Erd's Nothing In Particular, Ed cetera

Do your taxes yourself on the cheap

2012-02-01T01:40:00.002-05:00

I hardly have the time to get into a discussion about how awful our tax code is, but I can at least offer this piece of advice for any residents of California, Michigan, Montana, or my home state of Pennsylvania: do it the cheap and easy way. E-filing is yet another great internet convenience, and the federal government offers a free e-file program. This is the wonderful offer you always hear about on H&R Block commercials - FREE 1040EZ FILING! These companies still need to make a buck though, so if you want to file your state return through them or claim certain deductions, you better pony up $35 or more. Less-known companies looking to break into the market will hover around $15.

Enter the non-profit sector. I used I-CAN! E-file last year when it was free, and this year, it's still only $4.99 to do your federal and state return for residents of the aforementioned states. If you're from somewhere else, check out this page and do shop around: different companies offer different states for different prices. Anyway, to use I-CAN! E-file for $4.99, file your taxes starting with this page and go here to get the discount code (it will be sent by email). During the filing process, it will ask for that discount code. If you have half a brain, the rest should be simple enough given all the little informational bits along the way.

As a side note, there was one company that offered PA at $4.95, but I have no personal experience with them. Four cents is a worthwhile price for me to pay to use a company I know over one I don't. Also, most of these freefile options only apply if you make below a certain income.

(Right now, I'm awaiting my 1099G for Unemployment Compensation. I'll update this post when I file it if there are any changes needed. I figured timeliness was important).

Dr. Strangelaws or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Government [SOPA]

2012-01-22T05:29:00.007-05:00

Disregard my last post. The issue of net neutrality is much more important than my Programming Concepts class. You see, unlike you digital natives that make up a huge chunk of the Internet, I remember when there was no World Wide Web. I mean, for fuck's sake, I still capitalize the Internet like it's a proper noun! We had freedom of speech, but not on the level that we have now - there was no free and open global exchange of ideas in a neutral forum. We talk about this stuff a lot - how the Internet has connected people, led to a Renaissance of freethinking, spurred social movements under stalwart regimes, and led to the rise of independent artists - but it's sometimes difficult to see the trees through the forest of lolcats and Techno Chickens. Yes, the net can be a frivolous thing. Yes, people abuse that connectivity to distribute copyrighted material and child pornography, but way more people use it to stay connected to family and friends from out-of-state or country, to collaborate on art across state and country lines, to deliver information and education to those who otherwise wouldn't have access to it, and to fund projects to help develop the third world. These things are great triumphs of humanity, they deserve your utmost attention, and they deserve your zealous defense.

So, how do laws like SOPA affect the wondrous Internet, democracy's most salient incarnation? Let's take a long, long, long, hard look.

SOPA worked thusly: the U.S. Department of Justice maintains a "blacklist.". Any rights-holder (let's say Universal Music Group) can mail a letter to the Attorney General\DOJ to have a site added to the blacklist. Once approved, every Internet Service Provider (Comcast, Verizon) must then block access to this site. Meanwhile, the rights-holder sends letters to any advertisers and investors of said site and notifies them of the pending blacklisting of it. Advertisers are given a period of time to block said "violating" site from receiving payment or displaying their ads, and if they fail to do so, the advertisers will face penalties of fines, blacklisting, or liability for whatever damages Universal claims they incurred by the intellectual property "theft," which - if you've been paying attention - can be quite high. I know it already sounds draconian, but let's get down to some of the specifics of why that's so ridiculous.

First of all, they didn't need SOPA to shut down copyright-infringing sites. Their shut down of the MegaUpload family of sites serves as proof of this. If you weren't familiar with MegaUpload\MegaVideo, it was a file upload, storage, and sharing site that (thanks to its reliability and ease-of-use) became a home for basically every copyrighted piece of TV and Movies out there - basically, a DropBox without moderators. I was actually going to write a post a while back about how much I hated this site for restricting free viewing to 72 minutes; seriously, you can't charge someone to view content you don't own (and let's be honest here: MegaVideo was the de facto illegal streaming video site). Still, the point here is that the government held MegaVideo responsible for the actions of its users rather than the users themselves. If I build a road and you use it to traffic drugs, I'm not guilty of drug trafficking. Now, the many legitimate users of MegaUpload pay for the actions of the handful of pirates. SOPA hasn't passed, and yet, the DOJ was able to get an indictment together and raid the Hong Kong\New Zealand-based company. So then, what was the point of SOPA? To extend and expand the government and publishing industry's jurisdiction and influence while side-stepping civil rights.

Right now, the U.S. government can only apply its laws to companies and individuals within its own borders and otherwise needs to coordinate with foreign police and statutes to do anything more. If SOPA had passed, the government could ritualistically black out any site that had ever at some point linked to illegal content so that Americans cannot access it, even if it was accidental or done by its users (such as in the comments section). Given that something like 20% of all internet traffic is American, that would severely hurt the site's ability to turn a profit. Furthermore, the blacklist would force advertisers to drop that site as well, and with the majority of internet advertising agencies being in America (Google Adwords, for example), the site would be effectively dead. Stopping a site from making money and shutting it down are hardly different, and with a law like SOPA in effect, the American government would have the power to do this whenever it wanted and regardless of the laws in the hosting country, effectively expanding the dominion of U.S. IP law. For example, in Canada and some other countries, it's perfectly legal to send protected content to one another, so long as it's not done for profit - essentially the "Can I borrow that movie?" of the digital world. All in all, by controlling what sites every resident and advertising agency in America can support, the U.S. government would be using the school yard "You guys aren't playing by the rules I made up, so I'm going to take my ball and go home" argument on an international scale.

Whether or not you think the U.S. DOJ would misuse this power, do you think it should even have it? Do you want the government determining what information can be seen and what information cannot? Which artists can make money and which ones cannot? Which speech should remain free? It might sound like hyperbole to say that, but the fact is that even in the countries that we consider first-world free nations, when a government sets up an internet blacklist to stop the spread of child porn or IP infringement, it grows well beyond that purpose to include anarchist and activism sites. I mean, let's face it... if you have the power to silence your critics, wouldn't you?

Remove the stuff about the Patriots, genomes, and Y2K and it actually applies. More importantly, I may not get another chance to post Emma Emmerich, and I love her.

Which brings us to our next problem: due process. I know, I know, most of the time when you hear about due process, it happens to be coming out of the mouth of some fanatic, right? Wrong. Due process is a critical part of our justice system. When someone is arrested, it's "a jury of peers" that decide if they're guilty and what punishment they should get. That way, the final determination of guilt and gravity is in the hands of the very people that make up society. It's an important civil - no, human - right. We can't leave it up to politicians and policemen to determine whether we should be in prison because that's the difference between us and an authoritarian regime. SOPA leaves the interpretation of copyright violation up to the department of justice - i.e. federal police - and then doles out shutdowns and blackouts without any notice, hearing, or trial. It would have subverted the basic checks and balances of our government and handed authority to a group of appointed officials who are beholden to the publishing industry, not us.

In fact, if you consider it, we're talking about policing of the Internet by the record and movie industry. I mean, they're the ones sending the notices, and if there's no trial, where do we come in at all? Boycotting their movies? There's only one MPAA, one RIAA, one ESA (though maybe two, soon), and one BSA. You can't boycott everything! Elections? There's only two real parties in this country, and neither of them cares about Net Neutrality. Besides, this is one issue amidst all the gun control, abortion, wars, economic, and environmental issues. How important is this one area of legislation to most people? "But Erd," you say, "We'll be able to hold our leaders accountable when they overstep the 'only pirate sites' intent of the bill." We would, yes, but there was no transparency in SOPA. All of the blacklisting would be done behind closed doors, and at best we'd find out about it after the fact when WikiLeaks reports it. That is... if the government allowed us to see WikiLeaks.

But beyond the specific sites that would be blocked, you need to consider that all laws against free speech have a chilling effect. By outlawing - say - a video sharing site, you effectively increase the risk of owning or maintaining a video sharing site. When your friend gets caught by a police speed trap, you get a little more cautious when you drive through that area. If SOPA was in effect years ago, it probably would've struck down YouTube. Would we even have a YouTube now? Or Tumblr? Last.fm? I assume that great ideas like these were inevitable, but Wordpress and Facebook didn't get to where they were without competition from BlogSpot\Blogger and MySpace. Stifling competition and start-ups means slower innovation or - from a global economic point of view - innovation elsewhere. Would you rather the next big tech company headquarter and employ its people here... or overseas? Already, many investment bankers have said they'd be disinclined to invest in American Internet businesses if SOPA or similar laws pass. The chilling effect rarely is as obvious and blunt as that, and with so much of our economic progress tied to the Internet we created, it sounds like a risky gambit just to placate the RIAA.

And since we're sticking with the esoteric and abstract, think about how low SOPA sets the bar for burden of proof. In the strictest sense, since there's no trial, there's no real need to prove anything, but let's assume that the DOJ would have seriously reviewed every such instance. Given how many frivolous DMCA notices are sent on a daily basis, the DOJ would probably just resort to shutting down sites first and reviewing them later. Meanwhile, the site would already have lost its funding for a time - or permanently depending on how hesitant advertisers and investors would be to restore their services. When I originally addressed the problems with the DMCA, I pointed to a similar issue that basically breaks down to this: When we automate due process, burden of proof essentially shifts away from the accuser. Nobody has to prove that the content is being used illegitimately, you just send a form notice that everyone's afraid to fight, and the accused is left to prove that the use was legitimate. "Innocent until proven guilty" isn't just a catchy slogan Cops throws out there, it's a tenet of our legal system. Granted, this is somewhat similar to the detainment of suspects until trial, but normally people accused of crimes have the ability to post bail and bring wrongful arrest suits.

SOPA's clause regarding right to sue for abuse of process intentionally made it impossible to bring suit - you needed to prove that the person didn't just wrongfully shut your site down, but actually knew it was wrongful and did it to intentionally hurt you! Essentially, Sony BMG had nothing to lose by having your content dropped until such time as you had mounted some legal defense that was so clear and obvious that the DOJ would be forced to remove you from the blacklist, and during that period of time you would have lost funding, users that may or may not come back once your site is restored, and of course sunk money and time into defending yourself with no recourse for remuneration. At least with the DMCA, there are safe harbor privileges established for sites that try to police their content (though they still fail to address this problem well). It's these safe harbors that protect sites like YouTube from serious litigation, but SOPA would have eroded those protections, nominating even the sites that play fair for the chopping block!

Now, they would never have killed off Google, YouTube, or Facebook like some SOPA posts have suggested. I mean, if they did that, it would be way too obvious to the average American that these laws were overreaching and stifling of free speech. Still, the basic premises of SOPA were some of the slipperiest slopes we've seen. Consider the rule that sites linking to infringing sites would be blocked as well. Now, remember that the World Wide Web is built on hyperlinks. Anywhere you go, there are hyperlinks to other sites, and from those sites to even more sites. Under laws of this nature and scope, you couldn't safely post a link to any other site without first reviewing every single page - and link - therein. Even one link to infringing content was grounds for blacklisting. Obviously, they wouldn't waste their time on every rinky-dink site and chasing down every link, but it's not like printing a form letter takes much time. Hypothetically speaking, all you would need to do is find one pirated movie and trace it backwards until, before long, the whole Web is "in violation." It's called a web for a reason, and the lifeblood of the Internet is the interlinking of sites. SOPA, in essence, would be a sledgehammer blow to one of the pillars of the Internet.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Did I say one? I almost forgot about how SOPA would have screwed with DNS servers. For those unfamiliar with how the Internet works, think of a DNS server as the Google Maps of server locations. You need to go to the store, so you type in the pieces of the address that you have - on the net it's amazon.com, but for our metaphor you'd do street and ZIP Code. Google Maps figures out where on the map that address is located and directs you. If someone wanted to send you to the wrong place (like their fake PayPal site), they would simply change the map around, and before long you've shown up to a store that looks identical, but isn't. You go in, buy your thing, swipe your card, and presto, that fake company has your information. DNSSEC is an upgrade to the map that double-checks whether or not the map has changed since the last time you viewed it. Laws that require the blacklisting of sites work by changing this map, so whether or not there are differences would be irrelevant - the damn thing changes every day! DNSSEC isn't thwarted that easily though, and it will continue to search for a copy that hasn't been tweaked to resolve your request, whether the copy is in the U.S.A. or abroad. As such, SOPA mandated that DNSSEC and any other protocol or application "designed to circumvent the block" would be illegal. This is such a major security concern that NSA and Homeland Security veteran Stewart Baker said "[SOPA] is badly in need of a knockout punch."

Oh, right, and that's not to even think about how these servers - when they're working - will have to handle the task of filtering content. Right now, a DNS Server receives your request (www.amazon.com) translates that request into the correct Internet address (some long string of hexadecimal, like 1b:22:d6:10:48:bd), and returns that address to you, at which point your computer finds and connects to Amazon using the computer-readable address. This all happens in milliseconds, and the system is able to translate millions of requests. SOPA would have required that these DNS translator servers have another step added before they pull up the hexadecimal string: double checking the blacklist to make sure "amazon.com" isn't blocked. Again, this would happen in milliseconds, but what is the effect when you consider the requests of millions of American Internet browsers. We're not talking a tremendous slowdown here but imagine that every highway in the country has police checkpoints on the off-ramps. That might cause a bit of traffic, don't you think?

