"Everything Small is Just a Small Version of Everything Big"

The cartoon "Adventure Time" is a semi popular cartoon that runs on Cartoon Network. The show's sometimes more adult humor and themes makes for a plethora of rich comedy that my friends and I can actually appreciate. (sorry ) For whatever reason, the show has always had a slant on promoting mathematics, science, and morality. More so than other kid's cartoons I've seen. I mean its not done in a Sesame Street kind of way, but math and science are definitely used through out the show.

Anyway this one scene in which the show's protagonist, Finn, tries on a pair of magic glasses that lets him see the deep mysteries of the universe. His first epiphany is a visually splendid scene, the camera zooms in on his forehead, peering into his cells, and tiny microbes, then further down into atoms, and quarks, and eventually what look like little strings (string theory perhaps?) and finally into a galaxy and back to whatever planet that they live on. This struck me as wildly odd first of all, and very loopy in nature. Finn's following words "Everything small is just a small version of everything big" is what made it all seem a bit deeper.

Also on an unrelated note..Can you divide or subtract infinity by itself.. While infinity isn't a number, in theory, what would you get? Or even if you subtract 1 from infinity, is it still infinite?

∞ - ∞
∞ / ∞

FireFox 4

Like an expectant mother, I've secretly awaited the new Firefox edition to come out. Now that its released, and for the masses, I gotta say... that's slick! The address bar isn't so jumbled with other crap, and its pretty clean cut. Nice big buttons, with rounded corners, everything looks very clean. Very "Apple" in terms of looks. Minimalistic. With its new release, there's a ton of add on's, and apps you can download. Remember the days of Internet Explorer 3, where customizing your browser meant choosing to clear your browser history when you closed it? No more, I've said it before, its all about apps now. You can search and find nearly any app and theme you'd want. So in honor of Firefox's newest product, I present to you my favorite and recommended Add-on's.

Awesome Screenshot - This add on is leagues above your computers stock "Prt sc" capture. You can add annotations, marks, crop, and add text to your captured screen pic.

FlagFox- This is more of a personal like for me, but this add-on gives you the flag of origin of the server that your accessing. So if your visiting say..piratebay, you get the German flag, etc... Its not going to really assist you but its cool to see where your favorite sites are located.

Wholinks2me - This is an add-on that will help with bloggers, so you guys may want to try this. It gives you the domains of everyone who links something to your page. On the Drop down menu when you right click, it there's an option to view how many clicks, where the link was and I believe when it was posted.

Browser Server - This is a pretty wicked app. It allows you to turn your computer into a mini server, allowing people to access files from your comp. Just be sure to loosen up the reigns on your router. I may actually take advantage of this, if I ever start my own site, away from the blogger servers.

Wappalyzer - I happen to love this one... And just so you know.. most of the apps I'm including here on more for personal knowledge lol.. This one too, is really informative though...if your a comp sci major.. It lets you find out what technologies, and scripting languages that the website your viewing is using!

Limepic - I don't know if this app is using your computer to host it, or is some cloud software, but yea you can use this to host different pictures. This is awesome if you post a lot on message boards or forums etc..

Showmyip - I know there are a lot of websites you can visit to find out your ip address but hey, what the hell, having an app for that knowledge is handy!

Brower Turn Editor- I haven't used this, but I can imagine its pretty fun! You can edit web pages and let your creative inner beast free! Feel google's page needs more pizazz? Make it happen, according to the description you can save the changes to a pic document, but obviously the changes won't hold once you reload! If anyone has tried this, let me know about it

Adblock plus- Probably the most useful and most needed is Adblock plus. Seriously, if you download any of the addon's, get this one, your streaming movies will thank you. We've all been there, watching a really good movie online, and right when the action picks up, a commercial rears is ugly head, to rub itself in your face. Adblock gets rid of those annoy timed ad's and lets you stream non stop.


Well thats it for now, as I explore Firefox 4 more, I'll look into posting others up. And if you guys have any to recommend feel free in the comments. I'll leave you with this, its a command list for all hot keys, and shortcuts in Firefox. Enjoy!

Death: The Ultimate Loop?

Ahh, to meet your maker, expire, cease to be, joinng the choir invisible, cash in, ending your earthly career, to ultimately merge with the infinite! Whatever you wish to call it, the clammy hand of death indeed reaches us all.
A loop that we can not escape. So I've decided to post a few of my favorite death scenes from movies. This has been done many times else where, so I'm not going to go crazy here, but when one takes that ultimate plunge into the unknown it needs some sort of praise.

Oh and remember, this isn't a list of the most gore filled deaths, or the most gratitious. These are the more cinematic, elegant fate enders, I picked these because they each have a different moral implication.


#6. Terminator 2: Judgement Day


This really should be a death scene, cause no one really died, but in a horrid lucid dream, Sarah Conner walks to a play ground where she encouters a younger version of herself, surrounded by many kids all playing care free. In a prophetic vision of the doomed future, a nuke is dropped on the city (probably by the robots?) and in a grissly scene, sarah's body ignites into flames along with the children. They turn to ash and crumple apart. This is only a dream, but a stark reminder to fuel Sarah's need to shut down Skynet. Her "death" is what she needed to get her going to finish her mission. Find something that fuels your fire... no pun intended.

#5.Star Wars:

After nearly 2 decades years apart, Anakin Skywalker (aka Darth Vader) finally comes face to face with his jedi master Obiwan Kenobi. The last time these two met, Obi wan, left Anakin to die in a fiery lava planet that left him burned, missing limbs, and dying. Anakin barely survived, and needed to be placed in the horrifying black mask and uniform to keep him alive. Obiwan now confronts his former pupil and this time surrenders himself. Even Anankin is surprised by this move, but it was all part of the grander scheme. "Strike me down Darth and I shall return more powerful than you can ever imagine." Obiwan's suicide was needed for him to return to the force, and become even stronger. The Lesson: Not every battle needs to be won, sometimes, defeat will temper us for later victories.


#4. One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest:

Was McMurphy really crazy or just one hell of a good actor? All the men on the psych ward that he was assigned too, were all cowering under the boot of the head nurse. She had her patients wrapped around her finger. If she said jump, they'd ask how high? They ate, slept, talked, and took medicine when she said. McMurphy arrives and decides that should all change. Its the classic story of going up against something bigger than yourself. McMurphy saw that she was treating the patients unfairly, and wanted to stand up to her. Unfortunately this caused him to undergo such painful and numbing electroshock therapy, that it turned him into a vegetable. The once outspoken, loud McMurphy was turned into a silenced, shell. This was no way to live, so one of his friends, wakes up in the middle of the night, and sufficates him, putting him out of his misery...Its the worst thing you can do to someone is silence them.


