Scootinger’s Blog

I’m sure all of you remember back in January when Apple decided to screw existing iPod Touch owners with its “January Software Upgrade.” Apple charged iPod Touch owners $20 for applications that they specifically excluded from the device in the first place.

As an iPod Touch owner, I feel really insulted and annoyed that they wanted to get $20 more from me when I had spent $300 (for some $400) on the device already. I can understand paying for an OS update for a computer, but it’s getting rather ridiculous when you have to pay for a firmware update for a device like an iPod.

Today, Apple announced that their plans to release the iPhone SDK. The applications will be usable on the 2.0 firmware update released in June - free to iPhone users, but once again a paid upgrade for iPod Touch users. Why should we iPod Touch users get treated like crap compared to iPhone users? No doubt because Apple gets a constant source of revenue from AT&T for iPhone users, but IMO it is no excuse for a company like Apple that sells rather expensive products. And as with the “January Software Upgrade”, this functionality is something that should have never been excluded from the iPhone/iPod Touch in the first place.

I was considering purchasing a larger iPod Touch or maybe even an iPhone. However, Apple will be very, very lucky if they see another penny of my money. I have spent $1600 on Apple products in the past 3 months (the iPod Touch and a MacBook), before when I had never owned an Apple product. I love both my Touch and MacBook, but I don’t want to spend any more money with a company that treats its customers like crap. And yes, I know that Apple is not obligated to give those updates out for free, and that they are in business to make money. However, part of their business should be treating their customers well, especially when its customers are paying a premium for their products. As such, Apple has lost my business.

Taken at the Wal-Mart in Edmond, OK. For the record the exemption only applies to clothing.

Here at QuakeCon 2007 a 17-year-old kid got caught stealing a PSP. He decided to steal the PSP from a guy not too far from him then went to the DC++ chat to try to sell it. Then the PSP’s owner finds the kid on DC++ selling his PSP right after it’s missing. And of course we all know where it goes from here…the PSP owner acts like he’s interested in buying the PSP, finds that it is indeed his PSP, and before long QuakeCon staff and the Dallas PD get him kicked out of the event. Rumor has it that he’s permabanned from the event and they may even be informing BlizzCon too.

This is a story from someone who knew the guy that had the PSP stolen:

“My girlfriend (Day_Dreamer) is actually to credit for this. This guy stole the PSP from a friend of ours and tried to sell it on DC++ chat. My gf private-messaged the guy and offered $190 to buy it. She then met up with him and tried to get the S/N off of the PSP, but the sticker that had the S/N was ripped off by the dude. When asked about it he gave a BS reason that it was a refurbished PSP and didn’t come with one. Later she and I did some research and figured out that you could also identify a PSP by the MAC address the PSP has. She then got a group of cops and Quakecon staff together along with our friend and confronted the dude once again. While asking the guy about the PSP he changed his story several times, ranging from “My brother got it from me” to “I got it for my brother” to “Someone just left it on my keyboard.” Our friend then phoned home to his mom and have her read the MAC address to his PSP off of his PS3, for he had copied the PSP’s firmware information to the PS3 when he got it. After reading off the numbers, and finding out that they matched, the asshole was busted, got all his free stuff that he got from Quakecon taken away, and was banned for life. Like I wrote earlier, my girlfriend did all the detective work and, yes, I am the luckiest boyfriend alive.”

As we all know, Paris Hilton was let free from jail after 3 days of her 45-day sentence by Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca. Of course since then, she was sent back to jail to serve the remainder of her sentence. But could Scientology have influenced her release?

First of all, Lee Baca is a very prominent Scientologist. He commonly appears at Scientology events, galas, etc. Next, Paris Hilton was visiting her psychistrist while in jail. As many know, Scientology is very anti-psychiatry, especially since they promote themselves essentially as an alternative to psychiatry. They often claim that “Psychiatry Kills.” And also Paris Hilton was released based on a “medical” condition that many think was actually a mental condition.

Could Scientology have been trying to recruit Paris Hilton to join their “religion”? Scientology seemingly loves to recruit celebrities, such as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and many others. And of course Scientology also loves to suck money out of peoples’ wallets; of course Paris Hilton certainly has a lot of money that she could give to Scientology.