DNSSEC wasn't the only proposed way to get around SOPA provisions. There's also the classic proxy server or virtual private network. You may have heard of this idea before in movies that have a hacker character. When someone says "The signal is untraceable! It goes halfway to Moscow and back," or something equally hyperbolic, they're talking about proxy servers. A proxy server or VPN is basically the old bum outside the liquor store of the Internet. Someone says you're too young to buy booze so you hand him the money and he buys it for you. Sending a proxy is a great way to subvert the law, but it's also a great way to get around school and work firewalls to check Facebook, for anyone afraid of Big Brother to stay private on the Internet, or for whistleblowers to stay anonymous. Or hey, maybe you're not sure about a site and you would prefer to check it out before you accept their scripts and give up information about your computer's IP address, browser, operating system, etc. Because proxies could be used by infringers, they would've been illegal under SOPA, and that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Some of our government's greatest atrocities have been revealed thanks to proxied informants talking to WikiLeaks, and love or hate the site, you have to love the idea of a transparent government. An informed population is tantamount to a successful democracy.

But here's the best part of all: SOPA wouldn't even've worked! For all these terrible aberrations of free speech, privacy, personal security, due process, personal liberty, and economic sensibility, the law wouldn't actually stop pirates! Like I said before, these types of blacklists work by making the DNS Servers drop your request for the proper, computer-readable IP address. If you already know that address, you can route directly to it without ever telling the DNS Servers. It's folly to think that pirates would have admitted defeat and not developed browser plugins and other tools that anyone could access. Sure, the sites hosting these things would get blacklisted, but just like with Napster, then Kazaa, then Limewire, then BitTorrent, then MegaVideo, then Putlocker and all the other streaming video sites that are still up, the shell game will go on forever. In fact, there was already a Firefox addon ready to go before the bills even hit the Congressional floors. As Steve Jobs put it: "We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content [...] Pick one lock — open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it — puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it."

Without delving at length into the fallacy of the scorched earth approach to copyright protection: Everyone uses Hulu whenever they can. The issue has never been that pirates want to bleed content creators dry, it's that they want to watch their shows on their computers, mobile phones, and laptops at their convenience and for a price they can afford. Torrenting something risks malware, low quality, desynced audio, and all kinds of annoyances. Do you think anyone prefers that method just to avoid a few targeted ads? And how popular are pirate sites anyway? The Pirate Bay clocks in at #76 on the Alexa rankings. And then, when you look at the sites above it, you start to realize how little Internet traffic actually flies the Jolly Roger. Is it worth obfusticating the technology that lets us use 75 highly popular sites just to "defend" artists from site number 76?

Image courtesy of The Pirate Bay

Or wait... artists? Does this bill really protect artists? Those stats we always hear about how much money the music industry has lost to piracy always seem to be unimaginably high, and that's because they are. To get specific here: I don't like country music at all, so I'm not going to spend my erratic and quickly vanishing disposable income to check out your country music, though I might listen to a couple on YouTube for free or download an album if someone recommended it just to tell myself I'm open-minded. I've seen some estimates from pro-copyright sites that suggested 0.1% of all pirates, when surveyed, said they would have otherwise purchased the game. One tenth of one percent! I mean, I doubt that number's totally accurate, but think logically: Would your iPod be loaded with all the music you have if you'd had to pay for it? People who care about a band buy their music and go to their concerts. People who don't don't. You're not losing sales, people are sampling your content and then deciding it isn't worth paying your price for it while others who wouldn't've given you the time of day are turning into customers. Either get comfortable with that or give them a better price.

So then, the actual loss is probably a lot smaller than we always hear, but it's still theft and needs to be stopped, right? This would be true, except that we owe the rise of independent artists (indie music, movies, and games), to the extreme availability of media in the digital age. At the end of the day, the small loss is evened out (or - I would suggest - becomes a net gain) by the exposure of lesser known artists. Just think about some of the people who owe their writing, music, video, or video game careers to the Internet. Would they have had any success without a bit of piracy or piracy-driven advertisement? Justin Bieber wouldn't have. He got his start performing other people's music on YouTube - a practice that can be blocked by the DMCA let alone SOPA - and now he's rich and famous. The truth of the matter is that the only ones being hurt by piracy are the already-established artists - the Metallicas of the world. Interestingly, though, all of these artists are still thriving, still making millions, and benefiting all the more from digital distribution platforms and cost-savings. While they're only incurring minor losses, the truth is that just like records and cassette tapes, piracy has only increased the world's interest in music as a whole. In light of how the Internet and piracy is actually improving the majority of creatives' lives, it would be ridiculous if it was a few established artists who turned the amps to 11 on copyright infringement.

In truth, it's not them at all that is pushing these laws through Congress. Sure, some artists have spoken out against piracy, but they're in the minority, and they aren't the ones lobbying your representatives. The perpetrators, you see, are the production companies and distributors. They invest a lot of money into the development of media and don't take kindly to this newfangled Internet that enables us to buy and access media without a middleman. They know that they've become obsolete - that we no longer need to go to Tower Records to buy a CD that they shipped and own all the intellectual property rights to. If artists can release their vision to the world for the low price of a web site (or even free, as with YouTube, BandCamp, etc.), then how can the distributors justify taking a cut? If the artist has all the leverage in the digital age, why would they hand over their commercial IP rights at all? Distributors are the ones spreading the myth of the pirate epidemic because without a boogeyman to fight, no artist in their right mind would accept their terms. Artists are constantly fighting with their production companies and distributors, but with this new technology, they have new options for self-publication and monetization. Pay-What-You-Want, Donationware, and Subscriptions are just some of these newly-opened and wildly successful pathways. Congress would realize this, but they only recently settled the question of whether the Internet is a big truck or a series of tubes.

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SOPA wouldn't only have furthered the boogeyman philosophy of these distribution companies, but added a new reason for them to exist: legalese. America invented the Internet and remains its backbone and main proponent, so passing a law like this would be a clear signal to the rest of the world that blacklists are the way to go. Imagine a world where every country has a blacklist all with their own guidelines, and you must follow not just the rules of your home country but the rules of any country you hope to be viewed in. How could any independent artist hope to navigate that murky climate? He'd need a team of experienced IP lawyers just to write a tour blog or devlog, let alone all the other legal stuff he already needs to figure out. It's hard enough to keep tabs on the laws of one country, so imagine hundreds of countries and trade zones! Your choices would be either A: find a company to handle your publicity and promotion, or B: risk being censored in any number of locales with no idea how to appeal or ameliorate the situation. In essence, this wasn't the Stop Online Piracy Act, but instead the Stop Independent Artists Act. Would you vote for that?

It's truly a non-partisan issue. Conservatives demand limited government, whilst liberals seek regulated industry. Laws like SOPA exist only to expand the powers of both. Whether you're Occupying Wall Street or Teapartying it up, voting Obama or Ron Paul, Republican or Democrat, your movement has largely been funded thanks to donations made through the Internet, and you should be fighting for it and for your right to open discourse, open information, and open connections. We're the United States of America, not China, Iran, or North Korea. We don't want to stifle the Internet, because the Internet is Liberty 2.0. We may have won this round against SOPA, but PIPA isn't totally dead yet, and there are more bills just around the corner. It's about time you had your voice heard.

I hate one-issue voters, but if this stuff keeps up, I'm about to become one. Ron Paul 2012!

Internet Blackout Post-mortem

2012-01-19T06:48:00.009-05:00

I could hardly hope to write a more compelling or comprehensive post regarding the Stop Online Piracy Act or Protect IP Act than the multitude of sites already covering it. This bill is simply wrong, and in case Wikipedia's protest blackout yesterday caught you off guard and unaware, here's a collection of information about the SOPA\PIPA bills and how they will exact Draconian control of free speech through internet censorship, not to mention hurt the very technological foundations of the Internet.

So then, a primer...

Wikipedia - as always - does a fine job of explaining the legislation in a neutral manner.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation delineates some of the problems with SOPA.
Check out this link if you want to see the full list of blackout participants (Warning: 75,000+ is a lot of hyperlinks to load, so expect your computer to slow down or crash when you try to load it)
This all of course builds on the original protesting of GoDaddy, who originally supported the bill and watched as they lost thousands upon thousands of domains on Boycott GoDaddy Day, the full details of which can be found here.

The important thing to realize is that for all intents and purposes, SOPA is dead. Yes, that means that internet protests work. However, PIPA is still around, and a new bill has been presented by the computer industry in the wake of all this that seems so far to be an acceptable alternative, OPEN.

I wish I had more time lately to develop a proper post about this issue. I also wish I'd bookmarked the various sites that posted really moving explanations of why they were blacking out. Sadly, homework must be done. I apologize profusely and offer you this last bit of linkage as a token of my sincerity:

Feel free to fill in the blanks in the comments, faithful reader(s).

Cognitive Dissonance and Religion

2011-10-20T13:54:00.002-04:00

Cognitive dissonance is an intellectual tension that occurswhen two contrary ideas present themselves. Normally, this happens when a person invests themselves in a belief andthen is presented with contrary information. All rational responses to contradicting facts lie between these axes:

Either your old belief was wrong, or
The new information is wrong

We usually try to resolve this disharmony of ideas by taking the path of least resistance, which often results in an irrational third option that wesee all too often in religion (among other things): Rather than dissecting how either idea is false,we accept both conclusions as true and then reverse engineer supporting datafor both ideas using confirmation bias. There must be some way both things can be right!

Actually, I’m being too abstract. Let’s get specific: A friend of mine cameacross a Flat Earther subforum and, like a car crash, it commanded hisfascination. Being a professor of mathematicsand a physics enthusiast, he felt obligated to get involved. He was remised to find that while the FlatEarthers’ conclusions were obviously wrong, they had realigned their axioms andtwisted math and astronomy enough to actually support their claims! For example: the horizon is an easy demonstrationof the Earth’s curvature, but in this forum, the horizon wasn’t evidence of theEarth curving out of view, but instead the curious result of light refraction –and they had the formulas to back them up!

Obviously, as he dug deeper, he hit on bits of astrophysicsthat debunked the Flat Earth theory (and I use the layman’s “theory” here, notthe scientific term). What would happenwhen he presented these proofs to them? They’d simply respond with the self-affirming“It needs more study.” That would be afair retort in the 15th century, but since then we’vecircumnavigated the globe, seen the Earth from space, and developed layers of irrefutablemath that demonstrates an elliptical planet. We’ve solved the mystery. Some ofthese people were apparently skilled mathematicians, so how could they maintainthat the Earth was flat with a huge pile of documented evidence in front ofthem? Through the combined powers ofcognitive dissonance and denial!

Let me stop you right there. It's turtles all the way down.

To be fair, most of these people were probably young,intelligent physicists-in-training looking to test their abilities in a hobby exhibitionof Poe’s Law, but a small chunk of them had to be true believers. A select group had to have honestly at somepoint decided for themselves that the world was flat. Employing reversescientific method, they then fought from their conclusion backwards untilthey’d cherry-picked a large enough cocoon of unfounded jibber-jabber to encasetheir worldview. Some would say the samething about string theory supporters or other scholars of emerging theories,and in the end, this type of exploration is mostly harmless fun. Besides, I said something about religion inthe title, and it’s time I get to the point.

I was raised Roman Catholic. By that I mean I was raised Northeastern United States Roman Catholic –the cafeteria Catholic variety that doesn’t go to church or believe in Jesus,but gives credence to the basic moral teachings of the Vatican. I wasn’t raised to read a literal Bible, but“Don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t covet, and don’t cheat on your wife” are prettywell embedded in me and the golden rule is - in fact - a rule. As much as we could attribute these beliefs toreligion, I think any appreciation of individual freedom instills the samevalues, and I find it hard to believe than humans aren’t born with a desire forfreedom (history tends to back this up). But in Catholicism, “Thou shalt not kill” doesn’t just mean “don’t killpeople”; it comes with a host of qualifiers that I was taught and agreewith. For example: you may kill inself-defense or in defense of another if there is no other way to resolve thesituation. Well, that makes sense… ordoes it?

What about when you’re a soldier in an unjustified war and the“other” you’re defending is a voluntarily-participating combatant in your platoon? If the war is unjustified, isn’t his presencethere unjustified and likewise your murder in his defense unjustified? Or how about commandment eight: the one aboutlying? I hold the truth in high regard,and I could write a dissertation on why I believe blunt honesty is the onlyjust conduct in the all but a few circumstances. How can I be sure my dissertation of reasonsis not a dissertation of dissonance? Howcan I be sure of… well… any of my morals, really? And what about the beatitudes? I agree with them as well, but blessed are themeek and woe unto the rich? Where’s yourdata?

Nobody bailed out Coach when he was on food stamps and welfare.

No matter who you are, you’ll have a moral code impressed onyou by some authority or another - parents, teachers, or society as a whole - butreligion is the one class of institution that exists strictly to do this… strictlyto forever confound the means by dictating the ends. And yet when it comes to life’sunanswerables, it’s scary to imagine a world where a warm and fuzzy ideologyisn’t being injected into youth en masse. What conclusions would we reach in a vacuum of outside influence? Do I want my kids to grow up actually able todecide right and wrong for themselves? Would I laud them for walking their own road, or would I disavow themfor their selfish, dishonest, greedy ways, all the while knowing that deep downI have doubts that I reached my own conclusions by myself?

