Wikipedia

You all knew it was coming, so I might as well get it over with. This rant will sorta flip-flop between supporting Wikipedia and throwing mud at them. Either way, it should be quite entertaining for the readers.

First off, I support what Wikipedia is doing. I think the concept is amazing. It's a knowledgebase of everything, created by everyone, editable (and thereby improvable) by anyone. It reminds me of Linux and the open-source community. Someone comes along and creates a great piece of software/information, then the users get to make improvements to it without any bias from the author as to its efficiency or otherwise. This means that the data goes through countless, and I mean COUNTLESS, filters, each one improving what the original and the previous patch failed to fix. In the words of the almighty computer god Linus Torvalds, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", meaning peer review does in fact serve its purpose. As such, I wish all the teachers and others who call Wikipedia articles "incredible" (in the bad sense of the word) would learn what peer review really means. You know what I think? Well, of course you do, but...they need to admit the only reason they don't want us using Wikipedia for research is because it makes finding information on exactly what you want easy and fast! That's right, boys and girls! Using Wikipedia is a great alternative to using Google.

Seriously, am I the only one who is tired of trying to write a research paper on Dill pickles, going to Google, typing in "Dill pickles", sifting through 70 pages of crap, finally finding a link that looks good, clicking it, and being taken to a Scandinavian porn site?! I hate the entire idea of researching topics. It's flawed, but Ill get to that in a different rant. The point is, if I'm doing research on the Internet, I don't want porn! Put it in a pop-up window, send it to my e-mail, call my phone during dinner time about it, whatever. Just keep it out of my way when there are thousands of dollars of tuition riding on my ability to find a site that tells me what I want to know.

OK, so as I promised, now it's time to tell you what Wikipedia is doing wrong. Simply put, they are Nazis. Each article is assigned a handful of Nazis who check the editing history of the article, and undo any changes you make to it. They are the only ones allowed to be right. If asked why they reverted your edit that took 15 minutes to type up and added needed information to it, they will tell you "citations needed" or some other stupid crap. I always find that excuse funny, because about 90% of the article lacks citations. Now, I hate the thought of citing (see above), but I believe in consistency. If you are going to require every word to have a citation, how about just make the article read "The (Bible, 1 A.D,)."

So, yes, Wikipedia has some retards with no lives that we need to destroy, but I think with some human ingenuity and exploding Star Wars collectibles, we can do it. As for the teachers, they will probably never acknowledge Wikipedia as credible and therefore must have their wages lowered so low that they won't even check for correct citation. Problem solved. See, America? You should've made ME president.

Sexism At Home

I love talking to people who dont understand the meaning of racism, sexism, ethicism, or even praline-pecan-ism, the most delicious -ism to ever exist. People just dont get that racism and sexism are give-and-take, not take-and-take. They are about EQUALITY. What does equality mean, boys and girls? Thats right! It means everyone is equal! It doesnt mean you are inclined to more of something than someone of a different race, or that you are inclined to different treatment based on whether your reproduction organs are inside or out. I could go on for days about examples of racial and gender equality being unbalanced, but Ill spare you all with one of my favorites.

Women expect men to leave the toilet seat down so when they go to use it, they dont become a warthog fresh from wallowing in the waters of the [insert river of your choice starting with 'W'] river. I always found it hilarious that men are expected to check the seat before squirting the daisies, but women cant do the same. One girl I talked to once said "Well, if its late at night and I have to go to the bathroom, I dont want to have to check to see if the seat is down." Oh, really? What a coincidence! Me neither! That would probably explain why the toilet seat has distinct yellow marks all over the place and the smell of, well, a toilet. In all honesty, youre probably doing your health a favor by dunking your doughnut when you have to go potty instead of coming in contact with the public restroom replica seat. Obviously we have to come to some sort of common ground here to end this blatant sexism in the female favor. You know, in a lot of cultures, men are the dominant species and women are expected to do all sorts of stuff for them. Maybe women should start raising the toilet seat for men? Nah, western swingers are way too chivalrous for that. That leaves us with three choices: [One] Get over yourselves, your laziness, and your perceived gender entitlements and just start checking the toilet seat before you sit down like men do to create gender equality, [Two] Unconditionally grant sexual favors, dinner, and all the other male demands to create the 'give' in the give-and-take equation, or [Three] men just start sitting down to pee, and you live with the stains on the adjacent walls from our lack of controllable flagstaffs. I wouldnt mind option two, actually, but Im sure we can all agree on the benefits to both genders with option one.

