Innovating the Fifty-Thousand Problems In Need of Solutions and Better Ideas

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business of innovation, business of inventing, Capitalism, Creating, creators, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, drawbacks of inventing, innovating, Inventing, invention, inventors, makers, making, making a business from an invention, problems to solve, prototyping, who invents, women innovation efforts, women inventors, women makers, women owned businesses

In the world today, there are probably over fifty-thousand problems or more still in need of solutions and certainly some better ideas. Online there is an explosion of wonderful things, innovations, inventions, discoveries and small business start-ups seeking to solve some of these problems.

And then what happens to them? That is a good question. And in one of these posts, I’m going to try and answer that. But, before I get on a tangent about only 1.9% of women owned businesses getting any venture capital and how start-ups, especially women owned start-ups are ending up with loan packages at 40% interest rates and having to pay off investors at the two or three year mark when the business should be getting established, then taking a hit instead – I’ll cover some of the things still needing solutions.

But first, I found this article in my twitter feed and went over to read it –

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/lost-einsteins-the-us-may-have-missed-out-on-millions-of-inventors/?utm_source=mitsloantwitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=einsteins

It describes why the US may have missed out on millions of inventors. Their research indicates that –

WHY IT MATTERS

Innovation has slowed in the U.S., stymying economic growth. To get back on track, the U.S. needs more low-income children, women, and minorities to become inventors — but that won’t be easy.

(and)

The research also shows that innovation in the U.S. could quadruple if women, minorities, and children from low-income families became inventors at the same rate as men from high-income families.

(and)

Whatever policies are eventually adopted, policymakers need to think in terms of long-term solutions. “You want is to increase the pipeline of people on the supply side who are great inventors,” Van Reenen said. “You want to take the talent that is already in America and get those kids imagining themselves being an inventor or potential inventor. It is not a quick fix, but in the long run it is going to be a more effective policy.”

from –

LOST EINSTEINS: THE US MAY HAVE MISSED OUT ON MILLIONS OF INVENTORS

It is worth going and reading that article, however, I just about hit the ceiling when I read it and even now with a four bullet point list of what I want to say about it – well, angrier about it than I can even express.

When a man, young man, or boy in white upper class America comes up with an invention – what happens next is tremendously different than what happens when someone from any other of those groups, gender or income levels invent or innovate something.

There is more than whether someone can believe themselves to be an inventor. It takes being able to have some help and support, protection from theft of the invention and massive amounts of money and networking to get the invention patented, prototyped and then into investor backing processes. Women and minorities don’t have that.

One of these 50,000 plus problems still in need of good solutions and inventions is a way to take mining tailings out of the water system once they’ve been allowed to get into it. Obviously, that continues to be a problem in the United States and around the world.

Let’s say I have designed something for this purpose and am a woman without any real support from friends and family to back my idea to fruition. How often that is the case for every woman, every person without a strong financial foundation and most minorities, people that are poor and people who have disabilities specifically.

There are no family members going to network an attorney friend or blueprint maker to any of us as they would if a white male from an upper class family has the idea. There are no instances of getting some family members to financially back having the prototype made or getting the patent process done or pitching it to other people for us as happens for those guys and their idea.

So, when the researchers in this MIT/Sloan study support putting in place programs to help people who are women, who are poor and who are minorities believe we can invent and be inventors, it is very disingenuous.

We do create, invent solutions, innovate and make inventions that solve real world problems, but without the other components that are obviously available to white men who do it – from family, from friends, from investors, from bankers, from the community at large, from attorneys, from skills in their family’s networks of acquaintances – our inventions are lost to mankind and to our country.

These inventions and innovations either don’t get brought to fruition, are stolen by those who have means as we try to do something with them, or are ignored by companies until the patent we do manage to get doesn’t have the fees paid or runs out – then takes it for nothing.

Families of middle class and below, economically disadvantaged, working poor and outright financially destitute individuals simply are denied the access and equal opportunity for processes of protecting the invention or innovation or idea from inception to realization to be available to us.

Inventing and inventions, innovations and concepts for an innovation that could be brought to the marketplaces are not treated with value in these arenas either because everyone has seen that there is no chance of realizing any rewards from those efforts and bringing it to the marketplace.

Even once the patent is made, prototype created and market analysis is done for some product or invention, there is no money to go forward from that point for people in these groups either. Investors want to see 2 -3 times their money back in short periods of time and see that it can be done without any risk to them whatsoever.

No matter what invention or innovation it may be, there is typically no existing track record of what it will do in the marketplace because it is new or a new approach or has not been done that way already or would have to supplant something else in the market that is currently being used for whatever problem it approaches. That makes it appear to be unworthy of the risk involved of backers putting the money with it that the process would take to bring it into the market successfully.

Some investors, angel investors, venture capital investors, banks and sources intended to serve minority run businesses won’t even approach these new ideas without a track record. And, some loans to do it if not denied, have interest rates of 40% which rob the business potential of the idea at every stage. Then, about the time the business with this new invention or innovation are getting established, investors pull their money out – after 2 – 3 years, if anyone from any of these groups even get that far with it. Most often, the access for funding is simply non-existent no matter how many are approached.

To show the picture a little clearer – if a white male in a family has an idea for an invention, the first thing that happens in his experience with it is to receive respect for his value and the value of whatever he has come up with. Next, family members hook him up with friends of theirs and from their networks of acquaintances, that can help the idea be fleshed out into drawings and plans or they pay for it to be done outright.

Then, family members and business friends hook that guy up with an attorney to write out a non-disclosure agreement so the innovation, invention or idea can be shown to potentially interested companies.

Then, they call their friends and extended family members and pitch the need for backing this idea financially FOR HIM, and line up funds to get the thing going so the patent can be filed and a prototype created.

They might even get drawings or computer work done from a friend or family member or hire it to be done, to show off the idea, invention or innovation so it looks slick when they take it to bankers and friends who have access to invest in it.

Then, rather than the person – the white male from an upper class income in this case, having to pitch the idea, invention or innovation through his own efforts, there is already a team of family members, friends of the family, extended family and business acquaintances of the family supporting him, supporting his efforts, supporting his idea or invention, protecting the invention with appropriate legally binding elements, but also pitching it for him, pitching it to funding sources and rounding up money for it – for him.

That is not what happens to women, people who are poor or even middle-class, minorities, disabled people, elderly people, and children of every other group that is not financially well-off.

But, we do hear a lot of “who do you think you are?” and “why should I give any money to you?” As well as, we do get a lot of ideas, inventions, innovations and fully fleshed out prototypes of inventions and marketable products stolen from us that we’ve invented or created, hijacked from us, diverted from us participating in any of the rewards of them despite having created them.

The stories of that are far and wide, common in so many iterations that the experience of those around me without great financial means match my own in this area.

It is apparently been and continues to be a common practice, to not allow rewards of our inventions, labors, ideas, innovations, new characters, new processes, new possibilities for things to come to us. It must be intentional without those in our society doing it having any understanding of the cost to all of us and our nation’s potential when they do it that way.

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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Doing Business Through Online Platforms

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Art, art business, Artwork, Cricket House Studios, cricket house studios art and design, cricketdiane, design, doing business online, good bad and ugly, good bad and ugly of online business, internet busineses, internet platforms, Marketing, online business, online business how to, online marketing, online platforms, print on demand, print on demand platforms, putting art online, small business how to, the business of art, writing for online platforms

When I started on Ebay years ago, it was simple enough for whatever put there to be seen by someone during the auctions – from when the auction started and especially, when it ended. That’s because, as listings were entered into Ebay, the listing showed up in the search results as it was made.

There was something very fair and level playing field about that which changed after the platform went to a Best Match style search results product they added and then paid positioning which was added not too many months after that.

I really don’t know how close the two things occurred – but those two changes made Ebay into a place where most individual sellers and smaller shop owners in particular were no longer able to compete in a fair marketplace.

A lot of Mom and Pop shops that were doing their business activities on the platform would not be seen in search results, auctions of things wouldn’t come up for twenty-six pages after all the paid results were listed, and many individuals and small businesses lost the income and audience that they had been building.

At the time I started on Ebay, I had already been putting my art – paintings specifically, onto the internet platforms of various kinds including art sites that were more like portfolio hosts in the beginning and then changed to offer prints of artist’s works with a tiny percentage going to the artist.