#3.The Messenger: Joan d' Arc

The name either brings to mind, a holy woman, touched by god, or a halluncinating woman touched by madness. When France needed her most the poor peasant girl rose to popularity by stringing together a chain of victories against the English. Joan who re-claimed much of Frances lost territories, was eventually put to death for her ideals. The same fiery passion that had saved France from siege, was then said to be blasphemous and she had to be purged in cleansing fires. Joan's beliefs were used for the good of France, and once those needs where met, she wasn't needed anymore and was looked upon as a threat. Be careful who you help in life..

#2. Moby Dick

In life, you encounter things that you get madly passionate over. Almost obsessive. And no story captures that feeling of mad drive than the story of Captain Ahab and the white whale. In my opinion, this book has yet to be translated to film properly.. The 1956 version was ok.. and this 1998 remake was equally mediocre. But idea of Ahab's death from chasing this monster is what really shines through. So hopelessy obsessed, with Moby Dick, it drove him to a watery grave, and the destruction of the Pequod. Obsessing over something to the point where it consumes you is a sorry life, and will eventually be the perfect way to buy the farm

#1. The Hudsucker Proxy:

My all time favorite scene of perilous plummets, is the scene in the movie, The Hudsucker Proxy. The head of the major corporation decides that his no longer wishes to be part of the greed and every day squabbling. A beautifully done scene, that actually makes me want to pat Hudsucker on the back. He was rich beyond belief, but felt that he didn't want a part of it anymore.


Well thats that. Most of the people on this list, knowingly went off into the blue yonder, on their own choice. To give oneself in to the unknown vastness of empty time and space...

You guys are welcome to share your own favorites.

AT&T Buys T-Mobile

The world of Telecom shakes today, as AT&T takes over the reigns of T-mobile's US mobile division. This 25 billion dollar deal is going to (hopefully) help AT&T mobile network service. As an Iphone holder, I can atest...they're mobile service is horrid. I'm not sure if the fault lay with AT&T's towers, or Apple's made in China phone, but either way, I hope this will help bring the service to a much higher standard. I like AT&T, I like their history, what they've done, and how far they've brought the telecommunication industry. Without Bell Labs, we wouldn't have many of the inventions that we have. (Look in the near future for a full history and report on AT&T)

T-Mobile, which originally came from, if you remember VoiceStream Wireless. I vaguely remember the company myself, in fact I only remember hearing the name. VoiceStream was spun off of another merger, but ultimately VoiceStream was bought by a German Telecom company. In fact it was bought by the largest Telecom company in all of Europe, Deutsche Telekom. They wanted to own a wireless company in the states, to give them some profit overseas. Under the direction of Deutsche Telekom, Voicestream was turned into T-Mobile.

On its own, going up against the then struggling AT&T, T-mobile did pretty well for itself. its only been recently that the Mobile giant has began to show its age. Verizon and AT&T have been giving T-mobile a schlacking like none other, and I suppose its been falling behind. If you look at it from a tech point of view, T-mobile doesn't have much to offer. It put out in a act of desperation the Mytouch, which was supposed to go up against the iphone, but it wasn't even close.


So what does this mean? Hell if I know, I don't work for AT&T's corporate division. But from what I can gather, AT&T is going to be making use of T-mobile's cell towers which is good for us with AT&T phones. It will free up network space, and allow AT&T to catch up to the 4G tech. (which really doesn't deserve the name 4G, but thats for another topic)

Now, here's what I'm thinking... in the 80's AT&T was broken up for anti trust suits. Meaning, they were a monopoly and had to break apart to avoid being shut down. Now AT&T has reformed, and is once again gobbling up companies, before this, if you remember, AT&T bought Cingular. Obviously, unlike in the 1980's there's more telecom competition around now. Sprint-Nextel still exist, and AT&T's main rival Verizon is still a thorn in their side. I'll be keeping an eye on this story, and as I stated earlier, an AT&T/Telecommunications history time line will be one of my future posts.

Anyone here excited by this merger? Scared to death? Chime in.

It's a Unix system... I know this

I was watching Jurassic Park a few nights ago, (well I wasn't really watching it, someone was streaming it on livestream, and I was busy working on a class project) and aside from all the screaming, shooting, wheels screeching, and roaring, one line always bothered me. For those of you who haven't laid eyes upon this movie (what the hell is wrong with you??) its about an island of dinosaurs. I'm not going to get into detailed plot descriptions, because I don't review movies. Nevertheless, by the end of the movie, all hell is breaking loose, and this one self proclaimed "hacker" girl, is put on the spot to safe the entire cast of characters from being mercilessly devoured by door opening dinosaurs. She must "hack" into the computer and lock all the doors in the park, effectively sealing them into a closed in room. Anyway she hops on the computer, and much to her delight...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng

So yea, when I was a younger man, I had no idea what the hell a Unix System was..nor did I care. Dinosaurs where about to eat people. But as I grew up and my interest in computers grew, I had to wonder, what was Unix? I started watching TechTv (remember that?) and a man named Leo Laporte had a show called Screen Savers, in which he'd talk about technology and Os and related things, and he'd always mention something called Linux. Back then I had no idea that these two systems were related, and I began wondering just how many operating systems were out there? Was using Windows just a tip of the ice berg? I always hate that feeling I'm not getting to see everything. Like I hate playing demo's of games, cause I know there's more to it. So I had that same feeling when I discovered so many other Operating systems.. I wasn't seeing the entire picture with Windows. I've harbored that feeling for quite some time, but now as I'm getting into Computer programming, I'm finally going to download my own copy of Linux and see how it goes. So for those out there wondering whats so special about the Linux / Unix system? While I don't think everyone is going to orgasm over these features, they are cool to have.

Open Source Code: Probably the biggest draw to Linux is the ability it gives its users to go in and change the source code. Now you do this at your own risk of course, but atleast you have the option. It lets everyone's system be customizable, and you can really do some neat stuff with it.

Free & Legal: As much as I love & hate pirating, my moral compass and stand proudly as I download this.

Control!: If something goes awry with the source code, you have the ability to fix it yourself! This may seem like a chore to some, but with Microsoft you'd have to call or have your computer serviced. With Linux your source code is available to modify as you see fit! In fact its a plus if you doand fill out a bug report cause you'd be giving back to the other users in the linux community!

Desktops: Another big draw to Linux is the ability to customize your desktops. I don't mean change the wallpaper and turn your mouse pointer into a rocket ship, I mean truely changing the way it moves and operates. You can even change your file directories, and the way your folders work.. Truly its all customizable.




