Recently I made a payphone call with a credit card after I was stranded out in the middle of nowhere. Yes I’m still one of the few people who doesn’t own a cellphone, smart or otherwise… And yes, I thought that payphones were still america’s trusted institution but I guess I should of rethunk that when I saw only like one payphone in a city populated to the thousands.

After I entered my credit card information and made the call that no-one picked up. I woke up the next day to discover that there was $32 charged to my credit card. Go ahead, re-read that last sentence. I can wait.

Now, phone calls usually cost about 50 cents, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to be carrying change at the time. I mean our society has been so reliant on credit cards that carrying things around like dollar bills and change has become a thing of the past; and the fact that I didn’t even bother to even consider to carry any change just proves how dependent we really are; of course, the very idea of a payphone company using credit cards to commit fraud just sickens me, I mean what kind of “math” are they using to calculate their rates?

Of course, we don’t get to see how much it actually costs whenever we use our credit cards. Take a look at the picture below…

It may be blurry but you can clearly tell that they don’t tell you the fees for a credit-card call; and they don’t even treat it like that, they have the audacity to treat it as a collect call. That logic is just fucking palatable, it’s insisting that I entered my information so that I could pay the fees that the other person was calling, and that other person was me. How the fuck does that even make sense? Collect calls are usually you call one guy and the guy gets a question on whether or not he should accept it or not; you don’t accept the fees until you accept the call. And since we’re going by the definitions of a shady payphone company, I’m guessing everybody accepts the call unwillingly.

Now, the payphone that I encountered said that it was managed by Pacific Communications; a company that I have never heard about before in my life but appears to be based in Arizona. Seriously, I haven’t seen any of their payphones from where I’ve been, this is like the first of their payphones that I’ve encountered; and I’m guessing there are more of these babies since well, unsuspecting people enterting their credit cards and calling up collect is a good business opportunity.

Even more shocking is that Pacific Communications is only just a part of it, behind that lies a company named Custom TeleConnect Inc. which just happens to be taking advantage of the gaping hole left behind by all of the payphones being taken away. What, everybody has cellphones nowaday, we just have to assume that nobody will ever use a payphone because they just so happen to have a cellphone; what a waste of money these payphones are going to become… Also they’re in Las Vegas… Yeah, take a second to realize that you’ve just been tricked by a company barely anybody has heard of.

So have millions of people in the US, a simple Google search for Custom TeleConnect Inc. will reveal tons of reports and stories about how they got scammed by this elusive company. Hell I feel bad for that family who got charged a whole lot of money due to some convict calling them repetedly despite the fact that the family didn’t want him calling. I guess he too was unaware that he was bringing extra suffering by charging the family hundreds of dollars for about 10 calls, most of which made it to voicemail. Speaking of which, there was even one who got charged despite the fact that the call didn’t make it through; yeah you heard me, the call did not make it through; that is downright low to charge him/her for a call that didn’t even go to voicemail!

Of course, there is something more downright low then charging unsuspecting people hundreds of dollars; it’s trying to get the money back from these people…

When I got my statement, there was a phone number that wasn’t even the phone number of the phone company; it was that of a printing service that was specifically for payphones. I mean really, if you didn’t want people calling to give you refunds for your unfair charges then maybe you should of done a better job at it. I mean really, if all you’re going to keep doing is giving out “compromises” for people who dispute the charges like half-off your call which costed about $32 to make then you don’t really deserve to be a company; really…

This happened when we called the number that we eventually got from the second charge they served me, and it turns out that what I called was the billing department and the bigger surprise is that there were people working there. I mean really, do they know that they’re working for a downright deceptive company like this? I mean if all they can do is just offer me and other people 30% off for a call that didn’t even make it through then let’s face it, it makes them worse then AT&T. Didn’t really matter at the end though, I got the money back through my bank and I didn’t have to give those people my credit card number. Let’s face it, if I gave them that number then I would of discovered another unexpected charge on my statement; and I’m guessing even more people would of found themselves back in this scam they’re trying so hard to avoid.

But even though I got the money back, I am still pissed off by what they’re doing. What they’re doing is praying on people who just so happens to be stupid enough to forget their cellphone and stupid enough to use their phones to make a collect call or to make a credit card call; I’m more surprised by the fact that the government hasn’t done anything to stop this, seeing as how this stuff is; let’s say I don’t know… Illegal! They don’t even tell you how much it costs or how much it’ll costs them, and I doubt that the operator will be of any further help with that matter. I don’t know how they’re getting away with this, I don’t know how they can justify those fees that they push on everybody and I certainly don’t know how the owners can justify even ripping people off like this!

