Ok, so I’m giving away two free tickets to the Cafe Sevilla Anniversary Party. I’m in no way affiliated with them, I just happen to have two extra tickets to the event, and figured, what the hell? Why not do a Twitter/Blog-based Lottery to the few of you that read my boring crap? At least this will make it worth your while for a change.

Here’s how it works:

Tweet The Following
Hey @nrek is giving away #sevillaparty tickets! Details here – http://bit.ly/r1oEo

Party Details

Friday, June 26th 2009 at 9pm SHARP. It ends at midnight. It’s on a boat. That’s awesome. Oh, you need to dress up a bit, or at least that’s encouraged. Here’s a link to the thing [click me]

Give-away Details

I’ll be doing a Twitter-search for the above tweet Thursday June 24th, 2009 at 4pm Pacific. From there I use a neat randomizer I made for @cyantist a while back for the Penn & Teller show give-away she did.

What you’re winning

Tickets to the party. That’s it. Simple, aye? Tickets are valued at like $30 or $40 a pop…

Good luck and God speed.

I badger Apple all the time with short shuns and tweets, constant scoffs of disapproval, and blatant disregard for their… innovations in mobile technology. Anyone who’s talked to me for more than 10 minutes can tell you that I loath Apple. In fact, I’ll never own, use or (if I can avoid it) handle one of their God forsaken products.

So, what’s all this hate for a great company all about?

In a word, Marketing.

Apple does not, has not, and will never – as far as I’m concerned, bring any type of actual, huge, technological advancement to the Technology Industry’s table, ever. What they do, and will continue to do, is create gimmicks and tricks, and watch everyone try to play catch-up thereafter, because they Market their gimmicks and tricks to the point where they create a vastly large interest in their products.

If Apple ever comes up with something remotely awesome for technology, they bottle it up in the patent universe of Apple, not allowing it to become a popular trick to the trade, and thus acting much like Sony does. BetaMax, Mini-Discs, MemorySticks are all Sony innovations in technology that died for a number of reasons, but the main reason is how they were introduced to the market, as Sony owned “standards”. Yep, sounds like Apple. They don’t do anything for the betterment of the industry as a whole, except for shake it up with their one-off successes that they slowly migrate to “newer better” products, keeping consumers chasing their dreams of having a toy they can brag about to others.

What makes Apple great?

Community. Apple has created what’s nothing short of a cult following for those that buy their products. MBP owners, iPhone owners, iPod users – The products themselves are integrated very well with one another, the Apple universe is a tightly woven sweater that fits around it’s user-base with snug comforting, clubhouse-like, feeling. Hell, even the whole iThis, iThat thing has been popping up all over the place on products either related to, or in competition of, Apple’s goods.

Their direction, awesome. Their marketing path, very flawless, extremely obvious.

How could they be better?

Well they could start with creating viable industry advancing solutions that can be identified as real standards. Lean on that B2B marketplace and go for volume as opposed to being so consumer-end heavy. That might be a bit much, but hey! It’d be a great start. They’d have to accept the fact that two buttons on some things is actually a good thing though before starting down that road.

They could also actually look at what others are doing before they come out with something “Earth-shattering”, like a 3G smartphone that lacks 40% of what actually makes a phone smart, perhaps? Yes, Apple is “fixing” that problem, but it shouldn’t take the Apple fans 3 iterations at a cost of over $2,000 in hardware to get to that point, either.

Perhaps Apple could stop trying to follow in Sony’s footsteps as a company that creates more patents than things. Actually, Microsoft, Palm, Blackberry and Nokia should all pay attention to that one. Their grip on their IP is sad. I can understand patents on things like… Graphic Processing units that enable 1080p video playback on a handheld device, but I can’t understand MultiTouch, for example.

That’s it.

Really. It’s not that hard; Apple is a technology company. They create hardware, software and peripherals. Fine and dandy. Until they open up a little and start being less fascist with their innovations, they’re going to continue to be seen as “that smaller company that makes lesser products” and simply leverages marketing and cult-think to generate more revenue.

If they don’t change their approach, it’s only a matter of time before the community outshines the mighty blue Apple, comes out with stronger, better, faster, and better marketed items. The whole world is going in a direction of transparency, collaboration, innovation, and betterment – when it comes to things Tech.

Fans only stay fans as long as their loyalty is rewarded.

