My 2010

"I want to die of an overdose of life"


I want that to be my 2010, nothing less than that

Happy New Year

Nothing could be better than saying it with my granson´s Pietro Picture!

People do not know the value, they just know the price

"What is a company share worth if it does not pay a dividend and has no hope of paying a dividend? In my opinion, the answer is zero."
The value of an item is very different, depending on the label or the box.
Take for example a Hermes bag, 100% plastic, made in China, but sold by Saks Fifth Avenue and luxuriously wrapped.
It could easily reach a price over $1000.
The same item sold on eBay would have hundreds of people bidding and reach a very high price, if you can prove it was bought in the right shop.
The same, made in China, by the same manufacturer, with the same label, but lacking the code is worth maximum $5.
That for explaining how stupidity can change the price.
Nothing has an intrinsic value anymore.

My wishes for 2010

My wishes for 2010?

I live in Europe and it is since long I envy the people living in Sweden.
My wish for 2010 and later is that we, from the rest of Europe, come to understand what is real HIGH QUALITY life.
I too the licence to copy the following written by a Swedish (actually an American who smartly some time ago understood what many still do not and may be never will)


"After having made the move to Sweden 22 tears ago, my brother (who then shared our rent-controlled Manhattan apartment - but who know owns his Upper East Side digs plus a house in Southampton) finally admits that I made the right choice. He made a fortune as a stock broker, had to quit in 2008 because of the risk for post-crash lawsuits and now is desperately holding on to what he's got.
I live an hour from Stockholm in a modest house by the sea (powered by hydro electricity) and commute to my job in the city in European-style comfort thanks to our stellar transit system; 100 bucks a month for unlimited travel within a radius of about 100 miles. I had a car for a few years when my daughter was a toddler but ditched it when she got big enough to use public transit with me - which she prefers. We ride with our laptops and mobile broadband, me clocking work hours and she learning math and language, or we read books or just talk (How many parents get 2 hours daily right next to their kid without having to clutch a steering wheel?). We have 3 different composts which transforms ALL our waste (yes, even human) into soil for our yard and garden. Before selling the car it had been used as a greenhouse in the Spring. Our summers are spent on a mahogany sailboat that sleeps 3 but requires no motor.
I dare say our quality of life is superior to my brother's life of luxury, which requires 2 cars and endless hours of six lane highway-driving. Yet I do it on about a fifth of the income. I get 7 weeks more than the standard European 5 week vacation, when comfortable, punctual trains will take me thousands of miles if I choose to travel. Healthcare, daycare and education are all free here (and we can choose on both fronts among a wealth of both public and private providers). Violent crime is infrequent, since guns are strictly controlled and American-style poverty is non-existant.
All told I pay about 50% of my income in taxes - about the same as my brother considering his tax bracket and property taxes in NYC and LI.
The tragedy is not only that it took my brother over 2 decades and an unprecedented economic crisis before realizing that there is a better "way of life", but that we had to lose each other's company so I could find it."

Their business is providing you the best link...

If you are somebody who just clicks without reading and chooses the first company he finds, well this post is not for you.
But if you are somebody who likes to know what he buys and likes to see (almost) all what is available on the Market Place, THIS post is what you are looking for.
Because if you follow my links you can find the web hosting you are looking for.
In this website they have ALL the detailed information’s about the Top Web Hosting Providers, and their rating is based on the customer satisfaction, affordability, reliability, uptime and technical support.
All this is very important, because the success of your website and of your company can depend on the availability of it.
Nothing is more annoying than a website that doesn't show up or doesn't work.
People just go away and may be never return.
You can loose many customers just because of lacking uptime.
Sometimes is worth to spend something more but finding a reliable host.
Or a good technical support in case you are not an Internet guru, or you just want to leave the hassle of running a website to somebody who knows how to.
Or you have a special need for the Best ecommerce hosting.
May be you are looking for the best Colocation hosting.
Whatever you may look for is there.
You just go there and will see what I mean...

Ramblings for The end of the year

Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life, which may make our virtues worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.
But men are the slaves of words. They rage against Materialism, as they call it, forgetting that there has been no material improvement that has not spiritualized the world, and that there have been few, if any, spiritual awakenings that have not wasted the world's faculties in barren hopes, and fruitless aspirations, and empty or trammeling creeds. Sin sometimes is an essential element of progress.
Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless.
Sins create heroes and heroes make the Progress.
If the World was good it would be plain, stagnating in a futureless boredom.
Bad creates good and hopes and life.
Our own existence on this world was due to a sin.
Our redemption is due to a sin.
All revolutions were fought in the name of freedom, democracy, right.
But they always failed to create a world which was free, democratic or right.
It is the bad in everyone of us that makes the world the way it is and it is not love that makes the world go on, it is the bad which is the other side of being human.

The invention of lying

There are two big tragedies in life, one is living in a world where everybody lies, and the other, even worse, is living in a world where everybody says the truth.
I guess this is the message of the movie.
In a world where everybody is honest, the one who is not, becomes a hero and a quite successful guy.
This couldn’t of course happen in everyday, contemporary world, but "For what is Truth?
In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived.
In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of
art, it is one's last mood."
And it is also a way of denying reality.
Aren’t dreams much better?

Breezes Bahamas

Hurry up, because this is the right time to book your place in Paradise.
The weather is wonderful, as usual, and the prices are alluring.
To make you a very special gift this year why not choosing Bahamas all inclusive?
Great beaches, the most comfortable accommodations, friendly smiles when you arrive and warm wishes when you leave. It’s a first-class chefs and world-recognized golf and tennis pros, land and water sports...
Think what you would like and it is there, sun included.
Don’t you think you deserve it?
The beach of the beaches is Nassau’s legendary Cable Beach and Breezes Bahamas is exactly there, the best Super-Inclusive resort in The Bahamas.
It is just minutes from the airport, and so close to the excitement and nightlife of Nassau’s casinos.
It is a never ending fun at Breezes Bahamas, certainly the best among vacation resorts.
Are you fond of tennis or beach volleyball?
Are you fond of gambling or you prefer a piano bar?
Everything is there, all included.
All the calories you can eat and all the possible ways to burn them with fun!
That is exactly what Paradise is...

Who controls the world

"Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found."

The one who controls the food production with the seeds the farmers plant on their fields is the one who controls the price and the availability of our daily food supply, which is one of the most important factor for our survival, no food no life.

"Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes."

This should be what our politicians should do: not allowing something like this.
That is why we vote for them, that is the priority in every state.

When ecology becomes economy

Techno-triumphalism has one very weak point: oil.
It is triumphalism if there is abundance of it, it is finished without.
The big fiasco (wanted) was the failure to find some substitute to oil.
Or a substitute to the life with oil.
That means MAY BE we, for the first time in history, will have to go partially back to the past.
"It is as follows: the all-time peak of oil production implies the end of industrial growth as we have known it – especially when you correct for the unworkable fantasies that purport a continuing fiesta of so-called alternative or renewable energy sources. The end of industrial growth as we’ve known it implies that the investment instruments which represent the hope and expectation for future growth – stocks, bonds, currencies, et cetera – must lose their legitimacy. An attempt was made in recent years to work around this problem with engineered innovative financial instruments based on something other than industrial growth (namely, on getting something for nothing). "
These aggregate frauds amounted to a grand and comprehensive swindle, and now that swindle has left the world financial system in smoldering ruins.
The events of autumn, 2008, can be summarized as vast sums of capital leaving the system, never to return as far ahead as we can imagine. We have become overnight a poorer human race – in particular, those sectors of humanity who imagined themselves to be pretty well off. . .
Good bye happy motoring and Mac Houses.
"The end of the oil regime, and the vanishing of capital means we will have to live differently, whether we like it or not, whether it is fashionable or not.
This means, in effect, a return traditional ways of inhabiting the landscape: real towns, villages, neighborhoods, urban quarters, and cities of a different sort and scale than the hypertrophied monsters of recent decades. Also real buildings of comprehendible typology made largely out of materials found in nature. This is what the circumstances of the years to come will require us to do."

A good alternative to the Usual online Auctions

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Bidazzled. All opinions are 100% mine.

