“I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again.” “I’m an attorney, I will sue you.” “I’m going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you.” Just a few of the fun things I got to hear today from someone who said his name was Steve Phillips over at PriceRitePhoto.

Link to digg story and more comments

Actual blog entry of the guy who got screwed, btw there are some awesome pictures as well.

Basically this store was running a scam in NY and would not ship a camera that was ordered and then threatened to sue among other things. This story has since spread to other “mainstream” sites and I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit cnn within a day or two. It also looks like they have been manipulating the yahoo shopping rating system because they have way too high of a score. You can see the effect of what has happened though by looking at their latest ratings (I posted one myself). Lastly, you can see what their real rating is over at a better site, reseller.

Here is a picture of rochelle’s new little puppy

There is a great article over at the inquirer (not the tabloid) about the state of the console gaming market and why it is doomed for another crash. A great little bit of writing at the end:

Sadly, the gaming industry is in a self-imposed death spiral. Everyone is putting on a brave face, touting the latest v6 of a game that came out before most of it’s audience was born. What was a fun hobby full of creative geniuses and their mad art has become a grey corporate parking lot. We are about to take that dive again, the industry is desperately trying to speed up the process with each passing day.

Rather than take a step back, they are addicted to marketing plans and money men. It will kill them, and in a few years, good will arise from the ashes. It happened with arcades, it happened with the first wave of consoles, and is about to happen again. It is high time someone flushed the toilet that the games industry has become, it will do us all a world of good.

Full article

1. All players are allowed to make up new words on the spot.
2. If you do, however, you must provide a definition.
3. No counting points. It slows the game down.
4. Minor cheating, such as running letters off the board, on top of other letters, or flipping them over to use them as blank tiles, while discouraged, is not actually forbidden.

From a fark forum thread titled “My girlfriend is beating me at Scrabble right now. 6 letters left in the bag. 156-100. How can I get even….? I just made the word “Yew”, and I dont’ know what it means.”

In a brief follow up on the the ID debate down in Kansas, it appears that the Univeristy of Kansas has rejected its state’s position on the subject. Quoted from an Ars Techinca article quoting the school.

“The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.

“Creationism is mythology,” Mirecki said. “Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”

Here is a picture from law school prom (apparently, semi-formal doesn’t mean what is use to) a few weeks ago. It was called Blackacre for all you other law school folk. I like this picture more than the one below it. Michigan, you’re in my dog house.

So close…this could have been the photo. Alas, we blew it. Here’s to next year and to Penn State finally getting their act back together.

I am pretty pissed off about Bush Cheney Co at the moment, so I’ll just let Hagel do my talking. From CNN:

Some Republicans, including Arizona Sen. John McCain and Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, have also criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the war.

Hagel on Tuesday defended the right to criticize the White House’s war policies in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them,” Hagel said, according to a transcript on the council’s Web site.

“To question your government is not unpatriotic — to not question your government is unpatriotic,” said Hagel, who was decorated for his military service in Vietnam.

And from John Murtha:

“I resent the fact that on Veterans Day, they criticized Democrats for criticizing them,” Murtha said. “This is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public knows it, and lashing out at critics doesn’t help a bit. You’ve got to change the policy. That’s what’s going to help the American people. You need to change direction.”

In a somewhat quiet story, there has been an international debate over whether or not the United States should retain control of the internet through the DNS name servers and ICANN (don’t worry if you have no clue what they are). I am a staunch supporter of the red, white, and blue on this one. The internet has been and will continue to be the best example of free speech, for better or worse. It is taken for granted here, but in many countries in Europe this freedom of expression is not nearly as broad as ours. While we may censor our media more, the internet has no such restrictions and that is the way it should remain. We have done a pretty good job running this thing and there is no reason to change. If it ain’t broke, don’t get the UN involved, and even then….

An article about the deal from the BBC (good to get a different perspective once in a while)

In an eleventh-hour agreement ahead of a UN internet summit in Tunis, Tunisia, negotiators agreed to leave the US in charge of the net’s addressing system.

Instead an international forum will be set up to discuss net issues, although it will not have any binding authority.

Kill yourself by caffeine, pick your beverage and your weight and have fun