Seen at reddit: Protip from a former Senate intern, with thanks to /u/SomeKindOfMutant.
This is worth sharing, since most of us are not among the 1% who have access to government:
An email to your senator or representative may result in a form letter response and a phone call to the office may amount to a tally mark on an administrative assistant’s notepad. But, for any given policy concern, if you want to get their attention a letter to the editor in one of your state’s 5-10 biggest newspapers that mentions them specifically BY NAME is the way to go. If your message is directed to your representative, pick a newspaper that is popular in your district.
That is the crucial thing to know–the rest of this post is an explanation of why I know this is true.
I know this because, when I interned in the D.C. office of a senator one summer, one of the duties I shared was preparing a document that was distributed internally both online and in paper format. This document was made every day and comprised world news articles, national news, state news, and any letters to the editor in the 5-10 largest newspapers within the state that mentioned the senator by name. I was often the person who put that document on his desk, and it was the first thing he read every morning after arriving to the office.
I began to suspect that this was standard operating procedure because several other senators’ offices share the same printer in the basement of the Russell Senate Office building, and I saw other interns doing the exact same procedures that I was involved in.
Since the internship, I’ve conferred with other Senate and House employees past and present and determined that most–if not all–offices use essentially the same procedure.
Usually when I write or call or email a senator or representative, I get the expected form letter in return. Recently I was actually contacted by a staffer at Orrin Hatch’s office who had some more questions about a letter I wrote regarding the regulation of money-transfer services like Western Union who are participating in so many Nigerian scams. It was gratifying.
There’s an old joke circulating out there that occasionally crops up in people’s inboxes:
You have just received the [Amish/Polish/Aggie, etc.] Virus! Because we don't know
how to program computers, this virus works on the honor system.
Please delete all the files from your hard drive and manually
forward this virus to everyone on your mailing list.
Thanks for your cooperation.
It goes without saying that this would be a Bad Idea. That said, there is a very current scam going on which I ran across yesterday, in which the victim is carefully walked step-by-step through the operations necessary to allow Bad Guys to take control of their computer. I referred to it in a previous post, but here’s the complete run-down.
While researching spoofed and phishing URLs, I decided to use a misspelling of a popular website as an example. I typed in http://www.micorsoft.com (DO NOT DO THIS!) and discovered a rat’s nest of scam operations embedded in this one redirect.
According to WHOIS, the domain is registered thusly:
Domain Name: MICORSOFT.COM
Registrar: EPIK, INC.
Whois Server: whois.epik.com
Referral URL: http://epik.com
Name Server: NS1.DNSLINK.COM
Name Server: NS2.DNSLINK.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 19-oct-2014
Creation Date: 13-oct-2001
Expiration Date: 13-oct-2015
Epik is a domain-name registry service, so beyond that I don’t have the chops to dig deeper and see who is really running this operation, but this much I know – they’re wastes of human cytoplasm.
This domain redirects to a number of different scams.
1) You’ve won a prize!
Here’s the first popup. The URL is your typical scam alphabet soup address.
After answering four inane questions about age, whether you shop on line, gender, etc. you’re presented with this:
Well, of course I qualify. You think the scammers would turn down a sucker? No, I didn’t win a prize, I won a “chance” for a grocery gift card. Call the number, and what you hear is “Congratulations! Won a chance to win a gift card!. Stay on the line to complete your entry! Dingdingding your initial entry has been registered, but stay on the line for other additional offers!” You then are bombarded with advertising. Since I used Google Voice to call, there’s no way they could possibly know who is calling or how to contact you if you were really a winner – this is just spamvertising, pure and simple.
User Nokkenbuer at WOT (Web of Trust) posted on 09/21/2014:
I don’t trust
Malware or viruses
Poor customer experience
Scam
Misleading claims or unethical
Privacy risks
Suspicious
Spam
Potentially unwanted programs
This website was involved in redirecting me to a malicious site after accessing a typosquatter website (http://www.micorsoft.com/). I do not trust it and may aid in infecting your computer with unwanted malware, spyware, or grayware.”
By the way, if you don’t have the WOT extension on your computer, I’d recommend it. It gives you advance warning of sites that have been flagged as malicious, like this:
For any site, you can always “read more” to see what users have said. It’s wise to do, because on occasion a website was flagged early for suspicious behavior, but domains change hands and it could be a legitimate site at the present time. User comments will usually reflect this. At all events, you have the option of leaving before you actually visit a potentially dangerous website. Sign up, and you can leave your own feedback for websites as well.
