Why not buy Winzip

Winzip is a file decompression/compression software.

I bought it for the first time years ago. It worked OK.

As I did not have any decompression/compression software, I ended up buying a Winzip license. The software still works OK.

The problem is that when you install Winzip in your computer, it installs, without your permission, a toolbar that gets attached to both Firefox and Chrome.

To start with, this toolbar is totally useless. What it does do, however, is cover the uppermost part of the browser, so that if you are using certain types of software (especially editing sites and blogs), the stupid toolbar obliterates an essential area of the screen.

And getting rid of the thing is a bugger, for it does not offer a disable option. Before you find out all you have to go into Chrome’s extensions, and disable it from there, you might even be compelled by other dishonest folk, to purchase software to remove it. One such software is Speedy PC, which once used in earnest, will cause you problems, as reported by people on the Internet. Too bad google leads one right into it. People have reported spending hundreds of dollars to remove the software, which initially, costs about 30 bucks. BEWARE, do not trust google’s results as trustworthy.

Thus, for a matter of principle, don’t buy it. It is just a poor excuse for adware .I spent the money already, so I will keep it. Without the toolbar.

Why import young people

The reason why Europe is in trouble now is an aging population, with ever lower numbers of people contributing to social programs.

The USA also has that problem. The larger number of aging people, and longer life expectancy, creates a problem, a funding problem. Thus, a lot of countries must “import young people”, who hopefully will work and contribute.

This is the basic premise of this program. Very practical, however, people make a lot of ideological garbage out of it.

This is a hot topic, and as such, there will be pros and cons. The point of this blog is to point people to articles that might be of use, rather than simply discussing politics

As with anything dealing with immigration, there are tons of crook lawyers, ~paralegals~ and lawyers wannabes willing to extract a few bucks from immigrants. So you may as well get facts. These are articles from several cities across the USA and from reputable organizations and companies. Of course, this is not an endorsement, by any stretch.

Here they are

http://www.dhs.gov/news/2012/06/15/secretary-napolitano-announces-deferred-action-process-young-people-who-are-low

http://www.dhs.gov/deferred-action-process

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/us/young-immigrants-poised-for-deportation-deferral-program.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/19/deferred-action-immigration-program_n_1786099.html

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/deferred-action-applications-young-illegal-immigrants-now-online-214133456.html

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/15/2952870/undocumented-young-people-getting.html

Certified translations at low cost for Young Immigrants deferred action programhttp://www.legaltranslationsystems.com

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-government-sets-motion-deferred-action-program-young-undocumented-immigrants

http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2012/08/17/fact-sheets-on-deferred-action-for-young-immigrants/

http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=40233

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/08/14/young-immigrants-to-apply-for-dream-act-program-on-wednesday/

http://www.transworldnews.com/1124544/a74525/what-are-the-requirements-for-deferred-action-for-young-immigrants

http://www.wbtv.com/story/19287898/young-immigrants-prepare-applications-for-deferred-action

http://beforeitsnews.com/the-law/2012/08/deferred-action-program-may-help-1-8m-young-immigrants-2443560.html

http://www.fowlerwhite.com/when-publications-USCIS-begins-accepting-applications-for-deferred-action.html

http://www.foxreno.com/news/news/local/deferred-action-program-begin-accepting-applicatio/nRBMp/

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2012/08/young_immigrants_line_up_to_ap.html

Certified Translations of Birth certificates http://www.birthcertificatetranslations.com

The internet’s lies and exaggerations

Anybody who has ever worked in media sales knows what I am talking about. There has always been great exaggeration in readership, audience figures, from the very early days of the media to this day. Newspapers that claim to have 100,000 readers, might be read by as little as 5,000, TV programs that reach ~millions~ actually reach thousands, etc.

On the internet, exaggeration is the norm from day one, at a great order of magnitude.

Youtube videos become overnight sensations, because robots  are programmed, in a fashion not to be detected, to click on videos millions of times. Sites claim millions of visits, but again, most of these have been hits by Russian robots attempting to SPAM comments, or worse yet, search engine robots that are indexing the site.

People like to be told lies and exaggerations. It makes them feel popular, grandiose, part of a big thing.

