Todd Swarthout just sent this interesting bit in, it looks Bloomberg News goofed a publication this morning when they accidentally sent the obituary for Steve Jobs (who is fine BTW) out to their external wire of subscribers (instead of to the internal wire only). The story was pulled 30 seconds later.

As it turns out, pre-writing obits for famous figure heads in the industry is a common thing, to get facts researched, checked out and into the story ahead of time just right so the story is ready to run immediately when a death is announced.

While I found this completely crazy given that there was nothing wrong with Jobs, I found that (I guess my head has been in the sand) that he had been battling pancreatic cancer 4 years ago, but recent observations about his weight (check out how skinny he looks in the picture above) suggest that it’s possible the cancer is back and the iconic Apple founder may be having a hard time with it.

If you are interested, you can read the 17-page obit over at Gawker’s site who grabbed a copy of it.

If Jobs is back in a battle with cancer we send him our best wishes and wish him a speedy recovery.

About a month ago I wrote a piece about “Chronic Underachievement” and yesterday the CEO of OpenRain wrote an article about “Handling Self Doubt” that touched on 3 excellent points I skipped over completely and still struggle with today, more specifically:

1. Criticism is a good thing (it means people care)
2. Self-Doubt can cause you to freeze in place… indefinitely
3. Chasing your dreams isn’t that risky

Realizing Your Dreams

With regard to Point #3, I think the assumption when you want to “chase your dreams” is that you have to completely turn your life on it’s head, quit everything you do (job, family, kids) and move to the moon without a space-suit… or at least it feels like that.

The reality of the issue as Preston points out in his post is that when you sit down to quantify:

1. How long you will need to try and make a go of your dream
2. The amount of lost wages during that time
3. The cost of living during that time
4. The cost of startup for your idea

It doesn’t come out to an insurmountable amount that may have otherwise thought. For example, say you have an average job and need a few months to see if your idea “Catches fire” or not, how much could that possible cost? A few thousand dollars? $10k at the most? As Preston has put it to me in the past:

What, your life-dreams aren’t worth $10k to you?

Damn, I had never sat down and thought of it that way… of course they are, it’s just that I have my mortgage and Timmy has piano lessons that are expensive and Margie wants to take that trip in October and… BZZZZTTT, wrong.

Fighting Self Doubt

See, and that leads me to Point #2, self-doubt can lock you up in the same spot for years and lead to complete inactivity almost without you knowing at times. What happens is that you conciously want to complete or execute a task, say “Get in Shape” or “Start a new Business”, but the self-doubt you have is harbored down in your sub-concious, keeping your legs from going anywhere. So all your day ends up looking like is:

• I want to start my own business…
• Oh it will never work, I don’t know what it takes
• I could just check out the library and read up on it
• Yea right, and then what, blow through all your savings and be poor?
• My parents might lend me money
• Great and then you’ll be in debt your whole life, idiot
• I guess I should just hope for that promotion at work…
• Good, that sounds safe

And next thing you know, it’s been 5 years, you are fatter than ever and have nothing to show for your time either at your company (the promotion never happened, or it was a hell of a lot less than you thought) and are no closer to starting your own business. You are completely frozen in place and don’t know why… it’s this ellusive “locked up” feeling, like a engine freezing up on you with no oil… that my friend is what chronic self-doubt feels like.

What Preston proposes you do to oil the gears and unlock yourself is action… any action, just some action. Even if that means “forget about starting your business, just check a damn business book out from the library”, you turn every insurmountable task into micro-tasks, things that are easy to complete, until you turn around 5 years down the road and… holy hell… you actually ended up starting your own business without realizing it because you completed so many micro-tasks, there was just a natural progression between Point A (complete lockup) and Point B (having your own business).

I can’t reiterate this enough, so I’m going to call this out explicitly for anyone that just self-doubted themselves while reading this paragraph on self-doubt:

The only way to combat chronic self-doubt, is action, even micro-actions.

Don’t read that last sentence and think “Yea but I can’t start my own company tomorrow”, I didn’t write that, that’s your self-doubt kicking in and making this task seem impossible, even before you tried to do anything at all.

Just complete some micro-ass task related to what your eventual goal is… hell, buy a domain name, that’s like $7 at GoDaddy. Then in a month, setup a retarded website… then a month later, go to Amazon and buy the highest-rated “how to start a business” book.

See these are all completely easy-to-do micro-tasks that you cannot excuse yourself out of doing, but they are all forcing you to walk closer towards your goal. And it’s spread out over months, so in years you will most likely have your business and it will be a hell of a lot easier than you thought.

Don’t Fear Criticism

Now that we have tackled Realizing your Dreams and Fighting Self Doubt, there is 1 thing left to tackle: criticism.

As Preston correctly pointed out, most people (especially go-getters and perfectionist folks that put themselves out there) fear criticism. Every time you do something, you are effectively standing in the center of a room and handing out “Feedback Forms” to friends, family and peers and asking for their feedback. The bigger idea you have that you try and execute, the more Feedback Forms you are handing out.

Want to take a big trip? Ok maybe just feedback from Family and a few Friends. Want to start your own bank? Friends, Family, customers, investors, school children and the lady down the street at the coffee shop will all have Feedback for you on that one.

The trick is realizing that criticism is good. Randy Pausch, the famous professor that gave his “Last Lecture” before dying of cancer said something that drives this point home so clearly that I want to share it: If you aren’t getting criticism, it means no one cares.

Consider how much worse that is than getting too much criticism (e.g. a lot of people care).