I think the whole FollowFriday thing needs a layer of description, reasons why you should follow the people that are recommended… Sure, I slap a laundry list of names into a tweet or two, but really? What good does that do, people want things to be easy – give’m the reason and let’m make their decision based off of that one stop shop for FollowFriday recommendations.

As a little bonus, I’ve added a link so you can follow the below with less hassle. Just click the follow link, it will kick you over to Twitter, just click update… Trust me, this works just fine:

• NateRitter [@nateritter : follow] Nate’s tweets are informative, useful, hilarious and entertaining. He’s not one of those “drinking a latte” tweeters, his 140 has substance. He also has it together when it comes to technology and marketing.
• Northlight [@northlight : follow] Simply put, Steve’s one of my favorite people, coming from me? That should be enough.
• TillyRitter [@tillyritter : follow] You can’t follow Nate without following his wife. They have their Lucy & Ricky moments, and occasionally their Ozzie and Harriet moments. Overall, Tilly’s a sweetheart, and at the end of the day, who doesn’t need to follow more sweethearts?
• SDTips [@sdtips : follow] Want to know what’s shakin in San Diego? Follow Julie. She’s a kick ass lady with her ear to the ground on everything San Diego Events. In fact, if you’re in San Diego, and don’t follow her? You’re missing out on what this city has to offer for things to do when you’re sitting at home, bored, tweeting.
• Assignmentdesk1 [@assignmentdesk1 : follow] Dorrine rocks. She’s retweets awesome stuff, has a sensible outlook on current issues, and carries witty radness with her throughout her 140. Definitely a positive addition to anyone’s Twitter friends.
• Imagium [@imagium : follow] Another one of my favorite people. Phelan’s a business owner with lots of background in the world I live in, Web Stuff! He’s also part of… hell, I think every community organization in San Diego… It’s either that or he’s stalking me. Either way, glad to have him around and in my Twitter timeline, you should to!
• JBruin [@jbruin : follow] The organizer, creator of the successful San Diego Tweetup, one of the editors of Mashable.com, and a karaoke addict, Jenn Van Grove knows more about being an early adopter of new, fun Web 2.0 toys than most Web 2.0 people. You can learn a lot from this gal, unless you want to throw a BBQ.
• Kitchen [@kitchen : follow] How can you not follow a guy who’s last name is the best room in the house? Seriously. Ok, if that’s not enough, he’s a good hearted geek with a leg in BarcampLA. If you don’t know what either of those are, find out! BarcampLA is tomorrow, people!
• Boogah [@boogah : follow] Can’t talk about Kitchen without talking about Boogah, as far as I’m concerned. Ever met Jason? You should. He’s stellar. Following him will lead you down the road of tech things, geek things and all around fun stuff that’ll make you chuckle.

Ok, need to get back to work. But based on the above recommendations, the following people are in the same boat, and should be followed as well for reasons that are entertaining, informative, fun and random:

• declan
• gebl
• keithbooe
• musicjules
• sarahmcarr
• dd22
• shindotv
• cyantist
• mager
• roebot
• mikediliberto
• cantondog
• eldipablo
• hifisamurai
• downtownrob
• ccg
• jackiepeters
• nicolejordan
• techzulu
• bronwyn
• viss
• dantecl
• jjeef
• brant

These additions to your Twitter experience will improve the quality of your stream ten fold, which is what it’s all about right? Making what you get out of Twitter better, more meaningful, and more interesting. None of these people asked me to include them in this post for “more followers”, this isn’t about that, never should be.

Not too long ago, it was absurd for everyone to “need” a cell phone. In fact, these devices were seen as “elite business” tools that only the most urgent-matter-handling gurus in the business world would ever need. They were huge, they were cumbersome, and they merely performed one function, voice communication.

When kids started carrying pagers, people thought it was “too much”; after all, only drug dealers and lawyers needed the damned things.

Now, we’re in an age where cellphones are in the hands of seven year olds, and if you have a pager… chances are you still have your old Betamax player, and access the web via AOL dial-up. It’s even coming to the point where CD’s are becoming obsolete for music, lord knows I haven’t bought one of those in about 10 years, DVD’s can soon be there too if consumer-grade Internet gets fatter pipes.

So what’s the point? Everything mentioned so far was technological progress to make things faster for a majority, released into market when “it was ready”. Micro-blogging is another one of those advances. Crusty old-world style people that still believe in writing letters instead of using email are going to try their hardest to justify their actions, as archaic as they are, and try to retain every fraction of reality they can understand for as long as they can, and call “new things” that people like… “stupid”, annoying, frustrating, rude, confusing, complicated and useless.

