INTRODUCTION

This is a post a long time coming... I feel I've thought about it long enough to attempt a writing. Don't think I can get any further just by thinking. Now, to explain what this is going to be about: A lot of times, I'll tell people about friends I've met on the Internet and I'll get a weird look. I think my parents have outgrown this stage, but extended family and random people I meet will still give me the eyebrows when I talk about "a friend on the Internet." A few times, I'll be involved in a discussion with someone and Myst comes up and I'll just casually toss out there "yeah, I'm a Myst fan... I was part of the community, but I'm not anymore" and people will naturally ask why and I have to disappoint them with a pause and an "it's complicated." This is even to people who know me and know that I was big into Myst and ask me if I'm going to the "Myst convention" this year and I'm left explaining to them why... For all these people, and others who might be confused as to my status toward certain people, this post is for you. Now, before I begin, I want to say in advance that I currently intend no ill will toward anyone in particular. I may give examples of things that have happened to me, and the people I'm writing the examples from may read this and get angry. I say right now that I will give no names and all examples will be purely anonymous... If you get upset and leave a comment, then it will be your own doing that people begin to associate the examples toward you. That being said, let us begin!

FORMING RELATIONSHIPS

And by "relationship", I mean it in its broadest sense. Think "Sims relationship". Your Sim meets a new person and TADA! New relationship icon appears. One of the most common things people bring up when the subject of Internet friends appears is "how do you know they are who they say they are?" The simple fact of the matter is: You don't. People think that makes chat rooms and forums and Internet friendships based on nothing, and while that could be entirely accurate, and has been shown to be accurate before with all the news articles about stalkers and kidnappers, I tend to say that ALL friendships could be based on nothing.

Think about it... You meet a friend's friend. You've never seen them before, but you manage to strike up a conversation and learn some things about them. While your friend could be there to referee, so to speak, you're still taking this person's information at face value. None of it could be true, and, in fact, your own friend might be duped into believing false information, too. A lot of information can be corroborated with evidence and sometimes you can immediately see that some things are true and that some aren't.

Actually, a more appropriate example would be someone you've met at a bar. Now, for sake of those with overactive imaginations (like myself), I'm not referring to downtown strip clubs or places where people enjoy going to get drunk. I'm talking good old fashioned taverns and inns and places that people like to gather at the end of the day to wind down with a pint of ale and a good bit of gossip. Think hobbits! Anyway, back to the point: When you meet someone at a bar, there is absolutely no way you can be sure that what they're saying is true. They may say they're 18 or 28 or 38, or that they're visiting from Alabama, or that they are, in fact, not married... You can't be sure. Now, most of the time, people in bars come and go and you never see the same person twice... But sometimes there's a group of people who keep coming back to the same bar at the same time and you start getting acquainted. It's just a natural tendency. Two people see each other for the fifth time and greet each other with a nod or a wave and things just progress from there. You may have spoken once before and you may have even got along very well with them! I'm not going to get into how friendships are formed... But you get the idea. You meet people in a public area and sometimes you'll make friends if you happen to talk to them a lot.

Now, some people I realize are going to read this and point at me and accuse me of arguing on their behalf when I say the Internet is like a bar. Yes... I think that's the best analogy. Why? Because you have to treat the Internet as a public area where absolutely anybody could be lurking. It's just wise not to take someone at their word when you have no idea who they are. It's just common sense not to disclose contact information to someone you just met... The fact that the Internet is accessable from your living room is not something to be terrified of. You just need to realize that it's a wild place and you need to use caution. As with meeting someone in real life, they may not be who they say they are. They might be older, they might live somewhere else, in fact, these days, they might not even be the same gender they claim they are... And this is in real life as well as the Internet!

I hope this section, at least, helps disperse some of the fears of "Internet friends" not being who they say they are. That's a given... There's nobody who should argue otherwise. But I disagree that the Internet is a new frontier... Sure, it's opened up a plethora of new methods to communicate, but there's nothing different about the core issues with meeting new friends: They could be lying through their teeth and you would have no way of knowing.

HOW I, PERSONALLY, FORM FRIENDSHIPS

Now this is some background on how I form friends so I can explain what happened between me and some good friends I had in the Myst community. It might even go to help dispell some confusing between the friends themselves. For example, I had a friend who knew something was wrong between us, but would never have a mind open enough to consider that they were just as much the cause of the problem as they thought I was. I eventually just gave up explaining what was happening and they, in frustration, blocked all communication with me and I've never heard from them since. We'll call this person EXAMPLE ONE. I will later attempt to explain how I don't at all feel bad about our falling out... The way I see it, we stopped being friends long before the actual disagreement and subsequent turn of the back.

