A link.
I haven't been online much, so I haven't been saving up links so I could disperse them in groups of four or five. However, I do have one link that I've been saving for unknown reasons. It's a dumb link, too. I don't even know why I bookmarked the article.

Killer games suited for kids?

"Physicians and parents should understand that popular E-rated video games may be a source of exposure to violence that rewards (children) for violent actions,'' said the report published in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

An E-rating is the video game world's equivalent of a G-rated movie, having "content suitable for persons aged 6 and older,'' said the report from the Harvard School of Public Health.

[...]

The researchers found 35 of the 55 sampled E-rated games depicted intentional acts of violence ranging from 1.5 percent of the time in a hockey game to 91 percent of the time in an action game. Twenty-seven of the games depicted deaths from violence.

To beat a dead horse even more, what in the blue hell is this? Over half of all games reward players for violence? You could have fooled me! But how many people do you know that have actually gone out and killed a man because he played games like Contra, Double Dragon, or Kung Fu? Sure, these games were around before ratings were given to video games, but they also glorify in beating the hell of other AI-controlled drones.

"Action and shooting games led to the largest numbers of deaths from violent acts, and we found a significant correlation between the proportion of violent game play and the number of deaths per minute of play,'' the report said.

Whoa! Slow down! Who let in the genius? Who would have thought games involving guns would have the most "deaths from violent acts?" In the real world, you are more likely to kill someone with a Colt 45 than with one of my old psychology books. Also, there's a correlation between violence in video games and death rates in video games? Woo! Stop the press! How many games do you know where people get picked off and it isn't considered a violent game? Not even most RPG's are exempt from such a revolutionary statement. Asheron's Call and some Final Fantasy games fall under the teen category.

Even TV-Y and TV-Y7 cartoons like Looney Tunes depict lots of violence, sometimes even moreso than some video games. Slap a TV-14 rating on them!

I'm guessing this is another fine use of taxpayers' money.

This story isn't worth bitching over anymore. It's just dumb. Enough said.

Rules to obey as a passenger in my car
1. No smoking.
2. No eating.
3. Do not treat my car like it's your personal trash can.
4. Do not mock my car if your car is crappier or nonexistent.
5. Do not rest your left arm by placing your hand around my emergency brake!
6. Do not bring bleach into my car unless you have made sure that its friggin' container isn't leaking.

Number 6 is the new rule. Why? I have a new stain in the back of my car I'm not particularly happy with. *grumbles*

Nigeria plans to suck space of resources
Eh... Nigeria is a third world country. How the hell are they gonna pull that off? Beats me.

TV and radio
There's a lot of American Pie 2 promoting going on lately. I do intend to see this movie this coming weekend, but I still kinda find it weird that three of the movie's stars were on three different talk shows AT THE SAME TIME last night. Jennifer Collidge (Stifler's Mom) was on Craig Kilborn, Alyson Hannigan (band camp girl, also plays "Willow" on Buffy) was on Conan, and Tara Reid (Vicki, the blond girlie) was on The Daily Show. It weirded me out when I was fixing myself some food at 1 in the morning. And tonight, Jon Stewart was interviewing Jason Biggs (the guy that did that thing with the apple pie). Freaky.

In unrelated news, Opie and Anthony are back on the air in Boston. Just tune to WBCN from 3-7 pm. They are really funny bastards, but I feel that the amount of radio I'll be listening to is going to be dropping a lot. Why? I don't listen to the radio to listen to some guy(s) talk for four-hour shifts. I want to hear music, even if it means I have to hear some god damn Staind song every friggin' hour. And between songs, I don't mind hearing little wise cracks or short bits from the DJ, assuming the DJ doesn't suck. If I wanted to listen to some people flap their gums for a few hours, I'd be watching TV or hanging out downstairs. It's the reason why I don't listen to Howard Stern, either. Well, Howard Stern isn't that funny most of the times. My main man Nik Carter has been pushed to the 11 am - 3 pm time slot to accomidate for this "new" four-hour radio talk show. If his times could be switched with the Opie and Anthony show, I'd be all set since I don't listen to the radio much in the morning. Ho hum. But at least WOW is back. Heh.

They say this guy Shaft is a bad mother...
Shut yo mouth!

Ever wanted to hear the finest songs from the soundtracks of adult films? Now's your chance. If you have Winamp or Sonique or MusicMatch, prepare to be amazed of the soothing melodies people have banged to. Check out fluffertraX for more details.

Dude, these Albaplex pills I'm taking...
They totally smell like a rancid tunaboat. I kid you not. I become deathly afraid every time I have to open up the friggin' bottle because I may choke on the toxic odor.

"ph34r my l33tn3Ss, no0B!"
So a couple days ago, after several hiatuses (hiatii?) and approximately 337 years later, I finally have Win2k on my computer running perfectly fine. It used to crash on me within five minutes of starting up my computer, but I spent the day today in my mother's room playing with network settings, crossover cables, and a pair of RJ-45 couplers. I sent everything I wanted to save onto my mother's Pavillion, formatted my beast of a machine, set some things up, failed to download the service pack, and here a I am.