There were those and myspace and then a lot of people who had built their websites on geocities watched their sites be taken down without regard when it was sold. Then things like photobucket, deviantart and loth lorien sites where a lot of people simply picked up images to use without asking or paying or saying anything until I would find my artwork on sites somewhere without my name or any note of me having painted it or it being my work or anything. That happened from my blog too for that matter.

And, people said that being online to do business makes so many things possible for individuals because the whole world is out there and available from this single interaction sitting from wherever I might be.

Yes, then CafePress as a print on demand option which never did allow me to put in my tax number to get paid nor had anyone at their HQ who could help me really fix that. There is probably still things over there. The DeviantArt page or two that were put on without writing down the password and then when my email changed, I couldn’t even find a way to get in to do anything with it and there it sits.

It was pretty awful to watch what happened to the people creating content for Huffington Post without pay believing that they were building something together with the founders that would profit them eventually – and I still believe that the way it was presented to me and other content creators made it seem that way.

I didn’t push content there, though I might have posted one article once over to it, but I watched the dismal reality as writers, reporters, videographers and columnists, bloggers and others contributing material that built the platform by providing that content as they watched their audiences of followers turn out to not be theirs at all and not be paid for any of their work either, nor be hired on full-time, nor it be made into any kind of paying gig.

As the big money was paid to buy the platform, those contributors were not treated as part of what created the platform and gave it the value for which it was sold at that price, nope – not at all.

Anyway, I’ve seen a lot of these kinds of things over the years I’ve been working with the online concepts of doing business. The portfolio style platforms which started offering prints, from what I understand, wiped out those artists’ work that was being shown there to continue with some curated collection of prints from other sources without any regard for the artists whose works helped build their platforms’ traffic either.

By the time that happened, I had my artworks on about three of them, maybe four and didn’t even try to worry about it because every one of the platforms had been making some sales of my works as prints and I never could get my payments from them, even though it wasn’t a huge amount – still. And, too many headaches to worry about however many pieces I listed with them being deleted and the work I did to build a following. It is a zero sum game.

But recently, when YouTube changed its policies about paying the content creators and then a lady who had worked very hard to build a following was hit with censoring, then watched her audience numbers destroyed, then probably dropped from the revenue sharing on top of it all – after she had worked some years to build all that, I can see why she went off the edge. I don’t agree with her shooting up the YouTube HQ and then offing herself, of course, but I can certainly see what took her to the point of that.

This is the article about it from the LA Times.

It is one of the ugly sides of doing business through online platforms where the traffic is being built by the content and marketing efforts that are being provided by people like me and like her and like tens of thousands of us out here trying to get an opportunity to earn from our efforts doing it.

Yesterday, it was Polyvore that became a different platform without warning where millions of people had been interacting and providing content and efforts that built the value of the platform which lent its value to it being sold at a price in the $200 million range, first to Yahoo and then to the Montreal SSense, whoever it may be that owns them.

There are many people who made hundreds, if not thousands of collages on the site (called sets) by meticulously clipping out and creating beautiful groupings of clothes, furnishings or even artworks for the community there. And, now those things – all gone.

The company is allowing users to request a download of their sets, but basically – it is gone and no telling what those files will even look like once users get them. They probably won’t look like the sets that were created, nor the libraries of things they clipped to be able to use in the sets. And yes, my designer products and sets I made were on there too – several hundred probably. A lot of people are very worked up about it and understandably so.

My thoughts are a bit different about it at this point, I suppose. It doesn’t make sense to me that these companies would buy platforms that were built up by the users into a well trafficked platform and then dismantle it. Why buy it then? And why are the content creators not treated with more respect and value by the founders and companies that host these platforms to the online community? I don’t get that.

When YouTube changed its policies and then changed the revenue sharing, the content producers in the online community had spent valuable time, resources, talent, marketing efforts and faith in the premise of the platform to share in the revenue as it was presented to them by the company.

Then the changes were made considering none of that as having any value to them. I just don’t get that mental landscape. It doesn’t make sense, but I’ve watched it happen over and over on the internet and across American businesses throughout the country over the years. Customers don’t mean anything, employees don’t mean anything, the communities the company had served don’t mean anything and the well-being of those who have served the company across the board in extended communities of people and other businesses don’t mean anything. It is bizarre.

So, the good of the doing business through online platforms is the possibilities that it represents which, however hard to realize as a fruitful and prosperous business – do actually exist.

And, the fact that the whole world is out there with a massive set of communities and networks available to access through the internet, through the platforms – all that is a good thing about it, although it is very difficult to access those communities now for a variety of reasons not the least of which is, utter clutter.

The bad things about doing business through online platforms are mentioned above, like the platform being bought or changing its guiding mission or changing its rules about how revenue is derived by the content providers and those efforts having been invested to build an audience, a following, build a brand, build a business, become known and derive some reasonable income from it – are destroyed or decimated without regard.

The platforms online do provide low start up costs in money, but not in time and efforts. They do provide access to a global marketplace 24/7 in every currency and nearly every language – all good as well. But, unless I know about SEO and fifty other marketing things very specific to online marketing and talk about celebrities most of the time or some other trending topic, or do something that out-outrageous-es everything else out there in internet land, no one is going to find my things in that global landscape and marketplace.

There are other things too that are just genuinely bad about online business efforts through internet platforms that are provided in many different types now.

The main one I’m thinking about right now is that it puts anyone into direct competition, not just with others doing the same things but with every other retailer and every other product, design, use of money that could do something else and every other business selling anything including every service based company as well as the very largest well-placed competitors, to get even a dime from those efforts.

For the ugly, I think it is becoming obvious with the recent Cambridge Analytica / Facebook debacle. As one computer programmer recently said on twitter, if you aren’t paying for the service – then you are the product (or something close to that.) Although, to be honest, most of those services that are charging also sell the information and provide access to their information for a fee to third parties sooner or later – either because the company gets sold, goes bankrupt and is dismantled or changes their focus which changes their terms of agreement with customers and the content on their sites.

And, the services of online platforms that seem to not be charging like the print on demand types – are certainly charging each of the people using the site. On Zazzle, where my designs are now – it is like Lulu books or anything else, shutterstock and istock included, that are making money from my side of the interaction when anything sells and on the other sides of the dimensional equation from payment services fees to other revenue streams coming from the manufacturing companies for the products, or subscription fees to the customers as well, in the case of istock and shutterstock.

Ebay does that too and every other platform. Facebook has ad revenues that generate money from having the audience that all of the people having pages there are providing that audience and traffic from the real world of potential customers. Then, data is sold too. And, information of other kinds is sold too. I’m not on Facebook much, but on twitter – and definitely the same kinds of things can happen and may be happening with data harvesting.

But, the ugliest side of doing business through online platforms probably isn’t the data harvesting. The ugly is most likely having millions of people disenfranchised of their work and the internet’s promise and potential of providing a viable way to reach the world and create a sustainable income from it, particularly through these platforms, being less possible in reality than anyone would believe or try to do, if that were known.

When that lady shot up the YouTube offices a few days ago, she was lost – whatever she may have provided to the world was lost, her life was lost and the potential of everyone she shot was altered forever, and thankfully they didn’t die from it – but their lives were permanently altered because of it. So, in every way – it was a complete fail and a total loss rather than whatever it might have been without it ever happening.

In my case, I’d say the ugliest mistake I made with the online platforms was believing that it was a place to express my art, provide my art at a marketplace where I had access and that it would work well. That said, it has put my art and design into the hands of a lot of people across the world who would have never had access to it all otherwise.

The problem is that most of us likely buy into that idea about these online platforms freeing us to put our work into the hands of a larger marketplace – whatever our art may be – from writing and music to artwork and design.

That draws us – including me – into a place where the platforms thrive by getting content without cost to them and getting traffic, audience and communities built for them without any of the true costs of that as well. Yes, the backend efforts of the platform are being provided, but without content and audience – it would mean very little.

After spending years creating content online, and receiving very little if anything from those efforts, it looks to me like I could have declared it a holiday every day and never lifted one hand to any of it and come out better than I have for making those efforts. And that, I live with knowing every single day. Yet, somewhere – because I made those efforts, someone many times over, is enjoying what I created. It sits in their home. It was given as a special gift. It gives them some feeling that is nice when they see it. And, every single day somewhere around the world, every one who sees it is receiving something from it.

