Mentat's Blog

This article came from techrepublic.

it amused me so much that I’m copying and pasting it here

Here is the link

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/geekend/?p=5136#comments

Growing up with two older half brothers I believe that I had a definite advantage over other kids. One of my half brothers was still living at home during my formative years, and he was a perfect example of how to screw up in every imaginable way.

For instance, I learned at an early age that babysitting a younger sibling doesn’t mean borrowing your friend’s handcuffs, handcuffing the younger sibling’s left wrist and right ankle, turning the television on, and going out to play with your friends. Not only did I figure out this was a good way to get grounded until you’re 26, but I also discovered that mom knew where to find the bolt cutters and the replacement value of handcuffs.

When I became a father, I looked for a role model who could serve me as well as my half brother. I spoke with friends, I read, and I watched television, all in an attempt to find a father figure that I could use as a role model. After much searching it finally struck me that, with an upbringing like mine, Darth Vader is the perfect father role model. (Photo of Darth Vader’s armor courtesy of Thais M.)

You probably think that I’ve lost it, but give me a chance to explain. Yeah, Darth Vader has a borderline personality disorder according to French researchers, but considering that I was looking for examples of what I should and should not do, Darth Vader fits the bill. Think about it — Darth Vader provides a wealth of examples of what not to do when you’re a father.

For starters, Darth Vader wasn’t around for Luke or Leia; in fact, he didn’t acknowledge either child. Darth Vader never changed a diaper, never clean up kids’ messes, and never read Harold and the Purple Crayon to his children. I’m also willing to bet that there wasn’t even an order for support. This proves two things: He was truly evil and that the Empire doesn’t watch Judge Judy.

In addition, Darth Vader imprisoned Leia in the original Death Star. She was only released through the actions of her brother, Luke, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO. Later, Darth Vader even went so far as to have Lea’s boyfriend, Han Solo, frozen in carbonite! Now that I think about it, maybe that isn’t a bad idea for dealing with my daughter’s boyfriends.

And, of course, Darth Vader tried to kill Luke; he actually shot at Luke in Star Wars: A New Hope. How low can a man sink? Whenever I play the Star Wars games with my children, I don’t shoot at them, especially since they learned how to deflect the shots back at me using their lightsabers. Ouch!

In the end, Darth Vader recognizes the importance of family. He even goes so far as to quit his job by throwing his boss down a cooling shaft just so he can spend a little quality time with Luke. Unfortunately, it’s only about five minutes of quality time.

In the end, I feel that Darth Vader can serve as an example to fathers everywhere of what not to do. Do you agree? If not, who are your parenthood role models?

Facebook, twitter, Myspace, Blogspot, LiveJournal. These are all types of social media, but what has occurred to me lately is I go see my friends less often because of these media types. Now that we know that our friends are “looking forward to a beer and a movie” it make us less likely to call them and grab a case and head over? Are we all turning into seclusive narcissistic, apathetic, shut-ins?

Personally, I find I post in any of these media types more often when I’m depressed, or life is getting hard. Otherwise I post less often. When life is happy, I don’t share it as openly. This being the case, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that I partake in. I asked 5-6 people around here about their facebook accounts, and the people that they “hide” in their friends list. The question was why hide them. The biggest answers I got were “drama”, “negative”, “too much political crap”

As for these answer I’ve done it myself. I actually remove people who go ape shit on the political agenda. I don’t care to hear about the tea party and its blanket hate statements. For me people who are habitually negative, and create lots of drama get hidden. It’s my belief that if you surround yourself with negativity you become negative yourself. This is because of its influence. Negative is a very strong influence, and it’s an easy thing to do. It seems easier to be hateful than happy, to me It’s truly a choice to be negative. I feel that I was raised in a household where my mom, and the small city I grew up in was largely negative. And they are negative purely by choice. People complained about the local political agenda, they complained about the lack of water, and the heat. (you are farming in the desert, lack of water is given) And how much more expensive things are. People seem to have a very difficult time finding reasons to be happy. They can however, find a lot of reasons to be unhappy. The term “misery loves company” Seems to be pretty accurate in this regard. It took me a very long time to find reasons to be happy, and the more I do it. The easier it is to do.

