D I R K W O R L D

The Killing Blow For The ManBearPiggers

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 03:59:00 +0000

THIS IS MUST READING for those who have to contend with the sad, insane, religious fanatics who hysterically run around screaming that ManBearPig is gonna kill us all unless we make Al Gore a billionaire or something.

The reason I'm so brutally harsh with these tragic lunatics is because they are ruining the world economy based on absolute bullsh*t draped in the misnomer "science." If you've seen my posts about this stuff, you know I always use the term "REAL SCIENCE" to differentiate from the pseudo-religious garbage the enviro-crazies peddle. This guy - a REAL SCIENTIST by the way; not a member of the MBP cult priesthood - absolutely nails in short order the differences:

Science deals with facts, experiments and numerical representations of the natural world around us. Science does not deal with emotions, beliefs or politics, but rather strives to analyse matters dispassionately and in an objective way, such that in consideration of a given set of facts two different practitioners might come to the same interpretation; and, yes, I am aware of the irony of that statement in the present context.

The phrase ‘Occam’s Razor’ is now generally used as shorthand to represent the fundamental scientific assumption of simplicity. To explain any given set of observations of the natural world, scientific method proceeds by erecting, first, the simplest possible explanation (hypothesis) that can explain the known facts. This simple explanation, termed the null hypothesis, then becomes the assumed interpretation until additional facts emerge that require modification of the initial hypothesis, or perhaps even invalidate it altogether.

Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.

It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.

That last sentence is key because it reveals the fundamental dirty trick the ManBearPiggers play by insistent that their zealotry is the standard that all others must yield to and anyone who differs is a liar, a "denier", a "shill for Big Oil" or just plain stupid. The problem with the desperate shrieks of the MBPers is that when you put their bullsh*t under the microscope and test their preaching REAL SCIENCE STYLE, the FAIL epically every single f*cking time!!! There is no REAL SCIENTIFIC basis for their garbage, yet we're told to sacrifice light bulbs and safe cars and transfer billions to government cronies because they say so. FTS!!!

I saw an item yesterday that a scientist has a theory that could upend centuries of thought about how gravity works. If proven, it would require rethinking the mechanics of everything, but that's how REAL SCIENCE works; it's always being challenged and tested, forced to prove itself. Compare that to how ManBearPiggers react when you point out their books are cooked and more study is needed - they literally sh*t themselves in rage and reach into their loaded Underoos and start flinging their poo at you for your heresy.

REAL SCIENCE is science. The global warming hoax is a RELIGION, nothing more. If the Pope told us to use CFLs because God commanded it, we'd tell him go pound sand, but we're supposed to take Al Gore's word that we're doomed because he has a Powerpoint slide with a fraudulent "hockey stick" graph? Get real. And get sane. Knowledge is power and it's up to you to speak the true knowledge that REAL SCIENCE provides to the madness that the Apocalyptic death cult ManbearPiggers are peddling.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS (from my Facebook link to this story): These kooks claim that sane people who believe in REAL SCIENCE are "anti-science" when they're the ones doing immeasurable violence to the cause of science with their wolf-crying and overt lying. We should worry about minimizing air pollution, protecting our waters, making sure our food supply is sound and not burning our food in our cars because of the demands of a cabal of religious fanatics leveraging their cult's teachings for massive profit.

Every second and dollar wasted on the total fraud of global warming/climate change/ManBearPig is time and money not being spent on things that could actually provide benefit to the people of the world, not the connected cronies and scammers who inhabit the temples of junk religion calling itself "science."

CFE: Saving Money The DIRK® Way

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:08:00 +0000

The Backstory: Lifehacker had a silly item about saving money by imagining things cost 10 times as much. Many people in the comments remarked how dumb an idea this is in practice, so I chimed in with this:

As others have noted, this is stupid advice because it asks you to imagine spending something no one without a royal title would consider paying.

What I do is view money not as a number but in terms of what it buys and what not spending on one thing allows me to purchase somewhere else. For example, I was considering getting a Galaxy S3 on AT&T. Amazon did a sale last year where all non-iPhones were a penny, so I decided to wait a couple of months for the time they'd done the sale to save the $200, which is like 20 Blu-rays on sale.. While waiting, the Nexus 4 was released and I'm using it with Straight Talk. Over the term of what the AT&T contract would've been, I'm saving over $900 going this route which is a new laptop or most of an HDTV or rent and gasoline for a month.

The reason people don't realize how the little things add up. Going to the cafeteria for lunch costs $7 a day, that's not so bad, right? Sure, unless you realize that it's $35 per week or $1750 per year! What aren't you able to buy with that $1750? How about buying some lunch meats, cheese and bread for $10 per week, brown-bagging it, and having $1250 more in your pocket to spend on something else? Don't buy the new game the day it comes out for $60; wait 6 months or a year and get it for $10 - the entertainment value doesn't evaporate.

With a little patience and some deferred gratification, you can save tons of money. Instead of imagining something costing 10X as much, just multiply what something costs over time and then see how much other stuff you could buy (or SAVE!) instead. I'm able to live a lifestyle of someone making twice as much by just being smart about spending. While my friends are subsisting one paycheck to the next or are buried with credit card debt, I've got no debt, just pay my monthly bills/rent/car lease without interest, and have the ability to splurge on whatever I want on the rare occasions some deal comes along because I've saved.

Another tip is taking drinks with you when going to the bar. Since you have to go outside to smoke, it doesn't look weird to be going to the parking lot in between bands. Two tall boy cans of Labatt Max Ice are $3 (plus tax and deposit - $3.38 at the party store and have the liquid quantity of four beers and the alcohol content of eight beers. Depending on the bar, brand, and tipping, eight beers would cost you around $30! Save $26 bucks by getting your drink on in the car or buy one in the bar and still save a Jackson.

If you drink pop (soda, Coke, soft drinks, whatever your locality calls it) and aren't buying 2-liter bottles, you're throwing money away. People laugh at my giant bottles of pop at work, but I paid $1 for over 64 ounces - don't tell Nanny Doomberg! - while they paid at least $1.20 for the 20 oz. bottle they have. I've got three times the pop for less than a third the price. When there's a sale, I stock up. I drink about a liter a day, so $2.50 takes care of me for a week. Co-workers are paying at least that much per DAY for their consumption - five times as much. Chug!

CFE: The One Where The Atheist Has Irony Expained To Him

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:06:00 +0000

The Background: io9.com had the usual masturbatory Gawker network anti-religious screed using a Harvard report about how American students are falling behind as a launch pad to bash some silly Christian textbooks. (Because crappy teachers unions and the government indoctrination system has no effect, right?) I don't even know if the example shown was referred to in the report or some extreme example to illustrate how crazy them Sky Man Jeebus freaks are because them snake handlers is crazy, amirite?

Anyhoo, one of the unevolved chimps in the comments section chittered:

Eventually those kids will grow up and realize they've been lied to, right?

To which I replied:

The irony of your anti-religious sneer is that the real rude awakening is when the poor victims of our pass-along, everyone gets a participant ribbon, therapeutic, feelings-based, outcomes-based government indoctrination programs run into the real world and discover that they're not prepared for reality and their entire birthright has been mortgaged in order to buy the votes of moochers and socialist government cronies. We're seeing it now as all the chumps who voted for Obama now can't find jobs, but are so ill-informed that they re-elected him because they've been programmed to slobber and pull the lever next to the picture of a donkey. Wait until you try and collect on all that free stuff you were promised. Suckers.

Doubly funny is how the atheistic jackwagons who sneer at "Creationism" or "intelligent design" or "Sky Man" beclown themselves as they initially chin-stroke and murmur about the second law of thermodynamics only to solve the serious problem of where the matter of the Universe initially came from by saying, "Oh, it just appeared." Anyone who takes Steven Hawking seriously after that brain fart is a fool. How do you bash people for believing God created everything when you believe the seed matter for the Universe just materialized from nothing.

