Category Archives: Article

There are fiends, there are greater fiends, there are wholly despicable fiends, and then there is Netflix.

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Interesting article on Forbes titled “Why Best Buy is Gradually Dying”.  I thought I’d comment on one part of it.

From the article: “Best Buy and other traditional retailers complain that Amazon can undercut them in prices because the site doesn’t charge sales tax, and that Amazon customers use Best Buy as their showroom, taking advantage of the extensive, well-stocked locations and knowledgeable staff to research products they actually buy from someone else online.”

What a load of crap.  Since as far back as I can remember, Amazon charged me full state sales tax.  If I buy something right now on Amazon — sales tax!  And that doesn’t even include the added cost of shipping, which isn’t always free.  Though I might peek at something at Best Buy, the staff is hardly knowledgeable.  Any deeper question than “how much does it cost” and the shoulders shrug.  If you want to research a product, research it online.  The Brick & Mortar is good for one thing and one thing only: seeing how something feels physically in your hands.

The issue that I have with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is that it seems to convey the message that it’s okay to steal rings and keep them away from their rightful owners.  What the rightful owners intend to do with the ring is really beside the point — that’s their own private business.  What if someone commandeered your house because there were loose rumors on the street of you using it for smuggling contraband?  I bet you would feel awful about it.

Particularly if you were planning on utilizing your house for smuggling contraband, because then your moment of truth would be prevented on the account of some vigilante deciding to take the law into their own hands.  Your credibility would be shattered; your purse no longer overflowing.

Last word on the matter: Frodo the Baggins should have left the whole matter with the “One Ring” in the hands of the proper authorities.  The end doesn’t always justify the means — and this was one case where the end did not justify the means.  A lot of people got hurt, feelings and otherwise.

According to this source, Afghanistan has claimed that in the event that the United States attacks good old, stable Pakistan, Afghanistan would come rushing in to help — Pakistan.  Is it because the United States doesn’t end in -stan?    Oh well.  We didn’t name our country, so it shouldn’t be held against us.  But in case that really is what it comes down to, perhaps we shouldn’t be training Afghanistan’s military, providing them equipment, or supplying them with military craft.  It’ll suck to have to destroy our own stuff if it came to it.

On a separate note, the United States has begun examining the feasibility of changing its name to United Statestan.  Proponents have argued that the addition of three little letters to the end could yield wondrous benefits to foreign relations.

What’s better than one-hundred leprechauns?  Ninety-nine leprechauns.  You’ll never want to have one-hundred leprechauns around because you know what leprechauns will give you?  Leprosy.  Sure, folklore always portrays leprechauns as jolly dancing and singing folk, but in reality they are bitter midgets whose flesh is falling off their face from none other than The Plague.  There’s no pot of gold waiting around, nor shamrocks, nor green dancing suits; rather, there’s merely wailing and covering up with hideous-concealing wraps.

So remember — if given the option between one-hundred leprosychauns over only ninety-nine leprosychauns, always pick the lesser number of the two.  Leprosychauns: they’re not worth keeping around.  They can only hurt you and everyone you care about.

There’s been a lot of talk revolving around The Simpsons ending due to a supposedly needed budget cut — essentially a huge pay cut for the voice actors.  The looming threat is that this could finally be the death knell for the show that seems to be dragging on and on and on.

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It’s a cheap motel at a hotel price. There’s Internet, but it’s so slow, it’s practically unusable. It’s 2011, not 1997, damnit! Three words: small, cramped, and dirty. Avoid at all costs.

Certainly any PC gamer with a pulse for the past decade has been salivating profusely over the prospect of playing Starcraft II, whose release date has remained a solid “when it’s done” since 1999. Time and time again you’d hear from the screeching and giddy mouths of avid gamers: “I can’t wait for this game to be released” and “I’m getting it the day it comes out” and “the suspense is killing me!”  The most anticipated computer game of all time caused an untold number of gamers to claw in vain at the fabric of time in the hopes of expediting the release date.

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It’s official – the WGR has declared the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 to be resoundingly superior to the Xbox 360 version. To begin with, you can actually see into the distance. It’s like putting on a pair of glasses for the first time. No more guessing what 4 to 5 squiggly pixels might be (plant or an enemy? no idea!).  Not only is the resolution higher (1920 x 1080 versus 1024 x 600), but the distance is rendered with much higher levels of detail and clarity.

Second, the mouse means no more fumbling with an awkward control scheme that can boast nothing better than dual wild analog sticks.  I’d rather not use the same device that can pick up a stuffed animal out of this thing:

Reports of rampant cheating? Cheaters are here and there on both platforms (PC & Xbox 360).

On a side note, how could anyone make fun of the Wii with its 480P if Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360 is displaying at 600P? Is that what it takes to go from “Standard Definition” to “High Definition?” One-hundred and twenty horizontal lines?

The hard concept of preloading clearly eludes (and how) the Steam digital gaming service (www.steampowered.com).  What Steam allows users to do is purchase games online and download them as opposed to having to fire up the gas guzzler and possibly get into an accident in the process.  At any rate, Steam allows users to “preload” games prior to their actual retail release date; that way, you don’t have to download the game as soon as it is released.  It’s ready to go the same moment that you’d be able to buy the game in a brick and mortar store.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of the time, after people have already preloaded, by the time any game is actually and finally released, there is some sort of change that forces a complete re-download.  It happens time and time again.

Well, I’m sick of it, Steam.  So I’m formally filing a complaint as soon as I figure out who that would even go to. I mean it. I really mean it.