Chapter six
What isn't broken

This will be the shortest chapter in the book.
I actually got scared when i thought to myself “I don't have anything to put in this chapter.”
Well there still is the Apple for awhile anyway Intel and Microsoft are usurping them today.
Open source is definitely working and its free lets start with that. The peripherals like printers are pretty good now and USB devices are terrific so far. There is plenty of possibilities and a lot of them are very promising. Even with all the problems so far people do persevere.
There is so much good and exciting things happening and working fine right now that it makes it worthwhile to pursue.
However as I stated the Cartel is huge and omnipotent and right now covering the creativity with a blanket of greed and money.
My goal is to inform and hopefully guide people through this mess so they can see and maybe even create some of the exciting ventures in the high tech world in the future.
The status quo has to be radically changed. Truth, is one of the tools at hand but is woefully weak against this cartel so perseverance, information and toil are needed parts of the arsenal right now.
Open source software and hardware are gaining some momentum now and will help to balance the playing field in a minimal way for decades to come.

Monitors used to be reliable radioactive and major heat sources and space hogs when they were all crt. Now they have progressed to become unreliable light thin and quite cool only problem is there fragile come with a suicide note attached in the dead pixel addendum warranty.
Thats right there beautiful and save space but LCD monitors all have built in inherent problems. First the dead pixel affair. Heres the deal you buy it you take the Russian roulette gamble. If you open the box when you get home and there s a dead pixel or two well too bad thats your problem.
Ok heres t he tip you need at least ten dead pixels .HMM lets see icould smash it with a hammer or pee on it maybe. Iknow ill get a big magnet but then i might erase all the data in my room. Oh i know i will take it outside buy a $20 degauser get the lawnmower cord plug in my degauser and make big winding hurdy gurdy circles and see if that fixes it. Anyway heres a link to fix your crt if it has dead pixels or wacky colors and you have no money or no warranty left and are desperate and are a little crazy. http://woil.ws/fixmonitor/ or course i take noo responsibility if you try those examples. The best degausser and cheapest one of course is your finger. Turn the monitor on and off until your finger drops off or the monitor looks good again I dont how many supposedly bad or dead monitors i bought for nothing and fixed this way. Really they all have built in degausser when you turn on .

Ok heres the link to fix the dead pixel problem on about 60% of LCD monitors let it run at least overnight full screen mode.
http://www.psp-vault.com/Article168.psp
And another one if the above one doesnt work
http://www.dps.uk.com/freeware_DTP.htm

And in case you havent figured it out if any of these above create more bad pixels its actually good becuase you need to create more pixels to get your money back so keep going till you have at least ten. I can only warn you that if your prone to migraines or apoleptic or just generally queasy or sensitive DO NOT WATCH THE SCREEN WHILE THE ABOVE TESTS ARE RUNNING YOU WILL GET VERY SICK.
Already I can tell your thinking “man i got to have one of those LCD monitors i want to play too.”

Ok thats not the only problem. Theres more fun to these lcd monitors than meets the eye sorry i like puns and malapropisms don cherry and archie bunker are brothers you know.

Ok if you tilt the lcd up or down or to the side or all around the screen changes well actually your eye changes what you can see. Dont get upset theres more the next party treat is the ms factor , ask your sales person about this and listen to the gobbly gook that comes out of hteir mouth before they finally or ever say it dont work or its broken or at least until you get a migraine listening to them.
You will notice a ms rating for your Lcd monitor like 24ms or 16ms or 8ms.
What this is all about well almost all monitors except monitors with extremely good ms ratings dont work with video or motion. I mean theres a picture but your eyes will notice odd things and then soon another migraine is on the horizon. OH ok so what ill make sure i get a good ms rated one stop being such a cynic .
Ok but a word to the wise a good one today retails for $400. for a monitor and $4000. for a tv. If your using it for a computer your 400 monitor needs a $400 graphics card to play games or watch sports or action
I have developed my own rating system for lcd monitors its called the google problem rating.