This makes me extactic.

I don’t want these people using new things, I like them using the old. They call micro-blogging stupid, and I agree with them. I’ll agree with them because hopefully it will make them feel more comfortable with the decision they made to stay the hell away from escalating their ability to communicate their close-mindedness at an accelerated, amplified level. I encourage them to ignore and refuse for as long as possible, because in the end – technology is king; and just like the manufacturer of the carriage, they too will become endangered and the majority will forget they ever existed.

Cruel, perhaps – but in the end, the easiest way to improve the quality of the noise created by fast-access communication is to weed out the feeble minded, or rather, simply allow them to get left behind by rejecting the new. Do I think micro-blogging is going to take over a large marketshare of communication? Yes. Does it have the potential to become the platform for citizen journalism? When coupled with instant media (live streaming video and photos), absolutely. Are social networks going to evolve into community centers for communication and news? They should, and hopefully sooner than later.

Of course, with all great technological advances, comes a backlash of horribly executed exploits to turn a good thing into bad bucks:

Mail > Junkmail
Phones > Telemarketers
MP3’s > Piracy
Video compression > Piracy
Fax machines > Unsolicited Sales Faxes
Email > Spam
SMS > Spam
Internet > Spyware, Malware, Virus’ etc
Microblogs > Ads & Bots

In fact, every single invention that improves our Technology-based Society comes with a new set of excuses why the close-minded won’t conform. Yes. Micro-blogging is stupid, but only because I don’t want the close-minded to really know what makes it so brilliant.

Maureen Dowd is one of these crusty people; the only reason I single her out is: 1. It’s bad enough she’s part of a dieing breed of journalists (those associated with newspapers); 2. She’s already on the web, at least it appears, enough to understand what makes the web go round, yet she has the audacity to be so short sighted that she fails to understand the importance of “now” and communication.

It’s sickening to think that someone as shut off as that can be part of such a large organization. It’s horrible to think that she got paid whatever amount (any amount) to meet, and ridicule, the creators of a new, effective, communication era (twitter). Its apparent that she mocks and belittles micro-blogging merely because she is too simple to comprehend how it doesn’t hurt her already dwindling importance in today’s rising world of citizen journalism, unless she rejects it. But hey, whatever. Micro-blogging is a stupid child’s toy; and hopefully when those children grow up, she’ll be long gone from the world of journalism, because we’ll have finished changing it.

Links to the article related to this post has been purposefully not included.

There are tons of scripts out there to remove Facebook features and change your user experience for all kinds of things. It would be nice if the sites would allow people to remove superfluous garbage via site-settings side on the site, but what’s the fun in that?

So I did some searching and found a few things that’ll help if you’re so interested:

1. Greasemonkey Script “Hide Facebook Sidebar“; super simple script that simply “display:none”s the sidebar in Facebook. I’m talking that “blah blah became a fan of Platypuses” and ads sidebar (to the right) of Facebook, not the actually useful leftside bar with filters and such.
2. If you don’t want to hide the “People you may want to stalk” feature, you can use this script “Hide Highlights“

Now, you’ll need Greasemonkey for this. And I should explain what Greasemonkey is.

Greasemonkey

Super handy, super awesome Firefox plug-in / add-on that allows you to control your user experience how you want to experience it. In a word, it’s “basassedness”. You can get Greasemonkey from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748.

Now, let’s get stupid.

Unf*ck FriendFeed

Let’s take the new FriendFeed interface. First off, the new real-time updates is pretty slick. If Twitter ever tried this, they’d choke on their own bandwidth clogs and die in a corner like a little injured sparrow. So, thank god FriendFeed has about 1/10th the user-base of Twitter, or we may have never seen a user experience like this for it. Anyhow, the new FriendFeed is god awful and very hard to read.

Why? They chose a dark gray page background, against a white/white content section, black subjects/feed titles (awesome) with this nice pale, pleasant, hard-to-spot gray for accents like… COMMENTS; only the most important part of FriendFeed. So wtf?

This is a simple trick, and since the site has a real time feature, it’ll work for the duration of your stay, check it out.