I guess that I am kind of addicted to Auctions, and online Auctions are of course the easiest, the fastest and in my opinion the most convenient place to shop.
For everything you need and ALSO for what you do not need.
This could be a weak point, but I see it as a way to strengthen my will power, once a day at least I try to refrain and if I am able, that gives me enormous satisfaction, because it is a sign I still can control my Bank account.
It is on this view that I was kind of willing to try Bidazzled which is the online auction market that offers savings of up to 90% on name brand merchandise all while funding a charity.
To be really honest the charity part was not the winning point, but the way you bid kind of convinced me.
I will try to explain how it works (simpler doing that explaining).
You have to buy a certain number of bids, bids cost $1 and are available in bid packs as low as $25.
(You also get bonus bids when you purchase a bid pack.)
In this way the total cost of a bid is only $.67 per bid and often much lower.
The auction works this way: The price increases a few cents with each bid placed in a matter of seconds.
The auction ends when no other bids are placed. So if the something you want to purchase ends at just a dollar, then you win it for a dollar!
It was designed and created to fund a lung cancer charity and that is a noble cause, so you save (a lot), you have fun, you control the sum you spend and in the end you also do some good.
What could actually be better than this?

Dubai: the after dream come true.

I am not so fond of modern things.
I always feel a little bit uneasy with modern "design" chairs and so, made with the cheapest material and wearing the most expensive price labels.
When I spend I want something which is worth.
Because I am very materialistic and always gave dreams the place they deserved: somewhere were sooner or later you can wake up.
Dubai was for me exactly that.
The materialization of childish dreams, where nothing is impossible and where the most impossible is not a challenge, but becomes reality.
Like a skiing place in the middle of the desert...or skyscrapers so tall the moon had to steer its way around them, or immense off-shore developments: man-made archipelagos that resembled levels from Super Mario Sunshine.
And that is exactly what they are, a dream you wake up sooner or later, with the difference that dreaming costs nothing, materializing dreams is something else, just ask the world's financial markets, once they've finished screaming.

.docx file extension

Problems to open a file extension docx?
First what is it, what does the docx mean?
It is a Word processing format introduced with Microsoft Word 2007 (it belongs to Office 12); it is based on Open XML and uses ZIP compression for smaller file sizes. It could be compatible with Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 if the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack (FileFormatConverters.exe) is installed.
If any doubt you can check the Microsoft support page.
With the appropriate software you can convert a file extension docx document into a Word document.
The programs that can open a file extension docx can be for a MAC os: Microsoft Word 2008, Apple Pages, Panergy docXConverter; for a Windows os: Microsoft Word 2007, Microsoft Word with Compatibility Pack, Panergy docXConverter, OxygenOffice Professional, OpenOffice.org with Odf-Converter, NativeWinds Docx2Rtf; and for a Linux os: OxygenOffice Professional, OpenOffice.org with Odf-Converter.

Socialism

"Socialism is a great idea until you run out of other people's money"

What is a journalist?

He is like a cook.
Here are the raw materials: onions, garlic, oil, tomatoes, meat and so on.
My mother was a great cook.
I do not know if she was a good journalist, but I am sure as a gossiper she was the best.
She was gossiper number one in all neighborhood.
She was good in finding the hilarious side of everyone and every situation.
She was not malicious, she was funny.
People didn’t hate her; they liked and laughed about what she said.
She would have been a great columnist in a local newspaper hadn’t she been born when there were no columns and a very few local papers.
This is my point: give two people the same material and you will have very different results.
Writing news is elaborating the raw material finding the interesting in it and when failing to find the interesting in it, being able to present it as if it was actually very interesting.
Saying and omitting, using certain words and other meanings, making invisible parallels and being able to see the human side in all what you are talking about.
Putting a little bit of this spice and less of the other, making a special taste out of plain basic materials.
Writing is an art, and humor is a part of it.
But humor is in the beholder’s eyes.
Either you have it or you don’t.
It is like a Midas touch.
When you can write, then you can transform everything.
Just like when you can paint or you can sing.
The voice makes the song.
The artist makes the color.
The journalist makes the news.

Talking about Venice´s bridges

The Rialto bridge was completed in 1591.
The work took 3 years. It’s a combination of beauty and functionality.
The last bridge built in Venice should have cost two million Euro, but the cost has reached 14 millions.
Seven years to build it, the same time required to build an average pyramid.
With the difference that this bridge doesn´t even look nice.
Construction in Italy is a business. It’s no longer a necessity. A speculation whose beneficiaries are the property groups and the banks.
And regarding architecture (as design very often) the last think they think about is building something useful.
It is no longer architecture, but simply industrial design.
The important is to create a "scenario", what should be inside or what this scenario is created for doesn´t matter.
If people were water or clouds or dwarfs or whatever, certain buildings or certain tools would be perfect.
Straight is not fashionable anymore.
Everything must be twisted or upside dow.
The roof is not a roof because it has to look like a floor.
And may be, why not?
A building pinched in the middle.
Once you tried to save space and use it at its best.
Now they save nothing and use the space at its worst.
It has to look "different" because different is "new" and "trendy".
One example of this is the Olympic Stadium in Peking. Forty thousand tons of pure steel. Six thousand tons would normally be enough to build a stadium. Is this total waste of energy at all worthwhile? Is it really so beautiful?
The buildings are becoming more and more unbalanced and they land up costing four or five times as much.
That is because technology would allow us to make things "perfect".
We use it instead to make "s..ts"

Treni Italia

The trains in Mussolini´s time arrived on time and were used to move around.
In our times they arrive when they can and they are used to feed the Mafia.
In Sicily there are still the fascist trains, with nine hours of train ride from Palermo to Ragusa. Italian commuters travel as cattle.
It saves energy to warm the wagons in winter, but in summer the windows to cool down are not enough, also because the speed is what it is.
To make up for that we’ll have the TAV {high speed train} in the Susa Valley for the European corridor and the Messina Bridge. Great works for Great Contractors.
“Italy is a country that is sick and suffering from individualism and ‘I-couldn’t-care-less-ism’. It’s a country where a collective national project is missing”.
The railways are an abandoned collective national project and they symbolize a way of doing, a managerial culture, a way of being that is typical of Italy.
Let´s take as an example the high speed.
The project should have been finished by December 1999 and of course should have costed half of what it did.
Ten years later we are still talking and no end.
But the right locomotions were available since 1995, what was lacking was the right infrastructure.
They were underused for 15 years and now, when we will finally have the right binaries, they will be too old for them...
Without even talking about the environment damages and pollution...
They are not even able to provide clean carriages, or trains that arrive in time...
Well, a real disaster, but without responsibles...

The best money investment is spending it, it never lets you down

An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.
That is why when it comes to Golf Americans are always looking for new experiences and new locations.
Have you ever come to know or tried Golf Myrtle Beach?
If you are a real American and you are looking for something new and special this offers exactly what you are looking for.
Arnold Palmer created one of the most exciting and challenging courses in America, which features some of the most dramatic and unique holes in all of golf, such as "The Gambler" or the "Bull's-Eye".
And what about Myrtle Beach Golf Vacations?
What about nightlife and several attractions?
For example : Alligator Adventure, Family Kingdom Amusement Park & Water Park, Alabama Theatre, Medieval Times and many, many more...
If you think you deserve a vacation by yourself or with the family, relaxing and in the meantime exciting you cannot ask for anything better.
You can choose among many Myrtle Beach Golf Packages the one that better suits you an your wallet of course.
And remember: the best money investment is the one you enjoy.
Try Myrtle Beach Golf.

Freedom

"All efforts at controlling the mind are subject to this myth of scarcity. Try to control education and smart kids learn to reject you. Try to control the Internet and Chinese people learn just how precious a sip of freedom is, while the rest of us get bored by the firehose.
Freedom is the answer to tyranny because freedom creates abundance, or discovers the abundance that is in fact all around us.
To all those who feel oppressed, no matter their cause, I hope this brings some comfort. In the end, freedom will win out. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even in your lifetime, but it will.
Freedom, knowledge, and truth are all plastic, all powerful, and all unlimited.
The universe, whether we're talking about your mind, this planet, or the stars themselves, is far more infinite than you or I can possibly know.
And the only way to get a taste of it is to open your mind, as scientists do, and prepare always to have it changed."