I will be using CyanChat as an example of my forming friendships online because, to be honest, I don't have many friends online who I DIDN'T meet at CyanChat. I would log in and I would see new people... I would say "hi", but not much else. At this point, I watch them carefully. I just act like myself and see what they do in response. Sometimes we hit it off really well, sometimes we don't and it's a disaster. Two people, who I will from now on affectionately refer to as EXAMPLE TWO and EXAMPLE THREE, come to mind. I met these people and we sort of got off on the right foot, but there was an awkward tense feeling when we would talk. Just the way I would say something and they would respond. There was a mutual feeling of pressing buttons to see what would ignite the other into anger. These two people have always been a bothersome thorn in my side, though I've grown to ignore their trivial pursuits for my blowing my top, but even after I left the community, they seem to find it far more interesting to pester me on my blog. I'm sure there's a quote somewhere about how your enemies last longer than your friends, but, eh! Them's the breaks, and there's no way to get around people not liking each other sometimes. But let's get back on track: At this point (when I've just met someone), anything they say I treat very skeptically. It could be the absolute truth, but I'm not going to treat it as the truth for a while. If they can keep their stories straight for more than a week, it's usually a pretty good indication that they're either telling you the truth, or they're so good at creating a personality that they've planned their false lives entirely in advance. (In a place as obscure as CyanChat, the last bit is very unlikely.)

As a rule, though, I will never disclose real world contact information such as landline telephone numbers or street addresses unless there's a serious need for it. (Such as when I bought that Myst baseball cap from my good buddy lonelyto25 Richard.) Gender is usually something I'll formulate an opinion on as soon as I see the name, but it's not always verified until we elevate the friendship to voice-chat levels and I can hear their voice for myself. But, in short, when I first meet someone, I don't believe a word they say. I process it, sure, and I make notes so I can corroborate it with what they say later... If there are any inconsistencies, it's a good bet that they're lying to you about something. Sometimes you just never get into enough "serious" discussions to become more than an acquaintence with a name in a chat room, but sometimes you get into deep discussions about life, religion, politics or the universe in general and you really start to see exactly who someone is like even without knowing anything about their own personal lives or appearance. Personally, I think this is a brilliant way to become friends with someone, because appearance is so immaterial on the Internet that nobody cares how someone LOOKS, only what they THINK and SAY. You only care about their personality and their beliefs... The things that really matter.

MAINTAINING AN ONLINE FRIENDSHIP

You may think that a friendship is a friendship and that's that... Eh, I vehemently disagree. I think maintaining an online friendship for an extended period of time is a very difficult thing to do. Online friendships are very fragile, very accelerated relationships... By accelerated I mean that it takes far less to make or break a friendship. Let's say that you've met a friend in the real world and that you've been friends for a year or two. It could even be a college roommate... You see each other every day, you know exactly how to read the expressions of the other and everything's just fine. If you were to insult their beliefs on something, I've noticed that, while it does deeply hurt them at times, they are far less likely to bail on you and ignore you for the rest of time for that particular infraction. Partly because you HAVE to see each other every day, but also, I think, because physically meeting someone helps build more bonds of friendship than when you just meet someone's nickname online. The whole thing when I mentioned appearance not mattering is almost cancelled out completely because, without visualizing a living, breathing person behind that nickname, it's nothing more than a nickname to you... Sure, you KNOW there's a person behind that name, but there's no connecting that name to the person. The issue with anonymity on the Internet is partly what makes it so great, but is also equally responsible for making the Internet so BAD.

I have a friend in the real world who I only see for, eh... Maybe two days, once or twice a year. We've been friends for as long as I can remember and we never see each other. Sometimes I think I know that friend better than anyone I've met online. We've gone through some pretty sticky situations when we were young... I remember fighting over sandbox toys, forming temporary alliances with each other to specifically make someone feel left out, and getting so very angry over the good ol' Nintendo Entertainment System. I think that if I had as many problems with someone online as I've had with that friend, I would never have remained a friend. There's just something about having a friend in real life that makes the friendship more solid. We barely see each other, but we KNOW we're friends because of what we put ourselves through and lived to tell about it. It's an awesome thing of the past, now... "Remember that time when we didn't know how to divide the sandbox into thirds and fought over who would get the fourth?" We would fight so violently over stupid crap and yet we're still friends... I think that makes it all the better.