The truth is that neither of the Coke or Pepsi stories explaining how everything is here holds much water. Sorry, but it's true. We can't explain where God came from and we can't explain where the matter for the closed system of Big Bang and then billions of years of random occurrences leading to Earth, grass, birds, fish, trees, and Anne Hathaway came from. We are simply here despite the evidence and thus choose which story feels better. The difference between overtly religions people and atheist assholes is that the former understand that they are engaged in a faith whereas the latter are hardcore religionists using "science" as a cudgel with which to beat people into worshiping their belief system.

Atheist assholes believe that faith is the enemy of reason. The fact there are many scientists who are expressly in their fields because they wish to understand God's design of nature is unknown to them or a novelty like a conservative in Hollyweird.

As I commented, we are here despite the evidence, but of the two choices available, the idea that an Almighty created everything is far more plausible than the whole "lucky random series of events" proposal. At least I know there's no "proof" for my beliefs. The atheist jerks don't, yet they pretend they're not engaged in their own religious practices. Just because you've removed a central deity doesn't make what they're doing any less a religion; see the global warming/ManBearPig cultists for a perfect example.

I Bought That For A Dollar!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 04:26:00 +0000

One of the cool features about Android devices are the Live Wallpapers - snazzy, interactive and/or animated wallpapers that really liven up your home screens. (That my Samsung Galaxy S II phone has part of the functionality crippled by the petty harassing lawsuits by Apple is a rant for another time.) Many of these wallpapers are available for free from the Google Play store, but to encourage people to pay a buck (i.e. 99 cents), many developers lock customization settings on the free versions. It's a decent trade-off: Cheapskates like me can get some basic cool papers for no cost and people who like to tweak are welcome to pay.

Why looking around for some new walls, I came across the Mystic Halo Live Wallpaper Free which looks a little like this (not my video; from Play page):

As usual, when changing wallpapers I hit the Settings button to see what options were available and was greeted by this:

The listing of what features are unlocked for your penny less than a dollar is the usual stuff. The picture of the puppy thinking, "So hungry!" and the promises that buying the wallpaper would feed the dog, capped off with the button text is sheer genius. I'm a cat person and I wanted to feed the puppy and felt a little bad when I canceled out the first time. I posted about this on Facebook, but it merited some pictures to make the point, so this.

Since I had credit from my Nexus 7 purchase, I decided to spend 4% of my balance to feed Lizzy. He should buy her a kitteh to keep her company!

This is a useful lesson in marketing. When so many people are using the same "freemium" technique to distribute - and hopefully monetize - their wares, you need something extra to differentiate one's self. If he'd just put up the usual nag screen, I wouldn't have bought it. By being different and memorable, he made me say...

...and pried a virtual dollar out of my hand where none* had done so before. Bon appétit, Lizzy!

* To be honest, I've paid for a few other freemium wallpapers when Play had a sale with stuff for 10 cents a pop. I'll buy anything for a dime; a dollar, not a chance.

Why Royal Oak Ford Can Eat A Dick!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Background: I'd never had a new car until 2000 when, in the aftermath of a ghetto mechanic puncturing the fuel tank of my old (but paid-off) GMC Jimmy, I took on a lease for a Ford Explorer. When that was up a couple years later, I leased another for three years and another for two years after that. Rising fuel prices made me switch to a 2007 Fusion for a couple of years then a 2010 four-banger for the past three. My lease is up in a few months.

Every time I did a deal with the dealership, which has been my default go-to because it's literally a five-minute walk from my home, I felt slightly screwed-over as if I ended up paying too much or something. Every time I swore it'd be the last time I'd lease from this dealership, even when they changed ownership and switched from McLaughlin Ford to Royal Oak Ford some years back. As much as I disliked them, the sheer convenience of the location and the fact it was a once every two or three year pain kept me coming back.

No longer. F*ck Royal Oak Ford in their f*cking ears. They can eat a dick.

The fun begins three weeks ago when I took my car in on Good Friday for an oil change and a recall involving my wheels. When I called to schedule the recall look-see, they said it involved the wheel studs. My sunroof had also stopped retracting, but they wanted $105 to just examine it (applicable to the repair) and since it was going back in a few months, I passed on the opportunity to hand them another C-note. They called me several hours later to say that there was a small leak from the transmission boot that was covered by the power train warranty, but they didn't have time and people to do it that day, even though it was only noon. It wasn't a pressing emergency, so it could wait.

When I picked up the car, they asked if I'd like it washed for free and then sent me on my way after paying for the oil change, which for a dealership is actually cheaper and better-quality than what I get at the local Valvoline quick change place. Wheels fixed, oil changed, car washed, life was good.

Or so I thought.

The next day, while pulling into a diner lot to get some breakfast, I noticed that there were lug nuts in my cup holder. Huh? Closer examination showed they were the locking lugs that I'd purchased in the aftermath of my previous Fusion's wheels being ripped off. Um, why were these here and not on my wheels? I got out and checked my wheels and they had five lugs on them, so WTF? I have a four-way lug wrench in the trunk, so I went to make the switch and discovered that the locking lugs weren't tightening up. Huh a second time? What gives? It was then I realized that they simply didn't fit - they were spinning freely because the posts were too small. How the heck did this happen? Aren't wheel studs pretty much the same size?I called the dealership immediately, but since it was a Saturday and nearing 3 pm, there was no one around to ask about this. I put it on my list of things to do, but kept putting it off for one reason or another; I figured I'd stop in sometime.

Last week, a survey request was emailed to me and having a little spare time at work I completed it, blasting them in the comments for not telling me about the wheel locks being left off. Someone from the dealership left a voicemail on my home phone the other day asking for a callback and I was going to give them a jingle, but some asstackler managed to call my work phone first. This is when it all went to hell.

This jackass - I think his name was Jerry, but let's go with Jackass - basically came out of the gate like a shrill little bitch, whining that I had not called to complain to them before dinging them on the survey. Oh, so the problem is that you were content being jerks until Ford corporate types got tipped off? Oh, it's on, muthaf*cka!!! In the course of a five minute long conversation, he managed to be sporadically insincere about my concerns before lapsing back into whimpering about his butthurt over my not calling and talking to them before ratting them out to daddy Ford.

Now, what was the purpose of Jackass's call? To address customer concerns or make me backtrack from my offending his honor? I pointed out that no one mentioned the lugs to me either on the phone or and he nearly screamed that it was on the paperwork and so I can just shut up my stupid mouth! (I don't have the papers handy, but it's irrelevant for this discussion.) When I asked what the deal was with the differing stud sizes and he claimed that only the lugs had been changed. Between his hysterical squealing and demands someone apply Tucks to his inflamed hemorrhoids, I realized there was no talking to the clown and wrapped things up by telling him that he'd sealed Royal Oak's Ford hopes of ever getting my business again.

What's exceptionally stupid about this jerk's call was that it presumed that he was the only Ford dealership I could get my next car from. Um, no. He's the only Ford dealer ON MY BLOCK, but there are other dealers, all of whom haven't had their a-hole service manager call me up at work to bitch about my temerity in complaining about their crap service.

Last Labor Day, Dean Sellers Jr. himself of Dean Sellers Ford called me up at home and arranged an Arts, Beats and Eats ticket package for me and really put himself out to help this total stranger who'd left a voicemail in his box. I'd never leased a car - much less FIVE cars - from them, but they were willing to help. What did Royal Oak Ford do but be bullies? I pay the same price for cars wherever I go due to my work, so the ONLY thing that Royal Oak Ford offers me is locality. NOTHING MORE and that was before they pulled this stunt. Anyone have a good reason why I shouldn't give Dean Sellers a call?

It didn't occur to me until I started pounding out this rant that Jackass the Service Manager was flat out lying about the locks being the wrong size because not only did they transfer the locks from my old ride to this one, but I've had the oil changed - WHICH INCLUDES TIRE ROTATION - at least twice at the dealership and NO ONE MENTIONED THE LOCKS BEING THE WRONG SIZE before. I'd also had a flat that needed plugging and had changed the tire, not to mention that if they didn't fit as claimed, they would've fallen off sometime in the previous 45,000 miles. (I had mentioned that to him and he started screaming again.)

