The Stew

I recently got a Blackberry 8830 for work. There are some things I like about it — the full keyboard, the multimedia features (enhanced by a cheap 4-gig MicroSD card), and the voice dialing software, to name a few. There are some things I don’t like about it — the battery life, the Web browsing experience (which is both slow and clumsy… buying some stuff on Amazon today was a painful experience), and the button that activates the voice dialing feature. I can’t help but hit that stupid button nearly every time I put the Blackberry back in my pocket. It’s embarrassing during a meeting for your phone to loudly demand, “Say a command!”

But the thing that truly chaps my behind is the phrase in the title of this post. “You are not currently in an area that can handle data communication.” I get that warning screen all the time when I’m surfing the Web. “Oh really,” I say, incredulously, to my PDA. “Well goddamn it, I WAS in an area that could handle data communication three seconds ago, and I didn’t move!”

There are times when I get that warning that I can see, from the little arrows in the upper right corner of the display, that my Blackberry is sending and receiving data. How can I be in an area that can’t handle data communication when I’m clearly communicating data?

Earlier this month, Johan Bergendahl, the CMO of Ericsson, said that Wi-Fi hot spots will one day be like phone booths of yore — because, you see, wireless broadband is where it’s going to be at. I want what he’s smoking. Today, I can sit in any of a variety of coffee shops and surf the Web very quickly and pleasantly on my iPod Touch via Wi-Fi. That experience is light years ahead of surfing the Web on my Blackberry, even when I’m not staring at the “you are not currently” warning.

Those of you with other PDAs or service companies that aren’t Sprint can let me know whether I’d have a better experience with another device or another carrier. If I didn’t have to have the Blackberry for work, I’d probably never have bought one.

Minn. can’t bar kids from violent games

Basically, the legislature here wanted to keep kids (that would be those people under 17) from buying or renting games rated M or AO by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. A three-judge panel said the state couldn’t do that because it couldn’t prove that such games are harmful to minors, so the First Amendment’s cuisine reins supreme.

Talk about some mixed feelings.

I watched a dad pick up a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for his pre-pubescent son at a Best Buy a few years back. I remember being really sure that he (the parent) was an idiot. Not your standard run-of-the-mill “Iraq attacked us on 9/11″ idiot, but a true idiot nonetheless. Still, it’s a free country, and if pop wants sonny to beat up some virtual hookers after school, that’s his right. But do I think sonny should be able to save up his lunch money and pick up a copy himself? Not really. The content isn’t appropriate for his age group. I don’t think he should be able to pick up Hustler, watch South Park or listen to Limp Bizkit either. Honestly, nobody should be listening to Limp Bizkit. Fred Durst is such a worthless punk.

That’s one side of the coin. On the other side, I don’t think violent video games are harmful to the psyche. I got into an argument with one of my grad school professors about this. He had the gall to refer to first-person shooting games — my personal fave — as “murder simulators” that clearly lead to bad behavior. I replied that there was no credible evidence showing that such games are harmful. I also pointed out that people like Charles Manson, long before Doom arrived, didn’t need anything more than a Beatles song to go on a killing spree. Was it equally as clear that Beatles songs lead to bad behavior?

I think there’s only one way I can reconcile these two ideas: First, government, don’t tell us what we can watch or play. Secondly, parents, don’t be idiots – and monitor what your kids are doing.

Man hits woman on way to anger control class

Just in case you want to catch a few of these upcoming shows, I thought you might want to know what the tickets are really going to cost you. Thanks, Ticketmaster! 

It makes some odd kind of sense that the cheaper the ticket, the more you get screwed — but there’s plenty of screwing to go around at all price levels.