Category Archive

Just spent an hour doing what any real coder would have done in 30 seconds. My first iPhone app may be in beta by the time we’re embedding chips in our heads. But there is great satisfaction in figuring these things out for oneself.

The dirty little secret about the internet is that if not for the porn industry it probably wouldn’t exist today. Or if indeed there was a version of the internet that started without the massive investment of the porn industry it would be vastly different than what we enjoy today.

The whole concept of displaying images via the internet was thanks to the porn industry. There’s only so much you can do with letters to the editor that start off something like; “Dear Penthouse, I read your letters every month and never thought anything like this would ever happen to me…(insert details of threesome, the good kind, here).

Then consumers demanded video. The porn industry delivered. Then instant messaging. Helllllo, porn industry. And of course the porn industry is like any other enterprise and wants to be be paid for the services offered. So they developed the technology for high security payment platforms years before the banks had heard of internet banking.

There’s a famous story about a research group at HP testing the technology of a scanner they had just invented. They wanted to email the scanned image to colleagues in the UK over the internet and determine if the result was acceptable by comparing it the original image. How do you get the original image to them for comparison? Their solution was to scan an image from a publication that is printed identically around the world. They chose Penthouse. As it turns out Miss November in the US is the same Miss November in the UK

The latest advance that the porn industry is leading us towards is 3D TV. smh.com.au has a story about it here.

I have the latest Mad Men (Season 3) and Dexter (Season 4) if anyone wants them. Leave a comment below.

It’s so important for businesses to deliver what they promise. I was researching domain expiration information for a friend this morning and being a client of NetRegistry went to their site. They offer a IM (instant message) service where you can chat with a salesperson. Great idea! Doesn’t work. Responses took many minutes and my contact at NetRegistry ‘mbaker’ was obviously ‘mshangrahanasingh’. (see update below)

Here are the screen dumps of the chat – they don’t show the time stamps but the period from comment to reply was in each instance several minutes. That’s not instant. And particularly annoying when he was asking questions that I had already answered.

UPDATE @ 10:18 on 16/12/09

Just got this email as a response to my complaint to NetRegistry.

———-

Hi,

We don’t offer the service, hence the sales person had no idea about it.
Probably a better question to put through support rather than sales.

Regards,
Brett Fenton
Chief Operating Officer
Netregistry Pty Ltd.

———-

I unreservedly apologise to ‘mshangrahanasingh’ for implying he is in anyway associated with NetRegistry.

Each year in Australia there are about 10 mega draw lotteries. These are the ones where the first division prize is more money than God.

Last night one such draw for $40million took place and was one by a single individual who will now have more ‘friends’ than God.

Mostly people who win these prizes are broke again in a short period of time. They may have some trinkets and some cars and some property but generally the lion share has been pissed up against a wall or given to family and friends.

The only way IMHO to act when something like this comes your way is to do nothing.

My emergency plan for what to do when a multi multi million dollar lottery prize comes my way:

1. As the money doesn’t actually arrive for a couple of weeks (Police checks and anti-fraud test are conducted) it’s planning time.
2. Create a team: lawyer, accountant, financial planners.
3. Have the lawyer and accountant create a charity.
4. Get the financial planners to start looking at investment options. Step one here is to open a margin account offset against 100% of the winnings. You’ll see why this is important later.
5. The aim of this plan is give away 100% of the interest earned every year. But remember, we now have two piles of cash; the winnings and the margin loan.
6. Invest both, not conservatively and not outrageously risky either. A little risk is good. A lot of risk is heart attack city.
7. Now create another team of advisors from business, charity, science and the arts. Three from each area are required.
8. Promote the charity and ask for submissions from the public as to where the money should go. Remember, it’s just the interest that’s being given away not the principle so you can do this every year.
9. Have your team review all submissions and vote on two winning entries from each category.
10. The president of the charity can award an overall winner to one of the eight semi finalists.
11. Each winning submission (2 from each of 4 categories being 8 in total) receive 1/10th of the interest earned for that year. Another 1/10 is given as the presidents prize. 1/10 is reinvested so that the principal always grows so each year there should be even more money to give away.
12. Eg assuming a lacklustre 10% return on $40mil each recipient would get about $400,000 dollars. The next year they would get $410,000. SImple figure only and counting taxes or fees etc.
13. The other $40mil margin loan is earning interest at the same rate but costing 5% in interest making a gross return of $2million pa. Who couldn’t live, very fucking happily, on $2M pa and have given away over $3.6M to worthy recipients.

So some back story. In June 09 Stephen Colbert packed up his late night political satire show, Colbert Nation,  and took it on the road to Camp Victory, Iraq. It was brilliant. Just 4 eps but each one brilliant. On night one he interviews General Raymond Odierno (Commanding General, Multi-National Force—Iraq). Watch it here from Comedy Channel. Then watch the video below. And wait to the end to see what Stephen does…

Great article from the masters of mischief about PepsiCo ceasing its US$1.3 Billion dollar advertising budget.*

*This article proudly brought to you by our sponsors. That’s them, just under the ‘Print’ button in the ‘Article Tools’ box.

Story at news.com.au
I just want to borrow a dollar from everyone of you for a day. I promise to give it back tomorrow. Deal?

I sure hope you have all purchased your own domain name like
craigashleyrussell.com. They will be the most valuable piece of real
estate you own in the near future. For a couple of bucks, what’s
stopping you?

Ask me if you need help getting yours.