This is definitely very pretty wording.

The unlimited freedom has a taste of license.
Freedom is not in the abundance but in the understanding of scarcity.
Freedom is being able to appreciate your limits and respecting the others'.
Freedom will never win, because men will never change.
We will always have the weak and the strong, and the first will always be oppressed by the second.
History repeats itself and teaches us that there is no perfect life or world because there is no such a thing as a perfect man.
Believing in the victory of freedom is nice and warming the heart, but it is an illusion.

Create a perfect world and it will slowly change in an imperfect one.

Enough is enough

There are times in which one wonders if politic has something to do with leadership or nothing at all, but a lot with grabbing and stealing and saving what they can as much as they can.
After me the flood!
Never like today these words were so actual.
Flood in every sense, including the literary one.
After destroying the earth they managed to destroy people’s life and now even the hopes for a new future.
When will people understand that enough is enough?

Is there a defense against thieves?

Yes, now a day there is a good way to prevent certain thefts, for example protecting your car.
It is not enough to own a garage, thieves always know better.
And it is also not enough to have the newest type of electronic car key, thieves know better...
Ever heard about the "Polish key"?
In Dresden they have recently upgraded the number of policemen just for that reason: the thefts of cars (100 in one day) thanks to a very clever device the Polish thieves invented.
They spy you when you park your car, usually an expensive one of course (but also the cheap are not safe) and with a wireless device register the code of key and alarm system, which they are able to reproduce in a few minutes.
And your car is gone!...
So what to do?
Now there is a very safe and clever way to trace your car (and of course the thieves).
It is called GPS Vehicle Tracking Device , and works this way: The GPS tracking unit uses the Global Positioning System to relay information about the location of the vehicle attached to that GPS vehicle tracking device.
But there are other five benefits and reasons topurchase this device.
You can reduce fuel costs, keep an eye on staff, planning for more efficient routes when driving, discounts on insurance and of course tracking your car when stolen, mileage claims and time sheet reporting.
For a guide to buying vehicle tracking just follow my links, and believe ma, you won’t regret it, there is always a first time, also to loose a car....

Email and marketing

Some think that being a good marketing guy you must be born one.
I think you can become good with experience and the right tips and aids.
You do not need to know everything about email marketing, but you certainly need to know how to become good in it.
Icontact comes at your rescue, offering a very good and easy to use email marketing software.
If you are a business man (or woman), or if you belong to non-profit organizations and associations, and you need somebody to track emails, surveys, blogs, autoresponders and RRS feeds, you can stop looking, because you just found the right aids, including a newsletter software with all the features you need, and still quite easy to use.
The proof of what I say is in 15,000 customers worldwide who are happy with it.
They like the great inbox deliverability, the extremely easy to use interface, the great prices that start at $9.95 per month, the big number of templates, that include also surveying, autoresponder, and blogging capability from the same application at no additional charge.
Icontact can also take care of making sure your message gets to the inbox of your recipients through their ISP relations, feedback loops, and whitelist status. If you are currently running into deliverability issues with your existing newsletter sending method, iContact will be very helpful and ensure inbox delivery of your messages.
This product is perfect for small companies with a limited number of employees, but also has a number of Fortune 500 companies like Bank of America, Ford, Nissan, Super 8 Motel, and International Paper, and political campaigns like Barack Obama '08.
An overview video is at http://icontact.com/www/video/introduction_video.html.
You can also try a 15 day free trial of iContact at www.icontact.com.
If you are looking for any easy and inexpensive way to emarketing your business and get great results, you just have to check out my links.

Why traditional newspapers will die

What should a newspaper be?
Anybody would answer: a collection of the latest news and events happening locally or in the world.
In reality since newspapers had the need to produce revenues to survive, they also had the need to find customers who would produce those revenues.
My mother’s main interest on the local newspaper was the obituary column.
Knowing in real time what funeral to attend...
And what happen if just a limited number of possible customers is interested in news?
You try to find what they could eventually be interested in and deliver it.
That is something like daily horoscope, gossip about this celebrity or the other, the latest recipe for the healthiest pudding and locally talking about this and that contest, gossiping about this or that local guy and so on.

The big problem of newspapers is that THIS kind of product is much better, much sooner, much cheaper on the Internet.
Why should people buy a newspaper when they can find what they want, for free, with pictures and VIDEOS in real time, in their home, on their computer’s screen?
My mother would be still a good supporter of the local newspaper, because she didn’t own a computer and didn’t know how to use one.
But my mother is dead.
The big problem of newspapers is that they serve customers of the dead generation.

F.T.C. will revise rules about endorsements and testimonials in advertising

"On Monday, the F.T.C. said it would revise rules about endorsements and testimonials in advertising that had been in place since 1980. The new regulations are aimed at the rapidly shifting new-media world and how advertisers are using bloggers and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to pitch their wares."

The Internet is one of those revolutions that happen and change lives.
Everybody’s.
And they would be a good thing, if they didn’t change the economical world.
I consider myself the average consumer of the civilized world.
I do my shopping 90% online.
I still buy fresh eggs and meat and vegetable and fruit.
But that is all.
I spend an average of one hour a day just looking what is “going on” on the market place.
I know the latest products, their price, their low and high.
I know now where to buy and where to sell.
I am like one of those guys in Wall Street.
I know where fur coats are cheap and where they are expensive.
I buy from one and sell to the other.
I have feeling of what people will be looking for and what they won’t, I know when is the right moment to sell and the right one to buy.
I guess I know about marketing much more than many marketing guys.
I do not need to watch TV, except for the News, I find it quite boring and old style.
There are bloggers and writers ten times more interesting and stimulating.
If I want to know about what is going on in TV, I look at the best of this and the best of that on Youtube.

I understand ALL this is kind of scaring for the old style, old world economy.
They do not know how to cope with this new consumer.
He is much smarter than what he used to be, he doesn’t believe in the white whiter, doesn’t ´t like the usual boring TV programs.
The outcome?
There was a merchant who produced very good quality shirts.
But he was a small one, and the bigger producers, who sold less quality, but better promoted shirts, were the ones who had the market’s monopoly.
Then the Internet was born.
Marketing got much cheaper and his sales grew exponentially.
And since people buy a certain number of shirts, if they buy from x, they won’t from y.
May be a small producer of revolutionary bulbs finds a few bloggers writing about them (and pays them nothing compared to TV advertising) and sells more and more.

If the old world thinks that putting new rules will change the situation, they are terribly wrong.

“we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

"What was really meant in most places was that we would elect people to govern us and sporadically renew or revoke their contracts. It was enough. There was no practicable way to involve all of us, all the time.
President Obama declared during the campaign that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” That messianic phrase held the promise of a new style of politics in this time of tweets and pokes. But it was vague, a paradigm slipped casually into our drinks. To date, the taste has proven bittersweet.
What is the new role for government — a platform? a vending machine, into which we put money to extract services? a facilitator? And what, indeed, is the new role for us — the ones we’ve been waiting for?"

What was and still is meant is to vote for people who represent us.
If they promise they should fulfill what promised.
The reality is that, once there, they tend to forget.
Who they are, who we are, what promised.
Than they leave, we vote somebody else, but the game begins again.
So, why blaming people for being fed up, dissatisfied, deluded?

Politics have to change, but not in words.
They have to change in the real life.

Light makes the place

Light makes the place.
A dark space is usually of no use.(not always)
I used to be one of those who believed there were few kinds of lights and those almost all alike.
I was very wrong and found it out when I stumbled upon Magnalight website.
You do not believe how many kinds you can have, so many you could get lost.
But if you have any special need, this is absolutely the place.
For example, if you need any kind of remote lights, here you can choose among hundreds of different types.
Did you know that you can have a motorized remotely, wirelessly controlled light?
The remote control’s buttons (four) can control the full rotation of the light.
Once you decided which is the right position, you just have to release the buttons and the spotlight remains locked in that position until a button is pressed again.
Additionally you have the Cr5 Pentabeam II technology that combines a five-sided parabolic reflector with an axial filament Phillips 9011 bulb.
The result?
A bright beam to penetrate dark spots, that reaches distances of up to a half-mile away.
And you can have all the possible additional features.
Did you know the difference between Halogen incandescent bulbs and HID lights?
The first producing light produces also heat which eventually destroys the filament if vibration doesn't snap it first.
HID works with a different technology.
They use a gas that gives the color to the light.
Besides having a more natural light, require fewer amps to run than a comparable wattage incandescent lamp.
They offer more light with longer battery life, they are durable and long lasting in addition to being far brighter.
So, even at a higher price they cost less, because last longer and consume less.

