Land Reform

EDIT (05/02/2008):  This post has been republished by the following websites:

In Defence of Liberty - A website with a collection of libertarian writings.  You can find the post here.

Repormang Agraryo - A blog devoted to agricultural concerns.  You can go directly to the post here.

-end of edit-

The following was written for Minimal Government Thinkers, Inc. It is a think-tank that advocate libertarian ideals. These include free markets, minimal government interference, personal freedom, and personal responsibility.

The Tragedy of Land Reform

With the rice crisis and the impending expiration of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, the issue of land reform has once more been thrust into the forefront of news reports. People are now analyzing CARP, and the things that could have been done by the government to improve the lot of farmers who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of the program. Comments have been made about the old age of farmers, and the lack of interest of the younger generation to take up the profession of their fathers. What could save us from all these problems?

The answer is simple: Abandon land reform. That statement is easy for the writer, who has no political career, but it would be disaster for any politician who hopes to remain in power or even be promoted. Every Philippine President since Quezon has used land reform to buy support from the masses, and a lot of rebellions since the Spanish era can be traced to complaints by disenfranchised farmers. People have taken it for granted that land reform, with massive government support, is the solution to the problem of landless farmers and recurrent rice crises.

Social Justice

But what is land reform? Is it not fair to distribute to the farmers the same land that they have tilled for generations? Why should we care about the exploitative landowners? And is it not the duty of the government to help the poor farmers?

The idea behind land reform is that of correcting the great social injustice heaped upon our farmers. For hundreds of years, they have been little more than serfs, tied to the land that they till, generation after generation. Giving them the land will be fair compensation for their sufferings, stretching all the way back to the Spanish era, when they have been taken advantage of by friars, politicians, and other members of the elite. I am not about to dispute nor belittle the suffering of our farmers. Coming from a farming family with a very small plot of land in Tarlac (whose title can be traced to the American period, before any meaningful land reform), I understand the powerful hunger for land that drives farmers to the arms of revolutionaries and politicians. They are given a pittance for their labors, cheated on the prices of their produce, and compelled to burden their descendants with debts just to keep their farms going when everything needed (grain, feed, fertilizer) are given to them by landlords at prices they cannot afford.

But will it be just to give them the land? That after all is the rightful property of the landowners, however monstrous they may be. Is it just to provide a blanket law to affect all landowners whether they were good or bad to their tenants? Cloaking land reform under the banner of social justice violates our democratic process of due process. Current landowners will be punished for crimes that might or might not have been committed by their ancestors. They may or may not be doing the same things to their tenants, but can’t we just punish the erring landowners for practices that violate our labor laws? We are a civilized nation that will not punish someone for being the son of a child rapist simply because he was born into the wrong family, but we meekly accept the verdict imposed on all those who own land without question. The same principle is involved, but somehow the proponents of land reform were able to isolate the agricultural situation from the greater scheme of things.

I’ve heard another argument. The Spanish friars and conquistadors stole the land from our ancestors and compelled them to slave away for the benefit of the landowning class. Since the property is stolen in the first place, then we can get it back from them to serve the cause of justice. This argument is really irritating, because the current legal framework was not in existence then, and therefore all property transfers from parent to child since that time are legal and cannot be declared illegal ex post facto. But we don’t have to nitpick. All land before the time of the Spaniards was more or less communal. So how can anyone own the land, except for the people themselves? The problem is further complicated by the fact that the Republic of the Philippines traces its descent not from the barangay polities that the Spaniards found, but from the Spanish colonial structure. In short, there is no legal nor moral means by which to redress any perceived injustice that happened 500 years ago. It would be as absurd as ejecting every single white American from the United States and giving their land back to the Indians.

The Economies of Scale

If we cannot rationalize land reform through populist and socialist polemics, perhaps land reform could be justified in terms of productivity. After all, small private plots in the Soviet Union managed to supply most of the food needs of that country when their collective agricultural system was lurching from one disastrous harvest to another. It also has the added benefit of equitably distributing the revenues once earned by large estates to the farmers who would get the full profit of their labors.

