Mysql 5.5 upgrade SLOW queries [SOLVED]

Have you upgraded to MYSQL 5.5 and experienced slow queries?

I have the answer for you. Turns out the upgrade completely erases all your settings in the MY.CNF file, which is in the /etc directory.

You have to manually edit that file and add all your old settings, hopefully from a previously backed up file.

You are welcome.

How to crack games / create trainers

Note: I didn't write this, it's a post from reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sejpy/eli5_how_do_pirates_crack_games_without_access_to/

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Ex software cracker/hacker here. There are two types of video game cracking.

1) Trainers - hacking the game to enable cheats, god-mode, multi-player cheats, etc

2) Cracks - hacking the source code to enable you to play the game off of your computer without the original source disk, license key, online authentication, etc.

Trainers

1 is fairly simple to understand. You load the game and scan your RAM (memory) using specialized software. Then you change a value in the game. Like picking up an ammo pack. So your character goes from 0 ammo to 100 ammo. Now you rescan memory and compare with your original scan. Next you manually test changing the individual memory locations that had changed since the first scan. You see what effect the changes you make manually have on the game. Lots of times, it can be easy to locate the right memory location. Once you find that location, you create a program to update that location - a trainer.

Cracks There is legitimate debugging software that allows you to see the code and instructions that are processed by your computer's CPU. The CPU's process simple instructions only in Assembly language - like increments, comparisons, and jumps. Programming languages uses the basic elements to build complex functions, but in the end they are made of these simple pieces. Sort how complex life and substances are only made of electrons, protons, and neutrons (maybe not the best analogy - but I'm rushing to dinner).

You run the program and set a break point. Let say I want to break a game so that it doesn't check for CD disk. I can listen for when the game accesses my CD drive and place a break there. I know the comparison is done before then. Then I place a break a few hundred lines before then and monitor the code, walking through it one step at a time. After years of doing this, you become very skilled at reading the code. Find the comparison and change the jump requirement. So something like: If "CD Disk exists" Jump to "start game"

Becomes If "CD Disk does not exist" Jump to "start game"

Of course the code doesn't say that. Instead it will say: cmp ecx, edx (compare two registers, basically variable storage) jz ###### ("jump if zero" or equal to a given address in the code)

You would change jz to jnz or "jump if not zero".

The final step would be to create a program - patch, to update the game's executable to modify the values that control the jump instruction.

Hopefully that is simple enough. Of course there are many new technologies to work around this and make it more complicated. Just like in the lock industry - lock makers build better locks, thieves come up with better ways to defeat them. It's a cycle. Software publishers and crackers play the same game.

Source: F(Ph)ormer Phrozen Crew member and multiplayer game trainer peddler.

PS: When I was a teen, I was long on time and short on cash. Now that has flipped and it's actually cheeper for me to buy my software rather than spending hours or days trying to crack it or find a working crack. I've also learned the value of supporting artists and businesses that you believe in.

Box office figures are always not true/exaggerated!

box office figures for films are not true

example: box office for films. these are literally always untrue/exaggerated, because it helps sell the film if ppl think it made a lot of money. if you look on wikipedia, it very often quotes a site called "box office mojo". what kind of a source is that? i can create a site for ten bux, call it "box office stats" and have it referenced by wikipedia as a source??

in reality, many films don't make much. many famous actors don't make a lot of money. they just pretend they do. i read an article about deadmaus saying that he's not even a millionaire and about robin williams making 75k to voice aladdin. because there is just as much benefit to robin williams' career in voicing aladdin than to disney having him voice it. he probably would've done it for free.

whoever is not smart enuf thinks that ppl in movie industry make a lot of money, trust me, they don't, and the industry, just like everywhere, constantly exaggerates things.

Time is relative to the observer and not absolute

i think that the past is a relative, not an absolute concept. what is past  is assessed relative to someone or something. let's say we take a person from year 2000, create a very realistic dome of 1950's and put them in it. Would this person ever be able to tell whether it's actually 1950 or fake 1950? Answer is no, they wouldn't. Therefore, past/future is not absolute, it's relative to the reference point, or to an observer.