So it seems, we need to be less social on facebook, and more social in person. Facebook is a medium, not the only available route. We should all spend less time at our PC’s and more time face to face.

“Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.” -Stephen King

There’s a new blog in there somewhere I can feel it.

In the meantime enjoy this. Today is the day that Marty McFly Appeared in our time.

Damnit.. Where’s my hover board…?

I was asked to write a guest blog for a friend of mine over at kikastrophe.net. I was honored to comply. I spent a good amount of time considering the audience and what to say. As this was my first measly attempt at spewing meaningful drivel for someone else. As I spoke to laura about this, we discussed a number of topics. One particular one about a goal she has about doing 101 items in 1001 days. It was during that part of the conversation that she became my muse for the post, and the words flowed like water through a fresh spring.

You can see the original post here it’s entitled:The world ends with you

In the Old Testament of The Bible, “Lucifer” does not refer to the fallen angel. “Lucifer” (light-bearer)is a generic title referring to the morning star (Venus). As such, it has been used throughout history to refer to Satan, Christ, and others. With this in mind, Isaiah 14:12 starts out “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”. Taken as a separate verse, this appears to refer to the battle of angels – however, the PASSAGE starts at Isaiah 12:4 “Thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon” and towards the end is Isaiah 14:22 “For I will rise up against them saith the Lord of hosts, and cut of from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, Saith the Lord.” Thus Lucifer in the Old Testament refers to some unnamed Babylonian king.

Therefore  the term “Lucifer” is a translation mistake.

Moving is a lot of work, but we’ve gotten mostly settled into our new home, here are a few pictures of things I found interesting.

View from my hammock

I swear I had to drive through Degobah to get here.

Yes, this was available at walmart

I cannot stand Your mama jokes. It shows the mentality of those who thinks it’s hilarious, I don’t understand it to be honest. Most them aren’t really in that offensive category for me, but they aren’t funny. I’d rather masturbate with razor blades than hear anymore “your mama” jokes. Why is it because I don’t perpetuate the ending of every other sentence with “your mama” that people think that I am some kind of stuck up self righteous jerk?

Google is buying into the ISP business, which I’m not terribly surprised with. in 2005 they bought some 30k miles of dark fiber and part of an undersea fiber pipe. Now they have announced a 1 gig bandwidth fiber to 50k-500k homes in the US as a test run. This comes on the same day that they released http://buzz.google.com. which I’m reserving my opinion on. A lot of people have compared it to facebook, I disagree. it’s more like a much more secure version of twitter. you have the option of making it public. or private to just a few people. You can set it up so only people in your contact groups can see you; plus things don’t get as lost as easily in buzz as they do in twitter. The reply setup is really wacked out on twitter and I don’t care of it at all.

Twitter

Yes I have one. how I came about one is a bit amusing. I kept getting emails saying “Someone at twitter is following you” At the time I didn’t have one. so I went and checked it out the email was coming from spam, but I did sign up for a twitter account so the spam worked. I don’t really “Tweet” as they call it, and the people I follow ended up being Adam Savage, and Grant Imahara from mythbusters. So if it was a ploy to get me to make one, it worked. But in the end the only thing I ever ended up posting or “tweeting” was “I hate peas”.

Overheard at the office

“god.. if you’re going to ride my ass at least pull my hair”

It was announced today that Interplay and Masthead Studios confirmed the rumors of a Fallout MMO to be true. Not only that they slated a Beta time frame, sometime in 2012.

A game about post apocalyptic America, set in a year that’s supposed to bring on the apocalypse, the irony is to too great to pass up. I will laugh with joy if they decide to do the beta in January, and the release on Dec 21th 2012.  Not to mention there will be much giggling of me and several of the men of my office… I like that it would be much to the sounds of which will be similar to that of small school aged children of the female persuasion.

