All I hear in the news is Syria, Syria, Syria ... the media can't get enough of it!
I would like to know, why I hear absolutely nothing about all the other ongoing civil wars that are happening in the world - the world does not revolve around Syria.
Here are other major civil wars that are happening around the world right now:
Burma - since 1948 ( 12,000+ died in 2012 )
Somalia - since 1991 ( 2,600+ died in 2012 )
Sudan - since 2009 ( 3,200+ died in 2012 )
These aren't the only ones, here are a few of the ones were not so many folks get killed every year:
Iran - since 1918
Philippines - since 1942
Nigeria - since 1953
Colombia - since 1964
This isn't even close to all of them - currently there are over 30 countries that are experiencing ongoing civil war ... 24 of them are in Africa .
All this aside, there are also many regional conflicts I never ever hear about
So tell me, what is so special about Syria ?
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The IRS Is America's KGB
Within the last 2 months of this post, the United States has become a very scary place to live.
It was recently revealed that the IRS was updating their system for gathering peoples personal information, and it was leaked that they can seize the following records without some one's consent or court approval:
* All banking information
* All spending records
* All phone records
* Full employment history
* Political affiliation history
* Membership of any groups or organizations
* Criminal and legal history
* Address history
* School records
( If you do not believe it, look it up yourself )
Just after that, it was reported that the IRS intimidated conservative groups during the political election.
Some of the tactics used were illegally asking for personal phone numbers and addresses of all staff members and donators, massive audits, threatening legal notices, and more.
One has to wonder if Obama abused his authority to give himself an advantage.
( If you do not believe it, look it up yourself )
Guess what, as of when I posted this, it has been revealed that the Justice Department has seized phone records for the last 2 years from news agencies and reporters that have been covering the IRS political scandal .
( If you do not believe it, look it up yourself )
What kind of country have we become ? When will folks start to "disappear" due to political affiliation ?
This feels more like I am living in Soviet Russia, not in America.
All hail dictator Obama !!!
It was recently revealed that the IRS was updating their system for gathering peoples personal information, and it was leaked that they can seize the following records without some one's consent or court approval:
* All banking information
* All spending records
* All phone records
* Full employment history
* Political affiliation history
* Membership of any groups or organizations
* Criminal and legal history
* Address history
* School records
( If you do not believe it, look it up yourself )
Just after that, it was reported that the IRS intimidated conservative groups during the political election.
Some of the tactics used were illegally asking for personal phone numbers and addresses of all staff members and donators, massive audits, threatening legal notices, and more.
One has to wonder if Obama abused his authority to give himself an advantage.
( If you do not believe it, look it up yourself )
Guess what, as of when I posted this, it has been revealed that the Justice Department has seized phone records for the last 2 years from news agencies and reporters that have been covering the IRS political scandal .
( If you do not believe it, look it up yourself )
What kind of country have we become ? When will folks start to "disappear" due to political affiliation ?
This feels more like I am living in Soviet Russia, not in America.
All hail dictator Obama !!!
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
App Academy - Too Good To Be True ?
I was reading some of Yahoo's ads that are disguised as "news" stories, and ran across one for App Academy, and how you don't have to pay if you don't get a web developer job.
I ventured over to their site, and several red flags / issues popped up.
First off, this "academy" teaches web development and design, yet their web site looks like crap and is not coded very well ( I looked at the source code ). How can any one take these people seriously when they can not get their own site looking good?
Secondly, their statements about pay of web devs / web designers are off. The field of web dev / design is HIGHLY competitive, thanks to educated folks in China and India willing to do the work for far less than Americans.
The NORMAL pay for this field is $25,000 - $40,000. There are some places were you can make $83,000 as stated on the site, however, from my research, jobs like that are very hard to get.
Third, they state that sic ""Apple is the de facto standard among devs"" . I can tell you, that's an outright lie. I know a lot of programmers that use Windows and Linux.
Heck, a lot of dev tools they listed I already use on my Windows 7 computer.
Be very cautious of ANY "school" that favors only one operating system. In the real world, you need to know about all of them.
Forth, in their curriculum listing, I noticed they favor "Ruby on Rails" as their backbone framework almost everything is based off of. Very few companies use it in real life. It's nice to know, but excluding all the more commonly used frameworks, really limits one's employ-ability a LOT.