Serge Bronstein
11/3/2013
11:23PM

Was the Universe created by someone or did it create itself?

i've been reading carl sagan and i pretty much agree on everything he says. Specifically God.

Many people picture God as an old man with a beard governing things. Obviously, that can't be right. But, there seems to be some kind of order to things, it's as if it was someone who built and organized everything. It would be the most fascinating question to be answered, how/why everything/anything exists.

One more argument against an old man. Humans are the product of Universe, not the other way around. Humans did not create universe, the universe created humans. Therefore, a human could not create the universe. And we could also theorize that since universe created us, things in universe make sense BECAUSE we are within this universe, we are actually part of it and part of its design. Can be compared to a cog in a machine and that cog thinking, ok this machine makes sense.

If there is some kind of central entity that organized it all, then who created this entity?

I don't think humans will ever be able to understand, just as a microb on our body cannot understand what's beyond its immediate vicinity.

Serge Bronstein
November 3, 2013

What makes Starbucks/Chipotle successful?

i have been thinking about this sitting in front of starbucks: why do so many people go to places like starbucks, chipotle .. especially young people ...

if someone was opening a similar business, what would make it successful?

several reasons:

1) there is NOTHING to do and it's boring. what is the most common young people's problem? finding something to do. these places give you something to do. they not only sell food, they are a destination for young people looking to "hang out". you get your food and "chill" around it there.
2) they give you an experience. at chipotle, you watch them make the food for you. it's like entertainment. same thing with starbucks. everything is out in the open, it's like a mini-ride at disneyland.
3) they strive to be "upscale". although aimed at the working class, they give the working class a small taste of the good life, that's especially true for starbucks.
4) prime real estate - they always occupy prime, expensive real estate. in the end, it does pay off for starbucks. you rarely find coffee bean, peet's at prime real estate places, but starbucks is always there.

i think if anyone follows those two mini-principles, they can run a successful consumer/retail business.

Facebook is not about sharing, it's about competing

By Serge Bronstein
8-3-2013

HUMAN COMPETITION and FACEBOOK as a COMPETITION TOOL

Overview

Most people understand that the world is a competitive place. But, in my opinion, competition is behind virtually everything a human being does. Just as Sigmund Freud stipulated that sexual feelings are the innate driving force of everything people do, so is competitiveness. Nature has ingrained competitiveness in all living creatures. Species not only compete amongst each other, they compete with other species as well. However, competition is highly relative, corresponding to Einstein's theory of relativity. Humans compete with other humans for things that are relative, and change depending on many factors.

In humans, competition is present everywhere. Furthermore, people do everything with the subconscious purpose of being better than others. The goal is not to achieve anything specific, but to be better than the next person. If we look at a 100 meter dash. Your goal is not to run the dash in a specific time, your goal is to run it faster than the fastest human on earth, whatever time that human registers. There is a similar situation with wealth. People are not trying to achieve a specific amount of wealth, they are trying to achieve MORE wealth than others. Wealth is a very relative term. For example, at the dawn of the automobile revolution, people owning a car were considered rich. But now, since cars are so affordable, owning a car has lost prestige.

Competition as it relates to Facebook

There are very few places where human competition is as evident as it is on Facebook. Facebook is a great study in human competitiveness and narcissism, which is a characteristic of competitive people. In fact, Facebook is not about sharing, Facebook is about competing.

Let's dissect the anatomy of a typical Facebook post, a photograph showing the original poster (OP) with friends and members of the opposite sex, smiling and having fun on a night out. Through this post, the OP is subconsciously trying to show that they are better than other people, in essence, competing with them. How? By showing that they have more friends with them. By showing that they are affluent, and able to afford good clothing, drinks, a night out. That they are attractive to the opposite sex.

Facebook posts are clearly a competition for likes and comments. Facebook users, as well as their posts, are competing for an audience, and those users that consistently receive more likes and comments are considered "winners", while those who do not - "losers".

Facebook is a brutal competition in popularity. It can bring serious depression and anxiety in those who are on the losing end of this battle. On the other hand, winners receive accolades, people's approval and sense of pride.


