(click on image to enlarge)

My thoughts on Tiered Pricing.
(Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, et al)

Network congestion, what network congestion? At first we all paid for anytime minutes or had to wait until 9 pm (you know who you are) and you know what, we all bided our time like a fat kid waiting for the last person to eat their first slice before diving in for seconds. If you were like some of those rare fatties who didn't wait, well, just like his fat ass... you paid for it. You paid dearly because it was per minute of overage and those pricks rounding up to the next minute. Eventually, like the cool kid who tried to hang onto his coolness for a moment long after it was no longer cool - Data splashed onto the scene and stole his thunder. Now, every carrier offers unlimited voice because quite frankly, no one cares anymore. Now I can tweet my spacebooking ass off... in this blog no less. Since they no longer had tards going over thanks to email and instant messaging, they needed some way to substitute their overage scheme to amass more of the accumulated wealth of America.

Oh no! our infrastructure can't handle it... whatever will we do. Uncle Sam's got what you need baby. While I don't doubt for a moment that the rapid adoption of all things smartphone and microblogging escalates data traffic, I'm certain it is because of wireless carriers refusal to continuously upgrade/update their infrastructure. Instead it's more akin to our landline broadband, where I'm sitting pretty with Verizon FIOS and the sad, pathetic, sad Mr_Hao is crying about his Comcast and their bandwidth throttling and soft caps.

The only reason those numbers aren't even higher is because of my insistence to cap downloads/uploads, use other clients, etc. in order to play Street Fighter 4 on Steam without latency (or any other network influence). Leeches having a better internet connection might help inflate those numbers too... but hey, not my fault they're either poor or live alongside Zangief in Siberia. Right now, I probably use 384 kb of data... which would save me A LOT thanks to the new tier based pricing of AT&T (and in the future, Verizon). On my current provider, T-Mobile, that would mean a savings of $10-25/mo., which is a significant amount annually. Apart from being able to help Candy, Chastity and Celestial with their college education that they've put off for so long... I could even afford to throw my crack dealer a bone or two. However, that would be incredibly short sighted of me - which would suck because I'm already near sighted.

Even though my usage is incredibly low, if you went ahead and reviewed your monthly data usage and found that you were sitting pretty at 150 mb, well below the 200 mb, you would save money from not having to move into the next tier or overage fees. Congratulations! The sad thing is what if they change the caps to 25 mb and 100 mb, now you're $35 over and you'll have to buy a second 100 mb chunk. So if you're capable of thinking farther than 5-seconds ahead, you'll understand why tiered pricing is bad for you, for me, for everyone. Regardless if you're lower usage or not, because the caps should initially be high, it'll make it easier to swallow. Just about every newer phone out will be capable of 720p video recording; youtube now streams HD content, blah blah blah see what I'm getting at? I bid you all farewell with a nice little poem (which I'll recite to the best of my ability)...

First, they came for the jews, but I wasn't a jew so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the gypsies, but I wasn't a gypsie, so I didn't speak up. Finally, they came for me... and no one was left to speak up.

Unrelated note: Low income people without steady pay... suck.

Ready for Marvel vs Capcom 3?

Click on images to enlarge (warning: 56kers beware!)

Wolverine vs Ryu

Iron Man vs ...uhh, person-being-shot-at.

Ryu vs Wolverine

Hulk... SMASH!!

What I'll do to Izana.... HADOKEN!

Celtics 2 - Magic 0.

Do a barrel roll!

Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun!

The best and worst part about Red Sox/Yankees fans are how loud, obscenely loud, obnoxious as well, they were and I can tell you... there is nothing more annoying than loud and obnoxious fans, especially when they're highly informed and intelligent. Their shouts and obscenities are just so damn good. - Curt Schilling.

So originally I wanted to purchase an amplifier to go along with new monitors and subwoofer via s/pdif. The amp would also double as a headphone amp to drive the JVC HA-RX700 headphones as well. Initially settling for a Dayton DTA-100, which is fantastic as far as T-amps go, satisfied that 8 ohms load and 0.01% THD @ 30W would give me enough juice for the audio fidelity I wanted and power the monitors/sub to the point it would still have clarity if I decided to "rock out."

Dayton DTA-100

Somewhere along the way, perhaps between head-fi, avsforum and hardocp, it occurred to me that while 50W (sans sub) or only 30W just wasn't enough even if it doubled as a high fidelity headphone amp. Especially given that the passive bookshelf speakers (75W / 87 db sensitivity @ 1W) alone could possibly tax it. Don't get me wrong, as far as just amps go, this sucker is a flea on steroids compared to some of the other amps out there and quite possibly the best bang for the buck. Fortunately for me, 4 ohm impedence are not so common I would need an amp to drive the passive monitors - otherwise I would have had to purchase the amp in addition to...

Denon AVR-1610

I was planning on the Denon AVR-1910 but I have no plans on a 7.1 setup... ever (yet). Denon is releasing the 1611 and 1911 but the lack of legacy support for an additional HDMI and HDMI 1.4a(?) repeater is just not worth it to me.

Blue Snowball microphone. No idea why I got it...

