To Harass a Telemarketer

They call when you're in the tub, they call when you're out with friends, they call when you're banging the gardener. They'll call and call and call until the sound of the phone leaves you whimpering in the fetal position. They're the scourge of the telephony world. In a word: Telemarketers. They do not sleep, they do not eat and they will not stop, until you've saved 3 cents on your monthly phone bill for the first 3 months of your new 24 month contract (which will then turn into double the cost of your original service). 

These are dark times, my friends. Of late, we have seen a massive upswing in the telephone annoyance level (TAL) of the general population of my house. Time after time, the phone rings, and time after time, these monsters are on the other end. We stay strong, but with each call, we grow weaker. Each time, I fight it, but each time, the 24 month satellite TV subscription with 6 months free and 100 channels that I'll never watch, gets harder and harder to turn down. "$1,500 for tickets to a seminar that will guarantee to turn me into a millionaire, even though the speaker suspiciously isn't a millionaire? I'm there!".

Think you know how to deal with a telemarketer? Oh, I bet you do. Hit them with that old Seinfeld line, that'll work - "I'm a little busy right now, but how about you give me your home number and I'll call you later" "I can't do that, sir" "Well, now yo know how I feel" *click*. Ever tried that? I have. It doesn't. Ever agreed to buy whatever it is they're selling, told them that you're going to get your credit card, put the phone down and walked away? I've tried that, too. They hang up, and they call. Again, they call! 

Most people resort to yelling and threats. Some plead and beg, and some threaten with legal action. Such are the ways of man. No words, smooth or tough, no words of this nature effect the determination or the will telemarketing scum. "No words of this nature" - Nay! No words at all! Some are so desperate to rid their lives of the parasites they the bow down and give in to the poorly written pitch. Upon hanging-up the phone, a sigh of relief is heard. Jane Doe may have signed up for the ownership of a satellite that she'll never use, but at-least she's rid of the callers. Then, just as in horror movies where you think the monster dead, the phone rings again. The caller-ID shows that the call originated overseas. They do not stop. They do not surrender. Buy from them, harass them, ignore them. It doesn't matter. They're relentless.

I know, it seems hopeless. Perhaps we must learn to live alongside them. They hassle us, yes, but only sixty times a day. Is that so much? Is it that hard to answer the phone? Conceding defeat is our only option at this point. Well I say nay! We can fight this! I've found their weakness, and with this weakness, we will fight. We will fight and we will win. No longer will we have to turn away during a non-advertisement portion of our irregularly scheduled YouTube video playlist. No longer will we lose the flag because our dial-up connection was interrupted. No longer will we be a slave to the man who has no just cause to tell us that we could be meeting singles in our area right now.

We will rid ourselves of this charlatans, and we need only one tactic to do it. When they call, we will listen to their pitch. We will listen, and then, whatever they claim to be able to save us money on, we claim to be already paying for, at an absurdly low price.

"How much are you currently paying on your monthly phone bill?" "$5" *click*

"I have this great offer for you today, which comes to $30 per month for 100 premium satellite television channels" "Really? My dealer hooked me up and I'm only paying that pirate bastard $11.50 every month" *click*

"Sir, you'd be crazy to turn this offer down. You'll own 1/9005th of this luxury cruise liner for only $118,000" "That's cool, though Bill from down the road just sold me 1/7006th of his luxury cruise ship for just under $28,000" *click*

Those clicks will be the chime of our victory. The sound of every telemarketer who ever gave up and will give up in the face of our deceitful onslaught. This...this is our victory. It is ours and only ours, and will be...forever. Or at-least for 3 days until they call and we need to think up another hilarious lie.

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Learn Something: Listen, Watch and Expand your Mind (YouTube)

While it's true that I frequently post hilarious Youtube content, I think that it's also important to think about what we say, what we think and why. I've got a playlist of 9 videos that go about discussing topics that are relevant in all of our lives whether we wish to acknowledge this fact or not. A few of the videos also discuss  the possibility of the existence of a God or Gods. While it may be easy to dismiss the entire playlist because of these few videos, I want you to consider all of the information that is put before you and then come to a conclusion.