It is clear that Facebook's success can in part be attributed to it tapping into the human subconsciousness of trying to be better than the person next to them. Facebook gives people the tool to do so. Virtually every single action a user takes on Facebook is involved in a virtual "popularity contest" that the user gets sucked into and participates in. Whether this was Marc's Zuckerberg original design or came about by accident, it's enabled the company to become a global phenomenon on the world stage.

Future can be predicted if given enough data

By Serge Brontein
8-2-2013

FATE AS A CONCEPT IN UNIVERSE

CAN FUTURE CAN BE PREDICTED?

and

IS EVERYTHING PREDETERMINED?

Currently, the accuracy with which future can be predicted is based on information that is gathered and analyzed. The more information we have, the more accurate our prediction will be.

Let's look at an example:

A person is throwing a ball at a target. Your job is to predict how accurate this person will be. If you know NOTHING about this person, then you would be less accurate than someone who has seen them throw balls at targets for a week and recorded every single pitch, velocity, where it landed, etc. Clearly, having more information let's you predict better.

But, can you predict with 100% accuracy where this next pitch will end up? Practically, you can't. But let's look at it theoretically. Let's say you precisely know the wind speed, ball weight, all of the signals in their neurosystem, chemical composition of muscle fibers, state of every thought in their brain, gravitational pull of moon, etc etc, if you know EVERY single piece of information that would influence this throw, and process it into a computer, you could predict with 100% accuracy where the next ball will land.

Therefore, we can infer, that it IS THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE TO PREDICT THE FUTURE if all relative data that can influence the outcome is collected and analyzed.

Example 2: Stocks

Can you predict exactly where a stock price would be? Practically, no. But theoretically? If you got into the mind of every single person who purchased a particular stock, new their thoughts, bio metrics, mood, thoughts, what they did today/yesterday, who they talked to, what they heard, put it all into one giant computer and processed it, you could predict EXACTLY where that stock price would be.

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From all this, I can infer something else - if we, theoretically, can accurately predict the future, does that mean that EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE IS PREDETERMINED? In my opinion, yes.

Why do I think that? The future is affected by the past. One action leads to another action. The concept of things being predetermined mean that there is only one possible variant on how things will be in future, and that this is somehow set and can't be changed. And this is entirely true. The universe gives an illusion of randomization, where as in reality, there is a set program in place that can be described as a sequence - this happens, then this makes this happen, and so on. We can observe this in science on a molecular and atomic level, and in computers - where, in simple terms, two always equals two, and a program unfolds exactly as its written, and never otherwise (at least theoretically).

Human Insignificance

if you sum up all of the energy expanded by humans in all of history, it would probably not equal the amount of energy expended by the sun in 1 second. this just shows how insignificant anything that happens on this planet really is in the large scheme of things.

Stupid starbucks daytrader guy

people's stupidity never ceases to surprise me. i am sitting in starbucks writing stuff for my movie, and this guy and another guy are talking about stocks. they are clearly daytrading, thinking they can come up with some sort of system to win at stocks. so i ask him:

me:you trade stocks? 
him:yes
me: how long u been doing it? 
him: several years
me: whats your annual return?
him: i don't know.
me: you don't know? you trade stocks for a living and you don't know how much money you make?
well, if i make 1% a day, that is 250% a year (his exact words!)
me: you know the most successful hedge fund manager is soros and he only made about 40% a year
him: well, that's your opinion (annoyed, goes back to talking)

throughout the conversation, he gives me a look of a professor talking to a kid.

Facebook is a bragging machine

facebook has some useful functions, but it's main one is to satisfy people's insatiable appetite to show off and brag about things to each other. it's the same principle behind bmw and mercedes cars, expensive purses, huge houses. these objects, for the most part, serve not too much practical purpose, but are used as "showing off" tools. "bragging" in humans also satisfies the need and want to "put down" fellow humans, to establish that "i am better than you", "i have more friends than you", etc. it's really a crowd, high school mentality that serves to cure the inferiority complex that most people in america possess. they constantly have to prove to themselves that they are not "losers".

i personally conscientiously try not to show off, but have to confess that the urge is often there and i have to fight it

