the movie involving a war orphan whose hair suddenly turned green (color of nature), making him a greenish alien before his red, white and blue, war-supporting peers, somewhat as an American communist might have metaphorically appeared during that McCarthyist era of our country).
Since then, the song has been used in the 2001 films Angel Eyes with Jennifer Lopez and very beautifully in Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kidman. On last year's American Idol program, Casey Abrams (to his mentors' disbelief) performed a stunning rendering of the tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNRvnoDt82E&feature=related .
The song is the essential ballad of the hippie ideal, written by the essential forerunner of the California, 1960s hippies — eden ahbez, and he was the most prominent link between the historical edenites and the contemporary hippies. Ironically, this song, so important to the history of hippies was written by a white artist and first recorded by a black artist, as contrasted to all the white performers of songs written by black artists at that time.
"Nature Boy" had only fourteen lines, one of which repeats: "the greatest thing you'll ever learn / is just to love and be loved in return." Hippie philosophy if ever there was!
It was lifted, however, from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee": "And this maiden she lived with no other thought / than to love and be loved by me," used prominently in the 1971 Clint Eastwood, Poe-esque thriller, Play Misty For Me. [see: To love and be loved: An ode to disevered soulmates and St. Valentine for more on "Nature Boy" and "Annabel Lee."]
The second most famous Nature Boy was Gypsy Boots, who became a sort of spiritual presence for early California psychedelic groups such as The Seeds, The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane, performing on the same bill with many of them at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Both eden and Gypsy Boots became gurus of sorts during the psychedelic hippie era. Eden died tragically in a car accident in 1995 at the age of 86. Gypsy Boots died in 2004 just days shy of 90.
Afterwards, and presently, "Stevie" Boots became the spiritual inheritor of the hippie mantel. He now gives 15-minute consultations each morning at sunrise for a modest contribution of one blueberry-pomegranate croissant, one banana and a Grande Cafe Americano, no space. 🙂
"Peace, Love and Happiness" and "long beautiful hair" throughout 2012 to my lovely sister "of the free spirit" and her two groovy daughters, son and granddaughter.
For more fun with the daze of hippies, see: Revolution du Jour and Another Slice of American Pie ; Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" ; and Dion: Life and Near-Death On The Long and Winding Road .
Much of this information on hippies, I found at: http://www.hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=243 , which was excerpted from: Kennedy, Gordon. Children of the Sun; A Pictorial Anthology From Germany To California, 1883-1949. Nivaria Press, 1998.


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Bakı, 6 may 2014 – Newtimes.az
The crisis is getting worse. It's time for the president to rally the nation.
President Barack Obama needs to articulate clearly to the American people, and very soon, that the Ukraine crisis is the most important challenge to the international system since the end of the Cold War.
It is more than a month since the Russians annexed Crimea, and recent events have only exacerbated the crisis, with pro-Russian rebels reportedly shooting down two Ukrainian helicopters in separatist-held Slaviansk on Friday. Yet the president still hasn't laid out a comprehensive statement of what is really at stake: why we are facing this problem; why it is in our common interest to resolve it, with the Russians if possible; and why, if negotiation does not work out, we have an obligation to help Ukraine. Above all, the president must clarify why we cannot tolerate an international system in which countries are invaded by thugs and destabilized from abroad. And why this is a common responsibility not just for us but for our allies and other friends like the Chinese, whose stake in stability should be as great as ours.
On the whole, I support the actions the president has taken so far. Considering the kind of democratic alliance we have, I think he generally did as well as is possible under present circumstances. He has had to tread carefully. What I do fault him for is not explicitly and calmly, but in a broad perspective, addressing the American people on this issue. He hasn't made a single major statement to them on what potentially could be a major international crisis. He needs the support of the American people. Thus he has to convince them that this is important and that his stand deserves both national understanding and support.
Obama also has to generate some degree of conviction in the West that this is a joint responsibility, and he has to convince Moscow that we are serious. If we are to deter the Russians from moving in, we have to convince them that their aggression will entail a prolonged and costly effort. But it will be such only if the Ukrainians resist. Thus, we should be making an effort to negotiate with Russia even as at the same time we should be more open to helping the Ukrainians defend themselves if they're attacked. The Ukrainians will fight only if they think they will eventually get some help from the West, particularly in supplies of the kind of weaponry that will be necessary to wage a successful urban defense. They're not going to beat the Russians out in the open field were thousands of tanks to move in. They can beat them only through prolonged urban resistance. Then the war's economic costs would escalate dramatically for the Russians, and it would become futile politically. But to be able to defend a city, you have to have hand-held antitank weaponry, hand-held rockets and some organization.
Zbigniew Brzezinski is a former U.S. national security adviser and the author, most recently, of Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power.
Read more: Politico Magazine

subset: commoncrawl


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Home > Enterprise Used Cars California
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Estemeed reading ladies and gentlemen readers,
Since I want the little book to be more than just a novel, I want to make it slightly interactive. Despite seeing the characters from the perspective of other characters and especially through their actions, it would be a good idea to give some background on them, to understand them better and to hopefully give a better understanding of the whole novel.
The cast of characters will be continuously updated, as the novel advances.
Swords Made of Letters
Main Characters
Alexandre Reythier -
A senior officer of the Deuxieme Bureau (French Counterintelligence) and an experienced fighter, son of a decorated World War I veteran, Reythier is the key man for the Deuxieme Bureau as they investigate the increasingly frequent appearances of foreign spies from across all
Horace Benningham
A lowly member of the MI6, the British counterintelligence, whom he joined only 2 years ago when he turned 22, his desire to earn more money ended up with him being an important piece in solving a problematic issue of the MI6. He was privately employed by Sir Ian Beckett, a member of the British Parliament, who sent him to protect his mistress.
Richard Elbe
Early member of the SA, World War I veteran and close to 48 years old, Elbe is in charge of overseeing the spying efforts of Nazi Germany on the border with France and Belgium, initiating attacks.
Secondary Characters
Mathilda Adams Elbe - Beckett's mistress, she would prove to be of huge importance
Klaus Romain - Reythier's superior on paper, Klaus supervises the Deuxieme Bureau along the western border
Episodic Characters
Sir Ian Beckett - a corrupt member of the British Parliament, interested only
Lord Andrew Howe - a high ranking member of the MI6, the British Counterintelligence, second in command to the Chief of MI6 and the one responsible for cover action
Thomas Elbe - Richard's brother, Mathilda's husband and a member of the Luftwaffe


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A Good Superclásico Morning to everyone out there,
For those looking for some early morning reading before you head out to The Home Depot Center, check out my Three Points to the SuperClasico.
A note from last night's MLS results:With the Vancouver Whitecaps and San Jose Earthquakes picking up victories over Real Salt Lake and the Seattle Sounders respectively, the LA Galaxy now sit four points behind fourth place Vancouver ahead of tonight's match.
I'll have a few more updates as we get closer to the 8pm PST kick off.