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Battlefield 3: PC vs Console

Being a PlayStation Plus subscriber, I get all sorts of extra goodies that regular folk miss out on. In addition to two full retail games per month at no extra charge (I recently got Batman: Arkham City and Bioshock 2), us PS Plus subscribers are given one hour free trials of popular retail games. Battlefield 3 is available as a one hour trial, which I decided to try out. Everything here will be centered around the PS3 version of the game, and what I like/hate about it when compared to the PC version.

I was introduced to the world of Battlefield through Battlefield: Bad Company on the PS3, before moving to the PC with BF3, so I was excited to see what had become of my old FPS stomping grounds. After a 14Gb download and 2GB update, I was ready to enter the 'field. There were things I liked, as well as things I did not. We'll start with what I hated, since I'm a cynical bastard. 

Con #1 Poor Graphics

I'm a PC FPS fan. I like my edges smooth, my textures crisp and my terrain rugged (and manly, like me, babe). Battlefield 3 on the PS3 fell flat on all three accounts, and it was noticeable as hell.  For example, the hood of the American jeep on the consoles is not the same as it is on the PC. Instead of the solid, slightly shiny forest green we get on the PC, here we get some muddy spots on the hood that try ever so hard to resemble a military camo design. Try. Every texture just looks worse. They're noticeably muddier, to the point that it effects gameplay. At some points, the enemy was hiding in plain sight - and not just in the shadows, either - and was effectively camouflaged against bad looking textures. Needless to say, I got got. 

The edges piss me off as well. Do you know how many times I ended up shooting at nothing because a jagged edge moved in the corner of my eye? As humans, we're wired to react to changes in our environment. When the "change" is nothing but a jagged edge that your instincts force you to fire upon, which ends in you giving your position away, it goes from "looks bad" to "actually worsens the game". It's just not on.

Con #2 Clunky Controls 

You can't expect any console shooter to have good controls, it's just not going to happen. When you're trying to get a crosshair to move my moving a stick in that direction, it's not going to be as spot-on as a keyboard/mouse combo. It doesn't matter what any fanboy says, controllers are terrible for first person shooters. I can't really pin anything on BF3 specifically. It's a shooter on a console. However, it's a shooter on a console, therefore, it's controls suck.

Some BF3 specific things were much more awkward on the PS3 than on the PC. For example, on the PC, to spot an enemy, just hit 'Q'. On the PS3, you hit 'Select'. See the difference? 'Q' is right next to 'W', so you're only moving your finger less than a cm. 'Select' is quite far from the left thumb-stick in comparison, and takes a lot longer to press. Couple that with the time it takes to look around and you're at greater risk of getting shot.

Con #3 Comparably Empty Servers

I'm used to bustling 64 player servers with shots being fired and multiple aircraft overhead throughout the match. You won't get that here, I'm afraid. Console BF3 is restricted to 24 players. No, not 24 players per side - which would be acceptable - 24 players per map. I don't understand this. MAG for the PS3 managed to cram 256 players onto one map, and you're telling me that a console can't even handle 64? That's bullshit. 

The maps have been made smaller for the consoles, but given the tiny player count, they still seem huge. It just doesn't feel the same. On the PC, you've got players coming at you from every direction and you fight to stay alive. Here, you gun down one or two guys and you've got plenty of time to catch your breath.

Pro #1 Quicker Match Start Times

I was pleasantly surprised to have been in a match within less than 30 seconds of starting the game. I went into "Multiplayer" then "Quick Match" and after choosing my preferred map and game type, the game found a match for me and threw me in. That 30 second match-start time includes loading times, which were also surprisingly quick -- but not so quick that they deserve an entry on this list. Also note that my game was loading exclusively from the PS3's hard drive. Retail games that load from the HDD/Bluray disk might have longer load times.

