Sunday, April 24, 2011

Zeitgeist: is it possible?

The simple answer to the questions "is zeitgeist possible?" keeps staring at me every time I deeply think about it and specially talk about it with certain people.

First, for those who don't know what I mean by zeitgeist, as defined by Wikipedia  "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age." but I am actually talking about the ideas of both Peter Joseph of which ideas he learned from Jacque Fresco. Anyways all the information is out there and I wrote about it so I hope you know what I'm talking about by now (ask in the comments if you are unclear).

Second, I see that the answer is no and I'll try my best to explain why I don't see it possible in the very near future although plausible and I really do hope it happens, I will help it happen in all the ways possible by me and of course I am a big believer in this Resource Based Economy ideas brought forth by the two I discussed above.

It comes down to a few variables in my opinion that are still far from being solved, there's much more then money at stake for the ones with money and why they would not give it up for anything else in the world, even a better world for them. This would of course mean a better world for everyone else also. They are in control, they feel in control and they really are for the most part. I'm not suggesting that they want to be a dictator like the many violent ones in the past but to be honest it is not much all that different from those dictators that we have seen in history killing millions of innocent people.

You see all people are not made equal. This is a fact. Some people have a much higher drive for certain different things. Others have various things that make them 'tick'. The top one percent is the one that is in certain power, they have been for many years, in fact probably decades or centuries that had power passed down from generation to generation in secret societies.

But there's some people whom only more recently came into 'power', this power is brought forth by the money, ownership or wealth that they acquire(d). There is certain control in our modern societies, the western civilization is run by control, and by no means am I talking about monarchy or socialism of any type, we are not living in a prison state (yet) but it is very similar in the way we have control above us, there are at least 3 levels of police everywhere in north america. this is easy to show as we are all very aware of this: there is local police which is normally the city or town (if it's big enough) then we have the provincial police (yes I'm in Canada) or State police if you live in the US, and finally there's the federal police or national type of police (RCMP for us in Canada).

So you really have to be fully blind to the fact that you are in control. When you shift your thinking your eyes really open (as it did for me recently and why I'm writing this). Of course there's a need for this in THIS society, and in this environment and economy it is very necessary and this is how things run right now, the problem is because they run like this and they are well enough for us this will continue. Let's explore this further and see if you can follow; we have lots of freedoms, they mostly consist of certain choice, the choice to do or not do things and choose between things that sometimes considered good or bad. The police follow the control system, they obey the laws that were set forth by the other entities, they certainly don't make them. being as they are followers, they will blindly obey those laws and their job is to enforce them upon us, the citizens.

We are full of controllers that enforce things upon us as we see above and in real life all the time. And knowing that this form of control would not happen at all in the zeitgeist or RBE system this is probably one of the biggest fears that people will have; if there is no control who will protect them, but you are truly blinded if you think the police protect; in reality you are much better off not having police at all. I'm not suggesting to fend for yourself in the current system but in the RBE based system the ideas that spawn from it are very promising. There will be a much better way to deal with issues, for example rather then cuffing, and imprisoning people we would have intuitions to deal with the problematic people (if there will be such people out there), it is most likely that there will be issues and so the solutions should be based on real science and real psychology and real research instead of what the current system deems as inappropriate, illegal or intolerable for whatever reason they decided these laws which are not based on scientific facts or research or psychology or in fact any research of anything.

The laws are molded to help society remain functional, productive (but in a monetary sense) and meet the bottom line while remaining as civilized as possible to the big medias of the world. They are essentially heartless and just try to have good PR there is no real care in such people, millions will die and they wouldn’t know about it. We can see that by the wars that we wage, let’s not go into any conspiracy we do know for a FACT that people, American and Canadian people, die from these wars in the middle east. This is a true fact and we can see that they have no care in the world to stop these wars in a peaceful and graceful way, because this is still acceptable by the citizens and until there will be a huge uprising there will be no action to change this. Take action and invest your money in changing the way the world works, all controlling civilizations have too much power of the rest of the world, not only their own people and citizens.