Things are precious when they are scarce

"I'm serenely confident that we're in the twilight of Happy Motoring now."

I agree.
It won’t be so fast, because great changes need to be done by the majority and the majority always arrives to the point a little bit later...
But you centered the problem.
It is not only a matter of cost and availability of fuel, or a matter of pollution.
If it was just that it could be solved.
It is a matter of having too many cars and life being hell.
When it takes hours to drive a mile, compared to minutes with the train, no matter how much it costs, I would prefer the train.
Because I, as you, can rationally see the importance and the beauty to live a decent life, which is not working more to have more money to spend, but having enough time to do the things we like.
When you reach a certain age you realize suddenly that life is terribly short and you have more unfulfilled dreams than time.
Things are precious when they are scarce.
Time is one of the few things in life you cannot buy and in front of which being a poor or a millionaire doesn’t make any difference.

Many a bad days have been made good by the right kind of loan

Many a bad days have been made good by the right kind of loan.
The fact that you urgently need cash sometimes is not a sign that you will need it again (at least not so soon) and not finding the right lender can make things dramatically wrong.
Who has never been in need once in his life?
Especially if you belong to the category of the ones who are not a born book keeper, on the contrary, you very often forget that one plus one for many times can make some kind of a hole in your finance...
Well, since you (and me) are not the only ones, there are many who are happy to help to solve that kind of problems.
The question is how and mostly, how much it is going to cost.
Because one thing is urgency and another is taking advantage of it...
Sometimes some kind of emergency like medical bills, sudden car breakdown, broken windowpane and many others can not be delayed, so what to do, if your credit is not what you can call "crystal clear"?
There is a place which is like paradise payday loans, infact its name is just that "ParadiseCash" and it really looks like Heaven.
Nobody can understand what kind of big relief is being able to count on a little sum of money at the right moment.
And what about : secure, confidential, safe, low rates, no Hidden Fees, 50% Faster Loan Service, no hassles, no Need for Perfect Credit, direct deposit Not required...

Yes, we are in Paradise!

Communication is sharing

Communication, (which in my opinion is the heart of blogging) is not sharing information’s, but how we LIVE the information.
That is what a journalist does and is expected to do.
I do not read what you write to KNOW, I read what you write because I like the WAY you write it, and the feeling of the story you are telling me.

How can I, if you didn’t actually say anything about it?
"In the company of nudists, no one is naked and there is nowhere to hide."
That means that in a blog where you talk about yourself through your opinions you would feel "fake" if you didn’t talk about the most important part of you.

"It’s one matter for me to disclose my business relationships, politics, religion, and stock ownership on my blog’s “about” page; it’s another to do this."
You couldn’t just NOT talk about it, because you know that is something "men don’t like talking about penises "while you know that it is illogical not to.
If you think why not, then it must be.

Your posts are good because one can feel that they are true and "lived".
This is what real journalism should be.
People do not want to read about a "story" they want to read about "people" who make the story.
People want to be part of the "news" and in order to do so the good journalist has to write more about feelings than events.
Communication is mostly sharing the joy of living and the fear of death we all have inside.

The secret of doing things well is having the right software

PDF literally means Portable Document Format and was created to allow users to exchange documents in an easy way.
To write your documents with the file extension pdf you just need the right software, that you can easily download from the Internet.
Why using it?
Because it is widespread since 1990 and used almost by everybody.
That means that you are sure your documents will be read by the persons you address them to.
Your files can be read on any operating system (Windows, Apple , Linux), support any link and can also be encrypted, you can password protect them, and you can be sure that your documents are safe.
Also the pdf conversion is very easy.
You can create PDF files from any application that can print.
You can convert word to pdf,and convert pdf to word , just with a few clicks.
Sometimes the secret of doing things well is having the right software.

The sex of the Others

The Soviet Union no longer exists, most monarchies became republics, and even China is changing.
But the Vatican is still there. There must be a reason.
The fact we can’t find it doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t exist.
If someone kills a human being with a knife or a pistol they are violating God’s law. Do not kill.
If with your words you forbid people to use a condom and for this reason, millions of people die of AIDS it’s a matter of faith.
Applied theology.
Jesus Christ did never forbid using condoms.
Even at his times they existed.
It’s not a modern invention.
The Church bothers about the life of men, but it ignores death from AIDS.
Christ did not forbid priests getting married. He didn’t oblige them to live an alien life, inhuman, family life.
Christ attacked the Pharisees, the priests of that time.
The ones who handed him over to the Romans to kill him on the cross.
A woman cannot be a priest.
Who decided that? I don’t think it was Jesus.
A priest, a man who is not a father, a husband, a lover, how can he judge a father, a husband, a lover?
The Church is interested in sex. It discusses it every day.
The sex of the others.
It explains when it is legitimate, how to do it and with whom.
If you control sex, you control society.
The Church is rich, very rich. And among the banks, it is the biggest property owner in the world.
Its wealth is due to the work of millions of people over the centuries. Their work, their goods have gone to the Vatican, not to a family that they couldn’t have.
If the Church is dealing with what we do in bed, it’s right that we deal with the sex life of the priests.
Even for them, the time of sexual freedom has come with or without the condom.
Sex is a gift, sex is a human duty. Religious men and women must be allowed to enjoy it. I propose a referendum in the Vatican to end the sexual slavery of those in the religious life and for equal access to the sacraments for men and women. In the secrecy of the vote, the priests and the nuns would vote “yes”.
When you vote, God sees you, the Pope doesn’t.

To do more with less just let the right Software work for you

What I mostly hate when I work is having error messages I do not understand.
And of course the natural consequence is that I am not able to solve the problem.
Luckily I have a husband who knows a lot about software (he is a programmer) and when I can I just let him deal with it.
Very often the main reason of error messages are corruption of registry classes, registry keys and registry settings.
So, the first thing to do is to clean registry.
And in order to do it, you do not need to be a computer Guru, you just need the right software that that scans your PC to eliminate system freezes and registry problems, in this way optimizing your computer's performance.
Sometimes you also need to repair registry, and also in this case, you should just let the professional software to do so.
You will be able to clean and repair the Windows registry with a few simple clicks ( of course the right ones).
In the past you either reinstalled Windows (which is a very long and time consuming task) or spent a lot of time trying to edit the registry manually.
This, if done by somebody who doesn’t fully understand what is doing, can crash the entire system.
Within minutes, the right software, scans the entire windows registry, looking for all invalid or obsolete entries and generates a list of errors found.
At this point it is easy to choose what to clean or repair.

Social media can be one or more people

"You can take a blog and make it a business, like Mike, Om, Rafat and others have done. That's a fine strategy and it's working well for them. But it stops being personal and when that happens, something is lost. We have a blog at unionsquareventures.com where I blog frequently. That's a corporate blog. I would never do all my blogging on a corporate blog. I think facebook got it right that there are personal pages and corporate pages. Like it or not, TechCrunch, GigaOm, and PaidContent are corporate pages in the facebook vernacular."

A blog is a Blog.
A blog is a place where I go and read and comment.
I do not care who writes, I care what is written...
The beautiful of the Internet is that you can be a one man publisher, one man director, one man news, one man everything.
Internet is the world that makes possible and possibly profitable the "one man company".
You do not need much to begin a business on the Internet.
But you need brain.
You need an idea, you need to know how to make a business out of an idea.
But if you have more than one man, if you have more than one idea, and if you are more than one to use it, that can be much better and produce better results.
Exactly like the blog where more than one writes...

Is the Net getting old and slow?

Is Web Going To Slow Down By 2010?
Posted by Rushabh Choksi

According to a research web will slow down by 2010. Video and Interactive sites being the major reason behind web slowing down.


Nemertes President, Johna Till Johnson said “Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it’s back to the bad old days of dial-up,” and “The cool stuff that you’ll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won’t do it.”

