iamjames

Peter Thiel is an idiot, pays kids not to network in college

iamjames — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:41:07 GMT

Recently there was a story that the co-founder of Paypal, Peter Theil, was paying 24 people under the age of 20 to not go to college to start companies.

So I just have to say this: Peter, you're an idiot. Some of the biggest names in the industry went to college and met people that made them what they are today. Bill Gates met Steve Ballmer while at Harvard, and Mark Zuckerberg would have never created Facebook if he hadn't gone to college and "borrowed" the idea of Facebook from the Wiklevoss twins.

I'm not saying you should go to college to learn something because you probably won't, it's only useful to get a piece of paper to get a career. But going to college is like going to jail, criminals go to jail and become better criminals, so it's useful for entrepreneurs to go to college and network with other like-minded individuals to become better entrepreneurs.

You don't need to graduate, but you do need to spend some time there just to meet other smart people like yourself.

Has Hollywood and the media gone pedophile?

iamjames — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:52:32 GMT

Emily Browning in Sucker Punch

What has happened to the US media in the past decade? In movies and TV shows I've noticed more and more women that are over 18 but have the body of a 14 yr old, what is the point of this?

For example, Candace Bailey of G4 TV. Born in 1982 so she'll be 30 soon but looks like she should still be on Nickelodeon.

Here's a link to the video of Candace playing paintball.

Sara Jean Underwood is another example. Born in 1984 she was in Playboy in 2006 but also looks like she could be 14

And of course the recent movie Sucker Punch, where Emily Browning (born 1988) plays a 20 yr old but looks every bit of 15 throughout the movie.

Am I crazy or is this really happening? 20-30 years ago co-hosts and playmates looked like women but now they look like young teen girls, right? But why? Are they trying to make the public attracted to 14 yr old girls?

And what about the men who are attracted to this, would that make them pedophiles? Because you could line up Candace, Sara and Emily in a 9th grade classroom and they'd look like all the other girls. If a man is told everyday in movies and media that this is what's attractive and eventually likes it, should he seek counseling? Should we all seek counseling? And what's the next step, where do we go from here?

Satellite now think for themselves, Skynet becomes self-aware

iamjames — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:37:09 GMT

From the movies-become-reality department comes this little gem:

New control system will allow satellites to 'think for themselves'

"...engineers from the University of Southampton have developed what they say is the world’s first control system for programing satellites to think for themselves. It’s a cognitive software agent called sysbrain, and it allows satellites to read English-language technical documents, which in turn instruct the satellites on how to do things such as autonomously identifying and avoiding obstacles."

Gee, why does this sound so incredibly familiar?

Skynet (Terminator)

"In the Terminator storyline, Skynet was originally installed into the U.S. military mainframe to control the national arsenal on August 4, 1997. On August 29 it gained self-awareness^[1] and the panicking operators, realizing the extent of its abilities, attempted to shut it down. Skynet perceived the attempt to deactivate it as an attack and came to the conclusion that all of humanity would attempt to destroy it. To defend itself, it determined that humanity should be exterminated."

Alright so it's not in control of the national arsenal, but it's only a matter of time before one of these satellites read Snooki's book and convinces a military satellite that we need to be exterminated.

Why was Mr. Scott Scottish?

iamjames — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 22:44:24 GMT

It's a good question: of all the engineers in the world, why choose a Scottish engineer?

Gene Roddenberry probably chose a Scottish engineer because of this guy:

That's James Watt, the same guy the unit of energy watt is named after. He was a Scottish inventor and mechancial engineer who ~~built the first~~ made significant improvements to the steam engine.

Made sense in the 60's, however given the past hundred years if they were to make a new Star Trek they might have started with a German engineer (or maybe Japanese), but since World War II had ended barely 20 years earlier the 20-somethings that had survived the war were now 40-somethings and seeing a German engineer probably wouldn't have gone over too well.

Why Microsoft Tablet failed while iPad succeeds

iamjames — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:54:21 GMT

Please buy XP Tablet edition - Steve Balmer, 2002

Recently there was a story on PC world explaining why tablet computing hasn't been successful with businesses despite the fact that hospitals, the sales industry and delivery services have been begging for tablets forever.

Their explaination is that Apple's iPad gave users the freedom to figure out what to do with the tablets rather than force them into certain usage scenarios.

