Bill Mitchell: Why Wrestling Fans NEED to Buy the Shimmer iPPV

Posted on March 27, 2013 by admin

April 6th will mark a very important date for fans of women’s professional wrestling. On that day, Shimmer Women Athletes with assistance from WWNLive will officially stake a claim into the digital pay per view business model.  A model that Shimmer has shied away from since inception in 2005.

This organization has done well for itself with making liberal use of a time tested business model of arranging events on a quarterly basis, film said events and makes them available in DVD format for fans to purchase.  However, it is time for this promotion that has led the charge in solidifying and bringing much due attention to the athleticism aspect of women’s professional wrestling to enter the iPPV product offering genre.

With more and more mainstream organizations seemingly distancing itself from women’s wrestling, there is definitely a void to be filled.  This the perfect opportunity for fans to be vocal and militant about how there is something special about seeing two athletically gifted women demonstrating their craft for their enjoyment. These fans will be given an opportunity to express their support with the ultimately source of democracy that being their credit cards (among other methods of purchase).

I can not help by think that if there is a strong showing in buy rates for the big event on April 6th, that the powers to be at Shimmer will give some sinewy considerations in making a quarterly iPPV part of their monetization arsenal. I’ve bellowed for quite some time that Shimmer ought to go in this direction and apparently for whatever the reasoning was it had fell upon deaf ears and blind eyes.

There are a plethora of women that need and ought to be afforded the opportunity to showcase their love for what they do and reach as many people as possible. April 6th will give many of these women that opportunity but after the bouts concludes and the show fades to black (my apologies to Lars and James for the gratuitous Metallica reference), the realization will set in that this single event maybe the only opportunity for fans to be exposed to this juggernaut brand.

This would be unfortunate if that were be the case. Shimmer in its eighth year of operation has gained massive international appeal. To deprive a world wide audience of great women’s wrestling would be a grave injustice and would feed into the long standing stereotype that women’s wrestling simply doesn’t matter, when in fact it does.

Here is the other part crux to my argument and that is technology is rapidly evolving and evolving to the determent of television and cable networks. No more are wrestling organizations such as Shimmer strong armed into waiting for some cable company or network to come along to help televise their events. With that being said, basic economics does play an enormous factor.

If we want to continue to see Shimmer put on some of the greatest all all female cards through our various devices rather it be our mobile devices, Roku devices, Android set top boxes or tablet PC for our enjoyment we have to send a clear and decisive message using our wallets that says:

“Shimmer, I love what you are doing, and you have my support. I am willing to part away some money and will continue to do so if you are willing to make your product available to me.”

In a couple of years I predict that IPTV companies will scramble with reckless abandonment in trying to secure broadcasting rights. I think Shimmer has positioned itself to become the must have product to have on any video streaming platform. The only way that can be an absolute truth is if we as wrestling fans abandon the costly PPV extravaganza that is Wrestlemania if it is only for this year, and pour their hard earn money into this upcoming event.

What? Does my argument not provide enough reasons to order the much anticipated iPPV? I didn’t want to resort to name dropping but you have forced my hand so I will give you another dozen (or so) reasons to order the Shimmer 53 live iPPV:

SHIMMER TITLE CAGE MATCH

Cheerleader Melissa verses Sweet Saraya Knight

Amazing Kong verses Mia Yim

Ayako Hamada verses Athena

Madison Eagles verses Jessie McKay

With appearances by:

The Shimmer Tag Team Champions

The Canadian Ninjas

KANA

Leva Bates

Evie

Mercedes Martinez

Serena Deeb

Kellie Skater

Allison Danger

Rhia O’Reilly

Made in Sin

That is at least fourteen valid reasons that should compel you the wrestling fanatic to order Shimmer 53 iPPV. The pricing point is really attractive as well, for a limited time only you can watch what some are already calling the Shimmer show of the year for only $14.99 (that is if you don’t delay and purchase the iPPV before April 6th).  If you wait to make a last minute decision it’ll cost you an additional five dollars on the day of the show.

What are you waiting on order Shimmer 53 live right now by clicking on the link below:

Order Shimmer 53 iPPV

 DISCLAIMER:

I have no reason to think that the management of Shimmer Women Athletes will consider to make iPPV’s part of their business model. It is merely my hope that if they garner enough purchases from wrestling fans they will at least take it under consideration.

I am not part of or any way directly affiliated with Shimmer Women Athletes, and the view points illustrated above are my opinions only and doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Shimmer Women Athletes or it’s talent.

(Also – there might be some incorrect uses of grammar marks, misspelled words and the alike. It’s late and this was a time sensitive piece and I switched to decaf so please have a heart. Again, my apologies to the late great Vincent Schiavelli for the gratuitous Mr. Vargas reference.)

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Bill Mitchell: Scrap ClamAV and Begin Using F-Prot

Posted on March 2, 2013 by admin
Bill Mitchell: Using F-PROT on Ubuntu

You can use a powerful anti virus solution for Linux and ultimately ditching ClamAV.

I recently embarked on a journey.  I went in search of cross platform applications that I can use either on Windows based machine or my present Ubuntu 12.04 machine.  In my endeavour I found out much to my surprise that you can install and run F-PROT anti virus application via terminal.  Further in my findings installing F-PROT on my Ubuntu machine wasn’t very difficult at all and I will share those instructions to you.

1  The first thing you want to do is download the F-PROT for Unix directly from their website since you are unable to get it from any pre set software repository.  You can download the latest version by visiting the link I’ve provided below:

Download F-PROT for Unix

2  Once you’ve downloaded the program, you can un-archive the file to whatever directory is the default is because it will be installed elsewhere.