He also added that around $55 millions must be invested by cable and phone companies who are providing around 94% of USA broadband service. Hence, the upgradation of systems is must to continue faster web experience.

Main upgradation would be required in upstream data capacity. Web was mainly used as read-only. Until recently, the explosion by video and photo sharing, self publishing (blogging), and bandwidth-intensive activities like video conferencing on the web is straining the upstream end.

Compared to USA, Indian broadband penetration is very low. Despite efforts to roll out the infrastructure, urban India has only a 3 per cent adoption rate. Which means in India broadband reach is limited to certain extent. It is a surprise that in the last seven years, India could provide broadband connectivity to less than 2.5 million subscribers as against its target of 3 million, nine million and 20 million for 2005, 2007 and 2010 respectively. So if web is slowing down by 2010 India will be adversely affected as most of the people in India still use dial-up connection to access web.

But this can barely be true because technology is growing, the new generation high band-width helps us to access the net much faster. Today many websites are providing with full movie downloads (say movies around 700mb) which gets downloaded within short span of time due to high band-width, pictures and videos get uploaded very fast. So, I wonder how web is going to slow down by 2010 and if it is what are we going to do?

A day in the life of a post

You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work.
Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web.
Within minutes, if you've written about a timely and noteworthy topic, a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers.
If you have not written about a timely and noteworthy topic, you can have a smaller group reading what you wrote.
The important sometimes is not what but how you write it.
And I do not mean just a grammatically correct post, but an amusing or interesting one.
But first you must be somewhere where they can find you.
It is not enough to be in the blogosphere, it is a must letting the people know that you are there.
Sometimes just knowing that people are interested in what you write is a good source of gratification, but it is even better if you can actually make money out of it.
Blogging for Moneyis not, as some would think a mercenary way to express yourself.
You can still write what you like and earn something.
How to Make Money Blogging?
There are many ways.
There are websites that help you, for example placing a banner on your blog, or writing about them, or simply choosing to Enter Google AdSense and/or Amazon affiliate IDs.

Revenue Sharingis another good way to increase your income.
And the secret to make a LOT of money?
Just being a LOT good in blogging...

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. "

What do we need most on our planet?
Trees.
Trees clean the air we breath.
And where we have huge land?
A team of researchers has come up with a simple plan to halt global warming: all we need to do is turn both the Sahara and the Australian outback into vast, shady forests.
If most of the Sahara and Australian outback were planted with fast-growing trees like eucalyptus, the forests could draw down about 8 billion tons of carbon a year–nearly as much as people emit from burning fossil fuels and forests today. As the forests matured, they could continue taking up this much carbon for decades.
Illusion is a horse that more than one can ride.
This would be achieved with huge desalinization plants on the North African and Australian coastlines to convert sea water to fresh water, and a system of aqueducts and pumps to move the water inland. The young forests would be nourished with drip irrigation to prevent water loss through evaporation, and the sandy wastelands would change into endless groves of heat-tolerant, tropical trees like eucalyptus.

This would be a nice and painless way to go on polluting...

Ten steps to rebuild Economy

Data shows that banks routinely lose everything earned in their past history in single blowups.
This happened in 1982, 1991, and, of course now.
Every time society bails them out -- while bank risk-takers retain their past bonuses and start the game afresh. This is an aberrant case of capitalism for the profits and socialism for the losses.
Operators like to engage in a "blow-up" strategy, (switching risks from visible to
hidden), which consists in producing steady profits for a long time, collecting bonuses, then losing everything in a single blowup.
Such trades pay extremely well for the trader --but not for society.
For instance, a member of Citicorp's executive committee (and former government official) collected $120 million of bonuses over the years of hidden risks before the blowup; regular taxpayers are financing him retrospectively.
Blowup risks kept increasing over the past few years, while the appearance of stability has increased.

WHAT REGULATORY STRUCTURE DO WE NEED?

Preventing "too big to fail" situations, favoring diversity in risk taking,
allowing entities to absorb large shocks, and reducing the effect of model error.

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small.
Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks - and hence the most fragile - become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.
Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and riskbearing.
We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the
1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organizations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

4. Do not let someone making an "incentive" bonus manage a nuclear plant - or your financial risks.
Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show "profits" while claiming to be "conservative". Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups.
No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.
Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency.
Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.


6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning.
Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them "hedging" products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence.
Governments should never need to "restore confidence". Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.
Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible "expert" advice for their retirement.
Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as
storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require.
Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

10. Make an omelet with the broken eggs.
Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad hoc patches.
We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the "Nobel" in economics, banning leveraged buy-outs, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.
Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage.
A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks, and companies are born and die every day without making the news.

Liberally taken from Nassim N. Taleb, PhD

Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American religion.
According to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.
People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days.
The Film portrays the naturalist as a family man tormented by the death in 1851 of Annie, his favourite child.
"We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them "religious"; otherwise, they are likely to be called "mad", "psychotic" or "delusional" ... Clearly there is sanity in numbers.
And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.

How to win at the Lottery

The Internet reshaped History

They say the Internet reshaped History, may be it is true, because it reshaped life.
Once people read the news, now they want to be part of them.
The whole production, news included, used to be a monologue, after the dawn of the Internet it has become more and more a dialogue.
That is why people like blogs and blogging.
It is not just writing, it is beginning a discussion in which the reader can talk and say what is wrong or right (in his opinion).
It is may be the beginning of a real democracy, where everybody counts a little bit.
It is the cloud computing, where every end is also a beginning.
It is a Network, a community, a big living room where everybody wants a seat and has a voice.
It is a place where you can find out that there is somebody, somewhere, that can give you what you didn’t expect: new ideas.

Who ever said that learning cannot be fun?

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
That is something, if you think that who wrote it was Einstein, one everybody would believe had no problems with Mathematics.
And if he did, well, it is more than natural that we also can need Math help, at least once in a while.
I personally liked mathematics very much.
Being a lazy person I liked the fact that you needed just to understand it and then, it fixed to your mind and you didn’t forget it as easily as for example Literature or History.
May be I had a kind of mathematical attitude, but once in a while I had my problems too.
In principal Mathematics is just combining signs to express concepts.
If you understand the concepts you understand Mathematics.
And when you don’t?
Easy: you ask somebody to explain.
In my times asking somebody meant to spend a lot of money and there was nothing like free math help, because private teachers were everything but cheap.
Today it is pretty much the same, but the Internet, once more can come to your help.
You can have the best teaching online, and of course it can cost you a fraction of the sum you should pay.
They have courses for everything:
Geometry, Algebra, Number Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Boolean Algebra, Trigonometry, Statistics and Probability, Calculus.
A virtual Online math tutor is much better than the real one.
He is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Whenever you have doubts, or you do not understand, or you want to prepare for an exam (also on Sundays).
He doesn’t complain if you need to repeat the same concept more than once, if you are slow, if you want to stop.
You can also talk using VoIP, ask, working with him on your problems.
You can even get a free demo of Online math help, trying a few sessions for free.
Who ever said that learning cannot be fun?

The decline of a Nation

"Even the kindest physicians don't put corpses on life support. This particular corpse has been placed in the world's cushiest intensive care unit, with transfusions running about a trillion dollars a month -- not to mention hefty bonuses for the attending nurses."JK

I liked the example which I found particularly fitting.
One question troubled me: Why do they do it?
Certainly not to please the mass.
There was never a time in which the mass was worth less than today.
The mass is a number of people whose importance is essential on election day and then goes back to be a nuisance, except for the fact that it is a big number.
Why should they please people letting them making debts that most won’t even be able to pay back?
Because it is a BIG BUSINESS.

Some big brain made a big discovery, one of the biggest of our century: you are worth more if you have debts than if you haven’t.
The fact that you pay back or not is not THAT important.
The important is the NUMBERS they can write.
Somebody WILL pay.
Corpses are important...they create a new and profitable Market which is easy to run and produces huge revenues: the market of intensive care.
That is why they are willing (against any rational judgment) to make transfusions running about a trillion dollars a month.