Let it be known that if you ever find yourself near a payphone and you have to dial *11 in order to make a collect call; don’t. In fact, I don’t think you should be carrying around only a credit card, you should carry around some change; that way you can’t get charged exorbitant fees by this “monstrosity”. One thing that also needs to be known is that this company needs to be taken down, and fast! The faster the better am I right?

Then I heard about Need For Speed World, again I thought ”Could this be the return to grace Black Box’s NFS series needs?” It had all the elements of a good game, a massive online world, free to play, and best of all, it actually looked somewhat decent, at least according to the screenshots”. I signed up for the beta which I was never able to play but I came across this game again and I decided to try it out, to see what Black Box had in store for me. What Black Box had not what I had expected, I played it alot, over and over again, trying to see what was so special about NFSW but what I found good was the initial tutorial, the fact that traffic drove past game made barriers and the initial fun of the first few races. What I found bad was everything else…

What was EA/Black Box thinking when they made this game. Games are made for entertainment, not to frustrate and have you pull your hair out in total frustration, this is what the game did to me. First off, the game is good when you have a Tier 1 cars and you’re racing the tracks which are initially new but as you progress, you find new tracks which are longer and completely non-existent in terms of anybody playing the track in multiplayer. I got all these tracks that I’ve unlocked and the only way I can get an 8-car race going is in single-player, you’d think they’d make it easier to reach level 20 or something? Very few people are even around Level 20, there usually level 8 or 17 or 15 or something finding someone to play on those tracks can take a long, long time, making those unlocked tracks a waste of your hard earned grinding. Which brings me to the following two problems, the world is absolutely devoid of any sort of players, it feels like there are hundreds rather then the proported millions that EA claim populate this world, it makes me feel like I’m part of this world which exhibits the same lack of life as in Undercover. It’s very disappointing.

Second problem, you gain very little EXP from racing, leaving you to grind the same track over and over again to raise through the ranks, and when you want to race on other tracks, the competition is usually of a lower level then you, leading to you being the head of the pack and making the whole race feel boring as shit, the EXP you get is nonexistant which makes me wonder, what’s the point of racing on older tracks when you’re of a higher level? They used to be fun before but now, it’s just rediciolusly easy and overpowered. Anyway, the common MMORPG theory doesn’t work in this game, it works when you do something exciting like fight or team up but you’re racing all the time and you don’t get to team up. It can get boring, even if you win against a bunch of higher level opponents.

Speaking of which, did you know that statistics lie in this game, that you can easily get beaten by a Mazda RX-7, Lotus Elise (which should be a Teir 3 car in my opinion) or a Nissan Supara (those damned Supara’s) with inferior stats then yours? If you think no then you are 100% wrong, you will get beaten by one of those cars in almost any high level race (even when they’re a lower level), you’re be asking yourself this, how can they beat a car which has a higher top speed, acceleration and hacking? It’s simple, you pay real world money for BOOST, which is the in-game currency for anything involving enhancements. They get BOOST and then they buy card packs that allow HIGH PERFORMANCE PARTS WHICH I HAVE ONLY WON 4 TIMES, I know I shouldn’t be complaining about this but what use is racing fairly when you can use BOOST to buy card packs, get high performance parts that make your car ridiculously fast and win every possible race? As far as I know, EA has thrown out the book regarding fair gameplay, it’s all about da benjamins G! You gotta spend money to win! If you don’t then you know, can’t say it because it violates Bluehost’s TOS.

Additionally, they also grind across the wall and hit traffic and it does not affect their speed at all. This happens in every possible race so far, they pull back and then they RAM you at forces even Need For Speed shouldn’t be able to do. It frustrates me that they ram me into the wall and I lose all of my speed while their car goes speeding off at 100MPH, something people in the forum call wallriding. Apparently in the Need For Speed World, scientists have discovered an F-ed up version of physics, one that does not follow BASIC REAL WORLD RULES THAT ALL BASIC RACING GAMES AT LEAST FOLLOW. I have somewhat tried to resolve this situation by driving the opposite side of where they’re going to turn but this is inexcusable, the cars should be handling the same, not gain the sudden power of invincibility. Speaking of which, most of this is tied to poorly made networking code which fails at events almost 75% of the time. It doesn’t start up, it just dumps you back into the open world, forced to try again. And when your racing, then all bets are off, the cars can sometimes lag ahead of you even though you got a fast network speed and it also has the strange side effect of disconnecting you just when you think you’re about to win. I suspect that it has something to do with the rammers as well, it’s that bad.

