The fundamental problem is that people do not understand the concept of switching inputs. They simply do not get it that video and audio are separate. They don’t get that the audio and video come out of one box into another box. They do not comprehend that on the receiving box you must manually select which input you wish to currently be active. Now, people should learn this, but with a change to the HDMI spec, I think we can eliminate the problem in the long run.

Every cable box I have seen has a power outlet on it. Why is that? The reason is that you are supposed to plug your television into the cable box, and then plug the cable box into the wall. This will allow you to have the TV turn on and off when you turn the cable box on and off. Ideally this will eliminate the need for the TV remote control. Sadly, this only makes trouble in a more complicated system. For one thing, it means I have to turn the cable box on in order to play a video game. That’s just a waste of electricity.

The solution is to add one single additional wire to every HDMI cable. That wire will allow the devices to tell each other if and when they are on or off. The devices will also be able to command each other to turn on or off, or to switch inputs. It’s really so simple, I’m amazed it doesn’t already exist.

Here is an example scenario. You have a TV with an XBox and a DVD player. They are all off. You turn on the XBox. The XBox signals over the wire to the TV that it has turned on. The TV notices that it is off, so it turns on. Then it notices the XBox is the device which told it to turn on, and is the only device sending a signal. Therefore it automatically switches to that input.

Think about the difference that makes for the end user. They push the green button on the XBox controller, and they’re good to go. No fiddling with other remote controls. No juggling inputs. No nothing. Logitech probably wouldn’t like it, though, because it would ruin their Harmony product line.

I’m sure that you intelligent readers can figure out how the system will work in all sorts of other typical situations, but let me make a couple more examples. You turn off the TV, and it tells everything connected to it to turn off as well, saving lots of electricity. You turn off the XBox, and nothing else connected to the TV is still on, so the TV turns itself off. You have the XBox already on, but you turn on the Blu-Ray player. Well, it would be worse to switch away from a game in progress, so it should stay on the XBox. However, if the XBox turns off, it can switch to the Blu-Ray automatically.

Of course, the user will still need the ability to take manual control over which inputs are active, because the automatic setting will not be able to handle every single use case. Even so, such a system will drastically decrease the amount of times the user will have to manually switch inputs or turn devices on or off. It will also drastically reduce electricity usage because devices will almost never be on when they are in use.

Now, there are some extremely complicated situations that require figuring out. The best example I can think of is picture in picture. The TV and/or receiver has to be aware that picture in picture is a possibility. Maybe if you have picture in picture, and you turn on a second device, it opens in the small picture. Then if you turn off the second device, the small picture disappears. Even this complicated situation isn’t that difficult, you just have to spend some time figuring out the best possible default behavior for every possible scenario.

They’re adding all sorts of other great features to the HDMI specification like Ethernet, higher video resolution, audio return, etc. Those are far more complex than this simple one-wire feature. It will cost next to nothing to implement, and it will make a huge difference. There’s no rush, we can just do the usual thing we do with car safety equipment. All new products as of X date must support this feature. It will save a ton of electricity and reduce a ton of headaches. Too bad I’m just some guy and not an electronics manufacturer. I don’t even know the second step towards trying to make this a reality. The first step was this blog post.

Mark Maunder suggests we crowdsource the terrorism fight. He’s on the right track, fundamentally speaking. Our government is clearly incapable of intelligently combating a non-military threat. It must be the citizens themselves who help to stop terrorism. However, Mark’s specific suggestions are not all that great. None of them would stop a terrorist with a working explosive device. The people were only saved by the stupidity of the terrorist. There was nothing they could have done to save themselves from an intelligent attacker.

And that is the one thing that gives me hope. So many of the terrorists are just complete morons. Terrorism isn’t really rocket science. Just about any reasonably good engineer could cause massive amounts of destruction. I can personally come up with any number of plans to cause a very large amount of destruction. The reason we are save is because these smart people are smart enough to have jobs, and money, and such. When you’re smart enough to be a good terrorist, you’re smart enough not to be a terrorist in the first place.

Despite this, we can not rest easily. Even morons who fail most of the time are dangerous. They did succeed in 2001, in the London underground, in Oklahoma City, and many other times throughout history. They will fail often due to their lack of brains, but they will succeed sometimes, and it is those sometimes we need to prevent.

Start thinking about ways to prevent terrorist attacks. What do you think of? You think of physical defenses. Locking doors, searching people and bags, detecting explosives and weapons, these are all physical defenses. They all try to stop an attack right before, or as, it is about to happen. They also don’t work. If someone has a bomb at an airport, they can just set it off in the security line. Heck, trains have almost no security whatsoever. As long as you have a situation where there are many people together, it is next to impossible to physically prevent a terrorist attack. Even if everyone is on the lookout, and the crowd reports suspicious activities, that isn’t going to stop anything.

What you need to do is prevent terrorism way in advance. Intelligence is absolutely the most effective weapon against terrorism. If you know that a terrorist is going to go on a shooting spree tomorrow, you can have police arrest him today. If you know that someone bought a whole bunch of fertilizer, in the winter, and they aren’t a farmer, and it’s for a crop that doesn’t grow in the area, that they are probably up to something.

You might think this information is difficult and expensive to collect, parse, and act upon. You’re right, it is. But this is exactly where the crowdsourcing comes in. We need to crowdsource the intelligence to pre-empt terrorism. Let ordinary citizens keep a watchful eye about them. Then we can pool, share, and filter to turn the information into intelligence. Then the authorities can use that to pre-empt villainy.

This kind of crowdsourcing can work, but you can already see it’s a minefield. Untrained citizens are not that great at collecting intelligence. He who has a hammer sees nails everywhere. If you’re on the lookout for terrorism all the time, suddenly everything looks like terrorism. Is that a homeless guy, or is it a disguise? Is he hiding a bomb in his shopping cart? Is that guy really a utilities worker, or is he putting a bomb in the subway? What’s that weird device he has? That computer guy’s screen is weird, is he hacking?

Is there another kind of crowdsourcing we can do that is actually useful, and doesn’t require as much training? I think there is. We can find terrorists while sitting on our asses, on the Internet. For real.

I assume people reading this are fairly technologically competent. If you wanted to get illegal things online, like pirated media, guns, drugs, child porn, etc. do you think you could do it? It’s quite trivial. Yet, law enforcement agencies can’t seem to figure it out. If my only job was to find illegal activity on the Internet, I could have people arrested faster than they could be processed.

Do terrorists use the Internet just like pirates and pedophiles? You bet they do! Our recent terrorist Mutallab posted all over the Internet. He wasn’t particularly secretive either. He openly displayed his unhappiness and fundamentalist beliefs. It was a textbook case of a terrorist to be, right out in the open where anyone could see it. The same sort of thing goes not just for terrorists, but school shootings, and other criminals. A great many of these people posted their craziness all over the web before they acted.