3) Is Your Computer Running Slowly?
If you click OK, you’re directed to this page:
This one looks slick and official, but it’s a solid guarantee that if you call that toll-free number, you’re at risk for being scammed or having your computer infected or both.
4) The Scare Tactic
This is the one I referred to in my earlier post, and today I followed up on the game to see how it plays out.
This page is a little different than the first one I encountered; it doesn’t mention specific viruses, but includes an annoying, repeating, and loud chirp to add urgency to the scam. If you try to navigate away from the page, you get this:
If you bite and call the number (855- 979-7382) you will be connected to a polite-sounding Indian or Pakistani boiler-room worker who will engage you as follows:
I was asked kind of problems you are experiencing, what kind of computer I am running, and what my operating system is.
On a Win7 box (your mileage may vary for other operating systems) I was asked to hit “Windows-R” to open the Run dialog, and then type in “MSConfig” and hit enter. This is harmless, but displays running services on your computer.
I was asked if more than 15 services were stopped?
I responded that yes, more than 15 services were stopped.
The agent informed me that since more than 20% of my services were stopped, my system was vulnerable to application errors. Once Windows 7 has services stopped, that is the main problem. This, of course, is utter bulldust, but is technobabble enough to flummox most callers who get this far.
I was told that we need to check why these services are stopped. Again directed to the “Run” dialog, I was instructed to type in “hh h” and hit “Enter”. This brings up the HTML Help Window, which “Cannot be Displayed.”
I was instructed to hover my mouse over the little question-mark icon in the window, and select the “Jump to URL” option.
I am presented with a dialog box, and asked to enter the specified URL:
Note: This is a sneaky way to get you to visit a website, instead of typing it directly in the URL bar.
Once this is done, I am directed to this website: https://secure.logmeinrescue.com/customer/code.aspx This is a website which allows outside users to take control of your computer, usually for tech support reasons. If you trust the party on the other end it can be useful, although I prefer to use TeamViewer.
Before proceeding, the agent had me run inetcpl.cpl, click on the connections tab, and ensure that no proxy was being used.
Having done this, the agent instructed me to enter the code 941073, and hit “Enter.” He asked me what I saw on my screen.
At this point, I told him the only thing I saw was myself closing Chrome, because I had no intention to give control of my machine to a bunch of scammers, and hung up.
There are enough methods out there that the Bad Guys can infect your computer if you’re not careful, but helping them with the process is generally a Lousy Idea.
If you follow my blog, you’ll know it has become somewhat of a warning beacon against scams and frauds, which little crusade began after my own mother was scammed by cross-border fraudsters out of a large chunk of her savings.
Written by Amanda Willis, it describes her conversation with a Pakistan-based boiler-room worker who was trying to get her to download malware. The results were encouraging, and worthy of being shared. Her entire essay is definitely worth a read.
The tagline of the article is “Getting angry with fraudsters dehumanises them, but if we engage them in conversation we might be surprised by the results.”
Unfortunately, many scammers who are directly involved in criminal enterprises become frighteningly abusive when confronted with their scam, and I’m not sure I want to get involved with inviting that sort of negative energy into my life. But the principle at work here is the one found in Proverbs 25:21-22:
If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.
Well, it looks official enough, and I don’t even see any major grammatical errors or the kind of Nigerian English that usually function as a dead giveaway for a scam.
So, if you click the embedded “Click here” link (SOMETHING YOU SHOULD NEVER DO), where does it take you?
The fact that a corporate name appears in an URL is no guarantee whatsoever that you’re on that company’s website. Have a look at the real Bank of Ireland 365 URL:
That “https” in red up there indicates that you are on a secure site, meaning that communication between the website and you is encrypted and can’t be intercepted/read by bad guys. You should always look for that “https” on any website where you will be entering sensitive information: banking, internet shopping, login pages, etc.
Have a look at some different URLs, some real and some fake:
paypal.com: Real
paypalsecure.com: Fake (The name contains PayPal, but is not valid)
paypal@accounts.com: Fake (Watch out for @-signs and dashes in a name)
paypal@150.44.134.189: Fake (The root domain is an unknown IP address) http://www.paypal.com/signin/: Real (Even though the address is longer, “paypal.com” is the last thing before the first “/” in the address.
microsoft.com: Real
microsoft.verification.com: Fake (The root domain is “verification,” not Microsoft.)
purchase-microsoft.com: Fake (The hyphen instead of a period)
signin.microsoft.com@10.19.32.4/: Fake (The root domain is an unknown IP address)
micorsoft.com: Fake and dangerous (The name of the company is misspelled)¹
microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx: Real (Even though the address is longer, “microsoft.com” is the last thing before the first “/” in the address.)