That part of it is really, really good.

• cricketdiane, 04-06-2018

 

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March for Science April 14 2018

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cricketdiane, education, Engineering, evidence based facts, facts matter, march for science, science, science matters, STEM, stem march, support education, support science, supporting engineering, supporting science, US government war on science, war on science

The March for Science is going to be on April 14 this year. It is important this year more than ever to stand up for Science and for STEM in the United States as it is all under attack daily throughout our government in its current iteration.

At a time when America needs science and technology to make significant leaps forward to catch up with the rest of the world who has been supporting education, higher education, science, math, technology and engineering with massive efforts, our nation’s leaders have chosen to make war on science at every opportunity and in every agency, every policy, every possible way.

We need education to support STEM now more than ever and to support education for our children and adults to be competitive in a global playing field where we have fallen behind. Now, rather than supporting our nation to be in a leadership role in science, technology, innovation and education, it is being de-funded, demeaned, derided, discredited, dismantled and destroyed.

These actions will set our nation behind by years upon years against other nations’ efforts supporting STEM, higher education and science, in particular. Please join the March for Science – whether you are a scientist or not to show America’s business leaders and political decision-makers that we stand together supporting fact-based and evidence-based decision making, scientific reason and educated thinking.

• cricketdiane, 04-05-2018

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The website for the March for Science

https://www.marchforscience.com/

Tweets by ScienceMarchDC

Developing The Scared Donkey Mine Game into a Video / Online Game – Gaming Development Resources Online

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board games, cricketdiane, cricketdiane projects, developing a video game, developing an online game, game characters, game dev, game development, game development costs, game development platforms, game graphics, gofundme campaigns, grannie d, granny d, grannyd, Inventing, scared donkey mine game, scared donkey mine money video game, the scared donkey mine money game, video game development

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CricketDiane 2018 The Scared Donkey Mine Money Game GoFundMe Campaign to turn the board game of it that I created into a video game and animations.

https://www.gofundme.com/scareddonkeyminemoneygame

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I had put together a bunch of notes on post-its in my notebook about ideas to take a board game that I made, called The Scared Donkey Mine Money Game from a board game to a video game. It looked like it would make a great video or online game, so I made a GoFundMe page and campaign to raise money to do it, (link above will take you to it).

My second effort at making an animation – a gif – of Granny D for the game –

Granny D from the Scared Donkey Mine Money Game by CricketDiane 2018 – this is a second attempt, the first was in black and white without a background.

Then I made an adobe spark video using it to tell about the game – there is another one using a puppet for Granny D to promote the GoFundMe campaign that I made with Adobe Spark too. It is one the campaign page or the update page. I’ve been sharing it.

Here is the one I made last night  to promote the game development fundraising efforts –

https://spark.adobe.com/video/uY9kerg1zyna7/embed

And, of course – there were lots of things about doing that which I obviously don’t know about game development and this blog post is a start of my sharing that journey showing the things I’ve been wandering through lately to understand it and learn about making online and video games.

One of the first places I went after making some google searches and honing in on the right questions, was this site which lists open source game development platforms. Then I opened each of them and took some time trying to understand the differences to figure out which ones I might be able to learn without a full range of abilities in coding.

Eight Top-of-the-Line Open Source Game Development Tools

ANAND NAYYAR, OCTOBER 16, 2017

http://opensourceforu.com/2017/10/open-source-game-development-tools/

Open source provides interoperability, high quality and good security in game development. Little wonder then that open source platforms are already being used for quite a few successful and complex games.

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I could list all these game development platforms here in a quick itemized bullet list, but it would be better, if you are interested – to go over to this site and read about each one the way the author has presented them. It is perfect and makes it easy to see all of them before going over to the platforms and seeing their landing pages.

From various google searches I did, one of the important things I wanted to know is, where to find game developers talking back and forth within their community about the difficulties and aspects for game development.

And, I found this – which is a subreddit community involved with game development. Lots of great blogs and information is listed here and just about every problem that can be encountered with developing a video or online game plus some of it explains what they did to go around that, fix it, do it anyway, figure it out or find another way to do the same thing, etc. – very nifty. It is also a great place to learn about how game developers approach things in game design and the words they use among the community to talk about aspects of building the games, too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/devblogs/

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Google Search – open source game development

https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+game+development&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS746US747&oq=open+source+game+dev&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.9441j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

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Just to share a couple of the other game development resources I found that I’m using –

Top 50 Game Development Blogs & Websites For Game Developers

Last Updated Jan 28, 2018

https://blog.feedspot.com/game_development_blogs/

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This article had all kinds of amazing insight into the developing of a game for me to understand it so much better. I repeated from his list, the number 5 item because it is when I saw it, that I knew something that I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

There, that was it – anyone making anything, including me – suffers through the starting points of not knowing what all are the unknowns. And because of this article – I went and looked up GDD or in this case, not Goddanged Design Doofer, but Game Development Document. Then I did a google image search for GDD templates that yielded a number of them to use as a reference point and start writing the one for my game to be a video game.

What NOT to do when starting as an indie game developer

by Roger Paffrath on 11/15/13

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RogerPaffrath/20131115/204871/What_NOT_to_do_when_starting_as_an_indie_game_developer.php

Do not forget to make a GDD or write your ideas down somehow.

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So far, I have a multi-page notebook that covers about thirty pages of post-it notes on computer paper with ideas for making the Scared Donkey Mine Money Game into a video game along with about ten more written pages of the Game Development document (still hand-written but have downloaded a template to put it into). I’ve made the GoFundMe campaign to raise $90,000 of the about $3 million it would take to hire developers and coders then I would probably have to get some more to market the game once it is completed.

And, I’ve learned about game development a little, and here are some more of the resources I’ve gained in that –

Unreal Engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine

The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of other genres, including stealth, fighting games, MMORPGs, and other RPGs. With its code written in C++, the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and is a tool used by many game developers today. It has won several awards, including the Guinness World Records award for “most successful video game engine.”^[2]

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Why Video Games Cost So Much To Make

Jason Schreier 9/18/17 

While reporting for my recently released book about how games are made, I asked a ton of developers how they calculate their budgets. A few of the bigger companies wouldn’t get into specific numbers—like I said, notoriously secretive—but all of the studios that did answer offered the same magical number: $10,000. Specifically, $10,000 per person per month.

https://kotaku.com/why-video-games-cost-so-much-to-make-1818508211

(My NOTE – Just go read this one – really. You’ll be shocked at how much it costs and why.)

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Video game costs

Typical video game costs and budgets:

• production and development costs
  • developer salaries
  • voice acting
  • music and orchestra (as high as $500K^[1])
  • licensing
• marketing and promotions
  • television advertisments
  • print advertisements (magazines)
  • online advertisements
  • events and launch parties^[2]
• manufacturing and distribution
  • arcade machine production (very expensive)
  • console cartridge production (fairly expensive)
  • optical disc production (fairly cheap)
  • online distribution (very cheap)

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs

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Be careful about the info found on the link above that appears after the list of costs, because it distributes numbers throughout the article from several different years including 2002, when the game development systems, complexities and costs generally were different with 2008 numbers and 2012 costs and today is 2018.

Also found this which is handy –

Inventors’ handbook

http://www.epo.org/learning-events/materials/inventors-handbook.html

Which is an overview of the European patent system info for inventors, coders, innovators, etc. and noticed a part that is especially helpful about non-disclosure agreements, so the game can be shown to potential backers and publishers.

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Superpowers

2D + 3D open source game development platform for indies

http://superpowers-html5.com/index.en.html

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Cocos2d-x

Brand New Graphic Renderer: The Cocos2d-x renderer is optimized for 2D graphics with OpenGL. It supports skeletal animation, sprite sheet animation, coordinate systems, effects, multi-resolution devices, textures, transitions, tile maps, and particles. It adopts a RenderQueue design.

http://www.cocos2d-x.org/products#cocos2d-x

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GDevelop

an open-source, cross-platform game development to be used by everyone – no programming skills required

http://compilgames.net/

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Panda3D

http://www.panda3d.org/

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Godot

https://godotengine.org/

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How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Successful City-Building Game App?

by Andrei Klubnikin on 08/15/17

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndreiKlubnikin/20170815/303674/How_Much_Does_it_Cost_to_Develop_a_Successful_CityBuilding_Game_App.php

Game graphics

Although city-building games typically use 2D images only, they feature thousands of characters, objects and scenes.

