Business is getting too serious

It seems no one online has a sense of humor any more. I just got a 45 day suspension from gfaqs for having the words "Gfaq mods are small bundles of sticks." in my signature. Well, it was there for about two months before I got slammed into purgatory for it, so I guess that speaks to the level of intelligence most mods over there have. But as they say, all good things come to an end, and it appears someone with a brain figured out what it meant.

Another time someone was whining about homophobia in games and was asking if Saints Row 3 would have the same level of "homophobia" as the other entries in the series. Now lets set aside the fact that just because a game does not endorse the bumbing lifestyle does not mean it's homophobic, it just doesn't cater to faggots, and focus on the fact that I was banned for responding "One can only hope". It seems it doesn't matter what you actually say these days, just so long as someone can interpret it as offensive.

I'd go into details about how other gaming sites are more up tight and sensitive than a constipated person simultaneously suffering from chronic hemorrhoids, but I already ranted about the Escapist a month or so back, so that's been covered. I'm pretty sure the only gaming related place I haven't been suspended or banned from for speaking my mind is Kotaku, so go figure.

This really reaffirms my opinion that the only easy going sites on the net are ones related to or accepting of porn, because it seems most gamers are way too up tight to just live and let live.

Kangen Water

This scam has actually been going on for a while, but has really picked up steam in the last year or so. Kangen water is a Japanese device said to purify, ionize, break down and alkalize water. Now aside from the purification part, why would anyone want to do these things? Well, information is being spread around saying that the more alkaline water you drink, the healthier you will be. The fact is, one cannot change their body PH by ingesting anything. If by some chance you did manage to change your body PH to what these people would have you believe is best, you'd suffer from metabolic alkalosis and likely die. Your body PH is strictly regulated in a number of ways, the most obvious being the venting of carbon dioxide by exhelation. Not only that, but the second you consume alkaline water, it is nutralized by the acid in your stomach.

Ionization through the process of electrolysis is the next thing this device claims to do, but there has been no scientific evidence that this will do anything beneficial for the people who use it. From air ionizers to water ionizers, it's the get well buzz word of the past five years, and like all these other claims, is based on utter horse shit.

Another feature in the long list of things this device claims to do is break up water cluster to "improve cellular hydration". The thing is, your body actually has a mechanistic that already does this. This device claims that the ingestion of clustered water leads to dehydration, due to the fact(lie) that your body cannot properly absorb clustered water.

Here's the real kicker, this device has a price tag of around $4300 USD. Why you ask? Surely the parts must be really expensive. Nope. You could likely build this yourself for around $400. Then it must be the tech, right? Nope. Since this machine is just an over priced filtering device, the tech is not very expensive, and has been around for ages. The real reason this device sells for the price of a used car is because it has its roots in MLM. That's right, the minion selling this to you is at the bottom of a pile of useless, greedy fucks who get a commission every time their subordinates sell one of these false hope machines.

Another thing they flaunt about like a badge of honor is that the machine is fully endorsed by the Japanese government. These claims that "water ionizers are approved for use in Japanese hospitals" are misleading: these "approvals" merely attest to the machines' safety — that they will not electrocute you! My understanding is that the Japanese Health Ministry is highly critical of therapeutic claims made for alkaline water.

Here are a few facts I dug up that blow almost all the claims of this device out of the water (No pun intended):