Now going back to our Feedback Form analogy, imagine you declare your idea to a room of people: “Ok, I’m going to start my own bakery!” and you walk around the room handing out Feedback Forms for everyone to fill out, and as you walk by people turn away, and back to what they were doing (e.g. newspaper, cell phone, laptop, etc.) and wave you off… none of them want a form, none of them care. You have to admit, this feels a lot shitter then everyone getting into a tizzy with suggestions about what you should do (good and bad) because they are so animated about it.

This is exactly why you shouldn’t fear criticism. Criticism is bred out of people essentially giving a damn. Some will have good suggestions that you should listen to, others will have rediculous suggestions and most will likely have criticisms that they want to shower you with because they don’t want you to succeed.

You have to realize that every time you succeed, you remind the people close to you that they could have done what you just did. If they are open-minded/supportive folks, it likely makes them happy to know they could do that. If they are closed-minded, selfish and scared, it most likely drives them nuts that you are succeeding at something and they will likely feed you negative feedback every step of the way to stop you or slow you down (So they don’t have to endure the constant reminded that they suck).

Please keep your eye out for this if you decide you want to tackle something, always keep an eye out for poisonous people, the worst part of it is that they could be someone really close to your (parent, spouse, child, etc.) and it may make you sick to your stomach to think that they don’t want you to succeed. The good news is that they are likely just scared, and with a little coaxing and motivation, they may happily join you in your endevor (so don’t loose too much hope, just be aware that those people are out there, and will come out of the wood work once you start progressing).

I am currently reading a book, How to Be a Complete and Utter Failure (that is excellent so far), that had a great quote in it, it was essentially: The more criticism you receive for an idea, the more you must push forward (because the idea is likely a good one).

That is paraphrasing, and common-sense needs to be applied (e.g. don’t try and open an brothel next to a church), but you get the idea. The criticisms, assuming they are sound, should actually be an indicator of if you are headed in the right direction or not, for whatever your goal is. This is an interesting perspective, no only should you not fear criticism, you should welcome it… you need it to direct you.

So next time someone tells you your idea is stupid, before punching them in the face, step back for a second and see if you can figure out if that criticism they just levelled against you actually provides any insight into how you should adjust your plans to execute more effectively… then punch them in the face

Conclusion

So in the span of 2000 or so words we have covered:

1. Chasing your dreams isn’t that risky
2. Self-Doubt can cause you to freeze in place… indefinitely
3. Criticism is a good thing (it means people care)

and I hope it helped. If you wanted a single take-away from this entire article, as a recommendation from me (some Joe-Schmoe that struggles with this every day), it would be to focus a lot of your energy on battling self-doubt through action.

If you can successfully battle your own inactivity by way of micro-actions (or actions if you are feeling pumped up), I think you will suddenly see a burst of 50%-75% more happiness out of your life. The chronic action will naturally lead you naturally through the other two points probably without you even knowing it.

For example, let’s say you want to get in shape but always talk yourself out of the gym, here’s a list of micro-action you could take that over time will lead you to success without you even realizing it:

• Go rake the lawn, do that yard work you ignore usually (20min of work? 40mins?)
• Go for a bike ride, but not for 10 miles, just bike around the neighborhood (5mins?)
• Walk down to that coffee shop down the street on a particularly nice day (10mins?)
• Take your dog for a walk around the neighborhood or down the street to that dog park you always drive by.
• Go wash your car outside by hand, and wax it
• Find a local community group that does the same favorite sport you had from when you were younger (NOTE: I actually did this a few years ago with Tennis, took me 10 years of inactivity and self-doubt to finally do it, but I did, and I love it — NOTE: I’m not freaking kidding, it took me 10 years to get up the gusto to find a local group to join)
• Go to the gym, BUT just do 10mins of cardio and leave (prove to yourself that it’s easy)

NOTE: The trick to making these all work is knowing that just because you do that 1 thing, you aren’t comitting to doing that same thing every day. Don’t self-doubt yourself into thinking: Oh, if I go on this bike ride, that means EVERY DAY at 5pm I have to do a 5mile bike ride. Who the hell said that? No one, and it’s just your sub-concious trying to head-fake you out of the game… don’t listen to it, go for the bike ride and just ignore it.

I think most of all, you will be amazed how short the distance between “Failure” and “Success” is once you start trying. Once you find your pace and motivation, you will likely have the thought of “Well shit, this was a lot easier than I thought” atleast once.

Life is easy to enjoy, so enjoy it!

(Click here to start enjoying life if you need help)

Volume 134, Issue 3 of Cell Magazine (from Science Driect) published an article titled: AMPK and PPAR? Agonists Are Exercise Mimetics.

I had no idea what that title meant, but thankfully Paige Waehner did over on About.com with her article “Excercise in a Pill“. It seems that this pill stimulates the same response in the body that long sessions of endurance exercise would allowing the person taking it to improve their endurance and ability to perform physical feats over time.

Too good to be true? It has to be…

We covered something like this about a year ago where scientists found that messing with certain proteins (myostatin) in mice resulted in massive passive muscle growth.

Those same scientists out of Johns Hopkins have found that in addition to blocking myostatin, if they cause the over-production of the protein follistatin the muscle growth in those same mice almost doubles again.

While these findings are certainly fascinating from a scientific point of view, most folks initial reaction (mine included) has been: “Hey cool, I never have to work out again and can look great”, which I don’t think is entirely true.