Whoever thought about this seriously misunderstood the landlord-tenant relationship beyond that of exploiter-exploited of Marxist dialectics. The landlord, however maligned, provides capital, the necessary infrastructure and technology transfer to assure the continued productivity of his land. Most importantly, he provided the interface between the dealer and the farmer, providing for both of them the best possible prices for their produce.

For some reason, big estates are anathema to a lot of people, who see in them the source of wealth and power for a decadent elite. But looking beyond the political blinds of socialists, one sees a player in the rice market who is at the mercy of market forces. What does this mean? Cutthroat competition compels these farms to become more and more productive even as they reduce the costs of production to enable them to reduce the market prices of their products. The result would be quality rice in abundance at ridiculously cheap prices. Consider the huge farmlands in the United States that have been able to provide not just for the US, but to much of the world. How do they do this? Scientific methods and the application of relevant technology.

But it’s not enough to just have farmers adopt the latest technological wonders. There are questions of capital infusion, technical know-how, and the often overlooked aspect of relevance. Technology is expensive, and it’s not just about tractors. It includes scientific methods of care and protection for crops, and the knowledge to apply them properly. But with the costs of technology, the farmer must also address the practical aspect of benefits versus costs. It would be absurd to expect a farmer to invest hundreds of thousands of pesos for improving farmland that cannot pay for the cost of technology by its own produce. It’s better to invest the money in a large farm that can absorb the costs better and produce enough to justify the investment.

Sure, the farmers of adjacent plots can form cooperatives to finance and maintain their technological innovations. But how feasible is this? This means that the technology and materials would become communal property, and decades of collectivized agriculture has shown that incentives of caring for materials vanish when no one owns these materials. Even if all the farmers in a hypothetical village would band together and act responsibly, how long will this last? All it takes is one farmer willing to sell out, and all their efforts would be for naught.

The Government and Land Reform

Even before the Roman Empire, land reform has been used by politicians to manipulate people into submission. History since before the Roman Empire has been replete with examples of wily leaders who were able to grab or hold on to power through the use of land distribution to buy support from the masses. Even if we are to consider most of these people as sincere in their aspirations to help the landless, has it done good to the farmers that they are supposed to help?

Whenever the government undertakes an activity, this activity must be controlled and monitored by a bureaucracy. One cannot just say chuck the bureaucracy away, because this provides the means to implement the policies of the government with the necessary check and balance to assure the public that taxpayers’ money is not being wasted. Inevitably, these bureaucrats would see more merit in maintaining the forms and guidelines around them than in keeping the actual goals of the project in mind. After all, their performance and chances for promotion are based on these pieces of paper. It would be too much to expect people to act contrary to the incentives that pander to their self-interest.

Thus the farmer is dehumanized. He becomes a number or a name that simply fills out the proper space in the correct form. It becomes more tragic in a country such as the Philippines, where land reform has been used to throw a bone to the farmers hungry for land, and they are held hostage by what suits the government in power. Even in countries where land reform has been said to succeed, such as in Taiwan, it was done with much suffering for both landlords and peasant farmers. They are denied the freedom to decide their fate. How much land should they have? How should they go about raising their crops?

And it’s not just the farmers. Productivity for such small-sized farms can only maintained through heavy government subsidies. This is unfair for taxpayers, who are compelled to buy at full price rice and sugar that they have already paid for through their taxes. Unfair because they bought the lands to distribute to farmers, and not all of these lands would be farmed. As farmers age and their progeny decide to seek their fortunes in other fields, we are left with increasingly small farmlands with dwindling productions that cannot sustain an expanding population.

What is the solution? I am not calling for the government to compel farmers to remain farmers. That defeats the purpose of a democracy where everyone should be free to decide their own fate. Rather, the government should stop meddling in agriculture and let the market decide. A lucrative agricultural industry would lure many to try their hand in it. They should be allowed to do so, without limits on the growth of their business. Let those who wish to stay in agriculture prosper, and this prosperity can only happen only if they are given enough land to enjoy the benefits of technological advances in profitable ways. Abolish land reform.

Things I have not written about

I’ve planned to write about the following things, but I haven’t the time.  Maybe the long weekend will help.