Once America was a young Nation.
A Nation run by people who left their countries to make their fortunes, people who had a lot to give and were willing to WORK.
Yes, the ideal was money, but money has been and will always be the reason why, the goal to, the engine with.
That was money made with work, with brain and with enthusiasm.
The enthusiasm of the ones who wanted to "build" something great.
Lately America (like Europe) has become a country of old people, whose aim is still making money, but they do not have enthusiasm, do not have strength, so the money must be made in the easy way: cheating.
No hard work is behind the new Empires.
A lot of papers, a lot of lies, a lot of injustice.
This America doesn’t deserve to survive and it won’t survive.

File extension .sis

If you try to download a file that ends with .SIS you will find out that there is nothing you can use to open the file as it is an executable file for the Smybian operating system that is typically used on phones these days.
It's designed to be put on the phone and run there.
For example it is a file to be used on your cell phone allowing you to have a caller ID.
In order to install a SIS file on a compatible phone, you will need to transfer the file to the phone using the phone's PC communication software.
Then you will need to open the SIS file on the phone to run the installer.
The file extension sis means literally: Symbian installation source.
As the name says the file extension sis is an installation file for Symbian OS.
It is the OS you find for example in Palm PDAs and Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola phones.
Incorrect associations are the cause of many file extension errors.
In a few words: the file extension sis is associated with software, themes, applications and games which can run in symbian operating system. Usually Symbian OS is found in mobile devices.

Once and for all the true story behind the telephone invention

Bell is cut off as originator of the phone
U.S. Congress gives honour to Italian immigrant

BRANTFORD, Ont. - Stunned officials have been burning up the phone lines after learning that the U.S. Congress has ousted Alexander Graham Bell - the pride of Brantford - as the father of modern mass communications.

Bell has long been recognized as the inventor of the telephone, the concept for which he developed at his family's Brantford, Ont. homestead. His revolutionary device was patented in the United States in 1876. But last week, Congress passed a resolution crediting little-known Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci as the phone's rightful originator.

Brian Wood, curator of the Bell Homestead Museum in Brantford, was surprised to hear of the resolution.

"If this can be proven, then Meucci certainly deserves recognition as contributing to the realm of telephony," Wood said. "But I don't see it as a huge threat. There may be others all over the world who did similar things but didn't get patented or legally known."


The fact is that the inventor usually is the one that did those things first.

Everybody now a day knows how to write, but nobody would say: "There may be others all over the world who did similar things but didn't get patented or legally known"

The Italian newspaper la Repubblica wrote on Monday that justice had finally been served - 113 years after Meucci's death. The newspaper referred to Bell as an impostor, profiteer and a "cunning Scotsman" who usurped Meucci's spot in history, while Meucci died poor and unrecognized.

Vito Fossella, a U.S. congressman for Staten Island, N.Y., authored the resolution.

"In the past number of years, historical records and scholarly research have concluded that Meucci was the original inventor of the telephone, long before Bell," said Fossella's spokesperson, Craig Donner. "Because of Meucci's role, he should receive recognition for his contribution."

The resolution recognizes that Meucci filed a caveat on his early telephone on Dec. 28, 1871, which gave notice of an impending patent. But the Italian inventor couldn't afford the $10 to renew the caveat in 1874. If he had, the resolution says, Alexander Graham Bell would not have been granted his patent two years later.

But no matter what, said Wood, Brantford will always be the home of the telephone.

"The history behind Bell and what he did here will always be in place. The work Bell did here was very significant. Bell himself claimed that Brantford was where he invented the telephone."


A more "super partes" article:


And finally, an article from "The Guardian":
Bell did not invent telephone, US rules

Scot accused of finding fame by stealing Italian's ideas
Rory Carroll in Rome - Monday June 17, 2002 - The Guardian

Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the US Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell.

Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death.

The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci's homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man's work.

Calling the Italian's career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution said his "teletrofono", demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci's materials and who took out a patent 16 years later.

"It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged," the resolution stated.

Bell's immortalisation in books and films has rankled with generations of Italians who know Meucci's story.
Born in 1808, he studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city's Teatro della Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate.

In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the technology.

When Meucci's wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to link her bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a public demonstration which was reported in New York's Italian-language press.
In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely burned in an accident aboard a steamship.
Forced to make new prototype telephones after Ester sold his machines for $6 to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated. An inductor formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a technique so sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-distance connections.

Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for his "talking telegraph" so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford the $10 to renew it.

He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union.

Meucci sued and was nearing victory - the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell - when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.
Yesterday the newspaper La Repubblica welcomed the vote to recognise the Tuscan inventor as a belated comeuppance for Bell, a "cunning Scotsman" and "usurper" whose per- fidy built a communications empire.

Life after death (of copyrights)

Or a brief history of how life changed after the dawn of the Internet.
It began with music.
There had been several attempts and attacks to the Music industry long before, but the quality of the copy was quite low and the original still sold a lot.
CDs sounded good and you could bring them with you in your Portable CD player, and the only digital music you could get was as good as your friends' CD collections.

Then Napster came.
Suddenly, it was like all those college networks were tied together, and you could find all this cool stuff online. It was easier and more efficient than record stores, it was powered by music fans, and, well, it was free .

Suddenly you didn't have to pay 15 to 18 bucks for an album and hope it was good, you could download some tracks off the internet and check it out first.
In a few short years, the aggressive push of technology combined with the arrogant response from the record industry has rapidly worn away everybody's scruples.

But it didn't stop to music.
Suddenly the whole copyrights' world is changing, the very own idea of copyright has another look.
The Music Industry had its own chance.
The chance to come to terms with the customer , the chance to evolve in something different from the old anachronistic, arrogant, monopolizing, power-hungry company, the chance to get the same increasing the number of users and decreasing the price per song.
They ignored it.
They wanted more customers and more revenues.
They lost the customers and lost the revenues.
And nobody pities them.

History magistra vitae, but it is a teacher nobody wants to listen.
If you do not acknowledge your mistakes, you are destined to repeat them forever and ever.
And Destiny will attack and win ALL the other Monopolies on the market.
Copyright?
No thanks.

When you are "too big to fail"

Like other financial institutions, Lehman’s problems stemmed from borrowing too much to finance too many hard-to-sell investments, such as mortgage-backed securities, that were declining in value as a result of the deteriorating real estate market. Lehman was different because the government let it declare bankruptcy, meaning the company’s creditors were wiped out as well as its stockholders.

Willard Scolnik, a 78-year-old retired architect in Palm Harbor, Florida, who said he had $400,000 in Reserve Primary that he needed to help pay for a lung transplant for his son, was one of the unlucky ones. He couldn’t get his money out. Neither could Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear, the largest U.S. tiremaker by revenue, which had $360 million stuck in the fund.

Another loser was Colorado Diversified Trust. Municipalities park their cash in the trust before shelling out for projects such as a new road or sewer improvements. Boulder County was forced to write off $687,000, its share of the trust’s losses, according to Bob Hullinghorst, the county treasurer. That would have paid for 20 new health-care employees, he said.

“It makes me mad,” Hullinghorst said. “We thought our money was safe.”

The run on money market funds, considered the safest investments after bank deposits and the major buyers of commercial paper, sent shivers through the global economy. World stock markets lost $2.85 trillion, or more than 6 percent of their value, in three days. Banks’ cost of borrowing overnight from other banks, as measured by the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, jumped 4.29 percentage points between Friday, Sept. 12, and Tuesday, Sept. 16.

The disintegration of the commercial-paper market came around to bite banks such as Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, whose CEOs, John J. Mack and Vikram S. Pandit, were at the weekend meetings. It sapped them of the capital they needed to extend credit, even to one another.

“The fear factor that went through the markets was pretty amazing” as credit concerns caused banks to stop lending to each other, Fox said. “The ripple effect was huge.”

The ripples reached as far as Hong Kong, where Lehman’s default on commercial-paper debt paralyzed payments on so-called minibonds, structured notes sold in $5,000 denominations and guaranteed by Lehman.

Sun Kwan, 58, a retired parks worker, said he invested $285,000, most of his life savings, in Lehman minibonds. He was among an estimated 43,000 in the city who bought $1.8 billion of the notes, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Sun lost it all and has taken part in protests since October, rain or shine, trying to get his money back.

Derivatives are contracts whose value is derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies, commodities or linked to specific events such as changes in interest rates. Lehman had made about 1 million such bets in the over-the-counter market, according to a person with access to that information.