These terrorists are not ultra smart super villains like Doctor Doom. They’re mostly just really sad individuals who reach the breaking point. They post their plans openly. They’re not hatching an evil scheme in secret, they’re crying for help. By searching Google, newsgroups, IRC, and Facebook we can find the next Mutallab or Seung-Hui Cho before they strike. The authorities can’t even figure out BitTorrent, but we can. We can find these sad people on the ‘net and then do something to make sure they never fall so far as to actually try something.

You’re probably sitting at your computer right now, and you’ve had enough free time to read this blog post. You probably also have enough free time to do some searching. Go out there, and see if you can find people on the web who are actually likely to be real terrorists in the making. Maybe you can save lives without getting out of bed.

This same phenomenon can be seen in many other places. The highways are the easiest example. Ignoring the debate about speed limits, I’m sure every driver reading this has been stuck behind  an elderly person driving extremely slowly. Everyone must suffer and lose precious time because one person is ruining things for everybody.

If you go to ride the Go Karts at an amusement park, they are stupidly safe. Their top speeds are capped by a governor. They are configured in such a way that you can make it around every corner just by steering with the throttle wide open. There is no chance of flipping over, and very very little chance of hurting yourself. They are also much less fun. Why can’t I ride dangerous go-karts at my own risk, rather than eliminating them entirely?

Notice how whenever you board an airplane, there are all sorts of slow people who waste everyone’s time? They can’t get their carry-ons into the overhead bin. They can’t find their seats. They hang out in the aisle forever. They’re slow getting through security as well, because they don’t know the drill. Frequent fliers are made to suffer because these people are so slow. Why not special lanes, or even flights, where only experienced travelers are allowed?

On Metro North trains, and many others, there are touch-screen ticket vending machines. Some people use these things all the time, so buying tickets takes a few seconds. Many people fail to use them, and cause people behind them in line to miss their train, or to spend extra money to buy a ticket from the conductor. Why not have a few machines for first-time ticket buyers where there is a person to help you and teach you how it works. Have all the other machines give a time limit before sending you to the back of the line.

Lastly, let’s bring it back to technology. Why does almost every ISP block port 25, preventing you from running a mail server? It’s because most people let their computers get filled with malware and viruses that start sending out tons of spam. The result is that good netizens can’t run legitimate and safe mail servers from their homes. How about allowing people to unblock the port at the risk of severe financial penalties if they screw up?

Life needs a fast lane. People should always have the safe option available to them. That option should even be the default, but that doesn’t mean we need to eliminate the risky options entirely. Many people aren’t afraid of danger, and aren’t afraid to fail if it means they can go faster the majority of the time.

I’m not saying we should go back to the olden days where everything was risky and dangerous, and safety really wasn’t an option. Forcing grandma and the tourists to drive in the fast lane is just as ridiculous as me getting stuck behind them. In all areas of life we need more choices for people to make in terms of risk and reward. One size does not fit all. The slow people want to get away from us just as much as we want to zoom past them. I think the net benefit to our society’s productivity and happiness would be tremendous. Let’s make it happen.

Might as well get to the point. The solution is to hire one or two people to follow you and force you to quit. There would be some legal papers necessary for this to work because you would have to give the person permission to follow you everywhere, and maybe even restrain you if necessary. But even so, it wouldn’t be much more difficult than hiring a personal bodyguard. They’re just guarding you against yourself.

Despite the fact that this solution is a little extreme and silly, it’s guaranteed to work. How many people have spent tons of money on pills, patches, fad diets, hypnotists, and other things that don’t work? How many people have tried to go cold turkey and have nothing to show for it? Depending on the addiction, and depending on the person, I can’t imagine this solution ever taking more than a few months, max. For most people I see it taking just a few weeks. I also can’t imagine that the success rate wouldn’t be 100%.

Let’s say you are an alcoholic. You hire the person. First thing, they come and remove all alcohol from your house. They search everything, even your body. They then proceed to follow you 24/7. You might need two people, with one working the night shift. These people simply do not let you drink any alcohol, even in the bathroom. If necessary, they may go so far as to physically restrain you.

Obviously in some cases there may be withdrawal symptoms. In those cases, you will just suffer through them until they end. If they get really bad, the person can bring you in for medical attention to fix you up, rather than letting you fail.

Once the pain of withdrawal has subsided, they can watch you for a little while longer just to make sure. They can even slowly disengage just to make sure. Maybe after they think you’re ready, you can switch from 24/7 monitoring to random spot-checks. They just randomly show up anytime and any place to make sure you haven’t un-quit. If you have, then you return to full-on watching.

A side bonus of this is that you will hopefully make a new friend, much like rich and/or famous people become friends with bodyguards, drivers, maids, nannies, or other servants.

The biggest problem I see with this idea, besides the obvious legal unrealisms, is the price. The bare minimum cost is the minimum wage times twenty four hours per day. Even if this service existed, it would be priced out of range for those people who probably need it most.

However, the high price is advantageous in some ways. The cost can act as an incentive to quit and stay quit. The sooner you break your habit, the sooner you stop paying for 24/7 service. If you get caught by a random spot check later on, it’s going to cost you a lot of money all over again. Also, if you paid a huge sum of money to quit, and then you un-quit, it will all have been spent for naught. Thinking of that might aid people’s will power.

Thinking more realistically for a moment, I do think that this could actually work. What I would suggest is that someone do a scientific study, and use the research budget to hire these watchers. Compare the rate of successful quitters after X amount of time to other addiction curing methods. If it really is super effective, then we really should consider turning it into an available option, especially since it should create a lot of new jobs.

Lastly, there is one way to try this method out right now. Find a friend, family member, co-worker, etc., and get them to watch you. Maybe get one or more people who also have bad habits, and simply agree to mutually watch each other. My guess it that this will work very well because people will try very hard to catch you. It will be almost like a fun game of hide and seek.

It’s obvious that there is a serious will power deficiency in our society. If we can not figure out a way for people to build up the necessary will within themselves, then perhaps the solution is to borrow the will of others.

Let me begin by talking about what local stores already win at. They win at customer service. If someone runs a tiny shop, they are much more likely to actually care and know about the products. They also excel at proximity and speed. When you buy something, you get it immediately. Because they are close to your house, you don’t have to travel far to get there. You might even be able to walk there. They have the advantages that all brick and mortar stores have, that you can see and try the product before you buy. And because they are local, money you spend there stays in your community and boosts the local economy, which is good for you. It’s almost like getting a discount in the form of the rising tide lifting your boat.

Now for the problems. Local businsses have a severe lack of product selection. This isn’t just a problem for local stores, though. It’s a problem for brick and mortar stores of all sizes. I look around at a lot of the stuff on my desk, and in my room. Very little of is has ever been available in a brick and mortar store. My laptop, my monitors, many of my books, and almost all of the parts in my computer are almost impossible to find anywhere other than Amazon, Newegg, etc.