1. Install Firebug (don’t be alarmed, it’s a Web Developer tool, but when I’m done you won’t care)
2. This is for Firefox, if you browse the Internet with anything else, my condolences.
3. Restart Firefox
4. Go to http://beta.friendfeed.com or http://friendfeed.com for that matter (either)
5. Hit F12 on your PC (or whatever other shortcut key is out there for the iDrones.)
6. Click Inspect
7. Click a “Comment” area
8. Change the Color:#737373 to #000000

Done, click the image to the left for an example – it really does take about 4 seconds. It gets better. See in the image there, above the word “Style”? Yea, click the word “body”. You’ll see in that “Style” window “background:#blahblah url(http://etcetc)”, just delete that.

Like MAGIC, FriendFeed beta is not only super awesome, but you can read it without hoping to god that your monitor somehow magically brightens up so you can read the comments people are making on Scoble’s shares.

Honestly, that’s all I got. It’s how I cope with FriendFeed and Facebook, since neither of the sites are going away, and they’re both useful in their own way. Since I’m able to do this stuff on Twitter, there’s nothing to say about them – except:

Perhaps you kids should use some cash to throw down better servers. Yes, you have a gazillion active members making more queries than MySpace tweens when the Twilight trailer was previewed on their videos page, but seriously… PUFF DADDY is on your site (and me). Stop embarrassing the Social Media sphere with your damned downtime.

In December 2008, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced a new flagship device, the Nokia N97. Before I get into the Nokia N97, I wanted to first talk about one huge thing:

Why Nokia?

It’s no surprise to anyone that’s read half the things I’ve said about mobile devices, I love Nokia products. I have since they released the Nokia 5100 and 6100 series phones that featured the first iterations of mobile entertainment with Games, especially Snake, and the 5100 series was also the first ever mobile phone to feature changeable colored faceplates. Nokia brought more than merely personalization and entertainment to a market that was previously geared toward the common businessperson. They also introduced the first global phones, supporting multiple network frequencies, at a consumer level. In fact, going through the history of Nokia with a few Google searches, the word you see the most is “first”.

The object of the game, which is available on any Nokia phone in the 5100 or higher series, is to move the slithering snake toward morsels of food while avoiding the imaginary electric fence that runs around the boundary of the screen. Bits of food (little dots) appear in random areas on the screen, and they are gobbled as soon as the snake passes over them. The more the critter eats, the more points you rack up. – New York Times circa 2000

Following Nokia for nearly 10 years now, it’s apparent: innovation and market shift coming from their vision of the future is what drives the mobile market. Over the past two years, they’ve only had one thing to look to as possible competition, the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone.

Since the iPhone’s release to the market, comparing the Apples to “oranges” has been common practice, and not just for Nokia, but for Palm, Blackberry and the G1 alike. But to take a step back, and look at the bigger picture, Nokia had the vision for the future well before Apple even understood what the cell phone market was asking for:

Nokia displayed a yellow, egg-shaped handheld device intended to serve as a cell phone, personal digital assistant and camera. The phone has a color screen and supports the Epoc operating system from Symbian. Nokia executives said the company will start releasing some of the features in its family of cell phones next year. – CNET November 21st 2000

After 2 hours of searching archives from the 1.0 web, I was able to track down an image I saw on a South African cellphone site when I was a technician for what used to be PacBell Wireless (Cingular, now AT&T). Behold:

Now, I can’t even tell you how excited I was when I saw this concept. There were two others that were released the same time, but this one got my attention. A full screen phone, touch screen number pad, video/photo camera… Pretty much what you have today; but I found this photo stuffed away on archive.org in May  1999, and this featured Video Teleconferencing.

Nokia is like the frikkin Nostradamus of the cell phone market, and everyone thought they were nuts. Games on cellphones were seen as a road hazard, the whole idea of color screens was a question of “why”? Until cameras started coming attached to handsets. The future Nokia saw was “one device for everything mobile”. That was 10 years ago.

Now? With the Nokia N95 on my desk, and the Nokia N97 anxiously being waited for – I can say this. Pay attention to where Nokia is going, not just in their “market appeal devices”, but in the little leaps that they make throughout the span of their product and service releases.

When it comes to Apple? Apple doesn’t know cellphones, they don’t know innovation. Apple knows marketing. They know how to create demand for a device, and unless they catch up on the past 20 years of experience Nokia has in the industry – not the market – they will simply fall behind, and become “the 2006 thing to have”. Point being, it’s going to take a lot more than “multi-touch” and a “full browser” to put a dent in the future Nokia started to pave more than 10 years ago.