There's a whole bunch more differences that I won't get into, but I'll let you all know how this ends up. Rather I like it or not. After Linux, maybe I'll try running Unix on my imac... If any of you out there run Linux or any alternative OS chime in and let me know what you think. Do you like it? They're pitfalls, advantages, tips, tricks, etc..

The Chains That Bind

I really am trying to like AT&T. The oldest telephonics company in the world,(survived by its many incarnations... The original AT&T doesn't exist anymore) they have such a rich history, that really defined the shape of our country. I have an unusual interest in the telecom industry. (look for my future blog post on the History of Telecom) Anyway AT&T is really rubbing me the wrong way lately, and this is just another nail in the coffin. ( or maybe I should say just another jack in the wall?? Phone humor!) If there's one thing I abhor is a collar and leash. Especially on my internet, but that is exactly what AT&T is planning. Starting May 2nd 2011, AT&T will have a 'cap' on how much it's DSL subscribers can download and stream per month. 150 gigs is what you get if your a DSL line holder, and a 250 gig cap for their high speed users. While this of course may very well be enough for people, myself included, I don't like that feeling of a ceiling above me. And more righteously, I don't like the idea of people being penalized for sharing information. Rationing out data just seems wrong, and unfortunately, AT&T may not be alone. Something this big is almost guaranteed for other competitors to follow suit.




And another problem I for see with this, is that most companies, have two tiers of Broadband, a regular DSL line and a higher speed version that usually involves fiber optic cables. Ex: Verizon Fios, AT&T Uverse etc.. With these type of caps, the higher speed services, look less attractive, because whats the point, you'll just download yourself to the limit anyway? There's no need to get a faster service, because you'll just reach the cap faster for your month.
I'm not liking the looks of this and hope this isn't a trend to come.
As always comments welcome

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/atandt-will-cap-dsl-u-verse-internet-and-impose-overage-fees/#dsq-comments

Bejing Citizens Being Tracked Through Their Cell Phones

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but according to a few reports the citizens of Beijing, China can now be tracked by government officials, as to where they are. Even most mundane cell phones have some sort of GPS technology installed in them, and this is giving China, an incentive to use this advantage. Now, the director of their science and technology commission, stated that this move is to ease up congested road ways, and streets. He claims that know where people are gathered and congested, can help route traffic, to other areas. Now we all know China is pretty populated, no surprise there about the heavy traffic.. but tracking on cell phones? The matter just sounds sketchy to me. What others have suggested, and I agree with this, is that this initiative lets Government officials see where large masses of people are gathering and given the social unrest over the last two months in Africa, it probably has the upper echelons worried about the fire spreading. So this whole program can keep a big brother style eye over the herd and especially because of the reports that the social unrest in Egypt began over Facebook. This would allow anyone sending any messages inciting unrest, to be found and punished quickly and accurately. While I doubt the US government would never pull such a brash, and clumsy maneuver, you think something like this is possible? Even without our knowledge? Lets hear from you guys.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/china-tracking-beijing-citizens-mobiles

Mk Ultra

Ah, weird, behind closed door experiments? check. Mind altering drugs? check.
Set in the 1950's cold war era? check check..

Started in the 1950's and early 1970's, Mk-Ultra was the government's way of playing with LSD and other illegal substances. What was the MK-ULTRA program?
It was a covert operation by the US government to explore the effects of mind altering drugs on soldiers. Remember, in the late 1950's, and early 60's drugs were beginning to take hold of the youthful culture, it was a drug world. LSD one of the main centerfolds of the revolution had some serious effects on the human body and the nervous system. It's reputation carries with it, effects of altered thinking, psychodelic 'tripping', and cognitive shifts. That being the case, the CIA used LSD to experiment with humans, often CIA agents, and prisoners, and studied their effects. They put together mass group dosages, and watched for any interactions in the mental state.
The point behind all this testing, and experimentation, was to see if substances combined with LSD or psilocybin, ketamine, or marajuana, and other drugs could produce a person of higher mental thought, even producing effects of telekensis, brain washing, shared dreaming, or hypnosis.

Mind control, and brain washing were the two big idea's behind the MkUltra program. Producing this, the government in effect could create an ideal killer, or assassin, or even president. (one would argue, that the government already controls the presidents) The MkUltra program even went so far as Hypnosis, in which lots of experimentation was done with hypnotizing patients, and having them remember complex written words or strings of text.There were also a few "mini mkultra" programs that spawned from the idea of mind control.

MkSearch was established to find a perfect 'truth serum' drug. Using this at the height of the cold war would have been invaluable. Remember that during this time, the United States would have loved to found out about what was going on in Russia at the time.

Project Artichoke was a similar mind control idea that used the addiction of morphine and its withdrawl effects on people, to induce vulnerable states in people. Apparently Project Artichoke is where all the action happened, and that mkultra was a lesser offensive. But all the evidence of Artichoke was destroyed, leaving the public to chew over the mkultra program.

MKOften was another spawn, in which, the CIA investigated and played with more tribal, ritualistic methods of human thought. It even reports that mystics, clairvoyants, and psychics where used and experimented on.


Unfortunately, in the early 1970's, the files for MkUltra were vastly destroyed, so what truely went on in those hallowed halls, will never be known. The New York Times reported that there had been illegal experiments going on, which prompted an investigation into the matter, that resulted in something called the Rockafeller Commission, which was a commission to look into what the CIA did domestically. Sure enough, evidence of biological, and psychological experimentation was indeed found.
You can literally read tons one this topic, so I'll stop here with just the basic overview and I'll let you continue your research if you find this stuff interesting. The likes of Timothy Leary and John C.Lilly proved that the inner laberynths of the mind are corridors that can be explored and visted through the effects of drugs like LSD, and the CIA pouched on that opporunity. I'll be doing an article on Timothy Leary soon, he's a figure that fascinates me to no end!

I leave you with this link, its from a video, years back, called "Sunset". While the music is pretty, really pay attention to whats happening in the video..its very VERY much related to today blog post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmz_48HChj8

Also on a more comical spin of this topic, I'd point you to the recent movie "The Men Who Stare At Goats" While this is a humorous take on a similar project, it still deals with the main concepts.