How can we increase the selection of goods at a local shop? Right now distribution is setup such that the giant warehouses ship things to a few relatively spaced out big box stores like Best Buy. What if instead of a Best Buy ever few towns, there was a tiny electronics store in every town, more like Radio Shack size. Now what if all of those stores got a daily shipment from a regional warehouse that carried absolutely everything. You could order online, but then pick it up in a very local store within 24 hours at no shipping cost. I’m not a distribution expert, so I don’t know if this would work, though.

The other major problem in local shops is higher prices. Look at the insane discounts Amazon is able to give on just about everything. Even if you go to a big store like Borders can you get that kind of discount without a coupon or special deal. Those discounts are Amazon’s every day prices. How can a smaller store possibly compete? They can’t work in the same sort of volumes as bigger stores, and thus can not get the same bulk discounts.

I think the answer to this might lie in taxes. I’m talking about business taxes. Obviously the employees of small businesses will still have to pay income tax on their wages, but there should be no taxes on businesses that have smaller than X employees and make less than $X in revenue. Amazon will still be able to lower their prices and pay their taxes no problem, but a local business with no tax might be able to compete. Maybe we can do something with sales taxes, too. If you live in the same town as the store, you pay less or no sales tax. Something like that.

Another problem with local businesses is hours, even with restaurants. Most people with money work all day, and maybe they evne commute. They can only patronize a business that is open before or after work. When I was in college, many things were open 24/7. Near my house now, many places open late, close early, and are not open at all on Sunday, holidays, etc.

For non-food businesses I think the simple answer is technology and delivery. Imagine if instead of going to Amazon.com I went to my local bookstore’s web site. It would have live updates of what was in stock, prices, everything. As I said before, I would be able to order something that could arrive in store the next day. However, I should also be able to get home delivery for a much lower cost, since only local postage would be required. Heck, the proprietor of the store might even be able to deliver it themselves, or have an employee do the deliveries. This way, even if the store is physically closed, it is effectively open 24/7.

With things the way they are now, shopping online is really the only way to go for someone like me. Even in the cases where a local store has great customer service, which I do appreciate, that doesn’t justify the higher prices and decreased product selection. I do think, though, that if local businesses step up their game, they can definitely compete, if not beat, the big competitors. As of now, they just aren’t.

To demonstrate what I’m talking about, I will use the example of this cute YouTube video.

Ok, it’s a cute and catchy computer generated song and dance number, not too miraculous on the surface. Sure, it’s fun, but it’s nothing earth shattering. That may be so, but if you think about the entire history of this video is epic.

In Japan in 1941, twin girls were born who later became the ver popular singing duo The Peanuts. If you’re not Japanese, you might know them as the twin girls from the Mothra movies. At one point in their illustrious singing and acting careers they performed the song in this video, Koi no Fuga, on Japanese television. I think it was part of a New Year’s special. The video of that performance has been removed from YouTube.

Much more recently, a Japanese singing and dancing duo named W performed this song to a choreographed dance, which you can see here.

In 2004 Yamaha released the initial version of a software program called Vocaloid. Vocaloid is very cool. It allows someone to control a virtual singing voice. It allows you to map the fundamental elements of human speech patterns to a musical score. From that, it will automatically generate an audio track performed by a virtual singer. Each new version of Vocaloid has greatly improved this virtual singer, and also changed their voice. For marketing reasons, they create a new virtual idol character to represent each new singing voice, the most popular of which is Hatsune Miku. The girls in this video are another Vocaloid character, Sakine Meiko.

Vocaloid characters, and Hatsune Miku in particular, are so popular that some fans in Japan have created a free program called MikuMikuDance. MikuMikuDance is a 3D animation program which makes it relatively easy to create animated videos of computer generated models dancing. It’s specifically built for Miku and other Vocaloid characters. There is even an option to load Vocaloid files into the program itself, and it will automatically animate the model’s mouth to lip-sync to the song.

Now look again at the first video I posted, and think about it in the context of all these things. The Peanuts, W, Vocaloid, MikuMikuDance, YouTube, etc. Think about all of the things that had to happen, and did happen, in order for that video to exist. It goes deeper, though. Think about the futher miracle of you actually watching the video. The rabbit hole goes much deeper.

You’ve got to add in the entire history of the human race, specifically as related to science and technology. Without electricity, transistors, the Internet, GPUs, or a million other things which are miracles in and of themselves, this video would not be possible. This video is Japanese in origin, and if World War 2 had gone differently, this would probably not exist. If some character designer at Yamaha had changed his design, this video would likewise be different than it is.

Let’s take it a step further. Think about the entire lives of all the human beings involved in the making of this video. If the Peanuts had grown up in a different circumstance, they might not have become stars and performed this song. I doubt they wrote the song themselves, so think of the song writer. The two girls in W were formerly of Morning Musume. Think about their entire lives up until the point of making this video, and how under a different circumstance this might have not come to be. Think about the life of the people who created the MikuMikuDance application, and the life of the person who actually made this video.

Now branch it out even further. Think about the parents of The Peanuts. Think about the lives of all the people around them who made their career what it was. Their friends and family. Two girls singing a song is a huge production. There were many people who made that possible. And the same goes for W, Vocaloid, YouTube, or any other component you see here. You have a huge group of people contributing to any individual component, and each individual person in each group has a long chain of human ancestry that resulted in them existing and living their life the way they lived it.

And of course, before any of that, you have the history of the Earth, specifically life on Earth, and the history of the Universe. Everything from dinosaurs to evolution to the black plague  in some way made this cute little YouTube video that you just watched.

While you are thinking about how miraculous that YouTube video is, why not think instead about something like Star Wars, The Empire State Building, or a Formula 1 car. If you examine all things from a universal view across all space and time, you can not help but see the absolute awesomeness of everything, even the things that suck.

Regardless of what I think about insurance, this got me thinking about a new idea, reverse insurance. If I can make a bet that bad things will happen, why can’t I make a bet that bad things won’t happen? There should be a place I can bet money and get a better return than any savings account, certificate of deposit or savings bond. However, if something bad ever happens to me, they take away a bunch of my money. Good times would be better and bad times would be worse. Since most of my life is good times, this is a great bet for me.

People who defend insurance as a worthwhile investment say things like “bad things will happen eventually” or “better safe than sorry”. You know what? The reality is that bad things probably won’t happen. If the reverse was true, insurance companies would be losing money, not making it. If bad things were more likely, then insurance companies would have to pay out to most of their customers very often. Since premiums are lower than payouts, this scenario would quickly make insurance companies bankrupt.

Think of it like this. You go to a casino to play roullette. They let you make a bet on 0 or 00 because most of the time, you will lose. They even let you bet on red, black even and odd because you will still lose about 51% of the time due to the existence of 0 and 00. They wont let you make a bet on “not 00″ because you would win most of the time. Buying insurance like betting on 00 over and over again. Reverse insurance is betting on “not 00″. Which would you bet on?

