The United States Post Office

I think that the Post Office under charges for first class stamps. I am talking about the regular stamps you use to send a single regular letter, or in most cases a bill.

Here is my reasoning: Once, a few years ago, I was spending an evening with friends and we ordered out for sandwich delivery. Upon looking into my wallet I discovered all I had of any value was $2 in cash and four $0.37 stamps. I announced my cash situation to the group and asked if anyone would cover me. One offered to do so, and because I am the kind of person that does not like being in debt (even for $4, and even knowing I will pay it back tomorrow) I asked my friend if he would accept the stamps as payment of the debt. He asked essentially if the stamps were of the current value saying, "I put one of these on a letter and it will get delivered?" I replied, "Yes," and he agreed. So essentially I exchanged $3.48 in value (plus delay and uncertainty and lack of interest) for a $6 sandwich(plus tip).

The next step in my reasoning is what my father always told me about collectibles but extends as a rule to the entire economy. Something is only worth what you can get someone else to pay for it. The inverse of that principle is best exemplified by Starbucks, which has gotten people to pay ridiculous prices for coffee.

If you stop and think to yourself about what the Post Office actually does and their relation to the reality of communications technology, the Post Office really offers a premium service. If you need to get an original physical document or object to another location, that is a premium service given that it is such a rarity. The problem with that is that it is a rarity and if the Post Office raises their prices too much too fast then they will have fewer customers and those customers will be sending fewer things.

I really think the value of a stamp is somewhere between $1 and $2. What actually charging that value would mean to the operations of the Post Office is another matter. Unless situations like the one I described above start becoming common, where stamps are being exchanged as currency for three times their value, I think it is unlikely we will see large increases in the cost of a first class stamp.

The Friday Bacon

I am sure you have seen this out on the Log Cabin somewhere. Originally a joke, but the visual design of the product is excellent.

Gygax Statue

It has been two months since a non-bacon article and I break our silence to announce that Gary Gygax's widow is planning on erecting a monument to his greatness in Lake Geneva, WI. The article is sparse on details, but I assure you that if the opportunity presents itself we will place whatever fund raising widget they create on this website as well. I have not been to Gen-Con since WOTC took it from Milwaukee and created several clones, but I may just have to go to the 2010 event if there is going to be hoopla about the Gygax statue.

Time Warner Seeks to Destroy the Internet

Like a cartoon villain, Time Warner has enacted a devious plan that promises to destroy something that brings joy to the people like you and I. If you haven't heard about this yet, Time Warner has begun testing a tiered system where they charge you by both the speed and total amount of bites you operate at in a month. If you aren't feeling outrage right now, then you don't understand what I just said.

Time Warner is attempting to take advantage of the average person's ignorance of how computers and the Internet operate by manipulating ambiguities in language to make it seem like there is somehow a finite amount of Internet out there. When operating under that vague understanding of resource use that is so obvious in the physical world, it seems reasonable that they would want to charge us for how much of something we use. The thing is that this is a deception. There is not a finite amount of internets out there that one day we might us up much like we might one day use up all the oil. There are just limits on how much can be delivered to a certain number of users at any given moment. Which is why the erroneous "tubes" analogy is so attractive.

It is helpful to think of this from the end of the ISP. Faced with the need to consistently upgrade their capacity to handle many more and more customers at the faster and faster speeds that are needed to run the more and more intensive operations we perform over the Internet the ISP decides, not that the costs will one day become prohibitive(because as the Wired graph shows, that simply isn't true. And simple logic tells you that if they faced a problem of overhead they could simply raise their rates. They are the cable company after all), but that since this technical reality creates users of different needs, using a different metric vastly changes your rate structure and you can balloon your revenue.

The simple capitalist, free market logic is obvious here. Where you have a monopoly in your individual markets you can charge whatever you want. Since most regions of the country are serviced by a single cable company or ISP they can all do this without fear of being out competed by the numerous other companies out there. The only customers that will be spared are those that live in competitive markets. And sure enough ATT has started testing this idea out themselves. Now Comcast, the big villains of the last bandwidth war are looking competitive because all they have is a cap.