The culture of - look at all these people who have it better than you

i am tired of constantly being bombarded with images/stories of people who have it better than me. it's seriously what's wrong with humanity. people/tv/internet are obsessed with celebrities, sports figures, millionaires, and guess what, all this is making 99% of the world feel bad! and perpetuates feelings of inadequacy, depression, anger, hatred, you name it.

instead of thinking - why am i not a millionaire/pro athlete/celebrity, how about thinking - i am so happy i am not a bum, criminal, in jail, needing a kidney, etc etc etc. percentagewise, you are much more likely to be on the bottom, then you are on top, yet culture does not continuously make an impact on that.

if you look at tv - what do they show? constant shows about rich people who have everything - housewives, kardashians, musicians, dancing with the stars,etcetc. what they rarely show? shows about drug addicts, unemployed, uneducated, people at the bottom.

that's why i like watching russian news. they are not obsessed with BS, they show regular people, orphanages, bums, accidents, european news, etc, things that make me feel good about what i have.

Why are Hollywood movies so bad?

i recently wrote/directed my first film - the aztec box. part of the reason i did it is of how bad, in my opinion, hollywood films are. i thought - surely, i can do a better job with them. now, having some experience dealing with studious trying to sell the film, i understand why the industry is suffering. here are my gripes:

1) influx of new talent is severely limited by narrow vision of those who are at the gates.
 the people at the studious have a poor idea of what a good movie is, and even trying to get in contact with them is nearly impossible

2) lawsuits and legal stuff
 the fact that you can't even send a dvd or script for their review is ridiculous! you get a letter saying they don't accept unsolicitied submissions! if you are a studio, isn't it your job to find good new movies?? so you are just making your job harder by not even reviewing them!

3) people's negativity and unwillingness to help
 try to ask for a favor or a reference! 9/10 people will ignore you. why? i don't know. it doesn't take any effort on their part to do it, but since they've been treated like dirt, i guess they do it to other people now.

those are just 3, i could write more ...

Nature is inefficient

the world is the epitome of efficiency and inefficiency. the way nature designs things is far from good, and I literally do not see a particular purpose or reason in a lot of things. example - - people are born, spend half of their life studying, learning from their own mistakes, then maybe 20-25 years being productive. then they die, with all that knowledge, know how, experience.

then, in another generation. it starts all over again. while someone is studying, they are not doing anything productive really, just learning so they can use that knowledge later. furthermore, institutionalized education is difficult and, generally, not that pleasant.

wouldn't it be more efficient if people lived 500 years instead of 75 years? think about how smart you could be if you lived that long. or, if nature somehow designed a way to transfer knowledge to the human brain faster, and all newborns would already know every single thing that their parents did.

one can conclude that so called "achievement" that people place so much emphasis on, is not a truly important issue to nature, otherwise, nature would have designed things more efficiently.

The hiring process in most companies is HORRIBLE

it boggles my mind how SHITTY the recruiting process is at most companies. it just literally looks like no one gives a f$$k about whether it has any common sense about it.

People are the most important asset anywhere, and you are making it difficult for people to apply to your company? endless forms, logins, passwords that require god knows what in them. 

All you need for someone is to SUBMIT their resume, there is software that can take it apart and take all the info you need out of it. There is no quicker way to ALIENATE talented people than to make your application process long.

Smart companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, make application process very easy. Name/resume, thats it. This is what i did with my jobs site CBCJobs (at least jobs posted directly to it) just name, resume, zipcode.

Why does it always have to be done through the ass? Unbelievable. I don't even know what kind of people they hire there that can endure the bullshit that is the hiring process in most companies.

My interview for a book on found-footage films

Q: Can you please give a description of your film THE AZTEC BOX in three sentences or less.

A: Four college students rent a house in Riverside, Califonia. They stumble across a strange wooden box, which was buried by someone in their backyard. Inside the box find an ancient Aztec human-sacrifice container, inadvertantly letting out an anceint demon entity.


Q: What is the most frightening, disturbing, or memorable moment in the film, in your opinion?