Point is: I’ll forever resent that an organized religionstole from me the peace of mind of knowing that I reasoned my way forwardinstead of backward. It doesn’t matterhow rational you are, at some point cognitive dissonance will be something youexperience, and the ensuing denial it often causes even in the most rational ofpeople should scare the shit out of you. Always question your assumptions.

Tl;dr – Rant on how religion kills brain cells. Also, masturbatory pseudo-intellectualism.

Inb4flamewar

Evony is dying a slow, painful death

2010-03-07T15:00:00.004-05:00

Hopefully the last Evony post I'll ever write has just gone up on NFOpocalypse. If you've been following my coverage, this should be a vindicating grand finale.

Are you Racist? Find Out!

2009-12-12T06:42:00.008-05:00

We hear a lot about police racism in this country ever since Rodney King Jr., and if you read anything on the subject, it's clear that officers are bigots. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink discusses that fraction of a second cops have to guess whether or not a person is pulling a weapon. Unfortunately, it seems that race is an overriding factor in that determination. Why? Because their job primes them to act this way. Crime happens in lower economic areas, so we send the cops there. They see non-whites committing violent crimes day in and day out and it becomes an unconscious expectation. If a black guy reaches in his pocket to grab his wallet, in that instant, it becomes a gun to a cop.

Canning the policeman is obviously the response, but that's after the mistake already occurred. Is there a way we can pre-empt these situations? One possibility I've always liked is to send officers to areas based on their ethnicity. Black cops have more black role models and thus are less primed to have a negative image of coloreds in general. If you've seen how test results can be skewed by priming people with images of clean, articulate black men like Barack Obama or Bill Cosby, then you know my idea isn't that preposterous! Really, though, I think the best solution is to bury racism and just about any discussion of it until the issue dies out.

Anyway, now for the fun part of the post, finding out if you're racist, again courtesy of Blink (the URL is in the book's Notes section). In this test (direct link), you're asked to determine if a target is holding a gun or something benign like a cell phone or wallet. You'll see blacks and whites, with or without weapons, all in rapid succession. If you're anything like me, you'll be surprised to find that you shoot black innocents more often, that it takes you longer to identify when a white person is holding a weapon, and that it takes you longer to identify when a black person isn't.

Average reaction time:
Black Armed:566.76ms
Black Unarmed:715.28ms
White Armed:690.52ms
White Unarmed:604.2ms

I'm the furthest thing from racist, and even I botched the hell out of this test. Enjoy, and post your results in the comments!

Healthcare: Wendell Porter

2009-09-18T00:49:00.014-04:00

I'm still somewhat open to alternative solutions, but single-payer does seem the best way to go.

From some news site:

One of the panelists, former Cigna Health Insurance executive-turned whistleblower Wendell Potter, said in his opening statement that if Congress “fails to create a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, the bill it sends to the president might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”

Forgive the use of a random-ass site. I just wanted to make sure you saw that I didn't pull reformed smegma-sucking asshole Wendell Porter's quote out of my ass (he's still a putz for his past, but at least he realizes it now). Those guys framed it in a way that explained who he was and gave the quote without requiring me to use ellipses between the two. Now for the PBS interview with the same guy (if YouTube sucks at buffering it, try this instead):

The interview plays like an advertisement, but there are some fundamental points in there that people all too often don't actually consider. More on healthcare in the future no doubt.

Kingory is not copycat. (Evony\Civony v2.0)

2009-09-17T02:45:00.006-04:00

If you liked even one of my Civony\Evony posts in the past, you need to read the most recent development. I swear I want this to end as much as all of you, but God damn they make it easy!

Also, in case you haven't noticed, I disable comments on almost all of these offlinks because I don't want to split the discussion. Comment me on NFO if you've got something to say. The Akismet can be horrible at times, but as long as you're not posting a bunch of links, you'll get through.

So yeah: Read. Laugh. And click some of the articles I link in that post too - most of them are great as well!

Thanks to Jim for the tip :3

Kanyelicio.us

2009-09-16T17:06:00.011-04:00

Image yanked from Encyclopedia Dramatica, an intarwebs site
I don't intend to make a bunch of micro-posts, but damn it I've got a lot of games to play and many people to talk to! At any rate...

Just found this through a friend: http://kanyelicio.us/http://www.google.com I've chosen not to roll it into some "5 Sites You Should See" kind of thing because it's unlikely they'll keep it up for too long (as the joke will get old). Go watch Kanye West's publicity stunt at the VMAs if you don't get it.

If you haven't seen a site like this before, here's what you do: Type http://www.kanyelicio.us/{ANY URL} into your address bar and replace {ANY URL} with the URL of the site you want to see Kanye interrupt.

Erd's Nothing I- BEYONCE HAS ONE OF THE BEST....

Also...

Never Forget

2009-09-11T09:38:00.002-04:00

I don't know why Erd hasn't posted in a while, and frankly I can't blame him since neither have I. But, at the very least I wanted to talk about this date in history, because it's obviously significant. A part of me died on September 11th, 2001. Let me tell you about it.

I was in class when I heard the news about the World Trade Center. The school assembled the students in the cafeteria to watch the coverage. An hour goes by. We get to leave early... not because The-middle-of-fucking-nowhere, New Jersey is some prime target for terrorist groups, but because - as one might expect - a few of our classmates had relatives that worked in the New York Metro. We drove around, thanks to an upperclassman's car, talking about the attacks. A friend suggested we get something to eat.

We pull into a plaza, grab a bite, and saunter through a record store, still bewildered by the news. I flipped through racks of CDs, perhaps looking for something to dull the sting of our country being attacked, but there seemed to be no salve in stock. Then, I saw it: "Glitter," the soundtrack. Could this be the pill I sought? Could this be the bright spot in an otherwise dark day? There was only one way to find out. Debit card in hand, I deflected insult after insult from my friends. It's not their fault. They don't understand Mariah like I do. They were just venting. They'd see what a great album this would be - like all her others before it.

That afternoon, once I'd had my fill of the media, I retreated to my room: prize in hand. It was time for an escape... to passionate vocals of love, joy, and the struggles of a mixed race woman's journey to stardom. Life is much simpler in the world of music. Unfortunately for me, life was far worse. I thought "How could this be? Why would someone do this? Who would produce such a tragedy? Who was behind this? Such beauty, such majesty... crumbling down!" I could take no more. I smashed my CD player to pieces in anger and screamed at the top of my lungs! What a waste of money this was, what a waste of time, what a waste of... FUUUUUCK!

A part of me died that day. Specifically, the part that would continue to buy Mariah Carey albums. I of course calmed down, and a couple weeks later, I decided to go see the movie itself. It was just as bad... perhaps worse.

And if for no other reason, September 11, 2001 will go down in my memory as a truly tragic day. A day I try my best never to revisit, but inevitably do year after year. Never forget.

Evony: It's official... worst ad campaign ever.

2009-08-11T04:49:00.005-04:00

Another small update on Evony was posted to NFOpocalypse. You'll enjoy this, all of you.

Click title, read, and masturbate.

August 22nd: The linked post on NFO was updated to include yet another ad. I want to be done talking about this scam game, but it's a bottomless well of pathetic video game marketing.

ROMiniscing: Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (PC)

2009-08-10T15:00:00.006-04:00

Click title, read, and realize why games have the potential to be the best form of media.

Day of the Tentacle is made of so much awesome that I managed to write a post that diverged a bit from my "robotic fanspeak" tendencies.

For those of you unfamiliar with emulation or torrenting, here's a brief step-by-step to get you playing DotT:

Buy the game or pirate the torrent (you'll need a free BitTorrent client and a torrent site like The Pirate Bay that you can search)
Pop in the CD or mount the image (you'll need a CD emulator like the free Daemon Tools Lite)
If your system is old enough to run the game as-is, enjoy! If your computer is even remotely modern, download ScummVM (also free)
(Optional) Copy the Dott directory to your computer so that you don't need to remount everytime you want to play
Run ScummVM. Choose Add Game... and point it to the directory (either on the CD\image or your hard drive, depending on step 4). For settings, just choose whatever sounds good. You can always come back and tinker with it by clicking DotT from the list and choosing "Edit Game". If you're running it from the CD or an image, make sure you give it a directory for your Save path (where the saved games go)
Have fun playing (F5 brings up the menu when you're in-game, Esc lets you skip cutscenes)

Sounds like a lot of work for one game, but it's really not. Besides, ScummVM can handle a huge library of Graphic adventure classics, so you're doing yourself a favor.

If you have any questions about getting this running, I'll leave the comments section open. I'm not going to link you a torrent, so don't waste your time nagging. Also, if you post a link to illegal content, I'm obligated to delete it.

Also, check out the other two posts from today here on NIP, Edc (don't want them to get too buried).

What the... somebody reads NFOpocalypse?

2009-08-10T04:24:00.007-04:00

Click that title. Even if you never follow these offlinking posts, click that title and scroll down to the bottom.

Apparently, NFO's audience is greater than its writers and their parents. Who'd'a thunk it?

Awe-Some Jams

2009-07-21T04:05:00.003-04:00

I haven't updated in a while and unfortunately I don't have anything too important to say today... so we'll keep it light-hearted! A couple friends of mine recently linked me some music, and if I say so myself, it's great shit. The guys in these bands are fucking visionaries.

First, here is a cover of "Such Great Heights" (The Postal Service, another band I adore) done by some badass metal dudes called Confide. Don't let the "Love" and "Hope" tattoos on the one guy's fingers confuse you: it'll melt your face.

This next band, known as Entropy, has some pretty dark lyrics, but hilarious names and shit. The bassist refers to herself as "mAlice" and says that "strawberries are a metaphor for blood." Where do they come up with this great sense of humor!? They're hardcore about their music, even carpooling their fans to shows and stuff (apparently the Lexington music scene isn't ready for their level of awesome). They're activists too in a sense, as demonstrated by this blog post about the educational system in America.

Excerpt

How do I know why America’s public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America’s formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing. Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain.

These dudes are digging up some really obscure and important information and converting it to lyrics. Check out their music on their MySpace. As an aside: lol at their URL, it's "entropy is pretty awesome in most measurable ways i mean wow." This was funny enough to be both their URL and a blog post title where they give out awards to people for being "Punk as Hell," "Because Entropy said so" and because they can do wicked shit with their arms.

Here's another YouTube, this time a band called "Attack Attack!" with their song "Stick Stickly" (fucking Nickelodeon references ftw). I love their headbang\hop, the Crabcore stance, and the guitar swinging choreography. It's so fresh and cool looking. Listen at least to the 8th or 9th breakdown, where it goes all super-cool Electronica (who DOESN'T love Electronica?) The blonde chick in the video keeps covering her ears. If she doesn't, they may shatter her brain with their metalitude.

And lastly, here's a band in the same vein as "Attack Attack!" called BrokeNCYDE with their single "Freaxxx." I assume the three X's are like how you rate liquor, cause this shit will get you seriously drunk on the devil's brew. It's hardcore, man - just look at all the gang signs, smoke rings, and beer they spill for their homies. I'm 99% certain they'll get famous because they combine the best elements of the best genres (Electronica, Screamo, and T-Pain autotuned Hip hop... such a kewl effect).

Anyway, that's all for today. These guys are real music revolutionaries combining music styles and stuff. All these bands are pretty small right now so you can become one of us true fans that support them before they sell out their musical genius and start becoming catchy trash!

ROMiniscing: ActRaiser (Super NES)

2009-07-20T23:00:00.000-04:00

This week, it's a clever mix of hack-and-slash and city-building. If you like platformers with a twist, click the title.

As always, ZSNES is the way to go. I hope everyone is enjoying their summers!

ROMiniscing: Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen (Super NES)

2009-07-14T21:45:00.000-04:00

Click title. Read. Download. Enjoy.

This is one of those games that surprised the hell out of me because I had literally never heard of it until about two years ago when a friend recommended it. It's not 100% polished, but it's still damn good. It manages to be original even with all the Tactical RPGs that have come since.

Anyway, this shit's worth playing. Absofuckinglutely it is.

ZSNES is best.

ROMiniscing: Adventure (Atari 2600)

2009-07-06T18:00:00.000-04:00

Adventure. Geez, what is there to say? I mean, it's such a painfully simple game that I don't think today's gamers can appreciate it, but at the same time it's such a masterpiece for its time that it deserves to be talked about for decades to come. It manages to be simultaneously timeless and dated somehow.

Clearly, the only solution is for you to play and judge for yourself. Click the title, read the piece, and dig up Stella or some other emulator.

ROMiniscing: Kid Chameleon (Genesis)

2009-06-29T18:00:00.000-04:00

I was always a SNES fan myself, but I didn't completely miss out on the fun shit Genesis had to offer. This week, I'm spotlighting a game I spent far too many hours on as a kid: Kid Chameleon.

Click the title, read the article, then go download the game on one of the many ROM sites out there. If you don't have an emulator for Genesis, I've found "Gens" to be fair. The interface is piss-poor, especially compared to ZSNES, but it's leagues better than Hu-Go!