The slightly less obvious reason that is highly compelling for a cable company to do something sinister like this is that they are a cable company. They are primarily in the business of offering TV entertainment and people going over to the Internet to get their shows whenever they want(even their own customers) deprives them of a customer for their other services, and of ad revenue since people are having difficulty finding satisfying advertising solutions on the Internet. Largely because you have accurate measures of how effective your ads are on the Internet where they are cheap, but have to pay top dollar for television ads that are widely believed to be entirely ineffective.

The tiered structure is basically Time Warner punishing online gamers and online movie watchers for getting their entertainment elsewhere.

The tiers are also very low. Or at least in the way we measure Internet use anymore. Time Warner points out that their first tier, 1G, satisfies the needs of a third of their customers. These are basically the people that don't use the Internet. I admit that these people will probably pay less for the same amount of Internet. Anything above your grandmas Internet use enters an onerous tiered system where you pay for each gigabyte you use. In a month.

Apart from the possibility of viruses and malware using Internet without your consent and beyond your control, this is an attack on the basic philosophy that has led to the Internet and computer use as we know it. We all converted over to cable Internet because it was fast and primarily because we didn't have to pay for every minute of Internet use through a dedicated phone line. It freed up so much of the initial cost barrier of the Internet and increased the speed to the point where it became the multi-media communications tool it had always promised to be. This type of Internet service created the concept of the computer as the always-on, always-connected Internet terminal. This philosophy of the personal computer is central to the way we think of computer use and central to how software operates. Going back to a tiered structure where one pays based on an almost arbitrary metric is an attack, an attack based in greed, but an attack on the philosophy that was foundational to Web 2.0. We will never be able to proceed to Web 3.0 with this albatross around our necks.

That is where monopolies hurt business. Even regional ones. This was a lesson we learned around the last great depression and hopefully with a Democratic congress it is not a lesson we will have to re-learn the hard way. There is at least one Congressman trying to fight back. He has proposed the interesting philosophical change of calling the Internet a utility. I like that. If phone service was essential to daily life enough to be called a utility then the Internet is as well.

You should write to your representatives at the state and federal level. Raising Cain on the Internet will only go so far to produce resistance to this move by Time Warner and Ma Bell. You have to get the honest perspective of the people to the government before the industry twists the story.

It's easy to question the validity of an economic argument that relies on the business generation of the Internet. If you are a moron, or have been living in a cave since 1990. It is easy to point out that many small businesses and individuals have been able to expand their sales and start new businesses because of the low overhead cost of the Internet and its ability to reach an international consumer base. But there are specific businesses that will be impacted by this kind of tiered Internet usage structure. Online gaming is the first that comes to mind. This is now the primary business model for game manufacturers. Every gaming platform is connected to the Internet. The single player content is often secondary in importance to the users of the games. And every gaming device now can download new titles entirely from the Internet. This new business model for the gaming industry that drastically reduces overhead and cuts out the middle man would be jeopardized by requiring gamers to engage in a cost benefit analysis of whether the game would be worth the additional tiered charges.


I currently use Time Warner service to access the Internet. But that will change as soon as I can find an alternate service provider. The only thing a corporation can understand is their own greedy, short term, self interest. So the only way to communicate with them is with money. So I will be taking mine away from the finks at Time Warner for even thinking about using the byte as a metric for billing.

Feingold's Proposed Amendment to the Constitution

Anticipating the Worst

John Kerry hosted a discussion last week where he had a round table of experts engage in hysterics regarding the recession and asked them to criticize his party's stimulus, the one he cosponsored. One of their doomsday warnings was that major wars, such as World War II, are preceded by long periods of economic recession. They predicted such an outcome if the current recession lasts, oh say more than two years.

This, in relation to certain things I have been hearing people say, leads me to be concerned. My specific concern is a sensitive one to discuss, however I feel that it is necessary to discuss in the interests of preparedness and prevention. The subject of race riots. If we recall, WWII and most regional conflicts in recent history were preceded by racial unrest or have a racial element to the conflict. Iraq, Darfour, Bosnia, Rwanda.

