MICROSOFT & XBOX ONE ANNOUNCES THE XBOX1dot2

Microsoft understands your frustration regarding our recent decisions to back-door you without so much as a reach-around and to placate we have added a patented VCR Virtual Reality Immersion Experience to the Xbox One so you can play your parent’s old VCR tapes (you should be able to find them at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused bathroom with a sign on the door saying Beware of Betamax somewhere in your parent’s basement).*****

This new XBOX1dot2 tech comes complete with authentic loud-clunky-mechanical sounds playing in the background during your Dolby Stereo movie soundtrack to assist in the fully patented and immersive experience that is XBOX1dot2. Isn’t that nice of us?

We know your main concern as an astoundingly stupid consumer is how you are going to pay Microsoft and Electronic Arts for being such gracious corporations and allowing you to do continued business with us. That is why Microsoft has made it easier for you and your parents to throw your hard-earned money away on substance that used to come standard with gaming and added a built-in, ULTRA-CONVENIENT coin slot at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!!! That’s right folks, you heard correct, Microsoft is eating the cost of implementing this handy-dandy new hi-tech feature.*

And for just $500 more you can have the pleasure of purchasing your very own proprietary Credit Card Reader (comes with one free month of Xbox Live) to make throwing your money away that much more convenient.**

In a rather vain effort to take your needs into account and improve our product for mass consumption, the 1dot2 KINECT now comes with a nice friendly EYE to help make you feel slightly more comfortable while being watched in the privacy of your own home. This feature specifically enhances our new patented VCR Virtual Reality Immersion Experience.***

The XBOX1dot2 will be available as soon as enough XBOX ONEs have suffered the inevitable systematic failure that you have come to expect of a Microsoft product.

* Disclaimer: Additional fees will be charged to your Xbox Live account for the Microsoft employees we will be sending to collect the cash. For an even more immersive experience (at no extra cost to you) these employees will be dressed like those greasy, creepy guys that hung around the Arcades in the 70s and 80s watching kids playing games and handing out candy.****

** Disclaimer: Additional fees from credit card companies and your bank will apply. This has nothing to do with us, this is all about them. We repeat, this is all about THEM.

*** Studies have shown it makes watching your parent’s degraded porn tapes far less creepy.

**** Disclaimer: Candy available at an additional charge.

***** Disclaimer: Microsoft is not responsible for any psychiatric fees you encounter as a result of watching any tapes with your parent’s names scribbled hurriedly on them or titled ‘Summer of 69 Love Fest; the day little (insert your name here) was conceived’ or ‘Super Freaky Deaky Chocolate Love Orgy with Uncle (insert your favorite Uncle’s name here) and Auntie (insert your favorite Aunt’s name here) plus two llamas, several complete strangers & a midget’.******

