Quagmire Explains the Situation
Cell Phone Prices
Cell phones are ubiquitous for most people in technologically current countries. Cell phones are almost as prolific as America Online disks, yet, unlike America Online disks, cell phones have not become free, rather, the price of a cell phone has sky-rocketed since inception.
Mobile carries push you to get a new phone every two years or more frequently, they cajole you into going for services that are pointless (TXT, mobile web, GPS), and they convince you that it’s OK to pay hundreds of dollars a month to subscribe to their phone service…yet they also want to rip you off by making you PAY for the phone!
Consider a cell phone bill of $25 a month for unlimited everything. This is far less that what most folks pay nowadays, but will serve for illustrative purposes nicely.
At the rate of $25 a month, a cell phone company will get $600 per year from a consumer. Over the course of two years, that’s $1200, yet they STILL would want to charge you for the privilege of PAYING them for a phone? AND they want to contractually FORCE you to pay them and only them for a period of two years?
Poppycock!
Cell phone companies are ripping off consumers. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, ad infinitum. They simply picked up in the digital age where the Ma Bell left off in the age of analog! Even if you don’t remember ever paying to make a long distance call, rest assured, the old phone companies made billions and billionsof dollars off of folks who just wanted to call their family who lived far away. They ripped us off then, and now cell phone companies are ripping us off now.
Similar price points across cell phone companies, coupled with two-year locked-down contracts are clear examples of industry-wide collusion.
So did the Telecommunications Act of 1996 work as intended? It depends.
If your bill for monthly phone service has increased, it’s a safe bet that the promise of more competition has failed miserably.
If, on the other hand, you are scoring record profits from every new gadget and price point your ram down the throats of your customers, then it’s a safe bet that you are reaping exactly what you expected and laughing all the way to the bank. Oh hell, you’re not even going to the bank, you’re doing free wire transfers to Switzerland over telecommunication lines you own! Enjoy the money while you can - you can’t take it with you.
World at War
There is not exact formula for surviving an ambush. There are general guidelines for surviving an ambush, but that doesn’t mean they will work. Generally speaking, if you are not mounted and you are in a close-fire ambush, there is one way out: assault the ambush. You can take cover, pop smoke, toss grenades, etc. but the bottom line is you MUST go INTO the line of fire.
This formula is simple enough on paper, but it must be practiced repeatedly. When reacting to any ambush, most will not seek to close with the enemy.
Reacting to indirect warfare is more difficult. The unconventional warfare of silent killer is the enemy who never directly engages you. This enemy lays in wait. He may work behind the scenes with both your friendlies and your enemies in order to defeat you. This enemy cannot be directly engaged.
At the first sign of confrontation, this enemy disappears in order to continue the insurgency with unconventional and psychological warfare methods. Over time, the poison injected by indirect warfare can topple even the mightiest occupier.
My brother-in-law was ambushed on October 1st, 2009. None of these techniques would have helped him. The ambusher fired a single RPG, killing one of their high school buddies.
End this fucking war.
Special Report: Republicans Knew Bullets Cause Death
Recent highly sensitive confidential reports have surfaced across the news media and have sent shock and awewaves across the blogosphere. It seems that Republicans knew all along that bullets, when used properly, actually lead to death. Some historians have even argued that bullets have been killing people as early at the 1100s as depicted in early cave sculptures. Republican leaders have argued that the vase-shaped bombard depicted in the primitive artwork is not a death-dealing device at all, rather it is one of the earliest known depictions of Democracy and Freedom attempting to gain a following in a feudal kingdom that would later transform into a Communist regime and warned us that if we continue down the path of the drastic leftist policies of a veiled Socialist regime, we will lose everything.
Apparently, little metal objects propelled at a high rate of speed through the air have always been lethal but when marketed properly, people will think that they are immune to the effects of these small metal shards entering their flesh. Republicans have also recently revealed that anyone who can run faster than seven-hundred miles per hour will actually be able to avoid most modern bullets fired from any projectile. They even recommended a Nike running shoe and iPod remote to help you avoid bullets while enjoying your favorite music.
Republican leaders also advised that with proper moral instruction, young people will learn that not only are bullets useful tools for problem solving, but they are actually good for the environment. After all, nothing bad ever happens while mining and if we don’t get the metal out of the earth, then some Communist will come along and take it from us.
Great tits cope well with warming.
Three Ways to Improve Rock Band
I’ve been playing Rock Band for a few weeks now and I’ve concluded that it’s a great social game. However, it could be improved. Here’s how:
1 Multiple instrument support. If a song has two percussionists we should be able to use two drum sets. Same for two guitar songs and especially for backing vocals.
2 Different peripheral support. I don’t just mean the keyboard device. I want dance pad support for dancers. Light gun support for security, it could be a taser to keep the crowd from rushing the stage.  Camera support for gratuitous groupie flashing. Rob the Video Robot support for… well… I don’t know but you get the idea.