Something that Paige’s article touched on that many people don’t think about when they want to get in shape are all the ancillary benefits of exercise that aren’t addressed by simply dropping weight or getting huge muscles, things like:

• Psychological benefits: Both the endorphins for a generally better and more stabilized mood but also the self-satisfaction and confidence that comes from working out and achieving a goal. This may sound “fuzzy” or “floaty” but if you have ever known someone who had no ambition or accomplishments in their life, you’ll know why this is important.
• Passive physical benefits: Strong joints, denser bones, strong tendons, stronger organs and a more optimized physical response to intense exertion that your body learns over time (e.g. burning up glycogen stores faster for energy, sweating and stabilizing your body’s rhythm faster and recovering faster).
• Unknown benefits: You know they are there, but we just don’t know about them yet. Things like cell-wall density, cell resilience, red blood cell count, infection-fighting response time and strength, clear brain function as your body can better optimize sugars, etc. etc.

I’ve always been a big believer in “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is”. You can see it everywhere, every time a new miracle drug is announced or some miracle product, there is always some sort of catch.

I think messing with 100s of thousands of years of evolution (or “intelligent design” if your parents are cousins) with the short-sighted goal of having huge muscles while not considering the uncountable side-effects that either that or exercise have on your body is not a smart choice.

Even if this pill comes out at some point, I assure you… there will be side effects and it won’t replacement working out.

“Clear” is a fast-pass-esque air-travel system run by a 3rd party company that allows passengers to pay $100/year to pre-register all their humanly personal information in exchange for what amounts to a “fast pass through security” card seen on the left.

The only down-side is what happens when all that insane amount of personal information is stolen? Those people, that are paying $100/year to run through security, suddenly become prime targets for identity theft and if anything else, should now be under more scrutiny than normal passengers in the airport.

About a week ago a laptop containing all the registered participant’s information in unencrypted format was stolen from San Francisco International Airport. It seems that all 33,000 of the registered users using the Clear system (and paying their $100/year fee) are now prime candidates for identity theft and will likely put on a watch-list of some kind by the TSA to keep an eye on those identities to see if they are every compromised.

How beautiful is that? A system who’s sole purpose is to remove the retardation that the government created in response to all the non-terrorism we were having, will nowl likely find themselves on a semi-terror watch list of some kind?

Thanks Slashdot!

Grant Gochnauer sends in news that the Beijing Olympic Committee is putting the kibosh on any attendees bringing “professional camera equipment” into the games unless they have a Press pass to do so.

The real sticking point is that what constitutes “professional camera equipment” hasn’t been spelled out anywhere… the assumption up to this point is that they mean DSLRs and massive lenses. But what about some higher-end point-and-shoots that look like DSLRs or offer lens attachments? I have to guess these are going to get nixed as well.

This move doesn’t seem too surprising as broadcast companies bid millions to get rights to cover the Olympics, it doesn’t help them if Joe-Average-User is shooting high-def material that is on-par or better and posting it to SmugMug or YouTube for everyone to enjoy (as opposed to watching their broadcast station in HD).

Just the man sticking it to competition cause they can I guess.

Thanks CNET!

For the investors or financial bloggers in the group this is some really hot news. It looks like wikinvest has launched new support for embeddable and interactive stock charts that are also annotable.

For example (click and drag around this thing):

You can check out the main chart page for Google here.

It’s a really nice touch with the same approach to video as YouTube (accessible/embeddable to all, no barriers to entry) and will certain augment a lot of the financial writing out there for bloggers as well as news outlets that want to make use of or contribute to the information on the charts (annotations) in a Wiki-based fashion.

You know who you are… and you can just go straight to hell.

The different between a parent that stays home and misses movies, or gets a sitter and goes to one every few months versus the one that drags their infant, stroller and all, into an R-Rated movie on opening weekend is that one parent wanted to have children and the other parent didn’t and doesn’t like all the things he/she had to give up for it.

If you disagree with this, then chances are you are one of these parents or you are just so goddamn dumb you don’t realize that the 100 other people trying to watch a movie don’t want to listen to your little diarrhea-factory cry and burn up the $20 in tickets we just spent.

Besides ruining everyone’s shit, how does bringing your infant to an R-rated movie (on opening weekend) help anybody? We all know they are going to cry at least once and at most 27 times; it’s going to piss absolutely everyone off in the theater; the theater is cold with giant/scary sounds so the baby doesn’t like it; and it makes everyone hate you by the end of the movie.

How is this different than just hanging out at a swanky bar with your friends with your kid in a stroller? That’s classy… let’s do this, why don’t you go shopping at Wal-Mart and let me know if the mullet-accessories isle is having a 50% off sale on Tuesday. Then you and I can hang out, pound back a few brewskies and marry our cousins; it’ll be awesome.

My car’s in the shop, so let’s take your truck, you know, the one with all the “Amuricah Will Kick Your Ass!” stickers on it and a skull and crossbones decal on the rear window… undoubtedbly because you saw Pirates of the Carribean and liked it so much.

Thanks Up My Own Ass!

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to take a look at a phenomenon I saw in my life and I think some of you might see in yours: chronic almost-achievement.

The ability to give every task 95%, but avoid giving anything 100% like the plague for fear of failure and self-disappointment.

Outline

• What’s a 95%-er?
• Why is 95% Bad?
• Why Do People Do It?
• Am I an Almost-Achiever?
• How Do I Stop Almost-Achieving?
• Why Should I Listen to You?

What’s a 95%-er?

I had a disturbing revelation over the last while that came to a head when I was watching The Hammer. The premise of the movie is that a washed up ex-champion boxer gets a second chance, at 40, to fight in the Olympics because of his natural boxing talent.

There is a part about 1/2 way through the movie where Jerry (Adam Carolla) is talking with the team coach and the coach says:

I’ve seen guys like you before; you’re a 95%-er. You never give 100%.

… and for some reason that resonated with me big time.

In each activity I do now, I can’t help but have that sentence go through my head: “Am I giving this 100% right now?” and that simple assessment, multiple times throughout the day has changed my approach to a surprising number of things.