Royal Oak Ford can eat a dick and so will Jackass. I'm going to check the paperwork, clean up this post's language and trim it down, and send it to the general manager of the dealership under the title, "Why I Am Not Buying My Sixth Car From Royal Oak Ford. (And You Can Eat A Dick!)" (OK, the last part won't be on there.) I specialize in the Wrath of God Complaint Letter® and when you're as militantly stupid as Jackass was, you are profoundly inviting an air strike onto your position.

It's raining dicks, Royal Oak Ford and Jackass! Eat them!

CFE: Act of Valor Makes Liberal Critics Sad In Their Pants.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:56:00 +0000

The Background: Drew McWeeney at HitFix reviewed Act of Valor and simply couldn't restrain his liberal knees from jerking. (My review is here.) This prompted the following comment:

I saw a screening of Act of Valor in early December and found it to be an odd mix of superawesomeincredible action and painfully stilted melodrama. Using real SEALs made the action feel hella more authentic than pampered Hollyweird stars who've had a few days of "boot camp" training with Dale Dye would deliver, but the plot parts suffered from tired tropes (e.g. if you can't immediately spot which one has the call sign of "Dead Meat", you've never seen a movie) delivered by earnest warriors with the looks and acting skills of Peyton Manning. I tried to imagine how it would've played with all real actors or more of a pseudo-documentary "found footage" execution and couldn't decide which would've been better. (It's like how Clerks probably wouldn't have worked as well with real actors as Mallrats showed.)

However, the movie is the latest political football for hyper-liberal commentators to get their hate on for the military, war in general, and "BUSHITLER! WAR FOR OIL! LIES!!!" The Huffington Post has been wringing their dainty hands over the idea that our soldiers be portrayed as anything but the raping killers (as seen in Redacted), duped victims of corporatist war (e.g. Lions For Lambs), damaged thrill jockeys (Hurt Locker), and/or ticking time bombs threatening civilians back home (In the Valley of Elah) they imagine soldiers as being, not that they actually would deign to know any real soldiers. War is bad, mmmkay, and anyone in the military is either a fascist skinhead warmonger or a poor exploited minority. Right. (It's ironic that the same people who are hating on this movie are cheering Obama for "getting bin Laden" and on the night of the State of the Union a month ago, SEALs were rescuing an American held hostage by Somali pirates in a manner similar to a rescue dramatized in this very movie.)

On the other hand, conservative pundits are wildly overpraising Act of Valor as the greatest thing since film stocks moved from nitrate to acetate bases. It's easy to understand why: When the only positive depictions of the military to counter the narrative detailed in the previous paragraph seems to show up when we're fighting robots or aliens. (Not that Battle: Los Angeles was roundly bashed for being too pro-soldier, cuz we all know they're crazed Nazi timebombs rapist murderers.) Act of Valor isn't as great as the Right says and as terrible as the Left wants to smear it.

Drew's review is revealing in how allergic he is to values that exist outside of the Hollyweird bubble of liberal secular humanism. For someone so close to the movie BUSINESS as he is, he seems deeply offended that there are Christian (gasp!) and pro-military (to the fainting couch!) filmmakers who aren't militantly dedicated to offending the Flyover rubes who watch NASCAR and drink domestic beer and are actually making a buck doing so. I'm sure it's due to his deeply-held beliefs and not just because he lives and works in an industry where political affiliations are literally make or break for one's livelihood. However, reviews like this one with its, "Can you believe there are morons who fall for this stuff?", tone indicates that he can't even imagine anyone who doesn't align with his personal views being here and reading and if there are, they should have their incorrect thinking slapped around.

I've never understood why Hollyweird has chosen insult their customers and hand each other trophies for movies the unwashed rabble have no interest in seeing when there are piles of money for the taking if only they could mask their utter contempt for the paying customers. The self-anointed enlightened liberal elites can't stop vomiting over the success of movies like The Blind Side - let's not even mention a certain movie that Mel Gibson made which sits at #17 of the all-time domestic chart - but I can give you 309 million reasons they're fooling themselves. The denizens of Hollyweird doesn't need to actually become conservative or practice any of those archaic Judeo-Christian values in their own lives; they just need to stop screaming, "WE HATE YOU PEOPLE AND ALL YOUR STUPID BELIEFS!!!", with their movies. Stop insulting the customers and they'll give you money. Just fake it and take it. Is that too hard?

The commercial success or failure of the film is going to be spun by each side. If it flops, liberals will crow that it's because it was a terrible movie and if it succeeds, they'll dismiss it as being red meat for Red State bubbas who are terrible people. Conservatives will say....aw, who cares what THOSE PEOPLE think, right?

The polarization is even effecting evaluation of the most impressive and least political part of the movie, its look. Shot mostly on HDSLRs (Canon 5D MkII and 7D), it looks SLICK - Michael Bay slick. The HDSLR has been the indie filmmakers best friend since the Canon XL1, but it's typically been used for shakycam mumblecore stuff, not Big Action Movies and if I hadn't been tipped by the intro my screening had that HDSLRs were used, I would've been even more stunned by learning that. However, when noted photographer and HDSLR prophet Vince Laforet blogged about how remarkable a technical achievement achievement the film was, his comments section was overrun with comments like this: "Hey.. great another macho film… Yep show it to kids in the school, so they can serve as front line meat again. It seems we’ve had enough of that Vincent. There’s nothing glorifying about these guys." Lovely.

Death To Coupon Printers!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:39:00 +0000

I have an old Norelco - or is it Philips since they bought Norelco? - rotary head shaver. I've had it perhaps 3-4 years and probably paid $30 for it at Beast Buy. Nothing fancy, just a razor. It's gotten dull and rather than buy an all-new razor, I shopped around for replacement heads and was surprised they were about $24. Jeez, may as well by a new razor for a few bucks more, right? Sparing the landfills be damned.

Well, this morning I saw on Slick Deals a Target coupon for $1 off pain relievers that run for less than a buck, so they'd be free. Nice. While selecting the coupon, I saw another one for $5 off replacement razor heads. Double nice, right? WRONG! When I went to print, I was greeted with the bane of anyone who's ever tried printing in a corporate environment: The coupon printer program/add-on/plug-in/show-stopper. Even if you can get them installed (which I can), they never seem to actually work. I'm out of toner at home, so printing at work is sort of a necessity and these stupid doodads make it impossible to take advantage of the deals.

Now what I don't understand is the logic behind these things. I'm guessing they're intended to prevent people making multiple prints to clean them out on "free" ibuprofen, but what about bigger ticket items? I still have to pay for the blades and they're expecting coupon redemption, so why not just present a printable page in my browser? There's a sound (if evil) business case for making rebates hard to redeem or using them instead of marking down prices (i.e. a percentage of buyers won't submit for the rebate), but what's the point of making it so hard to get a discount coupon that the sale ends up lost? I want/need blades and Target could've made a sale, but instead isn't getting squat because they made the coupon unavailable. Jerks.

Comcast's Packaging Stupidity Goes To Xfinity and Beyond!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:08:00 +0000

I've had Comcast cable Internet service since 1999. Love it other than that one time storms knocked out my service for over two weeks. That I did not love.

Running Speedtest.net shows I'm getting almost 24 Mbps down and 2.2 Mbsp up. I just downloaded an almost 200 MB video driver package in about 75 seconds. Compare that to the three hours it took to download the ~36 MB Half-Life demo on dial-up or the 12 hours the Kingpin demo took. (If it wasn't for a program called GetRight that allowed downloads to be resumed after hanging up and reconnecting, I could have never downloaded it.) Cable is hella fast. My girlfriend has 1.5 Mbsp DSL at her place and I cry whenever I need to download something there.