Web 1.0, 2.0 and to come, 3.0

Suffice it to say that the early renditions of the Internet should probably be referred to as Web 0.5, but in those earlier days, I'll say 1994-2003, the web was very static. Hyperlinks were fairly dumb links, and there wasn't much interaction. A person would create a webpage, and create links. You then would click around reading and absorbing information. Not much give and take. Back then, everything ran at a much slower pace (remember the newest technological feat was 26, and 56k/s modems), so graphics were more stagnant and there wasn't a whole lot going on. Flash media, didn't exist, and embedding movies into web pages would have gotten you some laughable stares.
Web 1.0 relied heavily on the creation of personal web pages. People would set up a page about themselves, or about a topic that interested them, and have to go through coding it, and designing it with little help. Most Personal Web Pages were pretty elementary in design. Unless you knew HTML, it left you with little to work with. Web pages looked like this:

Not alot of interactivity, links pointed in one direction, and everything was very static

There's not a definite point when web 1.0 left and web 2.0 picked up, but personally, I accredit the transition to the creation and rise of Youtube. Other sites will say otherwise, but Youtube, is in my opinion the turning point that really gave control to the users. You could actually view and comment in real time to video's, embedded right into the page. Soon interactive media such as this began its revolution. Networking really took off as well. A site by the name of Friendster began the social media craze, soon followed by Myspace, flickr, and Facebook. All these sites rely heavily on the features that web 2.0 provides, which is a more participatory web. Running these sites like facebook and youtube on a 56k dialup modem is a chore in itself. So broadband definitely plays a big role in what defines Web 2.0

Such new programming such as Ajax gives live updates to pages without reloading. So when someone on Facebook messages you, you see it update without having to click 'reload'. This may seem small, but it allows you to be live in real time with things happening. Now, many new languages such as Perl, and Python, give users the ability to create and customize private pages with ease, rather than having to learn code such as HTML.

Also web 2.0 has an unprecedented amount of applications that can serve as tools. Things like RSS feeds, that is news reports straight to your desktop, improve upon web sites, giving a more dynamic and personal touch. This is "Service oriented architecture" or SOA, anything that improves and enriches online media.


Some examples of web "2.0ie" sites:


Probably the greatest feat in all of the web, is a site that Paul Otlet (see previous post) would have been proud of. Wikipedia, has become the worlds largest, most concise, and favorable encyclopedia. This user edited tome of world knowledge allows anyone to share, edit and contribute to its information. It is the epitome of Web 2.0, and in reality, it realizes the dream Paul Otlet had. While the information may be questionable, I refer you back to Marshall McCluhan's idea of "The medium is the message".

Some Web 1.0 Sites


As opposed to web 2.0



So that leaves us with Web 3.0? Where is it? When will it arrive? What's it going to look like? Some believe that web 3.0 is a 'cradle to grave' Internet. Meaning we'll always be plugged into the wired world. A sort of "metaverse" that is an open 3d world in which people can move around in that's separate from the reality we live in. While I think this is definitely getting ahead of ourselves, web 3.0 will look and feel different. More customization, more interactivity, and more Google...god damnit more Google...

A Look Back: Paul Otlet's Mundaneum

I think that with computers, technology, and information structure, we tend to have a 'tunnel vision' view of things. That is, we seem to look forward and only forward to see what the newest, shiniest gadgets will be. While the future prospects is indeed important, I to believe that it's fundamental to take a step back sometimes, and look at where the roots of our current technology came from. That being said, I'd like to introduce you to a man named Paul Otlet, who was an early information scientist (fancy word for librarian). Many may not have heard of his name, but you could easily say that he had an idea that resembled the web as we know it today. Otlet had many new idea's about classification and ways of storing information. It was very analog, and manual, but he had a vision of using information as a way to create 'trails'. In Brussels, Belgium in the 1930's, Paul Otlet has this huge office/warehouse built which he called The Mundaneum. This construct was an open warehouse building filled from the floor to the ceiling with filing cabinets, and drawers. He housed a staff of people there to literally read through books, and write down their information on index cards, and have them stored away. His main goal was to have a sort of 'bottom up' structure, where people could could take out an index card they could see what other people looked at as well. If someone took out 2 index cards, a third party could see the 'link' between the two. Its something that we lack in our library's today. If you take out a book and read through it, but you need more information on someone who was mentioned in the book, you have to go out and search it. In Otlet's Utopian view, you'd have access to what other books link to that document. He had this very idealistic view of information sciences. He was creating and thinking about all this as the League of Nations was forming, so he possessed this lofty goal of having a sort of "Global Library", in which information would be shared by all. His Mundaneum, actually took off, and it reached a max of nearly 15 million index cards, but unfortunately fate took the reins. We all know what catastrophic event took place in the early 1940's, especially in Belgium. The Nazi party stormed into Belgium, and his baby, the Mundanuem was destroyed, all the documents burned, and it was turned into a tour house for 3rd Reich artwork. After this Otlet, who's country was invaded and occupied, his life's work destroyed before his eyes, died as a nobody. Unfortunately people had more on their minds other than global information systems. He was generally forgotten and still remains as a figure that really doesn't get much recognition. Paul Otlet, who really had the basic frame work of hyperlinks, search engines, and the World Wide Web itself.

Meeting Your Doppelganger

This blog won't delve into the occult, superstition, or anything like that all too often, but this topic interests me to no end! Besides i look at this topic as more paradoxical in nature being that a person can't be in two places at once.

Picture this if you can, your walking down a busy street in a populated city trying to get to work. As you cross the street, masses of people are walking in the opposite direction, pushing and trying to get where they have to be. As your pushing your way through the mob of people, you take notice of who shoves and bumps into you while keeping the coffee in your hands from spilling... A business exec on his cell phone, a hipster girl holding a sketchbook, a musician holding a guitar, you holding a cup of coffee.. Wait what? You do a double take and sure enough your staring into the eyes of yourself.
You've just encountered your doppelganger, or "double walker" in German. The doppelganger has its root in mythology and was once said to be searching for you its whole life. Your doppelganger would spend its entire life trying to hunt you down and kill you while you go about your life completely unaware.
Also, the term doppelganger refers to seeing oneself in your peripheral vision. You be sitting in your apartment alone and suddenly see yourself sitting next to you. Either way seeing or meeting your doppelganger has generally been a very bad omen. Usually fore shadowing death.
They say that two types of doppelgangers exist. One is the ghostly apparition of a living person that basically exists as a harbinger of ill fortune. The second is a fully living person who is your exact double who is coming to find you as you read this. Of course there have been many reports of peaceful encounters with their double.

One of my favorite stories about this is of a school teacher in 1845 named Emilie Sagée. She was an Excellent teacher, loved by students and staff but she apparently have a doppelganger that shadowed her and was visible to many. One day as she was writing on the black board, a shadowy image of her appeared next to emilee, following her exact movements as she wrote. Thirteen students saw this happen. Another time, Emilee was eating dinner and from behind her, her double appeared mirroring the exact movements of her eating. One of the strangest events was when the school teacher was outside touring the gardens. The class room inside was being instructed by another teacher. 42 students were in the room and had a clear view of Emilee. The instructor inside the room noticed Emilee outside and left the room to go speak with her. The 42 students saw the double of emilee appear in the front of the room. The original emilee was still there talking though she looked tired. The new doppelganger emilee just sat motionless in the front of the room and stared into space soon vanishing. Emilie Sagée reported never to have seen her doppelganger but said that whenever someone reported it, she had felt tired and drained during the period it was seen.

