AB2² | Alex's Blog

Because it’s a “computer” without USB ports, without a real OS, and without multi-tasking.

WHAT THE F*CK!?!?!!?!?

Okay so I just watched both movies, first Donnie Darko (2001) and then subsequently S. Darko (2009).

Donnie Darko didn’t make any sense, but that was to be expected going into it. I thought the second one might clear something up a bit, or at least pretty much be another (slightly creepy) movie that would hold my interest.

Well… it held my interest through the whole hour and some number of minutes, but only because I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on.

If you’ve seen Donnie Darko, you know that there’s this funky time funnel thing that basically creates some sort of alternate universe (according to the director), and thus makes the real universe unstable or what not.

Okay well take that, and somehow multiply it by like 3 or 4 (I lost count…)

Anyways, this f*cked up time funnel thing travels around like nobody’s business, like it thinks it’s the cool kid at the party, and generally fucks up shit. You basically have to assume that every time stuff starts moving backwards (like flashbacks but played in reverse) that the time funnel has done it again, and well what do you know, you’re back several days / hours or whatever.

The plot, assuming you understood the original movie, and allow a certain amount of leeway with the base logic, makes some amount of sense in the end, but ultimately repeats the plot of Donnie Darko.

In short, I’d say you should all watch both movies, but in a well lit room, and then read all the Wikipedia articles you can find on them to make some sense of it, and reclaim the sections of your brain that will have turned to mush by the time you’re finished with the second movie.

So in my checking if my previous post was cached by google yet (yeah I know it’s unlikely 15 minutes … maybe not even that… after I posted it but I thought I’d check anyways) I ran into something that made me laugh, and then feel sorry for humanity:

http://www.wikihow.com/Clean-Your-Room

Apparently, there are some poor sorry excuses for people out there that don’t know how to clean a room. That’s right. They don’t know how to do one of the basic things that makes us different as humans from a lot of other animals on the planet: Clean a room / area.

What the f*ck people… seriously? I can’t express accurately how sad this is that something like this exists.

Okay so my parents used to tell me when I was little “GO TO YOUR ROOM AND DON’T COME OUT UNTIL I SAY SO!”
Back when I was 4 years old… there was nothing to do in my room except sleep or sit there… so this worked as a sort of “make the kid bored out of their mind” punishment. Kind of like “Go sit in the corner!”

Now however, if my mother were to say to my little brother “Go to your room!” the response would be something akin to “LOL Okay!”
As my sister pointed out “Go to your room!” means to the child “Go chill in that place with your computer, your TV, your xbox, your PSP, and your comfortable bed.” You know, the place that they were going to spend the next 5 hours anyways.

I just thought that was amusing.

Instead of this:
Parent: GO TO YOUR ROOM!
Child: AWW! BUT I DON’T WANNA!!

It goes like this:
Parent: GO TO YOUR ROOM!
Child: You mean that place with my computer, my PSP, my TV, and my comfy-ass bed? Okay!

Well, I won’t stick words in your mouth– wait yes I will, if you’ll swallow them that is.

A lot of people were very excited about the release of the Apple iPad, Apple’s first ‘Tablet PC’. I was excited to see what they’d come up with too, I assumed that it would basically be an iMac in tablet form, but really overpriced. I thought it would at least be a decent product, just overpriced as usual like ALL Apple products.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The iPad is a worthless piece of technology. It is essentially an over-sized iPhone without the capability to make phone calls, and no camera.

The iPad has no USB ports, no multi-tasking, iPhone Apps only, Final Destination.
You can’t even unlock anything without a ridiculous amount of effort and completely over-riding the OS. (iPhone OS btw, not OS X.)
You can’t open it up! It’s WORTHLESS!

See how they glorify it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwjJ4Y566vI&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Here’s something more useful than the actual Apple iPad. In fact, this video describes the real thing better than all of Apple’s promotional videos and advertisements:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs

Yeah… so basically… in short:

The iPad:
No USB port, no multi-tasking, iPhone Apps only, Final Destination.
You can’t even open this thing up, it’s WORTHLESS!

So if you’ve read the last 2 posts on my blog here, you’ve seen the spam email exchanges I’ve had with a certain company, which ended in them threatening to basically slander my reputation all over the internet.

I think a company blackmailing is unacceptable, so I wanted to find out who it was. Well, luckily for us spammers like nothing better than to link back to their company’s page so that you visit it.

The company’s front:
The spammer(s) claim to be from a company called OySystem Network. A lead generation company (supposedly) that offers to connect businesses / professionals with people in need of their services. Sounds awfully nice right? Someone out to help people right? Well not exactly… the company charges for leads. Sometimes as high as around $30.00 per ‘lead’ they give you.

Okay so what if they’re charging, it’s advertisement right?
Well sort of. Other than being insanely expensive advertising, and as far as I can see ineffective on account of that they only establish one to one connections. A sign on the road is more effective and more cost efficient.