The Nokia N97

Features:

• 3.5″ Sliding Display (larger than both G1 & iPhone)
• 16:9 Widescreen  Display (vs. the 3:2 on iPhone and G1)
• 640 x 360 display (vs. 480 x 320 on iPhone)
• TV-out
• Nokia Video Center
• A-GPS
• 5 mega-pixel camera on the back
• 1.3 megapixel camera on the front (for Video Teleconferencing)
• Carl Zeiss optics (you know, the guys that put lenses in space for NASA?)
• 32 GB in-phone w/ microSD slot for expansion
• 1500mAh removable battery (vs 1400mAh embedded battery on iPhone)
• S60 ver 5 Open Source operating system, pay attention to this one
• QWERTY keyboard
• Tactile feedback touchscreen
• Modular widget home-screen (meaning you can customize what shows up, in what order, on the home screen much like you get with iGoogle)
• Bluetooth 2.0 (stereo audio and EDR for faster data rates)
• Standard micro-USB adapter (vs. proprietary whatever plug Apple comes out with, there’s usually a new one every single device they release. How’s that working out for you accessory buyers?)

Coupled with Nokia Services like Ovi [The upcoming Nokia App Store which is already a center for video & photo sharing, among other things], as well as Nokia Vine / Nokia Sports Tracker or even PC Suite (for those non-Ovi folks); The N97 will be the realization that mobile computing is a complete reality, and will be focused on content contribution and consumption, unlike it’s “competitor” the Apple iPhone – which is the perfect device for those that merely consume, and rarely contribute.

After the release of the Nokia N97, those that are using the iPhone will be seen as those who are still using Internet Explorer 6 to browse the web – but that’s just my humble opinion topped with well… check this out if you have doubts:

Nokia: The Morph – Concept

Nokia: The Morph – Video

Nokia: 888 – Follow Through

Ref:
2009 N-Series (http://2009.nseries.com/specs.aspx)

I’m writing this post because, well, after searching on Google for what the hell could be keeping an Apache Web Service running on an XAMPP install in Windows 2003 with IIS stopped (and it’s respective services: HTTPS and World Web Publishing) – I found no help.

In fact, there are more “RTFM-type” SysAdmins out there than there are helpful people. Guess they call it job security, guess that’s what turned me away from being one of those anymore. Shun me later, my SysAdmin days are about 5 years behind me, hence the helpfulness I’m about to provide.

It’s actually quite simple, and not much technical help at all really.

XAMPP people install this thing to have an Apache Server run on whatever in no time flat, works great for a test server, I’d NEVER EVER suggest running it on a public web server, but that’s a whole other story in and of itself. Anyhow, if you can’t get one of the services up and running, try one thing first:

1. Go to where you have it installed, let’s say D:\xampp
2. Click xampp-portcheck.exe

That’s #1 – it’ll tell you what the hell is hoggin up the ports. If it is IIS, crack open “xampp-controll.exe” and click the little “SCM” button, that’s the quickest way to launch the Services control module for your server. Then:

1. IIS > Stop
2. It’ll stop the other services associated with it
3. Right click > Properties
4. Change from “Automatic” to “Manual”

That’s if that’s your problem… But as I just stated, that wasn’t mine. Mine was Skype.

“What?” – you say.

Yea, Skype. It was hogging up Port 443. What the hell? So I closed it. Started the Apache service from the Services control module, and *ding* like magic, the server was up and running again. Here’s some version/software info in case this doesn’t match what’s happening to you:

1. Skype ver 3.8.0.180 (Server 2003 doesn’t need ver 4, damn it – it’s just running my phone)
2. XAMPP 1.6.8
3. Python 2.5
4. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 SP 2
5. Quake 3 Arena, keep it old school.

Hope this helps some of you. Web server + Skype might equal a conflict. Go figure.

Cheers!

Whether you work in an office, cubicle, or at your home, having your workplace designated “stress free” or “stress light” is just as important as getting things done.

Let’s get to the points, shall we?

