Is Turning the Other Cheek a Realistic Option?

---by Billy Graham

Q: Didn't Jesus say someplace that we ought to turn the other cheek when people do something bad to us? Isn't that unrealistic? What would happen if our country just turned the other cheek when someone attacked us? They'd just run all over us, in my opinion. - D.G.

A: The words of Jesus to which you refer are found in what we call the Sermon on the Mount: "But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:39).

It's important to remember that Jesus was speaking these words to His disciples, telling them how they were to live in a world that might be hostile to them. He wasn't telling nations how they ought to deal with each other, or giving us a general rule for human society. In fact, the Bible says governments should uphold what is right, and when evil men seek to gain the upper hand they must be restrained and punished (see Romans 13:4).

What did Jesus mean when He urged His followers to turn the other cheek? Simply this: He was telling them to take the path of love instead of hate. Anger and hatred lead to revenge and conflict - but Christ calls us to love others, even our enemies. Just a few verses later, He said, "I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44).

Is this possible? Yes - when we commit our lives to Christ and allow His Spirit to control us. This is the kind of love Jesus had for us, when He died for us on the cross. Have you opened your heart to Him? If not, make your commitment to Him today, and then ask Him to begin filling your heart with His love.

Posted via email from Religion

What's Really Important????

A father and his son went fishing on a small boat, hungry.

The father helped his son reel in his first fish, and it was a beauty. “Great catch, son,” the father said.

“Yes, but I’m worried I’m missing out on better fish,” the son said. “What if I could catch a bigger, tastier fish?”

“Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching an even bigger fish an hour later. “A real beaut,” the father said.

“But what if there are better fish out there?” the son asked.

“Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching a bigger fish, then wondering if there were better fish, catching another, and so on.

At the end of the day, the son was exhausted. The father asked, “How did the fish taste?”

The son hesitated. “I’m not sure. I was so busy looking for better fish that I didn’t taste any of them.”

The father smiled contentedly, patted his belly. “Don’t worry. They were delicious.”

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

Corporate Tax Rates By Country

Obama demands that there be higher taxes on "the rich" and private companies nearly every time he speaks these days. One area where he misses the mark concerns corporate tax rates, where the U.S. is already under-competitive versus many of our most important trading partners. What follow are national and local "Combined Corporate Tax Rates" for ten of the 30 countries of the OECD, with the highest such rates in that organization, as of 2010:

1. Japan: 39.54%
2. U.S.: 39.21%
3. France: 34.47%
4. Belgium: 33.99%
5. Germany: 30.18%
6-9. New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Mexico: tied at 30.0%
10. Canada: 29.52%

The U.S. needs lower corporate tax rates to promote job creation by the private sector in the U.S. Lower corporate tax rates would make the U.S. a more attractive site for foreign and domestic investors alike. It would serve to attract U.S. corporate funds that are parked overseas. It would make the U.S. a more competitive platform for companies selling to foreign nations. Lower corporate tax rates would eventually raise more taxes to pay for public goods.

We need to have a federal government that is mostly oriented to promoting jobs through encouraging the private sector by creating a positive investment climate. This means lower, not higher, corporate taxes, among other things.

President Obama is a poor economic manager and needs to be voted out of office in 2012!

Posted via email from Global Politics

Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear

----by Eric Felton

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."

The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds." But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.

It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.

If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.

John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says "there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified." Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, "I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar."

The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.

It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."

Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.

There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn't have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.

Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.

Given the risks, why don't musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do—when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic.

Still, musicians cling to the old materials. Last year, Dick Boak, director of artist relations for C.F. Martin & Co., complained to Mother Nature News about the difficulty of getting elite guitarists to switch to instruments made from sustainable materials. "Surprisingly, musicians, who represent some of the most savvy, ecologically minded people around, are resistant to anything about changing the tone of their guitars," he said.

You could mark that up to hypocrisy—artsy do-gooders only too eager to tell others what kind of light bulbs they have to buy won't make sacrifices when it comes to their own passions. Then again, maybe it isn't hypocrisy to recognize that art makes claims significant enough to compete with environmentalists' agendas.

Posted via email from Music Business Information

Rick Perry and Muslims

While Salon gleefully noted the criticism of Perry from the right in its inevitable follow-up, “Shariah foes seize on Perry’s ties to Muslims,” this manufactured story created an inconsequential dust-up in the blogosphere instead of the desired conservative crack-up. For the left, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups vying to take advantage of the fallout, a large-scale manufactured fight among conservatives is tantalizing. By their calculation, the release of tension here can only follow two paths: (1) Perry brushes off the attacks against him from a small number of bloggers on the right, who continue to marginalize themselves with hyperbolic pronouncements about his “fifth column candidacy”; or (2) Perry listens to these conservative bloggers, repudiates his outreach to the Ismaili community in Texas, and leaves himself open to a vicious assault from the media, including demands he make amends — like Herman Cain did — to the most vocal and aggressive Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups like the Islamic Society of North America.

The governor, I predict, will take the first option. Fortunately, he is astute enough to stay above the fray on the issue, with a spokesperson commenting simply,

Gov. Perry took an oath to uphold the U.S. and Texas constitutions, and the principles enumerated in those documents are what guide his leadership.

And, as more respected commentators dismiss the assertions leveled against Perry by these bloggers (or, as is more likely, ignore it altogether), the left will have lost this wedge issue. Let’s hope they do.

Posted via email from Global Politics

New Orleans Barbequed Shrimp

Don’t break out your grill for this dish. Here in New Orleans, barbecued shrimp means sautéed shrimp in Worcestershire-spiked butter sauce. We serve these shrimp with heads and tails on, so you need to dig in to enjoy. I highly recommend a bib.

We are famous for our barbecued shrimp, and with reason. The biggest trick to making this taste like ours is to not hold back on the butter. The three sticks called for are enough to scare you into cholesterol shock, but are key to the flavor and consistency of the sauce. Another tip to keep in mind: to emulsify the sauce, be sure to add a little butter at a time while stirring rapidly. And don’t overcook the shrimp or they’ll become tough and hard to peel.