The unregulated $592 trillion market for over-the-counter derivatives, 41 times the size of the U.S. economy, contributed more than half of some banks’ trading revenue and had never been tested by the bankruptcy of a major Wall Street firm.

Swaps are a way for investors to gamble on whether companies will continue making debt payments or for lenders to buy insurance against borrowers who stop paying. If the company defaults, one side in the bet pays the buyer face value of the debt in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent.

Taken from Bloomberg.com

If you want to choose the right car for you, it pays to be informed

Waiting for the Future it pays to look what the present offers on green cars.
Never heard about "Hybrid cars"?
They are a combination of two power sources. The most common hybrid car available on the current market uses both electric motors and the petrol combustion engines.

Its batteries (when charged) act as a storage device to power the electric motor, usually working when the vehicle is travelling at low speed or in traffic, usually for city driving.
The gasoline engine, drives the car when more power is needed such as at higher speeds allowing the combustion engine to only operate at its more optimum efficient speeds.

If you want something new, but do not want to leave the style, your choice for a new car should be The new Corolla.
Following the 2010 toyota corolla review it is one the most conservatively styled vehicle.
Autoblog goes as far as calling the 2009 Corolla XRS "one of the handsomest pieces of sheetmetal in Toyota's U.S.

If you want a classic car but with a very new engine the lexus is the car for you.
While the outside looks still the same (and they decided not to change it, because the RX lineup is still quite successful), the interior has gone through a styling makeover.
They say it is interesting to look at as much as intriguing to use.
The very new feature is the hard-drive-based Remote Touch navigation system, a must have if you are a technology fan.

But if you like tradition and want something that will last longer than you would need the German quality is always at the top.
Following the mercedes benz s-class review: it is a car worth what you pay for.
And that is what you expect when you spend what it costs.
The handsome exterior design comes with power, luxury, technology and prestige.
It is luxury, but comfortable and what is luxury for if you cannot enjoy it?

Some people behave, the FED doesn’t

The Federal Reserve spent $389.2 million in 2008 on "monetary and economic policy," money spent on analysis, research, data gathering, and studies on market structure; $433 million is budgeted for 2009.

"The Fed has a lock on the economics world,"
"There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong."

The Fed failed to see the housing bubble as it happened, insisting that the rise in housing prices was normal. In 2004, after "flipping" had become a term cops and janitors were using to describe the way to get rich in real estate, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that "a national severe price distortion [is] most unlikely." A year later, current Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the boom "largely reflect strong economic fundamentals."

The pharmaceutical industry has similarly worked to control key medical journals, but that involves several companies. In the field of economics, it's just the Fed.

Being on the Fed payroll isn't just about the money, either. A relationship with the Fed carries prestige; invitations to Fed conferences and offers of visiting scholarships with the bank signal a rising star or an economist who has arrived.


Greenspan: "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

But, if the intellectual edifice has collapsed, the intellectual infrastructure remains in place. The same economists who provided Greenspan his "very considerable evidence" are still running the journals and still analyzing the world using the same models that were incapable of seeing the credit boom and the coming collapse.

"they're essentially using taxpayer money to wrap their arms around everybody that's a critic and therefore muffle or silence the debate."

At the Journal of Monetary Economics, every single member of the editorial board is or has been affiliated with the Fed and 14 of the 26 board members are presently on the Fed payroll.

Taken from The Huffington Post.

I thought that the Mafia was a typical Italian product.
I would say that in Italy we are, at least, honest to admit that it exists...

Patterns of Chaos

One of the last Bubbles began in November 1971.
Bob Moore launched Intel´s first Microprocessor, the precursor of the computer on a chip.
Chips were powerful and CHEAP and made possible technological and business future.
Life changed not only in the technological field, in all its aspects, the financial was one of them, may be the most affected.
At that time most middle-class kept their money in the Bank, investors were a few.
At the end of 1990 even people with modest salaries turned in hopeful "investors".

This was nothing else than the repetition of what happened in 1908 when Henry Ford brought on the market the first "mass car".
He began the era of the mass production and mass consumption.
In 1920 the New York stock Market was seen as the engine of the world’s economy.
As it happened later in 1990 the investment in stocks or real estate seemed to grow and grow in an unending market.
It promised great wealth for the players.
The crash was as unexpected as the following recession and depression were hard and prolonged.
Digging into history a similar sequence had happened before.
A decade after the Industrial Revolution there was the amazing investment boom in the stock of companies constructing railways.
The "Railway Mania" ended in panic and collapse in 1847.
Every technological revolution led to an explosive period in the financial markets.
The new wealth that accumulates at one end is often more than counterbalanced by the poverty that spreads at the other end.
This is the period in which capitalism shows its ugliest face.
The time when rich get richer and poor get poorer.
When the financial breakdown comes, the party is over and the time comes for analyzing what went wrong and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.

There begins the search for patterns of chaos.

About Bubbles

Greenspan was (and is) simply wrong. Bubbles are easy to predict. Most people will ignore the prediction but that doesn't save their pot-o'-gold. From what I have read, Krugman follows Greenspan on the topic. He is wrong also.

A leading modern proponent of Schumpeter's approach is Carlota Perez. Being Venezuealan and working in the UK, perhaps she doesn't care so much about winning prizes.

In her 2002 book "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital" and follow-on essays, she correctly identified the Internet Bubble as the latest in a series of similiar cyclical events over 200 years and predicted that another more severe collapse was coming to "complete" the pattern. She was right. Krugman etal were wrong.

Perhaps the crucial news from this -- apart from being able to skip Krugman columns -- is that we are now entering the *inevitable* next phase in global industrial development. Carlota calls it Synergy.

She's correct and there is much we can learn from studying her work.

Mark Stahlman
New York City

What is an economist?

"When the businessmen finally learned that the boom created by credit expansion cannot last and must necessarily lead to a slump, they realized that it was important for them to know in time the date of the break. They turned to economists for advice.

The economist knows that such a boom must result in a depression. But he does not and cannot know when the crisis will appear.


What the individual businessman needs in order to avoid losses is knowledge about the date of the turning point at a time when other businessmen still believe that the crash is farther away than is really the case.

If it were possible to calculate the future state of the market, the future would not be uncertain. There would be neither entrepreneurial loss nor profit. What people expect from the economists is beyond the power of any mortal man."


Let me put it in very simple words.
This whole crisis IS NOT something that happened, it was calculated and WANTED.
When you sell credits that are not CREDITS, but promises to pay with money that doesn´t exist and will never exist, when ECONOMISTS know and since they do not know when the bubble will eplode, don´t say anything, on the contrary let things go, let the BUSINESS men sell fraudes and fake bonds and stocks, let them play with people´s money, then I would say the whole thing would look patetic if was not criminal.

I ask, how can you think that people are so stupid as to be deceived twice?
How can you think to deserve the name of "economist" when you justify:

The economist knows that such a boom must result in a depression. But he does not and cannot know when the crisis will appear.

If he knows, why did he let it happen?Why not stopping it?
Stealing and cheating are crimes, and if you fail to report the thieves and the crooks, then, you are nothing else than an accomplice...

What people expect from the economists is beyond the power of any mortal man

Yes, we are at this point.
"One day posterity will remember, this strange era, these strange times, when Ordinary common honesty was called courage and the word courage was just a word."

What Obama would need

Any president of USA faces two problems: the first is the necessity to get votes for the next election, if not for him, at least for the Party.
The second one is that he has too little time to do it as it should.
He was elected promising miracles on one end and compromising promising what couldn’t make any miracle with the people who sponsored his campaign.
Now.
If he had a longer period to rule he could just forget both and do what America needs: building a new future.
This requires hard decisions and difficult choices, that would alienate that majority who though that the way out was easy and painless, that a miracle could just let things as they were, may be better.
Ant it would also alienate the part of sponsors who paid for his campaign.
If he could prove that what he does actually produces good results, he could have both back, and at least one, and in a bigger number.
But four years is too short a period and he will have to leave in a moment when things would be even much worse.
He would be guilty not only to have failed, but failed been a traitor; not keeping his promises, lying about being what people believed he was: a Messiah on one hand and on the other spitting in the dish he was eating from.
If only people could see a little bit further, than Obama could be a good president.

