No other way to say it... They're just crap. We're not "allowed" to question Obama being raised as a Muslim. We're not "allowed" to bring up the fact that he, for 20 years, attended a church with a blatantly racist pastor preaching there. We're supposed to buy into the fact that, even though he went to the church for 20 years of his young life, Obama never agreed with his pastor. (As if we're supposed to think that something this controversial wouldn't force Obama to leave? People leave churches over less.) The media is trying their absolute best to keep all this covered up and restricted, but then what do they do to Governor Palin? Why, they conduct "behind-the-scenes exposes" on how her Pentecostal Christian upbringing might poorly influence her judgments in the office.

What absolute bull honkey. You're going to try to tell me that Palin's Christian background might be scarier than Obama's Muslim and racist background? Really? After telling me that Obama's church and childhood isn't what we should be addressing? You're going to hold us to a completely different set of standards while you go out and do whatever it takes to find something bad about Palin? Outrageous. What pure, unadulterated bias, favoritism and hypocrisy. I am becoming increasingly disgusted with the mainstream media over their treatment of Sarah Palin. At first I thought it was funny... Sad, but funny. But this is getting ridiculous! How can anyone in their right mind think this is acceptable? I'll tell you what... The people who think this is acceptable AREN'T in their right minds. Nothing is sacred to them. Because conservatives and Republicans hold themselves to some kind of standard and liberals and Democrats don't, they think they can tell us how to act and then go out and violate those very rules themselves. I want it to be very clear that I'm not upset because Palin's church is being investigated, it's the fact that the media went out of their way to tell us that Obama's church should NOT be investigated. I think that this stuff needs to be done... Someone running for such high office needs to be examined closely and OBJECTIVELY and TRUTHFULLY. But it's not being done. The Republicans are, once again, being held to a far stricter and deeper scrutiny than the Democrats are. It's always been the case, but this year it's especially telling. You'd think that with all the dirt that they try to dump on Palin that doesn't stick that people would realize that she's an absolutely awesome candidate. We know exactly what McCain and Palin are like because there's no media screen to defend them. When we try to ask Obama about something, the media steps in and takes the dirt for him and we never see what he, himself, is like. Absolutely preposterous.

If you ask me, I think the mainstream media knows they're on their way out. They know they've lost every ounce of their objective reputation with the country at large... The media outlets have been losing shares for a long time now. News is migrating to the Internet, where people can get the news they want, when they want it, from wherever they want and from who they want. They can get liberal trash opinions if they want, they can hunt for that source that's truely objective, or they can find a source of news that flavors everything with a conservative opinion. The Internet is opening doors to a whole new kind of media and it's really showing during this election. It was just beginning to show in the 2004 Election, but it's really showing its colors during this election. By the time the next election rolls around, state elections or federal, I think the mainstream media outlets will have lost all influence simply because people are starting to notice just how hard they're working to get a Democrat in the White House. True objective reporting at major networks is dead, plain and simple. All you have to do is turn it on and wait until they talk about Palin... They know she united the Republican party and they're absolutely terrified of her... So much so that they have absolutely no qualms about dredging up liberal lies and conconcting scandals. When they find out that we're not quite so stupid and start pointing out that Obama has more scandal than Palin on these issues, they suddenly go hush-hush and try to bury everything before pulling out the next set of lies and scandal and everything repeats itself.

Pretty soon, folks, if it hasn't happened already, they're going to run out of things to hurt Palin with. In fact, since they've been pulling out lies about her from the very beginning seems to insinuate that there's nothing in her past that can be used against her. Lie after lie, scandal after scandal has been debunked and, more often than not, been used by Republicans to show some gaping hole in Obama's policies that haven't been addressed before because the mainstream media is acting as his personal body shield. When something gets twisted back toward Obama, the media tries to cover it up and you don't hear them making the same accusation about Palin more than a few times. Inexperience? Out the door. "Troopergate?" A lie. Bridge to Nowhere? Debunked. Book banning? False. Latest ones are "Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a governor" and "Palin is a Pentecostal Christian." Do you honestly want to go there? Do you really want to equate Obama to being the messiah once again? Not only did Jesus not incite riots or push anyone to do any political change, Pilate went on record saying that he would leave the decision to crucify Jesus up to the people. Did you even bother reading the story? You're saying Palin is like Pilate, when, sure... Okay. Go ahead! She's been saying all along that she wants government back in the hands of the people. That's what Pilate did, in essense. But seriously... That's only if you want to keep pressing that particular argument. Honestly, after having fought so long for separation of church and state, the Democrats sure have worked overtime addressing their religious factors. It's a poor attempt to woo Christians who actually know what the Bible says... You only demean yourselves. Palin is a Pentecostal? So what? Obama was a freaking Muslim, his father a radical in Africa, and his "Christian" preacher a radical anti-American racist. Do you REALLY want to go there? You better think very carefully before you start pointing at Palin. The demons you're hiding might make themselves known.

