Celestia Forums

Some of you older folks might remember the nuclear drills they used to make elementary school students do. You know, hide under your desk so that the nuke wouldn't take you away. Some of you newer generation folks were taught that this was propaganda. I call it nonsense, myself, and did at the time as well.

Anyway, I wrote some lyrics to it, and posted them on my site: http://wallstonemedia.com/wordpress/2009/08/25/nuclear-drills/. Let me know what you think.

- Danny

Wallstone wrote:Some of you older folks might remember the nuclear drills they used to make elementary school students do. You know, hide under your desk so that the nuke wouldn't take you away. Some of you newer generation folks were taught that this was propaganda. I call it nonsense, myself, and did at the time as well.

Anyway, I wrote some lyrics to it, and posted them on my site: http://wallstonemedia.com/wordpress/2009/08/25/nuclear-drills/. Let me know what you think.

- Danny

Danny,

nicely done site...

Those historical drills of nuclear damage prevention were indeed a political (rather than effective) measure to calm the population during the times of the "cold war". Every scientist was aware at the time that tables etc could only help a bit in regions VERY far from actual nuclear explosions... That many of these "lucky blast survivors" would later die from cancer, was also never mentioned.

Today we still have the same drills in many areas, except they are now advocated as a much more effective measure against damage from earthquakes

It was also nice to see your efforts of giving proper credit to Celestia and its developers. Here is a typo that you might want to eliminate. It also tends to happen to me quite frequently

Celetia Videos – Additional Credits

Finally, I hope your site is thoroughly NON-commercial, since NO commercial ads are allowed in this forum! At least I could not find any reference to book prices.

Fridger

Thank you for your responses, t00fri... I corrected the typo....

t00fri wrote:Finally, I hope your site is thoroughly NON-commercial, since NO commercial ads are allowed in this forum! At least I could not find any reference to book prices.
Fridger

I don't recall advertising anything at all. I wouldn't do that, ever, in a public forum. I did, however, ask for opinions about a few things I created (that were either based on Celestia itself -- the videos -- or was based on idiotic propaganda from past administrations -- this "song.")

The site in question is commercial. It was designed to be a commentary, review, and information BLOG. It is not a sales site, nor can you order anything through it. Nor do we advertise for anyone else (although we may occasionally accept an outside publisher's review of their offerings, subject to the same "info-only" restrictions.)

I have been moving all of my BLOGs and such to that site, as I was tired of dealing with advertising, commercialism, and the restrictions you get from most commercial BLOGging sites. Yes, we will be reviewing products we created. No, you cannot order them through us (except wholesale, in quantities, on our e-commerce site.) Otherwise, the closest thing you will find to a price is a UPC and/or an ISBN -- you'll have to find your own price through your favorite retailer or bookstore.

There are a number of commercial projects in the works for Wallstone, but Wallstone News & Views will barely deal with most of it, as it's an entertainment site, not a sales site. Before you holler too loudly about my site being commercial, keep in mind that:

1. I'm not, and I didn't, try to sell you anything.
2. No site where we (the public) generally keep our videos and music is non-commercial (YouTube, MySpace, StumbleUpon, SoundClick, Last.FM, Twitter, FaceBook, etc.) All of these make money by you simply showing up. Yeah, more if you click... I don't get one red cent from WN&V. I pay to have it up, though.
3. I'm only posting things here that I think you folks will be interested in, but will never advertise them, and never for a commercial product.
4. My site's a hybrid - the majority of the new posts coming up are actually old posts I yanked off my earlier BLOGs. Calling it strictly commercial is a misnomer.

Most of what we will be reviewing on WN&V was not created by us. Nor do we make any money from it should you decide to go buy it. Case in point: I will be reviewing, in depth, Battlestar Galactica (the remake), and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Both of these are SciFi, both have outer space associated with them, but only one has a plot, actors that know the difference between walking and sleeping, a storyline, or special effects worth a flip. Guess which one?

Although the music I use in the videos is commercial, (I own the copyrights), it is also free to the public. On our SoundClick pages (3 "bands"), we let the public download all the songs as MP3s, for free. They are licensed under Creative Commons, for noncommercial, no derivatives usage. This means people can do what they want with it -- companies cannot. Without the great background music I created, "Abstract Reality" and "Space Walking" wouldn't be music videos, as the video itself isn't enough to call it that....

In any event, if I cannot post links to my BLOGged posts here, then it should also be against the rules to post links to ANY outside site which contains ANY advertising (to include YouTube, etc.) They make money from their sites -- I don't from WN&V.