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Museums & Learning Centers
From local talent to Renaissance masters, Tulsa showcases world-class art and expression in a variety of renowned museums and unique urban galleries, exhibitions and installations. Located in one of Tulsa's most beautiful neighborhoods, Philbrook Museum of Art was once the 72-room Italian villa of oil baron Waite Phillips. Today this Tulsa treasure is home to a stunning collection of classic, modern, Native American, and contemporary art, plus 23 acres of immaculate grounds that raise landscape design to an art form. Where is the world's largest collection of art and artifacts of the American West? Right here, at Gilcrease Museum, which also features an outstanding collection of Native American art and artifacts. History, up close and personal, awaits you in Tulsa.


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Acrylic Bubble Drinkware
Available for order totals between $35.00 and $2,000.00
Style No. 50149335
Crafted using a special process that allows tiny bubbles to form on the surface, this plastic glass is a festive, cheerful addition to the dining room, picnic table, or beach blanket.
- Plastic
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- Holds 12 oz
- Imported
Tumbler: 4"H, 3.75"D, 3.25" diameter at mouth, 2.25" diameter at base
Goblet: 6.25"H, 3.8"D, 3" diameter at mouth, 2.75" diameter at base


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Seventy-year-old Lola Faulk was beaten, shot in the head and rolled up in blankets with her dog that also was killed. Friday a jury found the last of her three killers guilty, according to the State Attorney's Office.
Raymond Breeden, 46, of Jacksonville will be sentenced to life in prison later this month for first-degree murder and armed burglary with assault or battery.
The investigation showed that in July 2009 Breeden and co-defendants George Landgraff, 33, and Jeff Johnson, 34, broke into Faulk's Shellcracker Road home to steal from her - she sold illegal prescriptions drugs there.
It turned into a murder as Faulk was shot multiple times in the head and smashed with a concrete block. She was found by her grandson, the State Attorney's Office said.
The jury didn't accept Breeden's defense that he was a drug dealer who helped Landgraff and Johnson sell the television they stole from Faulk, but that he didn't take part in the murder.
Landgraff has already been convicted of first-degree murder, and Johnson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.


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|Previous Page | Table of Contents | Index | Next Page
How To Get Tax Help(p12)
Contacting your Taxpayer Advocate.(p12)
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Free tax services.(p12)
Internet. You can access the IRS website at www.irs.gov 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to:
Phone. Many services are available by phone.
Evaluating the quality of our telephone services. To ensure IRS representatives give accurate, courteous, and professional answers, we use several methods to evaluate the quality of our telephone services. One method is for a second IRS representative to listen in on or record random telephone calls. Another is to ask some callers to complete a short survey at the end of the call.
Walk-in. Many products and services are available on a walk-in basis.
Mail. You can send your order for forms, instructions, and publications to the address below. You should receive a response within 10 business days after your request is received.
National Distribution Center
P.O. Box 8903
Bloomington, IL 61702-8903
CD for tax products. You can order Publication 1796, IRS Tax Products CD, and obtain:
Buy the CD from National Technical Information Service (NTIS) at www.irs.gov/cdorders for $25 (no handling fee) or call 1-877-CDFORMS (1-877-233-6767) toll free to buy the CD for $25 (plus a $5 handling fee). Price is subject to change.
CD for small businesses. Publication 3207, The Small Business Resource Guide CD for 2006, is a must for every small business owner or any taxpayer about to start a business. This year's CD includes:
An updated version of this CD is available each year in early April. You can get a free copy by calling 1-800-829-3676 or by visiting
|Previous Page | Table of Contents | Top of Page | Index | Next Page