Every character should be animated – even if these animations will be limited to moving along 8 preset trajectories, clapping hands in a theatre and raising glasses in a bar. Multiply each character by 30 animations, 10 angles and 10 frames.

Also, you should breathe life into buildings and playing fields in order to illustrate construction, demolition and upgrade processes. Don’t forget about still imagery comprising icons and game admin UIs. Now you see where the overwhelming amount of graphic content comes from.

All in all, the creation of high-quality visuals takes up to 70% of the entire game dev time and costs about $ 250-300 thousand.

There is a lot of good information in this blog post and it has a great explanation to overview how the process of game development uses various things to help make the user experience better like optimization and the fact that currently, monthly revenue (as of 2017) for the SimCity game developed in 1989 is over $2 million dollars a month.

**

Aside from these resources, I’ve been looking at tutorials in game development specific to the Godot platform that I chose, although I’ve actually downloaded and intend to try out three of them, Godot, Panda3D and GDevelop.

I’ve also been looking at tutorials for creating a game in HTML5 and JavaScript

How to make a simple HTML5 Canvas game

by Matt Hackett, 2011 Aug 29

http://www.lostdecadegames.com/how-to-make-a-simple-html5-canvas-game/

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Making Sprite-based Games with Canvas

March 19, 2013

https://jlongster.com/Making-Sprite-based-Games-with-Canvas

Additionally, it’s relatively painless to distribute your app across a huge number of platforms. It’s exciting that in the past few years, developing games using HTML5, the technology behind the web, has become a reality.

The canvas element was introduced with HTML5 and provides an API for rendering on the web. The API is simple, but if you’ve never done graphics work before it might take some getting used to. It has great cross-browser support at this point, and it makes the web a viable platform for games.

Using canvas is simple: just create a  tag, create a rendering context from it in javascript, and use methods like fillRect and drawImage on the context to render shapes and images. The API has a lot of methods for rendering arbitrary paths, applying transformations, and more.

**

CREATE A SPRITE ANIMATION WITH HTML5 CANVAS AND JAVASCRIPT

by William Malone

Sprite animations can be drawn on HTML5 canvas and animated through JavaScript. Animations are useful in game and interactive application development. Several frames of an animation can be included in a single image and using HTML5 canvas and JavaScript we can draw a single frame at a time.

This tutorial will describe how HTML5 sprite animations work. We will go step by step through the process of creating a sprite animation. At the end of the this article we will use the animation we created in a simple HTML5 game.

http://www.williammalone.com/articles/create-html5-canvas-javascript-sprite-animation/

This one is super nifty. I really like it. Go check it out – it is the best.

**

List of best-selling video games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games

**

Pollutant and Smog Eating Neutralizing Materials and Gadgets

Tags

Air Pollutants, air pollution, building materials, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, diesel exhaust, neutralizing air pollutants, new materials, pollution eating building materials, pollution neutralizing cement, pollution neutralizing paint, smog, smog eating concrete, smog eating paint

I saw something yesterday that got me thinking again.

**

XXX A new lightweight configuration and material – MIT XXX

http://news.mit.edu/2017/3-d-graphene-strongest-lightest-materials-0106

My note – it is the math and surface area it provides that could be both strength and air cleaning in a massive way for cities.  It inspired me and so I looked up things about the pollution neutralizing paints and materials / concrete / cement – which I’ve added the things that stood out to me down this list.

**

So today, I made a search in google for

pollution neutralizing paint

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=pollution+neutralizing+paint

**

From those search results –

I chose to read and think about these articles –

2015

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/23/tech/innovation/the-smog-guzzling-buildings-pollution/

An even grander project, the Palazzo Italia, will use similar materials over 13,000 square meters across six floors when it opens in Milan in 2015. Dutch scientists have also adapted the system to roads, claiming this can reduce pollution by 45%.

The material is not prohibitively expensive — adding as little as 4-5% to construction costs. But the impact of such buildings has been limited to their immediate location, and efforts to develop the concept have led to more novel, personalized solutions.

**

2007

http://www.triplepundit.com/2007/11/tio2-paint-at-war-with-pollution/

The paint is formulated on a base of polysiloxane, a polymer consisting of silicon. The active ingredients are tiny spherical nanoparticles made up of calcium carbonate and titanium dioxide (TiO2). This polysiloxane base is porous enough to allow nitrous oxides to diffuse through it and effectively stick to the nanoparticles. In turn, sunlight provides the energy to convert the nitrous oxides into nitric acid which is either disposed of by rain or neutralized by the alkaline properties of calcium carbonate and converted into carbon dioxide, calcium nitrate, and water. These profound chemical transformations are triggered by the ultraviolet radiation absorbed by the nanoparticles.

AND

Millenium Inorganic Chemicals, a British R&D firm has developed what they intended to appropriately name “Ecopaint.” This paint utilizes the same photo catalytic process of the anti-smog cement developed and under going testing in Italy.

**

2013

http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/nasa-designed-airocide-neutralizes-indoor-pollution.html

NASA-designed Airocide neutralizes indoor air pollution

Called Airocide, this technology “clears the air of virtually 100% of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) – the harmful gasses emitted by products you have around your home, like aerosol sprays, cleaning supplies, disinfectants, hobby supplies, dry-cleaned clothing, building materials, paints and paint thinners, strippers, pesticides and even air fresheners. This FDA approved device also completely eliminates all mold, pollen, fungi, viruses and bacteria (all major causes of allergy symptoms) that enter the chamber,” according to the Airocide website.

AND

Gizmag reports, “Each Airocide unit incorporates a reaction chamber that contains thousands of tiny glass rings coated inside and out with titanium dioxide (TiO2). With the help of a high-intensity light, the TiO2 produces hydroxyls. When airborne organic molecules are drawn in and make contact with those hydroxyls, the carbon bonds in those molecules are broken.”

This process renders any organic compound inert. The hydroxyls cannot escape the chamber and no cleaning is needed, though the chamber does have to be replaced every year. The Airocide is currently priced at $799 and replacement chambers go for $99.

**

The technology has actually been used in places we’ve been visiting for quite some time now. Because ethylene gas causes accelerated ripening, supermarkets, florists and food packers have been using the technology since 1998, and in 2003, Airocide was introduced to hospitals, medical offices and daycare centers to prevent the spread of airborne disease.

**

Then popped from there over to this one –

2011

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/pollution-glue-london-roads-could-improve-air-quality.html

Dust suppressants consist of calcium magnesium acetate, which is expected to glue particles to the carriageway to stop them re-circulating in the air. TfL will first sweep and jet wash the roads, then apply the solution using a modified winter gritting machine with a fine sprinkler-like system attached.

 

AND

Head on over to Business Green for the full scoop on Mayor Boris’ pollution glue plan.

which I haven’t gone to see yet, but that article was from 2011

**

Then I made another search on Google using these search terms –

smog eating concrete

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=smog%20eating%20concrete

**

These are the search returns that I picked to read –

2013

http://www.core77.com/posts/25281/pollution-killing-material-smog-eating-cement-25281

Smog-eating cement first made headlines back in 2007, when it was introduced in the U.S. by the Italian company Italcementi, whose R&D center is pictured below. The cement is called TX Active and the magic ingredient is titanium oxide. When exposed to sunlight, titanium oxide can neutralize some pollutants—basically the toxins are oxidized when they come into contact with the cement. For instance, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide gasses are made harmless when they are turned into nitrates or sulfates. Without the catalyst of titanium oxide, the nitrogen and sulfur oxide break down in the atmosphere creating smog and ground level ozone.

And

 

**

2014

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-isnt-smog-gobbling-concrete-more-popular

 

**

http://smogeatingconcrete.weebly.com/

 

**

2015

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/smog-eating-buildings-battle-air-pollution-180954781/

**

2016

http://interestingengineering.com/building-covered-smog-eating-concrete/

The concrete is made up of traditional cement mixed with titanium dioxide. This unique mixture allows air to pass through while simultaneously capturing nitrogen-oxide particles, a main component of smog. Titanium dioxide functions as a catalyst to the chemical reaction which is activated by UV light. Not only does it filter the air, but the collected smog residue washes off with a light rainfall. Don’t worry about the residue, it’s made up of inert salts that have no effect on the surrounding environment.