Our ECONOMY GURUS

What happened to the economics profession? And where does it go from here?


And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago.

During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right.

The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.


Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets — especially financial markets — that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation.

The New York Times


Mathematics is truth, but what they didn’t see (or didn’t want to see) is that mathematics work as long as you follow them.
If you mix real value with fake value, and you treat both the same, that is, if you price a good stock as much as a fake stock, or inflated stock and if you apply mathematical rules to them, is not the mathematic that is wrong, is the misuse of it.
Mathematic is numbers and those numbers have a value, but if the value is not there, it is not mathematics anymore, it is a crime.

Regulators shouldn’t believe in regulation, regulation is wrong.
What they should believe is one simple thing: CONTROL.
Check what is going on.
They classified as AAA stocks that were worth less than toilet paper.
Don´t come and tell me that they "GOT IT WRONG"
They got it as it pleased...

Bushaltestelle for Alzheimer patients

“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members (Alzheimer patients) are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.
“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.”

The idea has proved so successful that it has now been adopted by several other homes across Germany.

File extension .OFX

OFX= Open financial exchange file

It is a client-server system that allows a direct connection between the member's computer and the financial institution's server.
Online Financial Exchange makes it easy the exchange of financial data by allowing members the chance to transfer funds and automatically download information using their Microsoft Money software.

MAC, Linux and Windows OS can open file extension ofx.
As computers play an important role in our lives, and almost everything we do is in one way or another connected with them, it is very important to have a basic knowledge of the various file extensions we come to.
First, it is important to know what kind of information is generally connected to the prefix and what it means.
Second, if we fail to open the file we have to know why and find out what to do.
The first reason for not being able to open a file with file extension ofx is because we lack the software to open it.
This extension shouldn’t be a big problem, since the three main OS can open it, so, in case we are unable to, the reasons could mainly be registry failures.
Cleaning the Windows registry could fix many of your errors in file extension ofx.
In order to do so, you have to run a complete scan of your registry looking for errors.

The cost of talent

Economists argue that there is no such thing as "a workforce shortage" -- there is only "a workforce shortage at a particular prevailing wage."
The situation is complicated by the fact that there's a lot of delay in the system: you don't produce a top-quality engineer in a week, or a month, or a year, or even a decade.
If, 15 years ago, entry-level engineers and computer scientists had been paid what entry-level lawyers and financiers were getting paid, then it's reasonable to guess that today, 15 years later, we would have lots more entry-level engineers and computer scientists.
So, if the question is "Do US companies offshore and hire H-1B's because of the need for talent, or because of the cost of talent?" the answer is "yes."



Ed Lazowska

A steak without the bitter taste of moral pangs

Certainly the thought of a life with no pain would attract more than one person.

Scientists already know that humans can intellectually dissociate the sensation of pain from how much it bothers them. (that is how morphine works)
Lab experiments with mice have also suggested a way to disconnect that pain sensation without totally leaving animals vulnerable to a world of hurt.

Will the next step to breed animals "pain-free"?
And would this convince those with moral pangs, to eat more meat?

Another alternative for a cruelty-free burger may soon arise -- growing meat from cells in a lab. Scientists around the world have already managed the feat with varying degrees of success, although a commercially tasty and viable product remains a ways off.

The Internet today, after 40 years...

Kleinrock ( the inventor of the Internet)said he might be able to predict what the Internet's infrastructure will look like years from now -- but there's just no way to tell what people will be doing with it.

"The Internet dominates my life," he said, laughing. "I'm always on. I am connected constantly. It's pervasive in my life. It's addictive. It's frustrating as heck with the spam and the slow processors and viruses and the fear that somebody from Nigeria wants to give me $500.

"You can characterize it as being the great leveler," Kleinrock added. "Wealth doesn't matter. Beauty doesn't matter. You can be short, fat, pimply and living in a hovel and reach out to people just as easy as someone who is tall, thin, handsome and living in a penthouse."

We have reached the point where it is not any more a matter of "telling what people will be doing with it", but what some will do out of it.
The Internet is not anymore a network among computers, but the mean to build a bigger supervised network who controls people controlling what they do and what the others want them to do.
It is the same story with new means.
Why does everything have to become a "commercial mean"?

How many sq Kilometers to power the world only with solar energy?

Very little.

In 2030 we would just need 496,805 square Kilometers.

Why not beginning NOW?

LED? No, OLED

The appearance of LG's 15-inch OLED TV at IFA 2009 is a small (but significant) step on the road to replacing LCD, LED and plasma technology.
Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology is poised to oust LCD just as LCD stuck the knife into the CRT.

An OLED panel consists of a layer of organic, light-emitting material sandwiched between two conductors (an anode and a cathode). This diode layer emits light when an electric current is passed through it. A TV panel features thousands of OLED pixels mounted in rows and columns onto a TFT array. This is referred to as an Active Matrix OLED or AMOLED display.

Advantages:

No backlighting required
OLED outperforms LCD and LED
Sony, LG and Samsung love OLED
OLED is available now (albeit in small sizes)
OLED can be 'flexible'
OLED can be 'transparent'

But:

OLED is expensive
It is not a perfect Technology
OLED displays are expensive to manufacture
There are concerns about its lifespan

more...

Vaccine from China?

"Scientists in China claim they have produced swine flu's first "magic bullet" - a vaccine that prevents the virus in a single dose.
China's State Food and Drug Administration said it approved the vaccine Sinovac after testing was completed last month.

It is the first "one shot" vaccine to be approved by the Chinese regulator, and is said to be effective on people aged between three and 60 years old."


No, thanks, I think I prefer the flu.

The secret of beauty is knowing how to look beautiful

Once I decided to hide all mirrors in my house and, where not possible, to walk in front of them looking on the other side.
It was because I didn’t like myself and I didn’t want to see my reflection.
That lasted some time.
Then one magical day I changed my hair style and found a very nice dress which fit me and showed the best of me, hiding the worst, and I began liking what I saw.
I realized that looking at the others and trying to be like them didn’t work for me.
Because they were tall and could afford things I couldn’t, and they had curly and beautiful hair, while mine was the opposite.
It is just understanding how you are and making the best out of it that can help to change your look.
If you are a size plus you need special clothes to look your best.
I have skinny friends that can wear (almost) anything they like, but that doesn’t mean that I cannot look as glamorous as them, sometimes, I look even better.
For example.
I like very tight pants, and one would think they are not good if you have a few pounds more.
They look perfect if you are smart enough to wear a larger blouse, that covers what has to be covered.
I like a classic look and would wear a pair of tight black trousers with a very nice linen shirt, not too big, not too tight, and not too long.
I also do not dislike jeans and I prefer the straight leg type, because I am not tall and certainly do not want to look little.
I once overheard a comment of two men looking at me:
"She is certainly not thin, but she is very well shaped..."
Well, that is exactly the point.
And where can you find the right outfit also for "Plus" sizes?
Simply on Women’s Clothing Catalogues!

No return ticket to Mars

On The New York Times:

"The most challenging impediment to human travel to Mars does not seem to involve the complicated launching, propulsion, guidance or landing technologies but something far more mundane: the radiation emanating from the Sun’s cosmic rays. The shielding necessary to ensure the astronauts do not get a lethal dose of solar radiation on a round trip to Mars may very well make the spacecraft so heavy that the amount of fuel needed becomes prohibitive.

There is, however, a way to surmount this problem while reducing the cost and technical requirements, but it demands that we ask this vexing question: Why are we so interested in bringing the Mars astronauts home again?"

The logical answer would be: because you wouldn’t find anybody eager to go into a no way back trip.

But:

"If it sounds unrealistic to suggest that astronauts would be willing to leave home never to return alive, then consider the results of several informal surveys I and several colleagues have conducted recently. One of my peers in Arizona recently accompanied a group of scientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a geological field trip. During the day, he asked how many would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space. Every member of the group raised his hand.
The lure of space travel remains intoxicating for a generation brought up on “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.”

Conclusion:

"Delivering food and supplies to these new pioneers — along with the tools to grow and build whatever they need, for however long they live on the red planet — is likewise more reasonable and may be less expensive than designing a ticket home. "

I wouldn’t certainly be among them.
But then, I never liked “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.”