Tag: Superdickery

AT&T. Because You Suck and We Hate You

It’s no small secret that the new iPhone was announced today. And taking a title from the famous “HK. Because You Suck and We Hate You” I present for your reading pleasure (unless you have an iPhone and are on AT&T) AT&T. Because You Suck and We Hate You.

First off let’s talk features. The new iPhone OS 3.0 will have two new features. These are tethering and multimedia messaging (MMS).

Tethering for those who don’t know is when you connect your phone to your computer and use the data plan on the phone as a network connection on your computer. I use it all the time on my Palm Treo 755p when I’m out and about (mostly because I don’t trust any network I don’t fully control but at least with being consistent and using Sprint’s I have a single point of attack instead of any random network). Well iPhone OS 3.0 now has this feature, and anybody with an iPhone can use it. Well that’s of course unless you’re in the United States and most probably on AT&T’s network…

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/06/08/the-dying-goodwill-toward-atandt/

Now from the same article let’s talk MMS. It’s more or less a stupid feature in my book. Think of it as enhanced text messaging. Instead of just text MMS allows you to send small pictures and video through your phone. Well iPhone OS 3.0 finally has this feature but alas if you are on AT&T it will be a while until you get it. But what’s a little wait huh? It’s not like this is a feature that’s been on every phone on the planet since the ’90’s, oh wait it is.

Finally AT&T being the bastions of super dickery they are have announced pricing…

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/06/08/iphone-3g-owners-and-atandt-upgrade-woes/

With most cellular phone carriers if you buy a phone you get a discount at the cost of having to sign a two year contract. Once this contract is up you often are offered a discount on a new phone for signing another two year contract. If you don’t opt for this then you are free to go from month to month with the ability to quit your business deal with your carrier at any time.

AT&T has decided that if you are not currently eligible for a new phone you will have to pay full price. Nothing unusual about that really, I paid full price for my current Palm Treo 755p. The difference is when I pay the full unsubsidized price with Sprint I don’t have to sign a new two year agreement. Well even though people may have to pay full price for a new iPhone they will also get the pleasure of being locked into a new two year agreement. That’s right you get struck twice with AT&T. You have to pay full price for the phone AND sign a new two year contract.

As you can see AT&T thinks you suck. After all they are giving your the privilege of owning an iPhone and using their network. And since the iPhone can’t be used on any other network (without some hackery) in the United States you are stuck with them if you want that iPhone.

As much bad mouthing that people give Sprint I think AT&T are far worse.

Wow Anti-Gunners are Assholes

Aren’t they always touting their moral superiority? Guess they aren’t so superior…

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=881958

So an established gun range has encountered a problem many ranges eventually do. Even though it was built out in the country society eventually encroached. Now the people who live nearby are mad because apparently shooting ranges make noise. How did they respond? By vandalizing his property of course.

Pricks.

New York on it’s Way for Micro Stamping

Another flawed idea by the anti-gunners is making it’s way through New York state…

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=4936

Senate Bill 4397, if passed into law, would make selling any semi-automatic handgun without so called micro stamping technology illegal.

For those of you out of the loop micro stamping is a method where the firearm marks every round it fires with some kind of unique identifier. The unique identifier is suppose to help police track a person illegally using a gun. Of course this requirement would jack up the price of the gun and won’t work to boot.

Let’s take a look at the basic idea. So the gun it supposed to stamp an identifier onto each round fire. In that case you have three options, stamp the bullet, stamp the case, or stamp both. Stamping the case would seem rather idiotic since you can just pick those up and take them with you. Stamping the bullet is equally idiotic since it’s mostly likely going to deform on impact with something which would distort and stamped on identifier.

So really nothing is accomplished. Further more the stamp inside the gun can easily be filed off so nothing is stamped on either the bullet or the case. So why would this get proposed? More importantly who would propose it?

Well the answer to that is ID Dynamics the company whom is the sole owner of the patent on micro stamping technology. The man who invented it, Todd Lizotte (I’d drop contact information but I can’t find any, if you know any means of contacting him let me know), claims it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. And he’s right it is for him and his company.

He’s of course stated that his company is willing to provide the technology royalty free. That’s an old trick really because even with the patent most gun manufacturers could not create the required tools in house to enact this technology, and certainly not in a timely manner. Because of that companies who have such patents often are willing to see the equipment required to use the patent, at a nominal fee of course.