• "Ionized water" is nothing more than sales fiction; the term is meaningless to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about.
• Pure water (that is, water containing no dissolved ions) is too unconductive to undergo significant electrolysis by "water ionizer" devices.
• Pure water can never be alkaline or acidic, nor can it be made so by electrolysis. Alkaline water must contain metallic ions of some kind — most commonly, sodium, calcium or magnesium.
• The idea that one must consume alkaline water to neutralize the effects of acidic foods is ridiculous; we get rid of excess acid by exhaling carbon dioxide.
• If you do drink alkaline water, its alkalinity is quickly removed by the highly acidic gastric fluid in the stomach.
• Uptake of water occurs mainly in the intestine, not in the stomach. But when stomach contents enter the intestine, they are neutralized and made alkaline by the pancreatic secretions — so all the water you drink eventually becomes alkaline anyway.
• The claims about the health benefits of drinking alkaline water are not supported by credible scientific evidence.
• "Ionized"/alkaline water is falsely claimed to be an anti-oxidant. It is actually an oxidizing agent, as can be seen by its ability to decolorize iodine.
• There is nothing wrong with drinking slightly acidic waters such as rainwater. "Body pH" is a meaningless concept; different parts of the body (and even of individual cells) can have widely different pH values. The pH of drinking water has zero effect on that of the blood or of the body's cells.
• If you really want to de-acidify your stomach (at the possible cost of interfering with protein digestion), why spend hundreds of dollars for an electrolysis device when you can take calcium-magnesium pills, Alka-Seltzer or Milk of Magnesia?
• Electrolysis devices are generally worthless for treating water for health enhancement, removal of common impurities, disinfection, and scale control. Claims that "ionized" waters are antioxidants are untrue; hypochlorites (present in most such waters) are in fact oxidizing agents.

It seems likely that these machines actually add substances to the water in order to make it either alkaline or acidic, because as one of the facts above points out, "pure" water can only be neutral.

A friend of mine tried to turn me on to this contraption a month or so back. I tried it out for a while and wasn't too thrilled. I discovered all this information about the scam through hunting around online, but only after wading though heaps of propaganda, blind testimonies, and endorsements by their brainwashed patrons.

She showed me a DVD full of retardedly absurd claims. One couple claimed the water cured their son of Autism (and in only two days). Another person claimed it cured his terminal cancer. The funny thing about these claims is that they are not made by the company, they just publish the testimonies of their "enlightened" customers, which leaves it protected under free speech.

I saw my friend earlier tonight, and asked if she had read the information I sent her to warn her of her impending loss of money. She said that she was really enjoying her device, and had already decided to buy one of the top models and recommend it to all her friends. I told her about what the info I found boiled down to, but she said she didn't want to hear it, which essentially translates to "I don't want facts to get in the way of my ignorance".

If you think game console fanboys are bad, be thankful you've never encountered one of these tools. These fuckers come out of the woodwork and hiss and spit and claim you're a heretic for not accepting this miracle. Most of the sites I visited were laden with comments by these true believers. Logic really doesn't seem to be prevalent in these people.

I realize that everyone needs a little hope, especially the sick, but false hope does nothing, and when it's false hope at the price of a small fortune, then I say tar and feather these motherfuckers!

Will drinking this water make you feel better? Probably. The placebo effect is quite strong in the ignorant, even more so when trying to justify their purchase of a $4000 water filter.

Sources:
Chem1
Skeptic Blog
Skeptoid
Chem1
CommonSense

Escapist Magazine

Escapist Magazine is a great site, really it is. It has great content, is home to Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee Croshaw, and even has reliable gaming news, but sweet fucking Jesus, are their mods ever a bunch of overzealous draconian cock suckers!

Post an on topic picture, get a warning, answer a question with too few words, get a warning, disagree that it isn't the "best gaeming site evar", get permanently banned. I've seen some pricks flaunting power in my time on the web, but until I started posting on the Escapist I thought that gfaq mods took the cake.

It wouldn't be too bad if they had enough brains to take things on a case to case basis, but infracting someone because the rules told you to just shows what a mindless fucking robot you are.

Here's an excerpt from an email I got today after disputing a mod decision.

Pulled directly from our code of conduct:
"Low Content Posts
This could be anything from *answering a question* to posting LOL. These forums are used for discussion and low content posts halts discussion."

If you had discussed it at all, or opened it up so that other people could, it would have been fine. 

This might have been acceptable had the argument held even a drop of water, but 94 people posted directly after me, and some of their posts were only two words longer than mine.  Halting discussion my ass...

Next time you trundle through their forums, take a moment to look for the greyed out posts.  These are posts made by users that are currently on suspension, banned, or posts that have been deleted.  You can follow the link at the bottom to see why they were banned or suspended in the first place.  Chances are it was some totally absurd reason or just some mod gunning for someone he didn't like.  Oh yeah, and mentioning software like noscript or adblockplus is an instant suspension.  If you mention piracy in anything but a negative light you can kiss your account, no matter how well behaved you've been, goodbye.

