Contracts

As with most things in life, my main gripe lies with those that do not use the gifts they have been given from day one. "What could such a gift entail?" I hear both of you ask? Allow me to expand 'ponst my previous point.

Reasoning.

That miniscule voice in your head that shouts at you to not do stupid things. Yet you ignore it. It's almost as if you actually want to ignore it. I mean Chariman WOW!

Let me give you one such example of stupidity.

You are going to get a new mobile phone. You are very excited. This new piece of technology has a 6 megapickles camera and it has all the bells and whistles that your old piece of 'junk' (I say junk, the technology you choose to discard is actually fathoms ahead of most things in the developing world, but taking that into consideration and still deciding to chuck it would make you an asshole, so you conjecture that not taking that into account at all and deciding to ignore such human tragedy will still make you cool with your mates. Thats what's important after all eh?) did not have. You are, I reiterate, very excited.

You go into the Carphone Warehouse or whatever fancy suits your needs. You are so happy to have this new piece of 'awesome' that you just sign away whatever they ask for.

This is where the lack of reasoning comes into play.

You just signed on the dotted line. You did not read the contract. You are legally bound into something you may or may not have any idea about.

Who does read contracts these days? It's a well known fact that contract makers are contractually bound (by their own obfuscating contracts) to make such things as obfuscating as possible. That means that they are legally obliged, by the terms and conditions of their contract of employment, to make things as confusing as possible to you. Encouraging you to 'just sign on the dotted line' as much as possible. Mobile phone carriers actually make their own employees entrap you through your own neglingence. A negligence that you have subscribed to by allowing such obfuscating terms and conditins to exist for so long in such a form.

"What could possibly go wrong?" I hear my subconcious tell me?

Well allow me to enlighten you.

Things like 'data plans'. Whereby such mobile phone carriers have the ability to charge you for 'services rendered' for allowing your mobile phone to carry data all the way from the world wide web (the clue here is that it is WORLD WIDE) all the way back to your phone, which is presumably, somewhere on the world. The intelligent amongst you will realise that 'data plans' are all bunkem. You do not need a 'data plan', you just need the effing data. There is no 'plan' about it. To recieve data via text message, it costs FOUR TIMES as much as to recieve data from the Hubble telescope.

Yes.

You heard right. Mobile phone carriers are charging you four times as much to recieve a message from a friend in THE SAME TOWN/CITY as you, than what you would pay to recieve data from something ORBITING THIS PLANET.

"Oh but GAME OVER, the signal has to bounce off of a satellite orbiting Earth" I discover you saying. STILL this makes your mobile phone carrier TWICE as greedy as NASA. NASA being a government institution setup in the times before mobile phones and having launched the Hubble in 1990.

USE YOUR REASONING.

1990.

Really? It takes 4 times the cost to transmit a paltry amount of data by any ones recognition (even those in the third world laugh at 10k) than it does to recieve data from a space telescope?

Maybe you are getting what the Anglicised amongst us call 'price gouged'.

You are being taken for a ride.

This should come to no suprise from ur American cousins though. I mean really. You think that 'not reading the terms and conditions' is a bad thing?

America bases it's laws on this very ideal.

Don't read them.

Then sign away.

Really, I kid you not. The Congress (bless their cotton socks) are now being petitioned to *actually read the laws they are about to sign up to*.

Seriously.

The 'leader of the free world' as they adorably call themselves, are actually considering reading the mobile phone contracts that got them into such trouble in the first place.

I pity you guys. I know Obama promised "More open government and more tranparency" and I'm sure that one day, more than likely after his term(s) have ended, that you will have them. But you really need to be reading that data plan for now. You really do.

Angels and... Just Don't

I am not trying to make this area of the Internet into a movie review site, but unfortunately people keep releasing utter trite dressed as movies. If they stopped, surely we as a race could then use movies to actually educate people in the matters of life, the universe and everything.

I have tried to warn Hollywood but, strangely, only received restraining orders from the studios I attempted to contact. It's almost like they don't want to know. It's the "I can't hear you so there is no problem" defense again.

Hollywood is guilty of using this defense more times than 'duck butter' was mentioned late at night in the Neverland Ranch. It has been used recently in the Pirate Bay trial, where record labels hired lawyers to shut down a site that they said "Allowed users to search for links to torrents for copyrighted material". It's not like there aren't others. The record labels just wanted to go for the flagship site. The one that couldn't afford lawyers as good as theirs. There is, in fact another site, much bigger and more popular than the Pirate Bay that allows this sort of thing.

The chances are you have heard of this site. Before I tell you what it is, bear this in mind. The ability to search for copyrighted material was the only charge the RIAA and MPAA could bring against the Pirate Bay, due, mainly to the fact that Sweden has sane copyright laws. The other site that allows this IS known to you. In fact the chances are, you have been there several times already today. Can you pin it down? Here is a hint.

www.google.com

Yup, that site allows you to search for links to copyrighted material too. But you won't find a lawsuit in the works from the MPAA or the RIAA. Oh no siree, that's not how bullies and sycophants work. But enough of this, onto Angerlols and Demunz. If you have not seen it, then read on for the spoilers so that I can save you two hours of your life. You will thank me for it later.

So, here is what happens. Serial novelist Dan Brown auctions off first novel to highest bidder after success of Da Vinci code. Tom Hanks' career is revived and reprises the role of the Symbologist. The Fonz's friend is brought in to direct the movie, to make it more 'serious'. Ewan MacGregor is brought in as the Pope's Son (not actually an oxymoron strangely) to add the popularity of the recent Star Wars tragedies. All in all, what could possibly go wrong?

Well the possibility that Dan Brown is not actually a scientist in any respect of the word probably should have been addressed. In all seriousness, he has proposed that the Vatican had first dibs on the LHC. Not the Large Hadron Collider that we all know and love, but one that follows this workflow.

LHC + Vatican 'scientists' = Anti-matter... Profit?

Now I'll admit that at the beginning of the film they were speaking French far too fast for me to understand what was going on, but I knew it was the LHC from the buildings they showed at the start. They then repeatedly mentioned the ATLAS and CMS detectors. Something all technologists, I would hope, are familiar with. Dr. Brian Cox certainly is. The Vatican 'scientists' (actually an oxymoron) make anti-matter by colliding protons together, then, well, that part is not explained. The anti-matter just sort of "arrives" in a container. One that is immediately stolen, and used as a bomb threat. Now the fact that this is all rowlocks should not alarm you. It is after all, a Dan Brown novel, made into some semblance of a film. It's the ridiculous inconsistencies throughout the film.

At one point, we are told the anti-matter containment field's batteries will power down after 24 hours, then later on that 'cold reduces battery power'. It makes you wonder why the anti-matter is origionally contained in a room near-bursting with liquid nitrogen valves. Surely that is quite dangerous?

The Vatican 'scientists' have obviously not watched enough movies either, as anyone that has ever watched a violent movie including the use of retinal scanners will be familiar with the age old trick of just removing someone's retina to grant access. The Vatican, amazingly, falls prey to this near-ancient idea.

I want to go on, but time is short, and so is my lunch time.

I will sum it up thusly though.

Ewan MacGregor's the bad guy. He doesn't want "science to have creation" i.e. find the God particle (Higgs Boson). Now despite the fact that Science already has the creation, in a provable, factual not "believe this because I say so" kind of way. He also gives his OK to the project in the first place. He wants it all to happen. It's like not wanting to give your neighbor some apples, then planting an apple tree in your garden, specifically so that the fruit falls into his backyard.

-1/10