The things that I have been hearing that worry me are a linking of the effects of the recession on individuals to illegal immigration of Hispanics. I have heard people remark, "why should I be worried about the civil rights of illegal immigrants I can't even find a job myself." To be sure, I have only heard this sentiment coming from racist people who already bemoan bilingual signage. Still, the linking of the bad effects of the recession on individuals, by the individuals themselves, through the issue of illegal immigration, to a specific racial category of people, is what worries me. The immigration debate already inflames gun toting extremists to the point of mobilization. And the Minutemen were in existence when we were still relatively prosperous. I fear the recruitment power the recession will have for violent racist radicals.

This will be the kind of thing that plays out like prior race riots. On the streets in the poor parts of the country people will feel the pressure building every day. That sense of racial tension will never see the light of day in the MSM until the flood waters suddenly burst forth in a regional paroxysm of violence. Local riots will break out and only local outlets will cover them until they become either large, or last multiple days, or become shocking in some other way. Then the national MSM will start saying what had been obvious to 1/4 of the country for months. This will all be a complete shock to white middle class midwesterners who will wake up one morning as the MSM brings their attention to race riots already in progress.



Honestly, I hope it doesn't happen that way. Maybe it will just be local like the riots over the killing of Oscar Grant III. Or maybe the racial tension will never reach critical mass, or maybe the catalyst will never appear. I am just worried at the pace with which racist sentiment against Latinos has changed under the influence of the recession. For practical purposes, we should be concerned with good relations with Mexico because a good portion of their GDP is remittances from the US, and they recently discovered epic shit tons of oil. We should stay friendly with our neighbors.

The Friday Bacon

The image is of bacon grease filtering into the grease cup. I feel remiss for not posting this before the New York Times and Yahoo. But at least I got there before Ric Romero. If there isn't already a patron saint of bacon, Jason Day deserves that honor.

I Know What You Mean

Here I was innocently looking for pictures of cute hippo babies and there is this story about a hippo that was separated from its mother by the tsunami and it started hanging around with a tortoise. Awww, cross species cuddling right? And, BAM! the author has to throw in some anthropomorphizing religious BS.

Comments

We have recently decided to moderate a comment for the first time. Being advocates of not just free speech but offensively free speech this decision burns us like white phosphorous. I often say that if people aren't trying to take your freedom of expression away from you, then you aren't actually using it. However, we here at the Fringe Element agree that this is not the place for unrestrained purely profane textual outbursts.

We like to think that every time we use an offensive word it is as carefully chosen as every other word we use in our works of expression here. When we swear or present an offensive concept it is to either focus the attention of the reader on the emotion evoked by the idea or calculated to knock the reader off balance in order to shock you the reader out of comfortable ways of thinking, or the word may be chosen simply to properly express our own emotional response to a situation in the news. But vulgar outbursts by anonymous posters have no potential of adding value to what we are trying to do here. Though it pains me to say even that much. If this post was a purely vulgar attack from a person that identified themselves it might have value as an expression of that person's emotional reaction to our content, but as an anonymous outburst from the tubes its just the kind of behavior that would embarrass the poster's mother. Really, you should think of what your mom would say if she saw you filling the wholesomeness of the intertubes with your potty mouth.

Anonymous posts have been a source of much enjoyment for me personally. Contributing to a blog has given me the opportunity to be exposed to the kind of virulent criticism, madness, and ad homenim attacks that can only be generated by painfully sane and mundane minds. I am glad that the intellectual hurdles involved in operating a computer, gaining access to the Internet, surfing the Internet, literacy, and posting a comment don't include the ability to think clearly and express oneself. If they did, the log cabin would be a much less entertaining place.

