These days everyone from Balkan button men to jihadi terrorists enjoy the Kalashnikov chic.
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Prosecutors and investigators used wiretaps and flipped Mafia soldiers, the so-called "button men," to testify against Godfathers and capos.
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They have let the capos testify against the button men while the Godfathers — the coaches and athletic directors and presidents — walk away untouched.
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In 2001, Cheapass Games and James Ernest worked with Abrams to create a Sluggy Freelance expansion for Button Men featuring Bun- bun, Torg, Riff, Zoe, Kiki, and Aylee as Button Men.
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After nine months of downtime, a number of the players from Button Men Online got together and recreated an open-source version of the site. The new version of Button Men Online came online in March 2014. Button Men Online requires you to register with a username and email, but is free to play.
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Button Men Online, a website initially developed by Dana Huyler and officially endorsed by Cheapass Games, allows users to play games over the internet via a web-based interface. Button Men Online features most of the printed buttons, an additional 250+ "buttons" that exist only on the site, and a random button generator. In 2003, Button Men Online won the Origins Award for Best Play-by-mail Game of 2002. In February 2012, Button Men Online went off-line due to server problems.
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All buttons that have not been licensed from Cheapass (including all of those that exist only on the Button Men Online web site) are illegal by default. Button Men Online maintains statistics on the hundreds of thousands of games that have been played on the site. Among tournament legal Button Men, win percentages range from the mid-teens to the high sixties. Therefore, part of the strategy of the game is to begin by selecting a relatively powerful button.
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The Sluggy Freelance set of buttons, for example, features characters from that comic, and the Brawl set features characters from another Cheapass game. In 2000, Button Men won the Origins Awards for Best Abstract Board Game of 1999 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game 1999. Button Men can easily be extended simply by creating more buttons. It has continued to be so extended since its inception; , over 200 buttons have been printed.
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DeFeo's top button men were Alexander "Black Alex" Morelli and Lorenzo "Larry Chappie" Brescio. DeFeo was one of the main bosses of the Lower East Side Italian lottery, and controlled bookmaking in the area.
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Button Man is a comic strip created for the British comic 2000 AD, written by John Wagner and illustrated by Arthur Ranson. The series is unrelated to the earlier Bad City Blue featuring Button Men in 2000 AD #468-479.
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Button Men was revamped into a trading-card format that can be easily printed on a standard inkjet and cut apart for gameplay. The original base set, "Soldiers", and the first expansion set, "Vampyres", have both been released in this new format and made available for anyone to download, print and play with at no monetary cost.
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Sailortown native John Campbell has published poems about Sailortown, and two of his books, Corner Kingdom and The Disinherited, are set in Sailortown's Docks. The latter book is based on the corrupt system which existed in the Docks beginning at the outbreak of the Second World War when men known as "Blue Button Men" were given preference in hiring over the Red Button Men who could only obtain work if they had fathers or brothers who were themselves employed as dockers. Novelist Eoin McNamee wrote about Sailortown in his novel Resurrection Man. Playwright Martin Lynch's 1981 play Dockers vividly recreates Sailortown life in the early 1960s, its central theme being the fierce competition for jobs amongst the dockers and the power of the union which was the final arbitrator in who was hired or not.
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Big numbers of button men and lieutenants from both gangs were being killed. The war results in an intense chase sequence shot in Kenya where Malik hires hitmen to kill Chandu. Chandu survives, though he is injured severely. Sreenivasan convinces Chandu to come back to Mumbai and fight his war with Malik by helping the police bring the mafia under control.
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Harry Exton, an ex-soldier, is a "Button Man", a hired killer pitted against others in an underground sport. Each works for a mysterious "Voice", a rich man of unknown identity. The object of the game is to defeat one's opponents, and take their marker - the first two joints of a finger. Button Men who lose three fingers are executed.
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Styal Road, Gatley, 1913 Button making appears to have been a significant local trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. A "button man" (merchant selling buttons) is recorded in Gatley in the 1660s. This continued in the 18th century with three button men being mentioned in Gatley between 1735 and 1779. People living around Gatley Green were mostly hand loom weavers and became more dependent on textile manufacture.
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Not long afterward, Kay suffers an apparent miscarriage. Kay grows increasingly disgusted with Michael's criminal life; in particular, she is appalled that Michael's button men are Anthony's closest companions. Kay becomes convinced that Michael will always live in a world of crime and violence. During the U.S. Senate hearing on organized crime that is being held in Washington D.C., Kay tells Michael she is leaving him and taking the children.
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Button Men is a dice game for two players invented by James Ernest of Cheapass Games and first released in 1999. Games are short, typically taking less than ten minutes to play. Each player is represented by a pin-back button or playing card of their choice. The buttons are metal or plastic discs, about 2-2.5 inches (5-6.5 cm) in diameter, with a pin on back that can be used to fasten them to clothing.
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Button Men is a game designed for fan conventions and other public venues. It can be played almost anywhere on short notice (provided the dice are at hand), and games are quick to complete. Buttons are meant to be worn on clothing, bags, or other accessories, advertising that the wearer has a button to play with and is open to challenges. Buttons also frequently advertise something else, such as a company, a webcomic, or another game.