Kinda.

All of my work may have been for naught, since I may have to reformat and do all of that jazz again tomorrow. After I got the OS up and running, I installed a few basic but necessary programs (like Winzip). Then I installed Norton AntiVirus. Once that finished installing and getting its "live updates," it detected a virus right away. What the hell? There was a file called "explorer.exe" in my C:\ directory that shouldn't have been there. It held malicious code called Trojan.VirtualRoot. The virus-scanning software couldn't clean the file or put the file "in quarantine." And it couldn't be deleted. Oh good. I couldn't manually quarantine it or do anything to it besides let it hang out on my computer. That's not a good sign. And it doesn't help that there isn't any information online about the virus.

Running task manager revealed that there were two processes running called "explorer.exe." One was the virus; the other is the main process that has to be running or else I can't dick around on the computer. After I killed the virus's process, I was able to quarantine it and delete it and go on with life. But what was really weird was that once I got online, I would have to log off within two minutes because I couldn't load any web sites or continue my online conversations because my phone line's bandwidth was consumed. Data was being sent to and from my computer, and I was not downloading anything. Uh...

I'd disconnect, wait five minutes, and reconnect. Two minutes later, data was being transfered again. I didn't even have the time to download something like ZoneAlarm to stop my computer from being "h4x0r3d |3y 5um 1337 d0odz." In some instances, I would get the same damn trojan virus again and I would have to delete it. Norton AV has been installed for approximately four hours now and I have received 25 VIRUSES, 24 being this VirtualRoot trojan. The 25th one was that damn Sircam virus that has been plaguing people's email accounts.

Now here I am, three hours later and it looks like I can safely surf the web for the time being. I've scanned my computer many many MANY times to make sure nothing else was lurking in the shadows of my hard drive. I think I'm safe for now.

What's weird is that I think since only my mother or I can be online at one time, I think we must share the same IP address. Her computer is fine. It might have contracted one virus ever in the past 2 1/2 years. I've gotten 25 in a one-hour time span. That's fucked up.

Well, I only have like three programs installed right now. I think I will install some others. Especially a firewall program.

ZDNet enjoys bestiality with Intel's dogs, News at 11.
I always felt kinda weird after reading articles at ZDNet, since they aren't biased but yet you can't help feel that they are in some way. And in this article about Intel's next-generation PCI slot design, it's clearly evident that ZDNet employees sleep with Intel chip makers. Not only does it fail to address the fact that Intel's 3GIO design specs aren't even released, but that the design is getting it's ass kicked by HyperTransport, AMD's next-gen communication-PCI-ish design that has support from WAY more companies than Intel's 3GIO, and it's already being implemented in some motherboards! So, I guess I get to destroy this article paragraph by paragraph. *cracks fingers*

In a win for Intel, a key industry group has voted in favor of the chipmaker's proposal to rework the innards of computers, and a who's who of industry heavy hitters will promote the technology.

In a win for Intel? Who are they competing against? It's not hard to win a one-entity race. AMD is busy trying to improve on the communication between parts of a computer, like redesigning the chipset and stuff. Intel's "win" involves input/output devices. However, both Intel's 3GIO and AMD's HyperTransport would have to work together if they both want to become standards in their respective fields. That is as likely to happen as peace in the Middle East. Hence the 3GIO vs HT battle.

The proposed technology, called 3GIO, will now be overseen by the PCI-SIG, the standards body that supervises Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), the long-dominant technique for plugging devices such as graphics cards and network cards into computers. PCI will be phased out and replaced by the Intel technology.

PCI will be phased out. But don't necessarily expect Intel to lead the pack. In fact, Intel is about 18 months behind AMD and the gang.

The PCI-SIG steering committee voted unanimously in favor of 3GIO Friday morning, the standards body's president, Roger Tipley, said. The nine committee members--representatives of Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom's ServerWorks division, Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies and Texas Instruments--had voted July 27 to take another week for company lawyers to review the standard.

So, they voted unanimously to take a look at what Intel has to offer? That doesn't mean they will support the standard. If you look closely at the names of the nine companies in the committee, you will notice that AMD is in that group. That automatically means that Intel does not have the committee's support. AMD is Intel's archrival.

The main companies putting their promotional muscle behind the technology will be Intel, IBM, Compaq Computer, Microsoft and Dell Computer, said Tom Bradicich, director of architecture and technology at IBM and one of the voters.

AMD has support from API, Cisco, Sun, nVidia, and ONE HUNDRED other companies. Unfortunately, I can't find a list of supporters anywhere. Doh.

That means a single-wire 3GIO connection could carry 206 megabytes per second, the eight-wire version could carry 1.6 gigabytes per second, and the 32-wire version could carry 6.6 gigabytes per second--six times the speed of PCI-X.

Hey! 3GIO provides the same results as HyperTransport! Too bad HT will be shipped on some motherboards by the end of this year. Intel doesn't even have any specs released.

