Another DRM infested music store closes - music becomes worthless

Back in April I wrote about Microsoft's music store closing, thus rendering any music purchased from that store worthless. Why? The music is DRM infested, and thus will stop playing after they switch off their servers that are needed for license veri... (more in the full post)

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There are subtle changes around the world all the time, some of them more obvious than others,

As many suspect, some know and some redicule,
These changes are effected by the annoymous controllers of the world, the ones who cause wars for financial gain, those who control the world economies, those who ensure the greater populace is kept in the dark from knowing the real story, and keep us from interacting with our friendly Aliens from neighbouring systems.
Some say they are really members of the ruling lizard Army,
others swear its the illuminati, perhaps its the government, or those with the black helicopters and red sports shoes.

I cannot say for sure who these anonymous fellows are, but I do know one thing for sure. they are at it again.


this time with the humble Match. the unobtrusive supplier of fire, lighter of ciggarettes, cigars, candles and incense sticks,



How many Matches in a standard box of Beehive "Safety Matches"???

I bet many of you will state "50" and in the better, more positive days of old, when the future was bright and mankind controlled its future you would have been correct.

I your intrepid investigator, went deep in the depths of the conspiracy, risked life and limb and discovered an earth-shattering revelation, something that could rock your perception of reality to the core.

be prepared for this. it is a shocking, terrible revelation.

THERE. IS. NOW. ONLY. FORTY FIVE matches in a box of "behive safety matches"

Surely this is the beginning of the end, the controllers, those secretive evil overloads are plotting to de-evolve the human race,

sure you say, it could be a cost cutting measure, who really uses all 50 matches in a box of matches, BUT NO!

At the same time this sinister ploy was rolled out, the cost for a humble box of matches rose by 10 cents!

Again! I hear you say, surely this could be coincidental, the cost of everything is rising due to the cost of fuel for transportation, and this surely will effect matches too.

WRONG AGAIN!!!  Pull the wool away from your eyes! that is exactly the sort of thinking they want! they want you to believe it is a result of a highly complicated series of economical factors locally and abroad causing the costs of manufacturing to increase.

AHA!  I hear a few of you say, you think you are smarter than that, you think that you have seen through this, you think,
This is a straightforward capitalist move, in which they are covering increased costs while increasing margins by dropping the number of items per unit by 10% meaning they can produce 11 units for at a cost only slightly higher (the cost of the extra box) than the cost they previously had for 10 units.

Ah my poor, naive populace, oh how I envy your blissfull sleep wrapped in your dillusioned reality.

This is only the start of the plan, these "Men X" have a sinister plan to de-evolve the human race into cavemen level humanoids.

You see. we have grown too much. we have too much of the Internet, at first they thought "Aha this internet. it is the new Television, in which we can place many time-taking activities, more intellectual soylent green, we can use this to gradually increase the depth of the reality disfunction"

-But Alas for them and fortunately for us! we have moved past.

whilst many get trapped, and sucked into the mass mind control vortices that have been created, projects with codenames so terrible I cannot mention, but which were re-branded into friendly sounding names until you realise the ominous portents of what these names portray.

these mass mind control vortices such as "MY SPACE" a secret covert program derived from
Mind Yoke, Situation Programming And Control, and another similar covert black op "FACE BOOK" a name that fills me with such ominous dread  I dare not delve far for fear of causing horrors such as were envisioned by HP Lovecraft, but let it be said it was a covert operation linked to Fully Assimilated Control Environments..

But these vortices were still not enough. they had to push further least we discover the truth.

and that is where the diabolic plan to de-evolve the human race has sprung.

it starts of small. they reduce the number of matches in a box by 5 and increase the cost by 10c.
that looks innocent enough on the purpose, but if you look further you are getting 10% less, for  20% more cost,

That is only the beginning. soon they will perform this step again, and gradually spread it out to other devices in which to make fire, gradually decreasing the resources and increasing the cost for us to create fire to such an extent that we no longer have the facility for fire,

One may point out that "what about friction - rubbing two sticks together" - this is one of the reasons their plan is soo diabolically cunning.

Citys were created for just this purpose. to eradic the availability of "sticks" and make us wholly dependand on store bought combustion created materials.

Soon we will be stuck wilth very few sources for ignition, and fewer for burning and keeping those fires lit.