Online friends, on the other hand, from my experience, are an entirely other ball game. Without appearances, the power of words are magnified beyond comprehension. You can make or break an online friendship with a single sentence simply because there's nothing else to offset it. You can insult someone and walk off and literally never look back and go on with your life. Internet anonymity makes it THAT easy to break a relationship. Of course, there's also the chance that someone breaks a friendship and appears to never look back, but decides to change their identity and does, in fact, return. Internet anonymity makes it THAT easy to change your entire personal history for everyone. Now, that's not to say that online friends CAN'T break up over something like that... I've had my fair share of deadly scrapes and jabs and sometimes we managed to be mature enough to apologize and fix the problem. Sometimes, you just know something happened that shouldn't have and that all you need to do is admit that you were wrong and it will all go away. Sadly, the power of words to destroy a friendship does not work so well to repair one, but I'll get to that in a second. I want to give some examples of ways I think people can maintain an online friendship.

Talk... A lot. When you can't sit in the same room as the friend, you need to actually talk. Opening an instant messenger or chat room window and lurking there saying nothing just isn't going to cut it. Remember, words, even in real life, are incredibly powerful, but online, they're the life force of friendships. If you stop talking, then the friend might as well not be there at all, and, as all of us Sims players know, when a Sim hasn't seen friends in so long, they start getting lonely and they start losing relationships. In real world friendships, you can go to your friend's and "hang out". You can sit there and watch a movie or play a video game and not say a WORD but still feel like you've had decent social interaction with them. When you're online, sitting silent in the room is not going to work... However, DOING something WILL work. That's right... Play games. You don't have to talk, but there's social interaction going on. You know you're playing with your friend, so it's okay not to talk. In fact, you might not even want anyone to talk since you're concentrating so much on gathering those asteroid resources or pulling off that wicked sniper shot that makes everyone afraid to face you as an opponent. In my personal experience, there is not much else you can do to maintain an online friendship than by talking or playing an online game. If you're NOT talking or playing a game, then your friendship isn't being maintained in the least bit, even if you're both in the same chat room.

Now, there's another downside to all of this... Since interactions are so charged with a constant stream of words or gameplay, the time you spend apart is going to feel like ages, at least by personal experience. I think this is further affected by the fact that there's no person to associate the name with. I think meeting someone in the real world, even just once, will go a long way to sealing the deal on the friendship. That way, you can associate the name with something more solid than a bit of text that logs on and off. You'll talk and play a game and as with all things that are fun, you lose track of time and you have to stop... You naturally look forward to next time, but that can seem like a really like time, even if it's just a few days or weeks. In the real world, I can go months without seeing a friend of mine in the real world and still pick up where I left off once I see them again. Online, if someone goes without talking to me for months, then it's a safe bet that they've forgotten about me and moved on. Online friendships can deteriorate so quickly... Sometimes, very rarely, I'll not talk to someone for a very, very long time and then BAM! All of a sudden, they show up and we get back into things like it was no problem, but that doesn't happen very often.

DESTROYING AN ONLINE FRIENDSHIP

And that leads me right into what it takes for an online friendship to end. This will serve as an explanation for what happened between me and the Myst community as well as an example of how online friendships end badly... Everyone who regularly visits this site knows what lengths I can go to when I discuss the Myst community, and no doubt this section will be a post all to itself, but it has to be said.

I'm a very trusting person by nature... Very loyal, too. At first I'm not too trusting of people, but once I've decided to call someone a friend, I hold them to certain standards, as we all do. The single most important standard I have, which, consequently, is also not very difficult to break, is that they don't betray my trust. It's as simple as that. You want to be my friend? Sure! I'm all for it... Just don't make me regret it. If a friend, for any reason, decides to take advantage of me by lying to my face, then you can consider yourself on the black list for the rest of time. A friend who I will refer to as EXAMPLE FOUR fits into this perfectly... They, at one time, professed to be my friend. We talked it up and laughed and watched movies... We did everything we needed to keep the friendship going, but then, one day, out of the blue, this person accused me of something without even bothering to ask my side of the story. Just WHAM! "You should be ashamed of yourself." Things were said, things were straigtened out and EXAMPLE FOUR apologized for their rash behavior... I forgave them, but the damage was done. They clearly didn't think enough of me to ask why I did what I did, and they gave no assurance that it wouldn't happen again. My guard went up in a flash. Later, they blatantly insulted one of my prized projects without provocation or an apology, and, later still, when I was discussing philosophical topics with someone else entirely, proceeded to put things in my mouth when it was absolutely obvious (since there WAS, after all, a record of all my text) that I had never said such a thing. That's when I drew the line and no longer considered them a friend... They betrayed my trust, plain and simple.