1.  The subprime mortgage crisis and how it will affect my plans on building my financial empire.

2.  The increase in my encounters with cheating cabbies.

3.  Eastwood City and its pretensions to luxury.

4.   My addiction to World of Warcraft.

5.  Owning a gun.

6.  My upcoming birthday.

7.  Brotherhood.

8.  Many more.

Somehow, the time just isn’t there.

Criminal Chutzpah (The Return of the Cable Thieves)

Early this morning, cable thieves struck again in our area to steal the recently repaired cable. It was stolen right when I was playing Warcraft, so I noticed it immediately. Unfortunately, I rushed out too late to catch them. I wasn’t too keen on rushing inside the local squatter colony alone.

Discussing this latest theft (less than a week after the previous one!), one of my neighbors kept pontificating on poverty, and how it forces people to steal. My mother criticized me for rushing out in the middle of the night, alone, to intercept people stealing property that was not mine. It sucks the way society has sunk so low that it tolerates crime because of poverty.

A lot of criminals might be poor, but they do not commit crimes because of poverty. Rather, they remain poor because their personality defects that contributed to antisocial behavior also makes them stay poor. But I’m not saying that they can’t help being criminals, and they can’t help being poor. It’s all a matter of choice to them, but as human beings, reinforced by their predisposition, they will evade responsibility so long as they can.

The first thing that one should understand in dealing with these kinds of mind is that there is such a thing as a hardened criminal. These are people who just can’t stop committing crimes. Like a compulsive gambler or a drug addict, they are people who can’t just part with the rush that crimes give them. Sure, they might have been abused or neglected during their childhood, but there are people who are able to put it behind them. Some of them are even from law-abiding, middle-class, and very supportive families. These are the kind of people that must be immediately identified and hanged.

Another kind of criminal would be the criminal of convenience, which I think comprises the majority of criminals. They like living the easy life, abhor responsibility, have low EQs, and are generally not very smart. They commit crimes because it gives them a cheap thrill, and it gives them things that they normally would have to work very hard for. They have a lot of kids that they don’t feed except in front of TV cameras when they’ve been arrested already. These people should also be hanged for being harmful, unproductive, and to serve as examples to others.

Third, we have impulse criminals. They usually commit homicide in a rage, rob stores on a dare, and break windows to show their friends that they’re cool. I think that these people should be jailed, given a chance to repent, and then hanged if they don’t learn.

Finally, we have the fucked-up criminals. These people have real psychological problems that cause them to commit crimes. Serial rapists, child rapists, serial killers - these are people who should be hanged as well since they are organized enough to function inside society. For really crazy people, they should be locked up in asylums.

If one would take care to analyze the categories above, almost all of them commit crimes not because they had to, or because they can’t control themselves, but because they wanted to. They know that it’s wrong, and that they can be punished. But they nevertheless do so out of their own choice. Poverty? They steal other people’s telephone cables to enable them to steal electricity. They steal water, and deprive paying customers of water from their pipes. They steal cellphones to sell for cash so they can get high. They may say they just wanted to feed their families, but they had colored televisions before my family did. Some of them even have airconditioning units. By the way, they have all this in a house built on land that belongs to someone else.

Are they really after survival, or just plain convenience? They see their neighbors getting all these fancy stuff, but just because they wanted one as well does not mean they have a right to it. It they stopped drinking every night, getting high every so often, maybe get a job, then they’d be able to provide for their families.

The funny thing is, bleeding heart liberals believe them when they say they wanted to feed their families, or they just wanted to buy medicines for their children. I know people who have children with chronic diseases who never steal. They work harder, sell their stuff, and tighten their belts. And this kind of people often live beside those who steal from others. I think it’s unfair. One of them wants to remain productive and honorable, and simply wishes to get by.  Perhaps they might wish for a few comforts, but they never aspire for anything beyond their reach.  The other is not just unproductive, but also inconveniences everyone else around him.  He is selfish, manipulative, and bleeding hearts indulge him.  They feel guilty that this man is poor and they’re not.  And since he’s not stealing from them, then they tell the victims that they must understand.