Anyway, go play some games.

Everyone Loves (Pandering to) Parents!

2009-06-23T22:10:00.000-04:00

It's not some controversial topic, so I'll keep this short: Enough fucking pandering already. Parents especially don't deserve it. Their jobs are necessary for the continuation of humanity and an act of choice (or an act of failure-to-make-a-choice). For these reasons and more they definitely don't need holidays or, at the very least, they don't need the kind of pandering nonsense they receive from the media on these holidays.

The local news down here in Nowheresville, Maryland is quite abysmal to begin with. I originally figured that the news networks down here, what with being located in the nation's capital, would be at the top of their game. This could not be farther from the truth. They read teleprompters like a dyslexic 4th-grader and have the comic ability of a TGIF sitcom. For Father's Day, one of the anchors said this:

One of the douchebag sports anchors on NBC\DC4:

Without fathers, there'd be no baseball... think about that!

What a fuckwitted segue. Seriously? You thought that was clever? I took the bait and thought about it. In roughly a tenth of a second I realized:

Without fathers, there'd be no human race
Without stromatolites, there'd be no land creatures
Without cataclysmic extinction events, there'd probably be few, if any, of the lifeforms we know on the planet.
A decade or so from now Project Natal-like gesture-based user interfaces could be standard and the middle finger I threw at the screen could appropriately change the channel like I wanted it to.

On the other hand, sometimes the ball(s) of a particular type of pandering can be quite amusing. If you've ever watched USA, you know that House, MD reruns make up at least 60% of their schedule. They try to justify this by having constant marathons, such as "End of the Weekenditis," "Seven Deadly Sins," and perhaps the best yet: the Mother's Day "Mother of All Marathons."

One final note: Hooray for people who read blogs (clicktheadclicktheadclickthead)!

ROMiniscing: Uniracers \ Unirally (Super NES)

2009-06-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

Click the title for a tip on some high-octane, fast-paced racing fun... ON ONE WHEEL! Uniracers really is a relic of a time when games rose and fell on their originality and uniqueness rather than graphics and marketing shock and awe.

As usual, ZSNES for the win and enjoy your Monday!

ROMiniscing: Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team (NES)

2009-06-15T19:00:00.000-04:00

Commemorate National Man Day by playing a classic Beat 'Em Up. There are a couple of stages (including the Dark Queen boss fight) where you get to beat women! Now that's a celebration!

But seriously... click the title and go read that shit. Then, download that shit. Then, play that shit. Then, take a shit. These are your duties as a man.

Fuck yeah Sunny! Fuck yeah Danny DeVito!

2009-06-11T17:24:00.000-04:00

This needs no introduction:

For those of you who need to catch up on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, It's Always Sunny Episodes (a blog with embedded streaming episodes) seems to have its shit together. Better yet, go buy the DVDs. Amazon's selling them for less than FX does, but I assume you could find them cheaper elsewhere. Still, $52 bucks with free shipping for both sets plus a pre-order ain't bad.

ROMiniscing: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (Super NES)

2009-06-09T16:02:00.000-04:00

Whoops! Didn't realize yesterday was Monday and forgot to post. Oh well, you get a new ROMiniscing a day late. I never officially said on NFO that it was a weekly feature, so fuck off.

Well, fuck off after you click that title and read the post. Actually, there are more posts for the future...

Nevermind... don't fuck off. Love me, love me!

ROMiniscing: Secret of Evermore (Super NES)

2009-06-02T00:46:00.000-04:00

Yup, it's Monday again. You had to work harder than you should for less than you're worth, your kids had to be rushed off to school for another day of indoctrination, and you're one day closer to that summer vacation you can't really afford but are going to do anyway.

On the plus side, it's also the day when another ROMiniscing posts on NFOpocalypse. Click the title, read, and enjoy.

As always, I recommend ZSNES.

A pet peave: "Agree"

2009-05-30T06:30:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been hearing people respond to statements with just simply "agree" so as to say "I agree with you." Is it so fucking hard to say "I agree" or "agreed?" They're both one extra goddamn letter!

When you state a verb without a subject, you are making an imperative sentence using an implied you. For example, when I reply to your "agree" nonsense with the words "Shut the fuck up," I am saying "[You] shut the fuck up."

Alternatively, words can be used as exclamatory sentences or statements to express an emotional response. This is usually done with words that are either interjections, profanities, or onomatopoeia. For example, when you say "agree," I may reply with "Good God!" "FUUUUUUCK!" or "Ugh!" Since the verb "to agree" is a passive action (oxymoron), it makes no sense in this context either. Agreed however is an interjection.

Correct

Person A: "The sky is blue."
Person B: "I agree."
B (expanded): "I agree [with you]."

Incorrect

A: "The sky is blue."
B: "Agree."
B (exp.): "[You] agree [with yourself]." Wha-?

In order to not sound like a dimdick, here are a few of the thousands of better alternatives to "Agree!" that you can use:

Mhm
Yup
Yes
Right
Correct
Agreed
Affirmative
Totally
Definitely
I concur
I agree
That's true
That's right
That statement is wholly\mostly\partly accurate
Erd has a chocolate-covered cock. Also, you make a valid point.

That last one will hopefully get a rumor going that will improve my blowjobs received/year ratio. As of right now, it's severely low.

DMCA, Derivative works, Piracy, Barack Obama

2009-05-29T05:00:00.001-04:00

At the intersection of these four topics, we have...

Normally, I'd post a concise but comprehensive post about an issue as important and complex as intellectual property laws in the digital age. I can't exactly do that here though because the issues are deep inside a grey area. I'd need a thousand pages and five experts to touch on every point.

On the one hand it costs money to produce high-quality creative stuff. If the fair use and derivative works laws make it legal to essentially pirate works, people can't afford to create them. Production companies need copyright protections or else we end up with the braindead ramblings that inundate YouTube as our only form of entertainment.

On the other hand laws that aren't black-and-white force court interpretation. This means the common derivative artist will need to have more legal savvy and money than the mammoth multinational that comes after him. In what world is that the likely?

The only clear part of this whole debate is that the laws are outdated. If nothing else, they need to very clearly define the parameters of a protected derivative work. We were able to clear up fair use, first-sale, and genericized trademarks. Hopefully, we can clear up the derivative work question as well.

As with anything, the first step is for individuals to understand the current laws so that they know when they're in the right. In theory, the rest will be solved by court precedents and people like you and I demanding revisions to the statutes.

Try reading up on Wikipedia's pages on derivative works, copyright, and fair use for starters.
Here's the Simple English Wikipedia version of the latter if it has too many big words for you. You're either an ESL student or an idiot if you think it does. Even if you're the second, we still need you in this discussion if only for your signature\vote.
This one is for the kids!
A comprehensive overview of copyright and fair use, though derivative works are sadly not discussed
A short description of fair use as it applies to bloggers
If you're still interested, here's a fabulous list of IP law-related resources that cover almost everything - it's just short of having an actual attorney's resources (i.e. paralegals and interning law clerks scouring LexisNexis).

So, instead of trying to write a complete manifesto sans Juris Doctorate, I'll use the John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd video to demonstrate where we're at with - and possibly educate about - derivative works. Sony has been all over YouTube demanding the removal of the audio portion of this file (hence why I'm linking the one from Funny Or Die)...

John McCain Gets Barack Roll - watch more funny videos

Things to consider about this video:

Disclaimer: Neither Ed nor Erd are attorneys. These is Erd's interpretations of the laws. Call a lawyer if you're facing legal trouble.

Originality: The audio file for this "remix"-class derivative work is merely the superposition of Obama's words over the original, copyrighted work. Thus, it is on shaky IP ground to begin with. But while the audio file is the crux of the humor in the original BarackRoll video (no audio), this new one involves extremely good chroma keying (watch the reflection on the stage behind McCain) and the intermixing of video from McCain's speeches such that the joke is now an annoyed McCain being forced to endure a BarackRoll of epic proportions.
Potentially satire: Though its real purpose is internet humor, one could view this video as political satire - it shows Obama saying he's "Never gonna make you cry," "Never gonna tell a lie," and that "You wouldn't get this from any other guy." This is all met with thunderous applause and chanting from McCain's supporters. Really, the video could be a statement of "Vote for Obama!" or even the less obvious "Obama's celebrity status has reached ridiculous proportions... what the fuck is going on?"
Purpose and character: Unless you actually buy the above rationale, this derivative work is not transformative (Wikipedia has two articles on the topic). However, it is released for free, so the authors (Hugh Matkin and Alastair Corrigall) are not seeking to make a profit off of Sony's music.
Amount and substantiality: If somebody wants to hear "Never Gonna Give You Up," this video is not the place. Of the 3-minute 33-second song, only 1 minute and 26 seconds are used - about 40%. More importantly, all but the first few seconds of this sample are corrupted with outside audio (Obama's voice and chanting). In short...
Effect upon work's value: It doesn't infringe on Sony's ability to make a profit off of the song. If anything, it's free advertising. Do you think anyone from our generation would know who Rick Astley was if it wasn't for the RickRoll and all its kin?
Artist's consent: Though Sony owns the copyright to his song, it is interesting to note that Rick Astley likes the BarackRoll and the grassroots creativity of the Internet. He even likes the rudimentary RickRoll.

Isn't it about time that Google-YouTube takes a stand in favor of their content creators? Isn't it about time Sony, Universal Music Group, and other companies stop abusing the DMCA and IP law to suppress artists? Isn't it about time we update copyright laws so that companies can't use the domineering "We have lawyers, you don't" tactic to subvert the rights of creative individuals? I'm usually pretty ambiguous or even in favor of the company trying to protect their works, but this situation is pretty one-sided for Matkin and Corrigall as far as I can tell.

Does Sony being wrong matter? Not a bit. YouTube gets hit with the DMCA fist of fury every day. They're unlikely to restore the audio even if hmatkin made a convincing argument that's he's not infringing - doing so runs the risk of them getting sued over something silly. Even if YouTube won, it costs money and time to defend themselves. Since hmatkin doesn't have monetary damages (the video is free to watch) he'd have a hard time suing Sony. His only remedy is to bait them by posting the video on a site\server -ideally outside the jurisdiction of the DMCA - that won't bow to cease and desists (or his own server), hope Sony sues him, and defend himself in court.

In essence, rather than Sony (the "injured" party) proving that hmatkin is infringing their rights, hmatkin has to prove he's not infringing theirs. This is the clusterfuck of DMCA in the digital age: You don't have to prove I punched you, I have to prove I didn't. Guilty until proven innocent (in a spaghetti-strand-through-third-party-hosts-too-pussy-to-defend-their-users kind of way).

The solution? The law needs to not hold YouTube liable for the content their users post. It didn't used to, but thanks to the DMCA, it does. If I build a road for public use and you use that road to traffic drugs, am I guilty of drug trafficking? Is the CyberCafe guilty for the libel and threats you posted online while you were there? If you burn a bootleg, am I guilty just because you did it when you borrowed my computer? YouTube provides infrastructure for people to upload stuff. It's not their job to monitor how people use it. The DMCA requires that YouTube remove infringing material - which works in theory except that the scales aren't even. YouTube has no legal obligation to its users, but does have one to Sony. The result is that any company with a few lawyers can bully even YouTubers who are legally using their content.

The "big picture" issue here is that the Internet is being treated like book publishing or TV - lots of channels, each with their own Standards & Practices team reviewing things before they air. It's not: it's global, it's hosted by public and private organizations and individuals, it's free-to-use and ubiquitous, there is no central authority, and on places like YouTube or Blogger, it's direct-to-publication. The Internet is unlike anything we've seen before... it'd be nice if our legislature understood that.

Anyway... thank the gods of the Internet for making it virtually impossible to put a tourniquet on the spread of these videos. In the time it took you to read this post, three more web sites added "John McCain gets BarackRoll'd" to their library and five people have downloaded it from somewhere and uploaded it to their own YouTube\DailyMotion\Vimeo\etc. accounts. Until the AT&T packet sniffer precedents are set, we're not completely in the shitter.

I'll let Barack Obama have the last word (Series of Disappointments = hmatkin = Hugh Matkin and maybe Alastair Corrigall)

"Ellen" from Pete & Pete - Where are they now?

2009-05-28T03:48:00.001-04:00

This is something cool I found out a while back after a fun weekend with HighResEuph0ria during which we watched the best things our DVD collections had to offer. It just now occurred to me that I should share it, as most of you were like me and had a tremendous crush on Ellen way back when:

Assuming my Google detectiving is right: Alison Fanelli, the above-pictured and aforementioned Ellen from Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete & Pete, went on to Goucher College for a B.A. in Pre-Med, then the Ivy League Dartmouth College for a Master's in Healthcare Improvement, and lastly Arcadia University for her Physician Assistant certification. She now works as a PA-C at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where I and many relatives and friends of mine were born.

That's pretty friggin sweet in my opinion and only makes her hotter. Now I just have to give one of my younger cousins the Swine Flu so I can go hit on her without seeming like a stalker.

Relevant links:

Wikipedia page, with links to imdb as citations for the after-the-show stuff
Her staff page on CHOP's web site
Explanation of what a Physician Assistant is - basically, it's one step down from a doctor with set hours, less ridiculous schooling, and almost as much authority (they can even write prescriptions!). Excellent choice of career if I do say so myself.