So we have decided to continue rejecting anonymous profane comments without context as a matter of policy. This is because, without posting your name to such a comment, we are unable to verify whether or not it is an actual person making said comment, thus we do not have to worry about violating an individual's freedom of speech. So if you feel the need to simply leave a profane remark, have the character and gumption to put your name to it. Also, this type of comment doesn't benefit anyone, even the individual responsible for it. It doesn't serve to elevate the discourse, provide any more information that might be lacking from the original posting, or doesn't meet the aforementioned 'mother' criteria, it only makes the commenter vent some emotion and lowers others' opinions of him or her. If on the other hand, you feel passionate about a particular subject and are offended by our thoughts, conceptualizations, ideas, or writings, and comment in a form such as 'fuck you, X is (positive adjective) because Y', this type of comment would be acceptable. So, in summary, please try to keep your comments above the level of an elementary school ad hominem. Thank you for reading, and we hope that you continue to enjoy our content here at the Fringe Element.

Of Urinals and Broken Zippers

This is a picture of the pull tab from someones fly in the bottom of a uninal at my work. Its been there since before Christmas. Just wanted to share that with you.

The Friday Bacon

Three Panel Soul has a cute comic about bacon ice cream.

The Friday Bacon

This is me frying burgers and bacon together. it makes both of them taste much better than just combining the two after the cooking process.

Aparently the whole bacon thing wasn't original, even the concept of the Friday Bacon was thought up by some other blogger. I wish I had thought of it first so I could get all uppity.

Game Review: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals My Life as King

Released two weeks ago with the first batch of Wii Ware FFCCMLAK is the most expensive Wii Ware title so far at 1500 Wii points, and it takes up a lot of space on the Wii's internal memory. That price tag can baloon because of the seperately purchaseable ad on content that ranges from 100 - 800 Wii points. Ad on content still feels like part of the game is being held for ransom away from me and I have to be fucked in the asshole by the people making the games availalbe in order to get a complete game. Personally I find the core game to be $15 dollars worth of entertainment but the ad on content does not add the value its price point demands. Especially if you consider that in order to get all the available dungeons, equipment, and jobs, the price of the game jumps up to become the most expensive Wii game yet available for the console. Its a clever marketing strategy but in a game like this where content that was available at launch is being kept seperate from the game it feels like a huge middle finger in the face of the consumer. Unlike a game like say Rock Band where one buys new songs that become available after launch.

Speaking of songs on Rock Band, you may have noticed that Motley Crue was the first group to realize the obvious, that selling music to an interactive experience greatly increases its appeal.

Apart from having a cold metal dildo shoved up my ass by Nintento and Square, FFCCMLAK is a highly entertaining game. It is a sim in that you reconstruct your fathers fallen kingdom from the memories of its people and it is an RPG in that you walk through this kingdom you are building as the young son of the king. You actually spend half of the game as a cheerleader for your subjects, raising the ir morale and improving their family relations, and you spend the other half of the game managing your adventurers.

Unlike most other Final Fantasy games you dont actually go out into the world and battle monsters. You can't even leave the walls of the castle. This combined with the mediocre graphics is where Square Enix obviously put together a cheap game to rake in some online cash. That said, the game isn't sloppy. The polygons are well shaped and are well contoured for what people have come to expect in a 3D video game.

The game itself is plenty entertaining if you like the thought of managing an army of adventurers. FFCCMLAK also gives an interisting perspective on towns in the Final Fantasy universe. If you have ever wondered why there are towns in the middle of a monster infested wilderness with weapon and magic shops and aparently no other commerce, this game gives some perspective. Managing your adventurers gets a bit annoying when the individual you intended to give a job just won't show up to to the job, and at times its difficult to understand why completely healthy adventurers flee from combat while low level adventurers throw themselves into fights twice their level.

The Friday Bacon: Late as usual

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MEDIA_OWNERSHIP?SITE=RIPAW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

There is already too much media consolidation resulting in poor news coverage. There is too much group think among media sources when important stories get ignored because CNN is covering a skiing squirrel or cat fashion show. Or for that matter a human fashion show. You're fucking CNN for fuck's sake! The group think has almost completely ignored the candidacy of viable candidates like Ron Paul.

The old media fucked up big time in the run up to the war in Iraq and during the 2000 presidential election. If they want trust and respect back they better start fucking earning it with real hard hitting investigative journalism, instead of the kind of fluff that bloggers can fill the world with. They like to assume they are more ligitimate than us but I say the burden of proof is on them now. And that burden is one of the preponderance of evidence.

