Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

What $18 Million of Your Tax Money Gets You

This one comes to you courtesy of care of No Agenda. I’m sure everybody has heard of the government’s website for “tracking money” use in the “recovery effort.” If you haven’t you should have since $18 million of your tax money went to make it. Well either way part of the mandate for the site was that it needed to be accessible by the blind. That brings us to the complain form.

In order to submit a complaint you need to enter a capta. This is pretty standard and is mostly used to prevent spam bots from posting on a web site. Well blind people can’t use them as they can’t see the words so there is often an audio version of the capta for accessibility reasons. Click on the audio version link in the capta box on recovery.gov. Now try to decipher what is being said in those audio clips. Do you think you could understand what is being said and type it all into the box accurately? Didn’t think so.

Technically it’s recapta that is the problem here as recovery.gov is using that. But for $18 million you would think they could have come up with their own spam control system that blind people could use. Seriously funny and sad at the same time.

Zombies Have Rights Now

Shit we’re really fucked people. I just learned from Dvorak Uncensored that my own country not only renewed the PATROIT Act but apparently gave zombies fucking rights. From the story:

The U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday released a ruling in favor of a group of zombies who say they were wrongfully arrested while protesting consumerism during the 2006 Aquatennial. The ruling reanimates the group’s federal lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and its police, seeking damages of at least $50,000 for each person arrested.

First I don’t know at what point zombies gained the ability to communicate and bring up lawsuits. Second I don’t know why the fuck the police of Minneapolis are arresting zombies instead of shooting them in the head on sight.

We’re so screwed. If we can’t rekill the undead they will overwhelm us all. Also apparently the police in Minneapolis lack the proper training to deal with the zombie apocalypse.

What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Your’s is Mine To

File this article under further proof digital “rights” management means you don’t own your content. Apparently Sony, Ubisoft, and EA have decided to do everything they can to thwart you from buying used games without them getting a cut.

There is a list of games in the article that will not allow you to access certain parts of the games unless you register it online. If you purchased a used game that has been previously registered then you have to pay the publishers $20.00 to get a new registration code.

This kind of practice is really sickening. What the three mentioned publishers are really saying is that you don’t actually own your content and have no rights to use it as you see fit. But what’s really fucked up is this quote:

Piracy continues to be an issue of concern for the PSP platform, but the launch of the PSPgo and the ability to access the PlayStation Store directly from PSP-3000 were significant steps towards fighting piracy and getting consumers to download digital games legally.

Buying a used game isn’t piracy anymore than buying a used CD. The fact that somebody actually implied it here is simply retarded. Digital “rights” management is a scan through and through. I’m hoping gamers out there are smart enough to simply refuse to buy these titles. These kinds of practices need to be discouraged.

It’s funny to me how we treat digital media different than physical media. Let’s use the stereotypical car example for this. Let’s say you purchased a new Government Motors (Not that I’m picking on anybody) car. Government Motors decides you need to register your car in order to unlock the radio and heater. This registration is uniquely tied to your person so when you see it another person can’t use the radio or heater until they reregister it with Government Motors. In order for the a new owner to register it Government Motors will require a $5,000 fee.

That sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it?

It Appears As Though You Haven’t Thought Your Clever Plan Through

Here is a story implementing a really bad idea via Dvorak Uncensored. It appears as though police officers are going to stage break ins. Yes police officers are going to break into the homes of citizens to raise awareness of burglaries. I see all sorts of bad things coming from this. See people don’t take kindly to strange people breaking into their homes in the middle of the night. Often when a person encounters the stranger they decided to perforate that individuals with gun fire… oh wait this is happening in England. Yeah never mind, capital idea there Bobby.

Are You A South Carolinan Planning to Overthrow the Government, Better Register

File this under the goofy category. Last year South Carolina passed the Subversive Activities Registration Act. On February 5th the clauses of those acts took effect. Now if you live in South Carolina and are planning on overthrowing the government you need to register… with the government. Oh and there is a $5.00 registration fee.

What I’ll get a kick out of is seeing the number of people on the registration list a year from now.

Gunnies and Gamers

There is a rather interesting story linked on Says Uncle. The story is an article in the Escapist where they find it funny that gunnies are complaining about the Call of Duty Effect. The story itself isn’t nearly as interesting as the comments made on it though. It does show quite a divide between gunnies and gamers.

I’m one of those people who happen to be in both categories. Granted I’m far more of a gunnie than a gamer these days but when I was younger and had a combination of more free time and less money I played a lot of games. I was also pretty involved in what could be called the gamer culture. Yes I was on clans (That’s gamer speak for teams) for many different video games. I competed in Command and Conquer Red Alert, Team Fortress Classic, MechWarrior 3, and MechWarrior 4. It was a lot of fun and gave me something to do without having to spend a lot of money (You can get a lot of entrainment time out of a single game). I still retain ties with many of my former team mates who are still gamers through and through.

I don’t have to explain my involvement as a gunnie as that is the major theme of this blog. Needless to say I’ve always found the divide interesting between the two groups. On one hand you have the gamers who think through their playing of video games that they are experts on many different weapons platforms. On the other hand you have gunnies who are very angry that somebody who plays video games dare claim to have knowledge in the field of firearms. Then you have the gamers who get mad when gunnies explain the fact that their game derived knowledge of video games isn’t so much knowledge but wrong.

What is funny is the divide between the two groups is warranted. Gamers claim to have detailed knowledge in the use of firearms even though most have never touched a gun. Then you have gunnies who simply call the gamers idiots and don’t take the time to properly educate the gamers on firearms.

I have a proposal. First you gamers out there please understand that if your knowledge on firearms comes from video games you have no understanding of firearms. Second you gunnies out there stop calling gamers idiots when they talk about guns in your presence and take time to properly educate them and even offer to take them to the range. We can all get along if both sides realize that they’ve been acting like idiots.

Heck if there are any gamers out there who want to try some guns out I’m more than willing to take you. The only conditions are you have to be willing to drive to the Twin Cities area, be at least 18 years of age or accompanied by a parent, and obey all range and safety rules which you will be briefed on.

What Wussies

Seriously everybody is going on about the horrible snow storm that hit the east coast, even other countries are commenting. I don’t know about the rest of the country but here in the northern part of the midwest we call these massive snow storms “winter.” And to prepare for this “winter” we do a few common sense things like ensuring we have a supply of food, have needed snow gear in our vehicles, and wear heavy coats. You guys in the new global warming sector should look into those items.