The company name (i.e. paypayl, microsoft, etc.) should be the last thing, or the last thing before the first “/” in the address.
Beware of hyphens or other symbols in names, or 4-part numbers like “192.168.0.0” which are IP addresses.
Be wary of country suffixes like “br,” “za,” “cr,” etc.
An address does not have to contain “www.” to be valid.
For those wondering, what’s an “URL” anyway? It stands for “Uniform Resource Locator“, a pointer to a specific internet address.
Here’s a typical clueless manager trying to “add value” in an area he knows nothing about, and giving his savvy tech worker a month’s vacation at the same time.
Be careful out there.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
¹This particular misspelling is especially malicious. It redirects to a number of bogus or dangerous websites, ,including this one: http://104.143.5.145/perror2.php:
If you land here, your computer issues a frightening-sounding beep and presents you with the above screen. You will be unable to dismiss the tab or even close your browser until you have clicked a hidden box that says “Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs.”
If you call the number, a female-sounding computer-generated voice informs you that if you are experiencing problems with viruses or a slow PC, to please press “1”. I did so, and got no answer. The assumption is that if anyone answered, they would walk you through steps necessary to download malware to your own machine, or ask for credit card details for some bogus cleaning software.
Edit: Just as I thought. This morning I called the number and got a very polite foreign gentleman who walked me through the steps needed for him to control my computer and download Mogg knows what. A full post on the encounter will follow.
According to Wikipedia, caralluma ascendens, another name for caralluma fimbriata, is an edible form of cactus used throughout the Indian subcontinent as an appetite suppressant, or so-called “famine food.”
Leave it to the snake-oil hawkers to turn this into the next big thing they can make a few bucks on.
Got an email today from a “friend,” one whose email account or information had been compromised:
From: Redacted
To: store-news@amazon.com, ChaseNotification@emailonline.chase.com,
These spoofed emails are so transparent at this point that I can smell the fraud before I even open them. But, in the interest of public service, I follow these links to see what new scam is being perpetrated on the general public.
Today’s bowl of steaming camel ejecta led me to a website hawking caralluma, the new New NEW weight-loss miracle.
This is the same kind of affiliate marketing effluence that I have described elsewhere (just do a search at this blog for garcinia cambogia, for example). Notice the tiny print below “ACT NOW!” that obligates you to a monthly $10.00 charge. But in the end, they’re less concerned with selling you their product as they are about getting your information which in the long run is much more valuable to them than a single sale.
Smell the foul rot of desperation as we proceed through the following screens:
The first come-on is BOGO. If we don’t fall for that, we get this:
Wait wait wait! OK, what now?
One of 50 customers, huh? Wow, I must really be special. But I guess I’m not really interested after all.
Wait wait wait! Wow, a free trial bottle, and the offer is good for only 10 minutes! Shall we look and see?
Now this is a wondrous thing. Instead of caralluma, I’ve been sent to a page to order garcinia cambogia. Looks like the affiliate marketer forgot to update his previous campaign.
More desperation.
Now the bottle is free, and I only have to pay 99¢ for shipping. But remember, I’m still providing my credit card information, and obligating myself to that $10.00 per month “subscription.” Once these drones have your financial information, they are in a position to bill you for anything they want, or sell your credit card and personal information to other scumsuckers.
It’s all garbage, poorly-crafted but sadly effective affiliate marketing for products that have little or no value, or worse, are actually detrimental to your health.
Edit: 5/26/2025 – Still going on. Mail received from “Domain Name Services” in Buffalo, NY. They want $265.00 for a 5-year renewal
Here’s some junk email that showed up this morning:
ATTENTION: IMPORTANT NOTICE Domain SEO Service Registration Corp. Order#: 780438 Date: 12/14/2014
EXPIRATION NOTICE
DOMAIN: [redacted]
Notification Offer EXPIRATION DATE: 12/22/2014
Bill To: [Redacted] Domain Name: [Redacted] Registration SEO Period: 01/05/2015 to 01/05/2016 Price: $64.00 Term: 1 Year
SECURE ONLINE PAYMENT
Domain Name: [Domain Name Redacted] Attn: [Owner Name Redacted]
This important expiration notification notifies you about the expiration notice of your domain registration for [edited.com search engine submission. The information in this expiration notification may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the Domain SEO Service Registration. This information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. If you fail to complete your domain name registration [edited].com search engine service by the expiration date, may result in the cancellation of this domain name notification offer notice.