Read about it here

SOPRANO (LEAD) VOCAL

Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars are now right.
Eons have passed: now then at last
Prison walls break, Old Ones awake!
They will return: mankind will learn
New kinds of fear when they are here.
They will reclaim all in their name;
Hopes turn to black when they come back.
Ignorant fools, mankind now rules
Where they ruled then: it’s theirs again

Stars brightly burning, boiling and churning
Bode a returning season of doom

Scary scary scary scary solstice
Very very very scary solstice

Up from the sea, from underground
Down from the sky, they’re all around
They will return: mankind will learn
New kinds of fear when they are here

Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars are now right.
Eons have passed: now then at last
Prison walls break, Old Ones awake!
Madness will reign, terror and pain
Woes without end where they extend.
Ignorant fools, mankind now rules
Where they ruled then: it’s theirs again

Stars brightly burning, boiling and churning
Bode a returning season of doom

Scary scary scary scary solstice
Very very very scary solstice

Up from the sea, from underground
Down from the sky, they’re all around.

Fear

(Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars now are right)

They will return.

Seriously, I don’t know what’s wrong with people. As it turns out the Blogging plug-in I was using on Joomla had an exploit. Where someone could do a php/SQL injection and get your password and take over the website. So I became the victim of an unfortunate Exploit. The real problem with the plug in is several time over. There were date issues and posting issues and tag issues, and despite the functionality and how nice the plug in is otherwise it was crap because it took a lot of alterations to get the damn thing to work correct. The hack into Joomla was so severe that I Could not figure out how to fix it and I was forced to wipe it out.

The worst part of the whole thing is the development team has refused to acknowledge any of the problems including this one and has refused to fix any of it. A fix was produced by someone else, which I found after I had wiped out my Joomla, but even if I had applied it, it would fix the problem, it wouldn’t fix the web page and how it loaded.

I lost a number of Blog entries and some other misc stuff but nothing serious.

There are protection schemes available.

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-a-security/site-security/8384

And here is the fix for it

http://jeffchannell.com/Joomla/lyften-bloggie-sql-injection-fix.html

If you’re running Lyften and you’ve not applied this fix or taken these steps I highly suggest you do so.

Dear, Bill, Kerry, Richie T.

In today’s debate over education and partially making Fun of Richie T about some of his marriage requirements  I found myself heavily offended and insulted. I called in and was quickly blown off and then disconnected. The fact remains that you as the DJ who was asking for people to call in with opinions weren’t allowing many, myself included a chance to actually give them. But people you know you allowed plenty of air time to discuss them. This is your radio show and this is your right, but in my opinion you were practicing a form of favoritism if not discrimination.

That being said my opinion on the topic of education matter is as follows. While I will not debate that education is critically important,  I do feel that having a degree doesn’t guarantee any form of higher intelligence. There are lots of benefits from having one, additional Income, an example to your kids, something to fall back on while the economy continues to tank. However, this doesn’t mean you should pigeon hole yourself either.   Both my wife and I are constantly learning new things,  I have several certifications; some that I invested 150+ hours in, which in many cases is the equivalent  of a college education. The experience I’ve gained from self taught courses has been to me, more valuable than spending 4-6 years in college. The point is that everyone should strive to continue their education, wither or not they have a degree or even went to college in the first place. I think you (Richie T)should find a women who you can meet with on an intellectual level regardless of her college status.

This is also something you need to pass on to your kids. For example:  My kids are exposed to Mythbusters, Time warp,  and the History Channel, we’ve taken them to Clarks Planetarium, Thanksgiving Point, and The Living Planet Aquarium to expose them to things that aren’t being taught in the school system anymore. This list is a very short list of things we have done. There is a desperate need to teach them things that promote science and history, these are things that are severely lacking in today’s education system.  In 5-10 years it might be something else that is severely lacking. The “no child left behind” program  has stunted the education system in a way that has determinable effects on the education system as a whole, the long term effects we have not yet seen, but when it hits people will wonder what happened.  As parents we recognized that we needed to pick up the slack, not only in ourselves but in our children.