The article says some other stuff, but I don't feel like arguing anymore.

I bet it seems like I favor AMD over Intel, and to a certain degree, that's true. Intel has not had a good track record as of late (the Pentium 4 sucks, they supported RDRAM instead of DDR RAM, this PCI thing...), and Intel is up against some big names this time (nVidia is essentially the ONLY video card company left, and they're supporting AMD). However, if Intel could actually do something right since the Pentium 3, I'll be parading them once again.

Plus, the purpose of this post is to show that the author is close-minded and... well... an idiot. It came at Intel's expense, though. If a similar article comes up in regards to AMD, I will probably rebuke that, too. Too bad AMD hasn't made any bad moves since the desktop K6-2 chip.

Dr. Whackjob, Part 3
It's that time of the month again. My gall bladder had to looked at for three minutes by Dr. Crazy Guy. And this time around, I didn't have to wait for an eternity to be treated like a human water pump.

It looks like my gall bladder is working fine again, which means I don't have to take those marbled brown pills anymore! Instead, I get to take some stuff called Albaplex because I guess now my bladder has blood filtration issues now. *shrug* Whatever. This new stuff is this weird periwinkle color, and it has a lot of the same ingredients as the shit I used to take. There's no flaxseed oil or bovine prostate in it, but I do get to ingest dried buckwheat juice and veal bone. Bring it.

You know, even if this guy isn't bullshitting me by saying that various organs are dragging ass in the blood filtration process, I would really appreciate it if he told me so using a method other than the "water pump" way. That test is so biased and false. Instead, if he pulled out something like a stethoscope and started saying things like "Hmm... that's interesting," I'd be more inclined to believe that he's not trying to suck up my mother's money. 'Cause during that arm weight test, I’d be damned if my arm drops to my side. The only time it goes down is when he applies too much force for me to keep it up. Hell, sometimes when he was apply a medium amount of pressure, I'd make sure my arm would stay up by moving it upwards. Heh.

I need more information on that medical procedure. Like, what the heck is the process even called?

"It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care."
Hehehehe! Office Space was on Comedy Central last night. That movie has so many good quotes that you can't list them all... but I'll try! Actually, I won't, but here's five more quotes for ya from the same movie:

Tom: "Look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!"

Samir: "Why does it say 'paper jam' when there is no paper jam? I swear to God, one of these day I... I... I JUST KICK THIS PIECE OF SHIT OUT THE WINDOW!"

Michael: "PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?"

Peter: "What am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?"

Michael: "Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton."
Samir: "You know, there's nothing wrong with that name."
Michael: "There WAS nothing wrong with it. Until I was about 12 years old, and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys."
Samir: "Well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael?."
Michael: "No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"

And when they beat the hell out of the printer... that's classic.
The enitre soundtrack is PERFECT for that movie, too.

"Sue me? Why do you wanna sue me?"
I was gonna wait until I had about 237 stories about people suing other people over the dumbest of things, but I only managed to find only four such stories over the past week. At this rate, 237 stories would take... eh... about 14 more months to collect. Bah.

On an unrelated note, I think there's a hole in my squirt bottle. Damnit.

Anyhoo, have some stories:

* This bitch is suing for emotional and physical distress from a mannequin. I guess The Gap will never have dummies that high off the ground ever again.
* These fascists are suing Kellogg because a flaming Pop-Tart burned their house down. Well, the house didn't burn down, but firefighters were called in. Why are they suing Kellogg, though? Why not the toaster company (too)? The article mentions Dave Barry, too. Bonus.
* A Hooters chick is angry that she didn't win a new car. Of course, she has to sue because of it. What the hell is she going to do with a toy Yoda, anyway?
* What do you do if your wife leaves you for another woman or if your husband leaves you for another man? Well, if you live in North Carolina or some other states, you can sue the gay trollop that broke up your marriage.

In similar news, I was reading an article about one of Garbage's many court battles (by "many," I mean about six or seven. No joke.), and it looks like terms have been reached between the peeps that own Angelfish (Shirley's former band) and the peeps that "own" Garbage:

At the time Manson joined Garbage, Radioactive encouraged her to sign on with the group. In return, the label settled for 25% of the net profits from their second album, "Version 2.0" -- equivalent to $1.5 million.

"There is no question that the commercial success of 'Version 2.0' far exceeded the reasonable expectations that Radioactive Records might have held for a second Angelfish album," the statement of claim says. It added that Manson's one Angelfish record sold a mere 10,000 copies, while both Garbage albums have sold four million copies each.

Hehe! 10,000 copies of Angelfish! And I own one of them. :) Picked it up for five bucks at Music Boulevard (since then, CDNOW has bought them out). They should have individually numbered each one and kinda make it a hard-to-get collector's item. :) And I bet at least 9,000 of those copies are owned by Garbage fans. Funny.

I share a birthday with Mary J. Blige and Naomi Judd.
I guess that makes me cool.
See for yourself.