Betraying my trust is what I would file my entire leaving the community under. Everybody knows my feelings about Uru... It's not my favorite game and I wouldn't hesitate to point out problems or give opinions that went against what the most influential community members believed. It wasn't as if I was a newcomer... I'd been in the community for almost 8 years and people knew the name "GermanShepherd". They KNEW who I was and that I had just as much of a right to give my opinions about Uru as they did, but in the spirit of what they called "tolerance", they very nearly unanimously declared that I and everyone who thought there was something wrong with Uru should leave the community because we were what was making it fail. All those friends I'd made in my 8 years suddenly turned their back on me... Those that didn't actually shun me outright simply didn't make any attempt to talk to me or acknowledge my presense. Those who agreed with me were very few... I still have them as friends, I might add, and only one of them is still involved in the community, if by very little. Sometimes, people would remember me and try to talk to me, but it all seemed to be a very thinly disguised way to get me to do something for them, and that would only make matters worse. I will also always remember that I used to pretend and play like I was a dog in CyanChat... I would tackle people and play fetch and such. (I mean, hey... You had to have fun somehow, right? We CyanChatters were a crazy awesome bunch.) But, for some reason, those same people called me a creep for pretending to be a dog... Things like that. Where something happens to cause people to change so much that they are no longer who I thought they were and then openly attack me for being who I always was. (This would be EXAMPLE TWO, to be exact... While we did scrape a few times, we did used to be friends a long time ago.)

Another specific way of ending an online friendship is the usual way of letting friendships die out... Stop interacting. For example (EXAMPLE ONE, to be exact... Remember them from the beginning?), I had an online friend who I was very close to. We would do almost literally everything together... We would watch shows and play games and chat it up all day long and we even shared the experience of being ignored by all our other friends, so we became friends not only because there was nobody else, but because we sympathized with each other and out of that first contact, we discovered we had so many of the same interests. We were so perfect that people would joke at us by saying we should just marry each other because we wouldn't find a more suitable partner. We were that close... But... My friend slowly started to show less and less of an interest in doing things with me. Games were all the same... Movies were all boring... There was nothing I could say to get them interested in doing things with me anymore and they would just totter off and do something on their own. Eventually, even just plain talking started to feel like pulling teeth until finally, we seemed to stop talking altogether. Then, in a final bout, I laid it all on their feet and told them if nothing was going to change, then it was going to be over with... We had the same argument that regurgitated the same excuses and reasons from both sides and it wound up with that friend blocking me. I honestly believe that I did all I could to keep things going, but my friend would actively resist all manner of things to have fun with, and would flat out not speak at all if I didn't go out of my way to speak to them.

CONSEQUENCES OF TERMINATED FRIENDSHIPS

Now, in either case, I'm not exactly upset that the friendships were terminated... The way I see it, the people who betrayed me were classic examples of what happens when you make friends with someone who lies to you. They painted a pretty picture and I made friends with the fake person, but as soon as I did something wrong in their eyes, the true person showed their ugly face... When that happens, I feel absolutely no regret knowing that our friendship died. As far as I'm concerned, I never knew you. I sincerely hope that the friends I have now are telling me the complete truths about themselves so I know who I'm being a friend with. I am perfectly honest with them and I expect them to be perfectly honest in return. There is no reason for me to distrust someone until they break it, so... Until they give me reason to doubt them, I will treat them as if what they say is true, and shame on them if they take advantage of that.

Now, when friendships die a slow death of neglect, that's what I have trouble with, as I have repeatedly told people, time and time again. I absolutely hate it when people stop talking to me... I try my hardest to keep friendships alive and unless someone betrays me, I consider friends of mine to be friends forever. As such, most of my friendships have simply been because my friend stopped talking to me... They changed their name and the contact information or don't pay attention to me anymore. These are the friendship failures that hurt... I regret whatever happened between us that made them stop talking to me. There were some who bit me when I tried to confront them about it, and for those, I feel less sorry about, but on the whole, I miss the friends who never gave me reason to doubt them, but decided to leave anyway. But for people who betray me, especially to such a magnitude as the Uru community, I wouldn't dignify you with a response if you begged me to return... You would have to somehow convince me that you wouldn't pull something like that on me again since you showed that you were perfectly capable of throwing someone under the truck to promote yourself.