A couple of weeks ago I got a note from Comcast that they were upgrading the service and I'd need a new modem. I'm on my third modem in 12 years, I believe. They've done an upgrade once and I think one died or something. Regardless, I needed a new new modem for whatever reason. I called them up last week to send it out. The nice operator mentioned that a "return kit" would be sent to facilitate return of the old busted junk. I still have the OG modem I got in '99 someplace. I never dropped it back with them.

Tonight, I came home to find this box in my apartment hallway:

It's approximately 2' x 2' x 1'. (It wasn't opened; I went back to shoot this sequence when I really what sheer f*ckery was afoot.) I saw it was from Comcast and got confused. A modem is about the size of a small book. What's with this giant box?

I cut it open and this is what was inside:

Hmmm...that's a lot of air. The small white box was about 8" x 10-1/2". The note was to tell me that this was for my old modem to be sent back in.

Well then, what's in the....hold on, say it like Brad Pitt at the end of Se7en: "What's in the baaaaaahksss??"

A small glossy folder with various manuals and paperwork for the new modem. Instructions on the lid which basically say, "Plug stuff in. All done!" Let's take a look under that top cardboard layer, shall we?

Huh?

Listen, I'm not a big enviro-whacko who harps on about recycling and whatnot, but my practical nature has always been peeved by needlessly large packaging. I used to wonder why Al Gore didn't crusade against the big boxes of air that the CD jewel case with the software on it came in instead of trying to scare us with fairy tales about the ManBearPig? This is nuts.

In this large box was (clockwise from upper-left):

The modem.
Ethernet cable and two lengths of coaxial cable - short for when your computer is close to the wall jack and long for if it's not. I suppose just leaving the long cable rolled up if you're close was less practical than providing a second, shorter, cable. (Note: Sarcasm.)
Wall wart power adapter.
Cable splitter, in case you needed to feed a TV box as well as the modem.
A bag of cable tacks to secure a long run of cable to your baseboard strip.

Here's what everything in the small big box inside the big big box amounts to:

The white box is the return box. If you're thinking that everything they sent would fit inside that box, you're almost right. The size of the coil of coax means the box would need to be an inch deeper, but otherwise IT ALL FITS!

That's right, folks! Comcast could have sent everything I needed in a box 8" x 10-1/2" x 3-1/2" or 294 cubic inches. How large was that UPS shipping crate that greeted me in my hallway? Approximately 6,912 cubic inches or about TWENTY-FOUR (24) TIMES AS LARGE AS IT NEEDED TO BE!!! It weighs almost nothing, but UPS had to eat up four cubic feet of truck space to deliver about one-sixth a cubic foot of contents. Properly packaged, they could put 24 of these modem kits in the same space as my one jumbo box. Un. Real.

I don't know what Comcast's stock is worth or their market cap or anything like that and I don't care. But how fiscally sane can they be when they do such idiotic things such as this?!? Why couldn't they just send out the right-sized box and say, when you're done emptying this one, toss your old junk back in and slap on the mailing label over the old one? Madness!

All We Hear Is Amazon Blah-Blah (Not Lady Gaga)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:58:00 +0000

As a sales gimmick, Amazon's MP3 store offered Lady Gaga's new album, Like a Monster, er, Born This Way for the princely sum of...wait for it...99 cents! That's right, for the price of a Value Menu item you could get the new album from the Mother Monster. (BTW, this "monster" stuff is stupid bordering on retarded.) What could go wrong?

Plenty.

As irate customers flooding the reviews area with one-star reviews testified, the problem wasn't the music, but the inability to get it in a timely manner. When I purchased it around 11:30 am, I saw people complaining, but figured it wouldn't take too long to show up in my Cloud Drive.

Ha!

When I started drafting this post, it had been 10 hours and I had only the three tunes I had 10 minutes after buying. I posted this comment on the deal section:

Lady Gaga was able to do what hacker terrorists Anonymous couldn't: Bring Amazon's system to a screeching halt.

I bought it about 11:30 am EST and after 10 minutes, the booklet and tracks #6, #10, and #13 showed in my Cloud Drive. 10 hours later, nothing has improved. I don't even have the singles off the album yet.

Meanwhile, the pirate torrent sites have had it for days and available for complete download within minutes. Once again, the paying customers have an inferior experience. How the heck is legal music at any price supposed to compete with illegal files that don't make you wait on top of charging you. It doesn't matter if it costs 99 cents or 99 dollars if you can't deliver the product customers have paid for in a timely manner.

Way to snatch crushing defeat from the jaws of victory, Amazon.

After wandering off and editing and posting the photos from a show last weekend, I checked back and they're all present and accounted for, 12 hours later. I bought a Bad Brains album a couple of weeks ago - what, a guy can't listen to Bad Brains AND Lady Gaga? Pffft. - and it showed instantly.

Clearly this was an aberration, but I'll be interested in seeing how many monsters snapped on this bargain and sent Amazon's servers up the creek?

Dirk's Three Laws (and One Strong Suggestion) of Band Naming

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:22:00 +0000

Working in the music business you see tons of bands for whom the task of coming up with the first thing people will hear about them - the name - has apparently been given less thought than their hairstyles or the music. To assist those who aren't gifted in the dark arts of band naming, I've assembled the following list of guidelines that you ignore at your peril. (And yes, there are more than three if you want to be picky.)

Rule #1 - The name should be memorable. This should be self-explanatory, but too many bands don't seem to understand that if no one remembers your band's name, no one will remember the band. Pink Floyd, Van Halen, even The Arcade Fire have names that can be remembered; Above All, Malajube, Menomena, and Shad (all actual bands at SXSW 2011) don't. Punny names like Jehovah Waitresses or The Victorious Secrets help. (I've used Atomic Guam and Iron Oreo as Rock Band and Guitar Hero names.)

Rule #2 - The name should indicate what sort of music you play. Iron Maiden implies one thing; Air Supply implies another. What does Sweet Jane sound like; a Velvet Underground tribute act? Atari Teenage Riot sounds like their name. Does your name sound like your band?

Rule #3 - It should be easy enough to spell so juvenile delinquents can grafitti it everywhere. I was considering naming my band The Bourgeoisie until I realized I had to think hard about how to spell it. Did I want "Teh Borzwahzee Rulez!" spray-painted on overpasses and alley walls? That's why I went with Red September.

The One Strong Suggestion - Try out the name in the sentence, "Hi, we're [band name]." Does it sound stupid or offensive or like something your mother would blush at or would it make J.D. Considine's work of writing a snarky one-sentence review twisting it for maximum damage easy? Then go back to the start and come up with something not terrible. There was once a band called Lame. Try that out in the sentence. Can J.D. reply, "Yes, you are."? Then it's a terrible name. Start over. Seriously.

For a time, these Laws did the job, but over time I recognized other factors to be dealt with, thus leading to the first extension to the Laws:

Rule #3.5 - The name should not have to be seen for the joke to be understood. I once saw a band called Raindance several times before learning it was spelled R-E-I-G-N-dance. Get it? Neither did I. Homophones are trouble and not because they sound like listening devices for gay people. If your name sounds like Laughing Carrots, do not spell it Laffing Carats.

Because too many bands ignore the One Strong Suggestion, I've had to add:

Rule #3.6 - If the name includes one of the "7 Dirty Words" than you don't want to be famous. No one is going to sign and promote or cover bands called Sh*t and Shine, Sh*t Horse, or Sh*t Robot. (More real SXSW bands.) There's a band around town called Sh*tf*cker and while they're commended for being able to gig without detectable brain activity, their name alone precludes interest from anyone who doesn't giggle at the word "poop" every time.

Rule #4 - Logos must be clear enough that the band name can be discerned in 1.7 seconds or less. This stems from seeing an ad for a death metal festival where about 30 bands were playing, but I could only tell the names of 80% of the acts. The rest had logos that tried so hard to look like lightning bolts, spiderwebs, Klingon bat'leths and whatnot, they were illegible. Hippie jam bands are also frequent offenders as they have psychedelic melted balloon typography. Hey, Trustafarians, the reason the Fillmore posters could get away with it was because the people back then were on acid and to them the words looked like they were in Helvetica.