It also doesn't help that Ruby on Rails has quite a few known scalability and security issues, as of when I posted this.
I could go on all day on the problems I have with this "school", but I want to keep this post to a manageable size.
The last thing I would like to point out is that the locations of this "academy" are in VERY expensive areas. I did some research on how much it would cost to live in both areas for 9 weeks, and the results are astronomically high.
Rent, food, and transportation for 9 weeks would run $8,000 - $12,000. If you would be willing to travel 2+ hours each way to "school", the cost would be reduced to about $5,000 - $8,000.
I ventured over to their site, and several red flags / issues popped up.
First off, this "academy" teaches web development and design, yet their web site looks like crap and is not coded very well ( I looked at the source code ). How can any one take these people seriously when they can not get their own site looking good?
Secondly, their statements about pay of web devs / web designers are off. The field of web dev / design is HIGHLY competitive, thanks to educated folks in China and India willing to do the work for far less than Americans.
The NORMAL pay for this field is $25,000 - $40,000. There are some places were you can make $83,000 as stated on the site, however, from my research, jobs like that are very hard to get.
Third, they state that sic ""Apple is the de facto standard among devs"" . I can tell you, that's an outright lie. I know a lot of programmers that use Windows and Linux.
Heck, a lot of dev tools they listed I already use on my Windows 7 computer.
Be very cautious of ANY "school" that favors only one operating system. In the real world, you need to know about all of them.
Forth, in their curriculum listing, I noticed they favor "Ruby on Rails" as their backbone framework almost everything is based off of. Very few companies use it in real life. It's nice to know, but excluding all the more commonly used frameworks, really limits one's employ-ability a LOT.
It also doesn't help that Ruby on Rails has quite a few known scalability and security issues, as of when I posted this.
I could go on all day on the problems I have with this "school", but I want to keep this post to a manageable size.
The last thing I would like to point out is that the locations of this "academy" are in VERY expensive areas. I did some research on how much it would cost to live in both areas for 9 weeks, and the results are astronomically high.
Rent, food, and transportation for 9 weeks would run $8,000 - $12,000. If you would be willing to travel 2+ hours each way to "school", the cost would be reduced to about $5,000 - $8,000.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
3.5 Inch Wide Screen Village - Engrish
I found this on the back of the box for an "Air Phone No. 4" ( which is a cheap knockoff of an Apple iPhone 4 )
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Guild Wars 2 - And How Bad It Is
This has been annoying me for quite some time now, and I'm making this post to release some built up stress.
Some time ago I watched a review of Guild Wars 2 by Angry Joe ( who was a reputable reviewer ), and based on his recommendation ( click HERE to view ) I went out and payed $60 USD for it. Little did I know almost everything Joe said in his review was a lie, and he "sold out" .
After trying to play the game for quite some time now ( 5 months ), I give up. The game is intentionally designed to frustrate the player into paying real money. Here is my list of issues I have with GW2 ....
====
#1
====
First thing you are confronted with when starting the game is a world select screen. You have to choose carefully - for it costs REAL money to transfer your account to a new server. To make it frustrating, ArenaNet does not show you the server latency, or any server performance stats at all. If you pick a laggy server, you are ether stuck with it, or you pay real world money to take another guess at finding a good server to play on.
====
#2
====
During game play, you do not earn enough EXP.
Doing all heart quests, finding all locations of interest, completing all dynamic quests in an area, will not yield enough EXP to continue on. You ether have to spend several hours repeating the dynamic quests, or go off to another race's area ... or spend real life money to buy the EXP boosts - which cost $1.80 USD an hour ( as of when I posted this ).
Imagine in World Of Warcraft if I started a Dwarf character, and every 6 or so levels I had to run across Azeroth to the Night Elf area, so I could get enough EXP to continue on in my own area.
====
#3
====
Crafting system is broken.
If you want to do any kind of crafting int he game, you'll end up having to pay real money for a few different things.
Like quest EXP, crafting exp is not enough. I have found myself running around in circles for hours trying to collect enough stuff to advance a single level ( no joke ). The system to process materials is "progressive", meaning you will need large amounts of raw materials, to produce a couple finished products.
