New Conspiracy Theory (2 comments)
Not too long ago, Paul's Futura monitor burned itself out and he went shopping for a replacement. he ended up picking up a 17" lcd with a default resolution of 1280x1024. I've long hated that resolution, since it doesn't have its pixels in a 4:3 ratio. Monitor and TV screens (excepting widescreen HDTV models) have a physical proportion of 4:3 (3/4 as tall as they are wide), so putting a proportionally different shape of pixels in that space will result in the image being stretched or squished. I told paul about that and he realized his error and is now on the path to success, looking at Sony FD Trinitron monitors.
But that got me thinking about the existence of such a silly resolution. Before today, I'd always attributed it to the resolution race of a few years ago, when video card and monitor manufacturers wanted to have a resolution with four digits on both sides of the "x" to make their product look better than it was. But today, I realized that it's all just another insidious plot of the man. When the monitor has more pixels than are proportionally correct, the image is squeezed, and thus photos of people look different. If this resolution were to become prevalent, people would see digital images squished vertically. Given that, it's obvious that the man wants us to believe that everyone on the internet is overweight. Now the intent of this conspiracy becomes apparent: we're supposed to believe that people on the internet, and thus all those who are good with computers, are to be treated as social outcasts, since they can never be as beautiful as people in real life!