Wait a minute, it just came to me. When you bet on 00 it’s the same as the casino betting on “not 00″. When you bet on insurance it’s the insurance company that is betting on reverse insurance. The way to buy reverse insurance is to sell regular insurance. Insurance companies are the only people betting on reverse insurance, and they’re winning a fortune. Not only do they have enough money to fix all the bad things that happen to everybody, but they can buy luxurious lifestyles for many of their employees.

How can you seriously say that insurance is a good bet when the people making the reverse bet are ludicrously wealthy? Insurance companies are loaded with cash while insurance buyers are so poor that they need insurance to dig themselves out when bad things happen. If insurance really were a good bet, the opposite would be true. If there are people out there willing to bet on insurance, then I should be allowed to bet against them. It really bothers me that the government forces me to be stupid and bet right along with them.

I think the only course of action for me is to start an insurance agency. If you disagree with what’s in this blog post, then I think I might be able to interest you in one of our policies. You give me a pile of money every few months, and I will use that money to make more money by investing it in various ways. If disaster ever strikes, I’ll use some of my vast riches to help you out. Any takers?

The idea I came up with is to make an emulator that emulates nothing. Instead of trying to make something to emulate a game console just make up a brand new amazing game console on paper and emulate that. If you’re computer savvy you probably realize this is essentially what Java is, a virtual machine. But imagine if someone made up a brand new virtual machine designed for games.

I’m confident that if such a system were implemented and supported by developers it would create a new revolution in PC gaming. It would make it easier to program PC games since developers would no longer worry about users having different hardware. They would just have to write games to work with the virtual machine without caring about what hardware is underneath. The emulator’s interface can include means to distribute games over the net and include an online matchup system for multiplayer gaming.

Think of it like this. What if the XboX 360 was a free piece of software that ran on any computing device ever instead of being an expensive piece of hardware. It would be like having a game console that never became obsolete. People would continue to use it and make games for it forever. Game developers would make money based on how many copies of their games sold and how much they sold for. The company developing the emulator would charge a fee for having games listed and perhaps advertising in the interface, but not during games.

All the detriments of PC gaming would also go away. No more difficulty installing games or not getting them to work. No more complications with patches. No more tricky copy protection schemes. All the detriments of PC gaming would be eliminated without getting rid of any of the benefits like the KVM.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this. And some people might argue that Steam is almost this already. The difference is that Steam is really just a front end for MS Windows. For Steam to fulfill this role and achieve all the benefits it would have to become much more than it is.

There is one negative to this that is the full power of PC hardware would not be able to be easily harnessed. The performance would be well above that of Java or VMWare, but it would not come close to fully utilizing the hardware. The emulator would always cause a performance hit by nature. One solution is to have an operating system instead of a VM. Maybe there can be an OS on a LiveCD or such, but I do not think that by taking on the OS route will this be successful. We’re just going to have to start shying away from crazy insane graphics and put more emphasis on making games that many people will buy.

In the case of the mass media or an editor-controlled source of news like a newspaper or Slashdot this problem isn’t so bad. I’m not saying that the stories don’t show up in those places, that couldn’t be further from the truth. But at least there is a single person who can be forced to take responsibility for publishing dangerous and misleading information and presenting it as truth. In the case of more democratic websites like digg and del.icio.us popular this is a more difficult problem.

If a deceiving website appears on Digg or del.icio.us it is because it has already deceived enough people to make it to the top of the ranks. The trouble begins when these things make it near the top of the charts, they get increased exposure and cause more harm. I’m sure the people who run these websites do not want to promote this false information. But at the same time they do not want to ruin the pure democracy of their sites. I understand their feelings and I actually agree with them.

Since these are websites where the content is completely democratically controlled by the users we need to take a stand and vote against any bad items we see. The trouble is that the software running these sites does not allow negative votes. You can’t “undigg” something and you can’t subtract a link on something for del.icio.us popular. So what are we to do? I have a possible solution for del.icio.us that can work if it gains enough support. I’m still thinking about digg.

The next time you see something on del.icio.us popular that is complete bullshit make a link to it and add the tag “flimflam”. Yes, I know, this will cause the link to become even more popular. But if you don’t add any other tags besides flimflam it will only rise up the popular and flimflam pages. If awareness of the tag spreads then people will take notice of things on the popular list with the flimflam tag. Also, people might just monitor the flimflam tag on its own to find out things which are fake. There is a chance for abuse if people mark things as flimflam which are not. However, the democracy of the system should make sure that only real flim flam is heavily tagged as such.

For Digg, I don’t know what to do. The only thing I can come up with is to post a story contradicting the original and then digging it up as high as possible. That is no easy task. If anyone comes up with anything better, I’d love to hear it.

So next time you see something promoting alternative medicine, scientology, pseudoscience, etc. on del.icio.us tag it as flimflam. Then be sure to keep a close eye on the flimflam tag to be sure that you aren’t deceived by anything fake. Let’s use the democratic power of these sites to keep them free of the crap that infests the rest of the net.

As German games go, M.U.L.E. is fairly flawed. But the flaws really can’t be blamed on any people. Half of the problems in the game are simply due to technical limitations. Because it is a video game with very minimal controls there had to be some losses. For example, the mine outfitters are on the left side of town. So if you have plots of land on the left of the map you can mine them without spending too much time. Also, having a poor a.i. which can be taken advantage of in any game with less than four players really hurts the game quite a bit. Lastly, the method of selecting plots of land is fickle, and you really need lots of skill to get the land you want.

The other ways in which the game is flawed weren’t viewed as flaws because this is a video game. But when you design a strategy game the current thinking is that you want to remove as many random and arbitrary factors as possible. M.U.L.E. has way too many random factors. Pretty much every turn somebody gets a random bonus or detriment. There is an element of gampeplay where you hunt the wampus which appears randomly. And the selection of how many plots of land are auctioned off and when can be pretty random.

One last thing about the game that is not so good is the lack of knowledge. In game theory there are ways of describing games as being games of total information, partial information or no information. A game of no information is like 3 card monte. The dealer used sleight of hand to move the card so you don’t know which card to pick, and your chances of winning are one out of three, or worse. A game of partial information is like Texas Hold ‘em, you know some of the cards out there, but you don’t know what your opponent is hiding. A game of total information is like checkers, chess or go where everything is in plain sight.

The problem with M.U.L.E. is that it is a game of total information, everything every player has is wide open. However, the rules of the game are closed. You receive points based on money, land and goods. Money points are obviously one point per dollar. Land points seem to simply be a number multiplied by how many plots of land you own. And goods points seem to be a multiplier of how many, and which, units of goods you possess. However, the multiplier for goods is unknown! How am I supposed to decide whether or not to sell a good? Let’s say I have an opportunity to sell one crystite for $50. Would it be worth more than 50 goods points if I held onto it? There’s no way to know because I can’t find this information anywhere on the Internet.