And

In total, it took 2,000 metric tons of the bio dynamic concrete to construct the building and it’s creators at Italcementi claim that it is stronger than the equivalent of regular concrete. This added strength allowed the architects and engineers to create the stunning linear shapes seen on the building’s facade with ease.

CHK this site to see a photo of the building – absolutely stunning and it eats air pollution.

**

Chinese activist-artist raises awareness by sucking up smog into bricks

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Chinese+activist-artist+raises+awareness+by+sucking+up+smog+into+bricks

**

2015

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/china-pollution-artist/

Brother Nut’s machine collected over 100 grams of pollutants, much of it made up of small particles some 30 times smaller than a strand of human hair.

He then took the dust, mixed it with clay in a mold, and turned it into an average looking brick.

The art project went viral, to the point that he now gets stopped on the street by pedestrians wanting to take photos.

However, he’s not the first artist to tout a vacuum cleaner as a possible way to clean up the city’s skies.

And

In 2013, a Dutch artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde came up with an electro-magnetic device that would pull airborne smog particles to the ground, creating columns of fresh air.

Air pollution can be made of everything from soot to heavy metals like arsenic and lead.

**

2015

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/01/chinese-vacuum-cleaner-artist-turning-beijings-smog-into-bricks

As the latest coal-fuelled “airpocalypse” engulfed northern China this week and world leaders gathered in Paris to debate the fight against climate change, Nut Brother hit the streets of Beijing hoping to raise awareness of his country’s deadly smog crisis.

For the last 100 days, the activist, whose real name is Wang Renzheng, has used the industrial appliance to extract dust and other lung-choking pollutants from the city’s atmosphere before transforming them into a dark brown “smog brick”.

And

He ordered a vacuum cleaner from a manufacturer in Shanghai and began taking it on four-hour sorties across Beijing’s urban sprawl, gobbling up pollutants as he went. Photographs published in the Chinese media this week showed him pushing his vacuum cleaner past some of Beijing’s most celebrated landmarks.

And

“You can’t tell if it is night or day!” Liu Haishan, 38, a taxi driver, complained on Tuesday afternoon as he attempted to navigate through the gloom.

Beijing authorities claimed they had forced vehicles off the roads and shut more than 2,000 polluting companiesin order to tackle the crisis.

**

2015

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/dec/08/beijing-air-pollution-red-alert-smog-before-after-pictures

With pollution reaching 40 times the safe level, China’s capital has issued its first red warning, closing down schools and factories until Thursday. These images show Beijing under a layer of smog – and what it looked like on a clear day

**

Thirty Something Years Too Late To Fix Big Climate Changes

Tags

climate change, drought, Ecology, environment, extreme weather, extreme weather events, flooding, Global Warming, hottest year on record, industry, oil industry, paris climate accord, pollutants, polluting, pollution

Every other year a team of geophysicists and weather geeks told the Bloomberg administration about the storm surge that would come and why it would be exceptionally flooding to areas of the city. They explained why protection was necessary while there was still time to do something about it and why it was needed. They used charts and briefs with clear explanations but each time were sent away with nothing done, not one thing accomplished. When Hurricane Sandy came, there was no protection whatsoever.

**

In the late 60’s, the scrubbers being requested of oil industry facilities and other high polluting industries would’ve cost between $30 and $60 per smokestack and effluent release pipe – but, no – they wouldn’t do any of it and hired millions of dollars worth of lawyers, pr firms, lobbyists and “experts” to prevent having to do anything.

In the 70’s, it would have cost about $80 each to put that same filter on each stack and about $120 each for the effluent streams. In the 80’s, it would’ve cost about $300 each and $450, respectively. Then in the 90’s, it would’ve been from $600 to $3,000 depending on the system required to be placed, based upon the chemicals being discharged into the air, soil or water by the industry. But, no.

After the year 2000, some of those prices actually went down because of better and cheaper systems and materials with a much better understanding of treating whole systems in a more integrated way – but still, no. All the while, the damage was being done to the environment, to people, to communities and to entire regions of our nation.

And, all the time this damage was continuing to be done to the environment on massive scales across multiple industries, they were spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars on not doing anything. Industries, both individually and collectively as well as their industry associations spent far more on not doing anything or not being required by government to do anything than would’ve been spent if they had simply done something appropriate about it at any given point.

In some jurisdictions, in some states, EPA standards were applied but in many, many others, they were not. After 9/11 because of demand for filtration systems to prevent possible terrorist attacks or at least ameliorate them, and because the value of our US dollar having changed generally negatively, those 1960’s $30 scrubber filters would’ve cost more like $12,000 – $18,000 each even with the newer materials and methods.

Industries and industry groups spent decades of spending what became billions, maybe even trillions of dollars all told, across all of the polluting industries. These costs for attorneys’ fees, fines (occasionally), paying lawyers to appeal the fines till hell freezes over, retaining pr firms, supporting climate denial think tanks, hiring lobbyists and paying lobby firms retainers, supporting PACs, making campaign contributions to anti-EPA and climate denial candidates, and paying “experts” to discredit and decimate the reputations of climate change supporting scientists far exceed the imagination. And, industries supporting those costs spent real money far in excess by many times over what it would’ve ever cost to have stopped sending pollutants into the air, water, soil and forever altering the environment with it.

Thirty something years too late to fix it and now, they’re saying they want to be responsible corporate citizens as politicians they’ve bought are starting to say we might ought to do something about this. As our weather becomes more extreme by each day forward, as our sea levels rise and flooding entrenches entire areas of our country month after month where it had not been expected but once every hundred years or thousand years, when rains come with twenty inches or more in numbers of hours over a couple days rather than across months or weeks, and as arctic glaciers melt that have been there longer than humanity has existed – yeah, now it becomes a thing. It is too late. We have passed the tipping point and it is way too late to worry about it now.

Tree huggers they laughed and smirked, mocking the shunned hippy folks they thought them to be. But now, as it turns out – trees lower the temperature of the climate by two degrees. And, wouldn’t that be handy about now? But the corporate giants of industry cut all the old growth forest and jungles down that they could get their hands on and still to this day, what is left of them are being cut down, clear cut, burned into more carbon in the atmosphere across the globe as if there is not one reason not to do it. And today, see this if nothing else –

Fred Bentler ‏@Bentler 3h3 hours ago

“The average peak temperature each day this month has been above 104 deg. Fahrenheit, with the mercury spiking one day to 111.7F” #climate

 

Fred Bentler ‏@Bentler 17h17 hours ago

‘There Is No Doubt’: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was a Global Threat By Late 1970s #climate http://goo.gl/2MhdTM 

Nick Hennen ‏@tweetbrk Apr 20

ICYMI: 2015 was the hottest year on record. 2016 is already hotter http://nyti.ms/26egOp1  images via @EricHolthaus

‘And then we wept’: Scientists say 93 percent of the Great …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/and-then-we-wept…

The Washington Post

Apr 20, 2016 – Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Task Force has surveyed 911 coralreefs by air, and found at least some bleaching on 93 percent of them.

Great Barrier Reef: 93% of reefs hit by coral bleaching …

http://www.theguardian.com › Environment › Great Barrier Reef

The Guardian

Apr 19, 2016 – Almost 93% of reefs on the Great Barrier Reef have been hit by coral bleaching, according to a comprehensive survey revealing the full extent ..