PLEASE CLICK ON SECURE ONLINE PAYMENT TO COMPLETE YOUR PAYMENT.
Failure to complete your domain name registration [redacted] search engine service process may make it difficult for customers to find you on the web.
CLICK UNDERNEATH FOR IMMEDIATE PAYMENT
PROCESS PAYMENT FOR [Domain Redacted] SECURE ONLINE PAYMENT ACT IMMEDIATELY
This domain registration for [Domain Redacted] search engine service notification will expire 12/22/2014.
Instructions and Unsubscribe Instructions:
You have received this message because you elected to receive special notification offers. If you no longer wish to receive our notifications, please unsubscribe here or mail us a written request to Domain SEO Service Registration Corp., 5379 Lyons Rd. 452, Coconut Creek, FL 33073. If you have multiple accounts with us, you must opt out for each one individually in order to stop receiving notifications notices. We are a search engine optimization company. We do not directly register or renew domain names. We are selling traffic generator software tools. This message is CAN-SPAM compliant. THIS IS NOT A BILL. THIS IS A NOTIFICATION OFFER. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PAY THE AMOUNT STATED UNLESS YOU ACCEPT THIS NOTIFICATION OFFER. Please do not reply to this email, as we are not able to respond to messages sent to this address.
Notice several things about this garbage:
The emphasized text in the spam disclaimer, written in tiny, gray print so as to be ignored, states clearly that you are signing up for worthless services, not domain registration. This shows the blatant deception being perpetrated here.
It’s designed to look like an invoice. There are, sadly, many unwitting office managers and secretaries and even executives who will take one look at this, pay the invoice, and kiss their money goodbye.
The “registration service” being offered comes from http://www.domainrseo.net/, which has been flagged by Web of Trust (WOT) as Phishing, Scam, Potentially illegal, Misleading claims or unethical, and Spam site. The two posted comments are informative:
User Carl Legg posted on 11/29/2014
WARNING: New Internet scam out of a shoebox office in Florida. Called Domain SEO Service Registration Corp. It’s the same, tired old false flag operation.
1.) Perpetrator looks up domain names (owner contact information is public) 2.) Perpetrator e-mails domain-name owner with an official looking “Payment Notice” 3.) Threatening “expiration” deadlines are made in the Payment Notice 4.) Payment notice written in legal-technical gobbledegook to scare people into paying.
The perp makes it look like you are renewing your domain name, but in reality, and through some seriously twisted use of English language (that leaves one’s head swimming), you are signing up for one year of expensive search-engine optimization. Many people would not understand this, and the perp wants it that way.
Registered in Florida, but likely owned by a Hong Kong firm? Hard to tell. Here’s the registration data:
Florida Profit Corporation DOMAIN SEO SERVICE REGISTRATION CORP. Filing Information Document NumberP14000093458 FEI/EIN Number NONE Date Filed 11/17/2014 State FL Status ACTIVE Office/Director/Agent: TAUBERT, MATTHIAS (Matthias Taubert) Principal Address 5379 LYONS RD. (452), COCONUT CREEK, FL 33073″
User eden-g posted on 11/29/2014 “Scam site engaged in misleading illegal activity owned by Chinese criminal Zhu Bing.”
I can’t speak to the source of the name in the second comment, but whoever is behind this scam is a dirtbag.
Be very careful out there. Domain registration scams are rampant, SEO firms are, for the most part, offering useless and expensive services, and most unsolicited commercial email is deceptive.
An article at The Telegraph talks about a new kind of vending machine that is starting to be seen:
The world’s first vending machine with facial recognition technology has been unveiled, and it could refuse to vend a certain product based on a shopper’s age, medical record or dietary requirements.
I was immediately reminded of this bit of whimsy which, while funny, is very disturbing in its implications:
What would happen if vending machines started presenting us with screens like this?
Two forces are at work here: HIPAA privacy requirements which have burdened the medical establishment with hippopotamic and time-consuming (but perhaps necessary) paperwork and procedures, and the free availability of information as demonstrated by the recent hack at Sony, only one of many over the last years.