CONCLUSION

So I hope this post will enlighten a few people into the intricacies of online friendships and maybe explain the way I feel about certain people and explain to some of them what happened between us. Some of them betrayed me and know they did, and thus won't care... Some of them betrayed me and don't know they did, but refuse to listen to me when I try to tell them, and thus don't care... Some of them betrayed me and know they did and have apologized and I've forgiven them, but there's still an air of caution when I interact with them. And, of course, the friends who've left me probably aren't reading this to begin with.

While I think online friendships are completely viable and no more or less safe than friendships formed under similar circumstances in the real world, I have no problem with admitting that there's a profound difference. I think it takes less to do more damage to an online friendship, but to have met an online friend in the real world will work wonders by letting you associate a person with the name, but it's also important, to me anyway, to realize that appearances don't matter, and that online friendships could potentially be far better due to the fact that you form friendships on personality only and not because someone looks pleasing to the eye.

If anyone has any doubts or questions or comments about anything, feel free to leave a comment. After all, this is a blog and the comments section IS open! That means, in no particular words: "POST A COMMENT, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL CREATION, LET ME KNOW YOU READ THIS PART OF THE INTERNET, PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU!" And with that, I conclude this post! (And I'm now very hungry...)

It amazes me (sometimes, but not always) how people can, in one instant, be so smart and informed about computer technology and software and yet, in the next sentence, be so completely off the mark that you can't help but gasp in horror. (Okay, not really, but it at least gets a healthy rise of the eyebrow.) It seems that one of the major points of contention is 64-bit operating systems... Most people seem to agree that 64-bit lets you have more RAM, but then they go on to say "it only recognizes 3.5GB" or "nothing but 64-bit applications work" or something else that makes absolutely no sense, and, to make it worse, they just went on to say something brilliant in the paragraph before!

Vista is the best version of 64-bit Windows... XP was more of a hobbyist thing (and still is). I just want to straigten out a couple of things. First, 64-bit operating systems can address 4GB of memory total, period. That doesn't mean just RAM and that doesn't mean just video card RAM... It also means things like BIOS ROM, RAID cards, low level programs like keyboard controllers, and other things. 16kb here... 128kb there... If you have 1GB of video card RAM, the OS will only recognize a little less than 3GB of RAM. It's not "64-bit lets you have 3.5" it's "64-bit lets you have 4GB of memory in your entire computer and system RAM takes the lowest priority of being counted". Second, Vista 64 runs 32-bit applications just fine, thanks to an emulator similar to what XP has to run 16-bit applications. Unfortunately 64-bit doesn't emulate 16-bit, so programs that you used when Windows 3.1 was the prime of the pack won't work anymore... But let's face it. People who use these programs at home should upgrade by now... People who use these programs at businesses haven't upgraded because those in charge never justified the cost and this will help the employees in their quest for easier to use software when 32-bit becomes a thing of the past. (Now, to be perfectly honest, the 64-bit memory allocation is far, far, far more complicated than that, but I won't get into that for the sake of your sanity.)

As such, if you buy a new computer RIGHT NOW? You should not consider a 32-bit operating system. Even now, 4GB is cheap enough to be expected in a computer you buy RIGHT NOW, and 64-bit is required to see all of that RAM. It doesn't cost any more when you pick 64 over 32 and it offers many more advantages. Anyway... It's people like these who make me think that I would be an AWESOME system builder and repair person. You know, I even caught someone saying that Vista SP1 was a piece of trash... In the spirit of my not believing stuff like this without proof, I asked them to provide links and numbers so I could see myself (I even linked them to the benchmarks that say Vista SP1 fixed graphics performance)... Of course, no response, but there've been a few others who jumped on my bandwagon with "what the heck are you talking about, man?"

What's worse than a noob who claims something without giving proof? A noob who claims something without giving proof who thinks that all of us should take their word for it because they think they're a professional... Ugh. No wonder Windows gets such a bad rap. Even the "pros" don't understand computers.

Oh, and while we're at it, a while ago, Slashdot ran with an article that spelled doom and gloom for the market share of Windows, and they were all praising the fact that Windows MIGHT drop below 90%, as if that is some sort of huge deal. They, of course, took the time to promote how Apple rose an entire 2% in the last year. (It's funny that they didn't note the 0.2% increase in Linux use... Not the exciting "year of Linux" everyone foretold in January, is it?) Well, if you're going to use this chart to condemn Microsoft, you have to use the same numbers for everything. Can't selectively say "Windows is failing" and then ignore "Linux is stuck". Of course, these are liberal, anti-capitalist, open-source fanatics we're talking about. They'll pick and choose whatever they darn well please and the Slashdot "editors" won't bother to check facts.