1. Clean desk: It’s a bad day when you look at your desk and get overwhelmed immediately by what’s on it. If you’ve organized your todo list in a piles of papers and notes, get a white board or note application, transfer your post-its, and then get a filing cabinet for your loose papers, spend a few hours labeling and organizing things. Also, huge help, get an inbox for things that can and should be addressed in the short term – transfer it to an outbox at the end of the day, and then file it the next. It’ll help make you feel productive, and keep you motivated.
2. Plants: Something about taking care of a plant is therapeutic, and even watching plants and trees is awesome. If you don’t have a view of a garden or trees from your workplace, then you definitely need to have a small plant on your desk, at the least. Keep it simple though, you don’t want to become overwhelmed by your office/Japanese Garden complication.
3. Fresh Air: Here’s a big one. A/C sucks. We can’t always avoid it. Fresh air isn’t always readily available. If all else fails, get an air filter (small ionic breeze) for your workplace. You’ll be surprised at how good simple air will make you feel. Forget air freshers too, this whole aroma therapy thing is good for baths, but not “all over” spaces. Release your smell-sense energy and take a whiff of nothing.
4. Lights: Fluorescent, blue-hue lighting is no good! Tungsten lighting even stinks. Soft 1000lux light is where it’s at. If you can’t control the brightness of your workspace directly, ask, maybe you can get something started to make it softer/darker/brighter. Indirect lighting is also a huge bonus.

Some other things that’ll help make your workspace less annoying:

• A good/reliable wireless mouse & keyboard setup. These aren’t always available, but unleashing your hands while you work is psychologically and physically beneficial. Move your keyboard and mouse a bit every once and a while, give your wrists a rest, and alter your perspective of the monitor every now and then.
• Nice, comfortable, simple headphones. If you’re not allowed to enjoy music at work, perhaps earplugs instead. Removing the ambient office noise while working is a huge step in concentration.

There are also the ergonomic needs everyone should have, no matter what:

1. A good/decent/awesome chair
2. A desk set to the right height
3. Possibly a foot rest to help maintain posture
4. Keyboard tray or the sort to ensure keyboard height works with your arm position
5. Monitor stand
6. Non-CRT monitor (big one, this’ll help ditch those headaches from staring at the screen all day with a 72 Hertze rate.

Lastly: blink. You’d be surprised how often I forget to blink when working on something that’s requiring my utmost concentration. Make it a point to blink and shut your eyes for a long period of time (without napping). Also, if you can afford to do so, step away for a few minutes every hour.

I borrowed the included cartoon from here.

Today, the US senate and president may pass a nice fat $410B spending bill. Not bad, actually, right? Do you know what $410,000,000,000 looks like? Ever hold that much money in quarters before? Imagine all the Street Fighter 2 Turbo you could play on that. That’s 1.6 TRILLION games of Street Fighter 2…  and that’s if you lost every time.

Regardless, in order to fully understand government spending, it goes beyond what happens today – let’s look back a bit – and thus, examine the US Government Debt, as in – the money that’s We The People owe to creditors.

In the year 2000, the US Government was a little less than $6trillion in debt. Roughly $30,000 per person in the US, also known as $30,000 per capita. Now, we’re roughly at 305,800,000 people in the United States, with a fatty debt of about $10,959,171,934,956.65 (as of March 11th, 2009). See I can’t actually type and post this fast enough to give you what the real debt of the United States is, the interest rate is so damn fast on a number that damn big, there’s nothing anyone can really do to report on it, except to point you here: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

As you’ll see on that site, the debt per capita (your end of the deal) is $35,816+/-.

Yikes.

What’s all this money going to?

• Pensions
• Health Care
• Defense Spending
• Standard “running the country” stuff
• … and so forth

In a perfect world, that’s pretty much what our glorious tax dollars would be going to all the time. Buying weapons to invade senselessly, curing our sick, paying the retired folk that gave their life to serve some type of government thing, and making sure this place stays afloat.

Well, that last one – the whole, staying afloat thing? Yea, somehow that also started to include bailing out companies that suck. AIG – the ever so important, we can’t live without, AIG. The Big 3 – oh no, what will we do without our prized automotive manufacturing?! Mortgages – consumers fell victim to bank greed, glorious.

So now, government spending includes pushing money into the sub-public sector to dig people out of the holes they made. For a moment, let’s take a look at Sweden and Canada. They’re both federal parliamentary democracies and constitutional monarchies. They have a series of systems in place that safe guard their country from becoming jacked by huge corporations, mainly, the fact that their form of government is a constitutional monarchy.

Do those two words side-by-side make me un-American? Anyway, something needs to be said about the way Canada and Sweden handle their business. I’m not sure how either of those countries would handle The Big 3 or AIG, partially because I don’t believe their market-model supports massive entities tied to the public sector and the government sector without actually being the government. In my view, if the government (Fed) invents the money, it should be within the best interests of that government to protect the asset in which it creates. At least then the accountability measure would sit on their shoulders, and they’d make wiser, better, less fucked decisions as a result of where the blame unarguably lies when the hammer drops.