CFE: Taking The Excuses of the Stupid Party to the Woodshed.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:58:00 +0000

The Background: This post on The Corner explaining the convention "wisdom" being bandied about by the Stupid Party to excuse their fecklessness in getting anything they were sent to do done. What follows is my comment:

As Breaker of Horses noted, the Stupid Party under Dubya were Big Government Compassion Fascists who squandered what little remained of the Newt Revolution and setting up a situation where liberals were/are able to sneer, "Bill Clinton left a surplus* and Dubya blew it on war and tax cuts for the rich. Also, funny how you teabaggers are suddenly concerned about spending not that a proud Nubian brother is in the White House." Yeah, it's a lies and selective character assassination, but the Stupids under the non-leadership of Cryin' John Fakenbake have done NOTHING to counter it.

What's appalling about the Stupid's utter collapse since being returned to partial power is that they've gone from being the so-called "Party of No" that remained futilely unified against the Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Marx/Alinksy socialist juggernaut to spineless, mewling, Vichy collaborators as they seek to crush the very freshmen and Tea Partiers that gave Cryin' John the gavel. It should be noted that Newt offered a Contract while Cryin' John merely spoke a Pledge. The difference is that you can't sue for breach of pledge and that semantic distinction bespeaks the unseriousness of these jokers.

The Contract with America was followed through on as far as voting on its items. What's happened with the Pledge? Demurrals, backtracks, excuses, and failure. From the moment they won decisively in November, they have capitulated to every demand of the Democrats. The lame duck was filled with bad treaties and bad tax deals. It was as if the Stupids wanted to side up with Obama and the Dems to stave off the Tea Party rubes. Then the chairmanships went mostly to old dog spendthrifts indicating that, as many suspected, the problem for the Stupids wasn't that there was spending going on, but that they didn't get to direct it to their cronies.

It's maddening to see how the Stupids can't seem to understand the actual meaning of what happens to them electorally. They believe they lost in 2006 and 2008 because they we're moderate enough and Dem Lite enough for the grasping hands in the nation. While they almost appeared to get that they'd lost their way from the true path and conservative principles during the Porkulus and ObamaCare battles, they were so outnumbered it didn't matter. So the voters took them at their word that they'd learn their lesson and we looking to redeem themselves and here we are now, betrayed by the only forces available to stop the nation-destroying agenda of the Obama Regime and fellow travelers.

As the brilliant Mark Steyn aptly said a month ago, "“I think John Boehner has been an incredible disappointment. I think John Boehner has basically climbed into the Bob Dole suit, and I think they misunderstand the lessons of the 2010 election, which is that the tea party chose to work within the diseased husk of the Republican Party it loathes. And it still hasn’t forgiven for 2006 and 2008. So for the Republicans to demonstrate that ‘hey, we’re back to 2006 again,’ except on Obama-level spending, is not a good idea.

We need Republicans to at least take the lead in broadening public discourse. This country is broke. It’s the brokest country in the history of the planet. And the idea of arguing over itsy-bitsy, half a billion here and half a billion there, and continuing resolutions staggering forward every ten days, is preposterous. It’s inadequate to the task. It’s inadequate for the challenge facing America”

The Stupids under Cryin' John have offered nothing but excuses for their failure and lack of will. They insult the intelligence of their constituents by whining about how hard they have it without the Senate and White House and it reeks of not wanting to get sweaty if victory is unlikely. The Detroit Lions show more stones than the Stupid Party because at least they make an attempt to not lose before starting the "Wait until NEXT year!" happy talk.

Let's see how the Stupids have done:

• Lame duck session - "We can't do anything because it's still the Dem's show. Next month, we'll get 'em."

• Then the new Congress starts and a lunatic shoots up Tuscon and while the media blames them for the tragedy, they suspend operations for a week. This is understandable, but it halted any momentum they may have had left after the lame duck debacles.

• The in CR after CR after downward revision until ultimate failure, they couldn't find it possible to cut ANYTHING in a substantive way. They couldn't defund the CPB after a citizen catches NPR's management acting up. They couldn't defund taxpayer-funded baby slaughter at Planned Parenthood after another citizen catches them collaborating with supposed sex slavers. [It's "human traffickers" on site because the language filters prevent sex] It was low-hanging fruit that the public wanted picked and they couldn't do it. Meanwhile the Dems are going to the wall in order to protect the murder of babies on the taxpayers' dime. They are willing to stand up for their death-loving ideology. What does the Stupid Party believe in that they're willing to fight for?

• After they lied that they understood why they lost; lied that they want to prove themselves reformed; lied that they would force the issues and do the will of the People who sent them; we're supposed to believe that the next fights, the hard ones with real money at stake and the future of the Republic hanging in the balance, that THEN they will stand up to the Dems. Uh, right. That's like a morbidly obese person promising to start dieting and exercising while they're still at the table choking down another wafer-thin mint.
* Nevermind that it was the Newt Congress's surplus. The Stupid Party can't even be bothered to set that record straight

System Restart Is Go.

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:12:00 +0000

I've neglected this blog for too long and the shooting of Rep. Giffords and the subsequent disgusting attempts by the liberals to smear conservatives like Moose Slayer for it require more discussion than can be done in other venues. So, buckle up, bitches...

DIRK'S BACK!!!

CFE: Dvorak's Commenters Are Dumber Than Digg's

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:35:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Dvorak Uncensored had a self-proclaimed moderate (translation: liberal who know that liberals are rightly viewed as evil) posting some blather from an English writer bemoaning the supposed implosion of Republicans in the Enlightened Era of Obama. The comments were beneath even the subterranean level of Digg, prompting this retort:

The reason Obama and the Democrats are imploding - that's right, THE DEMOCRATS, NOT REPUBLICANS - is because the Left is so consumed with arrogance, hubris, a thirst for revenge, and elitist entitlement that they don't understand how the liberal fascist schemes of Obama & Co. are playing with those outside the self-reinforcing echo chambers of NY, LA, and SF.

Where would you sneering liberals be if Obama was John Edwards trying to advance the same totalitarian agenda? Hmmm? You tell yourselves the fairy tale (learned from MSNBC) that opposition is only because "scared Whitey is afraid of losing their stuff and power" but for the poll numbers to match the actual vote totals, it would have to assume that the White Devil voted for Obama in November and is back to their Klan robes now. Huh?

In a country where Oprah (black woman) is a secular deity telling people how to live and what books to read; white kids want to be rap stars (mostly black men); the most popular athletes are black; the biggest movie star is Will Smith (black man); liberal morons (redundant, I know) are convinced that everyone is just like the people in "Crash", racist at best; genocidally racist, more likely.

Obama got elected by a frightened and ignorant public who bought the whitewashed (no pun) facade that Hopey Changerson would be a unifier who didn't see us as "red states and blue states." The Stupid Party (as I call the woeful GOP) had pissed off their base with crazy spending (which is small beer compared to the Omaba/Pelosi/Reid deficits) and lackluster leadership and campaigns. Many voted for Obama to absolve themselves of any appearance of racism, though I think many thought they going to get David Palmer from "24", not this Marxist Chicago machine thug who has taken corruption to unseen levels, not that you liberals can acknowledge the truth of your man.

Instead of leading as a purple state President, Obama has ruled as a tyrant unilaterally - "I won" - and has nationalized two-thirds of the domestic auto industry, handed hundreds of billions of payoffs to his Wall Street and union cronies, loaded his Administration with tax cheats, scofflaws and racialist anti-Constitutionalists who will remake the fundamental structure of this country by fiat and you Brownshirts couldn't be happier.

You people make the regurgitating parrots at Digg look like Oxford debaters. Your hatred of anyone to the left of Marx seethes in your posts and your bullying attitudes belie any specious claims about how supposedly "crazy" the conservatives are.

You aren't protesting the wars anymore, proving it was never about war and all about hating Dubya. You aren't upset that Obama has expanded surveillance under the Patriot act because it was never about privacy and all about hating Dubya. You don't care that Obama has doubled unemployment and quadrupled the deficit over Dubya's worst stats because it was never about fiscal responsibility and all about hating Dubya.