This one I love:
In a case that suggests that doppelgangers might have something to do with time or dimensional shifts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th century German poet, confronted his doppelganger while riding on the road to Drusenheim. Riding toward him was his exact double, but wearing a gray suit trimmed in gold. Eight years later, von Goethe was again traveling on the same road, but in the opposite direction. He then realized he was wearing the very gray suit trimmed in gold that he had seen on his double eight years earlier! Had von Goethe seen his future self?

Has anyone encountered themselves? Their Nega? Or their doppelganger? Was it a peaceful meeting or did it result in an epic battle for your life? The thought that there's another me walking around makes me pretty uncomfortable, I'll admit. Share all stories in the comments section!

Rotten Core to this Apple?

I was thrilled when I saw this article. About a month ago, I wrote a diatribe on here, about Staples and their deplorable business practices, and now out in the real news is an anonymous Apple employee doing the same. If you've ever been to a large mall in your area you may have seen the big white Apple stores. These medical looking stores look very sterile, clean, and quite frankly, pretty freaky. Minimilism is obviously what they're going for. You can touch, play and fondle all the available apple products. I really really despise going into these stores, the staff is always dressed down in tee shirts, trying to be "everyday" looking. I actually do own apple products, and find nothing wrong with their merchandise, but even I must admit, their marketing, and is so obnoxious. Apple started out as a small company that really strove to be different for the sake of change. Now because Apple is so mainstream, they just like being "different" for the sake of keeping up their facade. Anyway, this anonymous Apple employee, whom we'll call...'Aaron', gave us an inside look at an Apple retail store. What strikes me as the most glaring, is that Apple employees can actually lie to their customers about jail breaking, or switching carriers. All to make a buck. This is exactly what bothered me about Staples. Taking advantage of someone who doesn't know just so you can turn a profit. Like Staples, Apple employee's sales numbers are tracked and posted for other employee's to see. Which makes competition amongst employee's stiff, causing employee's to push the envelope further and further into getting better sales.
Has anyone here ever been lied to by an Apple employee? Has anyone had a good or bad experience at one of their stores?

Read the summary article for yourself, or pick up the full article in Popular Mechanics this month.
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/confessions-of-an-apple-store-employee-we-lie-to-customers-all-the-time-535959.html

Vending Machine Hack?

Has anyone ever tried this? I'm curious to see if it actually works. Well as you know, for whatever reason, Soda Machines and I suppose Vending machines in general, are getting more elaborate. You should see the ones in my school, once you make a selection, this loud, overally dramatic sound hums out and this big mechanical arm reaches up, takes your selection from the shelf and gingerly drops it in the receptacle. All these flashy doo-dads and crap require some sort of programming, meaning they, with the right amount of knowledge can be hacked. Let me preface this by saying, following this will lead to theft, it should be tried with just the advantage of knowledge and pure fun.

What you'll need:
Time
A Machine not out in the open
A bit of luck


Well like I said, I'm not sure if this will even work, it requires that the vending machine still be set on "default" mode. So I'm thinking that any high traffic area won't work. Like a vending machine inside a mall, or movie theater, or anything like that, probably will be changed out regularly, and the default setting probably taken off. So your probably better off trying this on a machine that's not visited so frequently. Once you locate a machine that seems to be out of the way of traffic, look at its number pad, or selection pad. Usually the numbers appear as they do on your keyboard's numpad. But in some cases of new machines, there are no numbers, but just big buttons with the drink on them. So instead of pressing F2 for a coke, you just press the big Coke button. These buttons are technically numbered as well, but its harder to tell how the numbers are ordered. Now according to this hack, if you press the buttons in a sequential order, a navigation menu will appear on one of the LCD screens. The number order is 4,2,3,1. Meaning you'd press those buttons in that order and you'd be taken to a menu screen. Like I said newer machines have those big square buttons but those too are assigned numbers, you just have to find out what number corresponds to what button. Usually the screens are pretty small, allowing only one line of text to appear at a time, so its good if you have no one in back of you waiting to use the machine. You have to scroll through all the options one by one. You'll see options for price changing, finding out how much money is in the machine currently, the version of the machines firmware, and some errors that the machine can run into (jammed, selection switched etc..) So yea this according to a few people can allow you to enter into any vending machine. Now as I said this won't work if the default password of 4,2,3,1 has bee changed. In which, you'll have to guess what password the machine is set too, which would be waaay to many combinations to just randomly guess. If your going to try this make sure no one's waiting in back of you, cause it'll probably take some time, and make sure the owner isn't around, or you'll have some explaining to do. And finally like I said, this may not even work! If anyone is willing to try it let me know, I'll try it on Friday when I'm at school. And I'll let you guys know how it turns out. If you've ever tried this, or heard about it, leave a comment to your findings!

The Mind-Body Problem

A topic of great interest to me, is the problem that Rene Descartes and many other philosopher's faced. So much so, that the debate really still goes on to this day, and that topic of contention is the mind-body problem. Or the duality of the being. What I mean by this is, You have in one corner, your brain, your body, your fingernails, your hair, and all the physical attributes that you can feel and interpret pain, touch and feeling. So you can run your finger across a cold surface and it causes certain nerves to fire telling your brain that the surface is cold. All very basic. So where does your mind come into play? Its generally accepted that the mind is different than your brain. You're brain is the physical structure in your head, and most people (I, included) are satisfied with just saying that the mind is swimming somewhere in your brain. Rene Descartes, a French philosopher really questioned this, and came up with the theory of Duality. This proposed that the Mind and Body are independent of each other, and that they could technically survive without the other.

"Body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible."

Descartes believed that the Mind or the "I" of a person was something immaterial, and that it couldn't be destroyed, and lived on after the body died and whithered.
But where is this? One thought experiment that's pretty fun to think about, is if you had a very long time, and the proper technology, someone could remove your brain, atom by atom, and replace it with identical atoms. You could remove one carbon atom from your brain, and replace it with an identical carbon atom. Do this several billion, billion times, and you could replace your brain. But would this 'new identical brain' still be you? If you reconnected all the neurons to as they were, would you still wake up with the same personality? According to Descartes, you would, because the mind is something inside the brain but doesn't interact with any physical matter.

Now here's how Descartes theory isn't completely sound. In my mind, I wanted to write this blog article. I woke up today with my decision in mind to write this, and so I sat down and wrote it. That right there dispels Descartes idea, he made it clear that the Mind and the Brain are separate. That the Mind is immaterial and because its not anything physical, it can never 'touch' anything in the brain. So by all rights, the mind should have no influence over the body.
A man by the name of Gilbert Ryle saw this fault and said that there had to be some sort of bridge to connect the two. That there couldn't be a "Ghost in the Machine" controlling its actions.