Advertisements: T-Shirt Hell

2009-05-27T10:48:00.001-04:00

Ever since I actually read the terms of AdSense, I realized we could never use their ads for this site (omg bad language and maybe a porn link sometimes). While browsing T-Shirt Hell (love their shirts), I came across their affiliate program. Fuck yes! A site that is relevant to the general tone of our blog that we trust and can personally recommend.

At some point in the future, I'm going to add either a pay-per-click banner ad across the top of the page or PPC text ads in between every couple posts. If we get lucky and stumble across another site that we like that has a PPC program, we'll be all over it. Anyway, long story short: if your site is too "edgy" for Google, check out T-Shirt Hell (and use our referral link to sign up). I once bought 14 shirts there in one visit.

When I originally did the layout, I made sure the planned ads wouldn't be too obtrusive and annoying for any readers. Yes, the T-Shirt Hell ad puts the category listings a bit far beyond the fold. We may move it in the future...

What do you think? Should it go down a row or two? Fine where it is? Should we change the text underneath it? The goal is for it to be obvious without being completely in the way.

Gems from the Evony\Civony forums

2009-05-26T18:08:00.001-04:00

This is just too fucking funny. It took me about 45 minutes to see the game for what it is and another 4 hours or so to make absolutely sure before I bad-mouthed it (and to collect relevant screenshots). It's hard for me to empathize with the suckers in that thread.

This thread is seven pages of the administrators asking players to report grammar and spelling errors. That way, they don't have to cut into their profits by paying one guy a few bucks to correct things.

These poor saps (one of which gave UMGE $180) seem to think the Evony developers actually give a shit about the game. They don't recognize that once the ROI for the Evony scam drops to an undesirable point, UMGE will simply rebrand, relocate, and rescam. Shell games ftw!

(also posted as an update on NFOpocalypse)

For background on this topic, see my original post.

ROMiniscing: E.V.O.: Search for Eden (Super NES)

2009-05-25T18:00:00.000-04:00

At Noon PST, that title will link to my ROMiniscing on E.V.O.

Click and enjoy!

I recommend ZSNES for this one. If you can get your hands on version 1.42, the Netplay is easier to handle (though for this game, Netplay is just a method by which someone else can watch you play).

Beautiful Young Pussy

2009-05-25T00:01:00.001-04:00

You probably don't care, but here are some pictures of a beautiful, young pussy anyway.

ROMiniscing: Splatterhouse (TG-16)

2009-05-18T22:35:00.001-04:00

Click the title and enjoy a review of a truly badass relic of the TurboGrafx-16.

If you want to play, there's the Wii VC, or Hu-Go! Search Google for "Hu-Go!" and then "Splatterhouse ROM" for some zombie-punching awesomeness.

Civony: Gold farmers go first party

2009-05-14T03:14:00.001-04:00

MORE? You want MORE?!

Click title. Read. Enjoy my review of Civony.

Follow-up post!

ROMiniscing: Using a SIXAXIS on a Windows PC

2009-05-12T01:52:00.000-04:00

Click title. Read. Enjoy.

Empty Gestures: What I did for Earth Hour

2009-03-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

Earth Hour is staged as a symbolic reminder to "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." In fact, it’s a symbol of how self-aggrandizing people draw money, effort, manpower, and time away from important research and development by turning “awareness” into a trend rather than a means to the end: solving the fucking problem. This article was posted as a draft at the start of my time zone’s Earth Hour, throughout which I encouraged anyone I knew that was online to read it and recommend edits. For the full duration of American Earth Hours, I closed no programs and turned off no electronics. Why? As a symbol that moral superiority posturing solves nothing.

Whether it’s jelly bracelets or being Inspi(red), we’ve gotten used to the “social responsibility” buzzword of product marketing. In this day and age, even breast cancer ribbons are abused as a marketing gimmick (see Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, Season 5, Episode 3 if you are unaware of this. The episode also delivers lots of tits). Companies quell what outrage we would have by using the blanket term “awareness,” and as my main man Matlock (in later image as “S7411…”) sarcastically put it:

Awareness is all that matters because if people are aware then people care.

Most people – if you make the point – will recognize the logical fallacy in thinking that once you’ve created awareness, you’ve solved the problem. That is… unless you're talking about their pet issue. “Green” is the buzzword of the 21st century, and boy do people have a boner for acting like they care about the environment. Earth Hour is the newest Race for the Cure of environmentalism.

A short disclaimer

Some people and organizations such as Leadership in Energy for Environmental Design (LEED), the alliterative Dr. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and the World Resources Institute (WRI) do great work educating about and developing sustainability science as well as spreading awareness of emergent technologies and legislative initiatives. People like this are not in my crosshairs.

Today, my problem is with the fools pushing this Earth Hour nonsense like a panacea for power plant emissions. Since Earth Hour’s inception, technical personnel have been raising some important questions about the viability of the idea - specifically, "if air conditioning units and major servers consume more power starting up than they would idling in these reduced-traffic conditions, wouldn’t it be better to leave them on?" What do Earth Hour supporters say? "Shut up! Of course it’s better! It doesn't matter how effective the gesture is, what matters is that we unite under this symbol, make a reduction in power consumption, and most importantly: raise awareness." ...what?

Is there anyone out there who isn't aware of the unsustainability question? Shouldn’t we be past the national holiday point and instead be devoting our money, time, effort, and media coverage to answering the tough questions by now? I don’t doubt that Earth Hour’s net effect on power consumption will be positive. However, by dismissing questions like “Could the resulting spike in energy use at the end of each time zone’s Earth Hour cause our plants to hemorrhage a great deal of energy?” you’re just demonstrating that this isn’t about getting green, it’s about feeling like you’re part of a “movement.”

You want to get Americans green? Awesome! We want to be green. We're aware. Stop raising awareness and start funding new solutions – particularly ones that people will do for more reasons than just "out of respect for the environment." That's why litter laws don't work.

1. Cost: Develop and encourage products and services that are more cost-effective for the consumer (short or long-term). Solar roof panels, fluorescent light bulbs, LEDs, energy-efficient computer equipment, homebrew alternatives to toxic cleansers (like using black tea instead of wood polish), refillable fountain pens, computer scrapping facilities, mass transit, faucet filters (though municipal water has done this job for you), ink cartridge recycling incentives, programmable thermostats, tankless water heaters, cat toilet training…

2. Convenience: “It’s better for the Earth” won’t excuse a higher price point for people who are already strapped for cash. Convenience however… Municipally-funded recycling, multi-switch power supplies with remotes, motion-sensor lights, waterless urinals, digital distribution, smart residential electricity meters, better Li-ion batteries, electric cars that draw from home power sockets, Touchstone chargers, paperless office tools, Smoker’s Outpost ashtrays…

3. Quality: If it has to be more expensive without being more convenient, then make it more effective\healthier\multipurpose than non-green alternatives. Soy-based spray insulation, composting trash cans, compressed paper golf balls, bicycles, some organic farming techniques (as some others can’t be applied on a great scale without a major drop in yield), aluminum products, smartphones, reusable tote bags, landfill methane energy collection, green cosmetics, some hemp products...

“Dark greenies” love to imagine a world where mankind keeps 100% within its means solely by virtue, and I'm no different. Too bad this is the real world. Yes, we need to be humbler about our place in the universe, but don't draft initiatives as though we’re in your moral utopia and then be surprised when they have marginal effect. Every creature acts in its own, sometimes short-sighted, self-interest. Whether or not this overlaps with the common good is typically an afterthought. Just because our species has higher reasoning doesn't mean we aren't still dominated in many ways by our instincts. You want to make a difference? Play to the base instincts we all have, not the higher reasoning most people clearly lack... why else would Arrested Development be canceled while American Idol is endless?

Oh, and one more thing: nuclear motherfucking power you dreadlocked half-wits.

Sammy the Cat

2009-02-19T20:13:00.000-05:00

In weird news today: A cat was banned from the Notasulga, Alabama post office for not paying taxes!

Okay, obviously this is a bit of a joke. I imagine the person that complained was only doing it in jest, but now there's a little bit of a debate going on in the comments pages of the various news sources reporting on the story. One that I read makes an excellent point: People who are allergic to cats (like myself) are now forced to undergo an undue hardship when they go to the Post Office!

This mirrors one of my main reasons that I support the smoking bans: I have asthmatic friends that are bothered by smoke. As wlpresvd puts it in his comment, "I don't walk, I race down the detergent aisle in the supermarket, or I start to cough and wheeze until I can’t breathe." Frankly, anything that screws with the air quality is no good, especially when it's brought indoors.

The inconsiderate residents of Notasulga bought Sammy a post office box so that you can send your thoughts. If you want to help educate them about asthma and dander, send a letter to:

Sammy the Cat
P.O. Box 173
Notasulga, Alabama 36866

Prey

2009-02-12T20:34:00.000-05:00

Look, I understand that the cost of television advertising has dropped significantly in the last decade courtesy of greater competition from cable networks and the Internet. I know that the extremely low risk of scamming through the internet combined with the power of automation and mass spamming (law of large numbers) has made it so that people can actually make a living scamming people from the comfort of their computer chairs. I understand this, and yet I can't help but wonder how some of the most blatantly retarded scam concepts make it to the airwaves. Why aren't networks refusing to advertise? No doubt they only care about the ad revenue, but that begs an even more important question: Where are these scam companies getting their money? Who is falling for this shit!?

I wrote this off as business as usual for a long time. Scams and shitty products have been advertised on TV for as long as I can remember... however, these things always landed in the "Obviously bullshit" section of the station guides (2am to 5am). For the last two or three years, I've been seeing these scams advertised during popular shows, in prime time, and this year even the Super Bowl. WTF? The only reason I leave my TV on during the Super Bowl in the first place is for the commercials, and now you're gonna put Cash4Gold on? Standards? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

None of these links go to their web sites. I don't want my blog anywhere near the referrer lists of these bottom-feeders.

Kinoki Footpads
(actual ad)

ANCIENT JAPANESE SECRETS! I love when commercials advertise that something is based on medical pseudoscience from a millennia ago. It's tantamount to saying "This product is made from the feathers of the magic unicorns of Gumdrop and Candy Cane Island!" In reality, 1000 years ago was a time when "exorcism" was a legitimate medical cure, scurvy (which you prevent and cure by... eating fruit, zomg) killed tens of thousands regularly, and the average life expectancy was almost a third of what it is today. Still think ancient medicine is worth trying out? We didn't eliminate polio by wearing "ionized" bracelets - it took real medicine.

If you love ancient Asian "medical science" so much, go get your qi realigned by having a needle poked into your foot to cure your Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Oh and don't forget: if you ejaculate, you lost some of your life force. Every time you masturbate, God doesn't just kill a kitten, he also shaves a year off your life.

Kinoki footpads: Put Japanese wet naps on your feet and, while you sleep, magic will suck out metal through your toes just like how the trees do it! ...?

Crazyfox \ Wolf \ HomeBusiness4757454.com
(Video may be slightly edited from the original ads)

You'd have to be crazy to visit this web site... crazy like a fox! Either that or you don't remember which of the 50 URLs they used on the commercial. News flash: Legitimate businesses want you to be able to find them. That's why they go to such great lengths to buy out URLs that are almost the same as theirs (Netflix.com owns Netflicks.com), that's why they buy domains that are easy to remember, and that's why they don't change their domain every week. If something is being advertised with unnecessary numbers (crazyfox200.com), it's often because they are playing a shell game with you to avoid being held accountable, most notably through domain name-based review and commenting services like McAfee SiteAdvisor. This is especially obvious when you see a new domain name on their next commercial, again with pointless numbers (134crazyfox.com). I wish I had listed all the "Crazyfox" domains I'd seen in the last three years. Some were hilariously stupid. I think I shit my pants laughing when they started doing Crazywolf.com's without changing the tagline of the commercial... "Crazy like a fox? That doesn't make any sense when you've labelled him a wolf in your URL!"

The idea that anyone could fall for this makes me feel nauseous... in the testicle. How many syringes of Imbecilin do you need to inject before you believe this has any modicum of legitimacy? Sadly, given that the commercials only seem to be increasing in frequency, someone must be falling for it.

Crazyfox: Send him a shit-ton of money, he'll send you back a pamphlet about joining his pyramid scheme, encourage you to quit your job, change his URL (and species!), and fuck your kids.

HeadOn & Pals
(Information! Apply directly to the forebrain!)

This one got enough attention as a joke nationwide that I figured people by now know it's a scam, but believe it or not I've seen many a forum post where people ask "I know it's a stupid commercial, but does it work?" NO! HeadOn, ActiveOn, and any derivatives I can't recall right now are total jokes. The "active ingredients" are barely effective headache treatments when in chemically significant amounts, and when diluted throughout the wax candle that you just bought have no effect on your body. And even if they did, rubbing stuff on your skin doesn't cure headaches. I don't ever remember my doctor giving me a prescription with the advice to smash two caplets into my face every 6 hours as needed.

HeadOn: Rub candlewax directly on your forehead so that the next time we see you out in public, you have a Scarlet Letter of gullibility and we can try other schemes on you.