Europe is moving back to the right as they realize that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money (Margaret Thatcher) while America is being run a full throttle off the cliff of socialist liberal fascism. And you idiots couldn't be happier about it and are ready to yank your Chatty Cathy strings and bray, "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISTSSSSSSSSS!!!!", at anyone who dares question Dear Leader. Even the fact that the Obama/Joker image was made by a Palestinian-American didn't stop you from blaming the mythical Angry White Male for it.

I now leave you to resume your self-reinforcing circle jerk of genuine hatred and ignorance.

Immediately, someone's knee jerked predictably:

# 23 Phydeau said, on August 20th, 2009 at 6:45 am

#19 Dirk “aptly named” Belligerent: Whoa dude… obsessed about race much? Copy/paste from right-wing blogs much?

Example #4,743 of wingnut meltdown. Thanks, Dirk.

Too easy....

#23 - Live in your liberal fart recycling chamber much? Cling to your stereotypical views of who's a racist much?

News flash, Sparky: It's YOU who is the racist, not me. It's YOU who sees nothing but skin color and acts accordingly. I called out the cognitive dissonance of you unhinged liberals and you had no response other than to resort to ad hominem and calling me the racist.

I'm sure the black woman with whom I had a business with and the black guy who is one of my best friends would be surprised to hear about my pathologies as diagnosed by the likes of you. Raff.

As I said right at the top of my post, "Where would you sneering liberals be if Obama was John Edwards trying to advance the same totalitarian agenda?" If a white Marxist liberal fascist was trying to advance this agenda and people rose against them, what would you do without your race card to play? Have you failed to notice that Nancy Reid and Harry Reid, the ones crafting the legislation that Dear Leader will only be signing are WHITE? They're getting protested even more than Obama, so is it because white people are afraid of them because they're white?

Yeesh. I don't even know why I bother to point out the doublethink you bozos operate under. It's not as if you'll suddenly wake up and realize how stupid you are and stop visually inspecting your colons.

Of course, Obama's greatest triumph was to tailor a one-syllable mantra for his sub-literate followers to latch on to. HOPE! CHANGE! We've gone from the Federalist papers to t-shirts. Can we sucker guilty liberal racists? YES, WE CAN!!!!

I see someone else visited here and took one look at the links and judged me unworthy of consideration because as the MSNBC race-mongers have told them, it's the non-liberals who are racist. *cough*

Since I've got actual work to do unlike the unemployed losers of the Left, I can't waste more time tussling with close-minded fools.

CFE: Why Pay For Propaganda?

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:16:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Techdirt has an item about "Why The Newspaper Paywall Will Fail" and this prompted these bon mots:

With the Treason Media's (as I call them) obscene cheerleading for the Obama Regime manifesting itself in blind stenography of whatever Dear Leader says no matter how false; the fundamental incuriousity about Dear Leader's college years, associations with crooks (e.g. Tony Rezko, Rod Blagovich) and terrorists (e.g. William Ayers, Bernadine Dornan), illegal fundraising; hypocrisy and bias in coverage (e.g. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were instrumental in pushing our economy into the abyss while reaping sweetheart deals from cronies they supposedly regulate, but, hey, that Republican is having an affair!); and brokering access between Administration honchos and fat cats, that they expect the people to pay to be lied to while they shill for the powerful elites whom they fellow travel with is to laugh.

These latter day Walter Durantys proclaim themselves to be objective reporters of what happens at the circus when they're f***ing the elephants (and donkeys.) Ever notice how many "reporters" are married to government power players, like Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan for two? When they are literally in bed with the other side, what hope do the serfs, er, people have of knowing WTF is actually happening? Fascism - REAL fascism, not the stuff the statist wingnuts were accusing Dubya of doing - is being imposed on America and the watchdogs are lapdogs because they endorse this upending of our culture in favor of something more Soviet in style.

It's ironic that as a commenter on a blog I'm expected to provide links to my citations while the Treason Media presents their product as the Truth to be accepted on faith, no proof required. They say something is so and it is so! How dare anyone question the High Priests of the Temple?!?

I forgot to mention this beatdown of the idea the government can fund their propagandists because I was tired, but you can check it out yourselves.

CFE: Stupid Party Is Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:26:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Red State had an item slagging the national GOP for backing a liberal, whoops, "moderate" candidate (Charlie Crist) over a supposedly genuine conservative (Marco Rubio) and bemoaning how this is more selling out of the Party's conservative base. In response to a comment about how the Stupid Party has learned nothing from the past two electoral cycles, I exponded:

The "leaders" of the Stupid Party have totally swallowed the Treason Media's meme that the reason they've been losing is because they've become "too right wing" and the party has been "hijacked by religious fanatics." WRONG! The reason the Stupid Party loses is because they offer nothing to CONSERVATIVES to vote FOR!

I came to the realization that in the six Presidential elections I've voted in, I have never voted FOR the Republican candidate. It has always been an anti-Dem or third-party vote.

1988: Voted Bush 41 as Reagan's third term.

1992: Voted Perot because Bush had failed and I believed the codswallop Perot was peddling. (That I was so easily sold this charlatan gave me insight into the Obama herd's blind gullibility.)

1996: Voted Dole because he wasn't Clinton.

2000: Voted Dubya because he wasn't Gore.

2004: Voted Libertarian because Dubya had failed to be conservative and I knew he was unable to articulate why the GWOT was important. His pathetic "turn the other cheek" responses to the Dem smears proved my suspicions. We can blame the Treason Media for Obama's rise, but the country wouldn't be in the mood for an elegant Marxist dictator if they weren't totally fed up with the Stupid Party.

2008: Voted Palin, but she wasn't actually running, so it was McCain as a "not Obama" vote.

Liberals/socialists/Marxists/fascists/statists have the Democrats to speak for them, but who speaks for conservatives? The Stupid Party? When they cynically back career pols like Specter, Chaffee, Crist, etc. over and over, it leaves freedom-cherishing people like us screwed over and with little choice but to go along or stay home and when we stay home, evil people like Obama win.

I had hoped that 2008 would be a clarifying year in which we could get a read as to whether the people wanted to be free men or serfs, but with a pinkish "moderate" squish (whose only real goal was to deny other Republicans the nomination) on one side and a true deep red Marxist on the other side, the liberal won and the TM-promulgated meme that the SP needs to move left to be relevant was furthered.

Since we've already seen that running RINOs is a losing plan, how about running some true blue conservatives and seeing what happens?!? If they lose, then the meme-pushers will have a legitimate "told ya so" moment instead of the specious spin. Too bad the Stupid Party's "leadership" is guzzling Treason Media Kool-Aid and can't think anymore.

CFE: Arlen Specter's Liberal Sensitivity

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:44:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Red State had an item about reconstituted Democrat Arlen "It's all about me me ME!" Specter's douchebaggery in response to Jack Kemp's death.

I guess that Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) really is happier in his new party:
Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its healthcare priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.
…because he’s certainly picked up from them the trick of using safely dead people to push a partisan talking point. Jack Kemp isn’t even buried yet; and he had nothing to do with the current political situation, you disgusting piece of partisan slime. I don’t expect truly civilized behavior from you anymore, but I did foolishly think that you could be trusted to show more delicacy than a hyena at the passing of a former friend.

I posted this comment to the thread:

I got my wake-up call about the mental pathologies that animate liberal jerks like Specter on Sept. 11, 2001. The WTC had just collapsed, killing untold thousands of people. Initial speculation was in the tens of thousands dead,

On a message board populated by many New Yorkers and even more unhinged liberal maniacs who took the defeat of Al Gore almost as badly as Reagan's defeat of Jimmy Carter - I'm not kidding; these people viewed Reagan as the beginning of the end of America - one guy, a Californian originally from NYC posted, "This is the result of the coup d'etat orchestrated by the Supreme Court last year to install Bush in office over the will of the people."

O...M...F...G...

