The Cynic Says&#8230;&#8230;

on Thursday, March 27th, 2008

in Opinions

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My friend online and I were having a discussion about the candidates left in the presidential race and we got on the subject of drug laws. I myself don’t smoke pot or use any illegal substances. Not to say that I haven’t, but I don’t at this point in my life. Anyway, we agreed on the fact that it makes no sense that the following drugs are illegal:Marijuana (you knew I was going to say this), AMT, 5-MeO DiPT, MDMA, LSD and Mescaline. There are others, but those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I hate to say it but none of those drugs are going to cause any horrible effects to the person doing them. People don’t kill, maim or harm others in order to obtain those drugs in most cases (maybe pot, but that’s really a stretch) and the worst damage they’re going to do when they’re ON them is to themselves. So where’s the problem? Why does the government feel the need to protect us from ourselves? If I get fucked up on Mescaline (peyote buttons), I’m pretty much gonna sit in the middle of my living room and talk to God (or some other higher power, whatever). Same goes for most of those other drugs I listed above. To be honest, they’re mostly passive & introspective drugs. They’re not like meth that you get crazy addicted to, lose a shitload of weight and start stealing and pawning shit to get more. Women aren’t gonna whore themselves out to get more LSD. So what’s the issue?? Oh, that’s right… People aren’t allowed to expand their minds on those wonderful mind-altering drugs. Nevermind that none of them have been proven to be addictive and with the exception of weed none have been proven to have any lasting physiological effects (smoking any substance isn’t good for the lungs, that’s a given). One might argue that research has hypothesized continuous high dosage MDMA usage has caused damage to certain areas of the brain but it hasn’t been conclusively proven to happen nor to even be permanent in those that did exhibit such damage. In any case, it blows my mind that those drugs are even remotely illegal. I DO see a point in regulating most other drugs. Cocaine? Crack? Meth? Heroin? Those have no real medical usage and are far more addictive and destructive drugs. Other drugs that DO have some medical merit but a very high possibility of abuse (Oxycodone, morphine, codeine, various other opiates, benzodiazepines, sedatives, etc.) should be regulated as well. But recreational drugs that don’t have any documented harmful effects? It’s not like they lead to doing “harder” drugs. What kind of dipshit is going to enjoy a few LSD trips and say “man, I need to try crack!” As if I’m going to eat some peyote buttons a few times, get really fucked up and decide that wasn’t good enough and shoot up some heroin. How about not? Most people who do those sorts of drugs do them for the pure enjoyment of the mind-expanding/altering experience, not for the feeling of being “fucked up”. Bah, anyway… it’s not like these laws are going to change anytime soon; not even with our current crop of candidates for president. Either way, I felt it was worthy of a rant. And if you have any constructive disagreements, feel free to express them in comments.

As an aside, I did leave something else out. Presume I’m carrying 20 pills of ecstacy on me. I get stopped and searched and the pills are found. I’m going to be punished the same as if I’d raped a woman at knifepoint. Care to justify that? Good luck!

new geek stuff

Published

on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

in Geek stuff and Opinions

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Yes, I’ve purchased some new “geek stuff” lately that I’m rather happy with.

First off, I got a new router. Mind you, I didn’t NEED a new router, but I wanted one. I was using an older Netgear WGR-614 for my home network, which did the job fairly well. I had a few issues with it here and there where I would have to reboot it after some heavy bittorrenting and the port forwarding functions completely stopped working until I reset it to factory defaults and set it up again but other than that, it worked fairly well. However, I figured it was about time to upgrade despite not really having a NEED to do so.