Microwaves

Microwaves are like the bane of the home kitchen appliances. For one, the name alone is lame. A Microwave uses microwaves to heat up food. Wow, so the device is named the exact same as the technology it uses? How lame-brained were the inventors of it? I think a much more suitable name for it would have been "Magical cancer box that turns the outside of my hot pockets into molten dough, but doesnt heat up all of the inside." It never fails that when I put some food in the microwave that was in the refrigerator from the night before, the plate gets so hot I have to hold it with an oven mitt, and the surface of the food gets so hot I cant eat it directly after heating it up, but the food that isnt in contact with the air feels like I just took it out of the freezer. And why is it that I heat the food up so hot? I dont know. I guess its because I was under the impression that if I did, it would affect ALL the food I put in and not just the surface. Then, if youre in a hurry or really hungry, you dont have time to play the stir-it-up-and-put-it-back-in game. So youre likely to burn the crap out of our lip with the first bite, then get a brainfreeze with the second. You would think that since we are in a sophisticated technological society, we would all be able to go out to Walmart and buy microwaves that actually reheat food all the way through.

It doesnt stop with the actual heating, either. Youve also got to wrestle with these buttons. Youve got the digit buttons that dont work when you press them once, so you press them harder and put the number on the display twice. Since there isnt a back button to erase just one of the digits, youve got to press the clear button and redo the whole time. Hopefully you dont do the same thing the second time, or you might be sitting in front of the microwave all day crying "I just wanted my pizza warmed! Why have you forsaken me, Microwave God?" Then youve got the thousands of other buttons that no one ever uses, probably because no one knows what they do. Youd pull out the manual to check them, but you threw that out a long time ago because you figured using a microwave is fairly straight-forward. As a result, youve got Mode, Sensor, Program, Omega 3, and other buttons just collecting dust. Its like a big, radioactive graphing calculator.

HopeLine Promotion

No, its not a rant or some other joke as usual. Im going to take a break from all of that to help promote two of the services that I think truly got "it" right.



Im subscribed to The PostSecret Project. PostSecret is like a catalog of human emotion. Every day, random people send in anonymous post cards with their most closely guarded secrets on one side of them, and every Sunday, a couple are selected to be posted on the PostSecret site. It is a truely great concept and I believe its one of the best credits to humanity. A couple of my friends and I have sent in some secrets of our own. Its a great feeling to know youre being listened to without judgement.

Recently, PostSecret asked those of us with the ability to promote HopeLine to do so if possible. Im doing my part. All of my websites now feature the above video on the front page. Its my way of saying thanks. Thank you HopeLine, thank you Post Secret, thank you for all that you do.

Nintendo Killed The Wii

The newest thing to be added to Nintendos already awesome arsenal is the downloadable content called WiiWare. These are games that you can buy from the Shop Channel, much like Virtual Console games. In fact, they are exactly like them in every way, except that they are often created by third-party programmers and the reason for this rant; THEY ARE HUGE! Seriously, the size of some of these games is astonishing. Now, if youre like me, you think "Oh! Size on a game cosole is no problem!" Yea...What you forget is that we are talking about the Wii here! Nintendo, in their infinite knowledge, thought it would be a good idea to limit the internal memory to somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 megs.

First off, are you kidding me? 500 megs is really all you can spare us, Nintendo? Ive got a $15 flash drive that can hold 2 gigs! Its surely not much bigger than your measely 500-meg hardware, and Id be happy to add $15 to my purchase to get those 2 gigs.