I’m not really sure which way this trend is going to go, or what my grandchildren will see; I can only hope it doesn’t devolve in the direction of telescreens and thoughtcrime.
With thanks to my colleagues at Cheshire Academy – from the Drama Club’s presentation of “1984.”
While I’d like to think that this is just satirical drivel, there are undeniably Orwellian trends taking place in our society today, witness the massive spying on American citizens by government agencies which were revealed by Edward Snowden. It is my hope that this trend can be reversed.
This is all rather heavy and depressing and far removed from vending machines… or is it?
This lovely bit of writing by /u/OneYearSteakDay over at reddit really resonated with me, because I lived through it from the other side of the age barrier. I have reposted it here with the author’s permission, and with the same gracious license I have bowdlerized it just a bit to make it suitable for all audiences (the original can be read here). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. (Turn on the fire while you read it for some nice atmosphere.)
A glorious fire crackles¹in TrueAudio nearby, blazing with 16.78 million shades of red and orange; the PhysX logs pop and break, falling apart to reveal the beautifully tessellated embers casting real time reflections against the mip mapped stone walls.
This story doesn’t start in 1984, that’s just when my part of the story begins. President Ronald Regan was in a vicious battle for the soul of planet Earth, When Doves Cry by Prince was at the top of the Billboard hit list, great films like Terminator left lines reaching around the street, and the home PC; the Macintosh 128k, was selling for the low, low price of just $2,495.00.
It was the most glorious of times, it was the bleakest of times. The foundations on which our great PCMR Empire is built were being formed, our first allies in the fight were the wealthy and the strong, those who could afford a home computer of their own. This is not their story, I cannot tell their story because I was not wealthy, I was not strong, I was a peasant and I loved it.
On my sixth Christmas in 1990 my parents got me my first gaming console: The Nintendo Entertainment System. I eagerly unwrapped the beautiful box and unpacked all the items. I pulled out the console and set it aside, I pulled out a mass of wires and confusion and handed them to my father, I pulled out a slim square with a picture of a man jumping over fireballs and a a duck, I pulled out a neon orange gun, finally I pulled out the last piece: A shiny gray block with four buttons and a cross on it. I had used a keyboard at school, but this strange gray block was much smaller, it was easier to hold, my six year old fingers could reach all the buttons and I was in love.
My father spent an hour that Christmas day trying to connect the Nintendo to the TV. (You youngins don’t know how good you’ve got it with HDMI and DPP! Try getting a semi corroded RF connector to communicate well with a TV that lost it’s set screws and then we’ll talk.) Once finally installed and connected I inserted the cartridge and pressed the power button.
GLORIOUS! The massive 24″ television screen displayed a beautiful image in 64 vibrant colors, speakers blazed amazing mono sound and I was enraptured. I pressed the button designated “Start” and the speakers let out a chime as I was thrown head first into World 1-1. I had played games the computer at school, but this was completely different! The school computers were slow, they didn’t play sound, and their screens had 62 fewer colors than this amazing NES. [Ed. Green or Amber and off. Off functioned as black.] It was obvious to me that Christmas morning that Computers were vastly inferior to this amazing piece of engineering attached to my TV screen.
The whole house came together to play. Mom and dad were as likely to get killed by a rebounding koopa shell as I was, dad was much better at shooting ducks than myself, but I was still better than mom. Much laughter was had as we tried to get used to this four button and a cross rectangle, when I ran right my entire body would lean with it, my hands jumped when Mario jumped, my heart raced when Mario fell, truly this rectangle was vastly superior to the keyboards I was used to at school!
As the years passed I acquired more games and more consoles and they were all adopted as members of the family. The Sega Genesis came next, and it was edgy, new, fast, a quantum leap beyond anything that the NES or school computers could offer. Sonic the Hedgehog could run over 700 miles per hourand my dad’s Chevette could only do 50 miles per hour down hill. Vectorman could shoot 3D blasts in any direction, Megaman on the NES could only shoot forward. Comix Zone had branching story paths and spectacular art, where as on the Nintendo there was only one path: Forward. The obvious technological improvements over the past were obvious. I was hooked.
Next came the stately SNES, my heart and soul, my bread and butter, my breath and blood. The SNES wasn’t more powerful than the Genesis exactly, but it has something the Sega didn’t: JRPGs. To this day I still have the Chrono Trigger cartridge with a New Game+ starting 120 hours in. To this day I still relish playing the opening level of Mega Man X3 when I got to play as Zero for the first time. To this day I still fawn over the beauty that is Yoshi’s Island.