Riddex
(These bugs seem pretty scared)

Plug the Riddex into your wall and it'll emit EM Pulse waves through the wiring of your house to scare off roaches, mice, and other pests! First: Low frequency EM waves are barely detectable to begin with (especially the kinds that would be emitted by a device like this). Second: We're not even sure if bugs can detect them at all. Third: There's no reason to believe that, if bugs and rodents could detect the waves, they'd be repelled by them at all. Lastly: Even if they were somehow scared away, the effect would be extremely temporary and minor in comparison to the myriad of other non-poisonous non-lethal methods of pest control. But who needs to test the efficacy of something before they make money hawking it to millions of desperate, naive people!?

I have a pest prevention tool of my own I'm considering marketing. I've seen it repel many types of bugs, rodents, and other pests, it takes roughly the same amount of electricity as this piece of shit (while performing another helpful function as well), and it's available at virtually every drug, convenience, grocery, department, and home renovation store in your area: a light bulb.

Riddex: Plug it in and tell yourself it's working, even though you have no way of detecting what it's doing and we don't have one iota of scientific proof that it works.

Cash4Gold.com
(The infamous Super Bowl ad)

I'd been laughing at the Cash4Gold commercials for over a year before the Super Bowl. How they managed to rip off enough people to buy a Super Bowl ad is beyond me. Here's how their system works: You call them up or go to their web site and they'll send you an envelope for you to put your gold jewelry, etc. into and mail back. Once they've received it, they'll melt it down and send you a check for what they say it's worth. It'll be fair market value. They promise. Seriously. Why would they rip you off? What do they have to gain (besides your gold at a dirt cheap price)?

Also, can someone explain to me why I should be taking financial advice from MC Hammer?

Cash4Gold: Send us your gold and we'll send you a check back. Trust us. Don't get involved with those shady dealers that quote you a price before they take your jewelry. Those places don't have Ed McMahon on their commercials, and he's the guy that used to come to your door with the big checks! Remember?

Human beings are supposed to be predators. We have eyes in the front of our heads, have an omnivorous diet, and use tools and communication like no other species on the planet. So why in the hell are so many of us acting like prey?

Word of the day

Alopecoid (adj.) - Similar to or resembling a fox

Another Update on ETM Security Suite

2009-02-12T04:01:00.000-05:00

I now recommend skipping Ad-aware Free if you're comfortable with the levels of protection Comodo and AVG provide. Frankly, turning it off during start-up is a royal pain. I managed to do it using one of the handful of administrative tools I use. I'm not sure if it was TweakUI, SpeedUpMyPC (which costs $), or CCleaner. I went through all of them and most couldn't actually stop the Ad-Aware processes completely. Anyway, I scanned my computer and Ad-aware showed nothing different. In fact, I had no malware at all... just two undeleted cookies. I wish I'd known that before scanning over a million files four times.

Since I am a seriously heavy browser and downloader, I'd say that's a fair test of the package's ability to protect your computer.

I've stricken it from previous posts and linked all three like so:

[Original Post]
[Update 1]
[Update 2 (This one)]

Hell's Kitchen

2009-01-19T23:09:00.000-05:00

People will never learn.

It's a well-established fact for any restaurateur that using microwaves is just plain stupid. As Chef Ramsay would say: "You're a donkey if you think that tastes good." Now, I personally eat out regularly at pretty upscale places in the Tri-State Area, so I know when something tastes microwaved. Typically, the food will be cooked\scalding hot on the inside but relatively cool or undercooked on the outside. Unfortunately, shows like Kitchen Nightmares regularly showcase chefs that use frozen ingredients in microwaves and deep fryers more than fresh daily ingredients in stoves and grills, resulting in shit for cuisine and no return business.

So, time to get to the point: I think I'm in fortunate enough circumstances to have the type of palate required to out yet another crappy chef who should do time for Assault with Deadly Culinary Techniques and also for Endangerment of Diners. This chef had a fairly fresh and exotic ingredient, but still needs to learn to cook properly: linkage.

How utterly sickening. I'm glad she's going to jail. Only the good chefs who know to use ovens should get to be free.

Update on ETM Security Suite

2009-01-16T01:07:00.000-05:00

[ This post is part of a series: ETM Security Suite ]

A small note about Comodo Internet Security...

I suspect this will be fixed in a future update at some point (though research suggests it's a festering bug that has gone unresolved for some time), but if you run Firefox (as I've suggested) and probably for Internet Explorer as well, it is important to note that Comodo's Defense+ logs files to be reviewed. While this would be an extremely handy feature if it had some criteria for noting these files for review, it seems the only criteria is activity or, perhaps, whether or not Comodo has seen the file before...

What this means is that if you're browsing the Internet regularly, you are constantly encountering new files (html, images, videos, music, and so forth) and thus constantly adding files to that list. Combine this with a feature of any browser whereby you can have it delete your history upon exit and you have a backlog: Comodo wants you to review every deleted file... even if those files are no longer there. After a solid week of browsing, I can fill the list over 10 thousand files, and that begins to slow Comodo, and that's the valve to the tubes of my internets.

The solution? Very simple: every couple days, double-click the tray icon for Comodo. On the right side under "Proactive Defense" click "waiting for review" in "x file(s) waiting for review." Check the box at the top left of this window for "all" and click "Remove" on the right-hand side. You're now ready to get back to populating the list again.

It's a minor inconvenience to an otherwise stupendous program. If you don't believe me, ask Cnet in their recent list of top free security software for 2009. A couple others of mine made the list as well - told you I wasn't shilling you bullshit.

Old Documents

2008-11-26T08:16:00.000-05:00

Catching up on my TiVo'd stuff, I was watching Bill Maher recently. During the program, there was a debate that was so simple and poignant I was surprised I never realized the silliness of an aspect of our government: the 2-seat Senate setup. Most democratic countries don't have a bicameral legislature, and those that do have both houses based on a proportion of their total populations (like we do in the House of Representatives). Clearly, this is a better system, because it means people are represented equally.

Bill Maher brought it up amidst a discussion of other things, and his guest, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (a Republican from Florida) offered no explanation. In fact, she seemed in agreement that the Senate's two people per state setup is backwards for a democracy, and I'm thinking very much the same way. I haven't researched why the Founders wanted it this way, but if the most senior female Republican Congresswoman and a liberal Libertarian are in agreement that it is stupid and antiquated, it must be stupid and antiquated, right?

This makes me think about the Electoral College, too. It's just plain stupid to have this winner-takes-all system where shadowy delegates decide whether we get a Republican or a Democrat, with no correlation to the popular vote. What's the point in voting then?!

And political parties - don't even get me started about them. They need to be gone already. Even Washington said that they're toxic in a democracy: what more proof do you need?

I love 90% of what's in the Constitution, but the stuff about political parties, the electoral college, and the Senate setup just needs to go. Why are we so in love with a document written over 200 years ago? It's just plain goofy to think old men from an old era knew everything. It's a damn shame we can't change what's in there, only add onto it with amendments (or, of course, repeal amendments).

Oh well. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Al Gore can win the Nobel peace prize but he can't win our presidency.

The ETM Security Suite: Free Edition

2008-11-07T07:51:00.006-05:00

[ This post is part of a series: ETM Security Suite ]

Now I'm no security guru, but I am a technophile who watches a lot of free porn, downloads a lot of torrents, and has seen more of the Internet than you can probably imagine. So, naturally I should be overrun with malware of all sorts, right? Wrong.

I actually rarely update my shit, and for about 6 weeks I was living on the edge: security software-free. However, even a sensible computer nerd should have something to keep his computer safe in that rare event that he actually does stumble across something malicious. So, I finally sat down a little while ago and re-researched - and tested - a handful of programs.

I set out with the following goals in mind:

Comprehensive - Any security suite I settle on needs to a be full-featured. Real-time scanning, firewall, rootkit prevention, registry protection, diagnostic utilities, and clean-up.
Low-resource - It is incredibly important to me that any set of programs I use operates with as little resource usage as possible. In fact, this was the reason I went six weeks with no protection (must game FASTER!). This also means that I must be able to disable them from starting up should I ever need to.
Cheap as free - I'm not paying for shit since I've seen for myself that I really don't need this stuff anyway. Also, I'd prefer to tell my friends "Download these things and you should be fine. Cost? They're free!"
Simple - I don't want any programs I can't recommend to others, and if they're overly complex, people won't use them. I help friends and family get rid of malware fairly often, so it's important they're using simplistic enough programs to be troubleshooted over the phone.

So, if those sound like characteristics of your ideal security suite (obviously they are), allow me to introduce you to the 2008 ETM Security Suite: Free Edition...

DISCLAIMER

Almost every one of these programs is free for PERSONAL use only. If you're a company looking to stay safe and clean on the cheap, these aren't for you. Also, I obviously have no liability if this security suite doesn't do the trick for you. However, I use these personally. I'm not just recommending shit I never touch.

Comodo Internet Security
Prevention, Detection, Removal

This firewall and antivirus combo does the job beautifully. Its on-access virus scanning can be disabled so that you only employ it when you choose to (as I prefer to do) and the firewall is very simple, very effective (by all accounts I've read on my nerd sites), and very easy to use (easier than any I've used before given all of its features). Install it when you have a clean computer, set it to "Training mode" by right-clicking the taskbar icon and choosing training mode in both Firewall security level and Defense+ security level. Then, play around online a bit. After about an hour of it watching what you normally do, set them both back to Safe or Clean PC mode and you're done! This solves the issue of about half the pop-up notifications you usually get from newly installed firewalls.

You might ask, "What's Defense+?" Defense+ is a neat little sub-section of Comodo that watches your browser homepage, registry, and processes for suspicious activity. When you go to install something else, you'll see what I mean ("avgexxx.exe wants to change startup entry 0x000008R" for example). This handy little tool helps you keep tabs on what's going on with your computer as it happens. Lastly, this firewall has logging, automatic updating, support forums, and a little traffic window on the main screen. That last part is handy because the taskbar icon shows an upstream\downstream comparison of traffic. Ever wonder why your internet is running so slow suddenly? Open Comodo and find out!

See update 1

AVG Antivirus FREE
Detection, Removal

If there was any product in this list I was willing to pay for, it's AVG Antivirus. The paid version includes some very useful tools that I'd like to have, and this software has been getting top scores in just about every computer security magazine and reviews site I read for roughly a year and a half now. And when I say top, I mean like TOP scores.

At any rate, the free edition is supposed to be just about as amazing in terms of virus and malware detection and removal. It's a pretty straight-forward antivirus and works quickly (I don't have any malware to test it with, but I'll trust the 15 or so professional security journalists that recommend it). My only gripe with this program is that I couldn't find a way to turn off the startup processes within the program itself. For any of my friends or family, I'd recommend they keep it on, but for me, I want as little as possible running in the background. Anyway, I eventually solved this issue by disabling its processes from running on Windows startup with CCleaner, a program I'll mention later. You can stop programs from starting up a handful of other ways too, but I love any excuse to use CCleaner.

Following section redacted, see update 2

Ad-Aware Free
Detection, Removal

Basically the same as AVG, but targeted more towards adware and spyware than viruses and trojans. As with AVG, it's been getting top scores for as long as I can remember, despite being around for years and years. Whoever Lavasoft is, they've been riding this program's wave for at least 5 years now, and they've never let it fall out of the top 10 lists of free security software. Real-time protection is not available in the free version (or, at least, not in the one I have... I haven't updated in a few weeks now), but that's not really an issue since you'll have AVG and Comodo taking care of that. In fact, I'd probably recommend to users downloading this entire suite to turn off real-time for Ad-aware even if it comes with it. That's not to say Ad-aware isn't excellent, but having three programs watching your every move is a bit of overkill, especially when the other two are so good at it already. Even still, it's important to have as many options for scanning and removal as you can tolerate, and Ad-aware is a relatively fast scan that I'm happy to tolerate from time to time.

Windows Defender
Detection, Removal

Now, for this you'll need a Genuine Windows installation, so if you're running a pirated copy, you can't get it. It's not a major loss. If anything was to be scrapped from this list, I'd cut this off first. It's basically an anti-malware program from Microsoft released solely so they can say they aren't ripping their customers off by having lazy OS programmers who leave too many security holes open.

Now, that's clearly not a vote of confidence, but I still download this. It's mainly superstition\cynicism as my motivation: I think if anyone knows the jungle of bullshit code of Windows that gets thicker with every release, it's Microsoft. However, I only ever run this if there's a problem. Download it, keep it updated, but don't waste your time scanning unless you found a problem using one of the other better scanners.

Mozilla Firefox
Prevention

If you're running Internet Explorer, stop. Seriously. The most recent version of IE isn't nearly as mired in security holes as previous installments, but Firefox has always been and likely will always be more secure. Furthermore, it runs faster and smoother than IE, and has a shitload of extensions, themes, and add-ons available to the user who wants a more full-featured browser. Did you hear me? It comes out-of-the-box simple and fast, and then let's you decide how many bonus features you want on top of that. Beautiful, isn't it? Proxying is quick and simple in Firefox and can plug into Tor using the FoxyProxy extension (if you don't know what that is, don't worry about it), and between full-featured IRC and FTP client extensions, e-mail clients, and an option to run IE within Firefox (for those handful of web sites that demand IE... otherwise known as Microsoft.com), there's no reason not to run Firefox.