Wrong. iPad was successful and tablets were not for one simple reason: iPad apps were designed only for touch. Microsoft tried to turn a keyboard and mouse laptop into a touch-and-pen tablet and it failed because nothing on the PC was designed for touching or writing on with a pen. Apple started from the ground up with the touch on the iPhone/Touch so naturally every app worked perfectly with touch instead of keyboard and mouse, so when they made the iPad everything was already in place.

If M$ wanted a real tablet they should have made one that did not run Windows programs. I know, shocker, Microsoft making a device that doesn't run Windows, but that would have been the only way.

Instead Microsoft gave us the lame duck XP Tablet PC edition way back in 2002 and it was DOA because it just allowed you to use a pen like a mouse with regular Windows programs instead of forcing developers to make new, touchscreen only programs for a new OS. Sure clicking the screen with a pen was fun and it certainly made signing digital documents simpler but 99% of the time it was easier to operate programs with a keyboard and mouse because that's what the programs were designed to work with.

So there you have it, only 8 years after XP Tablet edition was released Apple comes out with the iPad and sold more iPads in 80 days then all other tablets sold in the past 8 years*. The iPad will continue to be a great success and Windows XX Tablet Editions will continue to fade into oblivion.

What can Microsoft do? Well first they need to start from the ground up with a OS designed for touchscreens. Second, make an app store for it. That's ~~one of the many reasons~~ why Windows Mobile failed, trying to find software for Windows Mobile was a pain because there was no store, you just had to search the internet for programs and hope they worked. Some programs ran well, but a lot didn't. Third, don't force people to use your store. Make the store built into the OS like iOS but allow customers to download their own apps from 3rd parties if they wish. Fourth, have control over the hardware specs. This is one thing Apple's iOS does well while Google Android can't figure it out: every iOS app works on almost every iOS device. You can't say that for Droid. Fifth, have the OS be completely compatible with everything Microsoft. I want to stream or transfer files and control my Windows desktop from anywhere in the world. I want to open every possible file format and edit it as I please. I want the device to play nice with Google, Yahoo, Facebook and any other new thing that might come out tomorrow. I want to sync files to the cloud, and I want all of this built into the OS and free. Microsoft has already lost the smartphone wars and it looks like the tablet wars are about to be over, if Microsoft doesn't want to see the desktop follow then they need to get their act together, maybe it is time for Ballmer to go.

*I have no proof of this but it sounds good, and Apple did sell 3 million iPads in the first 80 days

Mom dresses 5-yr-old boy as girl for church preschool, calls son gay

iamjames — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:29:14 GMT

"I'm ready for church pre-school, Mom!"

File this under "No Duh": a mother decided it would be a good idea to dress her 5 yr old son as a girl for a halloween party at the church preschool.

Now usually I'd just let the internet take care of this (and honestly, they've been doing a pretty good job), but shockingly the mother claims 98% of comments on her blog support her.

She failed her son on so many levels. First, she never bothered to ask "Why do you want to dress as a girl?"

"Boo decides he wants to be Daphne from Scooby Doo, along with his best friend E. He had dressed as Scooby a couple of years ago. I was hesitant to make the purchase, not because it was a cross gendered situation, but because 5 year olds have a tendency to change their minds. After requesting a couple of more times, I said sure and placed the order. He flipped out when it arrived. It was perfect."

Really? If my son asked to dress as a Princess I think I would at least ask why he chose that costume.

Days before Halloween her 5 year old then expresses some doubts, rightly believing some people might not be understanding of his choice of costume:

"Then as we got closer to the actual day, he stared to hem and haw about it. After some discussion it comes out that he is afraid people will laugh at him. I pointed out that some people will because it is a cute and clever costume. He insists their laughter would be of the ‘making fun’ kind. I blow it off. Seriously, who would make fun of a child in costume?"

Wow, you're worse than my mom. I remember growing up and asking my mom if something looked ok and no matter what it was she would always say it looked fine. After being teased a few times I quickly learned not to trust her. Not only did this mother not question her son's choice of a girls halloween costume but when he said "hey mom this might not be right" she forced him to wear the costume anyway.

"...and the award for Worse Mother of 2010 goes to..."

So you can imagine what happened next when she brought her son to the church preschool: some mothers were concerned. "Did he ask to be that?" one mother asked. That's a very fair question! I think I'd ask the same thing because, obviously, 5 year old boys usually don't ask to dress up as girls.