So I think that Scientology (with the help of Lee Baca) was trying to recruit Paris Hilton by releasing her from jail and getting her out of psychiatry - how about you?

I was recently browsing on eBay and seller gameconsolehk is selling Toshiba SD-S802A HD-DVD drives for Xbox 360 for less than $100 shipped. At first I thought it was a typo or an unscrupulous seller. But I did some research and apparently it is the drive that Microsoft uses in the addon HD-DVD drives for the 360.

According to captain_video on the HTPCNews forum, the drive does have a non-standard connector, but you can use a laptop drive adaptor to connect it to the standard drive connector in your PC - IDE I am guessing, but possibly SATA? The drive appears to have special mounts on the sides, but maybe you can take them off to mount the drive in your PC? Aside from this, I couldn’t find a lot more information on this drive aside from eBay listings and a couple of firmware hackers.

This seems a bit weird. I find it strange that the seller seems to have no shortage of these (there are several listings), especially at such a low price. Also, if Toshiba can sell these at such a low price, why don’t they sell these at this price to the general PC user market? They would sell like hotcakes! What’s going on here?

Quick quiz: do condoms help stop the spread of HIV?

Most (sane) people, even many evangelicals, would probably say “yes,” even if it is from a statistical standpoint.

But John McCain doesn’t even know!

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

How dumb can this guy be? I would say that I’m politically moderate, and I did consider the possibility of voting for McCain if he is chosen to run in 2008. But I don’t think I would vote for a guy this dumb!

McCain doesn’t know if condoms help stop the spread of HIV (AMERICAblog)

Many people know that male drivers (especially teens) have to pay more for car insurance in the US than females, in some cases nearly twice is much! This is because of statistics that say that male drivers are more likely to get into crashes than females.

I’ve begun to wonder - why is this legal? Per federal law, it is illegal to discriminate based on gender, race, religion, as well as several other categories. Why is car insurance an exception, simply because of statistics and stereotypes?

What genetalia you have does not decide if you are a good or a bad driver. Just because some males have a tendency to do stupid things does not mean that the rest of us are this way as well. I’m a younger male that has been driving for about 2 years, and I have managed to only get myself into one tiny accident in which I didn’t even need to use my insurance, and no tickets either. But I know girls that have gotten into several major accidents. Just because I have a penis does not mean that I am going to be a crappy driver!

In the same way, why don’t the insurance companies give discounts to certain race groups? Why don’t they do some research on it, if there isn’t any out there already? I don’t intend to be racist or offend anyone, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s certain races that have a higher rate of vehicle thefts and maybe even accidents than others. Since they use gender-based stereotypes already, why don’t they use race-based stereotypes to increase prices for their higher-risk customers and lower prices for their lower-risk customers, and maybe make themselves some profit in the process? Does that sound right to you?

Simply put they should base car insurance rates off of factors such as the type of car that you own, driving experience, and number of crashes/tickets. Some of you may say that I am suggesting discrimination based on age, however I am suggesting that they set rates based on experience, not age. For instance, assuming that all other factors were the same, a 16-year-old new driver and a 30-year-old new driver should get the same insurance rates, since experience definitely does affect your ability to drive and your likelihood of having to make an insurance claim.

Do you hate Cingular? There’s 2 easy ways to get back at them, especially if you have rollover minutes you’re never going to use!

Recently I read that Cingular has begun to block free conference call services. The phone numbers for these services are located in remote exchanges in Iowa whose telcos charge the incoming carriers subsidies (often called “termination fees”) due to their remote location. These services locate themselves in these exchanges since they get a cut of the subsidies, which they use to run the service.

As a result, Cingular is not happy, since these services have caused their monthly bill for the “termination fees” to go from about $2000 to $2 million….within one month! They are suing some of the telcos over this issue, since they believe that this practice is illegal and in violation of FCC regulations.