What I want to point out (which is what PCWorld was also keen to point out) is that over the last year, Vista has grown over 300%, from 4% to 16%. Now, this is just Vista, not "Windows". The upgrade rate is growing steadily faster than Apple's... People keep claiming that Vista is "dead" and that because Microsoft is already creating a new Windows, it means that Vista doesn't have Microsoft's own "blessing". Absolute hogwash. Upgrades of this magnitude have always been slow... People wouldn't upgrade to XP from 2000, but when they were finally forced to, they enjoyed it all the same. People don't want to upgrade to Vista from XP, but those of us who are finally forced to decide it's really not as bad as everyone says it is. Take it from me... Vista on a new, modern system (as it was designed for) is absolutely amazing. Vista upgrading from a computer that can barely run XP? Not so hot.

All part of my "please, use common sense, you clueless rabble" theme for this blog.

So I saw a thread on a forum I sometimes visit... It was about Independence Day. "Great!" I thought. "A nice little thread reflecting on the beginning of our great country." WRONG! It was a thread picking apart everything that this particular person ever thought was wrong with this place... Dredging up falsehoods and oddities like "fast food is under attack" and several other things that made me blink and want to rip into this person for being such an idiot. While they were sometimes valid points, this person took them way out of proportion and made the United States out to be the next communist dictatorship and, to be honest, it's sickening. Of course, I don't think that a lot of people these days would take the time to reflect on the Declaration of Independence in the way it was intended to be written without crying about separation of church and state, but I would also expect people to stop listing everything wrong about the country and be happy that you live in a place that lets you air your feelings of malcontent without worry that the government police will break down your door and silence you.

I just thought I should mention that... Some people can never be happy, can they? Now, Peter Heck did this yesterday, but I was planning on doing this myself, too, before HE ever did, pfft. Anyway, here is, in its entirety, the Declaration of Independence (taken from ushistory.org). According to Peter Heck, there are so many in this country who haven't even seen the document... To be honest, I'd never seen it or read it, either, until I started getting interested in politics. I knew ABOUT it and what it stood for, but I didn't actually know exactly what it said... But here you go, for all you who need to step back and think about how this country was started, and might I also wish you a safe and happy Independence Day! (Also, I believe this is a far deeper post than it would be had I spammed "happy Independence Day" nearly 100 times like a "certain" blog I read through a "certain" syndication site...) But! Without further ado, the Declaration of Independence:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. - Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

- John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

So there I was... Watching Deep Space Nine and minding my own business. Season 7, Episode 8: The Siege of AR-558, to be exact. I'd seen the character a couple times before during the episode, but suddenly, his voice hit me like a splash of cold water... I KNEW THAT VOICE. I kept watching for a few seconds and BAM! I knew who he was. There's only one person who speaks softly in such a specific way:

Recognize him? I'll bet you don't... I saw his name in the opening credits but I completely blitzed out and didn't recognize it. It's Bill Mumy! Don't know who that is? Well, if you took my advice from long ago, you would have attempted to watch Babylon 5 and you would have seen a character called Lennier. (There's a photo on the Babylon 5 Wikia project, if you want to compare and see why you probably wouldn't recognize him.) But, oh, you know it... Lennier in Star Trek! I love it when this happens... You go about watching enough science fiction TV shows and movies and you'll be utterly shocked at how many actors and actresses do so many different parts in so many of your favorite things.

Okay, before I forget, I just want to go on record as saying that I don't believe the North Pole is going to completely melt by September like "the scientists" say. I just don't. I want to say this now so, come September, I can refer to this post so people can't say that I can't prove my forthcoming "I told you so". The bears striking resemblence to the many doomsday asteroid impact articles that NASA periodically puts out. They never get around to apologizing for scaring the entire population over nothing...

Now, for the record, I will apologize if I'm wrong about the North Pole melting... But I also wish to postulate the question: Would a melted North Pole REALLY be so bad? It's not like there's land underneath to redistribute the water and "innundate" our coastal cities. And besides, some articles refer to the amount of oil and other natural resources underneath the North Pole that could be exploited once the ice melts. This would be bad... How? It amazes me how the liberal left can scream "oil is evil" and call for alternatives, but at the same time, attempt to STOP oil production BEFORE we have alternatives. That's the definition of stupidity. Yes, let's cripple the country on so many levels just to expedite the research of alternative fuels. Brilliant idea! Now I understand how that side of the political aisle thinks they have everyone's best interest in mind. (Remember folks, that was sarcasm.)