Despite multiple paragraphs about the flaws of M.U.L.E. it is still a great game. With a little bit of modification it would make an excellent board game that could be played time and time again. If I find the time I am going to work on making a new game very much like M.U.L.E without as much randomness. I know that I’ve said stuff like this before and never come through on it. But remember what I said about shit-talking? At the minimum I will design a new game like M.U.L.E. that is much more like a german strategy board game with less random crap. At the most, I will implement this game in software for online play.

My issue is that I’ve pretty much locked my blog into an essay blog. I make big infrequent posts. A lot of times I write posts and never put them up because they are large and hard to edit. Mostly that’s my fault for being heavily redundant. I keep saying the same thing in many different ways to be sure I get my point across. Like right now. And while this format allows me to express myself in a way I like, it is really something I need to limit.

I had a SlashJournal and it had limits. I worked within those limits for a time. But eventually I found them too constricting, so I switched to this format which has no limits. Now that I’ve experimented with no limits for a time I find that I still can’t do everything I want. So I’m going to write myself a new blog software. One that imposes heavy limits to allow me to do more. Not making sense? Let me explain.

Presently all I can do to post on my blog is make a bunch of HTML and stick it in a box. But with so much freedom to move around I really lack direction. So I always end up blabbing away about something crazy. I never post a cool link I’ve found. I never post a short little blurb about a book or a game. I always wait for something really good and then write a huge thing about it.

So here’s my idea for a new blog software that encompasses all types of blogging. The multi-blog if you will. Instead of just one type of post there will be many. There will be simple “link” posts where I just put up a URL. That will most likely mirror to my del.icio.us. There will be blurb posts where I limit myself to 50 words or such. These will be used for anything which doesn’t require much explanation. Things like “I went to the beach today, yay!” or “I got this thing, you totally should buy it.” I’ll still keep the essay posts, but from then on I will be sure to limit myself to 1000 words or so. Maybe even less. That will force me to edit more heavily and only post an essay when I really write it well. I’ll probably make additional types of posts for photos (Flickr mirror), video and audio.

I think with all these different types of posts I will be more inclined to put up more content. And that content will be more useful to myself and others. Especially since I will also do the following. First, implement track-backs which I have never had working. Next mirror on sites like del.icio.us and Flickr for awesome and for bandwidth relief. RSS everything. Feeds of different types of posts, feeds of different combinations of types of posts, feeds of date. And of course, absolutely everything will be categorized by tag, not hierarchy. Oh yeah, feeds for flags too. Feeds for combinations of flags. The whole shebang.

What I’m going to basically do is create a single information collation point which will allow me to store, get and share all the digital information in my life. I’ve wanted such a thing for quite awhile, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized the web was the place for it to be. But don’t expect it anytime soon. I’m going to be working on using the Puzzle Pirates engine to make some multiplayer games first.

Then it hit me. Setting up LANs with VPN access intentionally for the purpose of playing multi-player games could be a great way to restore PC gaming. On a LAN you can provide all sorts of services very easily, and since a VPN is the only way in you can provide those services to only a select group of people rather than the whole world. It also makes everything easier by putting a single, yet very strong, security mechanism in front of all the services. No need for separate authentications or anything.

Why would this bring PC gaming back to life? Well, there are a lot of PC games out there that still work just fine. The problem has to do with lack of players, lack of quality players, or abundance of crappy players or cheaters. If someone were to setup a VPN dedicated to quality online gaming it would create a close community of quality PC gaming folk who could get their awesome game on without worrying about all the shitcockers. Not only could you lock up some game servers in the VPN, but you could also lock up some other stuff in there too. How about multiple game servers for different games, forums, IRC, informative web pages, a web server running web based games just for the LAN, etc. This type of community could allow the quality folk out there, like me and hopefully you, to get our PC gaming groove on free of all the craptasticness out there.

Imagine if there was a CS server out there that nobody could get to except for a large enough group of quality players. Imagine a place where there are servers for games that nobody plays anymore. Most of all, imagine a place where there are no shitcockers. They can’t get in, and if they do they are banned forever with no chance of getting back in. Incorporate the VPN into the LAN parties and you’ve got some even better times.

After a bit of research I realized there isn’t much you can do to avoid this other than to just not move anywhere with an HOA. The problem is that a lot of people don’t realize what they are getting into because they aren’t properly informed, and they don’t inquire when buying a home. Also, sometimes a good HOA can change leadership and makes someone’s life hell. Often some of the benefits of the HOA evaporate. The developers of the community trying to save money often slack on the maintenance funds and people have to pay for their own roof repairs and such. So they’ve essentially exchange their freedom for permission to use the community swimming pool and not much more. Supposedly rules prohobiting old cars in yards and such helps protect property values. I could however argue that this hasn’t been proven to actually increase property value at all, and that in fact might decrease property value because people don’t want to live where there are crazy rules. When HOAs rule everywhere land without an HOA will be more expensive. If HOAs taking away freedom makes living in one less desirable, and HOAs cover most of the houses, then decreasing demand and increasing supply will make non HOA homes more valuable.

The point is that once you are in, there’s no way out besides moving. Everything they have going is legal and by the book. So rather than try to fix the evil that is the HOA, I had a better idea. Let’s make a geek HOA. Build a community of houses with services like municipal internet (OCS!), swimming pools, digital movie theatres, file storage, segways, robot lawn mowers and vacuums. All the things that poor geeks can’t afford they can share municipally. Then we make all the rules of the HOA be extra awesome. Not maintaining your computers properly? No Internet for you! In fact, we can make the rules as cruel as we want. Running Windows? Foreclosed! Not that we should actually go quite that far, but the option is there, and it’s all perfectly legal.

The benefits of a geeky HOA would be obvious. Geeks would love living there. Property values would skyrocket since geeks would want to live there so badly, and there wouldn’t be enough houses to go around. Geeky people would be living near each other and thus could do all sorts of crazy geek things. You’d never be at a loss to find someone who can help you with some code, or for D+D players, etc. We could have our own private movie theatre that shows whatever we want. No more waiting in huge lines, there is a seat for geek already there. Pooling resources and cooperating results in more for everybody. This idea is at least equivalent in quality to the geek commune idea. It might even be easier to pull off since it is closer to the existing lifestyle of most geeks and more apparently beneficial.

Just remember. Whenever you recognize someone accruing power for stupid and evil, there is a way to use the same method for good. If only we could actually pull some of these things off we’d be in serious business. That initial financial investment is always the problem. If there are evil homeowner’s associations taking away peoples freedom, then why don’t we make a homeowners association with a different set of rules for us? I can dream, can’t I?

Look at both of my grandmothers and their friends. They are all masters of using the plain telephone, but none of them can use the cellular phone properly. Some of them can make calls and do nothing else, but even then most of them have trouble. And every time they want to do something like change the ring tone they ask some children or grandchildren to do it for them.