It just makes me sick... I hope people realize what's going on here. Republicans have been the brunt of media bias for a long time, but I think this year it's become crystal clear to everyone. Anyone who thinks otherwise is plain blind and ignorant. The liberal Democrats and the mainstream media are out to crush this threat to their grand agenda and they will sacrifice anything and everything in order to do it. The great thing is that this person to be crushed will bite back, and then the Obama campaign and the mainstream media will stumble back and whimper and cry that the McCain campaign is being so mean and spiteful. "How dare you attack Obama's person, you hateful, bitter, gun and religion clinging people?" It's like the bully in the school yard... They'll go and push and hurt and cause as much mayhem as possible because they know nobody will stand up to them, but then the new kid shows up who's dealt with oil tycoons and corrupt politicians. She knows how to deal with these types of people and she goes after them... And then the bully runs, crying to the Principle because some mean kid is hurting him, cleverly leaving out the parts of the story that show the bully inciting the situation. Only this time, the new kid in school has rallied the other kids and they're all witnesses to the true events.

Alright, I think I've got my point across. I'm done ranting... I should go watch X Files or something.

So I was talking with someone... Let's call him "MisterMan". I just came back from a college class where we were supposed to give presentations on different operating systems and one of them gave a presentation about OS X Leopard... Of course, I knew at least one of them would.

We get all the way through the presentation, and then the typical Apple elitism strikes and there's a video with all the stuff Vista "copied" from Apple. You know... Important stuff like calendar applications and mailing applications and instant search. Yeah. If Apple has to point fingers at Microsoft and say "you copied our calendar!" Then you go right ahead. I didn't know you owned the concept of a calendar, but if you think you do, then by all means, continue thinking that, and if that's all you got on Microsoft as far as copying goes, then I think you're just being whiny.

Anyway, so I told this MisterMan guy that the first thing I noticed about the video was that everyone in that audience was laughing and pointing fingers at how silly and stupid their competition was. That's just typical for Apple... And so this IM conversation ensued:

(9:27:38 PM) GermanShepherd: Microsoft doesn't mock... EVER NOTICE THAT?!
(9:27:46 PM) GermanShepherd: They just do their thing and make their products stand on its own merit.
(9:28:05 PM) MISTERMAN: would you mock if you owned 90% of the world?
(9:28:23 PM) GermanShepherd: would you mock if you owned 5% of the world?
(9:28:35 PM) MISTERMAN: to make myself feel better, yep

Perfect! Just... perfect. Apple's the low-end of the computer market share and they're just trying to make themselves feel big and bad by pointing out all the things Microsoft ripped off of them. (Things like an RSS reader in the bundled internet browser. Aww, poor Apple. Microsoft put an RSS reader in Internet Explorer... They copied your hard work... Did Firefox copy you, too?)

Anyway, this is just one of my random rants.

Oh, oh! I have the perfect set of animals that Apple can use for their next chain of operating systems! They can use birds! Yeah! And they can start with the MOCKINGBIRD, hahaha. Ahem.

No, not really.

Okay people...

I thought it was pretty much common sense to people who know what a "windowed environment" is, but Microsoft did NOT copy Apple's windowed operating system. Your only proof that MS copied Apple is that Windows came after Mac OS. Using this formula, a windowed environment was not Apple's idea, either! It wasn't Microsoft's... it wasn't Apple's... it was Xerox's. (Yes, they used to make computers.)

The year is 1981. Xerox releases a device called the 8010 Star Information System. It sports the first occurance of a windowed operating system environment for personal computers. It was obviously something worth using... because:

In 1983, Apple released the Apple Lisa. Guess what it had? A windowed system! Two years after Xerox. Now before someone goes and says "well, Apple could have been making theirs before Xerox", you have no proof of that. Microsoft could have been developing their Windows long before Xerox, too, then, couldn't they. Everyone copied Microsoft!

