Useful Thoughts and Actions Taken

The RIAA is serially bullying people with lawsuits. This effort is aimed at discouraging people from downloading music.  The fact is their business model was made obsolete at the time of the adoption of MP3 music compression.  Let’s use some common sense thinking on this situation: 1- The music the record labels were selling never was worth much.  Sure they got some dumb kids to pay for it.  The reality is the marginal cost of production of their vaporware product is nil.  2- The labels had such a revenue stream for so long that they can not believe the party is Read more…

Sirius Satellite and XM need to merge in order to survive.  There are alot of media outlets these days. Old fashioned radio, the internet are providing choices as never before.  All the while XM and Sirius are losing money.  Simple fact is there will be no satellite radio if they both go out of business.  Both are loosing significant amounts of money on a per share basis.  Thus it makes absolutely no sense for the FCC to block a merger between the two.  Yet the FCC makes noises about how a merger would not serve the consumer. Let’s get real here.  It may be just as likely that the FCC and cronies in old Read more…

I just received an email from a trading partner. He happens to be an over the road trucker.  Here is his first hand account of the Canadian oil sand boom: I’m at a fuel depot here in northern Mnanitoba, Canada!  My loads got changed around and I landed up going to FortMcmurray, AB with a hotshot to the oilsands.  Then turned around with a piece of equipment to a place called Thompson.  But during the trip I was able to stop at a bank that was open and I got you your money order sent on its way to you.  I Read more…

The best and earliest proof I had of evolution being true comes from standing in front of the mirror with my sister contorting our faces as best we could to make ourselves look like monkeys. I could flare my nostrils and pout my lips just right and always crack her up with the look of me morphing into a chimpanzee.  I even made myself laugh.  It must have been good.  When the comedian cracks up its good. Want a banana?

I will be adding rules here that you can cut and paste into your ebay auctions to prevent being scammed by international Ebay / PayPal scammers.  You should read the previous articles if you have not yet to understand this 3rd installment Article 1:   http://www.amarketplaceofideas.com/ebay-paypal-quick-spin-international-payment-turn-around-scam.htm Article 2:   ebay appears to sweep fraud under the rug.   All buyers outside of the USA must meet the following requires to bid:  1- You must have been a member of eBay for more than 1 year and have transactions in your feedback profile dating back one year. 2- Your feedback profile must meet one of Read more…

If you have not used Panoramio yet it allows you to upload landscape / metroscape pictures to the website at http://www.panoramio.com/    After you have uploaded the photos you can enter coordinates or use google mapping functions to plot the points on Google Earth.  Then other users can view your photos and get a more down to earth view of various points on the globe. Ok ….so naturally the no brainer conclusion is that cameras will soon have GPS function built in to log photo locations so you can connect the camera to your pc and pipe the photo / position data Read more…

This is a story told to me by a professor when I was doing my masters degree at ASU. I was in a class called “Signal Detection Theory” taught by my favorite professor of all time Doug Cochran.  He was an eminently fair guy and a real sweetheart when it came to any issues regarding classes.  A couple of weeks before the final he announced in class that if you were happy with your grade thus far that you did not have to take the final exam. You would be credited with the grade you had going at the time of Read more…

In order to understand this article you will need to read this first: Ebay PayPal Quick Spin International Payment Turn Around Scam Now that you have read that article I will proceed to show how Ebay and PayPal appear to cover up the fraud and re-register the same guy using the same name and address so he can repeat his fraud !!!! The Ebay ID’s and addresses used are shown below: anlogvins  He only got 2 feedback entries with this one. Indicates he got less this round. However the time gap between HIGHOBELISK and this id is so long I have Read more…

The only way you can explain the total lack of innovation in the area of cell phones is that cell phone networks are walled gardens that are extremely limited in competition.  If you are are interested in browsing the internet whilst on the go to get information here is the minimal ATT/Cingular plan Rate Plan Details – Included Data 5MB – Additional Data 0.015/KB – International Data $0.02/KB Yes you read that right. You get 5 MB of data transfer.  That’s it. Its rediculous. It’s dumb. Only a business protected by government regulation can do this ! Such poor service at Read more…