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Bogost furrows his brow asking, "Why didn't they just click the 'Full Page' link to get to the cows?"You work for the Transportation Security Administration, manning the x-ray machine at a local airport. Your day begins easily enough, quickly scanning passengers' luggage and bodies and waving them through. But after a few minutes, you get an alert—shirts are now contraband. OK, fine, you dutifully strip people of their T-shirts as they pass through the metal detector. Then another alert: Mobile phones are prohibited, too. Wait, now coffee isn't allowed either, but cell phones are OK again. As you struggle to keep the new rules straight, the line of cranky passengers gets longer. Wait, snakes and turbans have just been outlawed. Oh, and shirts are allowed now, but you didn't realize that until you'd already stripped down another passenger. That's one strike against you. Now native headdresses are forbidden, turbans are OK, but shoes must be removed. You get confused and let a snake through—another black mark. The line of passengers begins to stretch across the room even as new regulations keep coming in faster than you can process them. Before long, you are fired—not because you've endangered anyone's safety, but because you failed to cope with the illogical edicts of a capricious bureaucracy.
Bogost furrows his brow asking, "Why didn't they just click the 'Full Page' link to get to the cows?"That pretty much sums up the experience of playing Jetset, a tongue-in-cheek but nerve-jangling iPhone game that almost makes you feel sorry for the petty tyrants behind the backscatter machine. Jetset is the brainchild of Ian Bogost, a game developer and academic. While some videogames let players vicariously experience the thrill of tossing a grenade into an enemy machine-gun nest, Bogost's offerings—designed under the auspices of his small development company, Persuasive Games—tend to simulate grinding, unsatisfying everyday experiences. In Fatworld, players are charged with managing a diet-and-exercise regimen on a limited budget; in Bacteria Salad, they must grow and sell tomatoes and spinach as quickly as possible while containing E. coli outbreaks. (The game ends when too many people violently shit themselves.) In one of Bogost's sentimental favorites, Disaffected!, surly Kinko's employees struggle to fill orders for angry customers. At first, the game seems similar to classics like Tapper or Diner Dash, which transform workplace demands into a source of fun. But Disaffected! offers no such alchemy. "Conventional games are structured to ensure you can accomplish tasks and level up," says Bogost, who has a PhD in comparative literature and is director of Georgia Tech's graduate program in digital media. "In our game, you can't. You can't see it as working your way up to becoming a manager or to starting your own office-supply store. That is not what this game is about. It is about working a bad job."
Cattle Call
Ian Bogost created Cow Clicker as a critique of Facebook games. Taking his cue from FarmVille, which encourages players to personalize their homestead with special crops and equipment, he drew a series of cows for his players to buy with virtual "mooney" or real money. As the game grew more popular, Bogost found himself cranking out dozens of new cow designs to keep his players entertained. Here are some of our favorites.
The Original: Plain Cow
Each player began with this bovine. The skewed nostrils and nonplussed expression made it oddly clickable. 4.
Most Popular: Steel Cow
This sleek bovine was purchased more than 5,600 times. At just 10 units of mooney, he was a steal. 5.
Most Timely: Oil Cow
Bogost offered this heifer for a limited time—he pulled it when the BP oil leak was capped. 6.
Most Nostalgic: Kowrate Kid
Fans of the film could also buy Cobra Cow, a reference to the evil Cobra Kai dojo. 7.
Most Family Friendly: My First Cow
Drawn by Bogost's daughter. Available with purchase of a $1.99 iPhone kids' tie-in game. 8.
Most Menacing: Cowthulhu
Bogost worked on and off for months on this intricate Lovecraftian homage. 9.
Most Cynical: Stargrazer
Bogost charged 2,500 mooney for this cow, which is identical to the free starter cow but faces the other way. 10.
Most Expensive: Hay Roller
For this dicey bovine, you had to shell out 100,000 mooney—or thousands of dollars. Bogost's role in the gaming industry is much like that of the acid-tongued class clown who knows he's smarter than his teachers. He writes a column for the news site Gamasutra in which he has compared Sony to "a baby that doesn't know its own arms aren't alien beings." His acerbic perspective has won him invitations to countless gaming conferences, where he always commands the center of attention—whether onstage or tweeting furiously from the audience. He even looks the part of the rebellious grad student, with hair that falls to the base of his neck, ebullient sideburns that almost reach to his goatee, and a lazy eye that twinkles with every bon mot.
But Bogost's irreverence belies a sincere belief in the potential of videogames. He sees them as tools to educate and enlighten, to "disrupt and change fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world," as he put it in his 2007 book, Persuasive Games. By immersing players in a foreign experience, games can help them understand the challenges and choices that others face, whether it's cash-strapped diabetics trying to be healthy or agriculture-supply-chain managers. Bogost's games may not hew to traditional definitions of fun, but hey, neither does life.
It's an interesting notion but not, to date, a particularly popular one. Other than Disaffected!, which found success among Kinko's employees ("Someone was interested enough in their shitty job to make a game out of it," Bogost explains), most of his games haven't made much of a splash outside the insular world of game theorists and scrappy independent developers.
So it's ironic that Bogost's breakout hit—the game that has made him a celebrity within his industry, attracted tens of thousands of players, and even earned him a bit of money—is a cynical trifle he whipped up in a matter of days. It's a Facebook game called Cow Clicker, and it's unlike anything Bogost ever made before, a borderline-evil piece of work that was intended to embody the worst aspects of the modern gaming industry. He meant Cow Clicker to be a satire with a short shelf life. Instead, it enslaved him and many of its players for much of the past 18 months. Even Bogost can't decide whether it represents his greatest success—or his most colossal failure.
The 2010 Game Developers Conference, the largest annual gathering of gaming professionals, was a tense affair. The year, though only two months old, was already shaping up to be a bad one for makers of traditional videogames. Console sales dropped 8 percent in 2009 and were destined to fall 12 percent more over the course of 2010; console games were suffering a similar slide. Some of the biggest publishers in the industry, including powerhouses like Activision/Blizzard and Electronic Arts, had seen their stock prices fall by half over the previous couple of years.
But while console games were crumbling, a new breed was flourishing: social games. These lightweight offerings—titles like Happy Aquarium and Restaurant City, designed for casual gamers to play with their friends online—were attracting visitors by the millions, despite the fact that they had none of the strategic complexity or button-mashing action of traditional videogames. Throughout the conference, developers trudged from one session to another, hearing executives from social- gaming companies like Playdom, ngmoco, and Mind Candy celebrate the revolution.
Nobody made the case as explicitly as Zynga. It was by far the most prosperous of the new social-gaming companies, and also, to traditional gamemakers, the most suspect. Its CEO, Mark Pincus, hadn't come up through the gaming industry but from the world of Silicon Valley startups; his company's focus on things like monetization and user growth seemed blatantly mercenary to the digital artistes who were more concerned with rag-doll physics and rendering engines. And though Zynga executives claimed their games were all about bringing friends closer together, they carried a whiff of exploitation. FarmVille, Zynga's flagship franchise, encouraged people to publicize their every action on Facebook newsfeeds and pester their friends to join them. It kept players coming back by setting onerous time limits—return in 16 hours to harvest your rhubarb or your fields would be riddled with withered stalks. And it compelled them to pay money if they wanted to avoid mindless tasks or lengthy delays.
But there was no denying that FarmVille was a hit; at the time of the conference, it had signed up 110 million people, with 31 million playing daily. So it was no surprise when, at the awards ceremony on the third day of the conference, FarmVille won the honor for Best Social/Online Game. Accepting the award, Zynga studio vice president Bill Mooney urged independent developers to join his company. "Two years ago, we were 20 people sitting together in a crappy little room," he said. The sentiment was not warmly received by the independent developers in the audience, many of whom were proud to work in crappy little rooms instead of at giant corporations. Mooney left the stage amid boos and catcalls.
To Bogost, sitting in the audience, Mooney's triumphalism seemed a direct attack on gaming's artistic potential. "The day after Mooney's speech, this thought popped into my head," Bogost says: "Games like FarmVille are cow clickers. You click on a cow, and that's all you do. I remember thinking at the time that it felt like a one-liner, the kind of thing you would tweet. I just put it in the back of my mind."
Bogost furrows his brow asking, "Why didn't they just click the 'Full Page' link to get to the cows?"Mooney's GDC speech catalyzed a backlash, and Bogost emerged as one of Zynga's most vocal critics, telling CNET that the company's games were "like behaviorist experiments with rats" and calling them "the Wall Street hedge-fund guys of games" in the pages of Fast Company.
Zynga and its proponents argued that its critics were hysterical. Brian Reynolds, who gave up developing PC strategy titles like Civilization II to become Zynga's chief game designer in 2009, says that the company isn't exploiting anyone but simply tying traditional gaming urges into a new, player-friendly business model. "You can keep playing the game for free, but if you want the higher level of entertainment, you pay for it," Reynolds says. "We'll give you, whatever, 50 clicks today, and tomorrow you can have 50 more. But if you want 100 clicks today, we'll sell you more clicks."
As the debate over Zynga—and social games in general—became an industry obsession, Bogost was asked to speak at several conference panels and academic colloquiums. Before a seminar at New York University called Social Games on Trial, he decided that instead of creating the usual series of slides to accompany his talk, he would design a game that would illustrate what he saw as the worst abuses of social gaming in the clearest possible manner. That way, rather than just listening to his argument, people could play it.
Remembering his cow-clicker idea, Bogost threw together a bare-bones Facebook game in three days. The rules were simple to the point of absurdity: There was a picture of a cow, which players were allowed to click once every six hours. Each time they did, they received one point, called a click. Players could invite as many as eight friends to join their "pasture"; whenever anyone within the pasture clicked their cow, they all received a click. A leaderboard tracked the game's most prodigious clickers. Players could purchase in-game currency, called mooney, which they could use to buy more cows or circumvent the time restriction. In true FarmVille fashion, whenever a player clicked a cow, an announcement—"I'm clicking a cow"—appeared on their Facebook newsfeed.
And that was pretty much it. That's not a nutshell description of the game; that's literally all there was to it. As a play experience, it was nothing more than a collection of cheap ruses, blatantly designed to get players to keep coming back, exploit their friends, and part with their money. "I didn't set out to make it fun," Bogost says. "Players were supposed to recognize that clicking a cow is a ridiculous thing to want to do."
Bogost launched Cow Clicker during the NYU event in July 2010. Within weeks, it had achieved cult status among indie-game fans and social-game critics. Every "I'm clicking a cow" newsfeed update served as a badge of ironic protest. Players gleefully clicked cows to send a message to their FarmVille-loving friends or to identify themselves as members of the anti-Zynga underground. The game began attracting press on sites like TechCrunch and Slashdot.
And then something surprising happened: Cow Clicker caught fire. The inherent virality of the game mechanics Bogost had mimicked, combined with the publicity, helped spread it well beyond its initial audience of game-industry insiders. Bogost watched in surprise and with a bit of alarm as the number of players grew consistently, from 5,000 soon after launch to 20,000 a few weeks later and then to 50,000 by early September. And not all of those people appeared to be in on the joke. The game received its fair share of five-star and one-star reviews from players who, respectively, appreciated the gag or simply thought the game was stupid. But what was startling was the occasional middling review from someone who treated Cow Clicker not as an acid commentary but as just another social game. "OK, not great though," one earnest example read.
In fact, despite itself, Cow Clicker was perversely enjoyable. The cartoon cow was cute, with a boxy nose and nonplussed expression. After every click, it emitted a satisfying moo. The game may have been dumb and even mean. But it was also, for some reason that resisted easy explanation, kind of appealing.
Adam Scriven, a stay-at-home dad in Burnaby, British Columbia, had been a dedicated player of social games like Zynga's Mafia Wars when he discovered Cow Clicker. "I just dumped most of those other games and started playing this one," he says. "Instead of stupid games that have no point, we might as well play a stupid game that has a point." Yes, Scriven was playing ironically. But he—along with thousands of others like him—was still clicking.