Thus the billion dollar Facebook user figure hides this fact – it is probably wildly exaggerated.

A lot of these are fake profiles. It does not take much for one to get hundreds of fake emails, to be able to open facebook accounts.  There are fake celebrity accounts, people who impersonate others etc. Plus the light porno profiles, of which I get dozens of suggestions from Facebook to subscribe on a daily basis.

These are supposedly used by people who are in countries where pornography is prohibited, such as Pakistan and China. They use FB as a channel to view and exchange smut. That is, until these countries eventually prohibit FB too!

Company profiles, multiple profiles from the same user, celebrities (even dead) profiles abound.

Thus, out of the billion users, perhaps 200 million are really existing breathing persons. Additionally, about 500 people who were at once one of my friends, but disconnected from FB, appeared again on my list of friends, as the phoenix rose from the ashes. This leads me to think that FB accounts these as existing…

As FB is nothing more than a marketing platform, the billion dollar figure is tasty for avid advertisers willing to dish out millions to reach this “audience”. Only the audience is not that large.

The choice is yours – trust the lie, or the possible reality.

Shipping advice

Ok the economy continues sour, so I would like to give a piece of advice to people that entertain the idea of making some extra money selling stuff on the Internet, either through an e-commerce website or Ebay. Or those that do shipping otherwise, selling through other means (catalogs, etc).

I will start by saying that UPS has a very good tracking facility, and reasonable enough compensation for lost packages. They do take some time and effort to take the blame for damaged packages, as they almost always say the client packaged it incorrectly.

As these account for much less than 1% of my shipping activity, the real bottom line is individual package cost, so critical in a time of crisis.

My e-commerce site has a very useful and working link to the UPS website, which calculates the shipping on an individual basis. One of the most difficult things about using UPS is the fact that there is no fixed price – each individual area has a different price. This is not theoretically a problem, given the link.

However, with UPS WYSINWYG. In other words, what you see is not what you get. Once you start receiving bills, the number of unfair address corrections is a thing to behold. For each address correction, UPS charges a whopping $5.00, sometimes because the apartment member is missing. Plus, now they charge fuel surcharges, which are basically added to most billings. Plus rural delivery surcharges, which are added to the bill. None of the hidden charges appears from the link to e-commerce sites, or on their published prices on their site. Should the recipient not be found, guess what, UPS will charge you a good few bucks for shipping the box back to you.

It does not stop there. UPS almost always corrects the reported weight on expensive 3-day, 2nd day and next day packages, to higher weights, never lower, by a large margin. I don’t know what scale they use…

So, if you are a small operator shipping light packages, you are much better off using the Post Offices Priority Mail, with all of its shortcomings – and there are a few. If you ship heavy packages, stick to UPS, but set your website to charge at least $2.50 more for all of the surcharges above add up to an ugly few hundred or thousands of dollars at the end of the year, depending on how much you ship.

Blind date

My wife was watching a movie about a blind date, yesterday, which led me to think about something strange that happened a few eons ago.

A college student in dire need of money, I was selling one of my music keyboards. So I advertised on this newspaper they had in New Jersey at the time, where you paid for the ad only after you made a sale. On a trust basis. At the time people still trusted each other in the USA.

A few weeks went by, and I was not getting any calls for the advertisement, but out of the blue the phone rings. The caller, a girl, says that she knew I was selling a keyboard, but she was calling about something else. She went on to tell me that she was blind, and needed companionship to go to concerts, etc., and asked whether I was willing to meet her.

Up to that point I had never gone on a blind date, or a date with a blind woman. So this kind of got my curiosity.

I decided to go meet her. She lived in Elizabeth.

Honestly, I can’t tell you what I was expecting. I was very young, naive. And I guess, in need of a date. Badly. So I thought, who knows, maybe I was going to meet a blind Bo Derek and fall in love.

The house was a bit run down from the outside, the neighborhood was not particularly wonderful as well. I entered the house, kind of a darkish, depressing environment.

It turned out she was not pretty. She wanted to go pick up some concert tickets at a store, and wanted me to bring her mother and her on that errand. It seems some institution provided free tickets for her and a companion, because of her condition, which I thought was very nice.