I suggest you find a book called "The Mind's I" by Douglass Hofstadter. The first introduction describes and interesting scenario, in which a astronaut is marooned on the planet Mars. She'll be met with certain death under the alien sky, and the only thing that can save her is the transporter on board her ship. She can be quickly broken down atom by atom, and "rebuilt" back on Earth. She decides that this is the only option to see her kids again. So she steps into the booth and blacks out, only to be "awoken" back on Earth. Every atom in her body is shredded and copied verbatim, and then put together on earth. So what happened here? Did her mind fly from Mars to Earth and insert itself in the newly constructed body? Or did her mind re materialize along with her body?

My last thought on the matter ( I can go on and on with this topic) is that of Artificial Intelligence. We can and have created robots, to talk, listen, understand, and do work. If you look at your computer in front of you, or your ipad, or notebook, one would say, that the computer is a vastly superior in its ability to solve equations, and do tasks. So humans can create a brain. Albeit, a very limited brain that can only operate when given instructions.. but it technically is a brain nonetheless. But can we ever create a Mind? According to writers like H.G Wells, and Issac Asimov, the mind of an A.I brain will emerge on its own. Meaning that one day your home computer will have a 'spark' and be able to refer to itself. Because we have no hard wiring in our brains that give us the ability to self reference, the same would be for A.I, they would soon just know and be able to think about themselves.

So I ask you guys, whats your opinion? Is there really such a thing that makes me, Me? Or is it just a random placement of neurons and memory? If it is just the placement of neurons, then we can re-create anyone by duplicating the arrangement of these nuerons in a new body.

I.P Addresses and Tracing Them

For us telephony and communications geeks out there, I really think this is my favorite tools and abilities of routing. Of course I'm still pretty new to networking, and this is a pretty simple and probably well known feature. But lets say you take any website, to avoid angering anyone, lets use this very site. (Blogger is hosted by google, so I suppose it will anger google lol.) But you ever wonder where these sites are hosted from? I mean seriously of all the millions and millions of websites it really is interesting to see where they come from. And also, the path that your computer or router takes to get to them. Well for those who don't know, you can. Click your start button, or the window icon for you vista and 7 users. Click the run function. A little dialog box will innocently appear and you type in CMD. The MSDos command prompt will appear. You type in this as follows:
tracert www.loopinginfinities.blogspot.com
Make sure you put the single space after the tracert command. You can do this for just about any website. Press enter and a series of names and numbers will begin to be listed. This is my favorite feature of the command. It actually shows you the path that the information is sent from. When I run this command to this very site, it's first step is my router, then some sort of origin gateway, then it says Newark Core RT2, meaning the big city near me is called Newark, so it probably passes through a routing station there. After a few more of these it hits New York, then some sort of Google server, and then finally down into the routers there and finally to a single machine. (or more accurately a router for the single machine) Anyway I love seeing the pathway that all this information takes from my humble computer out onto the massive servers and routers and switches of the internet at large... Anyway, now that you have the websites final I.P address (the last number in the list), you can go to a site like: http://www.ip-adress.com/what_is_my_ip/ , and put the numbers into the small text box at the top. From there it will show you the location of there that I.P address is being served at. Generally though, these numbers are probably router numbers and not the true address of the computer its on.. Routers have that built in fire wall that lets them protect the computer that they're in front of. Anyway, hope you enjoy this stuff as much as I do.
For fun put in to the command screen: tracert 127.0.0.1 and see what comes up. A loop! 127.0.0.1 is the way of saying I want to talk to my own router. So the router sends a signal to itself. One of my favorite ways to cause a piece of machinery to self reference. Until next time!

Exploration or Exploitation?

Does anyone here hack? I mean it in the literal sense, do you find yourself hacking websites, phones, or other communication technology? I find the whole idea of hacking, and phreaking (phone line hacking) very stimulating. I mean to me the term hacker and hacking refers to the ability to use the inner workings of programs and technology to create hidden door ways and paths around the rigid rules of programming. Specifically today though I want to get into the world of phreaking. I don't hear this term used much anymore.. actually I never really heard it used. I'm 23, so the days of phreaking were generally dying as I was being born. Anyway brief history lesson in telecommunication hacking:

In the mid 70's AT&T ruled the telecommunications world. They were the one and only top dogs, and could charge exuberant prices that no one could contest. Obviously people didn't find this price gorging to be fair. Well neither did the US government. AT&T was eventually broken up in the early 80's into small subsidiary companies called the Bell companies.. Bell Alantic..Bell South etc.. Anyway it was too late people, mainly hackers, began experimenting with ways around the phone companies, stiff charges. Free phones calls, and information were but a few tricks away! People soon got creative outside pay phones became victims of what has been deemed "Boxing" Were you can literally trick the phone into believing you inserted money by recording the sound previously.
One of the great methods you can try out if you have an older land line near you is to pick up the handset, and click the receiver down a few times per second. then stop for a second, then click a few more times then again, take a second pause.. Do this 7 times, and you've just dialed a number! You can get good at this, because how many times you click the receiver, the phone translates that number of clicks into a 1-9 number. So you can literally tap out a phone number if you know the proper number. Morris code for the phone!

There's a bunch of other phone hacks that you can research and look into, I suppose with the dying of payphones, these hacks really just aren't viable anymore, but I love the idea..
Some people say, why go through all that trouble just to save a few cents? To me, and I honestly can't speak for everyone else, its really about the fun, and interest in seeing how things work and play out. Phone lines, computers and cable lines have always fascinated me, so being able to play and tinker with this stuff is really my version of playing video games. Pure fun. In fact.. I've been thinking..would the boxing trick work on parking meters? I plan to find out later this week! I'll report back to you my news! Anyway, keep exploring guys.


PS: The photo is just a reminder of what pay phone's have become in the last 10 years...

Channelsurfing.net

A Quiet take down. Channelsurfing.net was a streaming video site that streamed out mostly sporting events. Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, even some TV shows. This domain was a pretty popular site maybe even more so than, Surfthechannel. It offered completely free streams of live events, that were intermittedly interuppted by ads. Giving the websites its income. According to the article below, it was among 10 other sites that were seized and promptely shut down, including firstrow.net. Did anyone here use this site? I can't imagine it will be down long though before another site comes and takes its place.. The Napster effect I say..