Seriously, game developers, a good art style will always trump good graphics. To this day I still regard Kirby Super Star as the quintessential Kirby game. To this day I love the SNES and all that came with it.
It was in 1999 that my family got our first computer. Check these specs:
3gb hard drive
32mb of ram
28.8kbs modem
550mhz Intel Pentium Processor
Integrated floppy disk drive
Integrated CD reader
Stereo sound
This computer was dope. The hard drive had more storage than anyone could ever need, the ram was excessive and never completely filled, the processor was blazing fast and thanks to the CD rom drive I was able to install the bundled games quickly and permanently. Truly it was glorious my brothers!
When I finally got the opportunity to try this new piece of technology the first thing I did was load up the included copy of Mechwarrior 2. (Someone remake this game please. Please. Please.) True 3-D, yo! No longer was I constrained to go forward or right, now I could go left, or backwards, or use my jump jets or….
“Wait, what’s this bluescreen with all the numbers? How do I get back to the game?”
I had played a lot of hard video games in my time, games that would mercilessly defeat me, games like Bucky O’hare, Mega Man 2, and Mega Man X2, but I’d never encountered a mechanic that would cause the entire screen to turn blue! I died so hard that I couldn’t even get back to Windows. I restarted the computer and tried again. This time I didn’t get a bluescreen, this time I got a popup window informing me that I had performed an “Illegal Operation” and then the computer shut down. Then an enemy used some attack on me that slowed down my whole computer and prevented my Mech from receiving input from my joystick. Then a crowd of enemies ambushed me and froze my screen while they killed me. Seriously, Mechwarrior 2 was harder than anything I had ever played before. I had never been hit so hard in Mega Man or Mario that I had to restart my NES! I played Mechwarrior 2 on and off for years, but I was never able to “win” the game because the enemies played so many dirty tricks on me.
Clearly PC gaming was not for me. I went back to my consoles and remember experiencing to many memorable experiences. I got a PSX and fell in love with games like FFVII, FFT, Mega Man X4, Vagrant Story and so many others, none of which had enemies that would force me to restart the console and all of which were extremely fun to play. I got an N64, which had the first controller I ever held with an analog joystick. This was revolutionary! A 3D controller for a 3D console, brilliant! Super Mario 64, no bluescreens, no slow downs, 3D, fast game play, no need for a PC. Then came Star Fox 64 and the invention of the rumble pack, a true killer app for home consoles! This was an amazing time to be a gamer, and I do feel a tinge of regret that many of our younger brethren didn’t have an opportunity to experience it first hand.
With the PS2 and Xbox things began to change. All of the sudden the perfect game play I had experienced on my perfect consoles began to slip. Sometimes the console would slow down, sometimes it would stop all together, sometimes it wouldn’t even start up the game I had put in. They both offered DVD playback, but that could damage the PS2 and the Xbox required a special adapter. They both offered connection to the internet, but the PS2 didn’t do it very well and the Xbox required a subscription. They both had save features, but the PS2 used an expensive 8mb memory card and the Xbox used it’s built in 10gb mechanical hard drive.
The Xbox was the last console I ever bought (except for the Wii, which I regard more as a toy than a gaming console) because the Xbox was the end of a generation for gamers. Because the Xbox came with a hard drive and an internet connection now publishers and developers could upload patches and new content on the fly. Because publishers and developers could fix games retroactively there was no longer the need to ship finished, quality checked games. More and more broken games began coming to the market and many gamers began to leave their consoles behind.
The increased complexity of the consoles themselves also caused problems. I feel bad for anyone who owned a first generation PS2 because the DVD readers broke constantly. I feel bad for anyone who had to get a replacement HDD for their Xbox because they had to pay money to lose their saves. (I don’t feel bad for anyone who owned a GameCube because you could fire that sucker out of a cannon into a volcano filled with angry flaming lava bees and it would still play any GC game you threw at it.)
Thus the Xbox killed the console as we old-timers knew it.
What you have to understand is that there was a time when consoles just worked; they were single purpose units, dedicated solely to playing video games without suffering from the overhead of an Operating System running complex hardware. The NES just played games, the SNES just played games, the Sega Genesis just played games, the N64 just played games, the PSX just played games, (and audio CDs, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment) and my friends, they were glorious! Because these games couldn’t be updated, fixed, patched, enhanced, rebroken, repatched, then forgotten they had to be released in working order with good game play. The idea of buying a broken game because Ubisoft will be fixing it soon anyway would be frightening and confusing to gamers of this era. And I am a gamer of this era.