One of the biggest changes I noticed is my overall level of happiness and satisfaction is much higher, which seems strange even though it’s only a 5% difference in effort… there is a satisfaction that I did my best and succeeded.

Why is 95% Bad?

95% is almost 100%, right? Why is that so bad?

Looking at my own life, I would have to say it’s bad because it creates a mode of living that is equatable to being in cruise-control.

You are good enough at most things but excellent at nothing. You rarely have to bust your ass at something, and when you do, it’s a lot harder than you thought it would be, further discouraging you from doing it again.

Another comparison would be to your fitness level. Let’s say at some point in your life you were in really excellent shape for an extended period of time. Let’s say you are getting older now and still hold on to your hay-days in your head when you are watching other people do things that are physical and think to yourself:

I could do that no problem! OR I used to do that all the time, no problem!

The problem is that as the years pass and you get in worse and worse shape, you hold on to the belief that you could, if you had to, still do all those things. At some point you create such a strong association between your self-worth and being able to perform whatever task it is that you believe you still can (e.g. lifting heavy weights, running fast, swimming fast, gymnastics, etc.) that your subconscious exists only to maintain that association you have hammered into your psyche.

In order to maintain that reality, you avoid the task you think you can still do at all costs to avoid facing the possible reality that you cannot still perform it. Or you may not avoid the task entirely, but when you do involve yourself with it you do it half-assed. In no time at all you are doing everything at 95%.

An example of this might be avoiding joining a running club because you used to be an amazing runner but now you just jog and you’d rather not find out that you aren’t as fast as you thought you were. Or maybe when you play sports you avoid scenarios where you will have to go full-out and instead schluff the point and let the other team score.

I think once you start down that path, as you get older 95% turns into 85% and the 75% and so on; until you get to the point where you loath yourself and can’t quite pin-point why. You just know you hate yourself and it manifests itself in a bunch of bad ways, e.g. bad habits, drinking, over-eating, cursing, anger, violence,etc.

Why Do People Do It?

Fear of failure; ultimately the fear that if they gave it 100% and still failed, that they do suck and they just confirmed that they sucked by failing at that task. Even more than that, the fear that they can’t be better, even if they wanted to and that their 100% just isn’t good enough.

Some people do it to shirk responsibility. If they never give something 100%, then when they fail it’s not their fault, cause they weren’t “really trying that hard”. This can be another form of masking fear-of-failure though.

I have a fortune from a fortune-cookie taped to my monitor that I got one night after Chinese food that reads:

Not having a goal is much scarier than not reaching one.

That is there to remind me at all times to not give up hope if things seem like they aren’t all a giant ball of success and just to make sure I have a goal and working towards it no matter how mad, tired or pissed off I am.

Sometimes life is full of success… everything is working out, I’m firing on all cylinders and nothing could make it better; those are easy times to get through. It’s the times where things seem shitty, you are stressed out and just want to punch a kitten that you have to hang in there, and drag yourself through towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Things will always get good again for people willing to do that.

It is worse not to have a goal and not be working towards anything.

Am I an Almost-Achiever?

I think you can probably answer this one on your own… things I would suggest looking for are:

• A constant nagging sense that you could have done better at tasks you complete.
  • Ex: If I had started earlier, I could have done a better job on that report.
  • Ex: If I had made more time to plan, this trip would have been better.
  • Ex: If I had practiced 1 more week, my tennis/golf game could have been so much better.
  • Ex: If I had just focused more I would have lost more weight.
• A nagging or subtle feeling of knowing you could of done better at something, but for some reason you didn’t.
  • Ex: I know I could have beat John at racket ball… how does he keep beating me?
  • Ex: I know I could have given a better motivational talk to the group, why was I so scatter-brained?
• You are a great starter but a terrible finisher
  • Ex: You start projects all the time, but rarely finish them, or half-finish them.
  • Ex: You have no problem promising things to people, but rarely deliver.
• You are never completely happy with your own efforts completing things.
• You are frustrated with yourself often about things you should be doing, but aren’t for some reason.
  • Ex: I should be at the gym right now.
  • Ex: I should be studying for that exam.
  • Ex: I should call the guys and schedule a night out for fun so we can all get together.

The theme here is that you are most likely aware of frustrations you have with yourself regarding how you execute tasks.

How Do I Stop Almost-Achieving?

You just stop. Seriously.

It’s a conscious decision, don’t be scared of it, it feels good, even when you fail.

You just decide that you are done half-assing things. Next time you are playing a sport or working on something, think to yourself:

Am I giving this 100%?

You’ll know the answer right away. If you have that ball of guilt start to build up in your stomach, then you aren’t.

If you aren’t, then start. You’d be surprised how small the distance (in units of effort) between 95% and 100% are. You’d be surprised how little it takes to go from hating yourself to being genuinly impressed with your efforts. You’d be surprised how good it can feel to succeed, but also fail, once you know you are giving it 100% and can always work to improve and get past failure.

An example of this that happened just now is that I thought I was done with this post, so I was about to hit the Publish button then had the following dialog with myself in about 3 seconds:

• 100% Me: I should proof-read this… I’m not that good of a writer.
• 95% Me: Uggg, it’s good enough, just publish it, let’s go to bed… I’m tired.
• 100% Me: How ironic that I’m trying to cut-corners writing a “don’t cut corners post”… I have to proof this.
• 95% Me: Ok but skip the first 4 paragraphs, they were pretty good, no need to re-read them.
• 100% Me: Shut up, we are proofing the entire thing.

This happens all the time, every day to me. It’s not like my 95%-side disappeared, I’m just more aware of exactly what it is, what it wants and how I can combat it.

Why Should I Listen to You?

You don’t have to, you could your browser right now and ignore everything I wrote.