Do my wife and I have college degrees? No, we don’t. But this doesn’t make us less valuable members of society.

To the program as a whole. I’ve been a listener for nearly 20 years, this is the first time that I’ve had my intelligence insulted. I’ve been in complete agreement and support for many of the things you’ve said and done. (such as the Gay Marriage Billboard in 2002ish.) I view myself as a very open minded and intelligent person. I don’t think that I’ve ever had a desire to not listen to your program anymore until today. Needless to say you’ve left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and a more than a little disappointed.

Still a loyal (with some trepidation) Listener.

So Apparently there is a Chinese gaming company who runs an MMO, who has declared a new policy. If you roll a Female character must prove that you are female! By Via Web cam conference. But heck if you’re a chick you can run around as a guy all you want, but if you want to be a chick you have to prove your gender.. which I think is stupid. Anyway I read about this on MMORPG.com, and Jon Wood wrote a column about it. His last two paragraphs (to me) summed up the whole issue with this policy.

“Now, I always like to follow up a good, long tirade about sexual identity up with a little bit of cold, hard logic. We’re talking about a freaking role playing game here. I mean, I’m allowed to ponce around the woods pretending I’m some kind of wizard or knight, whacking at things with my sword or wand. No one seems to have any issue with this concept. Nobody has any issue with me pretending to be any ridiculous thing that I like so long as that ridiculous things doesn’t have curves and boobies? Shenanigans! I call shenanigans on this foolishness.

Whatever your own personal politics might be about homosexual rights, cross dressing, transgendered persons or a host of other topics, I hope that we can all agree that taking these steps in a role-playing game is unnecessary and a little bit absurd. We’re not talking about real life here, we’re talking about a game. What’s next? Am I going to have to prove that I’m short and fat in order to play a Halfling? Give me a break”

And this right here fully illustrates why china is the worldwide leader in cause of death due to MMOs. The players are so fanatical they refuse to eat, or sleep, and probably bathe. It’s a huge problem in Asia as a whole. Hell Square-Enix has got a warning on FFXI when you log in that in essence says: Yes this game is fun and involving, we know, but don’t be an idiot and go outside once in a while. There is a whole other place out there called ‘real world’. It’s a screen that you are required to see EVERY time you log in. They don’t want to be the blame of some fanatical people killing themselves by not taking care of themselves.
And seriously what kind of person stays up and plays a game for 3 straight days without eating? Sleeping? Drinking?

So today, is my oldest 11th birthday. He was excited to go to school today, he knew that his mom was coming with cupcakes. It’s a happy thing for him, for an autistic child, moments where he’s up before the crack of dawn, dressed and ready to go before the rest of us are awake are rare. We shipped him off to school. An hour later, My wife gets a call.

She has to go pick him up.

Because, he has the sniffles.  No fever, no rash, no headache, he was happy and excited. He proceeds to be in a good mood bouncing all over hell despite his disappointment of being required to leave.

The School district has decided that ANY child, regardless of the illness, is not allowed in school if they are sick. Do they realize that this means some kids will spend the ENTIRETY of the school winter semester year at home? It snowed today, it’s cold, you spend 10 minutes in the cold, an you’ll sniffle for a few minutes, it’s the nature of a natural body reaction. How freaking lame. I understand, and even sympathize that some parents have had child die, and it’s sad. it really is, but at what point to you draw the line? They are furthering the panic. Unnecessary panic. our bodies will not learn to fight off infections if we don’t get sick once in a while.

Alpine school district, Yes, you. In utah. I hope every one of you people who made this decision turns into a vampire robot nazi that is also a zombie.