There are other problems too. While the smaller phones are more portable the older people often cannot hit the smaller buttons, and definitely not in any efficient manner. They also have problems reading the text on the small screens even if they knew how to navigate the menus. The point is that most senior citizens only want a cellular phone to make calls. Primarily they save that for emergencies. These people have lived most of their lives not being able to contact anyone easily, so they don’t really have a large need to contact someone from their car or the grocery store unless it is extra important.

The reason this hasn’t been implemented is multi-fold. First off not many senior citizens buy phones as it is. So making a phone especially for them would cost a lot and probably not sell very well. However, I think this is a catch-22 and that the reason they don’t buy phones is because of these problems. And if a phone was made and marketed to the older people in our population it would sell like hotcakes. I imagine that even reluctant seniors would receive them as gifts from family and friends. The second reason is that phone companies make most of their money on things like e-mailing pictures for 25 cents and text messaging. That’s why they give away boatloads of minutes for almost nothing is so they can lure you into the other services with higher profit margins. Seniors will only use their phones to make calls and will only do it very rarely. To solve this problem the phone has to come with a pay as you go plan where they only pay for the minutes they use at a reasonable rate like 3-5 cents per minute anywhere in the country. If it is cheaper than the long distance cost of the POTS(plain old telephone service) then they will use it and it will be profitable. Sales of the phone itself could also be profitable as you will see.

So what kind of phone will it be? First off, it will be large. It should be about the size of most cordless handsets. There should only be 13 buttons on the phone. The same 12 buttons that are on normal telephones plus a power button. What about send and end buttons you say? How about voice activation. Saying hello and goodbye will pick up and hang up the phone. There are problems with that as well, but it is infinitely more intuitive to those of old age than more buttons. All buttons should have incredibly large print on them and also be large enough to easily hit with a clumsy finger. There should be no screen, they don’t need caller id or care. They will receive calls so infrequently that all they need is a very loud ring accompanied by a very vigorous vibration to let them know about an incoming call. Lastly their needs to be two LED lights. One of the lights should indicate strength of service and the other should indicate whether the phone is on or off. When they purchase the phones the in-store representatives should be responsible in instructing the elderly people as to how exactly the phone works and what the LEDs mean. They should not let them leave without knowing for sure that the people know how to use them. If they try to make a call while the phone is off and don’t know what’s wrong then customers will be lost due to their own incompetence. Lastly, the phones need very large docking stations for charging. I know that the only thing you need to charge a phone is a wire, but even something simple like that can confuse the old people. Put a large plastic stand on the end of the wire to dock the phone in. Oh, that reminds me, it probably needs a battery indicator also, doh. Anyway, as I mentioned before the phone itself will be cheap. Without a screen or camera or any advanced features the phone will be cheap as dirt. The only problem I can foresee is that the phones will only be a viable product for a short time. When this generation of seniors passes away the next generation will already be fully trained in the use of the cellular phone and will dislike the phone designed for today’s seniors. But I think the good that can come of producing this phone is not something we should overlook. Heck, we could probably make them by recycling old discarded phones into new chassis. Let’s get prototyping so grandma can call her grandchildren again.

In the Times Square end of the line there are people there every day with a table setup giving away free stress tests. I never paid them much heed other than being smart enough not to think twice about their bait. But I just noticed something recently that set me alight. What they were basically doing is hooking people up to a non-scientific hokey instrument to break the ice and try to sell them something. That’s not out of the ordinary nowadays. What really got me was what they were selling. Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. They were Scientologists! Scientologists are the largest, most evil and most hated cult on earth. Especially by me. I have decided that in the future, on some lousy day when I have nothing better to do, I will spend all my time in the subway harassing them. It will be so much fun.

Ideas to make this more fun include:

• Getting them to sell us books and record them doing it. It’s against the MTA rules and they will be ousted.
• Flash mobbing them and freaking them the fuck out. A large enough mob could make a human wall that would simultaneously intimidate and prevent people from taking the tests.
• Handing out informative leaflets explaining the truth about scientology so people know what the fuck is going on. Standard signs and informative soap boxing are also the standard.
• Taking stress tests over and over again. They’re free right? If we are the only ones taking the tests nobody else will be able to.
• Video, video, video. You never know what might happen if you end up in court for something crazy. Those cultists love lawyers, but even they can’t argue a video.
• I don’t know the rules about fire in the subway, but if they are giving away free books we can take them and destroy them all. it costs them money!

Those are the only great ideas I can come up with right now. Help me out if you come up with anything else. It will also be necessary to be aware of all the rules and regulations of what you can and cannot do in the subway station. If police or MTA police show up we want them on our side. In fact, if they showed up and were on our side, we win.

I’m dead serious about this. If you are a scientologist you might want to warn your buddies, not like it will do you any good. If you aren’t a scientologist, don’t become one. Other sites on the Internet will explain the whole thing to you. They basically take all your money and brainwash you. I mean, their “religion” was made up on a bet by a science fiction author. And if you hate scientologists as much as I do, come help me out!

As with any piece of software let us examine the problem we are trying to solve. We are trying to make software that will entertain people. It should also challenge people’s minds and reflexes and simultaneously move them emotionally in the same way a good movie does. This software should not be addicting, and it should have as small a monthly fee as possible, free is best. This software should not have a system of leveling by which the players who pay more money or play for longer hours will automatically be superior. Only skill in brains and game control should separate players.

First, the easy technical problems. Why do MMOs have monthly fees? The architecture of the software requires a centralized server which costs money to maintain. If we were to develop some sort of p2p architecture akin to BitTorrent that would act as the server, or at least alleviate some of its load, then the monthly fee could be reduced significantly. Also if all profits, if any, were made on the initial sale of the game we could reduce costs further by setting the monthly fee at cost. It would also remove incentive for developers to add addicting elements to the game which do not enhance the quality of the game itself. And distributed computing of an MMO is interesting computer science problem number one.

Next, how do we have a game in which there are multiple players that are separated only by their intelligence/wisdom and their video game control skills? There are many possible answers to this question, but the best one I’ve come up with is Metal Gear. Metal Gear is a game series in which puzzle solving and acute control skills mean everything. There is no treadmill, simply the collection and intelligent use of resources at your disposal to accomplish your goals. In my MMO idea, everyone controls an avatar just like Solid Snake, Lara Croft or the 3d Prince of Persia. Problem solving, resource management and video game button pushing are the skills required to make progress.

How can this game move people as emotionally as a movie? It needs plot, it needs music, it needs an immersing world. My suggestion is the following. The setting of the game is a post-apocalyptic hellhole similar to that portrayed in the Terminator movies. A game of survival. Every player is a person and there are deadly killer robots ruling the planet. The game will have one large persistent world, and there will be an endgame. High quality music will accompany everything to set the mood. And everything from in-game television screens to players communicating with each other to players finding things throughout the course of the game will be used to deliver the plot. The plot will be an incredibly epic and well written man vs. machine survival story. It would rock.