I really hope you don’t though…

If you got down to this section I have to imagine something written above resonated with you? Maybe you have been here too and have tips of your own that helped you? Maybe there is something I missed that is a big culprit for causing Almost-Achiever-Syndrome?

I’m just excited about a near leaf I’ve turned over and wanted to share it with folks if it helps. I feel like this has been the source of so much frustration and annoyance in my life since god-knows-how-long and now that I’m finally aware of it, and actively trying to change it things have been noticably more enjoyable for me. I hope they can be for you as well.

I would love to hear any comments, feedback, etc. on the topic. I know there are people out there, reading this, that are smarter and more qualified than I am that might have some excellent tips or comments to share.

Update #1: If you enjoyed this article, you might also check out Handling Self Doubt and Battling Inactivity.

Konami, creators of Dance Dance Revolution, Karaoke Revolution and Drum Mania rhythm games (and the Metal Gear Solid series), sued Viacom/Harmonix, creators of Rock Band, for patent infringement (this patent). Viacom/Harmonix claim they are doing nothing wrong and have their own patent to prove it.

Any guesses as to what this means for Rock Band 2? Probably nothing; The lawsuit was filed now to screw Viacom/Harmonix as much as possible (with Rock Band 2 planned for September) and I’ve never, in the history of the human and dinosaur world, seen one of these strong-arm lawsuits ever stop a new product from getting released.

Doesn’t someone sue Apple almost every time they are about to release a new product? Yea, so those are super-effective.

Thanks VE3D!

Did you see the above picture yesterday or did a friend forward it to you? I got it in my inbox and over IM a few times and it looks like it’s made it’s rounds online:

We better be scared right? A story with the word “Iran” in it, and then the associated picture. If I was more inbred or incapable of basic though, I’d say that the Washington propoganda machine is working on selling an Iran-attack. I can’t help but think that this has happened before… oh right, THAT.

Unfortunately for Washington, but fortunately for man kind, the White House doesn’t seem able to hire very good graphic artists as it was uncovered a few hours later that the photo has quite a few inconsistencies in it, namely:

So what’s the deal? Here’s my take on it:

• McCain has already been chosen to win
  • NOTE: For folks that are enraged that I might suggest candidates are chosen well in advance… just consider that when the “right”, most interest-friendly candidate is chose, there are trillions of dollars made by these interests collectively. Profit like that isn’t left up to chance and some crossed fingers.
• Start selling the Iran war now, let Bush and Cheney “get out” so they seem disconnected from the whole thing.
• McCain makes the “decision” to go after Iran when he enters office
• Everyone pats each other on the back for a job well done
• We get another 8 years of McCain, war and the continued explosion of the military-industrial complex

I know, I’m a leftie, freak, idiot, fuck-brains… but let’s wait until November before we decide that officially and I get shirts printed and redact my statement. I also wouldn’t mind all the circumstantial evidence suggesting I’m right.

Update #1: Maclean’s.ca Blog has an update to the story. Apparently the photoshoping was done to cover up failed missle launches in the array and the US’s official response was along the lines of Typical of Iran to act tougher than they are.

With the amount of powerful opposition against Iran, is anyone else curious why they would be puffing-up like this assuming it was true? They may hate America, fine, but they aren’t mentally handicap…

Update #2: Ok to lighten the mood a bit, this found it’s way into my inbox, figured I’d share:

They say that the chain is only as strong as the weakest link… unfortunately for you, if that weakest link is a retarded Customer Service Rep at Apple and he’s reading an email that says:

am forget my password of mac,did you give me password on new email marko.[redacted]@yahoo.com

And decides “Heck, I should probably email this random person that account’s password and be done with it”, you are in a world of hurt.

Did I mention that this is exactly what happened to Marko Karppinen?

The worst part is that I don’t think this is that far out there… I think most Customer Service Reps that work at these CS Centers are so under educated about security that they think they are helping… like calling AOL and telling them “your internet is full!”, they just want to help.

Unfortunately for Marko this means that whoever got access to his account also has access to:

• Personal details
• Personal email
• All the files stored on my iDisk
• Everything I’ve synchronized to .Mac, including my Address Book, Bookmarks, Keychain items, etc.
• My credit card details as stored in my Apple Store profile
• My iTunes Music Store Account
• My ADC Premier membership, including the software seed key and other assets
• The iPhone Developer Program’s Program Portal, including details of our development team

That’s just insane… this is certainly the downside to the “sync everything to a central account” approach that Mac provides… when things fall apart, they fall apart hard. What if that person farmed his address book, email and erased (or copied) his iDisk before logging off? Well that sure sucks, but Apple isn’t going to help Marko out here, how could they?

Besides changing his password and watching his account like a damn hawk, I doubt there is much else Marko can do.

Good luck buddy, I hope nothing bad happens.

The Washington Times is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expressed “great interest” in a “safety bracelet” that all air-travelers would be forced to wear if implemented.

This information was from a promotional video (Link Dead, they have removed the movie after all the attention it got) over at the Lamperd Less Lethal website.

The “ID Bracelet” would of course replace a boarding pass, because with every new good invasive technology that has to further degrade our privacy, there has to be an element of convenience associated with it to get us to adopt it.

Naturally, I’m sure down the road as people stop rejecting the technology, an option will become available to permanently purchase the bracelet and take it home with you. $100 says that somewhere in that multi-page contract you sign to take it home, it will say something to the effect that you agree to be monitored at all times by taking this device home.

The way the bracelet works is:

• Contains a GPS transmitter so individuals can be tracked at all times
• Contains a chip flashed with the individual’s complete personal information
• Contains a shocking element that can be remotely triggered to disable the wearer, just like being Tasered can do.