Bogost's office at Georgia Tech is crowded with in-jokes and personal obsessions. A basket filled with Garden Salsa SunChips sits below a window. (Bogost once publicly stated his disappointment that Delta Air Lines had stopped serving the flavor, after which someone sent him an anonymous shipment of the stuff. Bogost suspects his wife.) In the corner rests a 12-inch tube television attached to an Atari 2600 game console. A pile of cartridges sits beside it: Pitfall!, the infamous E.T., something called Lost Luggage, in which players have to catch baggage as it plummets to the tarmac. Copies of Bogost's most recent project, a retro game with an accompanying book titled A Slow Year, are stacked on his bookshelf. A Slow Year is a series of what Bogost calls "game poems," four minigames in which players accomplish leisurely, pensive tasks, like slowly sipping a cooling cup of coffee or focusing on a twig as it bobs down a stream. Bogost spent three years sporadically working on the collection for the archaic Atari 2600, which he says forced him to accept constraints similar to those self-imposed by Imagist poets, like Ezra Pound, who tried to use the most precise language possible in their work. If Cow Clicker is Bogost's diagnosis of what games shouldn't do, A Slow Year is his vision of what they might aspire to—exploring the artistic frontiers of the medium to create new kinds of experiences. A PC version of the game was published in November 2010.
Bogost furrows his brow asking, "Why didn't they just click the 'Full Page' link to get to the cows?"Bogost considers A Slow Year to be one of his most important works. And yet, in the months leading up to its publication, he found himself drawn to its evil twin, Cow Clicker. Initially, Bogost planned to launch Cow Clicker and let the game run its course. But now that people were actually playing it, he felt an obligation to sustain the experience. When his server melted under the unexpected demand, he was besieged by complaints until he signed up for a cloud-computing service to handle the load. Social-game developers, many of whom saw the game as good-natured ribbing, suggested ways to improve it: Let players earn mooney by clicking one another's newsfeed updates, for instance, which would further encourage them to spam their friends. Bogost added the feature, which he called "click on your clicks." He also added transparently stupid prizes—bronze, silver, and golden udders and cowbells—that people could win only by amassing an outlandish number of points. (A golden cowbell, for instance, requires 100,000 clicks.)
On one level, this was all part of the act. Bogost was inhabiting the persona of a manipulative game designer, and therefore it made sense to pull every dirty trick he could to make the game as sticky and addictive as possible. But as he grew into the role, he got a genuine thrill from his creation's popularity. Instead of addressing a few hundred participants at a conference, he was sharing his perspective with tens of thousands of players, many of whom checked in several times a day. Furthermore, every time he made the game better, he received some positive bit of feedback—more players, a nice review, a funny comment on his Facebook page. Tweaking the game was almost like a game itself: Finish a task, receive a reward.
The number of players peaked at 56,000 in October before beginning a long slide down to 10,000. What Cow Clicker lost in numbers, however, it gained in fan fervency. The people who remained may have begun playing in cheeky protest, but they soon began taking it surprisingly seriously. "There is a fair amount of strategy—maybe more than Ian intended," says Kevin Almeroth, a computer science professor at UC Santa Barbara who climbed to the top of the leaderboard, earning a golden cowbell in the process. "You have to get the top clickers in your pasture and lure them away from somebody else. I actually started to understand the psychology of Survivor a bit better." One player wrote an online strategy guide, which included chapters like "Advanced Pasture" and "Harvesting Strategies." In November 2010, hackers discovered the game and set up fake Facebook accounts and scripts to maximize their clicks. At first, Bogost let the cheaters prosper, but outrage from the player community eventually overwhelmed his resolve, and he added a verification system to crack down on the counterfeit clicking.
Bogost kept his players hooked by introducing new cows for them to purchase using virtual mooney or real money. They ranged from the crowd-pleasingly topical (a cow covered in oil and sporting a BP-esque logo on its rump) to the aggressively cynical (the Stargrazer Cow, which was just the original cow facing the opposite direction and for which Bogost charged 2,500 mooney). They may have looked simple, but they were time-consuming to conceive and draw. By the end of the year, Bogost was devoting as much as 10 hours a week to Cow Clicker. Drawings of cows cluttered his house and office. "I was spending more time on it than I was comfortable with," Bogost says. "But I was compelled to do it. I couldn't stop."
Bogost was not the only game theorist disturbed by Cow Clicker's addictive appeal. Nick Yee, a research scientist at PARC, the Xerox-owned innovation center, has been studying massively multiplayer online role-playing games for 12 years. He says that good games usually offer meaningful opportunities for achievement, social interaction, and challenge; otherwise, players become little more than rats in a Skinner box, hitting a button to get a jolt of reinforcement. "The scary thing about Cow Clicker is that it's just an incredibly clear Skinner box," Yee says. "What does that say about the human psyche and how easy it is to seduce us?"
Motivation researchers have studied the addictive qualities of games for decades. Game designer and futurist Jane McGonigal summarized the research in her best-selling book Reality Is Broken, in which she suggested that successful games mimic the feelings of accomplishment we get when we do fulfilling work. McGonigal argues that game mechanics—the rules and designs that govern gameplay—are captivating enough to make even the most miserable activities rewarding and compelling, from scrubbing a toilet to recovering from a brain injury. In recent years, companies have successfully used gamelike challenges and reward systems to encourage people to exercise (Nike+ and Wii Fit), explore their cities (Foursquare), and create models of proteins (Foldit).
Even nongaming companies are catching on to the power of games. Today, gamification—using game mechanics to influence real-world behavior—is a bona fide corporate buzzword. Executives attend gamification summits to learn how to leverage game features to attract and keep customers. The US edition of Google News offers badges that let people "level up" by reading articles online. Kobo, an ebook company, has a program that doles out "awards" when a reader highlights a passage, jots a note, or consults the dictionary. Corporations spent an estimated $100 million on gamification in 2010, and that figure is expected to rise to $2.8 billion by 2016.
To some industry stalwarts, the gamification craze looks a lot like Cow Clicker—mindlessly deploying gaming's most superficial and addictive features, such as leaderboards and badges, without providing the underlying experience that gives them meaning. Bogost himself made this argument at a gamification conference, during a talk called Gamification Is Bullshit, in which he suggested an alternate term, exploitationware. That, he said, represents the true mission of gamifiers: to use game mechanics to cynically ensnare their customers, much as Cow Clicker had unwittingly hooked its prey—including, as it turned out, Bogost himself.
Bogost furrows his brow asking, "Why didn't they just click the 'Full Page' link to get to the cows?"Game theorist Jesse Schell took this idea to its Orwellian extreme in a presentation at yet another industry conference. He described a world in which a person's every action—brushing their teeth, showing up to work on time, tattooing an advertisement for Pop-Tarts onto their forearm—earned points. Schell says he wanted to encourage people to think carefully about which kinds of games and experiences were appropriate to develop. But not everyone picked up on those subtleties. "I've had dozens of people come to me saying, 'Your talk was so influential to me that I started a company,'" Schell says. "All I can think is, oh God, don't blame me for that."
At the beginning of 2011, Bogost was still slaving away at Cow Clicker. In addition to critiquing social games, Bogost started using his creation to satirize other gaming trends he found distasteful. In January, he announced the advent of Cowclickification, "the application of cow-clicking mechanics to non-cow-clicking applications." In case anyone missed the jab at gamification, Bogost made it explicit: "Businesses can employ new cow-clicking mechanics such as clicking a cow to distract customers from the vapid pointlessness of their products and services." In February, disturbed by simplistic software that purported to be educational, Bogost created My First Cow Clicker, a "repetitive cow-clicking drill cleverly disguised as an entertaining videogame," as Bogost's promo copy described it, that promised to teach kids "how to click a cow effectively" for the low, low price of $1.99. (He sold dozens of them.) About a month later, troubled by the notion of "clicktivism"—the belief that mere participation in a social network could change the world—Bogost and a partner launched a sarcastic benefit: Players could donate to Oxfam America, either by clicking on a special sponsored "Cow Clicktivism" page or by purchasing a special $110 Cowclicktivist Cow (emaciated, with sagging ears and visible ribs). To date, $1,125 has been donated.
But on an afternoon in September 2011, it is all coming to an end. Five months earlier, Bogost had put a countdown clock on Cow Clicker, the expiration of which would bring about something called the Cowpocalypse. Bogost never explained what the Cowpocalypse was, but it didn't sound good. In keeping with the rest of the Cow Clicker exercise, he turned the countdown into a game. Every time someone clicked a cow, time was taken off the clock. But players could also pay to add time—$1 bought an extra hour; an additional month cost $400. A handful of players have staved off the "rapture" with last-minute infusions. But the clock is running down again, and this time Bogost is convinced the Cowpocalypse is finally nigh.
Sitting at his desk, Bogost fingers a sterling silver ring on his right middle finger. It depicts a cow skull—specifically, the skull of the Cow Clicker cow. The word click wraps around the back of the band. He had the ring made as a dark reminder of his experiment. "I like to think that having it on my body, especially on one of my typing fingers, will make me think twice about all these activities," Bogost says. "I've made all these people click on cows. I've wasted my own time and my family's time."
Not everyone agrees that the months they spent cow-clicking have been for naught. Jamie Clark, a student and military spouse living on Ellsworth Air Force Base outside of Box Elder, South Dakota, says that she has made close friendships with her fellow clickers. "I don't meet a lot of people who discuss politics and religion and philosophy, but these people do, and I like talking to them," she says. "I'd rather talk to my Cow Clicker friends than to people I went to school with for 12 years." It's a common refrain among dedicated Cow Clickers, who have turned what was intended to be a vapid experience into a source of camaraderie and creativity. They post witty cow-themed comments and poems along with the announcements that clutter their newsfeeds. They design Cow Clicker T-shirts and stickers.
It may be that Cow Clicker demonstrates the opposite of what it set out to prove and that social games, no matter how cynically designed, can still provide meaningful experiences. That's how Zynga's Reynolds sees it. He argues that, while early versions of FarmVille aren't as sophisticated as the company's more recent offerings like FrontierVille and CastleVille, which include such features as involved narratives and fleshed-out characters, they still allow players to connect with one another and express themselves. "Ian made Cow Clicker and discovered, perhaps to his dismay, that people liked it," Reynolds says. "Who are we to tell people what to like?"
Gabe Zichermann, a gamification expert, also dismisses Bogost's critique of Zynga's games. "Other gamers may think FarmVille is shallow, but the average player is happy to play it," he says. "Two and a Half Men is the most popular show on television. Very few people would argue that it's as good as Mad Men, but do the people watching Two and a Half Men sit around saying, oh, woe is me? At some point, you're just an elitist fuck."
Bogost delivered his response to this line of argument in a well-read blog essay called "Shit Crayons." In the piece, he compared Cow Clicker players to the imprisoned Nigerian poet Wole Soyinka, who composed poems from his cell using whatever writing material he could find. Bogost writes that Cow Clicker—and, by extension, games like FarmVille—are akin to the Nigerian prison, trapping players in a barren environment. The fact that people are able to exercise creativity despite the cruel limitations of the game—to craft crayons out of shit—is a sign of the indomitable human spirit but no reflection whatsoever on the merits of Cow Clicker. "Even if creativity comes from constraint, there's constraint and there's incarceration," he writes. "A despot in a sorcerer's hat does not deserve praise for inciting desperate resilience."
After two months of delays thanks to donations totalling $700, the Cowpocalypse finally arrives at 7:20 pm on September 7. At that moment, all the cows disappear. They have been raptured—replaced with an image of an empty patch of grass. Players can still click on the grass, still generate points for doing so, but there are no new cows to buy, no mooing to celebrate their action. In some sense, this is the truest version of Cow Clicker—the pure, cold game mechanic without any ornamentation. Bogost says that he expects most people will "see this as an invitation to end their relationship with Cow Clicker."
But months after the rapture, Adam Scriven, the enthusiastic player from British Columbia, hasn't accepted that invitation. He is still clicking the space where his cow used to be. After the Cowpocalypse, Bogost added one more bedeviling feature—a diamond cowbell, which could be earned by reaching 1 million clicks. It was intended as a joke; it would probably take 10 years of steady clicking to garner that many points. But Scriven says he might go for it. "It is very interesting, clicking nothing," Scriven says. "But then, we were clicking nothing the whole time. It just looked like we were clicking cows."
New York editor Jason Tanz (email@example.com) wrote about Kinect hacking in issue 19.07.