So, you know, I have tons of news feeds running through Google Reader every day... Mostly political, some gaming, some forums... I pick up on a lot of political developments before a lot of other people do. Except for this one, which showed up on virtually NONE of the mainstream media outlets, and I had to hear it from the Peter Heck Show.

Remember back when Bush was getting re-elected? Democrats were almost in perfect agreement that Bush was planning to push a theocracy and that we had to prevent that from happening at all costs. This was for the 2004 Presidential Election... Do you remember the uproar? I'm betting a lot of people don't (or won't) remember 4 years ago, so here's a little Google News link to refresh your memory. I searched for (bush theocracy -iraq), because people mention Iraq as being a theocracy at times, and that garnered hits that weren't relevant. The "Bush Theocracy", though... Plenty of articles. Go check them out if you don't remember them, but I bet you do, deep down. Why, you ask, is this at all relevant to today? Bush is getting out and he clearly hasn't turned this country into a Baptist regime. Why are you digging up the past?

Because of what Obama said... And I quote:

Sen. Barack Obama, trying to reach out to religious groups, on Tuesday called his faith "a personal commitment to Christ," and said that if elected president he would use taxpayers' dollars to help do "the Lord's work."

Interesting. Emphasis my own. Do you see what he said there? Always thanks to myst-bert for raking me over the coals for providing merely one source that "clearly means nothing in the grand scheme of things", I offer you another Google News link. You can read 669 articles for yourself. This isn't some fluke of reporting... This is something Obama said quite clearly, and something that local papers and blogs have picked up on. He promises to use taxpayer dollars to do the "Lord's work". How's that for weight to call Obama's campaign a theocracy? Funny thing is, I've not heard any complaining from the Democrats from my usual sources... The same people who are so quick to break Bush over less are either simply ignoring what Obama's saying (which wouldn't be surprising... If they actually paid attention to what his words say, rather than how he says his words, they'd be uproariously upset) or they're simply hypocrites. (Which also wouldn't be surprising... They're perfectly okay with their own candidate promising things they couldn't accept Bush offering because, after all, he's a liberal Democrat "who can do no wrong".)

So let me get this straight... Obama, if elected president, will take tax dollars to do the Lord's work. What does that mean? Well, according to the article, he was at a Presbyterian church when he said he would direct more funds to religious charities. If that isn't Congress establishing a religion, I don't know what is, even if it's actively funding anyone who wishes to apply... I don't think the government should at all be involved with channelling money into charities... It should be channelling money into the GOVERNMENT. If people WANT to give money to charities, they'll do it themselves. They don't need the government raising their taxes and forcing them to give to charities because Obama has a bee in his bonnet and wants to do what he thinks is the Lord's work with everyone's money but his own...

It's absolutely stunning how only last election, the Democrats were screaming about how Christians should not be elected as President because they'll "turn us into a theocracy". But Bush won despite their loudest complaining, so I personally think the Democrats took that heavy, unexpected loss to heart and started planning their next move... This is what they came up with! Suddenly, their prized candidate is a "Christian" (who attended an incredibly racist church for 20 whole years, mind you) who has taken it upon himself to woo other Christians into voting for him by promising that he'll use tax money to further their work. Interesting. Talk about a complete 180... Where are all the people who cried against Bush? Too busy swooning in the crowd of their Obamessiah?

I have news for you Obama, from a conservative Christian to someone who wants to make himself look like a conservative Christian: We don't buy into your empty promises. We're Republicans. We notice when you flip-flop. We notice how you vote. Because, you see, that's how this side of the aisle works. We check your voting history! We don't go on empty promises. You see, we've seen how you prevented laws from being passed that would protect babies who made it through abortion attempts. We remember the quality of the church you attended for 20 years. We know you're a Christian in nothing but name. We're not so dilluted and enthralled with your presence as Democrats are. We're REAL Christians. We're REAL Conservatives. We're Republicans... We can tell when someone's only pretending, and you're only pretending and we don't want you. We don't want McCain, either, for the record. He's pretending just as much as you are. We want a REAL conservative, and when you, Obama, are on record as calling us conservatives "bitter old people who cling to religion and guns", we know where your heart truly lies, and it's not with us AT ALL. It's not because we're racist... Hardly the case! We conservatives wanted someone like Alan Keyes as our candidate, but our party leaders had other plans. You know what? He's ACTUALLY African. We don't want you (or McCain) because we know what you believe in and we want absolutely no part of it.