This isn’t the disturbing part, the disturbing part is that the DHS is actively interested in deploying this technology according to a letter from DHS Official Paul S. Ruwaldt. He was quoted as saying:

To make it clear, we [the federal government] are interested in…the immobilizing security bracelet, and look forward to receiving a written proposal.

Just to clarify, this is not a pure hypothetical what-if, the DHS is looking to get some quotes for this and are already sold on the idea.

When you consider how ridiculous air-travel has become and look at the number of actual incidents that have been stopped by all this bullshit “security” compared to all the mistakes, it’s unfortunate that the solution, from the government’s perspective, is to raise that bar higher and higher until privacy is a thing of the past. Only that will keep us safe… safe from what I’m not sure; safe from each other I suppose… or ourselves.

Apparently waiting in 2hr long lines and rarely there being incidents at airports is just too risky, we need to lock down on the already non-existent terrorism problem in US airports even further.

My gut-reaction is that making air-travel a nightmare was intentional. After a decade of that and then having someone say to you “You can buy this ID bracelet and walk right through the terminal without waiting in line”, you would of course jump on the opportunity now and happily oblige. No need to up-sell you on the benefits of wearing a remotely activated Taser device.

I feel bad for our government when they view the citizens of the country they preside over as a security liability and nothing more. I can’t wait until it’s declared that with your driver’s license, you now get the option of an embedded chip that can be used as a boarding pass… I’m expecting to see that in 2020.

By 2050 we should be pretty much fucked.

Thanks The Washington Times!

With gas prices around $4/gallon and budgets everywhere getting crunched with higher costs of… everything, states are struggling to figure out how to lower costs and try and accomodate greener practices.

After a year-long study, Utah has announced this week that it will be moving to a 4-day (Monday through Thursday), 10hr/day work week.

The announcement will effect 17,000 of the 24,000 government workers in Utah and save the government a ballpark of around $4 million/year in lessened energy expenditures (electricity for lighting and AC as well as reimbursed fuel expenses).

The hidden benefits here are the boost in moral due to the 3-day weekends ever week, a boost in the local economy as locals go out on Friday to enjoy the city, hang out or golf and another potential side-benefit is the attraction of younger workers to the government workforce for the promise of a 3-day weekend.

There are a few challenges to get around, first being adjustments in the bus and child-care schedules that will need to move around to accomodate the new working schedules but spirits seem to be high around the change.

Good luck to you guys in Utah, this sounds really cool!

Was browsing through Slashdot today and saw two interesting articles. It looks like nations, naturally under the guidence of the RIAA/MPAA and similar groups, are beginning to move ‘anti-piracy’ legislation forward.

The first part of the problem is to give ISPs complete amnesty from pirated material, which will protect them from litigation and give them an “all clear” to begin monitoring their traffic like crazy as compensation for the amnesty.

This is going to get discussed at the G8 Summit as nations and nation-wide ISPs begin to collaborate on filtering, monitoring and data mining of user’s traffic.

Then we have a story that ISPs will be tasked up with the responsibility of copyright enforcement as they monitor traffic travelling over their wires. The days of ISPs simply providing a service and nothing more are eroding away to some singular global monitoring entity. The writing is on the wall that at some point the unification of corporate giants and monitoring tools integrated with government programs will give us one giant, unified and completely monitored network that is mined every nano-second of every moment.

If it hasn’t happened already, I’m sure some AI-driven intelligence databases know more about your profile, likes/dislikes and habits than you are actually aware of yourself. Might be interesting to get a peek at this information and see if I have a chronically bad habit of looking up funny cat pictures or not

BONUS: As the bullshit-bonus story of the day a lawsuit filed against YouTube by Viacom and enforced by a judge’s ruling will force YouTube to give Viacom a complete log of every video, every user has ever watched. Besides the absolutely rediculous volume of that data, what in God’s name does Viacom even plan on doing with it?

I think it will be a year before they have the capacity to even process it correctly and from there then what… more RIAA-lawsuit mining? They just hunt though the trillions of access records looking for every person that ever watched a Viacom-copywritten piece of material, find their IP, and issue a lawsuit against them?

Brilliant… I guess if it’s failing for the RIAA, why not try it again… and see if it works that time.

I do like that these actions are making most people hate media and take a more appropriate approach to it than an addictive “must have” attitude that these entities want us to have. I can hum pretty damn good… I don’t need music on my iPod!

We normally don’t cover a lot of product announcements here but from time to time there will be something interesting that pops across our desks that we want to share.

Uniross, rechargable technology company, issued a press release for a few new products 1 of which is a solar-powered battery recharger… how cool is that? So you are at the beach and burn through your batteries, don’t worry about pitching them, grab your solar recharger and pop them in there, go swimming and bam, they are charged back up… and you didn’t have to throw out any batteries into any land fills.

I really like the new green technologies that I’m seeing trickle out now as well as the general interest levels in them by folks, I have high hopes for this tech cleaning things up a bit.

Full announcement after the jump:

Ditch The Disposable Lifestyle With Uniross

New Product Range Includes Solar and Wind Chargers

Uniross has just announced the launch of a new range of eco-friendly battery chargers. With gadgets an everyday part of people’s lives, an unfortunate side effect is that 660 million batteries end up in landfill sites every year. Our increasing reliance on portable power means the last thing you want to worry about is carrying spare batteries, so Uniross is making battery charging a way of life with a new range that allows you to recharge your batteries anytime, anywhere.

If you’re in a hurry, use the new 15 minute charger at home to save time and the environment. Or, if you’re lying on the beach, you can recharge your batteries with the new Uniross Solar Charger. Never again be caught short on a long train ride with no power and an MP3 player of songs; simply plug in the new Uniross Pod portable power pack…and why take a separate alarm clock on your travels when Uniross now has a charger that incorporates a travel clock?