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The SliTaz contributors are pleased to announce the release of the new stable distribution SliTaz GNU/Linux 4.0. Two years of community work have created a reliable system capable of even shorter boot times with more than 1000 new installable packages.
SliTaz provides a complete graphical desktop in 35 MB based on LXDE and Openbox that works entirely in 192MB RAM. Its new 4in1 ISO can be installed on a hard drive with only 48MB by automatically selecting a configuration most fully suited to your hardware.
The home-made tools have grown. Tazpkg brings a new notification system and is much faster despite the increase in the number of packages and Tazpanel enables a new centralized management system. You can read the full Releases Notes and download SliTaz 4.0 from our mirror: slitaz-4.0.iso


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Bow Wow Admits To Smashing Ciara, Superhead, Kim Kardashian, Dollicia Bryan & Angela Simmons!
"Bow Wow appeared on Power 105 1's "The Breakfast Club" and admits to banging Kim Kardashian, Ciara, Angela Simmons, Dollicia Bryan, and Superhead!!!" - "The Breakfast Club" 6-10 AM Power 105 1 NYC
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Logo cupcakes with an edible full colour topper. Choose from vanilla sponge with white icing in silver foil casing or chocolate sponge with chocolate icing in gold casing. High quality scrumptious taste & finish freshly made to order in the UK. Packed individually sealed in clear wrapper.
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Haha. That's a cute tikus. Yes you're right. Thanks yea. I want angpows!!
Oh no! Now everyone knows my identity. I can't "kutuk" anyone here already! Hehe.
It's so pressuring typing posts in this blog, everything must be in correct grammar and spelling. If not, I'm sure my bosses will fry me, right Kak Liza?
Every time I feel like typing 'OMG' I stop myself ;)
For those who are wondering, OMG is Oh My Gosh.
I shall give parents some online tuition on internet language here.
Okay, gtg! Bye! *gtg = got to go
Posted by CBN1excellent at 9:47 PM | | 6 comments
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A new Family Forest® customer wrote "Actually, I had no idea about that. Thank you so much! That's fabulous! Most of my information is from census records and marriage records, which, as you know, are quite impersonal. I will definitely have to check out that book."
Elizabeth was writing about a story our ancestral history tour guide service discovered about one of her own ancestors.
With two of his brothers and their father, young Samuel Boyd was in a skirmish in South Carolina in the American Revolution. He was left for dead after a musket ball passed through his temple and took out his right eye. An old colored woman found him and took care of him until he was able to get away.
He did not have any children at the time, but after surviving a shot to the head, he went on to become an early pioneer settler in Kentucky and father of a large family of children who became the ancestors of many living people today.
What if that kind old colored woman had not befriended Samuel at that critical time? Would his descendants have never been born? Or would they have been born as someone else?
While we'll never know the answer to that, we do know something else for certain. History pivots on small events, including the kindness of a stranger.
The story about Samuel's pivotal Revolutionary event and his ensuing full life begins on page 121 in the 1892 Autobiography and Sermons of Elder Elijah Martindale by Belle Stanford.