• 16 jumbo shrimp (12 per pound, about 1 1/2 pounds), with heads and unpeeled
• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons cracked black pepper
• 2 teaspoons Creole seasoning
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cubed
• French bread as accompaniment

In a large skillet combine shrimp, Worcestershire, lemon juice, black peppers, Creole seasoning, and garlic and cook over moderately high heat until shrimp turn pink, about 1 minute on each side. Reduce heat to moderate and stir in butter, a few cubes at a time, stirring constantly and adding more only when butter is melted. Remove skillet from heat. Place shrimp in a bowl and pour sauce over top. Serve with French bread for dipping.

Yield: 4 appetizers or 2 entrees

Posted via email from WellCare

Sharks Kill Fewer People Than Vending Machines

There are 20 things that are more likely to kill you than sharks. Are you ready? Obesity. Obesity kills 30,000 people every year. Lightning.Lightning kills 10,000 people every year. Texting. Texting kills 6,000 people every year. Hippos. Hippos kill 2,900 people every year. Airplanes. Airplanes kill 1,200 people every year. Volcanoes. Volcanoes kill 845 people every year. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Autoerotic asphyxiation (please don’t ask me to tell you what this is) kills 600 people every year. Shopping. Shopping on Black Friday kills 550 people every year (crazy freaking women). Falling. Falling out of bed kills 450 people every year. Bathtubs. Bathtubs kill 340 people every year. Deer. Deer kill 130 people every year. Icicles. Icicles kill 100 people every year…but only in Russia. No place else. Hot dogs. Hot dogs kill 70 people every year. Tornadoes. Tornadoes kill 60 people every year. Jellyfish. Jellyfish kill 40 people every year. Dogs. Dogs kill 30 people every year…but only in the United States. Ants. Ants kill 30 people every year. I believe this one because I’m deathly allergic to insect bites/stings…and fire ants sting. Football. High school football kills 20 people every year. Vending machines. Vending machines kill 13 people every year. Dead. Serious. Roller coasters. Roller coasters kill six people every year.

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

In Silicon Valley, the Night Is Still Young

August 20, 2011

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

MENLO PARK, Calif.

LET the rest of the country worry about a double-dip recession. Tech land, stretching from San Jose to San Francisco, is in a time warp, and times here are still flush.

Even now, technology types in their 20s and 30s are dropping a million-plus each on modest ranch houses in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley and Victorian duplexes in San Francisco, and home prices in some parts have jumped nearly 50 percent in the last six months.

Jobs — good, six-figure jobs, with perks like free haircuts and lessons on how to create the next start-up company — are here for the taking, at least for software engineers.

And for anyone with a decent idea and the drive to start a company, $100,000 to get it off the ground is easy to come by.

Yet, for all the outward optimism, even before the recent gyrations on Wall Street, old fears have been creeping in, nagging memories of the dot-com bust. You can sense it at cocktail parties in Menlo Park, at business conferences in Redwood City, inside the hipper-than-thou offices of young Web companies in San Francisco. Maybe, just maybe, these good times won’t last, and it will all come crashing down again.

“There’s this ’90s hangover people still have,” says Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder and tech investor.

Now the worry is that all the turmoil on Wall Street will spread West. Can Silicon Valley really prosper if the general economy tips back into a recession? Can you make a fortune on your I.P.O. if the market is falling? Probably not. But then, no one should work here unless she is prepared to be lucky. Even in worrisome moments, like now, the essential optimism of this place endures.

“There’s a ‘greater-fool theory,’ ” says Lise Buyer, who was a tech stock analyst during the dot-com bubble and is back with a consulting firm, the Class V Group, that advises on initial public offerings. “In Silicon Valley, we are as a species wildly optimistic. But if we weren’t, we wouldn’t have so many entrepreneurs because no one who’s being rational would ever found a company.”

And so start-ups are multiplying. Engineers are deciding that this is the right time to create would-be Groupons or Facebooks — “me-too companies,” valley speak for start-ups that are basically copycats of a winning formula — or yet another local, social mobile app.

Even more than buying a new Prius or jetting off to Cabo for the weekend, the new money set here wants to keep investing — and believing. Backing another start-up is a status symbol, the No. 1 splurge, and it captures both the tech industry’s belief in the future and its fear of missing the next big thing.

 “These are nouveau tech millionaires,” says Adeo Ressi, a coach for entrepreneurs. “It’s not that they don’t see the warning signs. It’s like roulette.”

Even before the fragility of the stock market became apparent, people here had been asking this question: Are we in a new tech bubble?

The optimists — or, some would say, the self-interested who stand to profit from the hype — note that the amounts being invested are nowhere near what they were in 2000, and that the companies this time are generally profitable and mature. The pessimists say yes, a bubble has been inflating, yet even they aren’t fleeing. They just hope to be the smart ones who get lucky and get out before it pops.

A bubble looks just like a boom, says Marc Andreessen, who touched off the first boom when his company, Netscape, went public in 1995. Frank Quattrone, the investment banker who took Netscape and dozens more companies public back then, says that today feels less like the height of the bubble and more like 1995, when tech companies were starting to go public but investors weren’t yet speculative.

Just four short years ago, social media and the iPhone were the hot new things, and money was sloshing around. But when the recession hit in 2008, Silicon Valley froze. Of course, that didn’t last long: by 2010, start-up investing was booming again with money from angel investors playing with their own cash, and this year the I.P.O. markets opened wide to tech companies for the first time since 2007.

Twenty-two tech companies went public in the second quarter alone this year worth $5.5 billion, the highest dollar amount since 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Only six went public in all of 2008.

The valuations of young start-ups, meanwhile, have been defying gravity. Almost 1,000 raised $7.5 billion from venture capitalists in the second quarter, up 19 percent from the first quarter and 61 percent from the same period in 2009.

At first the bubble debate fixated on LinkedIn, which went public in May. Its stock price spiked on the first day of trading, reminding people of the bubble days — but then again, LinkedIn is a 10-year-old, profitable company. (Its shares have since fallen 16 percent.) Then more companies joined the I.P.O. rush, like the money-losing Groupon, just two years old. By promoting a gauge it called “acsoi” (for adjusted consolidated segment operating income) to measure its business performance, it called to mind the initial Internet wave, which offered interesting metrics like “eyeballs” and “mindshare.”

Now, amid the stock market’s overall upheaval, people are wondering whether highflying Web companies can still make it on Wall Street.

