Quaere Verum

As promised, here's the text of my letter-complaint discussing the unscrupulous practices of certain online game proprietors. I have promptly sent copies of this letter to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). Now if only they stop sitting on their asses and see the letter for what it represents, that is, uncharted legal territory , as far as consumer rights is concerned. The undersigned would like to respectfully bring to your attention certain possible abuses and violations of consumer rights as well as possible abuses in the use of an information and communication infrastructure in a commercial field which does not seem to be regulated much if at all. I am referring to MMORPGs, or Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. A MMORPG is basically an online video game, a game played over the internet where the players are represented in a virtual world as characters of their own design and choosing. The typical scena...

Somehow...I can relate.

Ever since broadband internet access became commonplace, the popularity of local online gaming has grown by leaps and bounds. Only a few short years ago, internet/gaming cafés offered mostly single player titles, as well as multiplayer games playable over a local area network (LAN), such as StarCraft , WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos , Command & Conquer: Generals , and the ubiquitous Counter-Strike . Nowadays, while most of these games still have a following, a lot of players have simply grown tired of playing with or against AI allies and opponents, or even with or against human opponents on a local network. They want to play with or against players from literally all over the place, not only with people located in a single establishment. That's precisely what massively multiplayer games are all about, and the proliferation of high speed internet access has made it all possible. In the Philippines, the rapid proliferation of online games is nothing short of phenomenal, with an es...

1. A flower shop in Diliman called Petal Attraction; 2. Anita Bakery; 3. A 24-hour restaurant called Doris Day & Night; 4. Barber shop called Felix The Cut; 5. A bakery named Bread Pitt; 6. Fast-food place selling 'maruya' (banana fritters) called Maruya Carey; 7. Then, there is Christopher Plumbing; 8. A boutique called The Way We Wear; 9. A video rental shop called Leon King Video Rental; 10. A restaurant in Cainta district of Rizal called Caintacky Fried Chicken; 11. A local burger restaurant called Mang Donald's; 12. A doughnut shop called MacDonuts; 13. A shop selling 'lumpia' (egg roll) in Makati called Wrap and Roll; 14. And two butcher shops called Meating Place and Meatropolis; Smart travelers can decipher what may look like baffling signs to unaccustomed foreigners by simply sounding out the 'Taglish' (The Philippine version of English words spelled and pronounced with a heavy Filipino such as: 15. At a restaurant menu in Cebu “We hab sopdrink ...

If you own a Nokia cellphone which uses a BL-5C battery, you may be at risk of it blowing up in your face. A few days ago Nokia released an advisory regarding the possibility of such batteries exploding while being recharged. The problem has been traced to a batch of batteries manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan between December 2005 and November 2006. To be on the safe side, if your cellphone is manufactured by Nokia, check the battery if it's a BL-5C type. The part number is printed in the middle of the front of the battery. If your battery is indeed a BL-5C, go to Nokia's product advisory page and enter your battery's serial number in the space provided to determine if your particular battery is among those at risk. If it is, Nokia will send you a new battery via courier from Finland. I have three batteries of the same type, though after checking none of them appear to be part of the defective batch. The procedure in identifying whether you...