Avasts marketing experiment

Avast turns piracy into marketing.

The anti-virus software firm Avast turned one pirated software license into a huge marketing opportunity.

One paid for license to a 14 user Arizona firm has spread across the interwebs to over seven hundred thousand users. Avast found out about the pirated license fairly early on but chose to see how far it would spread. And a year and a half boy has it spread. 200 countries later Avasts' little research project is coming to an end. But not before all of the uses of the pirated copy's get a pop up taking them to the free and paid license page. No word on if this has generated any real profit but its nice to see a company thinking outside the box.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/363379/single-software-licence-shared-774-651-times

"Holiday Madness" is catching

So this is my first real blog post since my little unplanned break. And I shall be delving into what I call “Holiday-Madness”

What causes people to change their basic personality during the holiday season? (Thanksgiving-Christmas time)

I am astounded every year at the changes I see in people in this time. Some become ultra sweet, very caring and giving. And others go mad!

Crazy people in Wal-Mart fighting over the latest toy (when there are plenty of toys on the shelf) or the last bag of sugar for baking. Like there will never be another bag of sugar ever! Its just amazing how much people change. And I blame a lot of this on the stores. Big box stores like Wal-Mart under-stocking shelves to make it seem like things are in demand to make people think they should get it now, before its gone. Its not right to exploit what should be a caring and giving time of year simply for profit. Granted every time of the year should be a time of year for caring and giving. But this time of year is even more so.

The Holiday-Madness continues though. People rushing stores to get the “latest” what ever and crushing people in a stampede. And I feel bad for the people that die and get hurt in these stampedes. But the problem is, if it wasn't them who had fallen they would have trampled some one the same way they where. I feel bad for them. Not because they died or got injured in the rush. But because they fell prey to the Holiday-Madness in the first place. Because they are weak minded enough to think that the latest kitchen gadget or toy is worth risking their life. Or killing another.

In 2008 a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in the rush of people.[1] This is a person just looking to make a little extra money. Probably to buy Christmas presents. And was rewarded with death because of the mindless rush of people.

This isn't how a refined society should be behaving! We humans like to think we aren't subject to animalistic behavior, but if we aren't then why are things like this happening?

I mean this is such a problem that OSHA is recommending that police and/or security guards be on stand by. As well as barricading and roping off the store. And a dozen other steps to deal with these people.[2]... I just want to buy my socks!

Those are my thoughts. Please comment and let me know yours!

[1]http://articles.cnn.com/2008-11-28/us/black.friday.violence_1_wal-mart-worker-fleming-busiest-shopping-days?_s=PM:US

[2]http://osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts/Crowd_Control.html

Happy Thanksgiving! ...

Well. I have slacked off! It seems only a few days ago that I posted about the meteorite and now here it is December 4th! Ah how time fly's during the holiday season.

So its time to play a little catch up with my viewers.

First I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. I had a great time with my family over Thanksgiving. Good food, great people, fun times.

And I got hands on with a Nikon D40. Must say that even though I was quite happy to use a DSLR (for the first time) the D40 leaves a lot to be desired. I may go into that deeper in a later post.

In my personal life nothing much as changed. We are still working towards selling our old house and things are looking good on that front. Hoping to have it done with by the 10th. In more recent news I have fallen a touch ill with some sort of flu. Its not very pleasant but I expect to be better in a few days.

Well that's all for this little catch up post. I will be returning with more posts about random things in my life and in the world at large! Stay tuned and hit the follow button.

Green comet!?

At approximately 9:15 PST November 13th 2010, myself and a friend saw what can only be described as a comet that was green, over the state of California. I'm doing more research but if this turns out to be some thing big I wanted to blog about it first. More information as I get it.

This LINK shows some thing similar to what we saw. The one we saw was not as big and we didn't see it break up but its the same green color.

So it seems this isn't unheard of but is pretty rare. I'm very lucky and really happy to have been able to see it. 

Edit: My projected path the comet took based on my sighting.

New post on my second blog!

Check out my second blog HERE for a new video of me skateboarding!

Cern have made a Mini-Big Bang

From the BBC-
[quote]The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.

The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.

The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.

The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.

Up until now, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator - which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) - has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe's formation.[/quote]

Full story here.

Pretty cool stuff I have to say.

Small update

Had a great weekend. Went to a party and met some cool people. I'm going to a lan party this Friday should be a good time. I felt I needed to post some thing since I haven't posted in a while.