Microsoft gets a clue

This didn't take long.  Made me wonder if the fine people at MSFT have been taking pages from the Netflix school of pissing off your customers.  They must have also learned from them when you're wrong you make changes.  Should have never been an issue though

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/19/tech/gaming-gadgets/xbox-drm/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Wilco...SO BORING. It's gotta be said.

It's gotta be said, Wilco sucks. Seemingly every music critic and too many music fans love these guys like they're the second coming of the Beatles and it's just been accepted as conventional wisdom.  I never got it, but just figured I was missing something, but it's time to say something.  (apparently I'm not the first person to say this...the obligatory Google search returns 4.3 Million hits for "Wilco Sucks").  I think I even bought it for a minute or two until I realized that the ONLY time I found Wilco palatable was "Mermaid Avenue", but  without Billy Bragg and the words of Woody Guthrie, Wilco is mind-numbingly boring.  They aren't even a good  "Alt-country" band, if they are classified as such.  Uncle Tupelo was better...maybe that is why everyone wants Wilco to be so good, to rekindle what they lost when Uncle Tupelo broke up

Anyway, I feel better.  

Do you even know what "Humbling" means?

"Famous" people need to stop saying everything is a "humbling experience". It's become the go-to reaction to anything that happens to anyone in media's eye. Getting busted cheating..."It's been a humbling experience". Win an Academy Award "This is a humbling experience". Wha? It's getting nearly as bad as the overuse of "Surreal" to describe every little thing.

NHL Player "humbled" by award

TO Humbled by Prison Visit to see Chad Johnson

"If you're not doing anything wrong...you have nothing to worry about"

So, I've heard defenders of the NSA spying on all of America (ignoring their semantic argument that they aren't really reading your emails and texts, just collecting them...as if that is different, maybe more on that later) say that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide or worry about".  Which is a classic line by despots, but also ignores some pretty basic tenets of PRIVACY and the 4th Amendment.

I found it interesting enough to comment on because some of the same people who have said this were the most outraged by the IRS looking at Political Groups (which by the way, they are supposed to do.  You can't claim to be a Non-profit, tax exempt organization and be a political organization.  So, if the IRS was looking at political organizations to ensure they were abiding by the law, why the outrage?  If they weren't doing anything wrong or improper they had NOTHING to worry about.  (Not to mention that NO  ONE has claimed that these organizations were shut down, only investigated to see if they were engaged in activities that were not allowed by Tax Exempt organizations...a HUGE  fact missing from the media's horrible coverage of that story)

Random thoughts on what little I know about Xbox One vs. PS4

So, I"m reading that Xbox will require us to be connected all the time, to not be able to share games or even borrow a friend's game and assorted other constraints like not being able to play old games (not sure if that's true).  I've read that if the HD breaks it can't be fixed, the box can't be messed with...and , having been stung by MS's crappy hardware with the original Xbox (3 of them stopped reading discs and had to be tossed) and the 360, another 2 bad optical readers.  I've experienced XBOX's HORRIBLE customer service when trying to deal with Xbox Live issues.  Including a friend whose account was suspended because they asked a question on the required blog (who supports a product in that manner) more than someone believed they should.  After the support people didn't answer the original question, they asked again and for that they had their account suspended.  I literally have never heard of a worse support model than Xbox Live.  (I'm probably going to suffer some sort of similar consequence for this post that no one will read, b/c that's the kind of customer service I've seen).

I've been a faithful customer of MS for...ever.  I've got tons of their products and we've got tons of games (and about 5 unusable Xboxs to show for it), but their arrogance and lack of support for Xbox and the new mandates.

It's funny I heard some talking head at MS talking about how their "always" connected mandate was like streaming Netflix versus getting discs at Blockbuster.  It seemed appropriate that they used that b/c it proves they don't get it.  My blu-ray player streams content from all kinds of places like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, but guess what?  I don't have to have it connected a SONY server to play a BluRay or a DVD.  I surely shouldn't have to be connected to play a game I paid $60+ for.

Sorry MS, I won't be buying another Xbox Product.  Sony's gonna get my business on the next console.

Wrapping yourself up in the Bible to justify your hatred...Not very Jesusy

Baptists leaving Boy Scouts...

For the past few years we've been hearing that religious people don't really have anything against gay people they just don't want to them to get married (we all knew that wasn't true).  Now, it appears they don't care for them after all as they can't bring themselves to tie knots with gay people.

Shameful..and I have NO DOUBT that Jesus would say the same thing of their selective readings of the Bible (we all know they don't feel the same hatred for people who eat Shellfish or wear two different types of cloth at the same time...) to defend their hatreds.



11 things you do that the Bible bans

Don't you feel safer

Choke Hold for a 14 year old

Nice to see some of Florida's finest choking out a child and defending it by saying he "clinched his fists" and made a look they didn't like.  Don't you feel safer?  This is real unbridled abuse of power...it should scare every American who loves Freedom and Liberty

The right-wing likes to talk about an intrusive government, but this is the real shit that people deal with every day.  Cops with issues acting violently based on whatever little thing sets them off.  This is real, not some ridiculous conspiracy theory of a government taking your guns, but notice the racist comments below the story.  I have very little doubt that the hateful comments are made by the same type of people who worry that "Obama is going to take their guns".  (see a connection?)

Shame on these cops and shame their management who defends this action.  Is a 14 year old clinching his fists holding a puppy REALLY a threat to anyone?  Maybe if you see every black kid as a threat and you take an opportunity to act out on whatever hang ups you're bringing to your job...