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AND FOR AT LEAST ONE SOLUTION – INDUSTRY COULD NOW BE USING THIS – 

New material shown to remove CO2 from smokestack effluent and other sources

Ben Coxworth January 5, 2012

http://www.gizmag.com/polymer-captures-co2/21014/

**

Draft of Useful Ways to Harness CO2

Tags

climate change, CO2, CO2 sequestration, cricketdiane, Ecology, plastics, pollution, sustainability

Recycling Carbon Dioxide to Make Plastics | Department of …

energy.gov/…/recycling-carbon–diox…

United States Department of Energy

May 20, 2013 – Novomer’s thermoplastic pellets incorporate waste CO2 into a … has the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously …

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RESEARCH: Turning CO2 emissions into plastic with algae …

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060023524

Environment & Energy Publishing

Aug 17, 2015 – Turning CO2 emissions into plastic with algae? It may not be as crazy as it sounds. Niina Heikkinen, E&E reporter. ClimateWire: Monday …

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Renewable plastic made from carbon dioxide and plants …

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/160309135712.ht…

Science Daily

Mar 9, 2016 – Renewable plastic made from carbon dioxide and plants … CO2 required to make PEF could be obtained from fossil-fuel power plant emissions …

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Conventional vs biodegradable plastics – UNEP

http://www.unep.org/…/Conventional…

United Nations Environment Programme

completely metabolize them to carbon dioxide (and water). … Life cycle analyses show that bioplastics can reduce CO2 emissions by 30-80 percent compared to …

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New Plastic Could Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions

http://www.livescience.com/4663-plastic-reduce-carbon–dioxide–emissions.html

A plastic tweaked to mimic cellular membranes can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas and could help reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, …

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These 5 companies strive to convert CO2 to cash | GreenBiz

https://www.greenbiz.com/…/5-companies-convert-co2-cas…

GreenBiz.com

Sep 22, 2014 – Not only is carbon dioxide readily abundant, it is three to 10 times cheaper than other feedstocks used to make plastics and chemicals, according to Cole. … Eventually, it hopes to harness carbon emissions there and convert it …

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Artificial photosynthesis breakthrough turns CO2 emissions …

http://www.gizmag.com/artificial-photosynthesis-creates…/37160/

Gizmag

Artificial photosynthesis breakthrough turns CO2 emissions into plastics and biofuel. Dario Borghino April 23, 2015. 3 pictures. Researchers have developed an …

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Sustainable Plastics: Environmental Assessments of …

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1118899806

Joseph P. Greene – 2014 – ‎Technology & Engineering

The most common areas of pollution concern are for ozone layer depletion, … Atmospheric emissions can include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, …

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Could future chairs, clothes and even buildings be made …

http://www.theguardian.com › … › Sustainable design

The Guardian

Feb 26, 2014 – Could future clothes, bottles and chairs be made from carbonemissions? … The vast majority of plastic is produced from petroleum, which means that … By combining methane and carbon dioxide with a proprietary catalyst, …

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Converting carbon dioxide into plastic – YouTube

▶ 4:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cHp368Nj6g

Feb 24, 2015 – Uploaded by ChemistryWorldUK

The world’s demand for energy, and the resultant carbon dioxide emissions, are drastically changing our …

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State-Level Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions …

http://www.eia.gov/…/emissions/state/analy…

Energy Information Administration

Oct 26, 2015 – Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions at the State Level, 2000- …plastics are subtracted from reported emissions for the states where they …

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Will hacking nature protect us from climate change? – CNN …

http://www.cnn.com/…/pioneers-carbon-sink-geoengineering-climate-hac…

CNN

Oct 27, 2015 – Watch this video. Could plastic trees end air pollution? … As air flows over the plastic resin sails, they grab CO2 and hold on to it. CO2 binds to …

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Transforming pollution into sustainable polymers & chemicals

http://www.novomer.com/

Novomer

Converting Pollution Into Sustainable Polymers and Chemicals … proprietary catalyst system that transforms waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into high performance, …

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Groundbreaking Technology Transforms Greenhouse …

http://www.takepart.com/…/plastic-bag-sucks-carbon-out-air-and-may…

TakePart

Aug 19, 2014 – … a way to make plastic from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. ….. Ocean Plastic Pollution Costs $13 Billion a Year, and Your Face …

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How to make the most of carbon dioxide : Nature News …

http://www.nature.com/…/how-to-make-the-most-of-carbon–dioxide-1.186…

Nature

Oct 28, 2015 – Pellets of urea fertilizer are made from carbon dioxide in a plant in … can convert CO2 emissions from coal and natural-gas power plants into useful … fuels and raw material for the manufacture of plastics and other chemicals.

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http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/

Energy-related emissions by state, 2013 chart from US Energy Information Admin

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The Link Between Plastic Use and Climate

Change: Nitty-gritty

https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=30619

Worldwide, we consume approximately 100 million tons of plastic each year. From the EPA’s more conservative estimate to the more liberal one, that’s anywhere from 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted to 500 million tons.

**

 

Pi followed by a period Trademark articles missed the point

Tags

cricketdiane, design, new designs, pi, pi trademark, trademark, trademark of pi

When Paul Ingrisano trademarked the mathematical symbol π (pi) with a period and then had his lawyer send cease and desist letters, there were a lot of immediate responses by news articles, blogs and comments from the public about it. About a week ago, when the online print on demand publisher, Zazzle (and possibly CafePress as well) decided to pull down products independently designed with the pi symbol, they were responding to this letter sent by Ingrisano’s attorney, Ronald Millet –

 

Zazzle Pi Trademark Letter

http://www.scribd.com/doc/227367808/Zazzle-Pi-Trademark-Letter

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It says –

“Ingrisano’s federal registration of this trademark provides him with certain proprietary rights. This includes the right to restrict the use of the trademark, or a confusingly similar trademark, in association with confusingly similar products or services. The Lanham Act (the U.S. Trademark Act) also provides numerous remedies for trademark infringement and dilution, including, but not limited to, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, money, damages, a defendant’s profits, provisions for the destruction or confiscation of infringing products and promotional materials, and where intentional infringement is shown (as would be the case here), attorneys’ fees and possible treble money damages.”

It goes on to say, not only that all pi related products must be pulled down but that an independent audit must be made and all accounting of any and all profits made from the sale of any and all pi design products, including those pre-dating Ingrisano’s claim along with the dates of each product being placed online containing the symbol or reference to pi. (paraphrased, see the actual letter above, or in this Wired article found here – http://www.wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=this-guy-trademarked-the-symbol-for-pi-and-took-away-our-geeky-t-shirts)

In 2006, there was a case brought in Florida Federal court against 52 defendants using the words, sweet pea in their design by a person who had been issued a trademark with a simple script of the words, sweet pea followed by a period. Because there had been no letters sent demanding to “cease and desist” before making the court filing, the case was dismissed. The intention in that case was for each of the defendants to pay a $5,000 fee to the new owner of the trademark for the words, sweet pea followed by a period and the generic quality of that trademark is very similar to the one for pi followed by a period, in fact.

Here is the page describing the logos of the sweet peas that were taken to court and on the right side of the page is the logo trademark in question whose owner took them to court intending to take all profits made from sales plus damages – or a $5,000 settlement fee toward their possible obligation to the new trademark holder plus whatever else the court may have awarded if it had gone forward –

http://sourpeas.org/page3/page3.html

In January of 2006, attorney Alexander E. Barthet of Miami, Florida on behalf of his clothing company client Sweet Pea Limited, Inc. went to Federal District Court in Florida and filed a complaint claiming that 52 companies or individuals located throughout the United States were violating their trademark.

The clothing company’s lawsuit contends that using the commonly used words “Sweet Pea” in any form — not just their stylized version — on any article of clothing is in violation of their trademark rights and therefore they are entitled to millions of dollars in damages. Most of the defendants are creating original designs using the words “Sweet Pea” graphically on T-shirts and children’s clothing.

Notably missing from the list are any large defendants. All the companies being sued are one-person businesses. (etc.)

(found here – http://sourpeas.org/page7/page7.html)

**

Going back to the pi with a period trademarked by Ingrisano – his and his attorney’s intention is clearly stated in the letter they sent to Zazzle demanding them to account for every design sold with the pi used in the design, to account for any and all profits that may have resulted from those designs, to submit to (and ultimately pay for) an independent audit of those sales and profits, AND to be prepared to remit any and all of those profits to Ingrisano and his attorney along with possibly treble damages for having allowed the use of these designs, despite many of them having no relational meaning to his trademarked design.

That is the point. People are angry about this because it demands money and damages to be given to Ingrisano that he neither earned nor had any right to acquire. And, he and his attorney are using a trademark law intended for the protection of genuine, distinctive and original intellectual properties used as trademarks, in order to do it unfairly and without cause. They are claiming a loss of revenues and a dilution of his trademark, when in fact, that trademark is not an original, distinctive nor unique mark and neither is it in use in a manner that is distinctive, original, novel or unique. That is the problem. That goes to the heart of the real issue here.