Besides a few strange looks that's all that happened, but here's the worse part: she concludes her son is gay

WOW! Let me repeat this, so it sinks in a bit: because her 5 year old son dressed as a girl for Halloween, she makes the huge leap that her son must be gay. Really? That's all it takes? You've done more harm to your son than anyone, automatically labeling him as "Gay" because he decided to dress as a girl for halloween.

Wow.... simply wow.... this poor boy, labeled as being gay by his own mother at the age of 5.

I told my wife about this story to get her opinion because she has a huge background in the gay/lesbian community. She was a active and vocal member of the Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) while in highschool, dated many women and still has many gay friends. Her conclusion was simple: this mother idolizes the gay culture and desperately wishes her son to be gay. Judging by the mother's comments and decisions I think that's a pretty fair conclusion. Oh, and she's desperately seeking attention: why else would she dress her son as a girl then whine on the internet when other parents simply ask "Why?"

Koran burning cancelled = terrorist won, USA lost

iamjames — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 22:37:55 GMT

Well it's official, the terrorist have won. Because of pressure from Islamic terrorist around the globe and our own government a Florida pastor says his church will not do what the Bill of Rights and Constitution guarantee him the freedom to do: burn a book.

Am I the only one that sees this as a huge FAIL for the US? That we've fallen so far that we're afraid to burn a book because a terrorist says not to? Why didn't anyone defend this pastor? Doesn't he have the right to burn any book he wants? If he burnt a Christian Bible or Hebrew Bible no one would have cared, but because it's a Koran and thousands of angry protesters chanted "Death to the Christians" and "Down with America" he didn't. If Muslims burnt Bibles would there be a protest in the US? Probably not, and even if there was a protest no one would shout "Death to the Muslims".

Why are we afraid? If it really is only a few extremist then we have nothing to fear, but if it really is the entire Islamic religion then perhaps this is a religion we don't want in the US, perhaps Islam is a cult like Tennessee's lieutenant governor said recently.

Some have said that if he burnt a Koran it would cause violence against Americans in the Middle East, but why is it his fault if he burns a Koran and a Muslim kills an American in Afghanistan? Shouldn't that prove Muslims are completely crazy? Perhaps by burning a few Korans he could have proved to the world how ridiculous the Islamic religion is if they started violence over a few books being burnt, although based on the reactions I think he's already acheived his goal.

How to disappear on the net

iamjames — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:28:43 GMT

Remember when the internet was like the wild west, you could do and say anything you wanted and no one could track you or stop you? It's not like that anymore and it's getting worse: seems every week there's another story of someone getting fired over a personal blog or twitter or facebook. Google has 282,000 results for "fired for blogging". So what can you do? How do you protect yourself? Read on to find out.

What NOT to do

I read an article recently on the popular blog lifehacker about using a pseudonym to better control your searchable online identity and the comments floored me. First comment was from infmom saying "I've been infmom so long, it feels like real to me"

so I decided to test that, just how much information could I find out about infmom? Quick google search found a twitter for infmo and revealed infmom is having problems with lifehacker recently, which means it's probably the right infmom

Twitter says her ("Queen of secondhand computers" so assuming female) name is "Marte" and has been online since 1983 so she's probably older. Her twitter gave me her website, infmom.net, which gave me her Amazon and LiveJournal. Her LiveJournal told me she's been exploring Griffith Park.

Googling Griffith Park that gave me LA, California. So infmom lives in LA. Her Amazon says Burbank and her birthday is November 30th

Another LiveJournal post indicates she doesn't like Republicans.

Back to infmom.net told me she has 3 tattoos and is a type 3 diabetic and has a nickel allergy. More reading revealed infomom is retired, older (retirement age), heavy and has a tattoo of seven stars.

So just by a simple post on a blog I've found that infmom is married, of retirement age (50+?), heavy, has 3 tattoos (one of seven stars), birthday, anniversary, hates republicans and lives in Burbank, California, all within a few minutes, and this is just the tip of the iceburg, I didn't even get into the 66 posts on huffingtonpost.com, ranging from her thoughts on gay marriage to the Iraq war. I'm sure with a bit more digging I could find a full name and, if I was willing to pay 123people.com, probably an address.

