Rants

Argh! The Internet will tremble before my rage!

Na-na-na na, na-na-na na, hey heyyyyy, goodbye cable modem

3
3 years ago
in ,

I’ve mentioned before the issues I was having with my cable internet service. Well, now that I’m no longer an unemployed guy with too much free time, and I’m now officially a telecommuter (there are surprising similarities, except now I’m paid, so that’s nice), my internet connection is very important. And my Time Warner connection started dropping, routinely, in the morning, and coming back sometime around 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening. Customer service was no help, and the technician they were supposed to send never showed, never called, and no one followed up on the open service call. More >

The problem with niches…

1
4 years ago
in ,

With cable and satellite viewers assaulted with eleventy-billion channels, cable broadcasters have to carve niches for themselves so they can find an audience. This is how we ended up with channels like E! Style, Sleuth, The Food Network, and thirteen different Discovery channels. Within the last five years or so, TBS decided to change its image from that of a low-rent local UHF station that plays reruns of old sitcoms all day, to that of an upscale basic cable network specializing in comedy by playing reruns of old sitcoms all day. They essentially accomplished this by snazzing up their More >

Held hostage by cable

2
4 years ago
in ,

My cable internet service went out for about half of last week, which served to remind me how important Internet access really is, and how little choice I have in my area. In the last eight years, I’ve had uninterrupted cable internet service, but thanks to mergers and market trade-offs, I’ve changed cable companies four times. The last time, it was when Comcast and Time Warner Cable divvied up a competitor and decided to trade customers in certain markets, just like that. I can’t imagine any other industry where this is possible, can you? It’d be like you had a flight booked on American More >

This game is not for resale

0
4 years ago
in , ,

You remember the music industry, don’t you? The guys who are desperately trying to cling to charging you $17 for a new CD, the ones who sued a twelve year-old? Well, they’re at it again. Universal Music Group has sued a man in California for reselling promotional CDs that go out to radio stations and reviewers. If they win the lawsuit, it could seriously affect your rights as a consumer to resell your CDs, DVDs, or even video games.

This has been around the news for a while, but Joystiq has a Law of the Game column up on why this is so important, and how it could have far-reaching More >

MySQL can kiss MySQAss

4
4 years ago
in ,

So my endeavour to get this site up and running is complete. What you see here is the result of several days worth of agonizing and scrutinizing over MySQL databases, PHP issues, wrestling with WordPress, and several botched attempts to edit a CSS stylesheet when I had no idea what either a stylesheet or a CSS was. It’s finally over.

You jerks better enjoy it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the hours I spent trying to figure out why WordPress wouldn’t talk to my database, when I had accidentally named the database “wodrpess” instead of “wordpress.” IT WAS A BLAST!

Things I currently regret More >

Zippity-doo-dah

2
4 years ago
in ,

So I was in a particularly good mood earlier today, for no real reason, and inexplicably I started whistling “Zippity-doo-dah” to myself. It’s a catchy, happy song, despite its origins in Disney’s nefarious “Song of the South.” I caught myself happily whistling along with Uncle Remus, merely celebrating my good day, and I stopped and asked myself: does this make me racist?

Weighing heavily on my mind is the recent controversy in the video game press surrounding Newsweek blogger N’Gai Croal’s comments over the Resident Evil 5 trailer. To sum up everything, the RE5 trailer shows the game More >

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