This time, instead of going with previous-generation wireless I decided to go ahead and jump into the next-gen stuff. I opted for the D-Link DIR-655, which is a Draft-n router. Admittedly, I don’t have any draft-n equipment yet but I figured it’ll be nice to have when I do decide to get the card for my laptop and the home wireless media extender to go with it. In any case, the router is pretty fucking pimp. It supports Draft-N, which has a theoretical max speed of 300mbps (though closer to 100mbps in practice), has 4 gigabit ethernet ports (most only support 100mbps) and supports “Intelligent QOS” which allows latency-sensitive packets (gaming & VOIP) to be passed through first-priority over other things such as FTP downloads and bittorrent. In practice it seems to work, as I was uploading around 45kB/sec on bittorrent from my desktop pc and not causing undue lag for my friend playing counterstrike. The router has quite possibly the most configuration options I’ve seen on a router so far, even allowing you to manually specify packet priority in the options for the intelligent QOS. It does support automatically updating dynamic DNS services, automatic firmware update notification, along with WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption. It has 3 external antennae which should in theory boost signal strength but with my internal Centrino wireless it doesn’t appear to have made much difference so far. I mean, maybe a little bit but signal has already been so good in my apartment that any improvement in signal strength wouldn’t net any sort of performance improvements. In any case, I’d like to get the wireless media extender to hook up to my TV in the near future. Then I could just download movies to my PC and watch them on my TV, thanks to Windows Media Connect. I’d also like to snag the 2-bay Network Storage Enclosure and stick a couple of SATA hard drives in it (two of the new 1TB drives from Hitachi, perhaps).

Also, I decided it was time for a digital camera. I found a great deal on a Panasonic Lumix TZ-1 camera for $199. It’s a 5MP camera with a 10x optical zoom, which is pretty much unheard-of in such a small camera. All the reviews I’ve read of it have given it high marks and I thought having a 10x zoom and anti-shake technology would make taking nice pics even easier. I haven’t gotten to test it out yet since my SD card hasn’t arrived yet. However, I’ll be sure to report my findings once I get the card. So far from toying around with it, it appears it’ll be a sweet camera. More to come on this one later.

I want an Xbox 360

Published

on Friday, January 12th, 2007

in Geek stuff and Opinions

. 1 Comment

…. and not a PS3… and here’s why.
1) The Xbox 360 has more good games out, period. Gears of War, anyone? Forza 2 is coming up. Project Gotham 3 looks simply badass. I could go on and on.
2) It’s $399, ready to go. Admittedly, buying an extra controller, wifi adapter, etc. will run your total cost close to quadrupe digits, but it’s worth every penny.
3)Xbox Live. It kicks ass, period. Voice chat with fellow players, game downloads, exclusive content for games, movies, tv shows, movie trailers… all kinds of cool stuff. Worth the money if you ask me. It’s infinitely better than what Sony has to offer online. Hell, Sony doesn’t even have a unified buddy list system such that you can only see who’s online playing the same game as you. Fucking idiotic!
4) IPTV is coming. Streaming TV to your xbox… pimp shit, I’m sold!
5) HD-DVD is optional, not mandatory. I don’t have to pay the extra money for the drive if I don’t need it just yet. Granted, I’ll end up buying it at some point… just not right off the bat.

Having said all that, the Xbox isn’t without its flaws. Yes, it’s loud as piss and runs so hot you could cook eggs on the CPU. I frankly don’t care. I have a home theater system that would have no trouble drowning out any noise it makes. It doesn’t support HDMI, but Microsoft has already said that it would be possible to do in the not-too-distant future. It doesn’t support 1080p; fine by me, I don’t have a TV that can display 1080p. The PS3’s piano black finish is infinitely sexier and it has triple the hard drive space. I can live with that… MS has even hinted at a new revision of the 360 that will include HDMI and a 120GB drive. I hate to say it but MS really seems to have an answer for everything Sony has tried. We’ll see how this all pans out but I really think the PS3 isn’t going to dominiate the market like the PS2 did.

More HD please!