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Olivia Wilde is just one of a host of actors that's signed on for Bradley Cooper's second film in which he plays a writer who takes a shortcut to success.
Wilde, Zoe Saldana, J.K. Simmons, Ben Barnes, John Hannah and Nora Arnezeder have signed on for "The Words," which will star Cooper as a writer who plagiarizes another. The film also stars Jeremy Irons and Dennis Quaid.
Cooper, of course, earlier this year starred in "Limitless" in which he played a writer who achieves literary success with the aid of a powerful drug that allows him to tap into his mind's full potential.
U.S. & World
The day's top national and international news.
"The Words" will mark the directorial debut of co-writers Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, whose script about a man who eventually pays the price for stealing another man's work has appeared on the Black List of best unproduced scripts in Hollywood.
Klugman and Sternthal previously worked with Wilde on "Tron: Legacy," let's hope this script marks a significant improvement over that mess.


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Contests typically draw controversy. At the present moment, Al Franken and Norm Coleman are currently winding down a very closely run contest for the Minnesota Senate seat. Some controversies can last for decades, while others can last for days. There are even instances where the public will never be aware of the controversies surrounding some contests whose results are made public.
The latest Controversy, was in part brought to an end today, but raises some very interesting questions, and could affect the progress related to the agenda of Human/Civil Rights Campaigns.
Today in a Press Conference, Donald Trump (Owner of the Miss USA/Universe Contest) announced that regardless of the public comments made by Miss California and Miss USA Runner up, Carrie Prejean, that she would retain her crown. This decision came not 24 hours after the administrators of the Miss California Contest "fired" Ms Prejean, due to "Violation of Contract".
During the Miss USA Pageant, blogger Perez Hilton , who was described as "doing his thing" by Donald Trump, asked a question regarding her support of Gay Marriage. She responded, predicated with her intent not to offend anyone, that in "My America" marriage is defined between a man and a woman. Today, she was encouraged to reiterate her belief, aligning herself with the current belief of the President and Secretary of State (who was also a Presidential Candidate). Supported by Mr. Trump (who refused to answer questions regarding his own personal belief on the subject) , Ms Prejean proudly encouraged others to use her experience as inspiration when standing up for their beliefs, regardless of the negative backlash that might accompany it.
A very serious question must now be posed: When does one's opinion regarding the Definition of Marriage infringe on the obstruction of civil liberties? And; will the denial of Same-Sex marriage be looked at in the same manner as we look at inter-racial marriage today (which is still looked upon negatively in certain parts of the country).
One must remember that it was a little over 40 years ago, that it was still illegal for interracial couples to be married. Leon Brazile (who was a trial judge in the case) echoed the rhetoric of German Physician Johann Frierich Blumenbach who stated, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." The pivotal vote taken by the DC City Council to recognized such marriages, sparked the legislation that was seen before the Supreme Court, which in turn descended that, "Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
During the Press Conference, the President's view of marriage was touted by both Mr. Trump and Ms Prejean. Another important question must be posed: Will President Obama support legislation to legalize Gay Marriage? If he does not, does this make him as bigoted as those who did not support his candidacy because of his color?
Today, the celebrated "opinion" of Miss California, has placed the Human Rights Campaign in an awkward position. They could use this decision to press the Gay Marriage Debate to the forefront to gain definite results, or they could regroup and reanalyze their stance on the subject, which could result in the whole subject to be dropped all together. What do you think?
Perhaps a voice from the past could help shed light on this subject:
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
~Thomas Jefferson