She was not particularly nice to me, actually, was somewhat bossy, and she was not nice to her mother either. At any rate, I said I would take her to get the tickets, so the three of us went, not very far, to downtown Elizabeth.

She said she got tickets to see Foghat, and asked whether I was willing to go. I answered I never heard their music (which was true) and danced around the issue a little. She continued to be a bit bossy and unpleasant on the way, to me and to her mother.

Well, you probably figured out the end of this story. That was the end of that blind date. And to this day, I have never heard any of Foghat’s music.

Reverse imperialism

A recent item on the news will probably go unnoticed by most people, due to its seeming irrelevance in the wider context of things, especially in the midst of global economic turmoil. I am referring to the sale of Jaguar to Tata Motors.

Most Americans are quite aware of what Jaguar is, in fact the brand is an object of desire for many people in the country. They are unable to measure, however, the significance of the name for the British.

The British motor industry was once a proud one, boasting a large number of manufacturers such as Austin, MG, Rover, Triumph, Hilmann, Humber, Morris, Sunbeam, in addition to luxury car manufacturers and high performance autos such as Rolls Royce, Bentley, Daimler, Aston Martin, and Jaguar, and dozens of sports cars manufacturers such as Lotus, Bristol, TVR, Morgan. Gross mismanagement, labor problems, quality issues, poor design practices, market developments and British Leyland meant the demise of most of these brands, and the sale of others to foreign concerns.

This meant that eventually Jaguar was sold to Ford. The impact of such sale was not that bad, considering that Ford also built cars in England for many years so the deal was considered “close to home”.

Under Ford ownership, the brand proved to be less profitable than previously thought, and as Ford is strapped for cash, the brand was put for sale. For half the price paid 17 years ago, when the dollar was mighty and strong.

Although a notch down from Rolls Royce, Bentley and Daimler, Jaguar ownership was nonetheless prestigious. Additionally, Jaguar was a prominent name in race tracks, having won Le Mans many times during the fifties, resuming race tracks activities in 1976, which resulted in two more Le Mans victories, plus a couple of world sports car championships. Until recently, Jaguar was the only foreign brand to have won a NASCAR race. Eventually, Ford decided to feature the brand in Formula 1, positioning it against other luxury car manufacturers Mercedes and BMW. The Formula 1 branding was a major disaster and after five years, the team was closed and assets sold to Red Bull, blemishing Jaguar’s racing heritage.

One cannot say that India looks at British imperial times with fondness, in fact many of the country’s woes today can be traced back to imperial times. By the time India got its independence from Britain, it had a huge population, and was one of the poorest countries on Earth, with seemingly unsolvable problems.

A few decades down the line, the very huge size of the Indian market and globalization made the country – or at least part of it, the wealthy part – a player in the business world.

So it must be with a lot of pride from the Indian side, and great disgust and sadness from the British side, that venerable Jaguar and Land Rover brands were sold to the Indian Tata Group. A sort of reverse imperialism.

This is more or less the equivalent of the American Cadillac brand being sold to an Iranian company.

Personal convictions

Well, I always say that our convictions stop where we start to take advantage of the system. That is why there is corruption in this world, because corrupt people by and large believe they earned the fruits of their corruption! With all their heart and soul. Scary stuff.

I am not talking about millions. I have a perfect example.

I know one guy who is one of those diehard Republicans. Before I go any further, I am not a Democrat, not a Republican either. So this is not about Republican bashing. I am just an American, which is what we should be in this land.

Beyond any reasonableness, this guy calls Obama a communist monkey, Democrats socialists, making it a blanket statement on all party “fans”. I call m partisans fans because people today are nothing more than irrational party fans (both Reps and Dems), they just follow their party without any critical thinking, without checks and balances. Where are the patriots in the nation, we should care about the country first, political parties should be secondary.

Going back to this guy. He believes any type of social program is communism, it is taking money from hard working people and putting it in the pocket of leeches who suck the country’s blood dry.

You know, I could respect the guy if he did have convictions , except that he does not seem too fond of work, lives off disability on shaky grounds, for some people say it is a fake disability. So he is a leech just as much as the next guy, a regular “commie” in his lingo.

However, his convictions, not surprisingly stop exactly where he takes advantage of the system…