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/03/business/la-fi-superbowl-stream-shutdown-20110203

Douglas Ruskoff "...The Internet is Entirely Controlled By Central Authorities"

If you haven't heard of Douglas Rushkoff, I suggest you check out his philosophy, writings, and lectures. His book "Cyberia: Life in the trenches of Hyperspace" is what turned me onto Computer Science, philosophy, media theory, and human interaction with technology. Rushkoff has raised a very interesting and very valid point about the internet as we know it. I mentioned this in my earlier post about the Egyptian revolution. Rushkoff, says that while we think our bottom up internet is free now, due to expressive sites like Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, in reality, we are still under the careful eye of any ISP and in turn, the government. We can have all the freedom to post anything on Youtube, but if someone picks up the phone and tells Verizon to bring the internet down with a click of a button, then yea, we're not really so free.
I mean I don't think we'd ever see such a mass shut down on the scale of Egypt's..but even when the Wikileaks site was shut off, here in the US, I'm sure it wasn't the first time, a site has been shut down, but it was the first one that recieved public attention


"Isn't it good to have a circuit breaker somewhere? A trusted authority in charge who can prevent people from saying the wrong things to each other? Perhaps.
But if we believe our society is capable of engaging in the democratic process, we must trust its people to share their thoughts and ideas -- their words -- directly with one another, no matter how threatening to those currently in power."

At the end of the article, Ruskoff mentions a new type of networking called Mesh Networking, which would tye wireless connections to each other. So I can broadcast my wifi signal and someone else can connect directly to it, rather than through an ISP.

Whoops, forgot to post this originally..check out the full CNN report:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/05/rushkoff.egypt.internet/index.html

The ipad Newspaper Vs. Print Media

Three updates in one day? This deals with what I believe just another nail in the coffin of print journalism. The ipad is going to be host for an exclusive and experimental newspapers called "The Daly". While a digital newspaper isn't new anymore, this one is designed to be used with the ipad interface in mind. Streaming videos, and 360 degree photo's, will accompany the articles. The magazine will be pretty cheap, only 14 cents per issue, because the paper will really have no major expenses such as printing and delivery. I'm pretty excited about this, I think we'll be witnessing the final death knells of large newspaper printing within the next 5 years. My local newspaper, The Star Ledger, has been getting smaller and smaller throughout the years. So what do you guys think? Will online journalism, be as prevalent and accepted as the formidable printed journals? I had the pleasure of going to New York City, early one morning, a few weeks ago, and A lot of people on the train, seem to be making use of ipads, on their morning commute rather than reading the 'ol grey and black newsprint.

Groundhogs Day

Happy Groundhogs Day everyone! And in celebration of one of the most looping movies ever, I make this post. The film Groundhogs Day, with Bill Murray, while a comedy, at its core has a pretty meaningful message. If you don't know, Bill Murray, is a news reporter, and you get the feeling that he's kind of a jerk. Ok..he's a big jerk. He gets caught up in the time loop that causes him to repeat the same day, groundhogs day, for weeks. He soon comes to enjoy his fate, but quickly realizes that his life won't move on... He tries to commit suicide multiple times, but to no effect, he just wakes up to the same loop. One of my favorite scenes, is that he befriends an elderly homeless man, and he takes him in, buys him hot soup, keeps him warm for the night, but he ends up dying anyway. So the next night, he goes back to the same homeless man (who's alive again, cause the days repeat) and tries to help him again, but he still ends up dying. The nurse who takes in the man's body, tells Bill Murray, "it was just his time to go." Anyway, if you haven't seen it, check for it on Tv today, I'm sure one of the stations will be running it. Its not the most thought provoking movie, but its nature with time, and repetition, almost required me to put up a post...

And the picture is another droste effect! Remember guys you can send in your own submissions for articles, pictures, and designs of your own artwork of loopy paradoxical structures and images! Damnthemachine09@aol.com

The Global Village

Is the Medium still the message Marshall? For those of you who haven't heard of Marshall Mcluhan, look him up, he's a really futurist, and really was the first to say, publiclly atleast, that we were heading toward becoming a 'global village'. In the 60's Mcluhan was a literary writer, and philosopher, and a communication theorist. He grew up when radio was first taking hold, and saw the invention of the TV, and even saw the beginings of the computer revolution. He really had a first hand look at these new devices for communication, shape and reorganize the way we talk, share, and store information.
What Mcluhan predicted would come about to change the landscape of the way we communicate forever. First, he really went out of his way to make the point that the new form of communication itself has a greater effect on us, than what the device actually provides.. For example, the effect the telephone has on us, is more important than messages passed back and forth through the wires. He means this to say that, the phone, makes communication quicker, and easier, and that's whats important, not that Jane say John flirting with Jessica at the park. This can still be applied today, in form of communication networks, like facebook and twitter. Because Facebook provides such an all inclusive way to know what you're friends are doing, this has many effects on our social lives, and the same with twitter. Its not an understatement, to say that these social devices can change the way we live. Instead of calling up Jane now, and planning to meet at Starbucks, we can talk to her in cyberspace, via Facebook. That, Mculhan feels, is whats important, in the invention of these communication tools.

Another idea that Mcluhan brought to light was the idea of something called the Global Village. And this idea is easy enough to understand. Marshall grew up in a time when the world was getting smaller. The telephone had recently come into play, then the radio, then Tv, then the computer. With each milestone, the world shrunk a little. People had to travel less to talk, and communicate. And what was even more intriguing, is that the effect of all this mass communication would lead to what his felt was a "tribal collective". Instead of the individual man, learning things for himself, and having knowledge for his own needs, people would be sharing information. It would be universal knowledge, literally. Once upon a time, things like computer repair work would have to be done by a professional. If something went wrong with your computer, unless you were a technician, you would take it to be fixed. Now with the internet and this mass availability of knowledge, there are many people who can find tutorials, and information to to the work themselves. Soon everyone will have knowledge on how to fix computers, or change your oil, or how to play piano, or network a system of computers. Mcluhan feels that this mass shared knowledge is turning the world from a group of individual thinkers, to a collected conciousness. It bringing the world together not so much in peace, but in shared information, such a small village... We would all be aware of what are neighbors are up to. While Marshall never really says rather he thinks this is a good idea or not, he believed that it was unimportant and that the evolution of technology would continue like a butterfly flapping its wings. Unavoidable.

Mcluhan who died in 1980, fell just shy of seeing the birth of the World Wide Web, which he predicted way back in 1962:
"The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind"

I think that says it all, he really foresaw what was coming down the tubes, and remember, its not what the internet gives us in knowledge, but rather what effect the web has on our social and everyday lives. Just as Gutenbergs, printing machine changed the way people receieved knowledge in the 1400's, Mcluhan knew that an interface such as the web would change how we research, development and communicate with information.