It is easy enough to drop the subject now that Zazzle has re-instated independent designers’ and artists’ copyrighted designs to their online market platform, but the case isn’t actually over because inherent in the demands shown in the letter sent by Ingrisano’s attorney, Ronald Millet are the terms they had intended, and likely will continue to pursue against any and all uses of pi that they perceive may have profited. This is partly evidenced by another trademark filed by Ingrisano claiming the symbol I<3 which is commonly used around the internet and already found on a variety of products including apparel, tshirts, sportswear, sweatshirts and other things he has listed for it in the trademark application.

http://trademarks.justia.com/854/81/i-3-85481027.html

The pi symbol followed by a period trademark reference can be found here (as well as at the US Trademark database) –

http://trademarks.justia.com/857/85/pi-85785006.html

People are angry about the symbol pi with a dot trademark because Ingrisano and his attorney, Millet are working to steal profits from small and micro business owners, independent artists and designers, as well as from online print on demand companies which they did not work for, did not create, did not work to get and did not have any right to take.

The process seems to be –

• Trademark the most generic, commonly used symbol or group of words.
• Set precedent by forcing all current and previous users of that symbol or group of words to “cease and desist” using them along with accounting for all uses and profits from all uses in order to remit them to the new trademark holder
• Take all previously made profits from sales and which resulted from promotions based upon that symbol or group of words, including those pre-dating the holders registration.
• Require an independent auditor to be given access to all internal and electronic sales data concerning those which ever held or currently held that symbol, and similar symbol, or that group of words and any similar group of words which could be confused to be that group of words.
• File court orders and cases to take all profits from any and all sales of any and all products which contained any part of that symbol, any with that symbol, any part of that trademark symbol group and any use of those words both in that group combination plus anything similar.
• Demand that the court award treble damages and attorneys’ fees, court costs, independent auditing costs, plus all sales amounts and profits made from those sales of products containing anything similar to that trademark even if that trademark doesn’t apply in that context.

At the time when Ingrisano filed the trademark on November 21, 2012, a trademark for pi had already been issued very recently to a cigar company for the symbol pi. That trademark was issued on October 9, 2012.

From the USPTO database –

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85099235&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

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To have many of the articles about this in one place, here is a list of blogs, news articles and more information links about the pi followed by a dot trademark, its influence and demands on Zazzle (and possibly CafePress) along with basic information about trademark laws affecting it –

http://jezkemp.blogspot.com/2014/05/some-loser-has-tried-to-trademark.html

This article describes the originality and distinctiveness requirement of international trademark law –

http://www.internationallawoffice.com/newsletters/detail.aspx?g=55169be9-7969-4540-9e40-6e908d776c00

**

The 273 comments on this Canadian article are interesting –

http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2014/06/artist-trademarks-pi-symbol-enrages-the-web.html

**

The costs, fees and registration schedule from the USPTO for patents, copyrights and trademarks – the trademark registration fees are well down the page –

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee010114.htm

**

The Lanham Act (from wikipedia) – The US Trademark Law –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_trademark_law

A trademark is a word, phrase, or logo that identifies the source of goods or services. Trademark law protects a business’ commercial identity or brand by discouraging other businesses from adopting a name or logo that is “confusingly similar” to an existing trademark. The goal is to allow consumers to easily identify the producers of goods and services and avoid confusion.

U.S. Trademark Law is mainly governed by the Lanham Act. “Common Law” trademark rights are acquired automatically when a business uses a name or logo in commerce, and are enforceable in state courts. Marks registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are given a higher degree of protection in federal courts than unregistered marks – both registered and unregistered trademarks are granted some degree of federal protection under the Lanham Act 43(a).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanham_Act

**

About the treble damages component of the Lanham Act that Ingrisano and his attorney, Ronald Millet are attempting to claim against Zazzle, CafePress and all other users of the pi symbol in any design –

http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1117.html

**

This article has a number of interesting points on it as well –

http://everythingtrademarks.com/2014/06/01/pi-is-irrational-so-is-this-trademark-dispute/

It is interesting (though not surprising) that there is little, if any, actual use of his registered Pi mark given that it issued earlier this year (January 2014). A review of the prosecution history for Paul Ingrisano’s trademark application raises questions.

One question designers raised was how could someone own a trademark to a generic mathematical symbol … or, more often than not, they put it in the affirmative: the pi symbol cannot be a trademark.

The notion that the pi symbol (or any universal symbol) cannot be a trademark is wrong. It can be (even on its own without other word or design elements). The U.S. Trademark Office (USPTO) devotes an entire section of its manual for examining procedure to “Universal Symbols in Marks.” See TMEP Section 1202.17 et al.

This excerpt from the article link above it goes on to describe some common symbols used as trademarks having been issued those registrations at some point.

**

Apparently the artist and his supporters in Brooklyn simply do not get why people are angry that Ingrisano and his attorney attempted to monopolize all uses of the symbol pi in any design, to steal all profits made from any sales of any design with pi on it and to receive treble damages for those uses on top of that.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/death-threats-brooklyn-entrepreneur-pi-math-symbol-article-1.1820289

**

A lot of valid points were made in the comments section of this cnet article about pi and trademarking common symbols –

http://www.cnet.com/news/artist-trademarks-pi-geeks-despair/

**

Concerning the distinctiveness, originality and novelty of trademark symbols – as required in international law –

http://www.internationallawoffice.com/newsletters/detail.aspx?g=55169be9-7969-4540-9e40-6e908d776c00

Which marks may be registered?

Under Argentine law, a mark can be registered as long as it has “distinctive capacity”. This concept has two components:

• the intrinsic capacity to identify, which refers to the sign’s ability to identify when considered in itself (originality); and
• the extrinsic capacity to identify, understood as the sign’s distinguishability from other existing signs (novelty).

Certain signs lack originality, including the following.

**

 

Over 300 Dead from Tornadoes – Why weren’t there basements?

Tags

building materials, building science, cricketdiane, home safety, Inventing, Rocket Science, tornadoes

In the past few days, I’ve heard things from family members and friends that are very disturbing about the tornadoes that have devastated the nation over the weeks of April this year.

It is unacceptable. The ideas presented to me were plainly wrong. There were over 300 people whose lives were lost in the tornadoes that blasted across Alabama, and other states of the South just two days ago. The days and weeks before that have shown all of us, homes that were leveled, towns decimated and lives lost and shattered. There is no excuse for it to be that way. It is 2011.

One of the excuses I heard is that it is “2012 when the world ends that is here early in 2011” and to fight it would be senseless. Another idea repeated to me from three different people, is that there is no way to control winds, storms, things like the jet stream and tornadoes – that to do so we would have to be God. Other ideas explained to me were repeated from various broadcasts of the am radio talk shows and other online information sources who say there is no way that anyone can do anything about any of these things since it is part of the “end times” and can be expected to get worse, not better. And, along with explanations on many business shows, business journals, business and financial blogs and tv broadcasts – there are a multitude of quotes to explain how America is falling and that we cannot expect to stand up again as number one in the world. Now, wait a minute . . .

Just hold the gd phone.

Back it up and rewind that entire set of conversations. I don’t know who told these family members and friends that to do something is to not accept our place as human beings and try to do what only God can do. I don’t know exactly, although I have a pretty good idea, where these people in my life got these lines of thinking which say there is nothing that anyone can do about all this and nor should we make the effort to do so. I don’t know how the excuse that “it is the end of the world anyway,” means we are all supposed to throw up our hands and tend to our own momentary satisfactions without seeking to do much else about anything. And, I don’t care, either – where these people got these ideas. I do know they are wrong.

When it rains, we put an umbrella over our heads. We don’t just stand out there in the rain without doing anything about it simply because “God” sent rain. We make lightning rods to go on our homes and businesses, which were designed by a brilliant man in our nation’s history who saw a problem and found a way to provide a naturally based principled solution. It has saved lives, homes, families, businesses and communities where people at one time in history believed that there was no way to stop lightning – that it was what amounted to an “act of God” which no human could expect to change, alter or do anything to provide safety against. Those people were not considering even finding a way to do something about it, but one man did and now we have lightning rods on damn near every single building, structure, skyscraper, and everything else that is built to withstand the natural elements.