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Experience Tower Defense Redefined. Orbit is a space-based TD game unlike anything you've seen in the genre before. You must protect your planet from incoming alien attacks by sending Satellites into orbit to fight them off. Features game-play infused with Real Time Strategy mechanics. You can freely Move or Swap your Satellites around the planet and Manually Target Aliens with your Satellites to exploit their weaknesses. The entire experience is complemented by a dynamic difficulty curve which responds to your play style in real time to always keep you engaged. This is a game of skill and strategy, not luck or one-upmanship. The more you play, the better you get to understand the strengths and weaknesses of all the game's unique Satellites and Aliens.
Only registered members can share their thoughts. So come on! Join the community today (totally free - or sign in with your social account on the right) and join in the conversation.
Create and share your own Game-types in Orbit!
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As new boy on the block, I think it behoves me to give a little introduction: my experience, my interests, and what subjects I intend to cover in this forum.
The bio at the top of this forum describes much of what you need to know about my experience, so I won't bang on too much more about that. Professionally, I enjoy leaving behind happy clients, and in particular I take it as a point of pride to build systems that don't break. Not always easy to achieve, of course. Although I primarily work for clients within Australia, I do occasional work with overseas clients . The common factor between them all is that they want reliable software.
Unprofessionally (that doesn't sound too good, does it?) Non-commercially, my interests are pretty cleanly split into two:
- Examination of what software quality actually means. Though more than a little philosophical, there're also a lot of practical aspects to my search. The Quality Matters column I write for ACCU is the main forum for my ruminations, but that's not to say such issues aren't going to spill over into observations here (e.g. how String.Split inhibits expressiveness, or how String.Join inhibits flexibility)
- Building software libraries and programs that assist me in my professional work, or that enable me to master a new language/technology, or that simply interest me. It's nice when it's all three, of course.
Officially, my remit is Windows/.NET. And that's a pretty good fit, as I've been focusing on .NET more in 2009 than ever before. Since I'm currently actively working on my next book, Imperfect C# (to be published next year), there are bound to be some good crossovers. So a lot of what I'll cover will fit into that characterisation. As something of an unconstrainable polymath, however, it's impossible for me to promise not to stray onto other subjects, most likely C, C++, Ruby.
I'm also going to be publishing several C++/C#-related articles in DDJ over the coming months, and this blog will allow me to discuss and expound on issues raised in the articles.
In terms of style/approach, I'm known for being a bit, er, wordy. So, inevitably, some of these posts will go on a bit. But I am going to really try to be as short and sweet as possible. Similarly, while I tend to spend forever researching an issue - hence why it takes me 2-5 years to write a book ;'( - I am also going to my hardest to publish early, publish often. Obviously, there may be the occasional hasty post, but any time I do make a mistake - and I count on you all to tell me! - I will make the suitable corrections (and attributions). Along with the occasional long-planned (and possibly long) post, I'm going to try and do the stream-of-consciousness stuff that others seem to find so easy, and post regularly about the things I'm currently working on.
So, while I hope to primarily interest Windows/.NET programmers, I also hope to say things worth listening to C/C++/Ruby programmers, along with anyone who's interested in the various factors influencing software quality. And, of course, I look forward to getting lots of feedback - good, bad, weird, whatever - and engaging in feisty debates online. :-)
Finally, I'd like to say a big Thank-You to Jon Erickson for again giving me the opportunity to make my presence felt to the DDJ community. It's been a while, and I'm very glad to be back.


