What we've got here is... failure to communicate

Fido calls me up and says they want to reward me for being a loyal customer by locking me into a contract for another 24 months. Well they didn't use those words exactly...

I goes I says I don't want a contract. He says he goes, "It's not a contract it's an agreement."

con·tract

n. 1. An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law.

So it's an agreement for 24 months. I axe the guy if there's any penalty for leaving Fido during that period. He tells me there's a "cancellation fee." So I repeat my desire to not be locked in. He goes he says, "You won't be locked in; you can change your service details any time you want." Confused, I axe if there is no cost for switching to another provider. He repeats that there is of course a cancellation fee.

Vendor lock-in

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.

Thanks for nothing, but no thanks, please, thank-you.

It's funny how they will use semantics to make it seem that they're giving you a gift. The gift of an offer to buy something from them. Well, I get that they would use different words to try to make the sale more appealing. What I don't get is saying "It's not the old word, it's the new word that means the same thing as the old word."

Here's an offer I'd like to see:

Fido would like to offer you a 24-month complimentary gift of service. This cellular phone plan has no monthly charges! Instead you'll only receive the Fido Happiness Convenience Bonus invoice, which will be automatically withdrawn from your bank account once a month. And, you can cancel this offer at any time, with no penalties! Instead of penalties, you will be charged a one-time Loyal Customer Farewell Gift fee of $200.


You can steal this if you want to, you sneaky Fido bastards.



Source for definitions: thefreedictionary.com

I can't hear ya. I say what's cooler than bein' cool?

Edmonton has now entered its period of polar night. We won't see the sun come up again until maybe February.

These days the temperature dips so low that our furnaces stop working. We try desperately to get them started again by shoving wads of newspapers into the coals, only to watch in desolation as the flames freeze into ice crystals right before our eyes, and turn to a cool dim blue light before fading out and falling from the air, shattering with a tinkle. Food is scarce as most of it has by now congealed into Bose–Einstein condensates, and has been rendered inedible.

Our only refuge is to crawl into the relative warmth and safety of our refrigerators, and try to balance shivering to stay warm, with staying completely still to conserve energy. Then we wait it out there until spring.

a pig in a cage on antibiotics

Skip reading this if you think ignorance is bliss when it comes to processed meat products.

Guess What’s in The Picture [Foodlike Substance]

Don't let the mouth-watering title seduce you into clicking the link!

Favorite lip-smacking quote: "USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) ruled that beef could no longer be processed this way, because testing showed that parts of the bovine central nervous system ended up in the meat." Well, I'm sure that, you know, not too much of a chicken or pig central nervous system ends up in food-like processed meat products due to this method. Maybe just enough to enhance the flavor of all the delicious pork rectums.

Nummy!

The truth is bendy

I was thinking about how people seem to make any side of a story true, if they want it to be. X is worse for you than Y because of blah and Y is worse for you than X because of other blah. So I tried it out. It's surprisingly easy to do!

This is true:

Did you know that cars actually generate water when you drive them? People think cars are evil or something, but they actually create this life-giving fluid that is required by all life as we know it. Meanwhile, trees, which people think are wonderful things for our planet, literally destroy much of the water that they use, breaking down its very molecules. By driving your car, you can help restore water into the atmosphere to replace the water destroyed by trees. Not only that, but people think that trees create oxygen; they DON'T.

IT'S TRUE!!!

You can steal this if you want to, you sneaky anti-environmental bastards.

Next Season on True Blood

The following is a transcript of a montage-style preview of season 4 of True Blood.

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Next season on True Blood...

What are you?

I'm a zombie!

Cut to:

What are you?!

I'm a wizard!

Cut to:

What are you?!

I'm a Hobbit!

Cut to:

What are you?

I'm a Jedi Knight.

Cut to:

What are you?!

I'm a Level 20 Half-orc Dual-class Rogue/Druid.

Cut to:

What are you?!

I'm a Crystalline Entity.

...

I'm a Cyborg from the year 2029.

I'm a Were-giraffe.

I am... a normal boring human. Obviously the last of my kind.