The building industry has known for well over a thousand years, that the basic protection for people’s lives during storms with tornadoes forming and reeking havoc, is for structures, homes, buildings, restaurants, malls, schools, hospitals, and living spaces to have a basement or storm cellar. It is not rocket science. It is a known quantity which works. At some point, the building industry, cities and towns policy makers, developers and other decision makers decided to not require basements and storm cellars for every single home and every single structure built in their communities. Well, that was wrong.

We put dams and levees up to control flooding. We don’t just sit back and say – well, if the place floods, then it was meant to be. That is called, “engineering” and is why we have those multitudes of engineering disciplines to this day. We have architectural and structural engineering disciplines that create to a better standard than throwing up a few sticks and calling it a house. And, the homes in these recent tornadoes yielded NO real harbor or safety from the storms. They acted as what they’ve become, pasteboard and brittle sticks rather than a reinforced, flexible and safe structure to protect the families and lives housed within them. That is unacceptable.

And, I don’t know what we’ll have to do – if it is to incorporate some type of polymer dip for the framing wood to give them more strength and flexibility, add re-bar to the core of brick facades which are held together by unreinforced masonry, create better building methods generally to withstand these types of extreme events, or find a way to cut those tornadoes in half and dissipate them in some manner before they get on the ground tearing up the place – but I do know that requiring basements and storm cellars to be built into every single structure is a known successful defense against loss of life.

I do know that we could do that everywhere in short order – retrofitting existing structures with storm cellars and below ground level basements – including homes, businesses, county buildings, schools, industrial plants, everything. And, I do know it isn’t just required in Kansas anymore – which has been evidenced for a long, long, long time. Why these 300 lives were lost a couple days ago, within seconds as their homes were obliterated – is no longer an acceptable excuse. And, the world has ended at least 8 or 9 thousands times according to various religious predictions across history. It isn’t an excuse to sit idly by while solutions could be applied to save lives, communities and families from known dangers with known outcomes by using either known solutions or engineering new ones that work.

– cricketdiane

***

And, there is no excuse whatsoever for anyone living in a mobile home or trailer staying in it believing there is some protection from a severe storm, extreme or damaging winds, and tornadoes. Especially in these housing types and their mobile home parks, on their individual private property where mobile home owners have set up housekeeping, and in mobile home communities – there absolutely has to be an enforceable code by every town, city and county requiring a storm cellar be added on site. For mobile home parks and communities, central community storm shelters in an underground basement at their community clubhouse or something must be required of those community owners with enough storm cellar or basement space to protect all of the people with all of their family members who live there. It has to be close enough to walk to it and get into it within a couple minutes – not sitting hundreds of yards away from significant portions of the residents’ homes.

The attitudes expressed to me over the past few days demanding that none of us give a damn about all this and insisting that no one can or should try to do anything about this – are attitudes commonly repeated and still wrong. They are based in someone not thinking through what they were saying – we do have homes because they were engineered solutions to our need as humans for protection from the elements. We did not – “just not give a damn about it” and sit out in the fields and woods never making something of a solution to protect ourselves as a species. We did, in fact – create many solutions to it and meshed solutions from many different people to have more than nature gave us in the first place. Or else we would all still be standing out in the rain without an umbrella or house in existence at all.

***

AND – people need to vote with their dollars by NOT BUYING any house or business structure that doesn’t have a basement, cellar or storm cellar in it.

When that happens, builders will start adding basements to protect people’s lives and building inspectors / county codes will require either basements or storm cellars in every structure and home in America as it should’ve been in the first place knowing what we know about tornadoes, storms, hurricanes and extreme wind events.

From what I can tell, the homeowners’ associations in many communities could have made a central storm safe space available – most have expensive clubhouses that are rarely used by anybody. They’ve paid for swimming pools – they’ve charge association fees. Surely they could add something more useful along with it – like public announcements throughout the neighborhood when tornado spawning storms are coming – or at the very least, provide a basement for people in the neighborhood to come and have some protection from those events.

But, sooner or later – there are still two parts which need serious workable solutions – one is to stop the tornadoes from spawning in the first place or after the conditions have developed to make them likely. And, as much as I appreciate the magnitude of these forces – we, as a people have changed all kinds of things in the landscape – which could just as easily also be changed to provide “wind breaks,” special heating or cooling zones in the landscape to help dissipate the storms’ power or alter them, some kind of lateral slicing through the tornado kind of thing that would act the same way as sticking a hand laterally through a whirlpool in the bathtub when the drain makes one, and/or sculptured land planning in the same manner as the buildings and heat zones of and altered air foils of cities with their skyscrapers, parking lots, freeways, streets and buildings change the likelihood of storms producing tornadoes.

Although cities are hit with tornadoes from time to time, it is far less frequently and with less running distance of damage that is somehow changed by virtue of the ways cities are constructed and contain heat or alter wind patterns and wind shear. Maybe the tall buildings force eddies in the air currents which change the dynamic or push them down or around in dividing ways – that principle which is working around cities could be used and applied for tornado development zones.  But, not just in Kansas – the dust bowl thinking of people stuck in 1930 something has got to stop. The Southern States have suffered inordinately high numbers of tornadoes for many years with the recent outbreaks of weather patterns differing in the severity and multiple development fronts. There is no reason that any state of the South should have any homes without basements in this day and age. There is no reason they couldn’t apply the massive knowledge our scientists and universities have discovered into tangible solutions – whether wind breaks or satellite looks at re-interpreting some parts of the landscape to dissipate these damaging winds when they do get started.

These things could be done.

The second thing that needs to be done – is to make our houses into safe harbors for human lives. They are not that now. It is inexcusable that our homes have become (and that includes apartments, condos, workplaces, some buildings, shopping areas, and large industrial workspaces under thin metal sheeting, etc.) – nothing but pasteboard and brittle sticks – no matter what they seem to look like on the outside. That is unacceptable.

Every structure needs to be retrofit in some way to be substantially safer along with adding basements or storm shelters/ storm cellars to all of them.

There are Geotextiles now and polymer / carbon nano fiber based fabrics that never existed before. There is a man who designed homes for hurricane prone areas which are glued and screwed rather than to allow the wind getting up into the structure tearing it apart as it goes. There are new types of cement and retrofitting systems to make unreinforced masonry into reinforced, strong but flexible structures. There are building materials, knowledge, science, engineering, materials science, structural engineering knowledge and research which 30 years ago, didn’t even exist.

Strides have been made in collecting data and information, analyzing the data and understanding the results. It has been public information available to everyone. Out of all that – it is far past the time to take it and weave new practical solutions from it to apply throughout our nation for the safety of families, children, people, young lives and old – there is no excuse for what has just happened to take these lives from all of us and from our communities by tornadoes damaging structures which weren’t much more protection than a cardboard box would’ve been. It is not acceptable for it to keep being that way.

And, where building techniques were known a hundred years ago or in 1930 something which worked to keep lives safe, but in our modern world were abandoned – those need to be brought forward and used as well.

That includes – if a house doesn’t have a basement or storm cellar – don’t buy it. Life is too precious to put up with it – there are no savings financially by getting a house or business without a basement. Dead or maimed from a tornado because there was nowhere in the house safe from it – is not a financial advantage no matter how good that house looks on the outside.

***

President Obama visits Alabama’s storm ravaged areas today – (CNN)

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/29/severe.weather/index.html?hpt=T1

Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN) — President Barack Obama arrived in Alabama on Friday, the hardest-hit of six states ravaged by a series of storms and tornadoes that killed nearly 300 people and left entire neighborhoods in ruins.

Obama was scheduled to meet with families affected by the storms as well as government officials.(etc.)

**

Photos: Nightmare scenes in Alabama after deadly storms sweep South – (CNN)

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/04/weather/gallery.hires.storm/index.html

Janet Pucket surveys the damage outside her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Thursday, April 28, after a tornado hit the area Wednesday. (etc.)

***

Protected: a CricketDiane Brain Zap – Just Thinking . . .

Tags

cricketdiane, cricketdiane brain zap, Energy Solutions, Fukushima, nuclear power, nuclear reactors

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