Go ahead type in google “lcd problems”this is the result
Results 1 - 10 of about 12,100,000 for lcd problems. (0.17 seconds) 

yup it says over 12 million .
I am so impressed it only took google .17 seconds to come up with over 12 million. computers are freakin amazin. How long will it take you i wonder.
And yes your right to wonder how long will it take to parse those 12 million problems to find my specific problem and is there a fix, hun billly? is there a fix billy ?is there billy? is there ? Hun is there?
Again the realist pops up and states, why worry you have a warranty silly, send it back , they may not replace it, but at the very least they will fix it .

h mm thats a tough one . Lets see all i have to do is pack it up ship it off and wait and wait and wait. Hmm , is there a temporary replacement monitor billy hun ? Is there? (ok i wont go on and on with this billy stuff just a little bit)

Well Alice yes in some cases depending on which monitor you bought and or if you also bought,.... wait for it the “extended warranty”
A manufacturers wet dream come true. I know theres a real good chance this monitor is broken and has dead pixels but likely not more than ten because i already tested them and the stats i got proved without a shadow a doubt that quite a few will be broken so first ill develop the dead pixel policy then the less than ten dead pixel policy then ill screw them up the nose with extended warranty. The computer cartel scream “Yes , man life is great”.

not only am i going to sell these guys broken stuff i am going sell them a warranty that ensures in case they actually get one that works i still get more money. And if they don t and gets one that doesn't, so what I allowed them to buy this warranty didn't I?Of course this might be the biggest tip i can give you for anything you ever buy.
but in this case you must do this before you sign or put cash for a lcd monitor down.
Tell the clerk they have to open up the box ,hook it up and run video through it for 15 minutes before you will buy it.

Either they assume the responsibility or you will go elsewhere. I do this and i will always do this.
I hear people talk about “demo products all the time in a negative fashion. But take a second hard look at demo products. In the case of electronics something that is out of the box on the table in front of your eyes and working is a very valuable thing to you the consumer. Also it is most likely going to work .Any electronic item that has been working for at least 24 hours is likely to work for a long damn time. This is a big bonus to you the consumer, this is true in all purchases not just electronics but you don't waste all that time money and energy taking it home hooking it up finding it broken taking it back and hassling and hassling and getting a replacements maybe. But and this may be the icing on the cake and I luv icing when it comes to buying most places will offer you a discount for “demo”models. I try to maintain my composure when i say “how much will you take off for that demo model?”I LOVE DEMO MODELS!!!
When in fact i would offer to pay more for a demo model in a flash .

This is a fact: a LCD monitor contains up to 4 million pixels, even a tiny dust particle on one of the pixels during the manufacturing process or a slight bump during shipping can break one of the highly sensitive pixels.
Now some of you are saying gleefully no problem I have eleven dead pixels you hump. Not so fast Gilligan are you sure their “dead”and not just “sleeping”please google Monty pythons dead parrot for reference heres the link Just simply replace the word pixel with the word parrot and you can be a computer salesperson too.

http://seehere.blogspot.com/2004/10/monty-python-videos-and-stuff.html

Pixies and fairies and cookies and Microsoft it must be tea time.

Yes seriously there is a definition of a dead pixel and a sleeping pixel. A dead pixel is black well not really black just void of light a sleeping or turned off pixel is one color like red or white. Please refer to your manufacturers warranty to review their policy. Bring a cup of coffee a magnifying glass and a lawyer and a bat with you while reading it. I must thank the electronic cartel for providing me with so much cynical hilariously funny material one day.

In the end here is what you really need if you have a dead pixel. You need a dead pixel creator. Thats right something that will create dead pixels until you have more than 10 dead pixels in order to qualify for the warranty.. AH thank you so should i google dead pixel creator billy hun should i ? Not recommended but if you have no life and would like to screw around for hours and hours go right ahead,your probably used to it if you bought a computer and if you had a life before it is dwindling in to the pathetic existence of a “user”anyway.
Yup they have a term for us they call us “users”.

George Orwell and Bill Gates are brothers too you know.
OK some of you are now tempted to keep your wonderful CRT monitor now aren't you? Hope you didn't toss your Commodore 64 cause I got some good news for you if you didn't. Otherwise well maybe you should close this book.