Over the weekend we (being my wife and I).. received the.. illustrious opportunity to Dog watch my in-laws dogs…. I’m.. not a Dog lover to say the least. There are some dogs I can tolerate, and some I cannot.. most.. fall into that second category.  There has been 1 dog I would not mind owning, and the reason for this is because he’s so extremely well behaved and low maintenance I don’t have to think about him much.  Like a cat, inside outside whatever. He won’t crap on my floor, and claw up my furniture, won’t bark insistently if he doesn’t get his way, and I honestly don’t mind taking him jogging with me.

My In-laws dogs are spoiled. And old…  We started to refer to the one as an old crone.  Cuz that’s what she is. She’s old and can’t barely move, I’m 100% certain she’s in constant pain, if it was me, I’d put her down. Life for her right now is probably misery, and as much as I hate dogs I don’t like seeing animals suffer.  In Utah, Animal abuse is considered a Felony, I’m pretty certain making dogs and cats live through some of the stuff they have is if not abuse, then at least torture, People get the Right to a DNR. Animals should as well.

The other dog is a poodle… a spoiled snotty Yappity shit all over my floor, and couch Poodle.  This dog kept me up two nights ago. Her constant yapping, She’s so small that we can’t lock her outside leashed up, because she’d freeze to death. Seeing that it’s getting to 30 at night, (and the whole Animal abuse = Felony law) I had to let her in the house. Where she’d shit all over my bathroom.. Friday night we woke up literally to 3 inches of crap up the walls the counter the toilet… everything.  And hardly a drop on her.  My wife put her outside while she cleaned, (Bless her soul) and she somehow slipped her collar. And Poof.. gone..

She spent 45 minutes trying to find her, and finally found her about a mile away.  Last night when they were picked up and taken home, I was happy. I have 40 Fish.. because my fish had  lots.. and lots.. of baby fish.. that’s more animals/mammals than I want.

I’m currently stepping through a redesign of the whole website. I’ve been wanting to do something that looked much more professional for ages, and I finally started to get into Joomla! So far I like most of it, I’m struggling with a few aspects but I’m sure it won’t take me long to figure it out, After that it’s just cleaning it up importing my wordpress blog posts, and I’ll shut this down and swap over. Hopefully shouldn’t take long.

I’m going to spend some time and do some custom graphics later down the road but that’s for after I get it settled.

In the mean time, I hope people enjoy my proxy and what little info I have to glean here. I promise soon I’ll post about my change in plans, some youtube videos that make me laugh and a rant about disney/marvel merger.

I’m a HUGE Adam Savage Fan, I would attend this if I had the means, you lucky people in San Francisco get your tickets while you can.

(Taken from http://www.paulandstorm.com/gigs/w00tstock/)

For decades, geeks were ostracized, picked on, laughed at and punished by the sun’s harmful UV rays. But there is only so long that a people can be kept down before they rise up against their oppressors; and, indeed, the dawn of the 21st century has seen the ascendancy of geeks and geek culture.

“We now celebrate that rise to power–and let’s face it, nerds pretty much run everything now–with w00tstock, a special event for geeks of every stripe. Television host/special-effects artist Adam Savage (”MythBusters”), actor/author/blogger Wil Wheaton (”Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Stand By Me”) and music-comedy duo Paul and Storm (hey; that’s us!) present a night of songs, readings, comedy, demonstrations, short films, special guests, and other clever widgets born from and dedicated to the enthusiasms, obsessions, trials and joys of geek pride.

This is the dawning of the Age of Geekdom–and its voices will ring true at w00tstock.”

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Woot.com. Personally it used to be one of my favorite sites for daily items that go for pretty cheap. over the last year or so I’ve come to really be Disenchanted with it. They stopped offering things that interests me.  Tonight I found Daily Steals

I’m totally taken. This is what Woot used to be. Some of it is silly but it’s far more useful and seems to cover a much wider range of items.

I’m open to MOST ideas and thoughts – especially when it comes to making money. Money is that eternal thing that we all seem to be short on lately.