Method 1

Sign up at FreeConferenceCall.com - all you need is your name and email address. You will get a phone number in the 712 exchange as well as an access code that you will use to begin the conference call. Call the number and put in the access code. It will place you on hold until someone else uses the same code to join the conference call. You can just leave your phone there overnight if you want to, while Cingular has to pay for it! Or you can actually use the conference call functionality - it supports up to 96 callers on one line! Have some fun with it!

The number that FreeConferenceCall gave me was not blocked yet however it eventually may be. If it is blocked, we can try Method 2…

Method 2

Find a 712 conference call/international calling number that is blocked on Cingular. Try calling it on your non-AT&T landline, Skype, etc just to make sure it isn’t a disconnected number. (I have not been able to find such a number…yet!)

When you do have such a number, call Cingular and complain about it. I don’t know how effective it will be, but they will probably take notice if a lot of people start calling!

File complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, Better Business Bureau, the FCC, and possibly your state’s Attorney General (links go directly to their complaint sites.) You have a legitimate complaint, since by paying for phone service you should be able to call any number in the US, and they are arbitrarily blocking these numbers because they don’t want to pay the fees. The BBB will most likely contact Cingular about your particular case and possibly take greater action if the volume of complaints is enough. The FTC/FCC probably won’t take an individual action but if enough people complain they will probably do something. Regardless, it’s definitely worthwhile to file complaints with all of them - it’s not hard at all.

I’m sure that some of you have heard of the American Family Association. For those of you who don’t know, the AFA is a very conservative fundamentalist/evangelical group. The AFA has several million members.

The AFA likes to whine a lot. They have been complaining for a while now about how Ford advertises in gay media. For instance, the AFA claimed that Ford explicitly supported gay polygamy because they had an ad in a gay magazine that had an article on the cover regarding this issue. If somebody advertises on a TV show that they don’t like, such as Desperate Housewives, AFA members will be writing letters to advertisers (see OneMillionDads.com), demanding that they pull ads from the show. When something happens on TV that they don’t like (e.g. Janet Jackson Superbowl incident or swear words on TV) you can bet that the FCC’s inboxes will be filled with “cookie-cutter” letters from AFA members. And you can’t forget that the AFA runs massive campaigns every holiday season, threatening to boycott any retailer that does not use the words “Merry Christmas” in their advertising!

I read an article by AFA founder Don Wildmon today called “Without Christian ideals, democracy dies“. It’s pretty obvious by the title that this lunatic seems to believe that Christianity (probably evangelicalism too) is necessary to keep democracy running. But it gets far, far worse! (more…)

Deals on Apple products seem to always be popular, because Apple stuff is almost never on sale. However everyone seems to forget about Apple’s refurbished store where you can get great deals on current-gen as well as previous-gen Apple products! These products all have the same warranties as new products. I’ve ordered from them before and the products are almost always in great cosmetic shape. They run out and restock all the time - if you see something that you want you should probably buy it ASAP, and if you are looking for something that is not in stock, check back every couple of days to see if they have what you want.

You can get a current-gen 1GB iPod Shuffle for $59, or a previous-gen one for $49. This is a great deal over the $79 you would pay for one otherwise. 2GB and 4GB current-gen iPod Nanos are $119 and $169 (respectively), taking $30 off of each. 8GB iPod Nanos are $209, meaning that those are $40 off. Previous-gen iPod Nanos can be purchased for an even larger discount - 1GB models are $79, 2GB models are $99, and 4GB models are $129. Current-gen 80GB iPod Videos are available for $299. Those are the only video iPods that are in stock as of this writing. If I recall correctly you could get the previous-gen 30GB models for $179, which is a great deal.

Of course they’ve also got great deals on Macs too. The base Core 2 Duo MacBook is available for $949 and the black model is available for $1299. If they restock the Core Duo MacBooks those would be $150-$200 cheaper (the base one was available for $799.) They don’t currently have any good MacBook Pros in stock but those will be 15%-30% off, depending on the model and type of processor. The $999 Core 2 Duo iMac sells for $849 and similar deals are available for other models. A Quad Intel Xeon Mac Pro can be purchased starting at $2199. You can even find old Power Macs and PowerBooks for even greater discounts. In addition you can get refurb Apple accessories, such as displays, keyboards/mice, and AirPort stuff at good discounts as well.