3  To begin the install process drop to terminal with the nautilus file manager window open because it saves time. Drag the install-f-prot.pl file to terminal window and Press Enter. Note: Sometimes Ubuntu will bark that you will need to do this through SUDO so if that is the case you’ll want to first type Sudo within terminal, then drag and drop the install-f-prot.pl file into terminal which will look something like this:

Sudo ‘install-f-prot.pl’

At this point press <Enter> and the installation process will begin.

4  You’ll be asked a series of questions about how F-PROT should commence the installation process. Just press <Enter> multiple times to do this all default, which I recommend.

5  Once the installation process is completed (and it only takes a couple of minutes) F-PROT will automatically update the software making sure the virus signatures are up to date and once that is finished from terminal you will type ‘fpscan –all’  to scan everything on your machine.

NOTE: You WILL get a series of error messages and this is to be expected.  I wanted to make sure I give you a heads up because you might feel that you might have done something wrong during the installation process and that is simply not the case.

Also, you will want to get into the habit of updating the virus signatures manually and you can do this by typing ‘fpupdate’ and press <Enter>.

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Bill Mitchell: Gun Control, Can it be Done?

Posted on December 15, 2012 by admin

With the recent tragedy that occurred in Connecticut, people are now having the same discussion that they had when James Holmes executed 12 individuals and wounded 59. The same discussion that they had when Seung-Hui Cho slaughtered 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech and having the exact same conversation when two high school student Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 students and 1 teacher back in 1999. That discussion being “Gun control” and the need for more of them.

Is that the answer?

The background check did nothing to stop a shooter (Adam Lanza) from executing twenty children and seven adults. Why? The guns were legally purchased by Adam’s mother Nancy. There is a broader loophole that has to be sealed, anyone with a squeaky clean record could have purchased the weaponry and funnelled them on to Adam, no questions asked.  The problem we are having is we are not holding enough people accountable for their action(s).

Let us examine the aftermath of the April 20th, 1999 shooting that occurred on the campus of Columbine High School. Laws on the books on that day made it illegal for both Eric (18) and Dylan (17) to lawfully purchase a firearm. So how were the weapons used acquired by these two individuals? They had someone else (Robyn Anderson) make what are known as “straw” purchases of two shotguns and Hi-Point carbine. She was not held accountable for putting the weapon in the pair’s hands, why? She cooperated with authorities, and in exchange no charges were filed against her.

BIG RED FLAG PROBLEM

While some people will stand back and say “Whoa! Wait a minute she didn’t know that Eric and Dylan was going to go on a mass shooting rampage…” I say, it doesn’t matter, she had no business certainly no medical or legal justification for purchasing said weapons for the two under age young men. If we are going to insist on controlling who purchases firearms we need to start holding these individuals (who may very well be leveraged as pawns) accountable for the actions.

I am not advocating that Ms. Anderson should be charged with the death penalty, but instead of a crime that requires (if found guilty through “due process“) an incarnation penalty of some extensive length of time. Her actions rather deliberately or not, caused the assassination of 13 innocent individuals, why was she at the very least not charged with accessory? A message needs to be sent to all people, and that message should be “if you are not buying the gun for yourself, perhaps you shouldn’t be buying the gun“.

This leads to another loophole that most people are ignoring. There is no federal law that requires an individual seller to perform any background check of a potential buyer.  They have no legal obligation to find out just who they are selling a firearm to, none whatsoever. In decades past, I could understand why this mandate couldn’t be expected to be enforced. The problem in decades past, it was a matter of logistics.

Where were these sellers expected to go, to do the background checks necessary to comply with the law? Their local court house? Call some special toll free number to talk to some law enforcement agent? While both of these options were certainly plausible it just wasn’t very feasible. That was then.

Today in 2012, all it takes is an internet connection, a valid credit card to do a simple background check. There is no excuse why a seller of a firearm can not conduct their own simple background check investigation. If a seller isn’t willing to part with or can be otherwise bothered to invest twenty dollars to instigate a background check  to sell a $500 – $2,000 weapon, then they shouldn’t be able to sell the weapon.

If a private individual pawns off a firearm without conducting a simple and inexpensive background check, or even worse conduct a background check but ignore their findings about the buyer and that firearm is later used in connection to a fatal shooting then that private individual should be held accountable both criminally and civilly. With great power comes great responsibility.

Some states do offer such protections at least when it comes requiring sellers to store paperwork associated with the selling of weapons or in some cases bans the private selling of firearms (I personally don’t think we don’t have to go that far, unless the background check turns up evidence that would disqualify a buyer from making a lawful purchase).

Those states include:

California

Iowa

Maryland

Minnesota

New Jersey

New York

 

I would also urge that any bartering transaction being made via the Internet would be held to the same scrutiny. If state officials can’t ensure that background checks are being instigated to ensure public safety then the state should just ban all Internet sales in regards to fire arms and its ammunition.

One could take this measure one step even further, and regulate who can and can not sell weapons to US citizens. While I do not enjoy censorship of the Internet, I could stomach a ban on websites who’s primary business is to facilitate the sales of fire arms from outside the United States. Access to the US market is and always has been a privilege and never a right.

I am not advocating an all out ban on guns, I am asking for what I feel is are reasonable requests for certain individuals to be required to be held responsible for what they do when it comes acquiring fire arms. We should make responsibility our primary goal, that would go a long way to addressing the epidemic we are currently facing.

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