Archive for December, 2007
Second Life – An Abstract Reality Linked to the Real World Economically
Dec 25th
Second Life is a virtual world. An electronic reality where land can be purchased, and economically profitable businesses can be created. The core aspects of a nation have been integrated into a web application to simulate the most intimate parts of a successful society. I wonder the limits of the concept, in that it appears to be highly enticing. Second Life combines what The Sims did for entertainment, and the potential for real capital gains. http://secondlife.com/
Monster – Useless for Entrepreneurs – Employers Want Drones
Dec 25th
My experience on Monster.com, and other internet based resume systems is that employers are looking for people with no brains. They want people that will do anything, and question nothing. They want drones. They want slaves. For $25,000 a year for an entry level position, getting someone coffee, or doing some rudimentary tasks. Speaking for all Engineering graduates of the past several years, we want to show employers how smart we are. We want to be professionals, and this is the very reason we became engineers. We do not want to be lackys, we want to express our business desires and concepts in an effort to better ourselves and achieve economic profit. Shouldn’t a company want its employees to express their ideas? Having more perspectives should promote better projects, and avoid errors; but when an entry level employee has a professional idea they are shot down being rejected prior or subsequent to the interview process. These are the jobs that are most available to recent Bachelors graduates. We have to submit our resumes via online systems, in such a fashion that they are compared to countless competing applicants. The market is saturated with more and more people and the selection process is becoming increasingly discriminatory. Overall my personal opinion that a Bachelors degree is completely useless if you have any desire to achieve something substantial with your life. You NEED a Masters, and likely a Phd. A BACHELORS IS USELESS and nobody will take you seriously as a professional. Nobody will listen to your ideas. Nobody will give you credit. All you will do, with a Bachelors degree, is SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK! In America you have to be privileged to be an Entrepreneur. You have to either have some sort of connection, or substantial financial resources. Otherwise having dreams of businesses, inventions, and services is a pipe dream.
VirtualBox – Seamless Mode With Windows and Linux Sharing Same Desktop
Dec 25th
VirtualBox seamless mode places the Windows taskbar above your Gnome or KDE taskbar. The Windows desktop is not displayed. When you open a Firefox or Internet Explorer web browser, from the Windows taskbar and save a file from a website, it will save to the Windows desktop. To compensate you can allow Windows to share the exact same desktop as your host Linux OS. You can save files from Windows web browsers directly to the shared Linux desktop. Essential this is taking seamless a step further!! First enable VirtualBox shared folder support for your desired guest OS. Make the shared folder either your Linux desktop directly, or simply your home directory. Then mount the shared folder in the guest OS:
net use x: vboxsvrDesktop
Then open regedit. Locate the key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerUser Shell Folders]
Change the desktop key to:
1) x: ; if you set the shared folder to be your Linux desktop folder
2) x:Desktop ; if you set the shared folder to be your Linux home folder
Now just reboot your Windows guest OS and observe the seamless consolidation of your Windows and Linux desktops!! This is one of my favorite Linux tweaks 
I now run the virtual server in headless mode. If your interested in my new desktop configuration you can see it in this post!! Its frikkin cool. On my system notice that a virtual server environment is running in the top right window. That is the actual server environment that is hosting this website.
Open Source Philosophy Versus Patents
Dec 21st
This concept breaks down into two distinct categories inherent in the title of this post: Patents Patents are a means of protecting intellectual property from competitive capitalization. Patents work extremely well in an already existing industry. Strategically a company can prevent competition for the time period allocated in the patent. The patent process is beyond the economic reach of most people; requiring $10,000 and up to achieve reasonable protection. Because of this the patent process is restricted somewhat, only achievable by the economically wealthy and the intellectually gifted (Law school is a lot to learn). Frankly I tried to write a patent once and the result were not positive. On a side note this is not the way it should be 
Open Source The most widely known open source project is Linux. All the source code is freely available making patent protection futile. Consider the open source concept in a newly born industry; one with no competition. Typically new products have their reliability questioned, but the existence of competition reaffirms the general public. As more and more Linux distributions become available the credibility of Linux improves. The success of each individual Linux distribution is tied directly to the success of of Linux itself, therefore it is in everyones best interest to cooperate toward a common goal. Thoughts I have considering two possibilities recently: 1) An already existing industry 2) A newly created industry In an already existing industry patent protection is the proper course of action. Capital resources are easily available, and most likely allocated extensively to intellectual property. This is the corporate way, and it works. But what about an industry that does not yet have a corporate powerhouse? An industry filled with a handful of small to medium sized companies. An industry built on open source information. Is the key to success competition? Will competition reaffirm credibility? Will a diverse availability of professionally manufactured products increase interest?  I assert that competition is the keystone to the creation of a new industry based on open source information.
Health Insurance – Car – Rent – Any Money Left Over?
Dec 21st
Does the cost of health care hurt? For a family of three is Port Washington NY it costs approximately $2,000 per month; and this is only reasonable coverage, not the premier package. I currently deliver pizza and can make $50-$75 per weekday, and sometimes over $100 on the weekends. On average this is $520 per week if I worked full time 10 hours per day. I find it quite disturbing that the sum of an entire month of full time work would completely go to health insurance for a family of three, with $80 dollars left for food, and rent. The numbers obviously do not crunch, and two family members would have to work full time to bring in even a modicum of income. The rent in Port Washington is around $1600 and up, therefore the income of the second family member would predominantly be consumed leaving $400 dollars. The job type is not pertinent, an income of $520 dollars per week is very very very much more than minimum wage, and its barely enough for two people to cover health insurance, and rent. What about car insurance? This can be over $100 per week, which would consume the remaining money left over after paying rent. To compensate an additional source of income is required; but working 10 hours a day, with a child, does not leave much extra time. Albeit with a lower income lower valued housing becomes quite appealing. Is this type of sacrifice the way it should be? Should people have to sacrifice a decent way of life just to have enough money for food and a modicum of luxury. There are financial circumstances that are logistically impossible to overcome; there are only so many hours in the day. There should be no doubt that this factor places millions of families in financial hardship, forcing them to struggle with the frustration of apparently receding life potential. The bottom line is simply. If your income is not greater than your expenses you are in a bad position. With todays ever increasing prices I see this being the case for the vast majority of people. What is the solution? While working 10 hours a day just to get by, how is there time for school? How is there money for school? It takes years to go to school; how can a family be maintained during this period? After school is finished there is no guarantee that it will provide financial benefit! Are there any guarantees in life? Frankly it appears that nothing is guaranteed, even with hard work!! It appears that it takes hard work just to get by. Then what provides success? If hard work is not enough nowadays, is it who you know? Is life supposed to be a delusional pursuit of the never achievable? If you acecpt the reality that success is well guarded it can get quite stressful. It is better to persist obliviously?
