For the next couple weeks I plan to be posting How To articles on computer tips and optimizing tricks. I don’t plan on getting into the eternal argument of what programs are better. So in that sense I plan to stay away from Anti-virus programs, music players, firewall programs, and internet browser recommendations.

I started a computer technician business when I was 16, by the time I was 19 I had over 3000 customers and was very active with my business, and I did this with no formal education in computers. So what I am planning to do is to teach people the easier ways to fix a computer, without the need of a computer degree to understand the why and how for.

These articles will be based around using software programs to fix problems. I will only talk about programs that I know work in Windows, and I will specify which OS version the programs will work with. In most cases the programs work in all versions including vista. It will be hard for me, but I plan to not go into detail about how much I despise, the beast of an operating system called, Vista.

I am against formating a hard drive and reinstalling all your programs to fix a problem. Most of the tricks that I list, will fix most problems one time around. As long as it is not a hardware issue, you will be able to fix it with the programs that I mention. Each program is freeware, but I highly recommend donating to the creators for making such amazing software tools. Read more

Read the article

It makes me wonder how many stolen items are sold on eBay. If you think about it, eBay has added a whole new avenue for circulating and getting rid of stolen goods. People no longer need a broker to get rid of hot items. All you have to do now-a-days is go online, head over to www.ebay.com create an account, most likely fake, and your good to go.

But one thing that I have never been able to find out, is if eBay even tries to stop this practice. In most cases, they probably don’t think twice about stolen items being sold, I doubt they even think once about it if you asked me. In my experience of using eBay, I noticed they seem to have almost no regards for most of their customers, so why would they care about people getting rid of hot items to other people. At least not until they get negative publicity about it and law enforcement shows up at their front door step.

In my opinion I would estimate that even though 68,000 dollars worth of stolen goods sounds like a large number, I would bet that this is one of the smaller fishes on eBay that sells stolen goods. Chance are, there is millions of dollars of stolen goods being sold on eBay by a group of people that no one has even looked into or even suspected.

Now if I was in charge of eBay I would change one minor thing during the sign up process to prevent scams, fraud, and other easily avoided mishaps such as stolen goods. Read more

The equations that were being used to show the efficiency for the use of Biofuels are way to simplistic and didn’t factor in land use. When any type of land is destroyed, it not only releases more greenhouse gases, but we lose the natural sponges of the earth that soak up carbon emissions. Now if you are the type to jump to the conclusion that the natural sponges of the environment will be replaced by corps, you have just thought wrong. Corps as a whole do not absorb nearly enough carbons to even be in the same category as forest, grasslands, etc. But the number one factor against these types of corps is carbon expenditure for growing, harvesting, and then getting it to people to use.

The effects of Biofuels Read more

Original Article at Baltimore Business Journal

As I am reading this article I am thinking to myself, "Gees, these people make no mention of who this will benefit." Granted it will open up more clinics for people to go and get medical attention. But it makes me wonder, who is actually benefiting the most by doing this?

This could go two ways

The first way – It benefits the people by lowering the cost of prescriptions, check ups, vaccinations, and various other medical minor needs.

The second way – It benefits the medical insurers, and ultimately Wal-Mart itself. With a high chance of hurting the doctors that run their own private practices. Read more

Recently I read an article about medication being delivered through a prosthetic tooth. It was a solution to what they see is a problem of people unable to take pills, or unable to take them on time. I thought this idea was pretty far out there, but this idea goes a bit more out there in the weird category.

I can see it now, kid says to mommy, "No I don’t want to go get a shot. It always hurts, please don’t make me go!" Mom Replies Back, "You will like it this time, instead of a shot you will get a new tattoo of your favorite Disney character. If the doctor does it, instead of the nurse, you might even get Sponge Bob." Now as appealing as this sounds to many people…… I really don’t see why they would want to fund this type of research.