You know that whole "With absolute power com es absolute corruption." thing? Well, it holds true even in the lowliest of mod positions. People tend to lord whatever power they posses over whatever people they view as lower than themselves. Remember what your teachers were like back in school, or a boss that had it in for you for some totally arbitrary reason? Same thing here.

You can almost see them sitting there shouting "Bow before me, you lowly fucking peasants!" from the comfort of their lazyboy recliner, trying not to rage too hard, lest they stand up and let all the Cheeto crumbs fall from their stained pokemon t-shirt.

Of course there is a percentage, a very small percentage, of mods who use their power responsibly, it's just that jading comes on prematurely when you're dealing with complete morons day in and day out.

PSN Welcome Back Is Online

The Welcome Back package is finally online, though I had to wait a week for the servers to stop smoking before I could actually download anything from them. Nothing says welcome back like giving your members free versions of games they probably already own. This annoying detail aside, I took their offer and sold my physical copies of Little Big Planet and Infamous. Of course I got less than $20 dollars for both of them, but hey, what can you expect from games that are nearly 3 years old. What eats me is that the second I'm out the door they get put on the shelf for twice to three times that amount. Corporate greed at its best.

I didn't walk away completely empty handed from Sony's plea for forgiveness though. Since I had my standard account, plus one for the EU store and one for the JP store, I actually got six games out of this deal, 2 months of PS Plus added to my main account and a free month for both the EU account and JP account. It's just a shame that my Credit Card and personal detail had to be plundered from Sony's servers to receive this deal. Makes me wonder what Sony would give me if my PS3 gained awareness and tried to strangle me in my sleep. Probably a free PSN mini...

PSN is back and fully functional...No, for reals this time!

It's been well over a month since the hacker and corporate negligence caused outage began, and PSN is finally back and fully functional. With the return of the PSN we finally get our promised two free games and complimentary PSN+ subscription as part of the Welcome Back prog... Wait, you mean we're not getting them yet?

Oddly enough, the meaning of the term Welcome Back seems to have been entirely lost on Sony. I blame the language barrier. I realize that Sony is inherently a Japanese company, and that things are often lost in translation, but in this case they weren't just lost, they must have been abducted, shot in the back of the head and burried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of town. Perhaps they should think of a new name for this program. Maybe they should use the one I came up with in my last blog post. It's certainly more accurate if nothing else.

PSN is back

PSN is finally back.

So the PSN is finally back online, and soon Sony will be rolling out the "Welcome Back" program, though I personally think it should be called the "We're really sorry we stored your personal information on an unfirewalled and unencrypted rented server, and that it got broken into and spread all over the dark net" program, but I guess that's a bit long for a bullshit title.

PR departments make me sick. Backpedaling motherfuckers always trying to put a positive spin on their massive fuckups. It's like if after the recent disaster in their country the Japanese started touting Japan as periodically having the "Best surfing in the world! Come now and receive free unlimited chemo therapy!".

Fuck You, Mozilla

Funny how the new Firefox 4 "upgrade" is in all actuality a downgrade.

Upon checking for updates this evening, I was promised greater stability, increased performance and speed, and an intuitive new layout with Firefox 4. What could go wrong, right? Well, for starters I had to download no less than 5 new add-ons just so it would be half ways usable for me. If you go to the Mozilla forums to state such an opinion the faggots come right out of the woodwork like they were laying in wait and tell you that with progress comes change, and that you should get used to it in a few hours. Guess fucking what. 6 years of hard wiring my brain to open tabs by right clicking and going to the second option cannot be undone by spending a few hours with a shitty new rendition of a good browser. Aside from this, the progress bar has been changed into an epilepsy sufferers worst nightmare. Instead of being able to monitor it constantly, it flashes information at you when it feels like it, which is more than a little distracting. Buttons have been arbitrarily moved around due to what can only be described as developer cranial trauma, and the options menu seems to have been stripped down so as to not intimidate the idiots they are hoping to snare with this glittery, substancless update.