“Our customers have told us they want to recharge batteries wherever they are - with convenience and simplicity the key,” said Mike Doole, Managing Director of Uniross. “Ultimately we want people to ditch their disposable lifestyles so we hope the new additions to our range inspire people to do exactly that.”

Uniross is the only battery brand endorsed by the WWF. “Throwing away batteries wastes precious resources and adds to environmental pollution,” said Colin Butfield, Head of Campaigns at WWF-UK. “Recharging is a simple way people can reduce their impact on the environment, which is a key aim of WWF’s One Planet Future campaign. Even better, a charger that uses the ultimate renewable energy source - the sun - means you can recharge whilst you’re on the move.”

With Uniross’ multiusage range, incorporating Hybrio technology you can now use the batteries straight out of the packet because they are pre charged. So they’re as convenient as a disposable battery, but when they run out you can just recharge them again and again … up to 1,000 times!

The new additions to the Uniross range are:

- Solar Charger
With USB adaptor
RRP £39.99

- 15 Minute Charger
For a faster charge: charges any battery in less than 15 minutes
RRP £34,99

- NOMAD Charger
Your portable power hub: with USB adaptor
RRP £19.99

- Wind Charger
Wind powered portable power with bike mount, integrated Li-Ion battery with
USB output and phone and game connectors
RRP £49.99

- Travel Clock Charger
Charges any battery in less than 3 hours, while you sleep
RRP £29.99

- Universal Chargers (2 models)
1.  Charges between 1 and 4 AA / AAA / C / D batteries
>From £10.99
2.  Premium: Charges any RECHARGEABLE battery in less than 3 hours
RRP £29.99

The new range of Uniross chargers is available from August from good electrical, department, supermarket and hardware stores and internet retailers.

The Antro Solo, pictured above, is a Solar-Gas-Electric and “Human” powered hybrid vehicles that came out of design shops in Hungary. The car is designed to go 150mpg and is planned to enter the market in 2012 at a $20,000 price point.

The entire car, chasis made out of carbon fiber, weighs less than 600lbs but can still reach a top speed of 90mph. The entire top of the car is covered in solar panels used to charge the car during short 10-15mile trips, but the car also offers stored battery-power for rainy days as well and as a last-ditch emergency effort, both driver and passenger seats come with pedals that can be used to charge the car’s battery if you are caught in a tight spot.

If you have gas though and don’t want to pedal to power the car (you know the American version will never have pedals… yay-fattest-nation-ever) the car does have a small combustion engine that can be run off of Ethanol or standard gas to power it as well.

What is pictured above is the running prototype that they hope to get into mass production by 2012.

Bring on the new tech!

Thanks TG Daily!

Quick “interesting news” post, scientists have found that the “wisdom of crowds” effect that is so commonly referenced with Web 2.0/social networking sites actually exists within each of us (assuming you are atleast of average intelligence).

More specifically, if you take a crowd of people and ask them a question, the average of the answers is typically correct (example given was “guessing jelly beans in a jar”). That sounds pretty cool, and as an individual you might feel defeated or dumber without the crowd… what researchers found though is that if a single person is given time to guess multiple times, the average of their multiple answers are typically just as accurate.

a) that is badass, cause now I’m not as dumb as I thought

b) I guess from now on I need to make decisions by giving multiple answers over the period of a few minutes… “Do you want to go to dinner?” “Yes… no… yes yes… no… yes…. ok let’s go”

c) I wonder what this means for Web 2.0/social networking sites?

Thanks The Economist!

Imagine you are sitting on a park bench, in the middle of the day and a stranger sits down next to you. He then turns to you and says:

You have 24hrs to take control of your life, or you will die.

What do you do? What does that phrase, “take control of your life”, mean to you?

I welcome anyone that wants to share, but more than anything, I just want you guys to mull this one over in your heads. You might be surprised as to what surfaces when you think about “taking control of your life” under pressure like that.

For the business folks in the ground, a recent Harvard study has come out that is declaring the much-referenced Long Tail Theory is infact false, and in most markets the “long tail” is not profitable after all or has very little room to profit from, where as attacking the “big hits” are much more profitable and, interestingly enough, seem to provide more satisfaction to consumers.

For the folks that aren’t familiar with the Long Tail Theory and want it explained to them by someone who can barely read his own name, I believe the gist is something like this:

Considering the graph above, and using some category of product like music, we could say that big hits are hugely popular and make record companies a lot of money. The Long Tail Theory argues that there is so much volume still available in the tail (off to the right) that money can be made if you can cover the breadth of it… so instead of worrying about producing/selling hits, maybe you could just produce and/or sell all the more obscure music that people will want, and have a really thorough collection of it.

And what this Harvard study is saying is “no-way-jose”, there is little to no money to be had in the tail portion of an industry and that if you aren’t producing/selling hits, you need to move on.

Thoughts?

Thanks Slashdot!

News is trickling out that scientists believe the North Pole will be completely ice-free (melted) by September… and not September 2050… or September 2020… they mean this freaking year.

Can someone fill me in when this happened? I know global warming is just a hoax, George Bush told me, but when did we manage to melt our ice caps… that seems like a pretty important thing to not try and melt.

CNN details the implications of the North Pole melting, and I’ll send along a picture of myself hiding under my desk with a 5-gallon jug of water later… maybe a short How-To on “How to survive Hell melting our polar ice caps… oh yea and I’ll see you there”

So I guess skiing will become a luxury sport here in about 5 years… California will sink into the ocean, Arizona will become a beachy oasis and Florida will become a string of islands… and Manhattan… well we know what happens to Manhattan.