Notice how I didn’t say Socialist?

Socialism is a bad word. It’s also the cop-out catch phrase used by Democracy Free Market moguls to scare people away from bigger small government. Yes, there’s such a thing as bigger small government. Governments can take care of things, like, it’s citizens via Health Care. Governments can also regulate some level of industry to ensure We The People don’t get ass rammed by an Enron, AIG, GM or the like.

It doesn’t take a type of Socialism to put some control over the well being of a governments marketplace, health care, or even insurance. All it takes is less gun-toting right-wing close minded fundamentalists. Believe me, I used to be one (minus the guns).

Open your mind.

If we want real, solid, progressive, long-term solutions; we need to start opening up to the possibility that we don’t have “it” right at the moment, and some radical changes need to take place. These radical changes would require patience, proper planning and restructuring. It would require the things that Americans are not known to have: wide spread acceptance of change, ability to comprehend, long-tail understanding of today’s actions and future goals.

Unfortunately the majority can’t even point to North Korea on a map, let alone understand that the structure of the US Government as it is today, mixed with the Fiat Standard, are the reasons that spending is ridiculously out of control, and now we’re going to get to pay the price for the mistakes of that system.

On another note…

We can live without AIG.

We did before AIG was around, and the fallout will only be about as bad as the US will let it. Sure there will be backlash if they’re allowed to belly-up, big damn deal. We’re already seeing backlash, and it’s related to how the whole system works, and AIG is obviously smack in the middle of that broken system.

I feel like we’re polishing the brass on the Titanic.

I’ve worked at companies like that before. 2 of them are no longer around, and the 3rd will be on it’s way out once they run out of liquid in 18 months. Unless they get some bailout money too! Wonderful.

When you tie this back into my second economy post, it gets even worse… This concludes my outlook on the Economy. Any more rambling and I’ll be seen as unpatriotic even more than I’m perceived already. But in the end, those that hold the US back from true progress are the ones keeping this country from doing great things like:

• Curing the blind
• Creating cities of the future
• Mainstreaming Alternative Fuel Vehicles
• … and inventing this

The Fiat Standard. Are you familiar with the term? I’ll make it simple – The Fiat Standard is a monetary system that is defined by an entity, man-derived, and is backed by nothing tangible. It’s the most common monetary system used today, and is a great concept… If we ever get it right.

See, the problem lies in the fact that the Fiat Standard is arbitrary, leaving markets and implied value as the front runners for guiding it’s perceived value. In other words, money’s not actually worth anything, it’s worth is based on opinion and systems that are prone to failure, and suffer from extreme fluctuations.

Commodity Money is based on a tangible, valued, item – take gold for example. Though the Gold Standard is long forgotten, people still find that investing in gold has time and again proven to be a worthwhile long-term investment that’s worth sinking your pockets into, should you ever have the opportunity to do so.

I’m going to try to not be too complicated with this whole thing, but I’m going to use the two above Standards at length and try to paint a picture of why Money is now utterly pointless and completely horrible for the human race.

The Corporate 9 to 5

The whole concept of the Corporate 9 to 5 being the standard way to make earnings was practically invented in the 1900’s. Anyone ever think it might not be a perfect system? It’s not. It’s far from a perfect system, in fact, I despise it, and think it rapes humankind from being free thinking, creative, motivated people. Service oriented work that relies on human-to-human (direct) interactions are the only jobs that exist that actually require schedules to be met.

The most grotesque example of “scheduled work times” comes from part time food service and retail stores. These clowns never keep someone on a routine schedule, they fiddle with numbers and people’s lives to keep them a prisoner in the never ending circle of working around their work schedule. Most of it is to avoid having to pay benefits, offer vacation time, or give raises in a timely fashion. More over, unless you’re a well programmed robot, chances are you’re going to fall victim to not knowing when you have to be at work 100% of the time, and also, you’re not going to be able to perform as well when you’re not working at your peak performance time.

Yes, humans have peak performance times. Some people work better at night, some people are best in the morning, others are great in the afternoon… No “Corporate Job” accounts for the human characteristic, and simply demands performance based on non-human standards to ensure they clear the numbers, make the books look great, have the most opportunity to make the most capital, and thus – turn their profits into investments, gathering  more equity, and establishing more credit.