“Investors don’t want stocks with valuations that rival the national debt,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of I.P.O. Boutique, an advisory firm. “They’re going to have to be pristine, not only on revenue growth but also showing decreasing losses or increasing profits.”

No matter what you call it — a bubble, a boom or business as usual in a land of optimism — something has been in the air. It may be harebrained or hopelessly out of touch, but if you don’t have a rosy outlook, you don’t belong here.

ON a rare sunny June day in southern San Francisco, hundreds of entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs flocked to the Founder Showcase, a kind of “American Idol” for start-ups that is held every three months and run by Mr. Ressi. Ten lucky founders, chosen in advance, pitched their companies to a panel of five venture capitalist judges, while the rest watched and voted for their favorites on their cellphones.

The audience members were hoping for money — or even just a business card or some advice on pitching their own companies — from the investors among them. The investors were easy to spot: they were the older ones with button-down shirts and slacks.

It was the seventh Founder Showcase. But signaling the appetite for money-making ideas, it had sold 600 tickets, double the number of the previous event.

First to make a presentation was Bundled, a service for merchants that sell coupons on daily deal sites, just one of many start-ups chasing Groupon. But Dave Parker, Bundled’s founder, said it was different — “the post-daily-deal company for businesses.”

Not different enough, apparently, for some people. “I’ve probably seen four of these in the last two weeks,” said Rebecca Lynn, a judge from Morgenthaler Ventures. The judges held up their scorecards. The average score was 3 out of 5.

Soon came VidCaster, a service for Web sites to add video; it was started by Kieran Farr, a taxi driver turned chief executive. He said his service had absolute stickiness — meaning that it lures Internet users to stick around for a long time.

“What’s the gross margin of the business look like?” asked George Zachary of Charles River Ventures.

“What does that mean?” Mr. Farr said.

“That’s a problem.”

Average score: 2.8.

Downstairs, free wine and tables of salami and crudités beckoned, but many people lingered to swarm the V.C.’s with their own ideas.

Rory O’Driscoll, a venture capitalist, complained that all the new deals were incredibly overpriced, but he still dismissed bubble talk. “It’s a little bit party-poopy,” he said, “to go from the world is ending because no one is investing to the world is ending because everything is so overpriced, without going through the middle part where we all make money.”

HANGING out near University Avenue in Palo Alto or in the SoMa district of San Francisco, you might wonder where all the wealth is. You can’t spot many designer suits, diamond tennis bracelets or mansions with columns. Instead, waiting in line at the Off the Grid food trucks in SoMa or at Fraiche frozen yogurt in Palo Alto, you see people in fleeces emblazoned with the names of their start-ups and hear them chatting about their new app or what to do with $30 million.

“You never change the way you dress,” says an executive at one hot start-up who made a small fortune at a previous one. He wore an orange T-shirt. “You don’t want to flaunt it,” he adds, “especially in front of your employees.”

So you might buy a car that’s nice but not too fancy — maybe a Prius or a BMW, but definitely not a Bentley — and take up a hobby like kite surfing. You occasionally charter a plane to fly privately, especially if it gives you more time to work on your start-up. Efficiency makes sense to engineers; splurging for splurging’s sake does not.

At open houses, engineers in their 20s and 30s have offered cash to pay for $1.5 million homes, and are even bidding up the prices of $3,500-a-month rental apartments by a few hundred dollars. In Palo Alto, according to the real estate Web site Trulia, the median home sale price has risen 49 percent in six months, to about $1.2 million.

“You’re seeing the new tech money and also the anticipation of new tech money,” says Alex Lehr of Lehr Real Estate in San Carlos, Calif., as builders buy land and fixer-uppers in preparation for Facebook to go public.

Still, the young tech millionaires are not buying all they can afford. They avoid towns like Atherton and Woodside, where senior executives and rich venture capitalists live, because they don’t want to seem showy.

For some, it’s a different story. Yuri Milner, the Russian investor who stormed the valley with hundreds of millions of dollars, which he plowed into Facebook, Zynga and Twitter, recently spent $100 million on a French-style chateau with a ballroom, home theater and indoor and outdoor pools.

But it hasn’t sat well with some people here.

“Being that ostentatious is O.K. in Russia, but not here,” says an executive who attended a party at Mr. Milner’s house but didn’t want to be named, wishing to preserve business relationships.

The new home of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, is more typical. Mr. Zuckerberg, who Forbes says is worth $13.5 billion, finally stopped renting and splurged on a house. He spent $7 million to buy one that is a century old — with just one pool (though it is saltwater).

Instead, the biggest splurge for the valley’s nouveau riche is angel investing, putting $25,000 or $100,000 into a friend’s start-up to keep the cycle going.

“That’s where all the money goes,” says Alex Rampell, a co-founder of TrialPay, an online advertising start-up in Mountain View. “It’s not about making it back. It’s about feeling good — and doing what’s accepted.”

At a rooftop party in the hills south of downtown San Francisco, M. C. Hammer was shouting into the microphone as attendees raised their cellphones high to take his picture. “Today and yesterday — different tempos, different styles,” he intoned.

The scene was an office-warming party for Airbnb, a service for people who want to rent rooms in their homes. It had just joined the club of start-ups, including Spotify, Square and Gilt, that were valued at $1 billion or more by their investors; its new office was befitting of a company with $112 million in fresh capital.

The conference rooms had been lavishly transformed into models of some of Airbnb’s most enviable properties, like an art-filled apartment in SoHo in Manhattan and a mushroom dome cabin near Santa Cruz. The women’s restrooms were painted hot pink and stocked with dry shampoo, Chloé perfume and affirmational notes — like “life is lovely” — scrawled on the wall. The shelves held multiple copies of books like “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” by T. Harv Eker.

The guests, sipping cocktails and playing Skee-Ball, looked out of place in tech land. They were dressed in short black cocktail dresses and slacks. But once they put on the gray hoodies — bearing Airbnb’s logo — that were distributed at the event, they were a casting director’s dream.

A private security guard and a fire marshal watched with amusement from the sidelines. Many tech companies had been hiring them for parties, they said. The fire marshal said he had worked at one at AT&T Park, the baseball stadium that Genentech had rented out for a concert with “the guy from ‘American Idol’ who didn’t win but has a rock band now.”

Another night, another office-warming party in San Francisco — this time for Foursquare, the Web service that alerts your friends to your location. The event was in an airy loft around the corner from the offices of hot start-ups like Twitter.