It was in 1985 (yey! birth year!) that Microsoft unveiled Windows 1.0 to the public. So yes, technically, Microsoft made Windows after Apple made Mac OS, which was after Xerox made Star. Unless there's proof that someone actually started started coding one of their systems first, then using your method of saying Microsoft copied Apple? Apple copied Xerox.

Xerox pioneered the graphical user interface as we know it today. Everyone else copied. Apple did not create it, they didn't innovate... neither did Microsoft. I'm not bashing Apple, of course, but I am bashing fanboys who aren't getting the facts straight and try to get "free points".

Digg n00bs... honestly.

This is a technological rant. Comments and pingbacks are closed.
If you want to bring something to my attention... contact me in person!

For some time, people have been comparing AMD to Intel and saying "hey, AMD is better". It's like, okay... fine, whatever. I personally don't like AMD so I'm going to keep buying Intel. But I digress... To the point.

Here are some benchmarks for the latest processors. Before anyone tells me that benchmarks lie? Give me a break. They only seem to lie when people don't like the outcome. Anyway... check out the numbers. Intel is faster than AMD at the moment.

But, oh! Ho, ho... suddenly... you can't compare AMD to Intel because they're "apples and oranges". What? Since when? Apparently, the fanboys didn't bother thinking that while AMD was ahead, did they? Now that they're losing, they try to make the comparison pointless. It would have worked for them if they did that before this came out... but, nah. It didn't matter then.

Is AMD better than Intel? Maybe. They seem to whine a lot as a company, though. But that's not the point of this post. (I have experienced AMD processors before... they're nice. I mean... they're processors. Not much can go wrong if they work. I just don't have the money to switch my entire desktop to AMD when I have a bunch of Intel peripherals to use up, first.) But it just seriously ticked me off that all these AMD fanboys turned into a bunch of hypocrits and totally decimated any respect they had in my eyes.

It just hit me as I was (and still currently am) looking at various Lost-related stuff... People give me a whole bunch of reasons why they don't like it. Because it's not realistic... or because there's too much character flashback... or some other who knows what.

...and the reason I can't fathom why nobody in the Myst community watches Lost, is because Lost is a huge puzzle. ...and I guess I'm just rather stunned that fans of the best puzzle game in existence are just "ladeda, Lost isn't my type"... and I can't figure out how.

Even in flashbacks, you get weird AHA! moments and sometimes even see random encounters they have with the other passengers. Just in passing. Like opening a car door and hitting someone with it.

Lost is an amazing series. Incontinuities are most likely ever so subtle hints at a larger scheme... it is NOT predictable like I've heard people say. You think you have something figured out and WHAM, something comes along and so totally destroys your theories.

The writers and producers have what? 6 seasons already planned? As in... right now. 6 seasons. 6 seasons before we start to see the final larger picture about the Hanso Foundation and their Dharma Initiative and why they have little bases all over the island. What the "security system" is... and why there's a bunch of insane people kidnapping the survivors, and what the heck that Button does.

I don't know... I'm just frusterated, I guess. I cannot figure out why you guys won't watch Lost... I can't get enough of it, and it drives me crazy waiting for the next episode... and it drives me crazy when I mention it to some of you and it's just "yeah, that's nice".

Arrrrrrgh! Anyway... To those few of you I've spoken to that haven't seen it, or have only watched a couple... pssh. You stopped too early and I think you kind of know it. It's a puzzle! It's fun to try to figure it out! ...and don't you go telling me it's not realistic, because you fell for Myst and it's no where NEAR realistic.

So there you are! Visit some webboards... you'll see how much raw information has already been presented to us in various episodes, but aren't really able to make anything out of it besides random theories. Isn't this what we all did with realMyst and "Mudpie"?

The following is a rant... it doesn't have to make sense to you, or even really be accurate, but this is how I feel about the situation, and if you don't, well... I don't care!

So everyone thinks they can run Blizzard's World of Warcraft servers better than Blizzard, eh? They think it's down all the time? Authentication errors since beginning of subscription service? These morons are all spoiled brats...

