Dawn of the Geeks

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Robot Wisdom on the Street

A bum in a Google cap. Now there’s a sign of the times, I think as he shambles toward me. He looks pretty much like any other tattered street person in San Francisco - long, windblown dirty-blond hair with a beard to match. Unbuttoned shirttails flapping in the afternoon breeze.

But he’s walking with someone I recognize - Andrew, a dapper writer I’ve known for years. We stop on the sidewalk, and Andrew introduces me to the guy in the Google cap: “This is Jorn Barger,” he begins. “Another homeless blogger,” his companion finishes.

Jorn Barger. It takes me a moment to recognize the name. Barger is an online legend I’ve been following for a decade. He was the unstoppable Usenet poster who could carry on simultaneous debates about Ibsen, Chomsky, artificial intelligence, and Kate Bush. He was the keeper of the James Joyce FAQ. Barger’s prolific posting made him famous, if not popular, in the proto­blogosphere.

…

He says he avoids the need for a job by living on less than a dollar a day. “I was carrying a cardboard sign when we met that day,” he tells me. “I wasn’t sure if I should show it to you. I figured if things didn’t work out with Andrew I could pick up some change.” On his panhandler sign, Barger had written:

Coined the term ‘weblog,’ never made a dime.

With all that information he’s assembled he could put Google AdSense on his site easily make $1.00 per day. I can just imagine him sitting on the street tapping his *Google* hat wondering how to get some money for the day. Hmmmm…that’s a tough one. That’s the problem with people who are far too into their misguided ideals that information should be free or something. “But Thomas Jefferson himself said that information needs to be free.” they retort. Yeah, well TJ lived in an age where anyone could build anything they needed. Thomas Jefferson also wrote and sold books. Not exactly free information now is it? These so called “progressives” need to get with the 21st century and realize that information is a valuable resource.

Apparently this guy decided to run himself into the ground rather than find a way to make money off of his talent. And he still hasn’t figured out how to make money off his stuff. Even though it’s right there on top of his head.

It looks like a little less than half of the visitors to the front page don’t have Javascript enabled and therefore, aren’t seeing the ads. The sections that would be the easiest to monitor are the ringtones, drivers, etc where the entire site runs off of a single file. The Wiki and Blog are the same way. Unfortuntely autoblocking would result in search engines being blocked as well. With the drivers and ringtones however, bots shouldn’t be downloading the files anyway. So it would be trivial to simply block the downloading of files if Javascript isn’t enabled but allow visitors to browse all they want.

I think viewing ads in exchange for being able to download for free files/ringtones you want is a fair trade. I think I’ll wait til next week at least before doing anything. Starting with the ringtones, etc would be a good way to work out all the kinks before trying implement such a system with the Wiki or other sections. The first step would be to simply implement the check, see what the ratio is and then consider taking any action.

Long ago I wrote Server Side Javascript Check as a theory for how to detect if users have JS enabled on their browser without having to trust the client. Well it’s now running on the main page of IcarusIndie.com and it works nicely. For now it’s just an experiment to see how many visitors have JS enabled and to work out any bugs.

Google AdSense relies on JS being enabled in order for the ads to display. In fact, lots of ad types rely on JavaScript and many sites rely on those ads in order to pay the bills so visitors don’t have to. Once the server knows how if JS is enabled or not, the possibilities are endless. Marketing drones are worried that the prevelence of ad blocking browsers may be the end of ad revenue on the net. This isn’t entirely true. There are a lot of way to encourage users to view the ads. Ways to make it more annoying to not allow the ads to display.

Anyway, we’ll see what this little experiment turns up.

Who can’t use more money? Unfortunatly the tooth fairy isn’t real. You actually have to do something to get money. There are plenty of low cost web hosting companies out there. IcarusIndie.com uses HostMatters.com for the main portion of the site. The total cost to run all the sites I manage is $28.00 a month. The site brings in more than double that each month. It may not seem like a lot but it’s money. Domain names can be had for around $8 a month. IcarusIndie.com uses Dotster.com and costs $15 a year. I also pay for my DNS hosting through DNSMadeEasy.com which is around $5 a year. But, running a web-site and whoring out Google AdSense may not be your thing. It’s takes a lot of visitors to make a sizeable amount of ad revenue and you can’t get all those visitors over night. You can’t just throw up a web-site and expect to make money.

The only way to start making more money overnight is to either work more hours or get another job. One of the other things I’ve tried is on-line surveys. They generally pay less than minimum wage. If you’ve got the free time and fit the profile they want so you get plenty of surveys it can’t hurt. I just don’t have that kind of free time. Other options are giving plasma or having medical experiements performed on you. When it comes to making money, you just have to be creative and dedicated. If you want to start a business you just have to figure out what people want, supply it and charge for it.

Our society is built on the buying and selling of crap nobody needs. But if we didn’t buy and sell it, millions of people would be out of work. It’s American’s fascination with owning useless junk that makes this country so rich. So to make money, find some junk to sell. I’ve decided to peddle information that is mostly useless. What you choose, is up to you.

Home Equity Loans

In any given month chances are you’re paying bills. The challenge is of couse managing them. To manage bills you first have to recognize what they are. You have bills that will never go away such as utilities. You have bills that never go away but you have some control over such as your car payment, cell phone bill, etc. And finally you have bills that can go away such as credit card debt.

The more credit cards you have, the more money you’re going to be paying on them and the less that will go to paying them off. For example, I have two credit cards and I pay at least $100 each to them every month. That’s $200 I’m paying each month just for credit cards minimum. What would be better is moving all the debt onto a single card and then paying only $100 per month. My debt is the same but I just saved $100 per month in bills. The only way to save that last $100 is to pay off the credit cards. And that’s exactly what you want to do. Otherwise you’ll be wasting a lot of money paying interest every month not to mention paying a lot of money into nothing. It’s just $100-$200 gone every month that would be better used for something else.