Check out this vid of Marshall Mculhan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDnPP6ntic&feature=related

Lights Out in Egypt

Or should it read internets out? In a mass silencing, the Eyptian government pull the proverbial plug on the entire country two days ago. In what seems to me as the biggest silencing in history. The pulling of the plug was a result of days of rioting and protesting about the current "president". Even cellphone service was sliced. The ISP's in Egypt all seemed to be strong armed by the government, into a mass denial of service act, of its public, in hopes to quell the resistance.
As I'm writing this Sunday morning, I'm unsure if their lines are back up, but the point is, something like this is pretty scary. While I can't see this happening here in the states, the recent, Wikileaks attack comes to mind. In which, the site Wikileaks has been removed from existence, because it said something out of line. Likewise, the country of Egypt shutting down their entire internet is an unfair move against its own people, and they have a right to be damn angry. As I said, I don't think the government would be foolish enough to attempt to bring down the entire internet. Too much rides on that data, the stock market would collapse like never before. Half the trading would be ended. That being said, there's nothing stopping them from blocking specific sites, as was the case with Wikileaks. I just don't think that such power should be used for sites and things that pose no harm. Obviously if we're talking about a site that deals with child pornography or something, yea to hell with it, but in this case I don't think its justified. I mean yes, no countries government wants its people up in arms but I think cutting off communication isn't the right way to get it done. It just seems like such a juvenile way of getting what you want.. If you won't do daddy says, I'm taking away your toys...

And today's picture is more of an optical illusion, but I like it just the same. Stare at it!!

No Angry Hang Ups

I was recently involved in a car accident ( my life is just going downhill this year). The front of my lancer is completely smashed in...I have to wait like 2 weeks for its repairs to be done.. And I have absolutely zero money to do this with... Anyway, I was on the phone with my insurance company and I was getting pretty worked up. It was mainly due to frustration, I was on my cell phone and at the apex of the argument, I was looking for the nice satisfying slam of the phone on the receiver. Its such a good feeling, getting into an shouting match with someone and you yell the last taunt, and slam the phone down, hanging up on them! A nice sense of accomplishment! You told them... they'll know in their minds that they were angrily hung up on. In the middle of the night they'll wake up with the sound of the audible click of the receiver, haunting them.. Anyway there I was on my cell, about to initiate the last word, when I realized there was no base for me to slam the phone down upon. An awkward second passed and I unceremoniously pressed the "end" button on my phone. Definitely anti climatic. No harsh slamming sound, no crunching of the receiver... It serves me right I suppose I was looking forward to that disconnect a little too much. I wanted make sure they knew I had hung up on them, that I had the last word and was punctuating it with my terminating of the call! Icing on the cake was them calling me back a few moments later saying, "I'm sorry sir, it looks like we lost connection...you were saying?"

Oh and in case your wondering, my computer gave me this cool screen when I tried to install a new graphics card. It takes more power to push the card, so my computer goes into this weird scramble mode when I run tasks with it installed, resulting in this blue screen. 'til next time guys.

The Looping, Cyclical Universe

My girlfriend, loves random tee shirts, with cool, hipsterish, designs, and she pointed me to this site called www.threadless.com which has art from anyone who wishes to submit it. So you can find a lot of cool, clever artwork here. Upon scanning the different prints I can to these loopy pictures that I really liked. I love the universe one, really metaphoric! Check out the site, they have some good stuff. I'm not much of a tee shirt wearer, but they have really nice stuff. Again, I didn't draw these, all respect to the original artists. What I like about this site though, is if you do find a picture you really like, you can buy a print of it to hang up. Anyway, I haven't posted up any looping and paradoxical structures in a while. So there!

Corporate Greed

Alright, so here's the thing. I've recently gotten a job at Staples, as I've made clear in my last few posts. I work as a part of the 'easy tech' crew. Meaning I help out with computer problems, tech advice, selling computers etc. The EasyTech group is basically Staple's version of Best Buy's "Geek Squad". I've worked here now for about 3 weeks, and I this is what I've learned. This is one greedy organization. Because I do believe in the freedom of information, I'll let you in on some of the polices of "Stjavascript:void(0)aples Customer Service". Honestly, 3 weeks, and I've seen the same pure greed, and dishonesty as I would at any wall street company. I'd like you all to be advised when going into stores like Staples, best buy, and other stores were they have commission sales. Don't let them fool you, there's a quota we have to make and if we don't make it, or if we're behind we're supposed to do everything possible to get customers to purchase stuff. So lets say, a woman comes in, looking for a laptop, we have to pick apart her words to give her 'suggestions' to buy things with her laptop. Basically her buying a 600-1200 dollar laptop isn't enough for these corporations, if you don't sell anything with it, they're not happy. This scene happened to me on Saturday night. A woman did come into the store and just wanted a laptop computer. I was the first to start helping her. I asked her a few questions to get a feel of what she wanted. We spent about 15 minutes shooting back and forth half joking, half talking seriously. But by the end of my time with her, she was in a good mood, and had settled on an HP Pavillion, with an AMD Atholon II Dual Core Not a bad computer, but nothing too fancy. Now that's when I would have mentioned some programs and a warranty, but if she didn't want it, I'd let it go and just keep her happy and send her on her way. My bosses weren't having that. They came up to me, pulled me aside, and starting ramming all this shit down her throat. Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Norton 360 Antivirus, In store service work, a laptop case, a mouse, screen protectors, usb flash drives, and external hard drive, and a warranty. All this shit they just barraged her with, her mood went from chipper to bored, and frustrated. They kept making up these fake scenario's into scaring people into buying stuff, and I hate it, it's really pathetic. When I'm talking with someone and they don't want these fake ass warranties that Staples dishes out, then I'm not going to keep pressuring them. As the poor woman was being harrassed by one of my co workers, my boss was chewing me out, telling me that you MUST sell attachments with computers. I looked at him and told him, that she didn't need any of it. I said, the most she'd need is an antivirus, she just wants the computer for light work use and internet usage. What he said next really cemented the deal that this company and its members are just uncaring greedy salesmen. No better than some sleazy cars salesmen. He told me that customers don't know what they want, and its my job to use that to make Staples and myself, money. Basically, take advantage of people who don't know computers, and use their money to line my and staples pockets. I refuse, and I'll be quiting asap. Another great example of this was when this older gentleman also wanted to purchase a computer. He too wanted just the desktop computer, and like the woman, was ready to walk out the door with it by itself. Like I said, that's frowned upon in this store. So my co workers actually had a group huddle, in the back room to see what we could toss at him, and get him to buy. In my mind I was praying he'd just tell them to shut up, and leave him alone. Be warned my dear readers, they don't care for you or your computer needs, all they want is a high quota cause that means we get a bonus at the end of the week on a paychecks.