“Hiring is the main reason for the party, to make some noise that we have space in San Francisco,” said Dennis Crowley, a Foursquare co-founder who had flown in from New York, where the company is based, on Virgin America, the pink-lit, WiFi-equipped airline that serves as a commuter train for tech types shuttling between the two cities.

A disco ball started flashing, and someone brought Mr. Crowley a gold paper crown. Engineers and venture capitalists cozied up to the bar to order “the Start-Up” (gin, tonic and blackberry soda) and “the Frat House” (rum and Mountain Dew Throwback). But the guests seemed mostly concerned with checking in to the party on Foursquare and posting about it on Twitter; their messages were broadcast on a giant screen.

Mr. Crowley may have a haircut like Justin Bieber’s former shaggy look, but at 35 is old by Silicon Valley standards. During the first boom, he was a tech analyst at JupiterResearch. In 2004, he started Dodgeball, another check-in service, which Google bought for a few million dollars and later shut down.

He scoffed at comparisons to 1999. Today, he said, “companies get a lot more done with a lot less capital.”

“There are so many more people on the Internet,” he added. “My grandmother knows how to shop on Amazon.”

“There is real money to be made.”

THE Twitter message flickered on the screen of Aye Moah’s iPhone, just as she was waking up in a Silicon Valley motel. She turned to her boyfriend and business partner, Alexander Moore, and said, “Get in the car and go.”

The investor Dave McClure had just posted that he needed a ride because his car was in the shop. The payment: he would listen to a start-up pitch from his driver.

Ms. Moah and Mr. Moore had come to the valley to raise money for their e-mail start-up, Baydin, but their meetings hadn’t gone well. So they leapt at Mr. McClure’s offer.

Mr. Moore jumped into his Chevy Cobalt and picked up Mr. McClure. And by the time they reached his destination 20 minutes later, Mr. McClure had agreed to give Baydin $100,000.

Mr. Moore and Ms. Moah have since moved into an office with cement floors and sweeping views. Almost nightly, they attend networking events with other engineers, or parties like one in San Francisco featuring belly dancers playing with fire. The couple dream of turning their start-up into a big company.

But if the dream is contagious, so is the fear.

The other day, Mr. Moore went to a start-up event to learn about “quick exits” — valley talk for cashing out of your company while you still can — where executives from large tech companies coached young entrepreneurs on how to sell their nascent start-ups.

Just in case.

Miguel Helft contributed reporting.

DC Stand for: Delusional Congress

Posted via email from Global Politics

Ronald Reagan's Biggest Mistake....??

As the nation's attention turns back to the fractured debate over immigration, it might be helpful to remember that in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. It was sold as a crackdown: There would be tighter security at the Mexican border, and employers would face strict penalties for hiring undocumented workers.

But the bill also made any immigrant who'd entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty — a word not usually associated with the father of modern conservatism.

In his renewed push for an immigration overhaul this week, President Obama called for Republican support for a bill to address the growing population of illegal immigrants in the country. This time, however, Republicans know better than to tread near the politically toxic A-word.

Part of this aversion is due to what is widely seen as the failure of Reagan's 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. However, one of the lead authors of the bill says that unlike most immigration reform efforts of the past 20 years, amnesty wasn't the pitfall.

"We used the word 'legalization,' " former Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson tells NPR's Guy Raz. "And everybody fell asleep lightly for a while, and we were able to do legalization."

The law granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, yet was largely considered unsuccessful because the strict sanctions on employers were stripped out of the bill for passage.

Simpson says the amnesty provision actually saved the act from being a total loss. "It's not perfect, but 2.9 million people came forward. If you can bring one person out of an exploited relationship, that's good enough for me."

Reagan And Amnesty

Nowadays, conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh often invoke the former president as a champion of the conservative agenda. Sean Hannity of Fox News even has a regular segment called "What Would Reagan Do?"

Simpson, however, sees a different person in the president he called a "dear friend."

Reagan "knew that it was not right for people to be abused," Simpson says. "Anybody who's here illegally is going to be abused in some way, either financially [or] physically. They have no rights."

Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter, agrees. "It was in Ronald Reagan's bones — it was part of his understanding of America — that the country was fundamentally open to those who wanted to join us here."

Reagan said as much himself in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.

"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally," he said.

Now, Amnesty Is Out; Border Security Is In

More than 20 years later, the Republican Party has changed its tune. President Obama's call for bipartisanship on the immigration issue was answered by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. A bipartisan effort would be possible, he said, if Obama "would take amnesty off the table and make a real commitment to border and interior security."

But Simpson, a fellow Republican who served in the Senate with McConnell from 1986 to 1997, says calling for tighter borders is a tried-and-true tactic of politicians unwilling to confront the realities of a growing illegal population.

"That's always the palliative that makes people feel good," he says. "You just say, 'Well, we're still dinkin' around with immigration, so since we can't seem to get anything done and our constituents are raising hell — how do we get re-elected?' Well, you just put some more money into the border."

Robinson says Reagan's own diaries show the president found the idea of a militantly staffed border fence difficult to take. In a private meeting with then-President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico in 1979, Reagan wrote that he hoped to discuss how the United States and Mexico could make the border "something other than the location for a fence."

Fix It Before You Overhaul It

These days, Republicans are also calling for existing laws to be toughened up, which Reagan would have agreed with, Robinson says. In fact, Robinson says, he would have been so upset at the federal government's failure to make good on the 1986 reform that he would have demanded for that law to be fixed first before instituting a new overhaul.

"He, too, would have been right there in saying, 'Fix the borders first.' " Where he would have differed, Robinson says, is his welcoming attitude toward immigrants.

"He was a Californian," Robinson says. "You couldn't live in California ... without encountering over and over and over again good, hard-working, decent people — clearly recent arrivals from Mexico."

That the U.S. failed to regain control of the border — making the 1986 law's amnesty provision an incentive for others to come to America illegally — would have infuriated Reagan, Robinson says.

"But I think he would have felt taking those 3 million people and making them Americans was a success."

Posted via email from Global Politics

Why Can't I Be Bitter?

---by Billy Graham

Q: I know you've said we shouldn't be bitter over some of the things people do to us, but why not? My husband dumped me for another woman, and as far as I'm concerned, I have every right to be bitter over it. -- Mrs. T.B.