"Environmental Sustainability" = "systematically remove mans capacity to make and keep fire"

if we do not prepare ourselves. we will become what the goal of their master plan is, a sub-human race of cavemen like bipeds the perfect slaves t operate their intersteller fastfood chains and cleaning resteraunts whilst they put their hyper intelligent robots to valuable tasks such as enabling awkward teen overlords to score with the hot overlord teen chicks who know about cars, by changing into a car with a cool engine then becoming a futuristic robot that deathmatches other robots before amusing crowds with puns involving Ebay.

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So, I'm sitting here in the Qantas business launge of the Sydney airport, waiting for my flight back to Auckland. A few tables across from me someone has just powered up his laptop. I know it's a business traveler, because his laptop has a business c... (more in the full post)

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Yesterday I posted about Telecom New Zealand's lack of a "meter" for their mobile data. Here is something that I thought would illustrate the issue well...

Let's say you rent a car on a monthly basis, for work. You agree to pay $49.95 a month if you drive up to 1,000 km per billing cycle, and $1 per km after this.

You decided on 1,000 km because you thought this could cover your average daily usage multiplied by the number of days in the month.

You get the car and notice there is no meter in it, but the rental agency tells you it's ok, they are monitoring it within their system, remotely.

You drive away. During 30 days you have no exact idea of how many kms you've done. You have to keep calling the company to find out how many kms you have driven so far, and calculate to see if you are still within the expected average.

Then you receive the monthly bill. You look through five pages for something that says "kms driven this month", but instead you find "times you started the car this month". And a charge for the rental.

Does it make sense?

No. Neither does Telecom New Zealand's "data sessions" line in the bill. They don't tell us how many megabytes or gigabytes we used during the month, only how many times we used it during the period.

Telecom, are you going to fix your systems?

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On a rainy day I parked on Tory St, Wellington and used the convenience of paying my parking via SMS. That would be $4 for two hours, plus $.50 for the privilege of not having to carry coins. But instead of getting the little piece of paper with the ticket to put in my windshield, I got an error message:

"Transaction rejected"

Interesting. But I immediately got a SMS back from Telecom saying "thanks, we debited your account for $4.50".

Bummer. So instead I decided to use a credit card. Again I got an error message:

"Transaction rejected"

Hmmm. It looks like the machine may be out of paper, but the developer for this company decided to stupidly save some bytes instead of providing a meaningful message - and a transaction rollback.

So I walk to the next machine, pay and display the ticket in the windshield.

But I wouldn't be short of $9 today, right? I called the Wellington City Council, explained what happened, and was assured someone would call me back to arrange the refund.

You guessed right. No one ever called me back.

Like so many other New Zealand businesses, getting you off the phone is what they want to do. The Wellington City Council is quick to slap a fine on your car if you are over five minutes in the parking lot, but they don't want to move a finger to refund you money that they took without providing the service.

By the way I am looking at my credit card statement. This was on 17 June. More than enough time for the Wellington City Council to come back to me.

End of rant of the day.

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This week we got the news Microsoft has released an update for Windows Live Mobile. No, don't go updating your Windows Mobile Pocket PC yet. Read on.

First the good news: this update enhances Windows Live on your Windows Mobile. Great. But if you have Windows Live Messenger on your device (installed by an OEM), don't install this update yet. Read more.

Windows Live Mobile is really cool - it enables push e-mail for your Windows Live accounts (this includes Hotmail and even the Geekzonemail accounts).

Here is the bad news: Microsoft stopped providing Windows Live Messenger with Windows Live Mobile - a departure from earlier versions. And if you have an old Windows Live Mobile version with Windows Live Messenger, installing this new version will disable the Messenger component.



The Windows Live Messenger files are still in the system, but the program won't start at all. Uninstalling the "update" will automatically revert to the previous version and enable Windows Live Messenger again.



What is really annoying is that Microsoft makes Windows Live Messenger available for RIM BlackBerry users, but leave Windows Mobile users in the cold, waiting for operators to release their software (which we all know ain't gonna happen any time soon).

If you don't have Windows Live Mobile on your device (some OEMs don't include it), then you can download it now - and use a third party software for communicating with friends on Windows Live Messenger. Try one of the following:

- Fring (free, multiple IM systems, Skype, SIP, Twitter)
- Pocket MSN
- MSN Messenger Force

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