How to BYOK

by Amber Craig & Kayla Adkins

I have been using the Google Voice beta for around a year and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the multitude of features it provides ranging from voicemail transcription to call screening in addition to free SMS (text messaging). My Google Voice phone number, 209-STASSI-1 is a free addition to my mobile provider’s phone number which I have allowed to replace all of my phone service provider’s previous limitations. Overall Google Voice has made my phone experience better, faster,  and more accessible as evidenced by the fact I effortlessly send and receive Google Voice text messages and voicemail transcripts from my lightweight Google Chrome browser extension on a regular basis.

Register a Google Voice account now if you haven’t already–it seamlessly links to your Gmail/Google Account. It’s completely free with no strings attached, so don’t let someone else register your desired custom phone number!

(Go ahead, leave me a voicemail from this handy Internets button.)

The .hX are a modern order of humanitarian ascetics who hone their energies in ways that maximize the happiness and well-being of humans and their allies. Their principle tenets include increasing the dissemination of information, knowledge, transparency, and renewable luxuries among humanity’s constituent populace without regard to organized attempts to privatize or monopolize them. When scarcity is an issue, .hX advocate using restraint and will act selflessly to help others.
Most .hX have a fundamental understanding of systems theory and view themselves as emergent beings due to the perceived importance of their work and their limited numbers. They will therefore adapt techniques to practice their beliefs while living within systems established by or sympathetic to contradicting ideals.
Furthermore, the esoteric abilities of .hX are honed around methods of reverse engineering (emancipation), adaptation (emulation), mind-machine interaction, cognitive encryption, decryption, and transcription, world construction (extropy), cognitive resonance, and dual-core cognition. These sufficiently advanced techniques are not well understood and are widely reported to be supernatural in nature by uninformed observers.

Over recent years, more secrecy and caution has been necessary for .hX to operate as they have gathered the unfavorable attention of multinational organizations that identify and rate them as low-chapter threats to private assets. In efforts to preserve their ideals, it has been necessary for these groups to develop logic traps designed to ensnare .hX who have difficulties coping with dual-core cognition.
The .hX who fall into the logic traps are left exposed to indoctrination and may voluntarily enter the service of their captors with the intent of disrupting or destroying their former comrades. The individuals who are no longer .hX for these reasons become f(x), with their individualities reduced to those of a mindless function of their parent ideology.
.hX are champions of their ideologies similar to the way f(x) are champions of theirs. Since it is easier for individuals to contemplate or perform acts of malice and selfishness, the f(x) who retain their .hX powers are ruthlessly efficient in projecting their newfound powers.
Corporations such as LSC Biotechnetics have enjoyed the recent success of attempts to reverse engineer .hX techniques and have since released patents on f(x)-specific techniques.

A majority of .hX reject the corporations’ notions that their abilities are finite, and claim that without regard for their original techniques, the f(x) will only stray further from the enlightened perfection gained through patience and meditation.

Cool James and Black Teacher demonstrate the esoteric .hX technique called rollin slidaz (or rolling sliders) in the 1994 music video Dr. Feelgood. The complex technique demonstrated above, which involves the disabling of an individual’s walk animation, remains locked inside the mind of Black Teacher as Cool James tragically passed away in a car accident in his home country Tanzania in 2002. Whether the technique was developed by the eurodance duo or emancipated by the .hX remains as unknown as the identity of Dr. Feelgood’s successor. Presumably, the next Dr. Feelgood can make you feel good when the skies are blue and will be available via means of paging or telephone.

ManmadePlatypus accomplishes a feat worthy of recognition by mowing down a bunch of victims on Sandtrap, racking up enough back-to-back consecutive kills with the unwieldy Chopper to earn a Killtrocity. Nicely done, Platypus! You’ll be Internets-famous soon enough.

[ Click to enlarge! ]

My comrades, Holy and Anointed, it was glorious day when Jewish Empire of Japan joined great Union of Christian Televangelist Soviet Republics. In Sid Meyer’s Civilization 4, the concept of vassalage is when one vastly powerful nation (Stassi’s) agrees to pay higher upkeep in order to subsidize a smaller, inferior nation (Adam’s) that is the militaristic dependent of the former. As a result, the vassal state’s population suffers unhappiness while the parent nation’s population gains immense satisfaction. This requires the consent of both parties, which Adam’s prideful Jewish Japanese would normally never agree to.

In other words, Stassi agreed to pay more money to make Adam’s civilization unhappy.

The story:

Throughout the multiplayer game pictured above, Stassi’s empire grew to an enormous size financially backed entirely by an ultra-pervasive theological Christian sect bent on profiteering from the developing world outside of their borders. Ironically, the increased profit allowed Stassi’s fundamentalist Christian civilization to focus on scientific pursuits at an alarming rate of discovery. Stassi would then share each piece of technology and surplus resources with Adam’s Japan (who is Jewish) usually in exchange for nothing.

Adam became so acquainted with accepting resources and technological handouts that he failed to notice Stassi’s offer to “become a vassal state” during a routine diplomatic trade, and promptly accepted. It was a glorious day for all of them, especially Stassi, since his aggressive pursuit of spreading Christianity around the world subsequently left all of his cities undefended by any competent military (other than Second Amendment-spouting SUV drivers armed to the teeth with guns, which are more of a last resort). Adam’s militaristic Japan, now a vassal state of Stassi’s undefended Russia, would solemnly accept the fate of protecting its parent nation using hand-me-down technology and resources in a delicious reversal of roles.

Years later, Adam’s Japan invaded Stassi’s godless, un-Christian neighbor of France, forcing them to retreat far to the barren north, where they learned to adopt Christianity. Regrettably, most of France had already perished under the feet of Adam’s mighty armies before they learned the path to Heaven (as described on Televangelist Worship Channel 26, for pay-per-view StassiVision customers).