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In October 2007, Cheapass Games stopped updating their web site; a message on the homepage explains: "Cheapass Games is in the process of hibernating, which means we can be a bit sluggish and hard to reach. Most of us have moved on to better careers, and James Ernest is slumbering peacefully in a warm hole in the ground." In 2009, Cheapass created a Button Men app for the iPhone. Paizo Publishing is selling some Cheapass games on its website.
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Later in the film, he and his sister, Mary, overhear their parents arguing; Kay voices her concerns that Michael's button men are Anthony's primary playmates. Michael refuses to believe he has influenced his son in any negative way. After Michael and Kay get divorced, Michael refuses to allow her to see Anthony and Mary. Anthony seems to resent his mother's role in his parents' split, and is sullen and unaffectionate during her visit, arranged secretly by his aunt Connie (Talia Shire), Michael's sister.
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Many are by now out of print, though many others are still available, primarily via purchase from the Cheapass Games web site. Companies other than Cheapass must pay a licensing fee to use the Button Men artwork in distributing their own buttons. In 2009, Thrust Interactive released an iPhone version of the game in collaboration with Cheapass Games. In 2011, Cheapass Games began "ransoming" their older and out-of-print games in an experiment to apply the "freemium" business model to board games.
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Not all Button Men are evenly matched against one another. Though designers attempt to balance a Button Man's strengths and weaknesses, necessarily it happens that some arrangements of die sizes and skills are more likely to win games than others. Buttons that are exceptionally powerful (or that have problematic special abilities) may be declared not to be "tournament legal" by Cheapass Games, meaning that tournament organizers should consider disallowing those buttons. Most illegal buttons are rare or promotional ones with unusual die skills or special rules.
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Just before Christmas 1945, Vito is wounded in an assassination attempt by drug kingpin Virgil Sollozzo (Al Lettieri), pushing a reluctant Michael into the Mafia world he has avoided for so long. Arriving at the hospital, he finds his father unprotected and vulnerable. While awaiting Corleone reinforcements, Michael prevents a second assassination attempt on Vito by Sollozzo, then affirms his loyalty to his father. Captain Mark McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), a corrupt NYPD officer on Sollozzo's payroll, breaks Michael's jaw before more Corleone button men arrive.
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FidoNet is governed in a hierarchical structure according to FidoNet policy, with designated coordinators at each level to manage the administration of FidoNet nodes and resolve disputes between members. This structure is very similar to the organization structure of the Sicilian Mafia. Network coordinators (referred to as "Button Men") are responsible for managing the individual nodes within their area, usually a city or similar sized area. Regional coordinators (referred to as "Underbosses") are responsible for managing the administration of the network coordinators within their region, typically the size of a state, or small country.
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Tournament organizers may also choose to minimize the importance of the "meta-game" of button selection (usually with the idea of shifting importance to the players' skill) by somehow penalizing stronger buttons, or by enforcing random button selection. However, chance plays a large role in Button Men; it is always possible for a 20-sided die to roll a 1 at an inopportune time. Among tournament legal buttons, at least, no match-up is impossible for either side to win. Inevitably it happens that a weaker Button Man or a less skilled player will claim some improbable victories due to lucky die rolls.
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While killing an opponent is generally acceptable, it is not always the preferred outcome of a match - on one occasion Exton's Voice loses a wager when Exton kills his opponent rather than taking his marker, thus beginning the souring of the relationship between Exton and his Voice. The Voices profit from the game by gambling on the outcome, and a ruthless killer such as Harry Exton can make a modestly wealthy man extremely rich. The Button Men themselves are paid well for their tasks. Despite being exceptionally good at the sport and not losing any markers during his involvement, Exton decides to quit, and tracks down his Voice killing him, thinking that will remove him from the sport.
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This grants him temporary freedom and he settles down anonymously in a small town, even starting an affair with a local waitress. He is himself tracked down by other Button Men (and a Button Woman) whose Voices view Exton as the ultimate sport due to his previous unparalleled success. Exton has advance warning of their presence when he spots them disguised as tourists in the Diner his girlfriend works at, and notices that one is missing two markers. Exton kills all the other operatives apart from one with whom he makes a deal - he cuts off his own finger and gives it to the surviving Button Man before dropping a tracking device (inserted into a filling by the jealous husband) into a lake.
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The company creates and assembles each game pack by hand, with most games only being made in runs of up to 5,000 copies. Cheapass Games and James Ernest have won several awards for game design including the 2002 Origins Award for best play-by-mail game (Button Men Web Game), the 2002 Origins Vanguard Award (Diceland), the 1997 Origins Award for best abstract board game (Kill Doctor Lucky), and the 1997 Origins Award for best traditional card game (Give Me the Brain). Cheapass' game Pennywise was awarded the parodic 2003 "Spud des Jahres" award for most overpriced game by the website Spielboy (see Spiel des Jahres). In 2004, the indie band Beatnik Turtle released The Cheapass Album, an album inspired by games from Cheapass Games.
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