Here's our Sept. 11 post, a day late. A Bush cabinet briefing, from Dr. Mikee. Classic stuff.

TUESDAY, 9/10/2002, 2:00pm HST by Raul

There's a rumor on the Web that Canon will be announcing a major advance in 35mm-bodied digital SLRs. The EOS-1DS is rumored to sport an 11 megapixel full-frame sensor. Can't trust it until I see the official Canon stuff, although that "actual Canon press release" was apparently posted on their site briefly. Could be an error or a hack though. If this is true, it would be very interesting indeed, but I wouldn't expect any less than a $8-$10k MSRP.

The ultimate luxury for the consummate lush: a personal garden pub. Decked out in full English style, this says you have arrived as a rich drunk. From Paul.

Well there's a new MLM company in town recruiting young people to pad the incomes of their uplines ... "Vizion One". This company offers dialup internet access at $16.95/mo (what a deal eh?). It also recruits "reps" who sell the service and more importantly, recruit other "reps" to the company.

[rant] Vizion One is part of the same family of companies as 2by2 and Infenet. They all have the same scheme. But I consider it a well-disguised pyramid scheme because of the nature of the kickbacks the "reps" get.

Apparently, selling internet access is just the vehicle by which Vizion One maintains legitimacy. Its real business is charging people to set up Web stores. Basically, new "reps" pay almost $300 to have a Web store set up for them (which seems to only serve the purpose of selling Vizion one's system or service).

Therein lies the scam. There are two stories about Vizion one recruitment. One is that reps get "nothing" for recruiting other reps. The other is that reps get a $70 "bonus" for each rep recruited. Now if reps get nothing, then ALL the money from goes to corporate -- a pyramid scheme in which only the top guy gets anything! And if the rep gets $70, then that's a more traditional pyramid scheme where the largest chunks of income are created by recruitment rather than sales. It would take quite some time to equal that bonus in internet or Web store sales "commissions" ... thus recruitment becomes key.

Thus, if you get a call from some unfortunate who has bought into this, it sounds like Amway, a cult and telemarketing all in one. You'll hear the same words you hear in an Amway spiel, but Amway at least has a line of products -- Vizion One's primary product is its system of making money ... the hallmark of a pyramid scheme.

If you want cheap internet access, please, check out Flex. I'll even help you set it up. [/rant]

Anyway, here's more information:

• 2by2, Infenet, Vizion one, legit or scam?
• 2by2sucks.cjb.net -- Clearinghouse of information

MONDAY, 9/9/2002, 10:Ish pm HST by Penfold

I took a while but we're more or less moved in.

Check out the odd flavors that the Japanese have for ice cream. What's so strange about squid ice cream?

Also for the Japanese speakers out there, please translate this for me.

Feel screwed over by some guy? Maybe he belongs on the dick list.

To be fair, for the guys, the Bitter Single Guy.

Internet feeling slow? How about running a internet pipe cleaner on it.