What fucks me off the most about all this is that I like to be up to date on security and shit for obvious reasons, but this is just way too aggravating. Of course Mozilla will be supporting 3.6 (Which I have already switched back to) for a "while", but whether this will be months or mere weeks remains to be seen.

In short, yiff in hell, Mozilla, you cock gobbling retards.

On Ignorance and Slander

Oh boy, here we go.

Recently, Fox News aired a segment on Bulletstorm, giving it the title "Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?" due to its copious amount of severed limbs and skill shots named after sexual slang. In this segment, they massacred comments made by Scott Steinberg, CEO of TechSavvy Global, and M2 Research’s Billy Pidgeon. Their unaltered comments can be read here and here along with some more back story on this media clusterfuck.

The fuss seems to revolve around the fact that many of these "skill shots" have been humorously named after sexual acts and slang. Rear entry is when you lovingly give your enemy a lead enema. Topless is when you not so delicately remove the top half from the bottom half of your enemy. And Gang Bang is when you wrap a flail grenade around your enemy, then proceed to kick him full force into his companions, detonating the explosives when the moment is just right.

Let me start by saying I'm not posting this rant in defense of Bulletstorm, since Bulletstorm doesn't require defending. In case you missed my earlier post about it, Bulletstorm is a balls to the wall, over the top FPS developed by People Can Fly, a polish developer currently under the employment of Epic studios. They are best known for their 2004 balls to the wall, over the top FPS: Painkiller.

It's already been established that Fox News is shit, and is entirely staffed by scaremongering cockbags who constantly falsify information to make entire mountain ranges out of mole hills, and that they are known for altering quotes from the interviewees that actually have the intelligence to not just tell them exactly what they want to hear. However, they do often find people with such incredibly uninformed opinions that they are akin to sparkly diamond mines in the eyes of Fox. One such person is Dr. Carole Lieberman, who provided Fox with deliciously slanderous statements about upcoming game Bulletstorm.

Dr. Lieberman is a known criticizer of violence and sexuality in video games, stating that "Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games.". This is of course, a baseless statement and complete and utter bullshit, but that doesn't stop her from spinning her wheels while referencing studies that never occurred.

Dr. Lieberman has admitted to never playing video games, so its a little hard to understand how she might feel that she is qualified to say anything about them aside from that they come in a plastic case and might include instruction booklets.

I don't deny that there are individuals out there that may take what they see in any medium, and act it out in real life, but these are individuals with inherent mental defects that would act on these ideas no matter where they saw or heard of them, including their own delusional fantasies. Such individuals are often in the spotlight when it comes to reports on video games, because news about calm, collected adults who enjoy video games in privacy of their own homes don't get the same kind of reactions as stories about terrorists that use outdated games as a unrealistic ground for training. Likewise, psychiatrists see the worst of the worst, since mentally healthy individuals do not seek out help for such issues. If you search for news about violent offenders who have at some point in their lives played violent games, you are almost certain to find such examples, and if you are pigheaded enough you will probably disregard any evidence you find that sits contrary to your beliefs.

Half the comments against her and her book are so saturated in sarcasm they're dripping. The rest likely come from people who are at a loss for words due to the anger they are feeling. She states that she would need to look through her records and check online for something to back up her claims, which makes it seem that she has really been winging it the entire time and if someone is going to put her on the spot and question her ideals she would like to have the opportunity to do some actual research.

It seems to me that if you've been bombarded with angry people emailing you, and reporters questioning your statements, you may just want to get your shit together so you can defend yourself. If after this amount of time you don't have your shit together, it becomes undeniably evident that you didn't know what the fuck your were talking about in the first place.

Video games are of course the media punching bag of the new millennium, though the baseless criticism started about a decade earlier, it has done nothing but escalate these last 11 years. It does seems rather ironic then that politicians and the like use video games as a target, when their own country constantly glorifies war and military service, and often carries out operations that are an absurd waste of taxpayer money in an attempt to hold back the unwashed hoards of dirty foreigners that allegedly attempt to attack this hypocritical nation of fat, uneducated cannon fodder who haven't yet been drafted by their local military recruitment center. And to think I was listed as being patriotic after completing one of those online tests...