I don't have access to any of the expansions because this is only a trial of the base game, but I was able to get into a populated match in the three main game types in the base game, that is, Rush, Conquest and Team Deathmatch. I couldn't get into any populated servers for Squad Rush or Squad Deathmatch, but who plays those variants anyway? 

There was only one thing that the console version of BF3 does better than the PC version. That's not a good thing. Battlefield 4 will probably be released for the PS4. If it has good graphics and support for a keyboard/mouse combo and 64 player servers or more, I'll be ditching the PC version and playing exclusively on the PS4. If it's done right. Looking at the history of FPS on consoles, that's a pretty big 'if'.

If you're one of the three people who didn't see the 17 minute gameplay demo of Battlefield 4 that DICE put up, you'll want to watch it down below. If you've already seen it, maybe watch it again. It's pretty awesome.

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The Complete History of Man

Can you prove otherwise?
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Unstoppable Force vs Unmovable Object

Recently, some guys at work decided to ask me to answer and explain to them, the following; 

"What would happen if an unstoppable force meets with an immovable object". I believe that I gave a logical and understandable answer;

"They can't. The two cannot meet because if one of them exists, the other can't exist. If a force is unstoppable, that means that there is no object that can stop it or slow it down. An immovable object is an object that can't be moved under any circumstances. If an object exists that can slow or stop that force, then the force is not unstoppable, it's just a very powerful force."

Those guys didn't really accept my answer. They kept asking "But what if it did happen? Then what?". Come to think of it, I didn't really answer their question very well at all because I didn't fully explain my idea. Since then, I've thought about and gained a better understanding of both the concept and the question.

Firstly, what is an 'unstoppable force'? Well, it's in the name: A force that cannot be stopped. However fast the force is traveling, it's speed cannot change under any circumstances. If something is moving at 5 miles per hour, whatever anyone or anything does to it, it will continue to move at 5 miles per hour, under any circumstances. Nothing can be done to stop it or slow it down.

An 'immovable object' is similar to the 'unstoppable force' in that it's speed cannot be changed under any circumstances, except that here, the object's speed always equals zero. No amount of pushing or pulling my any number of people or objects or forces could ever make it move a single inch. Try to take those last two paragraphs in before continuing.

These two concepts cannot coexist. If an unstoppable force exists, an unmovable object cannot exist. If an immovable object exists, then an unstoppable force cannot exist. They can't exist together because the speed of either the force or the object will change once they collide. One of two things will happen:

1) The force will stop moving because of the object that cannot be moved, or 

2) The object will be pushed (moved) by the force at whatever speed the force happened to be traveling. 

Both scenarios can't happen at the same time. The force can't move the object without slowing down while the object stops the force in it's tracks without moving. If scenario Number 1 were to play out, then that force is not unstoppable, it is simply a very powerful force. Conversely, if scenario Number 2 were to play out, then instead of being an immovable object, it would turn out to be a very heavy object. See, in scenario Number 1 and Number 2, the force/object turned out to have great but limited power, while the other had unlimited power. They can't both have unlimited power. Savvy?

I tried to convey my understanding of this problem from a philosophical perspective. Some might be satisfied with my reasoning (we'll see what my science adviser has to say about it), but if you like your answers to be both fun and scientific, you might like the following video explaining this concept.

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Dick Figures (YouTube)

What's that? You've never heard of Dick Figures, the animated series that mildly entertains anyone who dares to watch it? I scoff at you! You see, this is why you've got a real job and all I do is fail at SimCity all day long. I'm the one doing the real investigative reporting! You're wasting time getting some asshole rich. You know what? You don't even deserve this content, but I'm putting it up anyway, 'cos I'm a top bloke like that. If you like what you see here, watch all the episodes on their official YouTube page.

Click here if there is a problem with the video.

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