From Lifehacker: How to Give Your Million Dollar Idea Away So It Actually Gets Made

In this day and age of patents and tech advancements, I’m glad that there’s someone thinking of this… and I’m for promoting this kind of thinking all the way!!! (Are you reading this, Google, Apple, Samsung, and everybody else?!!)

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Traditionally, we tend to protect our ideas with our lives. It’s the exact reason we have patents, trademarks, and copyrights. But most of us don’t have the willpower or drive to take every idea through to execution. Here’s how to give your ideas away to people who actually know how to make them happen. More »


 

from Lifehacker

Jeremy Lin’s Interview on his faith and God

New York Knicks' Jeremy LinIf you live under a rock, then you may not have heard of the latest news sensation, Jeremy Lin, the starter guard for the NY Knicks.  I have been just amazed at his gameplay and the respect for him only grew as I learned of his faith in God and his journey.  Read and be encouraged…  God does bless those who are faithful…

I am a basketball fan now and I had never really watched any sports!!

Read it here

From News: Administration Proposes $5 Billion Competition To Improve Teacher Quality

I do think that our education system needs major attention and overhaul… while our college-level education may be good, we are losing them at (much) younger ages.  And if we do nothing about it, our country will decay (educationally) for sure.

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The Obama administration says its ambitious, competitive grant program seeks to transform the teaching profession.

 

 

from News

Verizon Wireless Leads Industry in Customer Care? Really?!

According to J.D. Power & Associates survey, Verizon is leading in customer care… Really?!

You see, I have been a loyal customer for almost a decade.  You’d think that they’d treat you well for loyalty… well, no!  😡 I got a new phone (Droid Charge) back in end of October just a day before I left for work.  I figured I’d have few days left (I was going for 2 weeks) if I wanted to exchange the phone.  The phone was crap.  Slower and crappier than its predecessor, Droid X.  And since I didn’t want to be without a phone while I was on travel, I decided to call in when I returned.

Big mistake. It turns out the 14-day return period begins from the day they SHIP IT OUT!  WTH?!  I kept complaining and they eventually said that they’d let me swap it out with HTC Thunderbolt (which is way better!).  They would re-imburse me later on once I ship back Droid Charge.  Well, they didn’t come through and after much crap, I was given the short end of the stick!  I was beyond mad.

I am thinking about not renewing my contract.  I tend to be very loyal… unless you screw me over big time.  Verizon did.  But my other problem is… who would I switch to?!  Surely not AT&T!  No thanks…  Sprint?  Too much doubt…  erg…  Ok.  I am done with my ranting… but just had to laugh and rant on J.D. Power & Assoc. survey results…  who do YOU ask?!  Big sets of walls?!  Please… both Verizon and J.D. Power & Associates… get in touch with REALITY!

From Ars Technica: Parcel Gamer wants to share used game profits with publishers

While I think this could save the used games market, I also shudder at the thought that the game publishers will effectively get paid more than once if this happened… I’m torn…
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At the heart of the great used game debate are legitimate fears—on both sides of the divide. Gamers are worried about their right to buy and sell games they legally bought without technological hindrance or lost content. Publishers are afraid new game sales are unsustainable when cheaper, functionally identical used versions are available mere days after release. Meanwhile, major retailer GameStop rakes in what’s estimated to be billions of dollars from the used game market.

Is there a better way? Mike Kennedy seems to think so. He’s setting up a new used game trading site called Parcel Gamer that he thinks can satisfy both publishers and gamers,  while also undercutting GameStop’s high-margin business model.

Read the rest of this article...

 

from Ars Technica

From Ars Technica: Is it legal to stop people from selling their used games?

I hope this won’t happen!  I will boycott whoever does this!  [Hint/Rumor: Microsoft]

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Recent stories about potential technical efforts to limit the future playability of used games, as well as commercial efforts to limit the content included with used copies, got us wondering: is it actually legal to hinder someone from reselling a game (or piece of a game) that they legally bought in the first place?

Read the rest of this article...

 

from Ars Technica

From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: The Moon Should Be the 51st State, and Other Space Dreams From Newt Gingrich

As crazy as Gingrich is (not to mention how much I dislike him as a person and as a politician), this is one thing he has right… too bad I can’t vote for him even if this big issue is what I share in vision…
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Newt Gingrich Gage Skidmore via Flickr

At the sunset of Newt Gingrich’s putative presidency, the moon would be the 51st state, colonized by permanent American settlers. Tourists would honeymoon in low-Earth orbit, space factories would manufacture goods in microgravity, and America would have a rocket powerful enough to send us to Mars.