****** Disclaimer: Microsoft means no offense to Little People–see how we capitalized your politically correct designation there? It’s what you were called back when VCR tapes were the thing to consume and in order to meet the legal requirements of our lawyers (who are currently coked out of their minds and laughing hysterically over the fact we had to write such disclaimers to begin with) we had to make it clear to children what such a tape could be called if their parent’s had stupidly written the tape’s contents on the label. As for the llamas, f*!k what you think, you’re llamas.

~~~

This EXCLUSIVE announcement brought to you by The Dead Console Society. Image made for FREE in GIMP. Humorous material provided graciously by Microsoft.
P.S. TDCS is back, smeggers!

Today we fight back against SOPA & PIPA.

Tell our lack-luster, feckless politicians
corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE.
We are the people. Together, we decide the laws.

AT&T + Verizon Think You’re Stupid, Are You?

That’s right America, two big corporations–those entities many of you seem to worship like gods–think that America is far too dumb to handle a truly free and competitive market. I’m all for responsible capitalism, fair capitalism, but we do not have anything resembling that in America. Just a few huge corporations and their buddies in Washington telling the rest of us nobodies how things are going to be.

The following is paraphrased from the PBS Need To Know episode on high fiber optics;

The average American pays just over $40 a month for internet service. But in Britain you can get it for the equivalent of around $12 a month (including phone service). While prices have been falling (in Britain) speeds have almost doubled which means that some Brits are getting 8x the bang for the buck. The reason this is happening is because the market for broadband has been opened up and made competitive. Hundreds of broadband providers all fighting for customers. When the effort started only about 12,000 homes and business in the UK had a choice of internet providers. Today some 6 million do.

“It’s just accepted as that’s the way it is. It’s free market, free competition, doing the right thing. Growing from a small customer base to a much bigger customer base… Overall revenues have grown (you have a smaller slice of a much larger pie.)” ~ Fergus Crocket, Product Director-British Telecom

IT’S THE WRONG THING FOR THE US
“British style competition rules are bad public policy and bad news for consumers.” ~ Verizon
“The same policies would not be equally appropriate to the different markets.” ~ AT&T

British Telecom didn’t like the idea at first either because British Telecom had the monopoly on broadband. Verizon and AT&T are in full support of this competitiveness in Europe simply because they aren’t the big “playas” overseas, without the broadband market being opened up in Europe they wouldn’t be able to get their grubby little greedy feet in the door. Here they have the market cornered so when they say it’s the wrong thing for the US what they really mean is it’s the wrong thing for them because it would release average US citizens from the strangle hold they have on us. This singular, objectivist mind set of American corporate entities is not just bad for us, it’s bad for them too. It’s stifling our progress and numbing our competitiveness.

Thanks to lovekeiiy from PGL for enlightening me.

Caveat emptor: The Case of the Hope Egg Earrings

My wonderful & beautiful wife is an anglophile. The only reason she went out with me in the first place was I’m one generation removed from the shores of Liverpool. Needless to say she was all caught up in the recent fervor of the royal wedding.

Captivated by Kate Middleton–so much so, she now insists I call her Princess Catherine–and in particular Kate’s Hope Egg earrings, my darling wife searched the internet for a keepsake of the royal wedding. My wife is a bargain hunter, probably the best there is. She found us the entire Cowboy Bebop & Firefly series for $10 each, all three seasons of Star Trek (original series) for under $80; this woman should be in purchasing. But the excitement of the royal wedding caught her with her guard down and she ended up ordering a pair of earrings that are nothing like advertised.

And so we come to the purpose of this blog. My wife made some mistakes, I’m willing to concede that. There were many signs that pointed to this retailers nefarious practices, £275 slashed down to £29.89 should have been her first clue. But this retailer is purposely misleading it’s customers and I will show you how so that any of you reading this will not be swindled.

Princess Kate’s real Hope Egg earrings are made by LINKS London, a reputable jeweler that has been in business since 1990. The real LINKS London website address is a .com address. The malevolent retailer my wife purchased her “Hope earrings” from was Links of London, their web address is linkslondononline.net/. To those savvy of the world wide web’s ways this would immediately tell us that these are two distinct and different companies. But this charade is deeper, Links of London does a good job at purporting itself to be the real LINKS London, they even use LINKS London’s favicon.

Not only do they use the same favicon, they even ripped the picture of the Hope Egg earrings my wife bought directly off LINKS London’s website:

This is the pic I ripped from LINKS London's web site. Note that I kept the file name the same. Click on it to go to LINKS London's website and see for yourself.

This is the pic I ripped from Links of London's web site. Note that I did not change the file name. Click on it to go to Links of London's website and see for yourself. It is the exact same picture.

The earrings she received look nothing like that.

These are the earrings she received. They look nothing like what is advertised.

LEFT earring is a side view of the one she received. RIGHT earring is the side view of the Hope earrings from the legitimate retailer's (LINKS London) site.

See how much bigger (and shaped different) the earwire or post is on the earring(s) we received compared to the real Hope earring(s) (which is what our nefarious retailer is insinuating he is selling) from LINKS London in the comparison pic I made.

Note also how the real pair does not have a hollow back.

More incriminating evidence can be seen when you examine the box the earrings came in:

This is the box that came with the earrings.

This is a real LINKS London box.

The font is different from a legitimate LINKS London jewelery box and our box is missing the 3 interwoven rings that is the LINKS London logo.

My research into this incident also indicates that there is another internet retailer purporting to be the real LINKS London. These cretins are so bold they even use LINKS London’s actual logo on their web site. They have a .org address, if you go to their about page they’ve been in business since 2000 (LINKS London has been in business since 1990). I also uncovered a third nefarious internet retailer trying to cash in on LINKS London’s new found fame. These guys are not so bold as to use LINKS London’s logos but are bold enough to use LINKS London’s picture of the Hope Egg earrings. I’m sure there are more of them, which makes me wonder if LINKS London is aware of this.

I’ll concede that my wife made some mistakes. One, she placed an international order, in and of itself a problem if you need to return something. Two, she didn’t properly research the company she was purchasing from. However she did believe that she was ordering from LINKS London because Links of London implied that she was.

One could make the argument that Links of London is selling jewelry that is comparable with it’s pricing; though I think the earrings my wife received look like they came out of a gumball machine. But what we must question here is the extent to which Links of London goes to make itself appear to be the more reputable and, since the royal wedding, more well known LINKS London. This nefarious and bold faced lie of a marketing technique says a lot about the morals of the people willing to implement it. If one is able to deceive so blatantly what other thaumaturgies is one concealing? Is that real silver or tin?

If it looks like a duck… It is.

So I got this comment on one of my previous posts and I thought I’d share it with the community. Times are hard right now for many of us, and during these times people sometimes jump for opportunities that are not there. The comment read as follows;

We really need authors badly. After checking out this article, we really want you on our workforce. We pay out $35-$50 per hour. Our top rated writers are pulling in over $90 THOUSAND a YEAR, writing part-time. Please swing by and see us. http://write.ncsall.org

It’s a scam. You know how you can tell it’s a scam? “$90 THOUSAND a YEAR” Does that sound too good to be true? Yes? Well, that’s your first clue.

The second clue would come if you actually followed the link you’d find that in order for you to make this $90 THOUSAND a YEAR too good to be true payoff you would have to start by sending them money first…

Right, I’ll write them the check just after I finish writing this one for that Nigerian Prince who can’t seem to get a hold of his millions without my 5 grand first.

No legitimate potential employer will ask you for money to start working for them. Maybe in a few more years after corporations and Republicans have completely decimated the Middle Class and re-instituted the truck system they’ll start doing this. Currently anyone asking you for money so that you can begin writing for them and get more money in return is a con-man, a shyster, and a predatory scumbag.

Thanks to Hectic & Harried for confirming my suspicions.