Against my better judgment, I'm going to point out that, once again, Cyan is attempting to resurrect a game that, for all intents and purposes, has repeatedly failed since it's initial release in 2004. That's right... Uru is back again. Now, when Ubisoft canned it, I was one of those who believed it was simply not given enough time to form a compelling story and a large enough player base to handle the costs, and when Gametap revived it, I was overjoyed. (I don't count Until Uru at all... In fact, if I had to point a finger at the sole reason for the increasingly elitist and intolerant community, it would be Until Uru and all the server operators who thought they were better than everyone else because they could run an Uru server.) But when Gametap canned Uru? I realized there was a reason why... Gametap gave it a year to work out and it didn't, plain and simple. People who tried to point out reasons why Uru was failing were unceremoniously cast out of the inner circle of the community for being "complainers". In a bittersweet moment, everyone finally understood what was going on and that those of us who said "look, there's a problem with Uru" were right.

Now... Cyan's releasing it AGAIN? Oh, but this time, they're not even trying to fix it themselves... They're going to let the omniscient community solve all the problems by letting THEM develop Uru into what THEY want... As if elitism and intolerance needed promoted? As Kotaku put it rather bluntly: "Just let it die already." Short, to the point, and full of truth. Cyan acquired the rights to it from Gametap, which I think is admirable of Gametap for giving up. Most publishers latch on to dead franchises, hoping that it will give them some power in the afterlife, but Gametap willingly gave it up. I think this is a good thing... But I think it should only be used to ensure that nothing further is done to Uru or the Myst universe without Cyan's sole consent. It needs to be put on the shelf as a reminder of what not to do with your next game and to make sure that nobody owns the rights to your flagship franchise... But it looks like new games from Cyan won't happen any time soon, since in this age of multi-million dollar games, Cyan is nothing more than a team of 10, similar to that of when they made Myst.

As a major fan of Cyan, despite what the community may think, I think this is a very, very bad idea. People are starting to look at Cyan and Uru as a joke. What is the popular definition of insanity? "Repeating the same thing over and over, expecting different results." Uru doesn't work... It never has, and I doubt it ever will. The developers didn't deliver story and content in a fashion to keep people interested, the publishers didn't go out of their way to advertise the presence of the game, and the community was far too immature for the style of gameplay, as was clearly evidenced when community members who were given the privilege of being in an official capacity took every opportunity to lord it over those who were "deemed inferior" by Cyan. With a lack of official story, regular players stepped up to develop their own, which is all well and good, but immaturity ran rampant because if you dared to question them on anything they were doing, even if it didn't fit with existing Myst canon, you were called a "complainer" and were told that you were the "problem of Uru" and that if you didn't like it, then you should just leave. (Or that you should do your own storytelling and leave them alone if you didn't like their way of telling.)

I would go on, and I was about to, but I realized this is NOT intended to be a post railing against the community, because I've been there and done that and had the responses and everyone knows I'm the "stupid, clueless, intolerant, creepy guy pretending to be a dog who hates Uru and everything in general". What I want to go on record saying is that I think it's in Cyan's best interest to personally axe Uru and do something else. I think that's what any sane company or person would do after all this trouble... I know the community is going to be upset that their favorite game is gone, but Uru is holding EVERYONE back... Players and developers alike. They're stuck trying to make something work that clearly CAN'T work, and they're too busy trying to patch the broken vase rather than concentrating on molding a new one, and, in the process, they've alienated so many people who used to be their friends simply because those people were saying "look, there's a crack."

In closing, I would refer you to this post, by Chucker. I agree with much of what he said... Especially in the first section where he talks about criticism. There will always be people who criticize because they see something they think is wrong... It kills me (and deeply saddens me) that people who've been a part of the community for YEARS were turned out on a whim because they saw something they thought was wrong and spoke up about it. "If you don't like it, you can always play something else." When you're a fan of something for as long as I've been, you want to see it succeed, and when you think you see a problem, you point it out so it can be fixed... And the Myst community decided that even though we were fans since Myst was brand new on Windows 95, we weren't "good enough" to criticize and that we should go somewhere else. You're not criticizing because you're a troll and want to drive everyone away and see it fail, you're criticizing because you want a problem to be addressed so it WON'T fail. It's not like we were newcomers looking to cause trouble. I would almost say we had a far more genuine concern for Uru than those who were willing to close their eyes and pretend nothing was wrong. But nobody saw that... So it failed.