3 More diverse music. After looking at many of the forums about the downloadable content for Rock Band I’ve determined that I’m the only person on earth excited for the Grateful Dead pack (all 18 songs–I’d even take different live versions of each). I still want more diverse stuff though. Especially the BEATLES. I want every song recorded by the Beatles. They could be released chronologically, a couple songs at a time or as one giant pack… whatever, just give me every Beatles song.
Metroid Sucks and Vagisil is NOT Manly
As a wii owner for nearly a year now I’ve yet to feel like it’s a solid video game console. Sure I still have fun with people playing wii sports and to a lesser degree wii play. I even like to pick up some single player monkey-ball once in a while. I’ve yet to try some of the sports games like The Bigs (baseball) and Super Mario Strikers (soccer) and I expect them to be passable but I’ve never defined my gaming experience by sports games and I doubt I ever will. So where are the wii games that I want to play?
I had very high hopes for Metroid, I’ve always loved first person shooters (even on consoles) and I was psyched to use the nunchuck wii-mote as the natural fps controls that they are (I liked the controls of call-of-duty wii, but the game was lame). So along comes Metroid and I was expecting something solid, and maybe it is, but it certainly isn’t fun. I suspect I had too high of hopes, I really expected multi-player. It was on the DS Metroid, why wouldn’t the wii have it? I have no idea. I’d have rather had a multi player only Metroid than a single player only, alas.
Metroid is a puzzle game disguised as an action game and with out a really fast puzzle-solve-time an fps is a terrible interface for puzzles. Apart from the anti-intuitive design concept the game is full of other crappy game things like back tracking and looking for differences in textures to identify hidden shit. I want to shoot things not spend my time combing levels through a black and white filter that requires me to hold a button for about three seconds every time there is something that might be necessary to complete the next section but usually isn’t. Please. In the review by Game Informer (a Minnesota grown gaming magazine) the editor had the balls to suggest that there wasn’t enough back tracking in this game and that the backtracking is what made Metroid special… I’m canceling my subscription.
I guess there’s still some hope. There’s a new resident evil coming, a shooter on rails that looks promising. There’s also a new Fatal Frame being made by Suda-51 the guy who gave us Killer 7 one of the strangest games I’ve ever had the opportunity not to finish. Apart from that powder is of importance.
Since I’ve been biking to work I’ve found that when wearing business clothes during the commute it’s helpful to apply a powder to strategic areas. At first I used some powder I found laying around–Goldbond. I liked the effect but Goldbond has a distinct mediciney smell that I’m not fond of. Sometime later my significant other was heading to the drug store so I requested that she pick up some powder that was a little less mediciney, a little more manly and a little more sexy. She brought me a big bottle of Vagisil powder. She still claims this meets my criteria… I disagree.
Antiques Roadshow the Video Game
Let’s say you had a one gigabyte MP3 player full of music. Using encryption one could take all of the information contained on the MP3 player and turn it into a string of numbers based on the key and equation used for the encryption.
Consider that your DNA is a string of numbers in base 4.
If one had a device that could analyze the data contained in your DNA and determine the proper encryption method necessary to result in the exact same data contained on the MP3 player one could create a storage free MP3 player. It would be some thing that decrypted your DNA is such a way that resulted in your desired playlist.
Of course this would involve reverse encryption, or encryption cracking, which we can’t do effectively yet. It may even be slightly more complicated than that, but I still think it’s a cool idea.
Shinders Falls
Shinders is done. They had a good run for eighty-seven years but it only took one drugged-out fiend three years to run the company into the ground and destroy it. I am not a business expert, but I would hope I could figure out a way to stop spending $100,000 per month if my business was tanking.
Maybe tell your vendors to stop sending you stuff?
We are in some very difficult times for printed newsstands and book sellers but it is possible to remain in business. Barnes & Noble is figuring it out. As is Border’s. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of those companies purchases the name Shinders. Well, that could be wistful thinking on my part.
I bought a lot of my comics at Shinders. Some porn. All of my Fantasy Football needs were met by Shinders. A ton of my D&D dorkiness was fulfilled by Shinders.
It is a drag to see them go. Especially in such a humiliating way. When history is written about this era of time, there will be a lot of examples of once-proud businesses that fail unexpectedly due to mis-management at the very top levels.
I hope Robert Weisberg gets disbarred and goes to jail. He’s only got a $500 donation listed over at fecinfo.com, so there is a chance he may actually go to jail. Of course, that doesn’t include the bags of cash or the hookers and blow he sends out to political candidates - so there is still a good chance he won’t do time.
If your only tool is a screwdriver, everything looks like a screw.
If your only tool is a microwave, everything looks like a bag of popcorn.
If your only tool is a lever, everything looks like a fulcrum.
If your only tool is a Happy Meal, everything looks like a chubby 10-year-old.
If your only tool is a stapler, everything looks like a stack of papers.
If your only tool is the internet, everything looks like porn.
If your only tool is a flux capacitor, everything looks like a delorian.
If your only tool is a flashlight, everything looks like the dark.