The company’s devious practices:
Spam:
The company apparently spams people, as that’s how I’ve come to know about them. No big deal really, many companies use email as a sort of aggressive marketing that’s very ‘in your face’ as it’s right in with your communications from your friends. It’s extremely easy and effective advertising, so many companies do it.
Spam isn’t the problem however. It is undesired and in some cases illegal, but not actually something that we’re not accustomed to dealing with, and if you use a filter on your inbox, it ceases to be more than a slight annoyance like a fly buzzing on the other side of the room. You click the delete button and the ‘fly’ stops making noise.
Viral Marketing and Complete Information Blocking / Flooding:
Okay so the spam isn’t enough for these guys, they have literally flooded all the major search engines with stuff about them, so that if you try and get any real information or reviews about them, you only find their posts promoting themselves on every site imaginable. They basically hire poor Indian people to post spam for them all over the internet so that you can’t get any legitimate information on them. I assume this is how they intend to slander my name, by posting demeaning things on various websites all over the place, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Blackmail and Slander:
If you read through the previous post, they basically threatened me to take down the post before that. They literally blackmailed me with the threat of slandering my name and reputation all over the internet. What kind of legitimate company actually needs to use slander (and poor language skills) to threaten someone who’s not even remotely a threat to them? I’m not sure what to call them at this point, but the phrase ‘legitimate business’ doesn’t come to mind.

I’m a person who enjoys a challenge on the internet though, so I say let them try, and everyone join with me to fight back against them. Post warnings about this company’s devious and downright illegal practice anywhere you can, because believe me, we need as many people as we can get to even have a one in a million chance of overtaking their massive marketing division who is tasked with the job to cover up all negative press about them, and anything that’s not posted by them for that matter.

So my previous post detailed my interactions with a spammer of the 3rd kind… make that ‘from a 3rd world country’. As I can’t be too sure what country they’re in, but they certainly don’t speak English well at all, in fact if I wasn’t so used to dealing with spammers like this, it would be nearly impossible to understand them.

So I posted for all of you to see, the email exchange I had with one of their representatives. Apparently their team of non-English-speaking data miners picked up on it. (Thanks for caching my site so quickly Google ^_^ It used to take you 3 days to get to my site and update your cache.) (No that’s not sarcasm) So they sent me another email, this time to my personal address, to harass and threaten me.

Without further delay, enjoy… as always… read for the lulz… and to know not to ever give your money to this company.

From them:

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Alex Alex Alex, You don’t know who you dealing with,

You got 24 hr to remove the post on your blog, or you name will be cover on all Google ,Yahoo Bing in the next 14 days and will be there for life, you simple don’t know the power we got.

If you don’t like to do business with us, you don’t need to post bad thing about us. So this is the only warning you going to get for us, we will check your blog in the next 24 hr, if you did not remove it we will make sure your name will be post all over the web, you can Google your name in 14 days, it will never remove from Google for life.

We have 175 worker in India that can post your name daily on all high traffic, blog, forum social site.

http://alexbahder.com/bloga/?p=317

alexbahder.com

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My reply:

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Greetings,

From your email, it sounds like you are threatening me to have me remove information from my personal site, or you will harass me and slander my name on the internet on social networking sites and the like.
Threatening someone in an email or otherwise with such actions is known in my country, The United States of America, as blackmail, which is a serious crime.
If you wish for me to remove a post from my personal site because you find it offensive, or otherwise detrimental to your image, you should contact me in a civil manner without threatening me. I did not post anything that was untrue, your company is harassing me, and I feel that others should be informed of you and your company’s actions.

Thank you for your time,

-Alex

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Their reply:

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Fine, We dont wait 24. Google your name in the next days a week

Enjoy

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My reply:

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You don’t get a polite greeting this time,

Might I inquire as to what you mean by ‘or you name will be cover on all Google’?
Why would I care if you somehow post my name all over the internet? Do you know what my name is? I suppose you do because you have this email. If you post my name all over the internet, isn’t that like free advertising? In that case I should thank you I suppose, and as you say, ‘Enjoy’.

If you slander my name, who is going to trust you? My post was there first warning people of your company’s devious and illegal practices. They won’t trust you at all.

If you harass me further, I will make sure that people know that your company is dishonest, devious, and harasses people when they don’t bow to your wishes.

-Alex

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Check back for further updates… don’t expect another email though… they usually give up right around now and continue spamming… more profitable that way.

So I found myself in need of some advertising recently (isn’t everyone), so I posted an ad on the popular site “Craigslist” (Which by the way is a pretty amusing place, you should all check it out.) and got some responses.

A few legitimate, and a few not so legitimate.

Below is the interesting exchange I had with some sort of spam company representative or something. Enjoy.

From them:

**************************

Dear Computer Repairman,
Are you offering the following?