A: When people betray us or turn against us, I know it's natural for us to feel bitter. And along with our bitterness often comes a host of other emotions: anger, resentment, a yearning for revenge, feelings of rejection or worthlessness, and so forth.

But listen: These always hurt us more than they hurt the other person. (The only exception might be if our anger leads to violence -- although if we're caught, we'll probably end up suffering more than they did.) In other words, bitterness is always destructive -- and the person it destroys is the person who is bitter. Your bitterness doesn't change your situation, nor does it change the person who hurt you. But it does change you -- and not in healthy ways.

This is why the Bible compares bitterness to a deadly poison, and urges us to cleanse it from our souls. If we fail to do so, we not only sin, but we pay a stiff price for our failure. No one likes to be around someone who is bitter and angry all the time. The Bible says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice" (Ephesians 4:31).

How is this possible? I believe it's only possible as we submit our lives to Christ, and turn our burdens and heartaches over to Him. It may not be easy for you to do, but honestly confess your bitterness to God, and then ask Him to replace it with Christ's love and peace.

Posted via email from Religion

America Is Not Broken; BUT, America Is FedUp with DC!

In short, it is not America that is broken; it is Washington that is broken. You can’t argue with the fact that power has increasingly been consolidated in Washington. In 1960, the government of the United States spent approximately $92 billion annually, or $509 per person. By 1987, that figure had grown to $1 trillion, or $4,127 per person. This year, federal spending is projected to surpass $3.7 trillion, or $11,500 per person.  There are over 2 million civilian federal employees, an additional 1.5 million in the U.S. military (that part is a good thing), and millions more involved in federal contracts. There are over 4,500 independent federal criminal laws and over 163,000 pages of federal regulations scattered across hundreds of agencies in 15 different departments.  The federal tax code and its supporting regulations total over 9 million words across thousands of pages.

The federal government is massive and grows more so by the day. Indeed, by the end of the 111th Congress, there will likely be more than 6,500 new bills introduced in the House of Representatives and 4,000 more in the Senate, designed, ostensibly, to cure the nation’s ills.

Of course, it never occurs to the power brokers in Washington that perhaps they are the cause of much of what ails us. But it occur to the American people. I have had the privilege of meeting and talking with tens of thousands of my fellow citizens from all walks of life, and I can tell you one thing for certain: the American people are fed up.

We are fed up with being overtaxed and overregulated. We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kind of cars we can drive, what kinds of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what kind of food we can grow, what doctor we can see, and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see fit.

We are fed up with a federal government that has the arrogance to preach to us about how to live our lives, and the chutzpah to haul every baseball player and other “evildoer” in the world before a congressional committee — or some comic such as Stephen Colbert. Meanwhile, Congress, arguably one of the most incompetent regimes with one of the worst track records of mismanagement in the history of mankind, runs up over $13 trillion and counting in debt.

We are fed up with bailout after bailout and stimulus plan after stimulus plan, each one of which tosses principle out the window along with taxpayer money. We can’t even keep up with all the spending, be it the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the auto industry bailout, the AIG bailout, or President Obama’s failed $787 billion “Recovery Act.” The list goes on and on.

We are fed up with a federal government that pledged $200 billion to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when their mismanagement, coupled with ridiculous federal regulations, led to the inappropriate lending policies underlying the financial crisis in the first place. And we are fed up with tax credits that amount to pure giveaways to certain citizens at the expense of others — the government picking winners and losers based on circumstance and luck with no real benefit to the economy.

We are fed up with a Department of Homeland Security that refuses to secure our borders, resulting in more than 10 million people living in our country illegally, thousands more coming in daily from all over the world, and almost 1,000 children being born in our country every day to parents who are here illegally. Meanwhile, politicians use the issue of immigration as a political tool to divide Americans.

We are fed up with a self-interested Congress that spends its time earmarking over 9,000 pet projects in 2010 worth over $16 billion, a number Democrats tout as an accomplishment because it represents just over half of the peak amount of $29 billion under Republicans in 2006 — all of which corrupts the political process and wastes our money. We are fed up with a Congress that often fails to even read the legislation it passes and that increasingly writes laws, such as the health care bill, that are over 2,000 pages long.

We are fed up with activist judges who tell us what is right and wrong and deny us the right to live as we see fit — from deciding when life begins and where the Ten Commandments can be displayed to telling the people how to punish criminals.

We are fed up that Social Security and Medicare teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, amassing unfathomable liabilities for future generations, that the federal government refuses to admit it, and that there is no leadership in Washington to do anything about it — unless you count yet another committee chaired by a retired senator that will no doubt be appointed to fix them.

We are fed up with a federal government arrogant enough to declare it knows more about our health than our doctor and that is willing to risk the best health care system in the world while blatantly lying that it is not on the path to a single-payer, government-run system.

But perhaps most of all we are fed up because deep down we know how great America has always been, how many great things the people have done in spite of their government, and how great the nation can be in the future if government will just get out of the way.

America is great. Yet for some in our nation, to make such a statement is considered arrogant, close-minded, or jingoistic — the kind of thing said by cowboys, as if it is a bad thing to be a cowboy.

Excerpted from “Fed Up!” by Rick Perry. Copyright (c) 2010, reprinted with permission from Little, Brown and Company.

Posted via email from Global Politics

What is the Devil's Will for Us?

---by Billy Graham

Q: I know we talk a lot about God's will for us, what He wants to do in the world, and things like that, but what is the devil's plan for all this? Or does the Bible say anything about this? -- M.J.H.

A: Yes, the Bible certainly does tell us about the devil and what he wants to accomplish in the world -- and also in our lives. The devil is real, and you can be sure he's always at work, diligently seeking to achieve his goal.

What is his goal? His goal is nothing less than opposing God in every way he possibly can. God's goal is to turn us away from sin and make us more like Christ -- but Satan's goal is exactly the opposite. He wants to keep us under sin's control, and turn our hearts away from God. This is why the Bible calls him "your enemy," and says he is "like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).

Sometimes Satan's attacks are very open and obvious, tempting us to do evil things that sound exciting -- but will always bring us to destruction. But often his attacks are very indirect and subtle, and we may not even realize what he is doing. The Bible even warns us that at times "Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14). But his goal remains the same: to keep us from God and His will for our lives.