Now comes the hardest part. What are the specifics of the game that prevent it from making all the mistakes of MMOs in the past? This includes all the questions like player death, cheesy techniques, asshole players, etc. These ideas have not been thought out in full, but I do have some good ideas on how the game will work. More ideas are welcome.

First off, the game will work like so. The player creates their character. This includes selecting a name and a physical appearance of the character including clothing, since clothing doesn’t matter. Next, the players will spawn in a “safe” location in the persistent world. If there are many players then multiple spawn points can be set. These safe points will be somewhat protected from the enemies, but not completely. The only humans inhabiting the game will be players. The safe “city” will have resources such as food, water, weapons, radios and a shield or turrets to keep the evil at bay. It will be up to the players to collectively manage resources properly if they hope for this place to remain safe. They will be free to form their social structure in any way they see fit, and depending on how that works out will determine if they get anywhere or just all die. Free-form social structure is interesting computer science problem number 2.

The actual game-play will be as follows. Each player has equipment that does everything it should do. Guns shoot, knives cut, radios communicate, watches tell time, etc. Making equipment like walkie talkies work the same way they do in real life is the third interesting computer science problem. In order to fight for survival, and hopefully the destruction of the evil overlords players will have to leave their safe little bases to gather more resources and mount offensive strikes against the enemy. The elements of stealth, puzzle solving, exploration, aiming, maneuvering, teamwork, etc. will all come into play out in the world.

When a player dies their corpse will lie there depending on the fashion in which they died. Dying from starvation and dying in a huge explosion are very different. All their inventory will be affected as realistically as possible. The player will then be forced to make a new character. The accomplishments of the previous character will be logged and remembered. That’s it. Since there are no levels or xp the only thing you can lose is inventory. And as there are no items that are necessarily better than others, just different items, it wont be too painful. Some items might be scarce, like powered armor with rocket launchers and jet packs. But if you have that, then you aren’t very likely to die. You couldn’t realistically expect to keep something like that forever either as the enemies will come at you in full force. You will either waste them or perish at that point. People really wont care about losing their pistol, flashlight, canteen and two grenades.

That’s the whole game? Yup. But there will be some other interesting tidbits. First off, coding the ability to switch control of enemies over to the administrators. That will allow cool things to happen during special events. Also, maybe some sort of side plots involving evolving mutant monsters near a radioactive dump. This will be yet another computer science problem to make enemies with AIs that evolve depending on player equipment and combat tactics, but also in their own configurations. It will be too much work for someone to configure enemies for all situations. But it would be undeniably awesome if they automatically outfit themselves with flamethrowers for massacre missions and sniper rifles for assassination missions, etc. And mutant enemies that actually change over time would be just one more bit cooler.

The other thing about the game will be the level of interaction will be extremely deep. Radios will work like radios, video screens will work like video screens. Robots will work like robots. Players will be able to dismantle robots for parts, assemble parts to create new things. They can re-program in-game computer systems to aid the cause. Imagine a game world where someone writes a virus in the game and it infects the enemy base in the way they coded it and that gives you the opening for an assault. That is indeed the game of all time. Imagine the game having real working duct tape. Need to strap a flashlight to your assault rifle? No problem.

That’s my idea. Tons of players with the abilities of Solid Snake fighting for survival in a very large persistent game world with incredibly dangerous AI enemies roaming about. Every important video game skill and more will come into play. The plot will be deep and have a beginning middle and end. The music and immersing world will elicit strong emotions. This is but one way to make a game with many simultaneous players on the Internet without making it just another MUD with 3D graphics. I think it’s a damn good idea for a game that provides interesting and innovative new things on all fronts. For the player, developer and administrator this will surely be something special. If anyone wants to pay me enough money to quit my job, I’ll make it.

From riding the train so often my Computer Science mind couldn’t help but start to think its evil ways. And thus I will explain how simple it is to hack the train.

On my train the conductors do not check for tickets between each and every stop. If you were to take a train between two local stops it will likely be a free ride. Just be careful not to get on the train car with the conductor standing right there. But then again, they are so apathetic it might not matter.

The lazy and apathetic conductors are the easiest way to get free rides. Basically these people walk up and down the train making sure that everyone paid for their ride in some capacity. They also have to think about the running of the train in cooperation with the engineer. One time I pretended to have lost my ticket even though it was in my pocket. The conductor and people around me looked annoyed as expected, but I persisted. The conductor eventually got tired of waiting and moved on. I had the ticket ready in case he returned, but he never did.

Now the ticket I get is a weekly ticket because my situation prevents me from getting a monthly ticket yet. The weekly ticket allows unlimited rides between two stations for 7 days Saturday-Friday. Unless the conductor takes it and studies it the only thing he can see from afar is the expiration date. This ticket, unlike the one way, round-trip or 10-trip tickets does not get a hole-punch. The conductor just glances at it and moves on. To test I just saved a ticket from a previous week and only exposed to the conductor a portion of it without the expiration date. He saw it and moved on. So a weekly ticket is potentially a lifetime ticket. Also, if you bought one with a conveniently editable expiration date like 08/08 or something you could use white-out or sharpie to edit the expiration date carefully and get free rides.

There are two holy grails of free train rides. The first is ticket forgery. That is too boring to even get into. The real interesting hack is to manipulate the little slips the conductor uses to keep track of who has paid and who has not. On a long ride they have to make multiple passes through the train checking tickets. On a crowded train the conductor cannot possibly remember every face on the train. So they use this system of little cardboard tickets and a hole puncher to keep track of who they need a ticket from. They punch and place these tickets in little slots on all the rows of seating. If armed with a properly shaped hole puncher and some properly colored blank slips you could mark your seat to indicate to the conductor that he had already collected your ticket.

I have not reverse engineered this system entirely, but I do know quite a few things about it. First, the way in which the slip is tilted indicates something. Secondly, each conductor seems to have a different shaped hole puncher, so having multiple shapes, especially star and triangle is important. Most important is getting and sitting on the train as far away from the conductor’s starting position is important. You can’t very well make fake hole punches if the conductor is watching. Other passengers are too apathetic to say anything. So let’s say you want to get a free ride on the train. Get on before other people and find someone sitting alone in a two-seat row in the window seat. Examine their slip. Then find an empty two-seat row and sit in the window seat generating an identical slip for yourself. Then you must skillfully ignore the conductor as he comes through. The rely heavily on the fact that honest people who have not had their tickets collected will bustle around when they say “tickets please”. People who have already been ticketed don’t even move. The fact that you move signals that you have a ticket to show. If you just keep going about your business he will likely walk on by.

If you get caught, pay up. The railroad has a system whereby purchasing tickets before you get on the train is cheaper than buying them on the train. This is to discourage people from trying to get free rides. It also helps them make the trains more efficient because they can better track how many tickets where purchased if you don’t buy them from the conductor. However, if you are getting tons of free rides by hacking the system it will end up being cheaper for you to buy the occasional ticket at the higher on-train price.