In the last few weeks or so my father in law was researching a way to enable his wife to work from home and make some money. He came across this website that boasted a $3 trial! Which he signed up for… and a week later gets billed for $69. Yeesh… So he made the suggestion that they give it to us to look into it. When I asked him about he told me this

“My understanding of this was that they teach us to work with Google and place links on websites as a way of generating income from Google”

So I read into it today.. so far.. I’m really not impressed. This is a website to teach you how to act and be an affiliate for other companies. You’d get paid by whoever company sponsored the click through, but that’s not the issue. Depending on how it was advertised it seemed to give the impression that google would have some direct impact on the money made… and it sorta of does. It does it’s job. It’s a search engine.

Here is why it bothers me.

They have a section called “Landing page” This describes what would be the initial page that someone would click a link would land on. This is the page that you’d want to entice the user at home to read, and click another link to purchase from. They tell you to HIDE the link click through so people can’t see that you’re an affiliate, because people don’t like the idea that you’re acting through an affiliate. They want the money that gets generated goes directly to the company. This is true. If I see a referral link from another domain for a product. I copy the link and go directly to the website rather than using the referral click through. This is one thing that bothers me and as I have found how is EXTREMLY common place.

But these are direct copy/paste of their website.

“Some of the landing pages that you find will be quite good and will make you want to buy their affiliate products or subscribe to their ezines, while others are clearly not as good. Bookmark the good ones to help give you ideas for your own landing pages. You can collect text from these pages, but do not copy! Put your ideas into your own words. A good landing page can double or triple your profits, so this is a very important subject to master.”

Okay..this.. not so bad. It gives you an idea of what you should do and should not do. But I was disturbed by the inclination of “oh don’t copy it.. rewrite it in your own words” At first I literally thought “copyright infringement, but if this place is creditable at all they won’t suggest you do that.” Because this is just to give you ideas of how to bally a tip to get people to click it. Okay.. fine I can accept that as creditable, I could see myself doing the same and trying to figure out how to do it.

Next page

“Do not make your reviews too long, because you do not want to test your visitors’ attention spans too much. Try to make your writing lively, and do not use a great number of big words (unless they have to do with the product or service, of course).”

Are they suggesting that people are stupid? And can’t understand big words? That seems really presumptuous. Should I be offended at this? I think most people would disagree that they are stupid – although I cannot argue that as a whole the general populace seems to be lacking in the “Thinking things through before you act.” I Guess if you were stupid, and there were big words that you didn’t understand that it could be found intimidating and it might make you want to leave the page. And as the cliché says “A fool and his money….”

“In order to write your reviews, you will need to do some research on Google, so type in the product name or your keywords and then the word “review” or “reviews.” You will find a great deal of good information this way. As you are looking at the examples from your research, notice what is most effective for you and model that.”

Again, suggesting you do research other product reviews for effectiveness. Okay that makes sense, I can get behind that.

“Take the best ideas and cut and paste them into your document. Then, while looking at what others have written, put each idea into your own words and remove the text you copied from the Web. It is especially important that you do not copy directly from others, because copyright infringement is illegal, and can even get you sued! Besides, when you put something into your own words, it reflects your personality and style, which makes it more convincing.”

Okay.. hold on a second cowboy.. do what? Okay so .. we are going to do a product review of a product you’ve never seen.. or used… not only that we’re going to “Borrow” someone else’s review.. and rewrite it to make it sound like it’s yours. let’s not fail to mention that rewriting it makes it sound like more convincing. Because you know, you’re all about being an honest person here. But this is because copyright infringement is illegal.

“The easiest way to differentiate copied text from your own is to change the color of the text you have cut and pasted to red or green — while keeping your own text in black.”

And now we’re giving TIPS on how to be underhanded… this is fascinating. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

“In creating your product reviews, start with a short explanation of the product or service describing how it is the best, worst or in-between; and you may even put in your own recommendation. Use the research you did above to help you with this. Include price and other relevant information at the beginning of the review.”

So include a recommendation based on someone else’s recommendation.

“Be sure to put the affiliate product you want most to sell at the top, and be sure to make a clear distinction between the best and worst. You are trying to influence people to buy the one you think is best. If your copy is not clear, they will become confused and leave your site. Sometimes, they might buy one of the other products you reviewed — and that is okay, because you will still make money!”