An example would be 9 logs makes 3 planks, which makes 1 dowel.
The next frustration is having to pay "in game" currency for 1 use tools. You are going to be constantly buying pick axes, wood axes, and salvage kits ( used to turn "junk" into usable materials ), and running out of money. This forces you to purchase more "in game" money using real money ( the game is very stingy giving you money during quests - and it is a very rare mob drop ).
While on your crafting adventure, your going to be collecting a lot of "future" stuff used in high level recipes . You do not want to get rid of it, but you can;t store it in your bank ether due to the tiny inventory . It costs real life money to expand your bank after you use up your limited amount of bag space.
====
#4
====
Quests are "cookie cutter" .
If you are expecting verity in your quests - forget it. Though your "personal" story is interesting, the "Heart" quests ( which you will be doing 99.9% of the time ) are almost all the exact same thing ... kill stuff ... collect stuff .... active stuff and kill whatever spawns.
The dynamic quests are not much better .... kill waves of enemies .... collect stuff .... active stuff and kill whatever spawns ..... escort dumb NPC through hostile area .
I do admit there is more verity with the dynamic quests, but they get old fast.
====
#5
====
Weapons and armor have issues.
In almost every other MMO I have played, you can find weapons and armor fairly easily in mob drops, or the "auction house". In Guild Wars 2, however, they want you to pay real world money for the privilege.
Weapon and armor drops are VERY rare in this game. To make things worse, you have to constantly repair it ( if you have enough "in game" money ) ... the damage rate makes me think everything is made out of tin foil.
Your going to have to spend quite a bit real world money to purchase "in game" currency if you want anything decent. ( Have fun trying to craft your own )
====
#6
====
Were is every one ?
A lot of the dynamic and Heart quests are designed for several people to do at one time, however I have very rarely seen anyone in the same area as me, let alone doing the same quests. As an experiment ( I was very bored ) I timed how many folks passed by me while I was doing quests. The average was 1 person every 41 minutes. None of them were doing the same quests.
====
###
====
In conclusion, Guild Wars 2 is intentionally designed to get as much money from players as possible and could care less about people like me who "just" payed $60 for the game, but can not afford to shell out hundreds of $$ a month to be able to play the game.
Some time ago I watched a review of Guild Wars 2 by Angry Joe ( who was a reputable reviewer ), and based on his recommendation ( click HERE to view ) I went out and payed $60 USD for it. Little did I know almost everything Joe said in his review was a lie, and he "sold out" .
After trying to play the game for quite some time now ( 5 months ), I give up. The game is intentionally designed to frustrate the player into paying real money. Here is my list of issues I have with GW2 ....
====
#1
====
First thing you are confronted with when starting the game is a world select screen. You have to choose carefully - for it costs REAL money to transfer your account to a new server. To make it frustrating, ArenaNet does not show you the server latency, or any server performance stats at all. If you pick a laggy server, you are ether stuck with it, or you pay real world money to take another guess at finding a good server to play on.
====
#2
====
During game play, you do not earn enough EXP.
Doing all heart quests, finding all locations of interest, completing all dynamic quests in an area, will not yield enough EXP to continue on. You ether have to spend several hours repeating the dynamic quests, or go off to another race's area ... or spend real life money to buy the EXP boosts - which cost $1.80 USD an hour ( as of when I posted this ).
Imagine in World Of Warcraft if I started a Dwarf character, and every 6 or so levels I had to run across Azeroth to the Night Elf area, so I could get enough EXP to continue on in my own area.
====
#3
====
Crafting system is broken.
If you want to do any kind of crafting int he game, you'll end up having to pay real money for a few different things.
Like quest EXP, crafting exp is not enough. I have found myself running around in circles for hours trying to collect enough stuff to advance a single level ( no joke ). The system to process materials is "progressive", meaning you will need large amounts of raw materials, to produce a couple finished products.
An example would be 9 logs makes 3 planks, which makes 1 dowel.
The next frustration is having to pay "in game" currency for 1 use tools. You are going to be constantly buying pick axes, wood axes, and salvage kits ( used to turn "junk" into usable materials ), and running out of money. This forces you to purchase more "in game" money using real money ( the game is very stingy giving you money during quests - and it is a very rare mob drop ).