And lastly I just want to say that I never actually have cheated the train out of anything. For every time I have taken the train I have legally purchased a ticket. The matter is that I simply can’t help but try to figure out ways to mess with the system. That is the nature of people like me.

So the obvious answer is that instability in the middle east, higher demand, lower supply, insecurity of oil fields, etc. all contribute to the higher price of oil. OK, that makes some sense. But the United States gets most of its oil from Venezuela, Canada, itself and I hear even Russia now. So little comes from former Persia that it shouldn’t make a significant difference. The other obvious answer is that in the US there is very little public transportation, and most people have to drive no matter what. So the gas station can charge whatever it wants and get away with it. It’s true, but in the 70′s when there was a fake shortage and people were waiting in line for gas people would drive mopeds and car pool. People aren’t doing that today.

Now usually if you are in the business of selling something, and that good you are selling has an increasing demand and decreasing supply, you raise the price on that good. However, since we have capitalism, you can’t raise it more than the other people selling the same good or else you’re SOL. When prices are high, people are more likely to shop around for the better price. Given that, how can the profits of the oil companies increase while supply decreases and demand increases? I mean, its not surprising there is SOME increase, but such a tremendous one surely requires further explanation.

The answer is obvious to anyone who thinks about it. The oil companies are not competing. There is no capitalism for them. Because they don’t have to compete with each other they can raise the price, for fake or real reasons, and everyone has to pay. The competition is not between the gas companies, but the gas stations. When you go to the grocery store it is your decision to buy Cheerios or Corn Flakes. And if you choose one over the other the retailer purchases more of that particular brand. And thus, the cereal companies compete directly.

Gas companies do not compete directly. The gas stations are competing with the other gas stations that are on the same road, intersection and town. But a Mobil station buy Mobil gas, no matter what. And the Hess station buys Hess gas no matter what. And the gas station owners only mark up their wholesale price buy a cent or three. If the wholesale price that one gas station pays happens to be significantly lower than another, then you’ll see them charge a few cents less for gas. Sure, overall they get maybe a little more business than the other station. But never have I seen two stations, one a few cents cheaper, where one was full of cars and the other empty. Various other factors such as number of pumps, side of the road, speed-passes, credit cards, etc. even out the field. I guarantee that every gas station that stays in business takes full shipments of gas regularly.

So, how to fix it? How to end the virtual price-fixing of big oil? Make gaseterias. One gas station that sells multiple brands of gas. If you drive up to the pump instead of seeing Mobil regular, plus, special and diesel you see 4 or 5 different brands of gas in three or four octanes each, then the oil companies will be forced to compete directly with each other. When people need to fill up they hit the nearest gas station, whatever it may be, Hess, Exxon, Shell, etc. But if the nearest gas station offers multiple brands of gas all with equivalent markup by the gas station owner, then the oil companies will have to compete with each other. Because you know damn well that people will consistently choose the cheapest brand every time until the station is out of gas. I guarantee that if this is done, then gas prices will drop by dimes per gallon almost immediately. If they don’t, then it can only mean that there is a price fixing conspiracy between the oil companies. That is not something out of the realm of possiblity.

Keep in mind though, I am not an economist. But this sure as hell makes a lot of sense to me. It should, I thought it up on my own. But if you are an economist or see any flaw in this thinking, I’ll be glad to hear it. As for me, I use the train and my feet to get around.

The problem I have with these people is the same problem I have with most people. They are illogical, selfish, stupid and harmful to others. But, unlike some, I completely understand people with fitinaphobia. Instead of following my usual format of examples and reasons I’m going to try to write this as if it was a real disease. It might be awkward to avoid my usual method of spilling my brain into the keyboard, but we’ll see.

Summary: Fitinaphobia is the fear of fitting in. Patients experiencing this illness will gripe and moan if any of their interests or hobbies are popularized. They are only capable of expressing interesting in something as long as it is only popular or cool amongst a small select portion of the population in which they live.

Symptoms:

• Complaining and moaning when their hobbies and interests are propagated or popularized.
• Frequent changing of hobbies and interests as fads and trends come and go, but said hobbies and interest will never match said fads and trends.
• Inability to express reasons for liking or disliking certain things.
• Citing the fact that “too many people like it” as a reason that something is no longer cool.
• Wearing clothes or displaying objects and accessories which are purposefully out of the ordinary.

Causes:

• Being a leader with a tap on pop culture.
• Inability to attract the attention and admiration of others by utilizing innate sense of cool factor.
• Strong desire for positive attention coupled with poor personality and communication skills.
• Elitist attitude which implies that if the masses have obtained something it is no longer elite to posses it or knowledge of it.
• Belief that the types and numbers of people who like something, as well as their reasons for liking something effect the quality of said thing.

Cures:

• Heavy dose of logic beyond threshold of truth-handling abilities.
• Realization that the root causes of lack of positive attention is not related to hobbies and interests, but to poor social skills.
• Severe beatings can sometimes work in extreme cases, but not reccommended.
• Very extreme cases are often incurable due to lack of rational thinking abilities in the brain.

Case Studies:

• Anime fanboy/fangirl: These people are often a prime example of Fitinaphobics. They liked anime before it was cool to like anime. They were watching fansubs on betamax from the local comic book store long before anyone in the US knew what dragonball even was. You can often hear them complain about how anime isn’t what it used to be. Or that popularization of anime in America has destroyed the culture and art. They feel that all these fake fans, followers or posers are getting in their way. They never realize that they wouldn’t have all the shiny anime stuff that exists today if it wasn’t so popular.
• Indie music fans: Indie music fans can only listen to music from bands that have fewer than a select number of fans. The moment one of these bands becomes too popular the fan will claim the band sold out, and thus their music is now crap. Occasionally it will still be acceptable to listen to music the band played prior to selling out depending on the circumstances. These particular people will have a music collection with a very high turnover rate.
• Race car drivers: Race car drivers, especially customizers or ricers, will only drive cars that stand out from the crowd. If the buy a new Mustang only to find out there are hundreds of Mustangs on the road they will trade it in for something else. Usually this is due to need for compensation or very strong desire for attention. Any car that doesn’t turn heads, make loud noises and go very fast is no good.

So as you can see fitinaphobia is the fear of fitting in. Afflicted peoples cannot stand to be the same as anyone else. They have to stand out from the crowd and turn heads at all possible times. Often they are accidental trend-setters which only curses them since their poor social skills prevent them from taking advantage of the popularization of something they started. I’ve encountered many people like this over the years and most of these people are huge assholes. I even once talked to someone who was saying that Linux isn’t for noobs, and that it would be wrong to make an easy to use version of Linux. They claimed that somehow making free software more popular would dilute its quality. Nothing could be more vapid. So, if you have this disease or know someone who does, do something about it. And for anyone who encounters one of these elitist pricks, slap them upside the head. Maybe then we can move towards a world where people share ideas and do not obsess about what other people think. No matter how many people gaze upon a gem it does not shine less brightly.