This is all according to a discussion Gingrich hosted Wednesday in Florida, which holds its presidential primary next Tuesday and which lost thousands of jobs as the space shuttle program drew to a close last year. But this is Gingrich talking, so it’s safe to say this isn’t all politics. A self-professed space nut and fan of science, Gingrich has dreamt of a lunar colony for decades. Even if this dream is inherently irrational:

“The reason you have to have a bold and large vision is you don’t arouse the American nation with trivial, bureaucratically rational objectives,” Gingrich said.

It’s odd for a politician to trump his own ideas as grandiose and not rational. But hey, going back to the moon sure fires up the patriots! So America’s space goals are once again a political football – one, incidentally, that seems to rev up Republicans more than it does Democrats. Gingrich has a long list of space dreams, which we’ll get to in a minute. But this debate brings to light an interesting volley since the Reagan administration, between Democratic presidents who seem not to really dwell on America’s space ambitions and Republican presidents (and would-be presidents) who just love the idea of Americans on the moon.

Dubbing himself a “visionary” for his space plans, the former House speaker and GOP presidential hopeful compared himself to John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and the Wright brothers. But he didn’t compare himself to another conservative Republican, George W. Bush, who also wanted the U.S. to go back to the moon as a launch pad for Mars. His new vision was gestated in the wake of the Columbia disaster, and centered on the retirement of the aging shuttles, but it also sought a more ambitious future for the space agency. The Constellation program never really got off the ground, however, and critics found plenty of faults.

But contrast this with Bill Clinton’s presidency. While he was in the Oval Office, the U.S. partnered with Russia to build the International Space Station – certainly a major achievement, but it was arguably more impressive for its geopolitics than its science scope. Both countries already had space stations before, and the ISS took way more time and money to build than anyone had anticipated. Otherwise, Clinton apparently didn’t have much to say about the space program, even in his autobiography “My Life.”

Then, a while after taking office and organizing a blue-ribbon NASA review commission, President Obama harrumphed at the idea of returning to the moon – “we’ve been there before,” he famously said – and charted a bumpy course for a future NASA that will eventually visit an asteroid and someday Mars.

Now Gingrich has set his sights back on our natural satellite, with a much tighter timeline. But there is one catch – he favors private development, not necessarily NASA leadership.

As Charles Houmans notes in Foreign Policy, the space program presents a conundrum for dedicated conservatives. It’s the most unassailably awesome achievement in American history, and as such it’s fertile ground for jingoists. But it’s also plagued by huge federal spending overruns, a risk-averse bureaucracy and – let us not forget – scientists, whose findings do not always comport with the conservative worldview. Gingrich seems able to toe this boundary carefully, coupling his love of science and space with his free-market beliefs.

In a debate earlier this week, he said privately funded prizes spurred Charles Lindbergh and Burt Rutan to reach new milestones, and private incentives could do the same for lunar settlement and Mars exploration.

For his part, his rival Mitt Romney has been a little more vague and a little more NASA-centric, discussing a space agency with more partnerships with universities and commercial enterprises.

Wednesday’s talk is just the latest in a long list of Gingrich’s space ideas, some of which are wackier than others. In 1981 he sponsored an unsuccessful bill called the National Space and Aeronautics Policy Act, which set forth “provisions for the government of space territories, including constitutional protections, the right to self-government and admission to statehood,” the New York Times reported in 1995. He proposed a lunar mirror network that would illuminate highways and dark alleyways. He envisions space factories creating new opportunities for the unemployed.

“If we’d spent as much on space as we’ve spent on farm programs, we could have taken all the extra farmers and put them on space stations working for a living … in orbiting factories,” he told a science fiction convention in 1986.

But other predictions and desires have borne out. A quarter-century ago he said “space tourism is coming,” predicting Hiltons and Marriotts of the solar system. There are no space hotels yet, but space tourism is likely just around the corner.

So does anyone really think a president Gingrich would set up a successful moon base? Not really, especially given this country’s economic situation and (depending on whose hyperbole you believe) debt crisis. Gingrich has given no indications of how he’d pay for it, incentives or otherwise, and the details are sparse. And most of the reaction from space observers has been tepid at best.

Space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, called it a “fantasy,” according to Space.com. “It would be much better to set realistic goals, but that is not Mr. Gingrich’s strong suit,” he said.

But you can hand Gingrich one thing: At least he’s talking about American leadership in space, something that’s been sorely lacking of late. Maybe his grandiose visions will start a real conversation.

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now