Published

on Monday, January 8th, 2007

in Geek stuff, Life and Opinions

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Ok, to be truthful, Comcast DOES have HD channels, just not enough.. That’s my issue. I don’t have HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. so I miss out on a few more HD channels that I normally would have. Being that as it is, I get maybe 12-15 HD channels…. totally not enough for my tastes. What sucks is that now that I have HD, I really don’t like watching standard def TV anymore. The picture quality is really lackluster in comparison. Watching football in HD on ESPNHD is freaking amazing. Even Discovery HD Theater is fucking awesome. I’d really like to see more than ESPN and ESPN2, INHD, Discovery HD Theater, MHD (Music Hi Definition, a combo of VH1, MTV, CMT) and my locals in Hi-Def. I really wonder whether the issue is Comcast not offering the channels or the networks not broadcasting in HD. Hopefully once the digital mandate goes through and networks stop broadcasting in analog, it’ll free up some bandwidth to broadcast more in HD. Obviously in a perfect world, every channel would have its HD equivalent and thus all my channels would be in HD. I mean, I could understand leaving off the inspirational/religious channels and maybe all the home shopping channels. They could stand to be in standard def since nobody really gives a shit about them anyway. Other than that, give me all my channels in HD, please. Hell, I paid $750 for a TV plus $25 for a stupid HDMI cable and I’m paying extra monthly fees for the HD/DVR box. Give me my money’s worth, Comcast! Hell, Dish Network offers 30 HD channels. Surely they don’t have exclusive rights on ALL those channels. Unfortunately I live in an apartment complex and my southern view is blocked by a HUGE tree, so no Satellite for me. Honestly I may look into it when we move, but I’m not sure just yet. I just want more HD, damnit.

What you might not know about myspace

Published

on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006

in Articles and Opinions

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I found a pretty interesting article on what the founders of myspace used to do before they started up myspace. Turns out that for the most part they all had some doings with email mass marketing and spam. Not really surprising since myspace seems to be predicated around spam that the userbase actually seems to welcome. People sending unsolicited bulletins that I really could give two shits less about reading, advertising at every turn (thank god for Firefox & Adblock), unsolicited friend requests from bands and porn spammers… not to mention the website is horribly laid out and a majority of the time takes 8 years to load, if it even loads properly at all. I use it less and less everyday and I’m still not exactly sure why I haven’t bothered deleting myself other than 90% of my friends have myspace and it’s occasionally amusing to see the new pics my friends post. Anyway, here’s the article. Pretty interesting reading.

More Colbert hilarity

Published

on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

in Opinions and videos

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This time Stephen Colbert does his “Better Know a District” segment with the congresswoman from the District of Columbia. Hilarity ensues, just watch!

Technorati Tags: colbert, video, comedy, congress, interview

Stephen Colbert is the best

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on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

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Ok, first off I’m a huge fan of the Colbert Report. I don’t get a chance to watch it on regular TV so I just watch clips on YouTube when I can (usually at work or at home, depending on time). Colbert does a segment called “Better Know a District” where he interviews congressmen (and women) from various districts around the US. On this particular occasion he has Robert Wexler, a Florida congressman who is uncontested in the upcoming election and so decides to have a little fun with him.. just watch:

Obviously, it’s all in jest and Colbert is having some fun with a congressman and he happily plays along. No big deal, right? Well, leave it to Fox News to misconstrue the interview and spin it to meet their own agenda. Here’s video proof:

Fox News Edits a Democrat to Make Him Look Worse

MORE FOX BIAS: http://www.youtube.com/view…

In his interview on The Colbert Report, Congressman Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Florida, left himself wide open to malevolent editing. Fox News took the bait, as this video shows.

04:25

Unreal, eh? So Colbert, being the good sport that he is, does a spot on this week’s show in response to all the hubbub about Wexler’s “comments” on his show. See here:

All in all, it’s quite amusing how the average media outlets are spinning this obvious joking interview the wrong way… I wonder how many people are REALLY biting on it. Hopefully not many, that’s for sure. It’s been most amusing, though.

Technorati Tags: colbert, news, wexler, interview, jokes, comedy

Pablo Francisco is funnier than fuck

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on Friday, July 14th, 2006

in Opinions and videos

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Most of you probably haven’t heard of him, but this Pablo Francisco dude is just funnier than shit. I’ve found a couple of videos of him on Youtube and google video and I can’t help but laugh my ass off at his routines. He has one where he does his impression of the voice-over that you hear in most movie previews and whatnot. Amusing as shit and pretty much spot-on. He could do the voice-overs himself! Anyway, here’s a couple of videos I found

Bit & Pieces

Pablo Francisco making you laugh!

48 min 49 sec

This one’s 45 or so minutes long, so be warned. If you’re not on cable or dsl don’t bother.

impressions

comedian does movie intro impressions..pretty good

04:08

Cable TV costs too much

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