They tell everyone else that we can’t hang him, because it’s cruel and unusual.  We must not sink down to their level.  So tolerating chaos is a higher level of existence and thought?  Teaching others to evade responsibility makes people intellectuals?  I say that even if that were true, then we must be humble and go down to their level.  Make them break rocks in a quarry.  Hang them.  Sure, they might not learn, but it will be cheaper to hang them then sustain their lives at state expense.  That comes out of the taxes paid by the victim, by the way.

Oh, some idiots try to say that it’s more cruel to keep someone alive looking out through the bars at a freedom he won’t have and alive to reflect on his crimes.  That’s crap.  If I’d have raped 10 little girls, I’ll be glad of the opportunity to live in a place where I have my own bed, three square meals a day, with shrinks who tend to my emotional bloodiness.  I’d say that’s a good trade.

But no, we’ve been desensitized to the point we don’t care about others anymore, and that’s a victory for crime.  You won’t intervene to defend someone else’s property or life, then there’s more chances for them to succeed.  Fortunately, law enforcement here is not as politically correct as in the United States, and they don’t bash people who do take the time to actually care.

The Case of the Stolen Cables

It is often said that you only find out how much something means to you after you’ve lost it.  And in the case of my Internet connection, I found out how much it meant to me last weekend.  I didn’t have a dial tone or Internet connection until Monday afternoon.

Staggering home at around 5.30am Saturday, after an all-night session of drinking beer, wine, whiskey, and other flammable liquids, I opened my computer to discover I had no Internet connection.  Picking up the phone, I discovered that I had no dial tone either.  My first thought was that we got disconnected, and then I got mad because there was no reason for it to happen.  Fortunately, Smart allows you to harass the technical support agents of PLDT for free from your Smart mobile.  I called up the agent, and like any good customer maligned by these unfeeling bureaucracies, let my wrath loose upon the hapless agent, who can only repeat that annoying line, “We are sorry for the inconvenience.”  That infamous line, uttered without a shred of sincerity and with diction sure to arouse the ire of Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, only  served to fuel my anger more.   Finally, knowing that the agent won’t be able to do anything that any barely computer literate person is incapable of doing, I decided to sleep.

I woke up to the ringing of my mobile a few hours later, to discover that I have a fever.  The technician has arrived!  While he was checking the phone line, my neighbors dropped by and grumbled that they also called PLDT for the same problems.  Hearing this, the technician checked the cables leading to the box serving the area.  It was only then that he discovered that the cable running from the box to the pole nearest our street was stolen.  All he could say was that he would file a report (much like agents do, except this guy can actually do something) which would be sent to the proper department to be their week’s ration of toilet paper.

Periodically calling PLDT, I discovered that 171 and 173 are so insulated from the workings of the other departments.  They couldn’t even tell me if the reports were read before they were sent to the department bathrooms.  All they can say is that they’ll just file another report, just in case someone has a bad case of diarrhea over there.  They won’t commit to any timeframe for the repair.  And most likely, no one updates their database.  Even as I said that phone cables were stolen and that the entire area did not have any form of service whatsoever, all they did was to ask for your number, and say that they would send a technician.

I also discovered that PLDT has systematically withheld the numbers of their business offices.  If you want to talk to someone over there, you have to physically go to the business office, get a number, then wait one million years for your number to be called.  In short, no one knows where these cable crews are, what are they doing, or maybe even if they’ve been hired already.  Everyone would tell you the same thing: We are sorry for the inconvenience, we will file the report.  It’s bureaucratic enough to shame the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with its committees, subcommittees, central committees, and presidium of central committees.

To make the long story short, service was restored Monday afternoon.  I understand that it’s not PLDT’s fault that their cables are often stolen.  In fact, I’ve decided to electrocute any cable thief I encounter as payback for my experience. What I don’t understand is PLDT’s strenuous efforts to insulate the consumer from the company.  Sure, they have a customer service department to receive the insults and curses of their clients, but would it be too bad to let the people in other departments taste the wrath of unsatisfied customers?