They all say "well THIS MMO doesn't have problems" and "well THAT MMO is running just fine"... yeah. They also only have about 10,000 paying users. City of Heroes? EVE Online? I've heard WoW compared to them... WoW has, can you remember? If you're a whiny-butt troll, you probably conveniently forgot... WoW has 6 million users. 6 MILLION. Let's see how your servers hold up under 6 MILLION connections. Over and over again.

They say how realms keep going down unexpectedly for hours and hour... funny how I never see this happen. I play WoW, too, people, and I hardly ever see a "Urgent News" bulletin on the login screen unless it's Maintenence Day. Hey... scheduled Maintenence Day. Do you realize how lucky you are to have a scheduled downtime you can plan around? Most other MMOs will just go POOF!! until they're suddenly back up... and that evening of gaming you had planned was suddenly ruined.

Naturally, there will be unforseen problems that crop up in any computer system. That's all part of the universe we live in, unfortunately. Things decay over time. Nothing keeps running in the same perfect state. Servers crash... some more often than others. That's what happens when you build a computer using hundreds of different parts from different manufacturers. One flaw in one part will cause the whole thing some serious instability.

Lately, authentication problems have been cropping up, too. You provide your username and password and it kinda sits there saying "authenticating". I've only noticed this happening in the last 3 months or so... That's also when they were saying that they were well on their way to 6 million users. Of course, not all 6 million people are logging in at the same time, but potentially hundreds of thousands ARE. So yes, I think they need to replace that... but, oh hey, guess what? They have been!

One thing users tend to forget when things are going wrong... fixing things takes time. Yes, it also takes money, and you guys don't seem to forget that. "Blizzard has 15x6,000,000 dollars every month! This should be fixed!" Hahaha... no. It takes time, people... and it always takes more time than everyone thinks it should. You can't just rip out a server and replace it with a faster one in a couple hours and go "tada! All better!"

Remember that Blizzard is new to this, relatively speaking. They've made some mistakes, yep... they've fixed some mistakes, yep. They make new one, too. But ya'know what? I've noticed that... well... everyone does. If it's seriously bothering you so much, just pull your subscription and take it to your uber-popular little single-shard MMO that's always up.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and say... they can't stop. They're addicted to WoW and can't stop even if they wanted to... and they're resorting to ripping Blizzard over these "realm issues"... ouy.

Three words for you people.

STAR... WARS... GALAXIES...

People who've played it know what I'm talking about... I've seen other SW:G'ers say how awful it was compared to Blizzard's problems, so I'm not the only one who's noticed. People who whine about Blizzard have obviously never experienced a TRUE monstrocity.

Here, I'm going to log in right now, and I'm pretty sure I'll get through Authentication like a hot knife through butter...

...tada! 10 seconds. No lag. On, GASP!!! Maintenence Day!!! You mean to tell me that the realms are up at 12:22PM EDT?!! ZOMG!!! Er... ahem. But you see what I mean? Some days are understandably worse than others. Some days are so awesome that there's no complaining... but see, people take that for granted. So when the system is flawless, Blizzard gets no praise.

BTW, Maintenence Day doesn't mean... Maintenence DAY. It's only for about 6 hours. In the extreme early morning for Blizzard... when nobody's on. Sometimes they'll hit problems in a patch and it'll be extended an hour or two. Patch 1.10 was especially difficult for them, and the Maintenence lasted all day.

People were irate. "This always happens! FIX IT, STUPID BLIZZARD!" Good heavens, you ignorant whiners... a Maintenence Day has NEVER been so bad... and everyone's ready to yank their subscriptions. Welp... so long to you dorks. It'll be that much more pleasant without you going ballistic whenever there's an accident. Dangit, we were even given an extra day on our subscriptions. Were people grateful? Heck no... "Good, now if they'd only done this all along." or "Well, they needed to do this anyway."

Okay, I think I'm done... Since I wanna go do something else now, though I could probably go on and on and on. But you know, I think you all get the picture. I know I have:

The human race is, pretty much as a whole, an ungrateful bunch of people who expect to get the best when they want it, and take it for granted when they do, thinking they've deserved it all along.

(Ick... good thing I'm a dog... yey! Woof...)

Speaking of World of Warcraft... prepare yourself for a rant that'll have no impact on you if you've never played on a "Roleplaying / Player vs Player" (RPPVP) realm, heheh.

First, all Says, Yells, and Emotes are In-Character. Period. End of story. If you don't like that, then why the heck did you pick a Roleplaying server? It's a whole new ruleset, people. Learn to live with them. Don't expect to get around them unnoticed... Someone always notices when you break the "In-Character Rule".