Second, the reason Im complaining about this small size. While Nintendo so graciously granted us the ability to plug in Gamecube memory cards and SD cards to store more data, the Wii cant run games from them! So, if youve got more than 500 megs worth of WiiWare and VC games, you are forced to juggle them between the built-in memory and external methods. This is unacceptable. If I want to play Star Fox one second, then play Zelda another, then switch over to My Life As A King, the only thing I should have to do is click the game from the Wii menu. None of this wrangling-with-memory-usage crap! If I wanted to play that game, Id go back to my Gamecube and see how many save files I could cram on a memory card before having to use another one.

Nintendo, I can safely speak for all of us when I say you completely fouled up the gaming experience. You alone killed the otherwise awesome love machine we affectionately refer to as the Wii. Until you offer an update that allows the Wii to run games from SD cards, or a service to upgrade the on-board memory, I will be upset with you and your awesome games that I cannot download and play because Im too lazy to swap around a million files. Really, come on. What were you thinking? You have failed.

Posts Pulled

I decided some of my old posts were a little too serious or biased, and took away from the comedic atmosphere of this blog. So, I commented them out.

Laughs all around, and the beers are on me! ^^

The Ultimate Cell Phone

A while ago, I got into a debate with a friend over how cell phone makers can justify selling hand-held devices for as much as they do. This ultimately led to us breaking down all the features a cell phone can have, versus how many people actually want those features in a phone. Well, a household-name cell phone company recently polled people who wanted or already had a cellular communication device. The management sat down and tossed around some ideas, citing the results of the polls.

They decided to start with a palm-sized, fat device that could only allow the user to talk into it and play back the voice of someone else with one. However, this wouldnt sell too well since the market for cell phones apparently wanted phones for more than just talking and also had the mentality that thinner is more convenient as well as "sexier", and every self-respecting business owner knows sex sells. So, they made the brick-sized device about as thin as their index finger, citing that poll results showed people hate fragile phones and drop them often. This meant they couldnt make the devices paper-thin because they would break way too easily.

Next, they looked at reception. A big turn-off for the polled people was the thought of being in the middle of a call and having it cut out unexpectedly. So, they added an antennae that jutted out from the phone. This lowered the attractiveness of the phone, so they opted to put the antennae inside the phone, which meant they had to expand the phone since the antennae was so long as to allow excellent reception no matter where the user would be.

The makers realized that the phone was lacking software and other communication options. The phone users demanded that they have a way of sending text-based messages, as well as access to the internet, especially to check MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. They added the software to do so, along with a teeny-tiny keyboard which fit over the numbers. But, another problem arose; the polls showed that another common complaint was that the users fingers would get cramped from using the small keyboard. So, they created a larger keyboard that attached to the phone. This was definately not attractive at all and was way too much work to have to carry around two different devices, so they put the phone screen on one panel, and the keyboard device on another, and hinged them. A flip phone!

Now, people were saying they wanted to be able to put music on their phones and plug headphones into them. They added the ports and software accordingly. The people were still not satisfied. They wanted the ability to take pictures and video like a camera as well. The software and camera was added.

The makers were almost satisfied with their new product, except for one last thing pointed out by the poll. People found it irritating that their cell phone screens were so small that they had to strain their eyes to read them. They decided that since the keyboard was already so big, they could fill the entire top panel with the screen. Another annoyance was that you had to use the keys to select what you wanted to do on your phone. People wanted a pointing device. The makers added it to the bottom panel along with the keyboard. Everyone was finally satisfied with the end product. The device sold out within a matter of days. Here is what the product looked like:



The moral of this story is that if you want a cell phone for more than just talking, YOU DONT WANT A PHONE! Buy a laptop! A decent one costs about as much as a cell phone anyways! What makes this story so funny is that it is, in a way, a true story. I asked a couple people what they liked and disliked about their phones and got answers that led me to believe these solutions were realistic.