How can we gain victory over Satan? The best way is to stay close to Christ. He is stronger than Satan. Some day, Christ's victory will be complete, and Satan and all his evil works will be banished forever. Is Jesus Christ the center of your life?

Posted via email from Religion

Where Did the Bible Come From?

---by Billy Graham

Q: Where did the Bible come from? I know it's made up of a lot of different books, but who decided to put them together into one large book? -- N.S.

A: The Bible is actually like a library, because it's a collection of books written by many people over hundreds of years. Once all the books were finished, they eventually were collected into one volume. Throughout this process, devout people recognized that God was speaking through those books -- and this set them apart from all others.

But the real author of the Bible is God Himself. He spoke His message to people He chose to receive it, and they in turn put it into writing as they were led by the Holy Spirit. Their message wasn't their own invention; it came from God. As the Bible says, "Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21).

Why did God give the Bible to us? The reason is because He loves us and wants us to know His will. Most of all, He gave it to us because He wants us to come to know Him in a personal way -- and this is possible, as we give our lives to the One who is the center of the Bible's message: Jesus Christ. Have you committed your life to Him?

Sadly, however, the Bible is something that many people respect -- but never read. Don't let this be true of you, but make the Bible part of your life every day. God wants to change your life -- and He will, as you open your heart and mind to the truth of His Word, the Bible.

Posted via email from Religion

Isolating Light On Photonic Chip

A new way to isolate light on a photonic chip allows light to travel in only one direction. The findings could lead to the next generation of computer-chip technology: photonic chips that allow for faster computers and less data loss. (Credit: Caltech/Liang Feng)

CALTECH (US) — A new technique that isolates light signals on a silicon chip solves a longstanding problem in engineering photonic chips.

Although optical fibers are increasingly replacing copper wires, carrying information via photons instead of electrons, today’s computer technology still relies on electronic chips. The switch to photonic chips will allow for faster computers and less data loss when connected to the global fiber-optic network.

Current, state-of-the-art photonic chips operate at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps)—hundreds of times the data-transfer rates of today’s personal computers—with the next generation expected to soon hit 40 Gbps. (Credit: Jingqing Huang)

Straight from the Source

Read the original study

DOI: 10.1126/science.1206038

“We want to take everything on an electronic chip and reproduce it on a photonic chip,” says Liang Feng, a postdoctoral scholar in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and lead author on a paper to be published in the August 5 issue of the journal Science.

In that paper, Feng and colleagues describe a new technique to isolate light signals. An isolated light signal can only travel in one direction. If light weren’t isolated, signals sent and received between different components on a photonic circuit could interfere with one another, causing the chip to become unstable.

In an electrical circuit, a device called a diode isolates electrical signals by allowing current to travel in one direction but not the other. The goal, then, is to create the photonic analog of a diode, a device called an optical isolator. “This is something scientists have been pursuing for 20 years,” Feng says.

Normally, a light beam has exactly the same properties when it moves forward as when it’s reflected backward. “If you can see me, then I can see you,” he says. In order to isolate light, its properties need to somehow change when going in the opposite direction. An optical isolator can then block light that has these changed properties, which allows light signals to travel only in one direction between devices on a chip.

“We want to build something where you can see me, but I can’t see you,” Feng explains. “That means there’s no signal from your side to me. The device on my side is isolated; it won’t be affected by my surroundings, so the functionality of my device will be stable.”

To isolate light, Feng and his colleagues designed a new type of optical waveguide, a 0.8-micron-wide silicon device that channels light. The waveguide allows light to go in one direction but changes the mode of the light when it travels in the opposite direction.

A light wave’s mode corresponds to the pattern of the electromagnetic field lines that make up the wave. In the researchers’ new waveguide, the light travels in a symmetric mode in one direction, but changes to an asymmetric mode in the other. Because different light modes can’t interact with one another, the two beams of light thus pass through each other.

Previously, there were two main ways to achieve this kind of optical isolation. The first way—developed almost a century ago—is to use a magnetic field. The magnetic field changes the polarization of light—the orientation of the light’s electric-field lines—when it travels in the opposite direction, so that the light going one way can’t interfere with the light going the other way. “The problem is, you can’t put a large magnetic field next to a computer,” Feng says. “It’s not healthy.”

The second conventional method requires so-called nonlinear optical materials, which change light’s frequency rather than its polarization. This technique was developed about 50 years ago, but is problematic because silicon, the material that’s the basis for the integrated circuit, is a linear material.

If computers were to use optical isolators made out of nonlinear materials, silicon would have to be replaced, which would require revamping all of computer technology. But with their new silicon waveguides, the researchers have become the first to isolate light with a linear material.

Although this work is just a proof-of-principle experiment, the researchers are already building an optical isolator that can be integrated onto a silicon chip. An optical isolator is essential for building the integrated, nanoscale photonic devices and components that will enable future integrated information systems on a chip.

Current, state-of-the-art photonic chips operate at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps)—hundreds of times the data-transfer rates of today’s personal computers—with the next generation expected to soon hit 40 Gbps. But without built-in optical isolators, those chips are much simpler than their electronic counterparts and are not yet ready for the market. Optical isolators like those based on the researchers’ designs will therefore be crucial for commercially viable photonic chips.

In addition to the Caltech team, researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the Nanjing National Laboratory of Microstructures in China contributed to the work, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Have you been spammed? Most likely.

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

Alcohol Use by All Americans Including Kids

This shows America has a major drinking problem.....all ages!

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WWW!!!!!

Twenty years ago today, the World Wide Web, also known as “the web”, was born at CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research. This event should not be confused with the Internet’s birth. According to the World Wide Web Consortium’s website, the World Wide Web is “an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing”. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the invention of the web, along with scientist Robert Cailliau.

Berners-Lee envisioned the concept of using hypertext to help researchers share information over the internet. According to Wikipedia, he proposed “ to build a hypertext project” called “WorldWideWeb” (one word, also “W3″) as a ‘web’ of ‘hypertext documents’ to be viewed by browsers, using a client–server architecture.” Berners-Lee used a computer called NeXT as the world’s first web server. On August 6, 1991, “the web” made its public debut.

Today, the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, as it is often called, sets the standards for “web” development. Tim Berners-Lee is still very active in the development of “the web” and is the Director of W3C. He was Knighted in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth. He also directs the Web Science Trust and The World Wide Web Foundation.