It is common knowledge that those who do not know the Christian gospel will suffer eternal damnation in the fiery pits of Hell. My challenge to you, reader, is to explain why Stassi’s Christian deity would create godless nations like France, born into a sinful culture of damnation and idol worship, never knowing the Gift of Salvation without Adam’s army of angry Jews massacring their people. Is Stassi’s Christian god rewarding his profitable dedication with black humour? If life on Earth is so amusingly ironic, can Heaven possibly be any better?

Humanity’s outlook is bleak.

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First I placed my default browser, Google Chrome, to the test.

Chrome 1.0.154.65

• Richards: 1140
• DeltaBlue: 1372
• Crypto: 998
• RayTrace: 1679
• EarleyBoyer: 2091
• RegExp: 112
• Splay: 2555
• Score: 1066

Not bad. Keep in mind at this point I don’t exactly know what the hell 1066 means, but it must be good because it’s over one thousand.

Then I decided to download and test the latest stable release of Mozilla Firefox, which you can download here. Firefox is a popular alternative to Microsoft’s travesty of a browser called Internet Explorer (more on that subject later).

Firefox 3.0.1.0

• Richards: 127
• DeltaBlue: 152
• Crypto: 79.0
• RayTrace: 151
• EarleyBoyer: 184
• RegExp: 97.3
• Splay: 418
• Score: 150

Hmm… that’s not the result I was hoping for. Right now Google is winning with a 916-point (711%) lead. Firefox, my old friend, I hope your makers one day give you the speed you deserve.

Then I called upon Microsoft’s infamous Internet Explorer which I had locked away in the bowels of my software collection from my computer’s (and my own) safety. There is no currently known method of uninstalling IE without the exorcism of demons and a virginal blood sacrifice. Deep beneath the operating system’s floorboards I traversed, and awakened its still-beating blackened heart.

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13

• Richards: 17.9
• DeltaBlue: 16.1
• Crypto: 29.9
• RayTrace: 44.2
• EarleyBoyer: 56.4
• RegExp: …….

Huh? What’s going on?

Sure enough, Internet Explorer committed suicide. Thankfully its violent death was isolated and did not affect Windows or my instance of Notepad that was recording the spectacle. My curiosity kept growing. I wanted to know the score. Nay, I had to know. I held my breath and called once more upon the treacherous browser’s deceitfully inviting blue “e” logo. Back demon! BACK!

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13 (round 2)

• Richards: 17.9
• DeltaBlue: 16.1
• Crypto: 29.9
• RayTrace: 44.2
• EarleyBoyer: 56.4
• RegExp: ……………………

This is madness!

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13 (round 3)

• Richards: 17.9
• DeltaBlue: 16.1
• Crypto: 29.9
• RayTrace: 44.2
• EarleyBoyer: 56.4
• RegExp: …………………………………………….

Exasperated, I gave up wrestling with the browser and beckoned it to return to its cruel masters.

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13 (final results)

• Richards: 17.9
• DeltaBlue: 16.1
• Crypto: 29.9
• RayTrace: 44.2
• EarleyBoyer: 56.4
• RegExp: ????
• Splay: ????
• Score: EPIC FAIL

Having successfully tested Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and tempting fate with the Browser From Beyond, I had a feeling that I was forgetting one particularly forgettable group of people. Who were they again? Oh right, Apple hipsters! Their once-noble crusade against Microsoft, turned crusade against comformity, turned absolute acceptance of comformity inspired me to test their favorite and second-least-appealing browser, Apple Safari.

I download the latest public version of Apple Safari and QuickTime from this site, and I do believe I am now initiated in some sort of counter-culture terrorist cell as a minion of Steve Jobs. They will send me a porcelain white worshipper robe with an embroidered Apple logo, and I plan to attend their weekly ceremonies as long as they continue to supply the unbelievably expensive organic Pepsi they promised.

Safari 4 beta 528.17

• Richards: 1711
• DeltaBlue: 1205
• Crypto: 1161
• RayTrace: 948
• EarleyBoyer: 2226
• RegExp: 161
• Splay: 510
• Score: 882

Yum! An impressive score of 882, only 184 less than Google Chrome and a whopping 82.74% of its score. It is nearly six times better than Mozilla Firefox’s score.

It was then I realized that Google Chrome had an update available. Somewhere I became under the impression that Chrome updated itself without your consent or knowledge, which I am cool with, but suddenly it was offering me an upgrade to version 2. As I said earlier, there was a new release available and I guess I wasn’t even using it yet.

I hit the upgrade button and restarted the test.

Chrome 2.0.172.28

• Richards: 1441
• DeltaBlue: 1638
• Crypto: 1163
• RayTrace: 1913
• EarleyBoyer: 2715
• RegExp: 561
• Splay: 3512
• Score: 1610!!!!!!!

Holy crap! Chrome’s leading score was just dominated by none other than a future version of itself! D-d-d-d-double kill!

Summary

• Google Chrome - 1066 (100%)
• Mozilla Firefox 3 - 150 (14.07%) =[
• Internet Explorer 7 – ???? (-0.666%)
• Apple Safari 4 - 882 (82.74%)
• WINNER: Google Chrome 2 - 1610 (+151.03%)

The winners are Google Chrome in first place, Google Chrome in second place, and Apple Safari in third place. Microsoft, Apple may have sold out but Google is going to lock away Internet Explorer once and for all. That’s why you’re warning the Europeans that bundling Google Chrome with Windows could give them a monopoly over the home PC market with all 1% of its browser share… but think of the lives they’ll be saving.

My work here is done for now. If you want to upgrade to the fast and free Google Chrome, click here!