As far as the argument goes as to why they think it needs to be looked in to. When someone gets a tattoo it invokes a response of the immune system to take action because it thinks its under attack, and for good reason, because it is. So with this response scientist are hoping to piggy back an actual attack on to the immune system by introducing a vaccination with a weakened virus of some sort.

Right now the current issue with weakened viruses that could be used for vaccinations are as follows.

1. The body does not respond to the injection. It thinks nothing of it and doesn’t commence a battle to fight the weakened virus and start producing the necessary antibodies for future attacks. So this makes the vaccination useless, because its not invoking the proper response.
   
2. The body doesn’t react in time, and the weakened virus is able to stay in the body and become stronger at its own pace. This is for only for a few viruses of course, cancer, AIDS, etc. The issue with these type of viruses is the body doesn’t recognize these as an attack until it is to late. In most cases they mask themselves, and our body thinks they are friendly.
3. The body responds immediately and sees the threat, but instead of producing an antibody it sees the weakened virus and is like, "well shit that looks really nasty and could take some work to make an antibody and since it appears to be not attacking lets just flush the S.O.B. before it gets stronger." Thus the body has now saved time, and most importantly energy.

So minus my sarcastic third reason, I see why it looks like an easy answer to the issue, I really think they need to continue searching for a way to get rid of viruses.

You can read the article here, but please feel free to leave your comments.

Meet Casper – The first See-Through fish hybrid made for real-time cancer viewing

Scientists are really pushing the envelope on this one. Now they can watch and see how cancer really effects the body. It may only be a fish, but as the report says the Zebrafish is genetically similar to the biology of humans. I applaud them on the idea, if all we have to go on for cures for cancer is injecting mice over and over again to see how they react, this comes as a beacon of light to many.

They injected this little guy with a fluorescent melanoma tumor and found that cancer spreads in as little as 5 days through out the body. But what was most interesting about the article was how the cancer instantly moved from where it was injected to specific parts of the body, namely the skin. It is still unclear why it does, but it seems to have a set course that it spreads to, and it is not random at all.

Article Highlight

Scientists are breeding zebrafish with see-through bodies in order to make studying disease processes easier, including the spread of cancer.

Read rest of article at Livescience.com

Image from kirklandplex

Before I get started I want to give thanks to strategy + business magazine and Nicholas G. Carr for writing a superb article.

There has been hundreds, if not thousands, of articles, Pod cast, news commentary, pertaining to how Google has become the giant that it is today.  I have read and listened too many of them. Several of them have been boring with no real meat and are repetitious to say the least. But an article I read recently really hit the nail on the head, and I wanted to draw a little more attention to the ideas of why Google is Google, and why they will be around for a long time.

Google itself is an amazing business, that goes without saying but still something I feel can not be said enough. But I am not referring to their ability to go from 500 million to 10.5 billion in under 4 years (yes this is impressive, but it’s been hashed over thousands of times).

I am referring to their constant ability to find new talent and new services. I want to include what I think is one of the most important parts of Google, and that is creating an environment, inside the company, and outside the company for innovation and advancement in the world. They are to date one of the biggest supporters of open source; on top of that they are the biggest financial backers to make information free for the masses on the internet.

But why are they such big supporters of free and open source advancements? Read more

I was so tempted to go around the internet and collect all the articles and information about Microsoft trying to take on google. Then make a new category just for it labeled How Stupid. But I didn’t feel like wasting that much time, maybe another day. (Pretends to scribbles that down on the non existent but needs to be created, to do list)

So why does Microsoft have to try and compete with everything technology related. Why can’t they just do a good job on 5 or 10 things instead of doing a piss poor job on 100 things.  Right now there current OS, vista, is a nightmare to work with. In most cases this beast of a Operation system ends up murdering whatever machine its on. They need to stick with what they know, and fix the junk they have released instead of branching out and chasing after another futile dream. Microsoft still refuses to give up hope of winning the non existent battle with google. They already lost, there grave has been picked out. Read more