I could’ve called 171 to tell them about my problem, and then they’d forward me to the department capable of addressing the problem.  Why can’t I have updates on the progress of their work, or the lack thereof?  Most importantly, why let clients wait three days for service they’ve paid for.  Sure, there are rebates, but they come only after you’ve dogged them for months, and even if not, it won’t be enough to pay for lost income (for those with Internet-based businesses), the inconvenience, or in my case, withdrawal symptoms from not being able to blog, check my mail, and play either Warcraft or Team Fortress 2.

Thinking about this incident, I realized that whenever I call 171, I am already in a hostile mindset that cannot be explained by simple inconvenience.  I am mad because I know I will be frustrated.  But I have no choice but to call them.  Even if I let my wrath loose upon them, my problem would still be unresolved, and my predicament will be nothing more than another “irate call” to the agent.  Perhaps for the sake of their agents and their customers, PLDT can change.  Maybe when Elvis releases another album.

Monday morning, I convinced my neighbors that we should send a letter to PLDT signed by all affected subscribers in the area that says we will all terminate our contracts with PLDT if they do not restore service to the area immediately.  We weren’t able to do it as service was restored before we can give the letter, but it’s something that Filipino consumers should do more often to assert their rights.  Maybe, just maybe, Pangilinan would take notice.

The Senate ZTE-NBN Hearing

“A committee is a group of the unwilling chosen form the unfit, to do the unnecessary.”
- Author unknown.

I’ve been fascinated with the revelations in the Senate hearings on the NBN deal. Abalos has been revealed as one greedy bastard who was willing to have the government spend millions of dollars to get $132 million on a shady deal. Watching Lozada’s testimony, I was struck at the sincerity of the man, dropping names of the most powerful officials in the land without blinking. In the Philippines, that’s an act of suicide, which almost happened to Lozada when he was “taken for a ride.”

But his testimony stood, especially compared to the testimonies of Atienza and Atutubo. Atienza tried to use his trapo charm and blabbing nonsense about how he cared so much about his underling (Lozada was the CEO of the Philippine Forest Corporation at the time of his flight to Hong Kong). In fact, he cared so much about his underling that he never bothered to take a cursory look at his planned travel to London. That’s dereliction of duty, IMO. As the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, he should take care that all his underlings spend the people’s money wisely.

General Atutubo of MIAA was put in a bad spot. He either had to admit being a moron or being a criminal. He allowed Lozada to be taken away without even seeing immigration. He allowed them to circumvent the most basic security procedures, claiming only “special arrangements”. So the question is, did he allow Lozada to be taken away because he was ignorant (something he vehemently denied when asked by Biazon) or was he a willing accomplice?

Director-General Razon of the PNP is saying that the mission was accomplished. Lozada is alive and well, and that was the only concern of the PNP. However, why was the security team unwilling to give Lozada the chance to see his family? Why did the security team need a “MAKAPILI” (in the colorful words of Senator Escudero) to point out the person they need to protect? He also has to explain why the PNP coddled a person who was vague about the threats to his life, who openly mentioned his aversion to attending the Senate hearing. Why should the PNP waive the necessary intel work to validate the threats to Lozada’s life. As a taxpayer, that’s an arbitrary use of power given to him, using state resources to protect someone who may or may not need protecting.

But what about the Senators? Miriam was a disappointment. While she is obviously biased towards the administration, I expected better than the feeble attempt to discredit Lozada. She simply asked about anomalous deals which Lozada willingly owned up to. Enrile had this funny notion that the Senate was wasting time because they were investigating the entire day, leaving only 30 minutes for legislation. I don’t know how much of that is an attempt to scuttle the investigation, but it seemed petty to carp about parliamentary procedure in view of the case being discussed. They’re not talking about requests for new toilets from a government agency. Arroyo raised a what-if scenario: What if the Court of Appeals’ findings varies from that of the Senate hearing? I think he’s trying to imply everything here was a waste of time. He interrogated Lozada about some other legal points. While pertinent, I think these questions should have been raised much earlier. Escudero provided some comic relief, asking Mike Defensor if he can rely on Defensor to give him 50,000 pesos without being asked. Escudero and Biazon skewered the government witnesses, although I concede that it doesn’t take much talent to do so.