If you’re looking to cut monthly bills that should be your first goal; pay off credit cards. Don’t just lower the amount you pay every month. The less you pay, the longer the debt lingers and the more money you waste just paying interest.

The next step is to manage flexible debt like car insurance and cell phones. If you need extra money, call your insurance agent and ask if there’s anything you can do to pay less every month. If nothing else, you can raise your deductible. You just have to make sure you can afford it. You could also consider if you need all the coverage you have or if there’s a way to not need it. Generally when you have a loan on your car you have to take out full coverage. Pay off the car and you can pay less in insurance and save the amount of the car payment every month. With cell phones, see if you can get by on a cheaper plan. Don’t go over your minutes and don’t use text messaging to save some money every month.

The real goal is to not be in debt and if you have to go in debt, get out as fast as possible. Document where all your money is going and find ways to lower the amount. If you have many sources of debt, consolidate. This is what a home equity loan is good for; turning short term, high interest debt into long term, low interest debt.

But however you go about saving money each month, the goal is always to get out of debt as fast as possible. The more debt you have the worse your credit becomes and the harder it is to get more credit and lower interest rates to consolidate everything.

Asbestos Mesothelioma Lung Cancer

I was was reading through this free pamphlet on how to make money on the internet. It started off saying how you probably paid a lot for it but you’re guarenteed to make it all back. Well, this pamphlet was all of three pages and basically said get a domain, get a web-site, register with affiliate programs, register with AdSense, throw up a web-page and *PROFIT*

AMAZING!

So what I discovered (well, you should all know this by now), is that the easiest way to get rich quick is to write stupid little how-to guides on how to get rich quick. The “guide” is most likely free now because the author was in danger of being lynched by an angry mob of suckers.

So, this post is a very subtle get rich quick guide. See if you can figure out what I’m doing. And best of all, I’m not charging for it. Hint: Wiki’s and Blogs are powerful allies.

Jessica Rodriguez

Normally I’m not big into celebrity news. Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. I knew that the nerd and his girlfriend on The OC were married in real life before my friends heard it mentioned somewhere else. I also know that psycho boy from Full Metal Jacket gained 70lbs for the role. But regardless, I noticed this information about Katie Holmes on MSN and posted a small blog entry about it. The net result was over 100 hits and still going. People want to know who Jessica Rodriguez is and what she’s doing with Katie Holmes.

And I’m happy to ablige. Saaya Irie and the Numa Numa Lyrics are still bringing in hundreds of hits a day. If people want to know, I’ll find out and let them know.

The wiki entry contains pretty much everything there is to know about Rodrigez as well as a photo of her.

It’s insufficient. A lot of people go through the education system (including university) and think that’s enough. Or they read lots of books and think that’s enough. I don’t know how to code because I read a lot of books. I know how to code because I code. If I want to learn something I come up with a project and learn it. I wanted to learn software rendering so I came up with various projects to learn it and continue to do so. Books and education can give you ideas of what to learn but unless you invent your own projects, you’ll never learn it on a level sufficient to get a job. You can’t just do the given exercises or whatnot and pass the given tests.

This really applies to all fields. You can’t be a doctor simply because you read medical books. You have to apply that knowledge. Knowledge is the knowing on things. Wisdom is being able to apply knowledge in the real world. What happens is that many students only gain knowledge from their education and fail to aquire any wisdom. If this is the case, you’ve wasted a lot of time and money. This is why many degrees require real world experience before you graduate. I can’t enter the professional program for teaching until I get a couple letters of recommendation indicating my ability in the area.

The only thing required to get a programming degree was a sufficient GPA. I saw how pointless the program was and didn’t really care so I didn’t get the GPA and just switched majors. Meanwhile I work as a programmer for a growing company. I’d rather teach. So that’s what I’m looking to do now. One of the things that motivated me was people just graduating with a programming degree and then asking how to make Tetris. It’s sad to see that. It’s not their fault they wasted tens of thousands of dollars. They just didn’t know any better and the teachers failed to tell them they needed to get most of their education outside the classroom.

My goal as a teacher is not only to teach them in the classroom but also inform them what they need to know to succeed in the real world; namely that no matter what field they choose, they need to start gaining experience in that field as a hobby now and through out their life. People that I work with have been working in the field for a long time and still have pet projects to enhance their abilities. Your career has to be your life or you won’t succeed.

I think the problem is that most liberals live in a world where transactions are done through meetings and negotiations. If musicians need something they call their agent or they fire up a lawyer. Same with all entertainers. They never have to fight for anything except verbally if that. Everything is about money.

They don’t understand that this civilized manner of getting things done doesn’t work with everyone.

They can’t believe that people like terrorists actually exist as we see them. They assume that since we can’t just talk our way out of the problem or buy our way out, we must be doing something wrong since they can talk and buy their way through anything in their life.

Why should terrorists be any different? Lefties have this very misguided notion that everyone is rational and everyone has a price tag if that’s what it takes.

They’re not stupid. They’re just willfully ignorant. They don’t know what evil is and don’t want to believe it exists. And that’s why they don’t know how to deal with it and don’t like how we deal with it.

I said years ago at the start of the war in Iraq that you can’t reason with unreasonable people. I’ve heard Bill O’Reilly say the exact same thing. People then didn’t like that idea either. The left just can’t accept that unreasonable people exist. People that are so unreasonable that the only way to stop them from harming others is with ammunition.

So they keep trying to figure out the reasons behind the actions and try to blame the victims for these terrorist attacks.

It’s rediculous.