Thankfully the Celtics won, so the last entry doesn't seem so ridiculous. Not feeling confident against the Orlando Magic though. Jameer Nelson and Rajon Rondo can be considered a wash. Vince Carter is a more lethal scorer than Ray Allen - though Allen has a better perimeter shot. Pierce > Barnes. Kevin Garnett edges out Rashard Lewis interior-wise, but Rashard is a little more versatile. Dwight Howard > all Celtics centers, though Perkins plays him well. Bench: Magic. Celtics bench can be woefully inconsistent; Rasheed Wallace doesn't always show up. Michael Finley is only good for about six minutes at most. Glen Davis is a short wide body, not useful against the Magic (especially with DHoward roaming the paint sending shots into the cheap seats) and Nate Robinson has been a no show. Tony Allen only thrives in the open floor or great spacing... which we probably won't have unless we're knocking down threes from downtown.

While I'm on the topic of hoops, Lebron will likely go Chicago because they already have a dominant point guard in Derrick Rose and pieces around him (Joahkim Noah, Kirk Heinrich, Luol Deng, et al) and have enough cap space for perhaps another big name free agent. New York Knicks could conceivably have enough cap space for two or more big names as long as they trade one more big contract.

*edit* Can't spell (B)ruins without ruin.

Crush the other bloggers! See them driven before you! Hear the lamentations of their subscribers!

Once upon a time, there were grandiose stories fabricated by religion. Initially, most were probably born of forbidden voodoo rituals, talks of religious apocalypse or real life stories metamorphosed into the byproduct of something else entirely. The following story is completely true...

About 660 years ago, there was massive widespread panic amongst a population. One of the deadliest pandemics in human history arrived with the ferocity of locusts swarming the West African Desert. Sweeping far and wide across the continent. Seemingly without provocation, the lymph nodes of people began to swell and become extremely painful. The agony did not end there. As these people walked among their communities, they were shunned. Extreme pain was only the beginning; people began to have difficulty breathing, their joints ached, coughing and vomiting blood. Skin would literally decay or decompose while that person was still alive. They were modern day zombies as it were and everywhere they went, death was only the beginning. In the end, half the population had perished. Countless penances paid. Religion was supposedly both the cause and solution.

Apparently religion didn't know it back then. God didn't know it (at least, he wasn't letting on). However, science knew it was the Bubonic Plague, which devastated much of medieval Europe.

Science now, not supernatural fairy tales of an invisible man in the sky, is most often to blame.

In so many ways, our fictitious supernatural gods have been replaced by technological wonders - so of course, the grievous adversity one faces in life cannot be far behind. The God/Devil duality reflects what happens when we trust religion and it turns against us. The pleasant propaganda (so called "good intentions") is buried away in a place of something hungry and mindlessly evil... the hearts of those who seek to take advantage (or money grubbing executives as it were).

These days, civilized educated people are not afraid of God striking them down, they are more afraid that something in the medical world or pharmaceutical world is going to backfire. Science has helped to decrease peoples' fear of the supernatural. While science has demystified so much of the Bible and its myths, legends and fables... there is still so much mystery behind what corporations are doing and the world in general. Things around us have so much power and so much power in our lives. With this shift in perspective, this realigning of what is dreadful and frightening to the masses, comes a shift in how those fears are played upon our culture.

Fear of the unknown leads the blind to fears of the supernatural. Religion has always had a huge role in history and mythology; shaping modern conspiracies, urban legends and culture - it is something that affects us all; politically, spiritually - positively and negatively. But despite that, whether categorically scientific or supernatural, material or mystical, the ominous threat of something far greater is when that fear is played on us and takes on something bigger than just ourselves. When religion offers absolute disproportionate limits of truth exacerbated by the inability to be explained by science or technology, we inherently turn to religion for answers. Even if those answers, however overstated, are merely to calm our panic.

We go from the fear of the unknown to fear of the known. We know science, at present, cannot explain it... so inevitably it gives way to a resurgence of religion and fears driven by the supernatural.  Today, people do not fear humans having the power of God... but allowing someone else having the power of God. Absolute power is not frightening unless it belongs to someone else. In the modern world, though, lots of entities have overwhelming power over our daily lives - drug companies, the Apples and Microsofts of the world, Oprah*, and so on.

In truth, zombies exist all around us - just not in the pop cultural sense. This disease represents conformity, of the masses moving and thinking without a mind to call their own. Following without questions. It is the idea that someone can become so immersed in something, anything (political, religious, propaganda, commercialism, etc), that they lose their autonomy and react by only instinct or command. The parallel remains whether by scientific or religious origins: these zombies are not in control of themselves, sometimes living, sometimes dead, but in all, people who have been disconnected from self, persona and free will.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke

In closing (I know, I shouldn't write that), no matter what that fear is, be it sourced from science or religion, the zombies who propagate such fear; just remember... if you hit them hard enough in the head, they won't get back up.

* = you knew I had to bring Oprah back...

Partly inspired by this book; the larger portion being mostly boredom.

Other God rants:
The original gangsta of God rants that started it all...

God rant strikes back!

Return of the God rant.

The God rant menace: Does God exist?

You're eating hair!!


Mom, mummy, mama, ma, mum...

Lately I've been bitter, opinionated and a sucker for flame-bait. Perhaps I've just been inundated with a flood of stupidity and my only recourse to YHBT is to, well, flame.

Flame on?