Not 30 minutes before, our country had just withstood a massacre of civilians and the first place his diseased mind ran to was his soapbox to rail against the denial of his party's continued rule. Again, I'm not making this up! This jackass would then proceed to post personal information about me: my address, phone numbers, photos, etc. in order to strip my of anonymity and make an example of me to chill anyone else's ideas of speaking against the liberal mob.

The kicker was when he thought I was somehow compromising HIS privacy and rushed to the forum operator to have me banned, which happened without my being asked first what was going on. When I explained what he was seeing, I was reinstated at the cost of my low member number, post count and private messages. Whoops! Sorry about that. Bah.

This one a-hole was the Rosetta Stone for understanding just how craven and inhumane liberals are. Specter's insipid burbling is no surprise to anyone who understands the dark, empty hearts of liberals. Those bozos like David Frum and Jeb Bush who think the Stupid Party needs to cuddle up to the winning strategies of the fascist statists in order to win fail to understand the nature of the enemy and how accommodating them is no different from accommodating evil.

I wonder how many chumps who voted for Hopey McChangerson realize what vile monsters they unleashed upon the land? I have to think that perhaps the union workers who blindly followed their leadership off the cliff in the quadrennial yanking of the donkey lever only to have a self-anointed Emperor seize control of their companies and put them out of work may have a little buyer's remorse, but then again, who knows?

CFE: Barry's (First) 100 Days of Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:06:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: A friend - a woman with a year-old baby boy that she loves to death - posted on her Facebook status:

Two wars, an economic implosion and a possible pandemic: President Obama is not God--he's Job.

Though I hesitate to bother even my most liberal friends with the inconvenient truths of their incorrectness with regards to politics, I felt a brief reply was warranted:

Too bad the rubes thought they were buying a Messiah instead of someone mortgaging away our future and way of life. Let the excuses begin! :\

Too which she replied:

And we would be in better shape with Palin? I say Pain because I think McCain would have had heart failure by now.

Oh no she dint! FLAME ON!!!

Well, let's see...if Palin was Prez, she probably wouldn't have:

* Nominated hordes of tax cheats, lobbyists and fat cats to her administration.
* Taken over two auto companies and six banks like an Empress to nationalize formerly private companies while paying off those who made the messes.
* Passed budgets that will triple the national debt in 10 years; debt that YOUR CHILD will labor in futility to pay off.... Read More
* Bowed to a Saudi king.
* Chummed around with every Latin American tyrant and sat silently while America was insulted.
* Groveled, apologized and blamed America to all who'd listen, cementing the impression that she was a punk who was weak.
* Insulted our best allies with cheap gifts and arrogance.
* Incapable of speaking w/o a prompter.
* Scared NYC to death for photos of her plane.
* Ensured poor kids couldn't go to her kids private school.
* Get the drift?

So, yeah, Palin would've been hella better! The bill for Barry's Marxism will come due and your son gets to pay it. :(

As much as the frightened and ignorant public who blindly swallowed the Myth of the One are to blame, Dubya and the Stupid Party are the main ones to blame for for the ascendancy of this charlatan. They squandered their power and betrayed their conservative principles in the vain hope being more liberal would make the media be nicer to them.

Bush exploded the budget and the GOP tried to be "Dem Lite" and drove people like me away. Bush was an inarticulate fool who couldn't explain what was happening and refused to defend against scurrilous lies and we all know a well-told lie will always beat a badly-told truth.

So, with the lame old McCain - whose only goal was to beat fellow GOPers for the nom - on one side and the glossy whitewashed package of Barack Obama - with all his hype and no serious reporting of his shady past and pals - on the other, voters who ponder their American Idol picks more seriously bought the empty box in "CHANGE!" paper. "How much worse could he be?" A: Lots.

Nightline tonight put together a really revolting hagiography of The One's first 100 days with such objective luminaries as Al Sharpton and Bill Maher fawning over how wonderful Barry's been and how we are finally about to join the Community of Nations thanks to this good shepherd. Ugh.

So blind. So foolish. We are so screwed.

CFE: Demigod Piracy Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:58:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Game publisher Stardock is a lonely advocate of not treating their customers like criminals and thus doesn't put DRM on their games. While this makes their stuff very easy to pirate, they counteract this by having updates and multiplayer limited to only registered legitimate customers.

Their new game "Demigod" was sold by Gamestop ahead of street date, an event which forced Stardock staff to rush in on Easter to get the server infrastructure up to accomodate players - gee, thanks, Gamestop! - and they immediately detected LOTS of pirated copies attempting to connect and play online, causing legit users to have a very poor experience.

Boss man Brad Wardell has been posting about the piracy problems and an update was featured on Voodoo Extreme which drew some scoffing replies, basically blowing off the explanations for load problems. I replied to these tools:

@Dangerdoggie & anonymousgamedev

Did Brad Wardell steal your girlfriends (yeah, right, like you have them!) or take the last slice of pizza right before you reached for it or what? Your attacks on this update indicate you're either illiterate or so agenda-driven that nothing matters, even if it's facts at issue. "AGD" - more like "anonymouspiratefan" IMO - is particularly dishonest and/or stupid because his scenario requires that no one actually read what Wardell wrote.

Just what the heck is this supposed to mean? - "If those users had bought the game instead of pirating it, they'd have been putting EVEN MORE stress on the servers, and they wouldn't have been able to fix the problem simply by rerouting the legitimate users to a different set of servers."

Now take a look at what Wardell wrote: The infrastructure was designed to handle up to 50,000 of these connections. But on day 0, there were around 140,000 concurrent users of which 18,000 are validated.

For your insane thesis to have the slightest credibility, you would have to assume that a game from a small developer and publisher would be such a blockbuster smash hit that it would attract the COMBINED peak concurrent user load of Counter-Strike, Football Manager 2009, Empire: Total War, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 on its first day. Get that? Demigod would have to steal the whole of Valve's player base to start approaching the mobs who were pounding their servers. That is lunacy! The only dev and title who can draw the crowds you're imagining rhymes with "Wizard's Burled of Boredraft."

Competently run businesses have a good idea of what their best case numbers should be and allocate resources accordingly. This is why Blizzard is able to launch WoW expansions that sell MILLIONS in the first week and absorb the onslaught. Stardock had no reason to expect this sort of traffic because they had a sense of what sort of load they'd be getting and they had more than double the capacity on tap for their legitimate customers. The system only faltered because nearly three times as many users were hitting the servers because of the hordes of pirates gumming up the works.

18,000 paying customers had to suffer because 122,000 thieves - that's a 6.78:1 pirate/customer ratio - messed things up and you have the gall to suggest that it's Stardock's fault for not having the capacity?!? That you then accuse Wardell of lying about the problems is just more outrageous. Stardock employees had to rush into work on Easter because Gamestop broke street date and they had to crank out fixes for the piracy-related loads literally overnight and little Internet snots like you dare call them the liars and attention seekers?

Stardock has been transparent in their dealings with their products. The company trusts the public - for better or worse - to not steal their works and doesn't slather DRM on their products and you seriously think that they wouldn't come out and admit the game outsold their expectations? That's how I really know you're a sack of bovine excrement - what company wouldn't want to boldly proclaim that their product is so popular that it sold three times as much and everyone was trying to play it?

You've got some petty vendetta against Wardell, Stardock, GPG and reality and you've just been served. Buh-bye.

This concludes this Smackdown.

CFE: Television's Slow Suicide

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:11:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: Techdirt has a item about how Hulu keeps trying to prevent Boxee from working with their content because content producers are techno-phobic morons who can't understand that their very survival is being put in doubt because of their foolish actions. As I explain...

As television networks are bleeding out because audiences are shrinking and advertisers won't support scripted shows - why should they when "Surviving with the Idol American Stars" draws awesome numbers? - it amazes me that instead of embracing Boxee and Hulu and new means to connect digital content to TVs, they fight to the death to maintain business models created when there were only channels 2, 4, and 7 on the dial.