“The web” has transformed into a medium for the endless sharing of ideas, entertainment, and commerce. Could the men who set this idea in motion ever have envisioned the powerful influence it has become today? So today, when you check up on friends half-way around the globe on Facebook, or catch the latest gossip on some news website, take a moment to wish “the web” a very happy twentieth birthday!

Tip To Increase Productivity

By....Leo Babauta.

A little while back I ran into a friend, Susan O’Connell (Zen Master and Vice President of the San Francisco Zen Center), and she did something old fashioned.

When I said we should have tea sometime, she immediately went to her bag and got out her paper calendar, and suggested we make a date right then.

I said, “No, you’re busy, we can set a date later.”

She said she tries to only deal with something once.

It’s an old-fashioned piece of productivity advice, and something that I’ve done in the past, but it works.

Deal with something once. Do it now. Then it’s off your mind, and you can fully focus on the next matter.

Do most of us do this? We might read a bunch of emails, and say, “I’ll reply to those later. I’ll decide later.” We might see a bill or other piece of mail, and put it aside for later.

We put off small decisions and tasks for later, and they pile up, weighing on us at the back of our minds, pulling on us until we collapse under the weight of “later”.

Try dealing with it immediately.

If you open an email, make a decision on it immediately. Schedule the appointment in your calendar, reply, do a small task it requires, or if it takes too long, then you can put it on a to-do list — but avoid this if possible. David Allen suggests a two-minute rule: if the task can be done in less than two minutes, do it now. I suggest five minutes, even up to 10, as that means you have one less thing to worry about.

At any rate, archive the email once you’ve dealt with it, or delete it. You’re done with that. Move to the next, and repeat.

This applies to everything else: mail, paperwork, phone calls, requests from others. Deal with them immediately, or schedule a date to deal with it later if necessary.

When your child asks for attention, give it to her now.

When your wife starts talking to you, put away the laptop, iPad or mobile device, and talk to her now.

What this means is that you deal with each thing in the moment, and then move to the next. Your mind isn’t pulled in a million directions at once.

It’s contrary to advice I’ve given before, because what it sometimes means is that you are often moving at the whim of other people’s requests — what they think is important, not you. And this can be a problem. You don’t want to just be reactive. I prefer to do what I think is important.

But a balance can be struck. When you deal with email or other types of communication, do it now. When you decide to work on something important, clear everything else, shut down communication, and just focus on that one important task. Don’t bounce around.

I’ve been doing this, mostly, ever since Susan reminded me of this little productivity trick, and it works beautifully. I’m not perfect — there are a couple tasks I’ve been putting off, mostly because I don’t have the ability to do them immediately, but for the majority of things I’ve been pretty good at dealing with things now.

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

Appalachian Trail Record

photo: Jennifer Pharr Davis on the trail. credit: Maureen Robinson

Jennifer Pharr Davis has hiked the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail twice before. She has even written a book about the long slog and its endless rewards and challenges.

NEWS: Appalachian Trail Could Be Extended Across International Borders

This summer, she hit the trail yet again with the goal of going even faster than her 2008 time of 57 days and some hours. (Most through-hikers take six months or more). But that's not all. She also wanted to beat the official record of 47 days, 13 hours and 31 minutes, set by Andrew Thompson in 2005.

The New York Times caught up with her part-way through the trek with an encouraging report. This week, she succeeded in her record attempt, finishing in 46 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes. That translates to an average of 47 miles a day.

Pharr Davis, a 28-year old writer, hiked up to 16 hours on most days, according to a post on The Adventure Blog. Her average speed was three miles an hour.

That pace is certainly not slow, especially considering the mountainous terrain, but it's not unattainably fast for most fit hikers. What's most impressive, though, is that she could sustain her speed for so many hours a day, day after day for a month and a half.

It's not Pharr Davis's first major hiking accomplishment. She has summited Mount Kilimanjaro, through-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and set a women's record on the Long Trail. She has also completed an Ironman, as well as multiple marathons and ultra-running races of 50 miles or more.

In a blog post after finishing the trek, Pharr Davis reporting sleeping a lot, eating pizza, doing literally nothing, and catching up on the news of the world -- both hard news and gossipy stuff.

"I timed my finish so I could watch the season finale of The Bachelorette," she joked to her husband.

Sounds like a rest well-earned.

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

AppSumo...Uncommon Sense....Int. with Derek Sivers

Uncommon Sense Welcome! Leave a blog review on your site, letting us know what you think of the video. After that send us an email letting us know and one person will win $250 AppSumo credit just email review@appsumo.com to enter. Now that is a deal that will make you slap your belly. Did you ever wonder what you were going to be when you grew up? Or even better, were you ever scared of leaving a job because you did not know what lied ahead? Sumo, I was once there too, then I had a chance meeting with Derek Sivers and that all changed. Derek has had an interesting life to say the least. He went from indie musician to starting the worlds largest independent online music distribution service. Sivers explains to us that having success as an entrepreneur isn't based on just pure book smarts but true passion for your work. He loved what he did so much that when he sold his company, he decided to put the money back into a trust for independent musicians. Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby.com really helps put things in a clear perspective. None of this esoteric intangible advice. Derek really lays it down to the nuts and bolts and gives solid advice that you can put into action right now. If you're not following his blog or twitter, you should be. Go to Sivers.org and subscribe. Also his new book is getting rave reviews. Go to Sivers.org/a. Highlight points. Learn to identify your goal. Learn how business plans can change quickly. Learn why simplicity works. Learn to incrementally begin executing your idea. See a case study of CD Baby. What you will find below Individual streaming sections so you can jump to whichever section you prefer Bullet summaries of each section Download links for the following: The full 47-minute video if you prefer to watch it on your desktop The .mp3 version for your .mp3 player of choice The full 11-page transcript in PDF form And finally, our email address so you can let us know what you want to see in our next Action Video Enjoy... Section 1: Intro Video powered by Wistia.com Section 2: Why are You Doing? Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: Learn to identify your goal. Learn to optimize your activities based on your goal. Section 3: Nobody Knows the Future Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: Learn why a complex and thorough business plan does not guarantee success. Learn how business plans can change quickly. Section 4: Revolution? Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: Learn why simplicity works. Learn how Derek Sivers defines revolution. Section 5: If its not a Hit, Switch Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: Learn to identify a good idea based on the reactions of potential customers. Learn to know when to stop being persistent with a specific idea. Section 6: Version 0.1 Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: Learn to incrementally begin executing your idea. Section 7: Idea vs Execution Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: Learn why it is important to know how to act on an idea. Section 8: The Most Successful Things We Did at CD Baby Video powered by Wistia.com What You Will Learn: See a case study of CD Baby. Learn how to be personable when in contact with customers. Additional Links and Resources Sivers.org Derek Sivers' Twitter derek@sivers.org Downloads Download the full video for your desktop here Download the .mp3 version here Download the transcript here *right click on the link and "save as" if opens in a new window Powered by SpeechPad.com Sumo Insider What do you want to learn next? Just send an email to nextactionvideo@appsumo.com