See now this reads to me like “put the one that will give you the biggest kickback at the top. Regardless of how crappy the product is because this is all about making money.”

“Try to find some pictures that illustrate a product or service. There are many places to look, but my favorite is Yahoo. Look at the top of the page, and you will see a search section called pictures. Click on this and type in your keywords or something that is related to your topic or product and you will find a great number of pictures (many of which are not copyrighted) that you can use freely. Google also has a pictures section.”

But only try.. because apparently it’s not vitally necessary to put in much effort to rip people off. I mean.. sell a product. Short of one detail. Most pictures of most products you will want to take will be on a website that will have some kind of agreement that says that the pictures are property of them and you may not use them freely. But hey you’ve already said to steal someone else’s review and just re type it. Why not just steal their pictures too.. or would that be too obvious… perhaps that’s in lesson 2.

“In order to save a picture you find on the Web to your computer, right-click your mouse and choose “save image.” Then select a file location and give the image a name that helps you to remember what it is, so that when you go to use it you will know where to find it. Be sure that any images you use are small, and fast-loading. Slow-loading pages can lose you customers and income.”

That’s right… make them small so it’s harder to see the manufactory defects.

“Don’t forget to put your cloaked link to the relevant affiliate sales page in each review and make the link blue, bolded and underlined. Many studies have shown that links that look like standard links are more likely to rate clicks. You can put the usual “click here to learn more” or “click here to buy now” words in your links. The only links from your landing page will be the ones that go to your affiliate program(s).

BE SURE TO CLOAK YOUR LINKS. What cloaking does is transform your complicated-looking affiliate link to a very simple one. Theres a few websites that offer free link-cloaking like www.addme.com, but they may not be good for you because these free sites may go down or offline for at anytime. The BEST link cloaking is one that you setup yourself, ones that you’ll find within this membership. Many people who buy online know what affiliate links look like and if they see one, they will often not click on it. You need to run your affiliate link cloaker in order to create an ordinary-looking link that goes to your affiliate program, instead of the long link you received from them. For step-by-step instructions on how to do this, go to the link cloaker section on the Web site.”

We need to hide the fact that we are being underhanded… we don’t want to get caught for copyright infringement.

“As you may be aware, the very best reviews are those that seem unbiased and honest.”

They seem honest, as honest as the guy who you stole it from, Proof positive of that!

“ People who read your reviews can generally tell if you are just saying nice things about the product or service with no real knowledge. It is important to develop trust between the reader and yourself. Do not just “say good things;” put in pros and cons to make your review more believable. The ability to write these types of review is also the reason it is so important for you to do a good job researching the product or service before writing the review.”

Yes we need to say good things about a product we’ve never used! Why lie when you can steal someone elses.. so much better!

“A testimonial landing page contains all the information that a review does, but in a style as if you are the one who uses the product or service.”

Just don’t let them know that isn’t true.. because you know the whole illegal thing there.

“ This style is much more effective if you actually do use the product in question. The important thing with this type of landing page is to get an emotional response from readers.”

That’s right you want to invoke such a heart driven response that they form a religion around your review! Such passion!

You may be appealing to their fear, greed, vanity, pride, desire for security, or the need to be wanted. The secret of effective sales writing is understanding the motivation of your audience and appealing to that motivation.

How about money? That’s a great motivation!

“As you are writing your testimonial, consider your readers and think about what may be in their minds as they are looking for information on the Web. Think of obstacles they may have in making a decision to purchase…what makes them skeptical? On the other hand, how could using this product or service make their life better or easier?”

Yes as you are writing a testimonial about a product you’ve never used… think what are others out there looking for? What would make their life easier… ooh easy more money so they don’t have to work… I’ll be the people of this website stole it from someone else… that would be SOOO Easy!