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Optimizing the customer experience is challenging. Most organizations have little visibility into the customer journey across multiple customer touchpoints and departments, can't sense and react to a multitude of customer pain points and opportunities, and struggle to quickly, meaningfully personalize customer interactions. Vantage Customer Experience eliminates these challenges by giving Marketers and Customer Experience Professionals the autonomy needed to keep pace with dynamic customer interactions.
Vantage CX delivers the previously elusive 360-degree view of the customer by allowing data integration experts in IT and citizen data integrators in the business to collaborate rather than compete.
Vantage CX helps enterprises sense and react to a multitude of customer pain points and opportunities with easy-to-use advanced analytics.
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1. Re: Database is not starting up439075 Jul 10, 2006 11:02 PM (in response to 522469)Hi,
From Oracle-Base(http://www.oracle-base.com/)
ORA-00600 internal error code, arguments: [string], [string], [string], [string], [string], [string], [string], [string]
Cause: This is the generic internal error number for Oracle program exceptions. It indicates that a process has encountered a low-level, unexpected condition. Causes of this message include:
* timeouts
* file corruption
* failed data checks in memory
* hardware, memory, or I/O errors
* incorrectly restored files
The first argument is the internal message number. Other arguments are various numbers, names, and character strings. The numbers may change meanings between different versions of Oracle.
Action: Report this error to Oracle Support Services after gathering the following information:
* events that led up to the error
* the operations that were attempted that led to the error
* the conditions of the operating system and databases at the time of the error
* any unusual circumstances that occurred before receiving the ORA-00600 message
* contents of any trace files generated by the error
* the relevant portions of the Alter files
Note: The cause of this message may manifest itself as different errors at different times. Be aware of the history of errors that occurred before this internal error.
Maybe this issues can be resolved by patching to a higher version, others not. So I'm not sure, if patching will help in your case.
BTW, try take a look at Metalink for this, maybe you can find some note to help you.
Example - Note : 139116.1
Title : ORA-600 [kohdtf048] "Maximum number of duration entries reached"
In other hand is a good idea to post Oracle version and OS.
Well, hope this can help you.
2. Re: Database is not starting up164995 Jul 11, 2006 12:35 AM (in response to 522469)Focus on what changed. Reboot the server if need be.
Concentrate on memory parameters. Post alert<SID>.log
3. Re: Database is not starting up112887 Jul 11, 2006 12:44 AM (in response to 522469)if you have support, login to metalink and use the ORA-00600 lookup tool.
Extract from tool for first argument [723]
This article discusses the internal error "ORA-600 [723]", what
it means and possible actions. The information here is only applicable
to the versions listed and is provided only for guidance.
ORA-600 [723] [a]
versions 6.0 to 10.1
This is a memory leak in the Program Global Area (PGA)
PGA is checked for Space leaks at logoff time and a leak was found.
There is no data corruption with this error.
4. Re: Database is not starting upA.Mohammed Rafi Jul 11, 2006 5:14 AM (in response to 522469)Oracle Hard Corruption
Since Oracle hard corruption points to problems with the magnetic media, this corruption is also called physical or media error.
The first evidence of possible problems can be found in the machine's system log:
WARNING: /sbus@2,0/SUNW,soc@0,0/
SUNW,pln@b0000000,912cec/ssd@2,0 (ssd117):
Error for Command: read(10) Error Level: Retryable
Requested Block: 34274544 Error Block: 34274544
Vendor: SEAGATE Serial Number: 03421655
Sense Key: Hardware Error
This error message indicates that something is going on with a disk device, and possibly we can expect some problem on the database block level.
Let's look in global, to see how different hardware components interact with Oracle block:
System Memory is the main machine memory from which is allocated the database SGA (System Global Area) memory area. SGA is allocated on database start up and is used as cache for all database operations. The second part of the Oracle memory model is the sessions' PGA, where sessions store their operational environment. Moving of the Oracle data blocks is under the control of the database writer process, which will interact with the operating system during block take over. Operating systems will immediately return a response to the database writer, and in the background continue block handling, all the way to the physical device. We are talking about standard UNIX file system implementation.
Faulty working memory modules, if detected by the OS memory detection mechanism, can cause database block corruptions. Corruption happens in the database memory, the operating system buffer cache or in the file system IO buffers.
Memory corruptions could snip to the disk device before the operating system detect memory parity error. Upon detection, the operating system will write warning messages in the system's log and start with defensive action.
Some famous media corruption errors:
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [3374], [], [], [], [], [], [], []
If you get an ORA-00600 [3374], it means that you have encountered a corruption in the
memory. Shutting down and restarting the database instance could clear the problem. If not, you will need to call Oracle Support for the procedure on how to write corrupted block out to the disk.
Upon instance startup, on touching corrupted object, Oracle will raise ORA-01578 error, indicating media corruption.
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [3398], [15727], [15742], [], [], [], [], []
ORA-00600 [3398] database error indicating that the database writer process has detected a corrupted block in the cache and will crash the instance.
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [4147], [], [], [], [], [], [], []
ORA-00600 [4147] indicates memory corruption with rollback segment blocks (invalid SCN) most probably due to a lost write to the rollback segment.
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [4193], [15727], [15742], [], [], [], [], []
ORA-600[4193] indicates corruption in the rollback segment, when the transaction table and the rollback block are out of sync.
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [12700], [], [], [], [], [], [], []
Block Checking: DBA = 16794980, Block Type = KTB-managed data block
kdbchk: bad row tab 0, slot 42 -> bad row data
kdrchk: row is marked as both Last and Next continue
This error indicates corruption in the index, table or the mapping between them. In principle, index ROWID is pointing to a non-existent row in the data block. Corruption of this type can be in the data or in the index block. Upon discovery, the whole block will be marked corrupt and we will not have normal access to data from the block. Marking a block as corrupted may break referential integrity constraints and the object free list may become inaccessible, depending upon the location of the corrupted block.
Disk Controller is a hardware device (SCSI, SSA, Raid...), equipped with an on board cache used to control communication between the physical disk drive and the operating system IO calls. A faulty controller or faulty firmware on the controller board can cause corruptions on this level.
For example, here is error message from a database instance that crashed because of the database writer error condition:
"DBWR failed to complete async write within 183 seconds".
Oracle was attempting to write data to the disk. In normal circumstances, ASYNC IO call will return immediately control to Oracle. However, when there is problem with hardware, the I/O request will timeout after 180 seconds, logging a message in the database alert log and database writer trace file. The next attempt to write data will be in 360 seconds, and if it fails again, the database writer will terminate the Oracle instance.
Another situation with disk controller can occur when the controller is working correctly, but a controller bottleneck caused system write errors to be logged.
Disk Device represents a physical, mechanical device used for storing data. Disk devices have limited MTBF (Mean time before failure) and we can expect them to malfunction sooner or later. Even more critical than mechanical problems with disk devices, are disk area corruption problems. With disk area corruption problems, it is not possible to reread previously saved data. These physical errors are handled very well by the underlying operating system. The operating system will detect and solve most of these problems regularly in the background.
A typical Oracle error, following corruption due to a problem with the disk device:
ORA-00600: Internal message code, arguments: [01578] [...] [...] [] [] [].
select count(*) from artist_test;
ORA-01578: ORACLE data block corrupted (file # 7, block # 128239) -> 7 is relative file number
ORA-01110: data file 22: '/oracle/artist/artist01.dbf' -> 22 is absolute file number
Oracle message ORA-01578, indicates a media block corruption. Each time a SQL statement tries to access (read or write) the corrupted block, Oracle will signal an error.
ORA-01578 usually comes with the ORA-0110 error indicating the file name and absolute file number. Several occurrences of ORA-1578 errors, always with the same arguments, definitely points to a media error. When the ORA-1578 error arises with different arguments, we are dealing with some other system error, possibly a problem with memory, I/O or some sort of swap problem.
The operating system will try to repair the corrupted block. When it has succeed, the block is zeroed, preventing Oracle from identifying the data block content.
Others - Many different reasons can cause Oracle block corruptions. For example, different operating system bugs or the usage of some disk repair utilities.
Hard disk and memory media errors are the types of system errors that occur most often. A good backup strategy should be enough for a database administrator to keep the situation under control. These situations offer a good opportunity for a DBA to impress others, proving his skills and making a fast, efficient database recovery.
5. Re: Database is not starting up112887 Jul 11, 2006 5:30 AM (in response to A.Mohammed Rafi)"These situations offer a good opportunity for a DBA to impress others"
Hmm... maybe, but unrelated to question asked.
The first argument [723] confirms the fourth argument [memory leak]
Unless there are any other errors or os problems that the original poster can supply then that is probably all it is. It may well just be an Oracle bug and they should Log a TAR with Oracle support as is usually the case with an Ora-00600 error


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BGJ 146 Autumn 2008
Reviewer: Tony Atkins
Catalin Taranu is another one of those authors I know, but only a very recent addition to the list, as this is his first book. Some of you will remember him from Canterbury EGC in 1992, when he was a 5 dan. Since then he studied Go in Japan and entered the professional ranks and rose to 5 dan. He is now back in his native Romania and teaches and plays Go around Europe. There is a group of strong European players who have also studied Go in Japan, but not made pro. Five of these (Pop, Hora, Mero, Nechanicky and Silt) came together with Catalin for a weekend of study at the home of Vladimir Danek in Prague. The idea came from Jana Hricova and the book is published by PromoGo, the Czech Go promotion group that she started.
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