To sum up, serious charges are being laid on the table. There is the question of whether Lozada was kidnapped. Obstruction, as government officials conspired to allow Lozada to evade the warrant of arrest issued by the Senate. Corruption, big-time corruption to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. More smelly deals, with the Southrail project now being exposed as an anomalous deal.

Even if we take the testimony of the government officials at face value, they practically admitted to defying the law and their willingness to aid anyone who wished to avoid attending Senate hearings in aid of legislation. I’ll update this or post another article when I find the time to digest the info in the hearing.

NBA Live 08 Roster Updates

Browsing through the Internet, I managed to find a roster update for NBA Live 08. After the trade that brought Gasol to the Lakers, I wanted to enjoy playing Dynasty Mode using this particular team. I managed to find Realistic Roster 08 v3 (Get it here). It’s not for the faint of heart, as you are required to tinker with individual folders related to your game, but the package includes a detailed instruction set. I’d advise you to back everything up before making any changes.

But! Here’s the result:

I know other people would be interested in other teams, but as I said, I’m a Lakers fan.

On the House

Jose de Venecia is about to be ousted from his post of Speaker of the House. That is, if we believe the news. But I don’t think that JdV will be able to pull a miracle bunny from the hat this time around. The President herself is calling for his departure, along with the rest of her benighted family. Previously, he was able to dismantle challenges to his leadership through the steadfast support of the resident occupant of Malacañan. When Ramos was in power, he was unbeatable. When he basked in Gloria’s favor, he was unbeatable. Now, he’s a beaten man, his only mistake being his son getting involved in the nasty National Broadband Network mess.

This incident proves what I have been saying all along. The shift to parliamentary system simply changes the titles of the players without really changing anything. Ever since Quezon, the party of the President becomes the Administration and everyone else becomes the Opposition. This happens even when the other parties get a larger share of the vote, even if there were more congressmen affiliated with parties hostile to the administration. How does this happen? During the Commonwealth, there was only one party, the Nacionalista Party. Sure, the Partido Federal and later the Partido Democrata existed to challenge the Nacionalista, but both parties had their members coopted and the remnants crushed. During the postwar period, congressmen simply switched back and forth between the Nacionalista and Liberal Party, and since the Liberal Party is a splinter group of the Nacionalista, they’re all in good company.

Of course, Ferdinand Marcos crushed all opposition groups and so almost members of the rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa also had to be members of his KBL (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan). After Marcos, things became a wee bit more sophisticated as it’s no longer individuals or blocs shifting back and forth but entire parties flitting from one coalition to another (However, it is prudent to note that in the Philippines, most political parties exist only in newspaper accounts, with members usually including the politician in question, a secretary, the politician’s household staff, and some people duped into signing the charter because they thought it was a loan application).

Such is the case today, as Lakas-NUDC-UMDP-IADH (Lakas-National Union of Christian Democrats-Union of Muslim Democrats-Insert Another Democrat Here) prepares to kick out its president when he loses his speaker post. This is in preparation for the merger of Lakas and KAMPI, the party of the President. Nevermind that KAMPI was nothing more than one of the parties mentioned above when Gloria became President. Oh well, Lakas was nothing until Ramos became President.

I’ve always viewed de Venecia as a sleazy politician, the quintessential wheeler and dealer who manages to keep everyone happy with their pork barrel. I laughed when I read that he is launching a moral revolution, because ample supply of morality is definitely not among his traits. But I look forward to seeing him in the opposition. He remains a formidable politician, and it would be nice to see an independent House of Representatives. Sure, it’ll still be filled with congressmen out to get their grubby hands on every centavo that passes through it, but other institutions are filled with the same kind of men. But if they are against each other, then we might experience something of a true check and balance that might sort our country out.

Showtime!

In the Philippines, there is this phenomenon where the NBA champion is always the favorite team.  LA Lakers in the 80’s, the Bulls in the 90’s, etc.  But for me, there has only been one team ever since I was a kid (who barely knew anything about basketball) and saw Magic Johnson play.  I collected rookie cards of Kobe Bryant (until they were stolen) and always played the Lakers in NBA Live.