Oh, yeah -- back to topic.... I added a refrain, and an extra verse set to the song. If anyone's interested, of course...

- Danny

t00fri wrote:Finally, I hope your site is thoroughly NON-commercial, since NO commercial ads are allowed in this forum! At least I could not find any reference to book prices.

I think the point of the forum policy on advertising is to avoid blatant unsolicited advertising spam which is completely un-related to Celestia. I think that Chris said in the past that he has no objections to Celestia being used in any commercial manner as long as the Open Source license is adhered to and appropriate credit is acknowledged. The license irself certainly doesn't explicitly exclude commercial activity associated with Celestia.

Also, I don't think this forum has any problems with commercial stuff, as long as it's related to Celestia. For example I'm sure that Frank Gregorio's site where he sells CD's of the Educational materials, has been linked to in the past from this forum (or even in his sig). Some people might consider that a commercial activity, but I'm sure that no-one here would object to that.

It seems Fridger that you as one of the co-authors, have a different opinion on commercial use of Celestia than Chris, or are you just talking about the blatant un-related spam stuff?

CC

Chuft-Captain wrote:It seems Fridger that you as one of the co-authors, have a different opinion on commercial use of Celestia than Chris, or are you just talking about the blatant un-related spam stuff?

CC

Well CC,

it was not my intention to expose here my personal opinion about commercial uses of Celestia in general and Frank's selling of Celestia-Edu CDs in particular. However, my views might well differ from those of Chris in this respect...

My sole point was to make sure that Danny did not recommend us a commercial site of himself, where the selling of his books (unrelated to Celestia) is advertised. Danny is a new user and thus might not be aware of the shatters.net policy concerning links to Celestia-unrelated ads, political comments etc.

Wallstone wrote:The site in question is commercial....

I just quote this from the Users/Forum Guidelines:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Please do not:
=========

...

- 4 Post advertisements for commercial products.
This includes SPAM.

...

Consequences for violating these guidelines:
=============================

-- Forum moderators may lock, edit or delete postings which violate these guidelines, usually with an explanation why.

-- People who persistantly violate these guidelines may not be allowed to use the Forum again.

----------------------------------------------------

That should be clear enough?

Fridger

t00fri wrote:

Wallstone wrote:The site in question is commercial....

I just quote this from the Users/Forum Guidelines:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Please do not:
=========

...

- 4 Post advertisements for commercial products.
This includes SPAM.

Did I try to sell you a book? No. Did I offer to let you read something I wrote, as a parody to something idiotic? Yes. I did not know about the anti-political atmosphere of Shatters, so my apologies to anyone who may have been offended by such, but can we move past this? Had I posted the exact same thing, on my own Yahoo Groups site, and linked to such, it is doubtful anyone would have said anything. This is despite the fact that there are more ads on Yahoo than most commercial BLOG sites use -- for their own products.

Listen closely: I will not market to this crowd, through this forum. I will be placing ads on YouTube, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, StumbleUpon, etc. when I am ready to sell, but it won't be here. That way, when you go to your favorite social site, then you can see my offerings. You don't even know what I'm selling, as I haven't told anyone yet....

In any event, I'm through discussing this. I didn't come here to fight, and certainly not about anything as stupid as whether or not a commercial site can be linked to through these forums, as there are a LOT of links from here to them... Thank you for your input, however.

- Danny

Note to moderators - if the existence of perhaps the dumbest poem ever written is really that offensive, please feel free to delete this thread. It is impossible to keep from offending the entire planet, no matter how hard you try, especially when people are simply looking for a reason to argue.

Wallstone wrote:Did I try to sell you a book? No.
- Danny

Danny,

sure enough, I never claimed that you tried to sell actively some books (of yours) at this shatters.net site.

Yet, Selden currently deletes users and or bots (plenty therof!) who merely carry a link to a commercial website below their post signature.

In that sense, a mere listing of books with prices in some currency would definitely fit the criteria...As I wrote above, I was unable to spot any prices, hence it seems to me at least that there is no problem.

It's Selden's task to decide. I just wanted to help avoiding potential problems. No reasons to attack me in any way

On our CelestialMatters site

forum:
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/
Website
http://www.celestialmatters.org/

which has plenty of Celestia related material, art etc... we also disallow links to commercial sites.

Fridger

t00fri wrote:sure enough, I never claimed that you tried to sell actively some books (of yours) at this shatters.net site.

Or anyone elses', for that matter....