They even throw the workers, full time and career folk, a bone, by offering a 401k. This institution is an utter joke, allow me to explain why:

The Stock Market and Investments

This is going to sound nuts, but since the Fiat Standard is full of problems (the way we’re using it), the stock market is basically this huge imaginary blob of nothingness that keeps the rich (and middle class) chasing a dream that runs the risk of no reward more often than it returns it. These high risks are in direct correlation to the fact that the Fiat Standard is problematic, chaotic, and uncontrollable, thus making it a complete waste of time and energy.

The Stock Market is made up of a slew of public companies, their stocks have perceived valuation based on tangible and  intangible items; such as operating costs (overhead), revenues, investments, equity, credit, and so forth. Everything in that list, aside from overhead and revenues is based on the imaginary, and utterly worthless, tricks of the trade that make up the problems with the Fiat Standard.

Equity valuation is subject to perception inflation – the nastiest type of inflation imaginable. All it takes is a majority shift in opinion, and money simply “goes away”; the housing market and the first “dot-com-bubble” were great, visible examples of this. Basically, if you take an item, buy it, people think it’s a commodity, it’s not – it gains value based on their opinion, and when (not if) that opinion changes? You’re back to nothing again.

It gets worse when companies get to take out credit loans on equity. You probably see where this is going, but just in case: If you borrow against an item that doesn’t really hold the value that it’s perceived to have (if it’s inflated), well when that equity vanishes, the credit you’ve borrowed doesn’t always vanish with it, putting you more in debt than you’re actually worth, thus making you a victim of someone else’s idea of what you’re money is.

Sounds like a great system to me! It’s broken.

The nutshell

This is how the Fiat Standard breaks (in orange):

1. Company gets big enough to employ 9-to-5′ers
2. Company makes some investments and gathers equity
3. Company gets credit on that equity to expand
4. Company gets appraised, valuation is applied
5. Company goes public
6. People invest in Company
7. Company makes awesome things happen
8. Company expands
9. Stocks split for company
10. People make money
11. Perception of company is disrupted
12. Perception of 100’s of other companies is disrupted
    
13. People stop buying and start selling
14. Company goes under
15. People’s money disappears (because it wasn’t really ever there)
16. People go broke
17. Company files for whatever, bailout, bankruptcy
18. Company tries to enter this list at step 2 again, skipping step 5, and probably step 4 at this point

Solution

Obviously, this is an extremely simplified, broad spectrum overview, of the way things work in the Free Market. But, the jist of the matter is, human opinion should not gauge the valuation of a product as much as it has been. Yes, supply and demand will raise and lower the cost of tangible items, but when it comes to equity investments, credit and overhead, I believe these things are, though necessary, exploited too much too often to ensure a stable money market.

Honesty would increase stability, but we all know that won’t happen.

So, for humanity – I propose maximum possible flexibility with work. Do your job, and get paid – for the corporate junkies anyway. Fixed part time schedules for the day-to-day part timers. Day laborers, you need flexibility as well, but sorry, manual labor requires you to be on the job. Career-mongers need to ditch the cubicle and have “in-office optional”, forget all this garbage about being connected to the office, it’s raping America of it’s aspirations, and unless that’s the point, it’s a worthless way to live.

For the monetary system – I propose a simple set of rules. Company valuation is based on actual business product. If a company makes houses, those houses cost the company $110,000 to build, those houses should not sell for more than 150% of the cost to build, and a fixed percentage of value increase to match growth would suffice. This whole business of house values increasing 10% to 20% a year is ridiculous.

A company should not be allowed to leverage equities as valuation, due to the arbitrary nature of equity items, it makes no sense to boast promise of long-term gains, since it is inevitable that there will be long-term losses. Leveraging these items as credit for growth is also a bad idea, in general, given the nature of the economy. Though, it would be a more sensible bet given companies go back to being valued on their business models’ production items only, as opposed to the circular virtual reality of equity/credit valuation.

Another Option

Get rid of money. Simple.The mere fact that we’re relying on money as a control to make people do things is archaic. Yes, this is extremely unreasonable in our society, in fact, it’s a completely insane idea that’ll never ever happen. But if it were to happen, imagine what it would take for our society to make it, imagine what would be different, imagine the things we could live without, and imagine the new things we’d have… Well, the idea worked for Star Trek anyway.