Why do you think there are 3 levels of police for YOU? the answer is: It is for YOU, to control YOU. If you get out of line, as we see in the big protests where they harmless people that have no weapons, no protection stand against armed police with full body and head protection, yet they shoot at the people that have nothing. This is happening in our own backyard and we can’t seem to do a damn thing about it. Let’s re-evaluate everything we are used to and change this for a better world we can all enjoy, not just the top one percent or the rest of the 90 percent that either blind on purpose because they don’t want to care and don’t want to think about the way things are or are really too dumb (which I refuse to believe).

Finally I’d like to leave you with a quote but before I find a good one, here’s mine. You need to learn and action what you see with the time and money that you have simply invest it into getting the truth out there, educate your friends and your family get everyone around you to agree that things must change so we can all do it together.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments or email theborisedu at gmail dot com

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Interview with internet millionaire

My recent friend had a fast found riches that is now in shables and I wondered all these questions (how, why, when etc) about it, after spending some time asking various things I got an interesting picture and maybe some of the readers will find it interesting.

Background:
Male in mid twenties now, dropped out of high school at 16 and became a quick millionaire for a few years [update: he was making only about 100k per year for at least 4 years - never really reaching a million in total but living it up by spending as you will find out], but after the expensive lifestyle the business died (you will find out why below) and now is just a normal guy with interesting story and a few expensive toys (which he has trouble paying for now).

The business was internet website(s) that focus on satellite hacking. Got started by being a vendor of satellite hardware (receiver and/or satellite).

For those unfamiliar (like me) here's how it works: In order to get the satellite service you would need to pay a monthly subscription (along with the hardware cost of the satellite itself and receiver box that connects to your TV), but hacking it became very simple (he described it as easy as sending an email) to circumvent the monthly subscription cost and simply get a free signal.

Bottom line, if you can hack the satellite you can get it for the cost of the hardware itself and there is no need for monthly subscription. The hacking would sometimes have to happen quite often as the system would change things roughly every month, so the users have to come back every month. The business worked on the principle of the traffic of visitors - displaying third party advertising and sponsorships that work with the site directly (find out more from the interview below). Another stream was premium users would pay a smaller fee then monthly cost of satellite subscription and get the hacks faster than regular users which got a delay to create this new stream of revenue (smart).

Back to the story, from the vendor website (selling hardware) he made good but not great money, when a satellite company bought one of the top satellite hacking forums (let's call it X forum) there was another top satellite hacking forum up for sale (lets call it Y forum). Since the X forum seemed to have a bias as it's owned by a satellite company he decided to buy Y forum for the asking price of about 10 thousand dollars cash.

He made several changes to allow for more topics and was able to get the major moderators on board to Y forum from the X forum. When X forum started censoring the topics, discussions and even the spelling name of Y  forum. The moderators, top contributers and hackers switched fully to Y forum and of course the regular users followed there to make Y forum a huge success.

Now that the story seems clearer (I hope) here's some more details that I asked him and I formated it into and interview format and paraphrased the answers to make an read:

How did you get started in the website/satellite business?
A high school friend introduced me to satellite hacking (direcTV and free to air), got really obsessed with the stuff, spent days studying it and learned everything about it.

When did you start?
The satellite idea around 2004 and the website in late 2005-2006, made the most around 2007-2008
In late 2008-2009 the hacking was stopped because of the huge investments (millions) the satellite companies spent on security of the system, after that the traffic stopped.

Where did the traffic come from?
Visits mostly North America (USA and Canada). The hacks probably come from South Korea or somewhere in Asia.

How much did the advertising pay?
Thousands from private ads (sponsors) for satellite equipment and thousands more from third party (adbrite, since adsense was running but never paid - it shutdown saying there were invalid clicks) every month.

Where was it hosted?
Malaysia

How much was the hosting?
$1,500/month

Was there other forms of revenue?
Yes, premium accounts that got the hacks faster were paid for by some users, there were also many donations received.

What technology/programming language did it use?
vbulletin - php/mysql forum (not free or open source)

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My understanding is the business was run from Hong Kong and funneled the money back through a local one. The expensive lifestyle is not one I would choose with this income but it makes for an interesting story. Leasing an 05/06 Dodge Viper that he still hopes to pay off among other toys, stories and things that shell remain anonymous.

If you have any questions you would like me to ask/answer please leave in the comment or email theborisedu at gmail dot com

Let me know what you think!