Not long ago; only two generations past now, the console and the PC could coexist peacefully in the same home, each serving it’s respective purpose, each with it’s own strengths and weaknesses. Today “consoles” are nothing more than weak mini computers, and that is unfortunate because they could be so much more. Having seen both the zenith and the nadir of console gaming I can assure you that consoles have so much potential, but they’ll never realize that potential so long as they’re trying to be something they’re not. Like a feather weight fighter boxing the heavy weight champion, modern consoles have reached too far for their own good, and while strong in their own right they cannot win against this opponent.
And that children is why so many elders of the PC Master Race have gigabits worth of roms on their hard drives, burned ISO files of old PSX games sitting on the shelf, and choose to play Pokemon Red on their cell phones. There were good times, and there were great times, and that you may not get to experience them saddens me. The roots of the console tree are strong, the trunk is thick and sturdy, but the branches creak and crack under their own weight. You may live to see the day when this tree is nursed back to health, but first we must look back at what made the tree so strong in the first place.
The last of the logs pop as the hearth darkens, real time shadows dance about the stones, now defined by feathery ambient occlusion and the cooling shades of of 256RGB reds and yellows. I warm my hands over the few remaining embers and remember the days when Final Fantasy VII had the best graphics the world had ever seen and sigh.
TL;DR: Consoles used to be gaming machines, made for gamers to play video games. They were accessible, they were stable, they were affordable, they were powerful and they were fun. Then Xbox and everything bad now.
I can’t describe adequately how much this bit of writing pleased me, because I was one of those dads who struggled with rusty RF connectors as my oldest son got his first NES in around 1985. He could whup my honus at Mario 1 – I kept falling down those never-sufficiently-to-be-accursed pits, and rarely made it past 1.1 – but I was a better duck hunter.
This period of gaming indelibly affected me. My current phone ring is the Peloponessus segment from “Battle of Olympus.” I have a customized ring in case my ex ever calls me: “Still Alive,” from Portal. And sometimes I find myself whistling the theme song from “Bubsy.” As the author intimated, these were times never to be forgotten.
My thanks to /u/OneYearSteakDay for the wander through the mists of memory.
I can’t drink coffee any longer, and haven’t since 1969. I used to consume it by the gallon, or by the thimbleful when I lived in Naples, Italy – lots and lots of thimbles. Back when “uno normale” cost 50 Lire, the equivalent of 8¢.
Nowadays my caffeine addiction is fed in other ways.
But there are times when a hot cup of something hits the spot, and this idea has never really appealed to me:
Enter Erzatzkaffee, a German word meaning “coffee substitute.” I remember hearing my mom talk about this when I was a kid back in the 50s, and the impression I got was that it was made from anything they could find, sorta like this:
Apparently it wasn’t quite as bad as all that. Mit herzlichem Dank an Benutzer Helmut0815 over at the Axis History Forum, I found this:
In wartime Germany as well as in early postwar era there was of course a massive shortage of coffee as Germany was cut off from it’s resources. Real coffee was only available on the black market.
So the people drank Ersatzkaffee widely known as “Muckefuck” (from french “Mocca faux” = false coffee) which was made from roasted chicory roots, malt, barley, rye, acorn and many other things which were available. Of course this Ersatzkaffee did not contain any caffeine.
Some popular brands were Linde’s Kaffee-Ersatz-Mischung, Kathreiner Malzkaffee, Koff and Effka.
After I gave up coffee, I took to drinking Postum™, once a ubiquitous feature of Greyound Bus waystations all over the country, to be found in little packets right next to the Sanka™ instant coffee, but over time its popularity faded and it was discontinued in 2007. Fortunately for me, Eliza’s Quest foods acquired the trademark and Postum™ is now once again in stores and can be had online.
The product was responsible for multiple foilings of “Mr. Coffee Nerves:”
After a two-year stay in Austria, I came home converted to Caro™, which tastes a lot closer to coffee:
Fortunately for me, Caro™ is marketed in the USA as Pero™.
These products are based on malted barley, chicory, and rye, and although an inveterate coffee drinker would probably think they taste like panther piss, after a while they grow on you if you can’t have the real thing.
Playing in the World Game 