A: Filming the classroom scenes was quite a thrill due to the fact that we did not have a permit to film. I tried to obtain a permit, but the process was incredibly bureacratic. I decided to just go for it. We went to the school and found an empty classroom – thankfully it was summer, so there were not too many people on campus. All of the background actors took their seats and we began filming in a hurry. We filmed in two separate classrooms and literally just as we finished the last scene a custodian opened the door and looked around. She thought this was a real class (it looked like one), said “excuse me” and closed the door. We all burst out laughing after that happened and quickly wrapped everything up.



Q: Can you discuss a vivid memory from the making of the movie (a logistical problem, a humorous anecdote, weird coincidence, etc.)?

A: There was a deleted scene with the professor opening the box. We used dry ice for the special effect and it was quite an adventure.
As originally written, the film was supposed to end with the two FBI agents (the ones you see in the beginning of the film) investigating the house after the “disturbance”. They find professor's number on the fridge, call him and he comes over. He then proceeds to try to open the box despite the FBI agents yelling at him not to touch it. I wanted white smoke to come out of the box to make the scene more dramatic. To create the white smoke, we decided to use dry ice. I've never used dry ice, but Steve, our lead cinematographer, has. We loaded up two cooking pans of dry ice with water inside the box and shut it. Appararently, it reacts very quickly. We waited about 15 seconds and started doing takes. The situation was comical – I myself literally could hardly keep a straight face through it all – for some reason, it was all quite comical. The first few takes, there was way too much smoke. On about 3^rd take, the amount was just right and we had a good take. Unfortunately, after all that work, I decided to cut that scene from the film – I just did not like that the box was on the floor and the camera got a look inside of it, taking away from it's mystery.


Q: What do you like about the found footage/fake documentary style of filmmaking?

A: There are mainly two things I like about it:
a) authenticity - why do billions of people watch Youtube everyday? People like to watch things filmed by other people. There is certain truth and excitement in it. A lot of viewers are tired from the polished glitz and glamour of Hollywood films. Found-footage style brings this home-video authenticity to the big screen. With a traditional movie, it's difficult to immerse the viewer into believing what they are seeing on screen is not fiction. It's easier to do with found-footage.
b) affordability – the found footage style let's a filmmaker get away with a low-budget film. Since a lot of footage is hand-filmed, you eliminate the need for dollies, cranes, steady-cams and the like. Since home-videos don't really have a budget, a home-video or found-footage style works very well for low-budget films.

Q: What were the inspirations for your film (film, book, or otherwise)?

A: I had many inspirations. I've always liked history. In my spare time, I often read biographies of important historical persons and recounts of historical events. I love Wikipedia :). I also like historical tv shows, such as Pawn Stars and other stuff they have on the History channel. So, kind of from the beginning, I wanted to involve some actual history in my film. For example, I love Indiana Jones movies. I like how they combine and tie in actual historical events into a fictional adventure story. During 2011 & 2012, a lot of people were talking about the Mayan/Aztec calendar and the end of the world, so I thought to myself – why not base my film around this.
It was important for me for this film to look authentic. I based it in a real place – Riverside, California. I was well familiar with Riverside, taking many trips there while looking to purchase some real estate investments. Riverside is full of abandoned run-down buildings and creepy locations, but because of the limited budget of the film we ended up filming pretty much everything at my parent's house in Fullerton.
I would say that every film I've ever watched that I thought was good inspired me. I often try to look at
successful films and try to determine the factors that made it good – and same with films that are bad – what exactly was it that made the film bad. The films that I consider good – classics such as The Terminator, Aliens, The Fly – these films inspire me.



Q: What would you like to see in the future for found footage/fake documentary films?

A: Just like in any film genre, there are good found-footage films and bad ones. I would love to see more found-footage films with a good story. The story is very important in a film. The genre is great for aspiring filmmakers with a low budget to make films to showcase their talents.
Also, there are some higher budget found-footage films that were quite good – for example: Chronicle and The Bay. Both had good screen plays and were well directed.
I think there is a very bright future for found footage films and home-video entertainment in general. Youtube is growing by leaps and bounds. Although most of the clips on Youtube are short, people are making bigger and better productions daily. The fact that Youtube is a formidable revenue generator – currently making about $1,000 per million views – will help fund these films.
I would also love to see a system that would enable filmmakers to directly market and make money from their films avoiding distribution companies, in the same way people are making money from videos on Youtube. I think this is where the market going and this will considerably help smaller filmmakers.