Thanks Slashdot!

Summary [8 out of 10]

At $99, the Brookstone Tranquil Moments Sound Therapy Machine is a safe buy for anyone that is entertaining the idea of a sound therapy (aka “dream machine”) device. While the build and sound quality at it’s price could be better, for some reason… it just works, and that is all the proof we needed.

NOTE: In the image above, the iPhone is just shown for size-comparison differences.

Background

I am actually a pretty good sleeper, but I take too long to go to sleep some nights. Over the last few months my stress levels have been increasing so my tendency to roll back and forth in bed and not get to nice sound sleep was increasing. Not being a big fan of chemicals I wanted to try and find something more natural to get to sleep faster (even avoiding Melatonin if I could).

That is when I started searching for what I thought was a Bose “Dream Machine”… either they have been discontinued or they never existed, because I didn’t find any such device.

NOTE: Am I going crazy, or have any of you heard of the Bose Dream Machine as well?

Anyway, the area of sound therapy devices is very scarce and honestly the highest rated one I could find was the Brookstone Tranquil Moments Sound Therapy Machine (whew… long name).

I ordered it, we got it and have had it for about 3 weeks now. Below is my review of the device so far, please as any other questions you have and I’ll try and address them.

Review

Below is a bulleted list review in Pro/Con style to make it easier to browse and digest.

Pros

• Really seems to work… I don’t know how, but those relatively low-quality sounds have some property to them that my brain just drifts away to sleep pretty quickly.
  • NOTE: The device does say the sounds were developed at some sound institute, so I would lean towards agreeing that there is probably science behind these tones.
• Has a 30-min, 60-min and 90-min timer mode for night use (as well as simply turning it “On” indefinitely)
• Headphone jack if you want to use it personally but don’t want to disturb another person in the room (e.g. a dorm room or your spouse)
• Many different sounds to choose from (12 total, 4 in each of 3 categories)
• Nicely labeled face-plate that lists all the sounds, per category

Cons

• Build quality is basic plastic/cheap feel with a decent hard plastic facade and average control buttons.
• The white back-light that illuminates for the particular sound that is playing is really pretty bright. I saw a few folks mention this, but it’s worth mentioning again. If you need a dark room, this light will bother you (or just cover it)… it’s bright.
• Buttons don’t have a unique design to them and are not individually back-lit, so to navigate the controls at night in the dark, you’ll have to memorize their positions. Not that big of a deal though since we just push “On” and then go to sleep… so I might even consider moving this under “Neutral”.

Neutral

• Sound quality is not crystal-clear, I originally had this under “Con”, but since the device really does seem to work, I can’t complain. So I put the note here.

Conclusion [8 out of 10]

I’m very happy with the Brookstone Tranquil Moments Sound Therapy Machine and plan on keeping it after these last 3 weeks. There is a noticeable calm/sleepiness that comes over me when it’s playing, I’m sure it’s psychological, but who cares… I’m falling asleep quickly and that’s all I wanted to do.

One note I will make is that if you do decide to get/try out this device: Try all the sounds

I made the mistake of assuming I only wanted to listen to the beach and rain sounds, but as it turns out, just the nonsensical “White Noise” sound that is not particularly calming puts me to sleep like a baby for some reason. So don’t forget to experiment, even if the sound doesn’t sound great to you… let it play and see what happens.

Gallery

Below is a gallery of the Tranquil Moments machines to look at. I tried to grab a few pictures of just how bright the light was at the end, it was a bit hard (sorry for the grain, had to turn ISO up to 1600).

The comparisons are between the default screen brightness of the iPhone’s screen and then the second shot is how bright the light is compared to a default red LED on the base unit for my home phone. Hopefully gives you an OK idea:

At first, I thought it was just me… getting multiple calls a day, at 7am to 7pm calls from “News” and the phone number 1-314-963-8895 popping up on my Caller ID.

No problem, I’ll just ignore it…

6 months later, it’s still happening… all the fucking time. I decided to finally Google this number and see if I could find some obscure forum post someone that would explain who these people were and what they wanted.

I didn’t find an obscure post, but instead found 100s of comments by folks that were getting calls all over the US from the same number!

As many of the people mentioned, answering the phones only results in a hang-up by the automated system. Also calling the number back does nothing as the line rings and rings and rings, and never stops.

Some of the comments said the number is associated with PISA Group (The PISA Group, Inc.) who was hired by a Texas Newspaper to sell more subscriptions. Some other folks said they asked to stop being called and all PISA does is just call them back; business as usual.

A commenter, Wes, probably gave the best suggestions:

I filed complaint with FCC and State Attorney General’s office. I also filed complaint with local BBB against Pisa Group AND the newspaper who hired them…

Probably not a bad idea if you are being harassed by the PISA Group as well.

If you have had calls from these yahoos, let us know and be sure to report them to the appropriate places as mentioned above.

Business as usual in politics… a Paul supporter put together a pretty aggressive compilation of contradictory statements from McCain.

What’s new though? That’s been pretty much a summary of the entire Bush reign… video compilation after video compilation, Hollywood movie after movie of contradictory statements from Bush, all his cabinet.

Check it out (load times were a little slow for me):

Does anyone else notice the super-smile that McCain throws on while he’s talking at press conferences? That glazed-over ice-smile… I love it, I wonder if he has like 200 more of those left in him before he cracks and punches a baby.

These videos are always morbidly interesting, click to watch the security video and cell-video of a guy flipping out at work.

Update #1: Eugene gave us the heads up that this is actually a viral video for the upcoming Angelina Jolie movie “Wanted”, check it out:

Thanks Eugene!