Alright so maybe it's not so bad in her case, but what if this was a 13 yr old who left so much information available online? Would you want your son or daughter's information available to any stranger?

True story: I was once looking for a wedding photographer and found a few on craigslist. I contacted the photographer and he seemed nice enough and the price was reasonable. Before finalizing the deal I decided to google his username and email: I found posts from 2005 where he was soliciting young girls for pornography.

I did not hire the guy.

What TO do

So what can you do to keep yourself safe from googling? Here's some tips

DON'T use the same username on every site. Switch it up often, the more the merrier. So what if you forget, let the browser remember them, or if the browser forgets click "forgot password" and wait a few seconds for the password to be emailed to you. DON'T use your name or any similar characteristics to your other usernames.	DO create a username that results in thousands of results when googled. Use something generic like "cowboysfan" or popular saying like "BPsucks" or even the incorporated the URL of the site you're posting on like "gizmodoreviews". Each of these resulted in thousands of google results, making it difficult for people to find your posts.
DON'T use the same email for all the usernames	DO create multiple email addresses and have them all forward to another generic email that you never give out to anyone or use on any site. Gmail makes this easy, you can even reply as those other email addresses. DO use something generic similar to the technique to decide your username, so google searches result in thousands of results
DON'T post the same or similar comments on your personal blog and a popular article. Just read an article and want to comment on it? Don't comment on the article and then go write a blog restating what you just said, it won't take long before someone connects the dots.	DO keep your personal comments separate from your blog comments. Either write your comments on the article itself or go to your blog and write about it but don't do both.
DON'T use the same avatar everywhere	DO use different avatars. There's thousands to pick from, when you see someone's avatar that you really like just save it to a avatar folder and use it on your next username.

Got any other tips? Let me know in the comments below.

Fiverr Fail - Why fiverr sucks

iamjames — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:38:19 GMT

any request for customer service results in a fail page

Considering the considerate press fiverr is receiving you'd have to be living under a rock to have not heard of fiverr.com in the last 6 months, but after using the service a few times I can see none of these websites actually bothered to use the site before publishing glowing reviews.

Fiverr.com - Scammer's Paradise

Let's start with a brief intro to fiverr. It's a website where people offer jobs they're willing to do for $5, similar to ebay if it was all $5 buy-it-now jobs. Jobs like "I will send you a postcard from California" or "I will translate an article from english to french". Small jobs that take a few minutes.

So what's wrong with this? The idea is sound but implementation is completely wrong. For example a seller can completely ignore a payment for weeks and the buyer can't leave negative feedback for that. Or the seller can accept the job, sit on it for weeks and then give it back to the buyer and again they can't leave feedback. What? Yes, you heard me: sellers can ignore you for weeks and you can't complain.

Even if the seller does accept the job there is no way to encourage them to actually do the work and no way to dispute it. After a seller says a job is done the buyer is given a box to click positive or negative feedback. Where's the dispute button? Your money is gone whether you're satisfied or not.

"But this seller has 99% feedback, must be good, right?" Wrong: sellers create a fake buyer account and buy from themselves and leave positive feedback. Unlike eBay who check personal information and ban people using the same address or credit card, fiverr only requires an email to buy or sell so it only takes a second to create a fake account. Since the feedback is just a percentage you can't see who gave positive feedback for what, so a seller only needs to create one account and buy a few times from themselves to give themselves a stellar feedback score.

Can you imagine if eBay had a system like that? Would anyone use eBay a second time after paying money for an item, getting no response from the seller for weeks, not getting their money back and not even being able to leave feedback?

So how can you avoid this? Right now all you can do is avoid fiverr, there's no way around it, their system is broken and until it's fixed to work more like eBay's feedback system there's only one thing I can say about fiverr: they suck.

How to find iPhone app size and delete the largest apps

iamjames — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:16:09 GMT

If you're anything like me you managed to fill that 16gb iPhone in no time. I tried deleting what I wasn't using anymore but that didn't get me very far, there's no procedure on the iPhone to sort by size so I couldn't see what was taking up all the space. Unfortunately TreeSize isn't an available app but this trick will help you find whatever apps are taking the most space on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and remove them.

1. Sync your device with your PC

2. Click Apps in the left menu

3. Change the view to list view

4. sort by size

5. And there's your problem! 600 megabyte game demos. Within a few minutes I was able to free nearly 2 gigabyte of space.