My girlfriend's family doesn't have DVRs and still tapes shows on VHS off standard-def DirecTV. (Ugh, I know. I'm working on it.) At 9pm Thursdays CSI, Supernatural, and 30 Rock are on. We watch Supernatural on OTA HD while she tapes CSI and then I download 30 Rock from BitTorrent, playing it back thru my Xbox 360. Clunky, no?

Now, why the hell aren't the networks making deals to stream Hulu (or whatver) directly to these game consoles like NetFlix does. Instead of making people muck about with a HTPC or things like Boxee, just pipe it into the Xbox or PS3 that's already hooked up to the TV. Duh!!! How hard is it to see the obviousness of that?!? It cuts down on "piracy"; allows advertisers to present their commercials in an unskippable format (Hulu's one 30-second ad per break is quite tolerable as opposed to four minutes of ED adverts); and gives viewers a good experience.

Whoops! It makes too much sense! My bad. Nevermind. As you were, people.

CFE: Regarding Difficult Videogames

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:08:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: The director of the upcoming game "Bayonetta" is quoted at Joystiq as hoping the game will be "sadistically hard". Comments as to the pros and cons of hard games ensued and my 1/50th of a dollar:

The original Ninja Gaiden was miserably hard; absolutely no fun at all; and the way it was structured where you'd have to fight a dozen minions to get to the mini-boss fights, only to die and have to rinse and repeat over and over made "playing" take more effort than my day job.

Early on, Ryu finds his family village pillaged. He (you) fights 12-20 enemies and then faces a mini-boss on horseback. Common sense would dictate that if the mounted warrior kills you, you should reset to the beginning of that area, but the a-holes at Team Ninja dictated that you re-battle the whole village before getting a crack at the boss. Not. Fun. It wasn't until they put out Ninja Gaiden Black with the "Ninja Dog" mode (read: "You suck. We'll take it easy on you.") that I was able to actually play the game I paid for. I struggled in spots, but it didn't feel like I was being laughed at by sadistic developers.

However, 1337 g4m3r kidz whined loud and often that Ninja Gaiden was too easy(!!) for their awesome skillz. They filled their diapers over Bioshock's Vita-Chambers because it removed the penalty for death. Yeah, gawd forbid players be able to finish the game. How many devs slave over the end levels of their games to have their work go unseen because players give up? I was so annoyed at their crying, I posted, "You want hardcore? Take a loaded pistol and put it on the desk in front of you and then play the game. When you die in the game, pick up the gun, put it to your head, and PULL THE #$%&ing TRIGGER!!! HARDCORE ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!? ENOUGH RISK FOR YOU?!?!?" Sheesh...

If I were Bayonetta's publisher, I'd be on the phone telling Kamiya to STFU and not cripple my investment stroking his dom urges and pandering to tubby loser virgins who have nothing better to do than memorize 16-button combo sequences. Making games playable - and ENJOYABLE - for a majority of gamers isn't "dumbing down" or "selling out to casual gamers"; it's good business. Go ahead and put in a "PWNZ J00!!11!" mode for the hardcore llamas, er, 1337s, but give the rest of us a freaking break. kthxbai!

BTW, doesn't she look a little like Moose-Slayer?

CFE: Regarding U2's "No Bars on the Verizon"

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:17:00 +0000

THE BACKGROUND: In his Big Hollywood post, "U2 & Me", Matt Patterson discusses his mixed, but ultimately positive, reaction to "No Line on the Horizon", which I refer to by the title of this post. I posted this comment:

U2 was one of the few acts I would still schlep down to the Beast Buy to plunk down my Hamilton to blind (deaf?) buy their latest on the day it came out. When the album leaked a couple weeks early, I decided to try before I bought and I am so glad I didn't waste a farthing for this turgid bore of an album.

Background: I've been a fan of theirs since 1980 when a high school pal had a t-shirt for their "Boy" album. My band covered "I Will Follow" at our annual Big 80s show last year. I have all their albums except for "Poop" (as I call it), which was such half-baked mess due to their having to push it out the door in time for the already-planned tour. (I gave that to my girlfriend with whom our first real date was a Zoo TV concert in 1992.)

I thought "All That You Can't Leave Behind" was the sound of a band with nothing to prove casually rebounding from their self-inflicted irony overload and delivering a solid album. I call "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" a "Wonderbra album" because what was up front - the sublime "Vertigo" - was just a tease because what came after was a flat experience that sounded like the Edge scrolling thru his guitar effect presets of classic tones.

Where "No Bars on the Verizon" (heh) flops is that the laziness and distractedness of the lyrics are only compounded by the lackluster music. Larry is playing the same beats; the best lick in the title track is the one Edge nicked from "The Fly"; every song is a slow to mid-tempo dirge except "Get On Your Boots" which serves as a midpoint wake-up nudge more than an exciting and memorable song.

Most critics are just rubber-stamping 5-star/A+ reviews for this thing like they automatically award the latest loaves pinched by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, or any act that bashed Dubya. Fans who can't cope with the idea that their beloved band could fail are happy-talking, too. But for those still able to see whether the monarch dressed for the day or not, "No Bars" is the sound of a band that should decide whether they want to save the world or save their musical reputations.

Behind the Stunning FX of Benjamin Button. (Updated & Bumped)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:34:00 +0000

(Note: Originally posted 1/5/09 - bumped to add video)

While I haven't had a chance to toss up the mini-review of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" yet - Bottom Line: 8/10, see it - I didn't want to wait to share this fascinating tech-speak-heavy article about how the special effects were done that created the titular character. However, if you haven't seen the film yet, DO NOT READ THIS or look at the pictures because it will blow the surprise. See the movie, THEN read the article.

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UPDATE: The film quite rightly won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and this talk from TED.com shows in a fast-moving 18 minutes some of how they did it. Enjoy.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (of Edits!)

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:58:00 +0000

Once again I marvel at the amount of spare time some people have.

See 'em all here!

White Wedding: The Literal Video Version!!

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:36:00 +0000

Been a while since I posted one of these. Enjoy!

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

"Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, and More"

noreply@blogger.com (Dirk Belligerent) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:00:00 +0000

So says Larry Kudlow:

Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s address to Congress and budget. He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next ten years.

This is nearly double the government-spending low-point reached during the late 1990s by the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton administration. While not quite as high as spending levels in Western Europe, we regrettably will be gaining on this statist-planning approach.

Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.

And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge tax increase on all blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, and new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.

Obama’s tax hikes will generate fewer revenues and lower economic growth. Yes, the economy will recover. But Obama’s rosy scenario of 4 percent recovery growth in the out years of his budget is not likely to occur. The combination of easy money from the Fed and below-potential economic growth is a prescription for stagflation. That’s one of the messages of the falling stock market.

Essentially, the Obama economic policies represent a major Democratic party relapse into Great Society social spending and taxing. It is a return to the LBJ/Nixon era, and a move away from the Reagan/Clinton period. House Republicans, fortunately, are 90 days sober, as they are putting up a valiant fight to stop the big-government onslaught and move the GOP back to first principles.

Noteworthy up here on Wall Street, a great many Obama supporters — especially hedge-fund types who voted for “change” — are becoming disillusioned with the performances of Obama and Treasury man Geithner. There is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse. Well then, do conservatives dare say: We told you so?

It's a start. After the election, I wrote about silly conservatives, like Bill Bennett and George Will, who seriously thought Obama would act as a moderating influence on the Dastardly Duo of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi> They thought that Obama was such a savvy pol that he'd refuse to rush to the left because he knew that it wouldn't work and it'd backfire on him. Nevermind that he was the most liberal Senator and steeped in socialist radicalism his whole life, he would triangulate like Clinton did.

Well, we see how all that worked out. Morons.

Obama is ruling like the fascist despot he is, but the real question is who is going to step up and admit that they were suckered by him? Will Oprah call The One onto the carpet for being a charlatan like that "Million Little Pieces" author she shilled onto the best-sellers chart or will she silently sit in approval as he turns America into Soviet Amerika? (I'm guessing "B".)