Yet, Selden currently deletes users and or bots (plenty therof!) who merely carry a link to a commercial website below their post signature.

Okay, I'll delete mine, since its against the rules. Of course, I'm not paying for extra email accounts to make a public forum happy, so your systems will continue to send me replies to my commercial email account (as it has for the past 2+ years.)

In that sense, a mere listing of books with prices in some currency would definitely fit the criteria...As I wrote above, I was unable to spot any prices, hence it seems to me at least that there is no problem.

Previously covered.

It's Selden's task to decide. I just wanted to help avoiding potential problems. No reasons to attack me in any way

The funny thing here... First, you told me "nicely done site"; then spoke in detail about the nonsense we youngsters dealt with back in the day. Thank you again, for pointing out my typo (spell-checker wouldn't have caught that one since I had to enter the title manually....) Then you complained that it might be a commercial site. The posting I was asking for opinions on (the "song", and I use that term loosely) is not presently commercial, although I could certainly turn it into such. That was never my objective -- I thought y'all might like a laugh, with some mild criticism of past stupidity. My bad.

Since I've worked on that domain for over 3 years (most of which you cannot see, as it's not public yet), it should be excellent. I think it's top-notch, for what it's designed to do. Again, it's not a sales site, although products that exist in the universe will definitely be discussed there. So will topics entirely off-limits here, but that is virtually anything, since Celestia is apparently the only permitted topic here (even here in Purgatory.)

I'm not attacking you. I'm just wondering why you seem to want to attack my site...? Did it do something to you?

- Danny

Wallstone wrote:I'm not attacking you. I'm just wondering why you seem to want to attack my site...? Did it do something to you?

I think I made it clear enough that I am neither attacking you nor your site. I indeed like the theme and layout of your site, as well as some of its content. So you seem to be out to turning around what I was writing, unless my English is incredibly bad

Since according to your own assessment, your site is a commercial site as well (no contradictions, right?), I merely expressed some respective warnings with regard to shatters net policies.

That's really all. Actually like here

Selden wrote:Danny,

Please remember that political commentary is not allowed on the Celestia Forum site.

Selden

it should have been Selden's job to clear this commercial issue up, not mine. But I would certainly be in charge at CelestialMatters.

Fridger

I think I made it clear enough that I am neither attacking you nor your site. I indeed like the theme and layout of your site, as well as some of its content. So you seem to be out to turning around what I was writing, unless my English is incredibly bad

Thank you, and you misunderstood my intent -- I winked to show I wasn't serious...

Since according to your own assessment, your site is a commercial site as well (no contradictions, right?), I merely expressed some respective warnings with regard to shatters net policies.

Right.

That's really all. Actually like here

Selden wrote:Danny,

Please remember that political commentary is not allowed on the Celestia Forum site.

Selden

it should have been Selden's job to clear this commercial issue up, not mine. But I would certainly be in charge at CelestialMatters.

Fridger

You took that from a different thread, dated after this one, but yes, I understand. I even responded to Selden in a personal message about it. No political discussions. Got it.

For the next two weeks, I'll be mostly out-of-pocket, working on another project that will contain some Celestia animations; full credit, and indeed, direct links to involved sites will be included. Does anybody want to write a new review of Celestia for the common public, or has one been written that the writer might let me use on my site (with proper credits, of course)? I'd like to give back to the creators, and the easiest (and possibly most useful way to Celestia) for me to do that is through free publicity. Hence the question. I would write the review myself, but feel that some of you are definitely more familiar with the program, and could point out useful (or maybe undocumented) features that the public might like.

- Danny

Good that we seem to be arriving at a "common denominator".
Good luck for your next project.

Incidentally, since you wrote above that with all these restrictions there seem barely good subjects left for Purgatory...I disagree, Purgatory is one of my favorite forums at shatters net (given that I got to write serious posts mostly as a longstanding Celestia coauthor ).

Just glance through some of Purgatory's non-political. non-commercial themes:

From my scientific 100 day evaluations of the global Swine flu growth and death rate, via Dr. Schrempp's Chem Lab , This Music makes me Cry, Tsunami strikes Sri Lanka, Dec 26, AF 447 Rio => Paris, Walls of Rhododentron in Hamburg!, Spring in Hamburg, Spring Explosion in Hamburg, Why does this forum have so few women??, Hamburg's Big River (Elbe) Freezing to Hiking in Paradise!

http://www.celestialmatters.org/users/t ... se%202008/

...and many many more during the past 7.5 years

Fridger