Micro stamping accomplishes nothing besides increasing the cost of manufacturing guns. And that cost is then placed on the consumers. Remember if the anti-gunners can’t outright ban guns they will do the next best thing, ensure nobody can afford them (this trick was used in the abolishment of so called “Saturday night specials.”). Remember just because they can’t take your right doesn’t mean they can’t find a way to prevent you from exercising that right.

People of Congo Town Take up Arms in Self Defense

This article is actually dated a few months back but it’s a great story nonetheless…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29167366

Assholes from The Lord’s Resistance Army were harassing the people of Bangadi. They requested help from the military and the United Nations sit-on-their-ass, I mean peacekeeping, force. Neither group responded so the citizens of Bangadi did the logical thing, took up arms and defended their town. From the article…

So Akoyo called a town meeting and told everyone to bring whatever weapons they had: pre-World War II rifles, homemade shotguns, lances, swords, machetes, hunting knives, bows with sheaths of poisoned arrows.

The women came armed with kitchen knives and log-sized wooden pestles used to pound yams into flour.

And with these ancient rifles, MacGyvered shotguns, and various melee weapons they fought off the pricks of The Lord’s Resistance Army. Hell when this article was written the citizens thought there town was so nice they fought the bastards off twice. And because of these peoples’ inspirational stand…

News of Bangadi’s success — and the lack of military protection — have spurred hundreds of villages to form self-defense groups, according to Avril Benoit, a spokeswoman for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

That’s right other people in other villages are arming themselves and making a statement that they aren’t taking shit from those who would do them harm.

These guys further show what a community working together can accomplish. If people of cities of “developed” nations would ban together to defend each other we would see a drastic decrease in crime. Oh wait I forgot most “developed” nations’ governments won’t do shit to defend their citizens but if you try to defend yourself or other members of your community your government may very well move in and arrest you. Just ask Britain.

Greenpeace Being Morons Again

Man I hate these guys…

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/08460718-4e0f-11de-a0a1-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

So the road to blame all meat eating people for the world’s problems is being further paved. Now us omnivores and carnivores are being blamed for the destruction of the rain forest.

The sum of it is since we eat meat and potentially use leather products we make a demand for cattle. The demand for cattle requires Brazilian farmers to burn down more rain forest to create more pasture. I have a better idea, maybe we should blame those farmers burning down rain forest to create pasture land.

I’m getting damned sick and tired of this attitude of people who eat meat are villainous. This is like the letter to the editor some lady sent into to The Red Star (I mean the Star Tribune) saying people who eat meat are immoral because they support the killing of animals. Well I have news for all you meat haters, animals have been killing each other for sustenance well before we came around. Instead of taking the moral high ground why don’t you just eat your non-animal products and be happy and quiet about it.

Jealous Countries want United States to Relinquish Internet “Control”

Another thing that irritates me is the fact that the rest of the world apparently things the United States should relinquish control of the root DNS servers. I’ll drop this link to a slashdot.org story for reference…

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/28/1734243

For those of you who are unfamiliar with how the Internet works I’ll give a brief explanation of the DNS (Domain Name System). Each website is located on a computer which has a number associated with it called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. For instance the IP address of this web site is 74.200.243.253 (actually that’s wordpress.com’s IP address which hosts me). Typing that address in would take you to wordpress.com

Of course numbers aren’t really useful to human being when it comes to associating things. Because of this we designed a system to translate names to IP addresses. When you type in www.google.com what is actually happening behind the scenes is your browser is asking a DNS server to return the IP address of www.google.com. Once the browser gets the IP address it accesses Google though the IP address.

So the DNS is pretty much a phone book for the Internet. And the master servers (called root servers) are the rulers of the roost. They are controlled by ICANN via contract from the United States Department of Commerce.

What many other countries are saying is since the Internet is a multi-national entity that the United States should give control of the DNS to some third party (usually the United Nation’s name is dropped). This is a case of pure jealously and idiocy.

The Internet is an evolution of ARPANET. ARPANET was created by the United States Department of Defense as a project to create a communication network that would survive a nuclear strike for the Soviets. Anyways through much work and finagling this evolved into the Internet that we know today.