Prelude to a God Post

In a future post I will prove that god exists. The proof is pretty much the same as the proof that Santa Claus exists, which I will present here. It is a "proof by redefinition", which I am finding very useful in a world where more and more of what we experience can be shown to be subjective or relative.

Proof of the existence of Santa

First, there is evidence that Santa Claus exists. Every Christmas morning, millions of children wake up to find presents that are addressed from Santa. If you axe the parents of these kids, "From whom are these presents?", many or most will say "They're from Santa Claus."

Who then is this clearly existent Santa Claus? Every Christmas, millions of parents take on the role of Santa, buying the presents, signing his name. If you allow a definition of Santa that doesn't have to be "one person", you can call this collective group of parents "Santa". In the way that Santa matters -- bringing toys to millions of kids on Christmas Eve night -- this group of parents fits the definition. They also label themselves with this definition.

You can equally easily prove that Santa doesn't exist. If you define Santa as a magical fat human who lives at the North Pole and delivers millions of toys by sleigh, sequentially all in one night, you will not find much evidence of his existence. In fact you can easily find evidence of "impostors" (parents) planting false evidence of his existence.

And so, whether Santa exists or doesn't, or can be proven or not, depends completely on how you define "Santa". Fortunately, we're given plenty of opportunity to make such definitions. Santa is based on St. Nicolas, an apparently real human who did in fact deliver gifts individually. The idea of a flying sleigh, elves, and a North Pole toy shop are all part of a myth, built around St. Nick. The myth need not have anything to do with the actual definition of Santa. Whether you define Santa as St. Nick, or as the myth, or simply as a label to describe the role that parents take on at Christmas, is up to you.


Clearly, the same idea applies to "god". There is plenty of myth surrounding the concept of god, and we choose which myths to accept and which to ignore (Does god look human? Are there multiple gods -- a god of the sun, a god of the sea, a god of lightning?). Everyone has a different (if even just slightly) definition of the meaning of "god". Most of us are free to choose what god means to each of us as individuals, and many of us incorporate what we "think" into what we believe. And, we can choose to define god as something that clearly exists, or something that doesn't, or something that is not provable either way.

This week in news

RIAA Sues LimeWire for $1.5 Trillion

In what seems like a sad and ill-timed April Fool's joke, RIAA is asking for $750 for each song downloaded through LimeWire.

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RIAA Sues Radio Signal Receivers for $10 Trillion

People who are subjected to radio signals have been getting a free ride, according to RIAA.  "Radio stations are playing music that we own, and whether someone is listening to that song on an album that was purchased in a store, or if radio waves carrying that song pass harmlessly through their head, it makes no difference to us... we are still owed money for that song."  RIAA is asking for $750 for each song that is played on a radio station, for each person within the range of that station.

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RIAA Sues Pet-Owners for $250 Trillion

RIAA claims that pet-owners are not living up to their contractual agreements.  "When you purchase an album, you are purchasing a license to listen to that album, as an individual.  Pet-owners tend to have their pets around when they listen to music.  The owners typically don't realize that they are required to purchase an additional copy of an album for each pet that consumes our product."

RIAA has also stated that they may be introducing new licensing agreements that require customers to buy a second copy of an album if they listen to it more than 5 times.

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RIAA Sues India, China for $5.5 Quadrillion

RIAA has stated that consumers in India and China are not buying enough albums, which they are calling "Theft of potential profits". By their calculations, each person should be pulling their weight and buying enough albums for a collection of approximately 250 albums each, roughly the average for UK album owners.  At an average of 12 songs per album, and at $750 per song (the magic number that RIAA says each un-purchased potential song costs them), the bill comes to $2.25 million per person.  With around 2.5 billion people in the 2 countries, the total amounts to over $5,545 trillion.  "Luckily, with such large numbers, the theft of our potential profits is a very serious crime in these countries, and may even carry the death penalty as a punishment, which we think will really encourage people to pay up what they owe us."

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RIAA Sues Earth for $3.3 Quintillion

"Frankly, we're just used to pulling ridiculously inflated numbers out of our asses and telling people they owe us that.  The number we came up with, and it's an exciting one, is $500,000,000, from each person on the planet.  And, we'd like to have that money, so we think we deserve it."