”       Computer shows a blue screen
”       Windows locked, lost Password
”       Recovery of lost Data
”       Network Setup & Troubleshoot
”       Computer wont start at all
”       Security & Data Protection
”       PC not responding, freezing, crashing
”       Virus, worm and spyware infections
”       Computer wont boot, partition issues
”       Overheating problems, cooling solutions
”       Computer shutting down
”       Computer is very slow
”       Hardware Installation & Upgrade
”       Software Installation & Upgrade

Computer Repair Leads $16/per lead

If your answer is yes, we would like to speak to you!
Please Contact us via Toll Free (800) 755-7951 or email us at admin@oynetwork.com

You may also start by login (Free) to create your own Exclusive Leading account www.oynetwork.com

Exclusive Local Computer Repair Leads

Full Marketing & Promoting your Computer Repair Business
Targeted, High Quality, Exclusive Computer Repair Leads!
Immediate Computer Repair Leads Delivery via Email or Text Message
100% Exclusive Computer Repair Leads, no competitors in your area
Local lead generation for Local Computer Repair business
Live Operator 24/7
Live Message Delivery
Message Delivery via text messaging
Message Delivery Via E-Mail
Pay Per Lead, Pay as you Go, No long-term commitment

Limited Locations Available! Jump on this before your competitors do. Each Location is exclusive to one company only.

Be the only Computer Repair in your area. Start generating business today!

Best Regards,

Veronica B.
sales department
(800) 755-7951
admin@oynetwork.com
Web: www.oynetwork.com

Lead Generation Programs : Looking for the best? Oynetwork.com is the place!

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My reply:

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I’m confused.
What are you offering?

-Alex

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Their reply:

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We sale Computer Repair Leads for $16/per lead

You can login to our site www.oynetwork.com

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My reply:

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That sounds both (pardon my expression but) foolish, expensive, and like it would negate a significant percentage of the money I earn.
Why would it benefit me to give you $16.00 per client? That would mean that if I charge the client $35.00, you get nearly half. That makes no sense. If I charge them $60.00, you get over a quarter, that still doesn’t make sense.

-Alex

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Their reply:

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I you think like that you not going to make money

But for the long run you grow your client base and they will recommend you to other etc..

How much its cost you to advertising your name and not get any clients? We use you pay only per lead, so you have better choice to make money. It’s your choice think about it

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My reply:

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You know, I am inclined to believe you’re a scam.
Your English language skills are terrible, you’re asking for a nonsensical business relationship, etc. How do I know you are not a fraud?

-Alex

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Their reply:

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Alex,

It’s ok , you can check our Business under BBB, We in Marketing from 2001, we not accept all business to get our leads, you will need to qualified, and as for now, we really don’t think you will be.

Good luck with your business.

I will remove you from our list.

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My reply:

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With all due respect,

Why bother talking to me? If you’re not assuming I am ‘qualified’ to be a partner of your organization anyways, why waste my time? I’m a person with a valuable skill set, and I’m committed to always delivering the highest quality of service, at the lowest price possible, and I do value my time. If you’re going to waste it by mocking me or my work, or sending meaningless emails (with the writing level of a grade school student no less), then please don’t bother with the effort, value your time some more and make use of it.

Thank you for your time, it has been most amusing,

-Alex

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There were no further replies.

So… as soon as I point out that they might be a scam… they insult me and don’t want to deal with me. Guess they were a scam.

Okay so some of you may know and some may not know what Network Neutrality is… so I’ll explain it for you.

Network Neutrality is the concept of a neutral network. Every node / portion of the network passes on information it receives to it’s appropriate destination / path as requested, without prioritizing based on who sent it, what type of data it is, etc.

Some large companies (Comcast, AT&T, etc.) want to disobey Network Neutrality, a basic concept of the Internet as we know it, to extract money from consumers and businesses.
Basically, if you pay more, your connection business’ site would get a higher priority in the system, etc. People would be able to load your site / services faster than others, because you would have priority over the all the Internet’s systems in preference to those who did not pay extra. We’re not talking about the amount of bandwidth you get on your connection to the internet, we’re talking about the way packets are handled and passed on once they leave your computer and get to your ISP.
If allowed to violate Network Neutrality, the ISPs will essentially kill off sites and services operated by lower income people, by lowering their packet priority to nearly nothing, which would cause the connection to time out.
This system would also allow for them to block certain sites based on content, political alignment, etc. at the discretion of the company.

Basically it’d be like China’s internet. Only worse quite possibly.

President Obama has responded to a question submitted by a fellow internet user about his stance on Network Neutrality. He claims (still even after he’s been elected) to understand the importance, and promises to fight for it and push back the companies that are pressuring congress to pass unjust laws permitting companies to do what is basically theft, and discrimination based on income.

See his response here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP01t0Z4Hr8

Of course, it’s not like President Obama hasn’t skirted around what he said in the past, changed what he supposedly meant by his words, and maybe even lied outright, so we can only hope that he keeps to his word on this.

Come on Mr. President… don’t be a douche, and pull through on this one; We’re all holding you to it!

Apparently this blog has gotten away from me.

I don’t actually think anyone reads it though… so it’s not that bad that there’s nothing new to read I guess.

However I do plan to start more regular updates… possibly to add some sort of structure to my life. If I have to I’ll start using this as a twitter-like thing, to ensure I update it.