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Free Ways to get Rid of Conficker

Conficker is a worm, one very sneaky and successful worm. That once it's in your computer it will go into self preservation mode. Meaning, it wants to live. So it will search out any place such as an external hard drive, usb flash drive to attach itself. And it's doing this because if Microsoft can figure out how to plug the security hole that allowed conficker to get into your system in the first place, it would die off once the new security patch is put into place. But as long as it's on an external hard drive where a security patch can not be placed it can lay in wait. What's conficker, or sometimes known as conflicker, waiting for? It's waiting for you to take your external hard drive to another computer where the security patch is not installed on. If conflicker can find such a computer (which it's pretty successfully doing right now) it will gain access to the internet and self update itself with new orders, as well as how to access new security holes. Then once you bring your external hard drive back to your original computer Conficker will again start to do it's thing.

What is Conficker's "thing"?

So far conflicker (conficker) hasn't caused any damage. But what it does do, is find your passwords. The worm can figure out almost any password you have. Why and How? Because it knows that most people do not use secure passwords. They use simple things like relatives names, birthdays, special moments, one word names, cars..etc. Another words SIMPLE. Conflicker just starts searching your computer, going through all your files, finding names, repeated words, interests and what not, and then applies it's finding to anything on your computer that's password secured. And it's VERY SUCCESSFUL at it. What's even crazier is that people use the same password over and over again in all areas from secure documents on their computer, to bank accounts, to ATM machines, etc. Once conflicker knows who you are, and can get your passwords out of your computer and send via the internet to the creator, than that creator most likely can start gaining access to most of your accounts. Scary isn't it?

No matter what you do, there will always be people who refuse to update their computer, or even those that have no idea how, so that will always give this worm the ability to grow and seek new instructions, orders, and self update itself. Here's something even more scary.

Conficker, or also sometimes referred to as Downadup, Kido or Conflicker, keeps finding ways to update itself, in doing so, it's finding ways to block Windows from installing the security patch. Even going so far as to make you think you installed it, but you really haven't. By far Conficker is one the most sneakiest worms ever created. So now what? If you have conficker and it's updated than most likely it's going to try and find a way to prevent the security patch from updating or even block certain virus protection programs from being installed, even going as far as blocking you from accessing certain sites on the internet that could effect the life of Conficker. It's going to come down to first taking steps to manually get rid of it, than stopping it's accesses, then prevent it from happening again.

Free Ways to Get Rid of Conflicker

First
Disable AutoRun. Autorun allows your usb to automatically show up, or automatically start programs on any
external hard drive. So first do this.

• Go to your Start Menu and Select Run
• Then type gpedit.msc
• A group policy window will show up
  -go to computer configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System.
• Under System double click the "Turn Off AutoPlay". It will be in the right hand panel.
• Then, select "Enable" and choose "All Drives" from the drop down menu.

Second
Update your computer. Make Sure that your version of Windows has all the latest security patches. Don't worry about whether or not conficker may make it appear that you've updated when you really haven't. There's a good chance that Microsoft has kept up and is on constant watch for this worm. So update.

Third
After you updated and restarted your computer now it's time to remove the conficker virus or at least make sure you don't have it. Your best bet isn't a virus protection software yet. First you need a standalone free program called Sophos Conficker Cleanup Tool. You can download it by clicking here. Once you've downloaded the program, and run it, it will effectively get rid of the conficker worm.

Fourth
The only real way to make sure this doesn't happen again to you, or to prevent you from being part of the vicious cycle of conflicker (conficker) being able to update itself, is to have REAL TIME VIRUS / SPYWARE BLOCKING PROTECTION. Yes, I wrote that all in capitals to stress my point. It's not enough to have virus protection or spyware blockers on your computer that wait around for updates then do a scheduled search on your computer for spyware or viruses. You need a program that is constantly on guard, ready to attack anything that attempts to overpower or attack your computer, and you need that program to quarantine that item RIGHT NOW. There are lots of spyware blockers and anti virus programs out there. The best usually cost about 30 dollars, but you can get free ones as well. The free ones are basic at best, but can still offer real time protection. I would start with PC TOOLS. They are the most popular for a reason. Next would be Zone Alarm. Incredible real time protection as well as an assortment of other great programs such as Zone Alarm's Force Field will NEVER leave you vulnerable again.

Lastly - PASSWORDS.
I know it's nice and easy to remember your dog fluffy's name and use it for a password, but it's definitely not a smart thing to do especially since that's the first word your next door neighbor is going to try if he/she wants access to your computer or a file. Here are some great tips on Passwords.

We all have them, and sometimes we have literally hundreds of them. How can we remember them all? First use a program to store your passwords that uses the latest encryption methods. Any password protection program worth it's salt will be using state of the art encryption security in the program that would take even the most advanced computers on our planets 100's of years to decrypt. These programs when using them also prevent the use of any spyware from seeing what you are doing like keyboard recording (keyloggers), and computer snap shots. So it's very safe to open them and record your password in them. A simple search in Google or Bing for password managers will give you lots of free and well as paid programs for this.

Now once you have your password manager, now it's time for you to get a password generator. These generators are usually free and do just want they say. They create impenetrable passwords that your neighbor, sneaky employee, or and conflicker worm can figure out. Completely Random, long, multitudes of characters. Hard to remember, and could take 30 years to crack.

Once you start practicing safe password usage you will actually be among the few who actually won't be taken advantage of when something as dangerous as the conficker (conflicker) worm ever resurfaces.