Recommended add-ons for a converting user are:

IE Tab
Image Zoom
~~Update Notifier~~ feature implemented in newer versions of Firefox
Custom Download Manager

(for this last one, once it's installed, go to Tools > Add-ons, click Custom Download Manager, click Options, then under "Download Manager's Type" click "Sidebar")

Additionally, I suggest you check out this page for some Searchbar extensions. Saves me a ton of typing when I want to look something up. Also, if one of your favorite sites isn't on that page, visit said site, click the Searchbar down arrow, and see if there's an "Add favoritesite.com to Searchbar" option. Some pages have plugins for the Firefox Searchbar but haven't gotten listed very high on Mozilla's list.

McAfee SiteAdvisor
Prevention

Probably the greatest, simplest, free prevention tool there is. We all know McAfee, as they've been around since the days of DOS rooting out and destroying viruses spread by 5.25" and 3.5" floppy diskettes. Well, they're still in the biz, still doing great work, and still manage one of the most widely-distributed security suites on the market. Now, for we who do not want to fork over the cash to buy McAfee, they have a handy tool that leverages their enormous database of virus signatures against every page on the Internet. Basically, once you've added this to your Mozilla browser, any time you do a search (Google, etc.), the results will have either a little check mark, red X, yellow circle, or white question mark icon next to them. Green means go, yellow means caution, red means stop, question mark means they haven't looked into it yet. Simple enough, right?

If you need more information about the site's rating, click the icon, or use the little button in the lower-right of your browser to investigate the reasoning behind that choice (said button also changes color to tell you the status of the current page you're viewing). If you encounter a question mark, click it, and ask McAfee to scan the page. Granted, it won't be done anytime soon (it goes into a queue that is miles long), but you'll be doing the rest of us SiteAdvisor users a favor. Lastly, this extension, as well as Google's search engine as of late, will stop you with a warning screen if you try to access a site that they've flagged. You can proceed anyway if you know that the site is safe, but information like this usually comes at a premium.

VirusTotal Uploader
Detection

This thing is god-damn brilliant. Did you just finish a torrent that you think is suspicious, or that had a vague warning comment from another user on the download page? Got a file you're too scared to open? Well, lucky for you, most viruses won't execute until they're decompressed\accessed, so for the moment you're probably okay... but how can you be absolutely sure it's safe? How about scanning it with 37 leading malware scanners? Normally, you'd need to actually own all 37 of these scanners, but with VirusTotal Uploader, all you have to do is right-click the file, go to "Send to", and choose VirusTotal. In about 15 minutes, you'll have your answer. All the scanning is done by their servers, not your computer, so you can do whatever else you want while you wait. What's more, the scan results are archived on their web site, so you can send the link to whatever forum, torrent site, or friend you received the file from and give them the heads-up.

Absolutely fucking indispensable for anyone who downloads P2P and anyone else who receives e-mail from idiots. FYI: That means indispensable to everyone.

HiJack This!
Diagnostic

For the computer illiterate, this tool isn't terribly useful. However, most computer professionals will be glad to see you have it, and if you're brave enough to peer into the bowels of your computer to try and fix a problem yourself, this is essential. Basically, this program scans your active processes, HOSTS file, and a few other places to tell you what the fuck is really going on with your computer. So, if you think you've cleaned up the problem and you know what to look for, this is the program to run for confirmation. It outputs a text file with the data that you can dig through yourself, or you can go to their support forums where computer experts can take a look. So, if your computer has been royally fucked by some trojan that brought a whole lot of uninvited guests to party in your 'puter, their forums may be the single best place to start to taking care of things. Realize that their help is free, and free means slow. These people aren't paid (I don't think), they're just good Samaritans who know their shit.

What's Running?
Diagnostic

This is basically the Ctrl-Alt-Del Task Manager on crack. View active processes and modules, what program\process\module asked them to start, where they're located, their current activities, your IP Connections and ports, all your drivers, and everything that is called to run at Windows Startup as well as what called it. This isn't a security tool per-se, but it was the only thing that helped me root out a particularly nasty trojan about a year ago (which I subsequently blasted with registry removal, DOS investigation, a couple of scanning tools, file deletion, CCleaner Registry clean-up, and of course some information from the HiJack This! forums).

This won't be the bread-and-butter of any security technician's diagnostic process, but it helps, and it doesn't cost you any resources.

CCleaner
Clean-up

This is the be-all, end-all of free computer clean-up. Basically, you click a button, it deletes all your temp files, cookies, history, MRU data, and cache. Now, not only does it delete it, but you can have it set to do multiple passes, including the NSA Standard (7 passes) or even the Gutmann method (35 passes). 35 passes of deletion is so strong, computer forensic professionals aren't even sure the data can be recovered at that point (don't count on it though, I'm sure the FBI has something up their sleeve). What does this mean? This means that the personal data you're worried about a trojan getting are deleted to infinity (and beyond!). Now, that is by no means an effective preventative tool, because the important data is more typically discovered by keyloggers, not spyware or trojans.

Where CCleaner really shines is on the "Registry" tab. If you've ever installed, uninstalled, changed the settings of, or updated a program or driver on your computer, it is highly likely that you have a useless registry entry (or ten) as a result. Think about how many things you've changed on your computer since you bought it. Almost every one of those changes resulted in registry entries being left behind - in short, your computer is bogged down with really old, useless, and cluttered registry data. CCleaner will take care of most, if not all of that, with just a few clicks. Simple to use, quick to run, and absolutely indispensable for anyone wanting a fast computer.

Now, this might not sound like a security program... because it's not. However, if you've seen how clusterfucked computers can get when they're infected, you know the type of damage malware can do to a registry. Malware typically digs itself way deep into Windows... so deep that the scanners often only pull out the weed and leave the roots. Unlike my metaphor, viruses don't grow back simply from leftover roots in the ground, but computers are meant to be clean and efficient... CCleaner will help you get that efficiency back after an infection.

Simplifying it all

Now, that's a hell of a lot of reading I put you through. Hopefully, you stuck with me here and saw the wisdom in each of these programs. You might think if you take my advice, your computer will be slowed to a crawl by all this shit running. Guess what? From all of these programs, I only have 1 process active: Comodo. You'll probably want to keep AVG on as well, but the point is you get all this protection, maintenance, and diagnostic stuff for FREE and without costing your computer its speed (in fact, you'll probably speed things up thanks to CCleaner, Firefox, and a nice clean computer). So, to stay protected and clean, how often should you update? Scan? How do you make this stuff regular?

Well, you can play with the Windows Task Scheduler to try and get it to automate your scanning, but I frankly hate automated scans, and you should be concerned enough about your computer's security and your own privacy to keep to this very simple regimen:

ALWAYS...

Browse with Firefox. If you absolutely need to use IE for a certain web site (like Windows.com), use the IE Tab add-on (linked above in that section) to maintain some of the securities of Firefox
Have Comodo running, both Firewall and Defense+. Comodo is a two for one deal on protection. Let's stretch an analogy way too far here: adding a firewall is like locking your doors and windows. Obviously, that helps, but your windows are still breakable. The same rule applies - if a piece of malware is determined enough, it will find a vulnerability in even the tightest security. Defense+ means that even if a virus breaks in, you have an angry dog waiting for it . That spyware\adware\virus isn't going to get much done because it will be pinned down on the floor by Comodo.
Have AVG Running (if the free version even has active protection... I'm not sure. You might want to buy it if you can and the following stuff suggests you should). This is your choice, based on how proficient you are with computers and how safe your users are. If it's just you, a gamer who rarely has malware problems, you can disable this using What's Running or CCleaner's startup management options. However, if you have children, a stupid sibling who hops on your computer from time to time, or allow friends to use your computer regularly (even if it's on a guest or otherwise limited account - spyware doesn't need admin privileges to infect your computer), you should have something like AVG scanning the files you access active all the time (VirusTotal Uploader is manual, things like AVG are automatic).

ONCE A WEEK\EVERY OTHER WEEK...

Update everything. It usually only takes a minute to update each of these programs. If something manages to slip onto your computer and cripples your internet in the process, you'll wish you had updated malware definitions.
Scan with Comodo, AVG, and Ad-aware (It's fine to do this outside of Safe Mode since these are just the regular "check-up" scans). No one scanner is the be-all end-all of scanning, nor will there ever be one. If you want to scan weekly with AVG, but every other week with Comodo and Ad-aware, that's a fine compromise.

WHENEVER YOU FIND MALWARE DURING A REGULAR SWEEP...

Update, reboot to safe mode, and scan with Comodo, AVG, Ad-aware, and Windows Defender. Run CCleaner after all the scans have finally given you a clean bill of health, and create a Restore Point using Windows System Restore (Google it if you can't find where it is on your computer. XP has two organization styles, and Vista moved everything. I don't know where System Restore is on your computer).

WHENEVER THE PROBLEMS PERSIST...

Use What's Running to see if you can find the files yourself, and use VirusTotal Uploader to confirm.
Boot normally and use HiJack This! to get a log of activity and active processes to post on the forums linked in the HiJack This! section above.
Ask for help from any computer nerds you know who have handled this type of stuff before.

ONCE A MONTH

Run CCleaner, just to keep shit running smoothly.
I also recommend that you defrag your computer, for speed purposes, but that's not really security. The guys who made CCleaner have a defrag tool that is miles better than Windows' included. http://www.defraggler.com/

It's really not hard, people. All told, you'll lose about 1 hour every other week to scans, and 1 hour a month to CCleaner and Defraggler. That's 3 hours a month to re-certify your computer's clean bill of health.

Final note

A lot of ISPs nowadays will give you security software along with your service, though they don't usually market it well enough. Call your ISP and check. McAfee, for example is great stuff. The firewall is excellent (I used it personally until we changed ISPs) and the real-time on-access antivirus, though taxing on your resources at times, is better than the free version of AVG (though the paid version of AVG I hear is better than McAfee). If nothing else, you gain one more scanning tool. However, if your ISP gives out Norton\Symantec or Computer Associates (CA), DO NOT DOWNLOAD THEM.

Norton is marginally more effective than its main competitor, McAfee, but in the process it digs itself so deep into your system that you will NEVER get it off. My brother actually had to dig into the registry to remove Norton in his security class once because it was inadvertently stopping him from removing a boot sector virus before it forced another restart cycle (boot sector viruses are one of the nastiest types). Computer Associates (formerly eTrust PestPatrol) crashed my computer whenever I installed it... all I had on my computer at the time was Windows, hardware and peripheral drivers, and Internet Explorer. I went through two weeks of back and forth with the vendor thinking I had a faulty OEM Windows or bad hard drive before I, not they, figured out that if I didn't install PestPatrol, I was 100% fine.

Good luck, safe browsing, and in the unlikely event you get stuck with a virus, happy hunting!

The Race Race '08

2008-11-05T05:50:00.007-05:00

A link to this comic | A link to that site

I find it annoying when people insist on maintaining the secrecy of their ballot. I mean... sure there are situations where it's necessary (like not wanting to spend 45 minutes debating politics with your boss), but on the whole it's silly. You put real thought and consideration into your vote didn't you? And that research you did! You should be proud of your vote, because you know you made the right call! Instead of pride, some people carry a feeling of shame, either because of their zombie-like voting on "charisma," or because of phenomenon like the Bradley Effect - otherwise known as the "YOU VOTED FOR THE BLACK GUY!?!?!?" effect.

Tonight, the Bradley Effect was tested and failed. Perhaps the entire concept was just more media sensationalism, but it had me legitimately worried. I talk to a diverse range of people, especially on the Internet, and in my experience the number of covertly racist people is astounding. Recently, a small number of people that I’ve talked to that were voting were solid McCain supporters. Why?

Almost all of them gave puerile reasoning, ranging from “He was a P.O.W.” to “I met him once when I was in the Navy” to “Obama seems too good to be true” to “I just don’t trust Obama.” I call these childish reasons because his previous P.O.W. status and his attendance at whatever Navy function you were at have nothing to do with running the country. His military career deserves respect, but what does being tortured while in a prison have to do with his thoughts on global warming, healthcare, or his selection of an inept governor for the second highest office in the nation? Obama seems too good to be true, you say? Wow, that’s the first and last time I’ll ever hear that cliché about a politician. And how can you trust Obama less than McCain when McCain did more 180's than Tony Hawk? Prior to running against George Bush, McCain was a moderate conservative. Once George Bush took office, McCain became a partisan. Then, when he started campaigning he double 180’d! He started as a hardline conservative, then in response to Obama's poll numbers, turned back into a centrist, then towards the end of the campaign he reverted to Republican base lines. Talk about flip-flopping!

Clearly, with specious justifications such as these, people were clutching straws so that they didn’t have to admit the truth: They couldn't vote for a black man.

For the record, I have a few friends who did not vote for Obama (or didn't vote at all), for such reasons as “The government fails at everything, I don’t want the government touching healthcare. The insurance system may be fucked, but government will fuck it worse” or “He lacks the experience needed to handle his roles as influence leader during a recession and Commander-in-Chief during war time.” These are fine reasons. I think Biden brings the experience that balances out these shortcomings, but if you disagree, that’s perfectly fine – you’ve applied logic and come to a conclusion. I’m not going to jump down your throat if it’s different than mine.