There’s also the minor problem of the power ups, the rest of the power ups I can live with but Traffic Magnet angers me, not as much in a race because it’s easily blockable using Juggernaut or Shield but because multiple people can call Traffic Shield on you multiple times, I feel like they should of limited it to only 1 Traffic Magnet usage until the self imposed timeout runs out, makes it easier to race because you’re not constantly being baragged with Traffic Magnet and you’re not waiting patiently for your Juggernaut or Shield or Ready power ups to charge up. There’s also the problem of useless power ups such as One More Lap or Ready, while the Ready might be useful. One More Lap is something I barely use and yet I win it mostly every time in the lucky card draw, just goes to show how lucky I can be. There’s also a missing powerup that many forum readers have requested, a ghost powerup, if they implement that into the game then maybe, maybe there might be a shred of fairness in the world.

Additionally, the pursuit mode (which you can only access while hitting a police car, not when you’re driving on the streets or during a race), while cool, has lots of flaws. First off, the police AI still focuses on sucking and it shows when trying to ram you, the only thing it knows how to does. It foolishly drives itself into hazard zones and it easily lost my car during a pursuit tons of times. What gets me pissed off is the fact that instead of improving the police AI. they have the SUV’s that cannot be rammed, even with a powerup that ram you and send your car flying and it exhibits the same poor AI as the rest of the game, usually you can escape because it flips your car and the game spawns it outside of where they trapped you, allowing you to escape. It can also have the unintended side affect of sending you the right way or just at 100MPH, that’s not what pisses me off. What pissed me off is the sheer numbers that the police spawn in, instead of relying on AI which could actually make a police chase difficult, they have tons of SUVs that ram you from every direction, trapping you in a spot you cannot escape from even if you manage to squeeze your way out. It feels like in order to evade the police, I have to spend tons of money on power ups, therefore reinforcing the whole pay to win approach, which EA forces on you with it’s constant messages that you can buy stuff to make yourself feel like #1. I get that I can spend my money to recharge my power ups or have the cars before a certain level, guess what EA, I’m not falling for your mindtricks any time soon.

There are minor flaws such as the game not having enough game modes as before and the fact that you have to buy a second car slot in order to buy a more powerful car because you’re getting beaten by unusually powerful cars and you discovered that your old car was better because the stats misleaded you, which it can do in this game so beware. (Additionally I had accidently spend the boost on Money and Rep enhancers (they shouldn’t make those entire parts clickable, only the button) so I was forced to use up the 7 days of the amplifiers, hence my overall impressions of the game, it was also the worst $5 I have ever spent.) There is also a lame meeting place which is in actuality, a photo mode and a bad photo mode at that. It didn’t discard the UI when I took pictures of my custom designed Mitsubishi which I sold because I needed a more powerful car apparently. Also the traffic in this game stupid, as in it drives  in your way instead of out. I lost many races this way and I know it ain’t worth complaining about but really, they should make the AI cars at least smarter instead of dumbasses relying on guessing which direction the car is coming in. I mean come on, do they give out licenses to drivers without having to take a test, I mean who is running the virtual DMV in this virtual world! Come on, teach your damn drivers left from right, or do you not have elementary school in Need For Speed World?

In closing, this is the worst street racing game in history, they did everything wrong, they focused on the fact thay force the whole pay to win mentality on you and the fact that skill means jack shit when you can pay real world money to enhance your e-penis which nobody cares about in real life. I mean seriously, EA should force all their players to design their cars in the color scheme of money, add money symbols and add text that says I’m rich biatch! This is as stupid as companies having to force you to share the story, TAKE A PHOTO OF THE STORY YOU SHARED and place it on your Facebook page, and if whoring didn’t get bad enough. I don’t want my Facebook profile to be a whoring spot for various companies due to the fact that you have to do this to enter the contest. Whatever happened to just entering your email address and just having it randomly drawn out of a hat I mean come on, I know Facebook is a privacy hole and I should care but I don’t because of the fact that I have never even posted anything about myself on the website, except for a few photos but I don’t think they matter much to Facebook, at least I know what to post on my Facebook profile from now on.