Second, Whispers are only In-Character if your character is standing next to mine. I'm aware that Whispers are global capable, but whoever heard of someone Whispering at you when you're in the United States and they're in England? Common sense would be prudent here.

Third, Party chat is, once again, treated rather like Whispers. Though I tend to treat it like Say/Yell/Emote just to be safe... until that one moment where someone says they have to use the bathroom and they'll "brb" or when they announce that the phone's ringing and everyone needs to stop.

Which leads me to the fourth point... Talking Out of Character in In-Character communication channels is not forbidden. If there's an emergency, such as straightening out people who can't separate RP from real-life, please enclose your OOC speak in something like parenthesis. The most common and widespread method of doing this is saying something like: ((Whoops! I'll brb... I'm needed for a minute!))

Fifth, General global chat channels, including Trade, Local Defense, Looking for Group, Guild Recruitment and World Defence are all Out of Character. Period. The little infant roleplayers LOVE arguing about this without end. But literally only in the starting zones. Once you venture out into higher level zones, that argument disappears, because now you're surrounded with slightly more intelligent players who realize that there's no way people could yell across the forest without actually using the Yell command. I ain't joking... that arguement will stop dead and you'll never hear about again. (Unless you pass through the starting zone again.) So my point is... there's no point argueing. It's already technically been decided in the WoW RP realm policies, and those who stick around and actually level up a character on those realms eventually realize there's no use fighting.

Sixth, don't use Trade to gab about random crap. It's a global channel because it's SUPPOSED to be useful. People actually read the Trade channel to see if there's any loot to buy at decent prices. ...when you go mucking it up by screaming about how some player stole that super special item off the corpse without asking, not only does nobody care, but you're being extremely selfish by hogging the screen in 4 major cities with your spam. Don't do it. You'll get more of a bad reputation than the thief.

Which leads me to my seventh and final point. Learn these rules so you can separate Roleplaying from Real Life. You'll make Roleplayers upset that you're screwing up their play, and you'll get angry at something that, after all is said and done, had absolutely no impact on YOU as a player until you went and made a fool of yourself.

I was in Goldshire with my kickbutt Level 30 Druid. I'd just logged in and was leaving the Inn when I heard a serious battle happening outside. I peeked out the door and my fears were confirmed... some Warlock had, once again, for some reason I can never understand, released a very powerful demon on the village and all the little level 10 and 20 players were trying to kill it... and everyone who COULD actually kill it were standing by and laughing at their brave but ultimately futile attempts to protect their town.

After it was all said and done (some high level druids finally took up the defense and destroyed the demon), still amidst the laughter of some lame Level 60 Warrior from the not so cool guild called High Impact. Anyway, before this all happened, I pubically said, IC, with my character, something like: "I see that the warlocks are showing off their flawless control of demons again." (My elf is a Druid... Druids (should) be flat against demons and those who think they can control them... so my character is always dripping sarcasm and disdain when speaking to Warlocks.) I don't think the offending Warlocks heard me, though, since I didn't get a response... but after the Infernal (the name of the super demon) was destroyed, I actually used Yell so that the entire region could hear me and said something like: "You've gone and shown your perfect control over demons once again, stupid Warlocks... how arrogant." (Technically, from a character's standpoint, people died because a Warlock was playing.)

Anyway, this time the offending Warlock heard me, and starting using Yell, too, and he was actually Roleplaying... BUT! At the same time, I got like a tell from every other Warlock in the area, yelling at me that I just offended each and every Warlock in the zone, because they weren't involved with the attack. Now... Tells are also Whispers. So I seriously looked around me for all these names that just verbally assaulted me... and I couldn't find them. If someone whispers you from so far away that you can't even see them... it's OOC. I don't care what you think.

So I replyed on General, "To all the warlocks who just whispered me, learn to RP, kthanks." ...and a couple responded and apologized, saying they thought I was serious. I'm sorry? You thought I was speaking my real feelings about Warlocks and their players? That's........ well, that's dumb. I was using legitimate RP channels that should only be used for RP, and you thought I was talking OOC? Man, talk about a serious buzzkill. I was sooo upset that I just got flamed by a bunch of people who didn't know what Roleplaying was...

ON A ROLEPLAYING SERVER!!!

Moral of the story: lern2play