This time, I’m pleased at the trade that brought Gasol to the Lakers.  They are now one of the best teams in the league, as they should be.  I’ve never seen the Celtics-Lakers matchups, but now I have the chance to see a new edition.  I won’t analyze the way other bloggers have, as I think they know more about basketball than I do, but I am definitely pleased to see Kwame Brown go.

Of course, they still have to win games.  We’ll never see the full force of the Laker lineup until Bynum comes back from his injury.  But even without Bynum, it will be nice to see how Bryant, Gasol, and Odom would gel together.

PC Express sucks.

I just got off the phone, having called PC Express, both their branch in Caloocan and their main office, complaining about my video card. I’m using an Inno3D Geforce 7300GT, with 512MB of video memory. When I started playing Half-life 2, I noticed artifacts (as seen below) appearing in the screen.

Because they are usually resolved by loading a saved game, I thought that it was simply a software problem, perhaps due to conflicts with other programs running in the background.

Problems became much worse when I bought other games off Steam. All games using the Source engine display artifacts, with Lost Coast and Episode One being the worst culprits. Call of Duty 4 also exhibit artifacts, along with Medieval II: Total War. Even Peggle Extreme, which came free with The Orange Box, has corrupted graphics. In short, practically all the games I have except those released in the 90s run with problems. Which should not be the case.

I finally emailed Inno3D, and after waiting for two weeks (wtf?!) I got a reply. It asked me to turn off overclocking, any BIOS modifications, and check my BIOS settings to conform with their sample. Since I don’t overclock or modify my BIOS, it left faulty hardware as the culprit, which was included in the email by Inno3D.

I called PC Express, and told them my story. Apparently, I have to wait for FOUR WEEKS for them to “process” my video card. And they will not provide any service replacement in the meantime. I was stupid enough to patronize their store and this is how they repay me. Unlike most Filipino consumers, I am assiduous in the exercise of my consumer rights, since the government steals about a quarter of my salary every month. And I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when the consumer complaint form of the Department of Trade and Industry would not work. Is this a fucked up country or what?

Removing Punkbuster, part 2

Even up to now, my post on removing Punkbuster last December 24 is still being read.  In fact, if you put “remove punkbuster” (without the quotations) on Google, that post will be the second in the list of results.  I know that the solution I proposed to the problems of Punkbuster was a bit kludgy, so I decided to look around for a better solution to the problem.

From the things I’ve read on the Internet, it would be better to leave the services tab of msconfig alone.  Disabling PnkbstrA.exe and PnkbstrB.exe from msconfig requires you to start Windows using the diagnostic startup option, something not recommended by experts, although I’m not sure why.  Second, it permanently disables Punkbuster, unless you modify msconfig once more and tick their boxes.  So if you want to play the excellent multiplayer aspect of Call of Duty 4, then you have to reboot the pc.  Afterwards, you need to untick the boxes and reboot once more.

I’ve found a better way of removing Punkbuster without preventig you from enjoying the multiplayer game of COD4.  Go to your Start menu, click on Run, and type services.msc.  Look through the list and once you see PnkbstrA and PnkbsterB, right-click on the files (do this one file at a time) and click Properties.  Look at the dialog box, and pull the drop-down menu for Startup Type.  Select Manual, then OK, et voila, finis!

This way has several advantages.  First, you can start normally at all times.  Second, Punkbuster would still run and be enabled when you start the multiplayer game.  This means you can play on most servers without the hassle of editing all those startup files and rebooting your PC, like what I used to do.  After playing, just go to the Task Manager and end the processes concerned.

Of course, removing Punkbuster is just one part of cleaning your PC up.  Do visit Tweak Guides for more info on the services you see in services.msc.  You can also install Startup Inspector to check those mysterious files in your startup list, and CCleaner to remove those things.  In this way, you’ll be able to boot your PC without much trouble.

NOTE:  All of the instructions above are applicable only to Windows XP with Service Pack 2.  The author is not responsible for any damage or inconvenience that may happen due to the act of modifying your startup files.