This bring my first argument against surrendering control of the DNS over to some other entity. America invested the initial capital and research into the creation of the Internet. We then opened it up for everybody to use. Now being it was a government project apparently different rules apply to it. Because when a corporate creation becomes a world wide de facto item (like Microsoft Windows) no other government calls for it’s release to a third party. Releasing the DNS root servers to international oversight would be like Microsoft releasing the source code for Windows to international oversight. Yet nobody calls for that because it’s understood Microsoft put the initial capital and research (i.e. they bought DOS from a third party and rebranded it after some small adjustments) into Windows so they own it.

My next issue is this, the Internet is not censored. It’s an open means of communication which anybody can use, even an opinionated ass such as myself. This is accomplished for one main reason, the United State’s right of free speech. I can imagine the second some other entity such as the United Nations got control over the DNS censorship wouldn’t be far behind. For instance the United Nations is very anti-gun so I’m sure pro-gun sites would get axed. Being they have a lot of clout with the United Nations I’m sure the European Union could get a resolution passed to ban any negative talk about the Lisbon Treaty as well. Pretty much the bastion of free speech that we know of as the Internet would become akin to what China does with the Internet.

Problem three with the United States relinquishing control of the DNS is the fact that there is nothing stopping any other entity from starting their own root servers. The DNS is incredibly dynamic and anybody can setup a DNS server. Hell your network and work probably has one. If Britain wanted to control a DNS server they could most certainly set one up and use it. Nothing is stopping them. So instead of bitching they could try setting up their own system and force their citizens to use it.

Finally the system currently works. I’m a big fan of the idea that if something isn’t broken don’t fix it. The Internet works incredibly well at the moment so why the Hell should we do something drastic like rework the DNS? All that will do is break something and we’ll be fucked bad.

Apparently the American Flag is Offensive?

I’m going to try to control the storm off foul language that’s currently running through my head…

http://cbs11tv.com/local/patriotism.at.office.2.1020415.html

So for Memorial Day Debbie McLucas puts up an American flag in her office (located at Kindred Healthcare). This is a pretty common thing to do in America, which is where she is. But her boss (shit head) and a supervisor (douche bag) found the flag offensive. They both told her she needed to take it down.

Well apparently she didn’t (good on you Debbie) and Mr. Bag did it for her. She came into her office to find the flag on the floor (completely against flag protocol).

Well eventually Kindred Healthcare posted a statement on their website (no link was given by the news article so I can’t reference it here, sorry) which stated the following…

“The disagreement was over the size of the flag and not what it symbolized. We have invited the employee to put the flag back up.”

So the flag was three foot by five foot at that’s too big? Hmm… I know my company has a full sized flag hanging on a flag pole right outside of our office. I know this not just because I walk by it every day but also because we replaced the flag on Memorial Day. We also gave the old flag to the local VFW for proper disposal.

Anyways being two people said the flag was “offensive” I don’t think the take down had anything to do with size. This is standard company speak for “We fucked up and don’t want to accept blame for it.”

What the Hell has a country come to when you can’t even display that country’s flag?

Here is the contact information for the company…

Kindred Healthcare
Corporate Headquarters
680 South Fourth Street
Louisville, Kentucky 40202

502-596-7300
800-545-0749

web_administrator@kindredhealthcare.com

Source: http://gunrightsradio.com/forums2/index.php/topic,1782.0.html

Man Threatening to Jump Off Bridge is Lent a Hand

Another interesting story from dvorak.org…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8064867.stm

A man who was threatening to jump off of a bridge in China got pushed off by a passer by. When asked why he pushed the man off the passer by said he was fed up with the jumper’s “selfish activity.”

As they say be careful what you wish for because you may just get it.

Source: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/05/23/bridge-jumper-in-china-gets-a-“helping-hand”/

The FCC Think They can Search Your Home

Arrogance becomes you FCC…

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090521/0939414961.shtml

The FCC believe if you have any device that could interfere with the operation of other devices (in other words any electronic piece of gear) they can invite themselves in to search your house. And we’re not talking at pre-arranged times and dates but anytime they damn well please.

So the spooks aren’t the only people who think they can search your premises without a warrant.

FTC Considering Regulate Blogs

Well this figures, I was reading Snowflakes in Hell and came across a rather scary news article…

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090519/1030204931.shtml

The Federal Trade Commission is considering sticking their fingers in bloggers’ business. They want to require bloggers who review products to disclose whether the product being reviewed was given to them, is a sponsor’s product, or if the reviewer is getting paid to do the review.

Up next requiring bloggers to be “fair and balanced.”

Source: http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/05/21/government-looking-to-regulate-blogs/