Entries Tagged 'Rants and Raves' ↓

Left: toilets. Right: sinks.

Well, folks, just wanted to tell you about plungin’ toilets.  No, no — I know you probably don’t wanna hear about this, but it’s really important.

See the plunger on the left?  That’s for a toilet.

See the one on the right?  That’s for a sink.

Use the right one for the right job, or else you’ll look like a dumbass. -_-’

“JK Rowling outs Dumbledore as gay”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7053982.stm

Seriously, this is the most transparent publicity-increasing move I’ve ever seen.

At first, I was upset: “Common sense — meet JK Rowling. She and you have apparently never met.” As if fundamentalist religious-types need _another_ fucking reason to get outraged over one of their favorite targets!

Then, I realized that the _Harry Potter_ series is over and done with, all kids that have read its stuff have _already_ done so, and there’s probably very little accusations of “GLAAD”:http://glaad.org type interference that could go on here. She’s more than likely just trying to increase sales as much as she can for this dying series.

(In case you didn’t know, GLAAD-type interference is where GLAAD pays certain people or authors to publicly state that previously non-sexual characters in books or stories are actually _secretly_ gay, just to… well, just to do whatever the hell it is that GLAAD actually wants to do. I sometimes wonder, myself.

I do know that to GLAAD, there are only two types of people; those that are gay, and those that are secretly gay and waiting to come out. Make up your own mind about what that means.)

It can be free; “go see for yourself”:http://radiohead.com.

“This article”:http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071015/OPINION03/710150323/1039/OPINION03 sums up what’s happend so far. According to a survey taken of the people who’ve downloaded the new album, about a third paid nothing at all: $0.

Some people make a big deal of that (like Fark’s headline, “A third of the people offered Radiohead what their new album is worth: $0″:http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3136034), but they’re missing the big picture — if a third of downloaders got it for free, that means that *the other two thirds paid for it, even when they _could’ve got it for free_*.

According to the survey, many paid more than $20, and the average price was $8 (I paid about $4, myself). Do the math — even with this survey not necessarily representing all people who downloaded the album, that means that at an average price of $8 times 2/3 of a million downloaders (~8*666,000), that’s like…

*5.3 MILLION DOLLARS*.

And that’s money that’s going straight to the band. No middlemen, no greedy record executives to pay, no RIAA cartel to cozy up to — just straight hard cash going to Radiohead so that they can continue to make good music.

What’s the downside of this type of purchasing system again?

Nothing, from what I can see. Everything I’ve ever heard of seen tell me that bands make very little money off of album sales when they go through a major label and an organization like the RIAA — most of the money they make is through performances and band “stuff” (you know, t-shirts, autographs, and the like).

And while $20-25 bucks (what you’ll pay in a store) for a new album is FAR too much if you ask me, paying the same amount to be 10-20 feet from my favorite band whilst screaming my head off along with thousands of other people? Now, _that’s_ worth $20. I’ve paid that amount before to see bands play in a venue (hell, I usually pay twice that), and I’ll continue to do so — but I haven’t paid for an CD in years.

Wow — normally, I wouldn’t give two shits and a fart about Beyonce, but I was trying to show someone the video of her falling on her ass recently, and it’s become nearly impossible to find! It’s removed from YouTube, from Google Video, every goddamn thing!

Apparently, Sony’s started kicking up a fuss about one of its main stars (and sources of income) being made to look like a clumsy oaf all over the damn world, so apparently they’ve been slapping everyone who hosts the video, from big sites to small, with “DMCA”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA requests (even if they’re not actually filing the actual requests, they’re at least threatening to, I guarantee).

I _finally_ found the damn thing on a site called “PinoySpyTV.com”:http://pinoyspytv.com at “http://www.pinoyspytv.com/view/158/beyonce-knowles-falls-on-stage-in-florida-concert/”:http://www.pinoyspytv.com/view/158/beyonce-knowles-falls-on-stage-in-florida-concert/, which I’ll post for you below:

You can download the actual source of the video at “http://www.pinoyspytv.com/flvideo/158.flv”:http://www.pinoyspytv.com/flvideo/158.flv (right click and go to “Save as File…” or something like that).

Like I’ve said, normally I wouldn’t give a shit about something like this, but I just think it’s scary as hell that a company—not even the government mind you, but just a damn company—is actually trying to erase an event from history like this! (Think that’s crazy? Do you think Sony isn’t sitting there wishing they could do exactly that?)

Download it. Save it. Remember it. Remember the day Beyonce fell on her face like an idiot and slid down a flight of stairs on her mug.

Trust me, today it’s videos of Beyonce disappearing, tomorrow its the Constitution.

What, you don’t believe me?

I was going to go through the “Bill of Rights”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights here and describe how each one is being threatened today, but it quickly got too depressing… feel free to check ‘em out, though I’m sure you’re already acquainted with them, right?

…so we’re sitting there, having just installed “Joost”:http://joost.com on our main Windows computer, and we’re watching “Strangers with Candy” on the MTV channel, and then all of a sudden…

All the other computers on my network start going apeshit and telling me they’re having their ports scanned, and the originating address is the computer I’ve just installed Joost on.

Uh… Yeah. No. Nuh-uh. Fuck that shit. I uninstalled it and now I’m having to do full scans just to make sure that I’ve gotten rid of all its little processes.

Now, look — I know about Joost’s “relevant advertiser information” that it sends to companies like Viacom, Warner, and the like; I expect that shit. Companies like DirectTV already do that (it’s how you can see features like “what are other people watching” on the DirectTV service), and you _pay_ them to let them do it to you.

But the port scanning of other computers on my network? Nope — you leave the other fucking computers on my network alone. If I want you looking at them, I’ll install your fucking software _on_ them.

Port scanning is spyware-like activity, and if I wanted spyware on my computer, I’d turn off my firewalls and browse with “Internet Explorer”:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx, okay?