For entertainment purposes I am not so sure media consolidation is that bad. I may be confusing correlation with causation but market saturation and a vast empire seems to have given those like Ted Turner and Disney the freedom to create specialised networks for a narrow audience that would sink a network like NBC who has to stick with bland "entertainment" that appeals to noone but at least doesn't offend most. The increased venues for creativity may also simply be a result of the managment style of the Turner corporation.

World Orgasam Day

http://www.globalorgasm.org/

On the solstace this friday we are all encouraged to have an orgasam in order to help alter the energy of the Earth. The effort is to change the warmongering hostile psychic energies of the Earth to those of peace. Sexy, panting, too-tired-to-fight-and-all-I-want-is-a-sandwich, peace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgasm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Orgasm

http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/asksam/archives/2007/12/world_orgasm_day.html

Proof: Ron Paul is Systematically Ignored

Take a look at this little tidbit. The mainstream news probably won't report this; in fact it is fairly relevant from the graphs that Ron Paul, while enjoying by far the highest search volume, is consistently and systematically ignored by news outlets.


Google Trends: Presidential "Front Runners" and Ron Paul

They cannot destroy all the evidence that "they" are trying to gain complete control. The only problem is that we have to work so hard to find it.

Another Big Fuckin Suprise

This is one of those things that is actually news of the situation being worse than previously known. However, noone will take any notice because everyone already assumed it was this bad. Basically, ATT was tapping EVERY FUCKING CALL, EMAIL, OR BIT OF INFORMATION you transmited over their lines.

Thats really fucking important!

The question being tossed around in the courts and the legislature is weather the government can tap calls involving foreigners because its pretty fucking clear that tapping the calls of a US citizen is illegal. But thats exactly what they have been doing.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004001159_spying08.html?betterheadline

Why Don't You Know You Are Free Wednesday II

To bring everyone in the class up to speed on what has transpired so far, the Bush Administration embarked upon a path to violate, in part or whole, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in February of 2001, well before the 9/11 attacks. At least AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth were involved in the program as it was established. In the case of Qwest, though, the Bush administration met resistance in the person of Joseph Nacchio. Fast forward to today, Mr. Nacchio was sentenced to a six year jail sentence over the summer, in what some might call a political trial, especially given the fact that the defendant couldn't testify about classified information. Now the phone utilities involved in this heinous violation of the law are refusing to release details about their cooperation. Although the above pieces does describe the FBI's methodlogy behind the eavesdropping. But if a friend of a friend has a name close to 'Bin Laden,' you've probably been eavesdropped on.

Here's a brief refresher on the definitions of suspicion and reasonable doubt.

And Texas is the freest state in the union.

In related news, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in support of a moratorium on state and local Internet taxes. Who are the two members of the House of Representatives that would be so bold as to vote against this? None other than Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat from California's 14th and Rep. Michael Turner, Republican of Ohio's 3rd. Rep. Eshoo represents Palo Alto, and has this statement strongly in favor of the moratorium on her website. The only reason she voted against it, is because it is temporary. The funny part is that Rep. Turner's vote was apparently an accident.

Establishing a Christian nation

Heres another blog that explains why the concept should be scary to every normal person.

http://www.unknownnews.net/apocalypsenow.html#below

Basically the born again types believe that Jesus will return only when Israel is returned to its biblical boarders and there is then a massive war in the region, triggering the rapture and the end of the world.

So its not just the self serving ignorance bemoaned in these articles that we should fear,
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.aspx?id=19049
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19031
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/pdf/SOFA2007results.pdf
http://www.unknownnews.net/apocalypsenow.html#below
but that we have these maniacs in the government and the military and want to start war in the middle east. Not for anything that makes sense like control of oil but to bring about the end of the world. They think the Bible is an instruction manual.

There is so much willful, self serving, ignorance among people out there that they would probably not even care if this were being reported in the old media. But CNN would rather report on skateboarding dogs than risk offending the 50% of maniacs out there who believe they are right and 26% who believe noone else has the right to think differently.