Anyways, (even if it is free, it’s still bad). Flawed MMO concept (they should of had you drive to the races), lack of things to do in NFSW, lack of fairness in the game and a lack of general polish in general. This is officially the worst arcade street racing game by far. If you want my opinion, get Midnight Club Los Angeles, harder difficulty, more traffic, better multiplayer mode with an open world you can do anything with (unlike NFSW), better graphics, a cockpit view for those of you who enjoy it  and an overall feel of completeness and enjoyment. Trust me, you’ll enjoy driving around their Los Angeles more so then the world of Need For Speed.

First of all, people say it’s obtrusive, How is it obtrusive then any other toolbar out there today (web or not)? It’s not ginormous or anything or a size that’ll consume up most of the screen and it doesn’t even interfere with anything, I can read the article just fine without anything obstructing my view. And also, I don’t get the thing about it being in a separate inline frame being bad. First off, the DiggBar is resizable, I’ve tried this and the DiggBar just hides the text slightly and the inline frame resizes horizontally among the window meaning it works with almost every screen resolution imaginable. Secondly the web has changed since the age of flashy design elements and people are designing their websites with an mix of design and style, meaning that their designing sensibly rather then going out of control, just look at almost any site on the web today. Third, some sites still use inline frames and I don’t get the cross compatibility issues that you keep complaining about, rather they resize accordingly just like the DiggBar

Frankly, you guys that hate the DiggBar are just overreacting because frankly you can disable the bar if you don’t like it and if you don’t like Digg then you don’t have to use or join Digg if you don’t want to. While I do agree with some of your guys reasons, this is just completely insane. For people saying that they’re keeping you on Digg’s domain and not redirecting you to the source link, the source link is in an inline frame itself which means that the page gets loaded as normal and that page get’s a view count. Also I need to clear some things up about some of the absurd things that I’ve heard. DiggBar does not display it’s own advertisements per say, there are no Google Ads, no Banner Ads, nothing. If you’re thinking that it’s one big advertisement for Digg then you seriously need some help.

One thing that really bothers me is the fact that people knew that the DiggBar was coming beforehand and it had alot detailed information on how the DiggBar was going to work. It even described in full detail that it was going to be in an inline frame and Digg was going to have a shortened URL. There was even a small dicussion that was before the initial DiggBar release about some doubts that people have about the then unreleased DiggBar which was at the time being beta tested to make sure that Diggers’ would love it and not have a problem with it. You guys could of addressed these issues to Digg before they released the DiggBar and you guys complained about how sucky, that way you could of at least made a difference or at least made the DiggBar a little bit better. You guys could of said “Hey, I don’t like the upcoming DiggBar, there’s a specific thing that I don’t think is right”. Thankfully there’s a feedback button on the bar itself so you guys can help improve it but still, why didn’t some of you guys know about the upcoming DiggBar?

In closing, I have to say that all of you guys are simply overreacting to this, sure there might be people who like it and people who hate it but during the time I’ve used it, I have to say that it’s not obtrusive, that you guys are focusing too much on the inline frame as the source of criticism, that even though they’re keeping you in the Digg domain and not letting you leave Digg, you can just click the X on the top right of the toolbar or disable it entirety and most of the issues that you claim to be problems are exaggerated over the top. I admit that there are some problems such as logging in from the DiggBar is not as dynamic as I want it to be but overall people should just give the DiggBar a chance and not just complain about it because it uses obsolete technology or it radically changes Digg so much. I like Digg but I occasionally don’t like their users because of the childish way that they treat things (A.K.A. The Digg Ban Brigade), but overall the community is very mature, again, just give it a change.

Now before I go on I must say that I do not watch FOX News, I am not a regular government believer, in fact my father is an activist and has really thoughtful words to say about politics, the government and anything altogether, nor do I believe in the propaganda. Mostly these truth sites force you in by saying “The government may seem nice on the outside but there is loads of corruption and things the government does not want you to see in the inside. Stop believing the government’s lies and let us show you the truth that they do not want you to see.” Now that’s how they grab you but what you see inside is more lies, lies even much more deceptful then the government.