While on your crafting adventure, your going to be collecting a lot of "future" stuff used in high level recipes . You do not want to get rid of it, but you can;t store it in your bank ether due to the tiny inventory . It costs real life money to expand your bank after you use up your limited amount of bag space.
====
#4
====
Quests are "cookie cutter" .
If you are expecting verity in your quests - forget it. Though your "personal" story is interesting, the "Heart" quests ( which you will be doing 99.9% of the time ) are almost all the exact same thing ... kill stuff ... collect stuff .... active stuff and kill whatever spawns.
The dynamic quests are not much better .... kill waves of enemies .... collect stuff .... active stuff and kill whatever spawns ..... escort dumb NPC through hostile area .
I do admit there is more verity with the dynamic quests, but they get old fast.
====
#5
====
Weapons and armor have issues.
In almost every other MMO I have played, you can find weapons and armor fairly easily in mob drops, or the "auction house". In Guild Wars 2, however, they want you to pay real world money for the privilege.
Weapon and armor drops are VERY rare in this game. To make things worse, you have to constantly repair it ( if you have enough "in game" money ) ... the damage rate makes me think everything is made out of tin foil.
Your going to have to spend quite a bit real world money to purchase "in game" currency if you want anything decent. ( Have fun trying to craft your own )
====
#6
====
Were is every one ?
A lot of the dynamic and Heart quests are designed for several people to do at one time, however I have very rarely seen anyone in the same area as me, let alone doing the same quests. As an experiment ( I was very bored ) I timed how many folks passed by me while I was doing quests. The average was 1 person every 41 minutes. None of them were doing the same quests.
====
###
====
In conclusion, Guild Wars 2 is intentionally designed to get as much money from players as possible and could care less about people like me who "just" payed $60 for the game, but can not afford to shell out hundreds of $$ a month to be able to play the game.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Denmark - The Country Of Ludicrous Taxation
(( Note I am using 2013 tax rates - sources are official Danish tax booklets ))
I would love to know how the people of Denmark survive with the taxes their government forces on them.
To start with, they have 25% sales tax ( VAT tax ) which applies to almost everything thing - including rent and utilities. Next tax rate people have to pay out is local taxes. The cheapest is 22.7% of income. Coming up next is the state tax, which is ( average ) 12% of income.
But wait, we are not done yet, the government needs their taxes, which are 33% of income ( average ). Are we done yet? Nope. Next tax is the "Labour market tax" which is pegged at 8%. Maybe we are done now. Maybe not ! The last tax that has to be payed is the healthcare tax, which is also 8%.
So lets add all this together ... the average tax rate I would have to pay just to live in Denmark would be 83.7% of my income ( 22.7 + 12 + 33 + 8 + 8 ) . Luckily the Danes have a maxim tax rate of 51.5% .... but still. How the heck can people live with all those crushing taxes ? I mentioned the VAT rate, but I have left out the STUPIDLY HIGH import taxes they impose on everything that's shipped into the country ( which is almost everything they consume ) ... did I mention there is a 1.5% tax on income for "church tax" or the 200% sales tax on cars ?
I would love to know how the people of Denmark survive with the taxes their government forces on them.
To start with, they have 25% sales tax ( VAT tax ) which applies to almost everything thing - including rent and utilities. Next tax rate people have to pay out is local taxes. The cheapest is 22.7% of income. Coming up next is the state tax, which is ( average ) 12% of income.
But wait, we are not done yet, the government needs their taxes, which are 33% of income ( average ). Are we done yet? Nope. Next tax is the "Labour market tax" which is pegged at 8%. Maybe we are done now. Maybe not ! The last tax that has to be payed is the healthcare tax, which is also 8%.
So lets add all this together ... the average tax rate I would have to pay just to live in Denmark would be 83.7% of my income ( 22.7 + 12 + 33 + 8 + 8 ) . Luckily the Danes have a maxim tax rate of 51.5% .... but still. How the heck can people live with all those crushing taxes ? I mentioned the VAT rate, but I have left out the STUPIDLY HIGH import taxes they impose on everything that's shipped into the country ( which is almost everything they consume ) ... did I mention there is a 1.5% tax on income for "church tax" or the 200% sales tax on cars ?
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