Somewhat related: A friend of mine said tonight

This is bullshit: It’s not racism when black people vote almost 100% for the black candidate, but it would be racism if Obama lost.

While I agree with the general thesis she presents – that a double standard is in effect here – I don’t really care about how people would've framed this election - win or lose. But that’s just our opinions. The bigger problem is that the statement is just dead wrong! Stepping away from race for a second, the female vote did virtually nothing for Palin. As much as there are complete morons out there voting blind, in reality most blind morons simply don’t vote. Presidential elections are not like municipal judge elections where people show up and vote for whoever has the funniest name just to see the pretty lights on the ballot booth. In executive branch elections, people go in knowing the candidate’s stance on at least one issue that is important to them. Palin was a joke of a female candidate – she doesn’t have a pro-woman stance on any key women's issues. Hence, women weren't swayed by her estrogen on the ticket. I think it's safe to say that if McCain was black and Obama was white, few blacks would have voted for BlacKain.

Lastly, she said

The only reason [Obama won] is because black people are voting in droves suddenly.

At this point I flat-out called her a dumb racist. Again, she is proven wrong by facts – here’s how:

African-Americans make up 13.4% of the population of this country, as per 2006 census data. Whites are around 83%. The black vote in any election means next to nothing.
In fact, it meant nothing in the outcome of this election for sure: Black Americans are overwhelmingly concentrated in the states that have been blue states for the past 3 elections or more. The new black voters did not affect the Electoral College result any differently than if they hadn’t voted! Need proof?

Of the 9 states Obama picked up that Kerry did not win in '04, only three of them have a black population greater than the national average. These three: Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, account for 55 electoral votes total, meaning Obama would still have 309 votes. In Indiana and Ohio, where Obama only took the state by a slim margin, we have a total of 31 electoral votes. Now Obama is down to 278 – still a fucking win! Also, think about Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin – these states are as white as the snow that dominates them every winter, and yet even they voted for Balack Osama!

At any rate, I’m going to end this post now because it’s pissing me off that anyone should have to go to these lengths to debunk such a ridiculous idea, and I don’t want to make another point that warrants a lengthy period of data research and spreadsheet development. I’m very tired.

Welcome to the new world. It’s not much different than the old one, but at least now we’ve proven racism is marginalized enough to elect a black president, and that's something to be excited about.

Ch.. ch... ch... Changes!

2008-11-04T02:25:00.000-05:00

Picture source: Yamatologic

Today, Obama was elected President. More importantly, Ed has chosen his running mate for greatest blog ever: Me.

My name? Erd Tird Mans. Obviously, that's a pen name, but it's valuable to have when you've been around the Internet as long as I have... that's not to say I'm hiding my identity at this point. In fact, searching it on Google brings up my MySpace most of the time (~~Or, you could just click the link on the side~~).

At any rate, I'm the more technologically capable of the two of us, and since we've been friends for years now, Ed decided to add me to his blog. In typical merger and acquisition fashion, I've reworked his layout template, kept the tag line, and decided on a dual blog title. Marriage is about compromise (no, we're not gay... at least, I'm not. I have my doubts about him).

You'll notice we write and think very much the same... this is no major coincidence. We met at Drexel University in Philly (me a commuter, him a resident), both in Engineering degrees, both dropped out (I'm at another school now), and both politically liberal (as is customary in our part of the country). These similarities are why we're friends.

He is more partisan than I am. I give more credence to religion than his wild atheist brain allows him. I am more about the ends, whereas he is bigger on the means. When he blogs, he generally rants while I actually try to assemble a cohesive thought. He listens to pop and R&B while I generally abhor the stuff. These differences are also why we're friends.

Hopefully, my addition adds a little flavor to this recipe. At any rate, it's not like the readers have any choice in the matter (all 5 of you).

Enough introduction... to my first real post!

Side note: Yes, I am the guy Ed mentioned in a prior post who was getting the CT/PET Scan and hoped the radioactive isotopes would give me telekinesis. I don't believe my powers have kicked in yet, but when i was walking to the porch recently to refill my beer from the kegerator, the door did open by itself. A sign of things to come, I hope.

Thoughts on Vice Presidential Debate

2008-10-03T10:17:00.001-04:00

A comment on the C-Span upload of the Vice Presidential debate of October 2nd, 2008 between Governor Palin and Senator Biden reads:

JamesFnQuinn

Damn shes so hot. I bet she gets really dirty. Those types will always surprise you. lol

Insightful political commentary from what can only be assumed to be the central tube of the Internets.

CT/PET Scan

2008-06-25T20:34:00.004-04:00

Two days ago, my friend got a CT/PET Scan. This type of radiology involves radioactive material being injected into your body as a tracer, such that when going to the bathroom before his scan, the technician asked that he "sit down to pee" as his "urine is radioactive now."

It might be a couple more days before he develops super powers from this. I'll be sure to update you once they've emerged. He wants telekinesis, but frankly I think magnetism manipulation is way better. It's basically the same thing, but it doesn't require acute concentration. You can move quarters and stuff, and you don't have to be that strong to throw cars and shit!

Bear Grylls = the MAN

2008-05-25T03:04:00.005-04:00

I can’t understand why Survivorman with that bald guy is still on, especially considering that Discovery has Bear fucking Grylls. I can think of at least five reasons Bear Grylls is cooler than the bald guy…

1. Everyone likes Bear better: I have a couple of friends that think Survivorman educates better, but almost all of them agree that Bear is way cooler. He was a British Navy SEAL, he climbed Everest, and he can do like 100 push-ups on cue. I swear in every episode the guy busts out 50 push-ups and 20 chin-ups shirtless just for the hell of it. It’s fucking awesome. How many push-ups do you think Survivorbaldman can do? Probably only like 20, on a good day.

2. Bear keeps it short, sweet, and entertaining: Survivorman whines like every episode how lonely he is and how depressing survival is, as though he’s not getting paid to do it! Look, buddy, you don’t want to survive in the wild for a few days, then don’t! No one is forcing you to! Bear on the other hand gets out there, smiles and laughs the whole time, kicks nature’s ass, and beats hypothermia 100 times per trip. Survivorman wanders around and takes 10 hours to build a shelter whereas Bear does it all in 4 hours, including climbing vines and trees to reach extra-strong hammock material. I mean, I’m sure survival sucks. I can’t imagine being away from good food and friends for so long... but if you’re making a television show, make it entertaining.

3. Bear arrives with nothing: Bald guy always has extra "everyday items" like a matchbook, a bag to catch water in, a can of tuna, and some fishing line. When Bear does his thing, he just swims up to an island, spears some fish, runs around for a few hours showing us cool tips, then builds a raft solo and fucking wings it back home. He uses nothing but a survival knife to make it out, and gets so much more done in the process.

4. The show isn’t produced like a piece of shit: Everything about the production quality on Man vs. Wild is better than Survivorman. The camera angles, the tips, the action (HE TOOK ON A FUCKING BEAR AND WON, whereas bald dude ran from a panther)… it’s just such a better show in terms of production quality. Someone told me that this is because Survivorman is done entirely by the bald dude filming himself, which I guess is cool. Really though, if there’s no crew with him, then why wasn’t he doing this before Discovery Channel called him? Obviously, there's a health and safety crew around (which is totally reasonable, since he's out where people can't live). Also, during the show there are always a few shots of him walking away from the camera up a cliff face or whatever. How does he get those shots but with a fucking cameraman? Exactly.

5. Bear drinks his own piss and doesn’t complain: Every show, bald dude eats a few crawfish or whatever and bitches about eating animals and how much he loves nature. If he loves nature so much, why is he leaving camera gear, human-made shelters, and firepits lying around the forest every episode? Isn’t that unnatural? Bear says nothing more than “It will be unpleasant, but I’ll have to drink my own urine if I want to survive” and then chugs that shit like a champ. He’s hellacool.

Anyway, there are probably a million more reasons, which is why I can not imagine how Survivorman has lasted so long as a clone of a better show. It’s just dumb. I’m guessing it’s because there are so few others out there willing to even try to be as cool as Bear Grylls. I guess I’ll give the bald dude some credit for that – at least he’s trying to be as ace as Bear.

Not gonna talk about it (Racism)

2008-05-22T05:42:00.006-04:00

With daily news focus on a first black president, immigration, Reverend Wright, rising crime rates, “nappy-headed hoes,” and the drug war, I am reminded constantly of the race problem in our society. Multiple requests from my faithful readers have asked me to use my blogfluence to address racism and establish a moratorium on racial epithets. While I confess that hearing nigger, spic, chink, WOP, and Mick upsets me, I do not believe a discussion of this is prudent. How can I, an intelligent American think this?

Well for starters, how much power do wetback, banana, guidon, and sand-monkey actually have in our society? Words only have the strength to which we ascribe them. Censoring specific vocabulary is pointless and against free speech. Idiots need something to talk about, and regardless of what we do these words will always be there for them. It’s pointless, and besides are viceroy, wasian, and fremen really the biggest problems here?

Overt racism, nowadays, is scorned by everyone. A politician who says wapanese, oreo, jigaboo, or pikajew will not get elected and employers would immediately fire you for saying noodle nigger, slurpee nigger, or prarie nigger. No, what we really need to address with our children is unconscious racism. There exists an underlying current of invisible, structural racism in our country. Consider how public housing ends up in already impoverished black communities because the locals protest it less than the locals in better white communities with properly funded schools. The means are not necessarily racist, but the ends are racism. Examples like these are many, but identification is not a solution. So, where does this subtle and unintended racism begin?

Some suggest it starts in youth, when parents and older peers pass down garden gnome, 10% off, Cocoa Puff, and the like. I, however, believe the source is even simpler: the deluge of discussion of racism. A self-fulfilling prophecy – the fact that it is a topic is what perpetuates it. Because we hear on a daily basis (albeit in a disapproving voice) that Texican, polak, African’t, and kike are being said, we over time subliminally absorb the hatred behind these words.

So, you ask me to write an article about racism. Well, I won’t. I’m putting out a moratorium not on niggapotamus or McNigger, not on oven honey or bix nood, and not on patio primate or Manuel Labor, but instead on racism as a talking point.

So stop asking me to talk about it.

Learning from mistakes

2007-07-18T02:40:00.002-04:00

In 2004, the tables were set for a Democratic steamroll: the country was growing weary of the scandalous ineptitude of their President, the quagmire of Iraq was beginning to become clear, people were becoming aware of the black heart of the Republican spin machine, and everyone was ready for a change from family dynasties in politics. Why didn't the Democrats win? No good candidate.

Luckily, we've learned from our mistakes.

Pink... the artist, that is

2007-05-29T05:31:00.002-04:00

I love Pink. Totally. She's such a rebel, and always has been.

She colors her hair like crazy, has tattoos and stuff, and basically does whatever she wants. She's so cool. I love women that have their own mind. Like in her new song "U and UR Hand"... it's just so cool how she blows that guy off and mispells words. She's too cool for proper speeling. Forget that.

I know she's technically a pop artist, but I don't see anything poppy or catchy about that new song, or her hair, or her attitude. She's just 100% herself, and her fans will either love her or hate her for it -- she won't change for anyone.

Corzine

2007-04-21T07:31:00.018-04:00

Jon Corzine, one of the most prophetic statesman to ever hold office in the great state of New Jersey was recently involved in a tragic and unforseeable car accident. In this blogger's opinion, we should all bow our heads and say a prayer that his recovery is swift and his future bright.

A man such as Jon Corzine, who won his office with poignant positions and brave stances, should be recognized as a great American. He was always busy working for New Jersey, so much so that on this fateful day, between meetings, the state trooper driving him around was forced to push the speed limit to 90-some odd miles-per-hour, in order to promptly arrive at their next, very urgent meeting regarding core issues for New Jersey.

Unfortunately, his important duties meant that he needed mobility while in his seat, and likewise he could not wear his seat belt in accordance with Jersey law. Many have criticized him for this error in judgment, but would any of us be so brave as to endanger our lives like this for the people of this state? Every year, hundreds of people are pulled over for this offense - and rightly so - so I can understand why many scorn Corzine for his failure to wear a seat belt, but I humbly disagree with that sentiment.

In any case, we should all respect this wonderful human being for his work, and wish him the absolute best in this dark hour.

VA Tech Shootings

2007-04-17T01:49:00.003-04:00

Hello and welcome to my blog. My name is Ethan Edwin White, simply known as Ed, and though my presence on the internet has been isolated thusfar, I hope that this message reaches out to every man, woman, and child in the world:

The Virginia Tech shootings that happened only hours ago upset me on a very personal level. Ordinarily, I hear about these things and think simply, "Oh my god, how horrific," but this time I stand outraged and think the killer crossed the line. The shooter in this massacre took thirty-two souls from this Earth before killing himself in a senseless, wasteful demonstration of rage and frustration. With a thirty-two kd ratio, he was obviously aim hacking, and that should not be tolerated. What does that accomplish? How is that fair? We need to teach our children morals and ethics to prevent this kind of disgusting behavior. This tragedy is just more proof that our nation is going to hell. But, before we get there, I'm standing against this kind of activity.