What you see is a lot of christan propaganda, you know with every truth-seeker being a christan and all, they’d probably connect with god not approving with the government doing the things that they want you to believe that they’re doing. But what they’re doing is not what they’re even doing at all. They claim that they’re poising you with common household materials to make you dumber and make you believe everything the government is doing is a good thing, they claim that AIDS and HIV are curable and a scare tactic that is used to convince people to get the shots which somehow introduces a chemical that changes your body to make you much more closed-minded, also debatable is the claim that you can cure AIDS and HIV naturally and that you get sick because of all of the medicine they give you. Please, if AIDS and HIV is so “curable” then Eazy-E would be alive by now and cranking out hit rap records.

First of all, how can the government include chemicals that taste exactly like the food it taste likes? It would take a lot of money to engineer the chemical to have the exact same taste as the billion types of food out on the market today. And why would they waste millions of dollars trying to get the people to dumb down and believe in the propaganda? I mean aren’t people already stupid enough to believe in anything, as evidence by the millions of idiots flooding the idiot today believing in anything told to them, mostly they’d be the target demographic they’d want to spread the “truth” to. Besides, with everybody under their control, how will they create the illusion of the “American Life”, spending most of their money trying to control them and all? It’s just blatantly stupid.

Also, answer me this question. How in the world could your body get sick from medicine? They act as if the medicine taken doesn’t allow people to procrastinate, reduces their brain function and makes your white blood cells weaker. And they blame it as the basis for the common cold, flu, basically every disease there is. I’ve taken lot of medicine and I have not gotten sick, once. This reveals another thing with “truth-believers”, they’ll do anything to get you to believe in the truth, even if it is deceiving you. If you look at most of the “proof” they have, you’ll see that it’s very, very fake. Here’s how they make you “believe”.

1. Create a claim so over-the-top that it’s got to be real.
2. Subject won’t believe so it’s forced on him over and over again
3. Proof created using Photoshop or staged as a video “documentary”
4. Subject begins to worry, brain starts to think that it’s real
5. Subject actually believes that the claim is real
6. Profit!

Simple right, simple forcing fake proof like Barack’s voting record which was obviously created in Photoshop to suggest that he’s the same like George W. Bush, at least McCain was actually twisted and involved in a Ponzi scheme where he stole from the banks a lot of money. This is just suggesting that every president is the same corrupt, world ruining guy just wanting the seat of power, wanting to get rid of freedom, wanting it all for the money, that’s just crazy stupid. Also to make you believe that they don’t even care about the first amendment, they put themselves of situations of controversy… By stepping up to the office, saying that they’re protesting, then change the story that they’re not protesting and that they’re just at a disagreement, and get this, they actually jump cut it to make it appear that they’ve been arrested for violating the 1st Amendment. Wow, it’s almost like the government is behind these videos.

Also, subliminal advertising. Really, really, really stupid. To think that companies, actual companies, could insert subliminal advertising in their advertisement. First of all, the human eye is able to detect every frame of video or what they’re seeing, so I’m sure they’ll be able to detect the “subliminal advertising” on the “18th frame”. I have nothing against advertising, but these people make a big deal of it. I’d admit that the commercials are too long, take up too much time and also take up too much space, but they’re not forcing you to buy the products, it’s not like the advertising is telling you to actually buy the product. Besides, without advertisements, companies wouldn’t be able to make much money, websites wouldn’t be able to support itself and local places would likely close up without anyone knowing it exists, how much they cost and the wonderful experience you could have there.

Now imagine a world as these people who believe in the “truth” imagine it to be. Imagine if albums like Nine Inch Nail’s “Year Zero” Nas’ “Untitled”, Young Jeezy’s “The Recession”, Metallica’s “…And Justice for All” and Megadeth’s “The System has Failed” never existed. There would be no expression, no freedom of speech, because that would be restricted in a perfect world. People aren’t being allowed to do what they do, people following a forced regimen, people being controlled and forced with much more propaganda then there is. All other religions not existing, no chaos, no balance, everything would just be love, happiness, and perfect. Everything would be same on the radio and the news and people would probably go insane from all of the peace and order.

That’s the kind of world that could theoretically exist but considering that every person is genetically different and probably has different needs, then the world would not probably work out for everyone. It may not matter for everyone but I am tired of these “truth groups” going out and spreading lies about everything just so they can destroy the government and have her very own way. I know that the government lies about some things and try to cover it up, but under the Obama administration, I think that’ll stop. Goodbye people trying to launder money and goodbye USA trying to get Oil so they can get a financial benefit.” I feel that the War on Iraq was mostly for Oil because mostly they want to control all of the Oil and get all of the profit. Anyways, that’s it for me…

Karras out!