“When you are writing your page, do not forget that most of your affiliate programs will have a 100% money-back guarantee, which eliminates all potential risk to the buyer. In addition, it may be useful for you to explain the security available for the buyer’s personal information protection (secured server using Clickbank or Paypal so that information does not go to the company, but to the secure server of Clickbank or Paypal).”

Right because when the end consumer returns the product or gets infuriated at it’s complete lack of functionality, it’s the manufactures’ fault! Not yours! You still get your money! Screw the companies who actually higher people who have families and are trying to support them. But if they were smart they would steal everyone elses ideas! Just like you did!

Now here’s the thing. I’m sure people are going to get on my case for “copy and pasting the contents of their paid membership”

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/web-money-training-c246533.html

as I researched this further It came to light that they are using googles logo. And from what it looks like, it appears to be without consent. Although google may be blind to this I don’t know but I’ve alerted them.

The fact remains is that vast majority of what they are suggesting is underhanded and dishonest. But they put in fine print that you have a week to cancel…knowing that people who are looking into this kind of thing are so busy it might take them longer than a week or two to actually sit down and look at it. Such as the case my inlaws.  Is what they are doing illegal? Not necessarily, but it doesn’t make them honest, nor does it make them good people. They claim to have “Free products to offer for you to sell” but it’s something else with googles name on it. They claim to have more, but you have to upgrade to a gold membership. so I investigated the cost of that, and that was no where to be found.

Salesmen are generally really dishonest people. they will say nearly anything to make a sale because their life revolves around money. this doesn’t ring any different too me. I Feel bad for my in laws, and anyone else who has been taken advantage of.

http://doihaveswineflu.org

And people are doing JUST that… panic.

Come on people, this isn’t as terrible as everyone says it is. At the very least it’ll be the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, that’s not a terrible thing, now is it? Now if we were to suffer a terrorist zombie attack, that would be devastating.

Seriously, this is blown completely out of proportion, everyone is scared and over reacting. Let me present you with some facts.

1976 A member of the military contracted swine flu and died. They created a vaccine for it, and 25 people died from the vaccine. The cure was more deadly than the virus was. The WHO (World health Organization) hasn’t restricted travel to Mexico, and 90% of the cases out in the public right now aren’t swine flu. The media is spinning it up because they have no other news at the moment. Look carefully at the way it’s printed. It’s “probably” and “possible” confirmed cases. They call it probable confirmed, to scare you. It’s a scare tactic, it’s fear mongering, and you MR. PQ Public is falling for it. I have my doubts that there is a single confirmed case in the U.S. and there has only been 1 U.S. citizen who has died from it. (in 1976) The child who died in Texas was a 23 month old child, who was from Mexico. The family brought the child over the border to get the child looked at due to medical issues, and the child died here, she wasn’t a U.S. Citizen.

The point is, West Nile virus is more deadly than Swine flu. The only ones at risk are going to be small children, the elderly, and the immune compromised. If you are in relatively good shape and are healthy the worst you can expect to happen is get sick for a few days and you’ll get over it. Which honestly, is that any different from any other form of flu? Every winter they put out a vaccine, Elder and children and immune compromised are vulnerable! Get vaccinated now! It’s the same speech, just with a different name, because it’s the same situation with a different variant of the flu.

So people, deal with it and get over it. You’re making it out to be worse than it really is. I can see people being skeptics of me, prove my sincerity in this issue I need to illustrate that I have 2 Autistic Children. They are “Immune Compromised.” If anyone in my house is going to get it, it will be them, They being autistic and the fact that we’d HAVE To hospitalize them as they REFUSE to take any medicine at all, and I am not the slightest bit worried.

Over the course of the summer we will see it completely disappear. The reason why is because of the increased sunlight. The sunlight on our skin causes our body to convert vitamins A in to D (or is it D in to A)? and it does increase our immune system, simply by being out in the sun. Does this mean it’ll come back in the fall? it’s a  possibility, but it means that you’ve got all summer to get out and enjoy the sunlight and work out and get healthy.

in the meantime, calm down,  go out and enjoy the summer.