Q: What is the most challenging aspect of making a found footage/fake documentary film in your opinion?

A: I would say that, in general, making a found-footage film is much easier than making a traditional film. I don't think there are any special difficulties in making this type of film aside from just the regular things that go along with making any film. Since this was my first film, a lot of things were difficult for me. But this was not because it was found footage, it was because it was my first film.
Scheduling in particular was very difficult – we had about 8-9 people cast and crew, all with different schedules. I would email everyone to arrange filming on a particular day. 8 people would say – yes, it works for me and then one person would say – sorry, I can't that day!. And I would need to start all over scheduling for a different day checking 9 different calendars. To this day, it's amazing to me that we were able to even complete film.

Q: Can you discuss any real documentaries that have affected you greatly?

A: Michael Moore's documentaries left a lasting impression on me, particularly Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911. These documentaries exposed things that were not known to the general public and helped shed light on otherwise murky chains of events.
Documentaries are a very powerful medium – a lot of them are made about very compelling subjects. I recall recently seeing bits of a documentary about abuses in Mexican prisons and the corruption there. The filmmakers went to great lengths to film inside the prisons. The documentary also helped free an innocent inmate.



Q: What is the biggest difference between found footage and traditional narrative filmmaking in your opinion?

A: Films usually tell a story. However, the way this story is told differs. Traditional filmmaking has completely different shot selection and presentation. But it's interesting to note that traditional filmmaking often has elements of found-footage films in it – such as the cameras on the shoulders of soldiers in Aliens II.
The biggest difference is just the way the film is shot. While found-footage usually has one camera and one focal point, traditional films have more camera positions, cuts, lighting setup and so on. They require a more extensive setup.
FF is most suitable for stories where authenticity is important. It's not important in every film. Most films do not set out to prove that they are not a work of fiction, but some are. For example, FF-style worked well for Borat, where the whole idea was that people were being pranked, even though in places it was probably pre-arranged.

Q: What is the most important part of making a found footage/fake documentary film entertaining or compelling?

A: It's difficult to say or define this. It's similar to asking – what makes a film good? You can quantify this somewhat, but if there was a definitive guide on making good films – there wouldn't be any bad films. Unfortunately, there isn't such a guide. Making good films is a bit of an art and takes certain personal talent.
I would say that, in my opinion, there are two very important things. One is the story, and the second one is scene direction. The story has to be interesting, compelling and easy to follow. Once the basic story is written, it has to be divided into scenes and each scene needs to be filmed a certain way – angles, camera location, etc. This is up to the director, for the most part. In good films, scenes are filmed in an interesting, captivating and often tense way.

Q: How do you feel about the digital revolution in filmmaking?
A: The digital revolution has had a tremendously positive effect on films. It has taken the grunt work out of film making. In the past, the sheer work of developing and cutting film was tremendous. Now it's just a few clicks.

Q: Do you have any advice for someone thinking of making a found footage/fake documentary film?
A: Focus on the story. Make sure it's well written, make sure the film will be interesting to watch and has some kind of an interesting central idea. Make sure the story is easy to follow. Create tension and develop characters.

Q: What would you say makes your films stand out from other films using the found footage/fake documentary style?

A: Throughout the process of writing/making the Aztec Box, I was thinking this exact same thing – what makes my movie different/better than the other FF films. What I wanted to do was take the best elements out of films I considered good, and avoid the bad elements out of the films I considered bad. I think the main “stand out” feature of my film is its actual historical background – I cannot specifically think of any other FF film that is based on actual historical events. The Aztec Box is based on the Aztecs, their rituals of human sacrifice and their calendar – all of which did really happen. The film stays authentic by having a professor explain the history of the box and of the Aztecs. Also, the main characters visit a library and read historical literature.

Q:Aside from budgetary advantages, were there other reasons for choosing the fake documentary format for the film in question?

A: Authenticity was important to me. It seemed it was easier to make people believe this film was a true story with a found-footage format.

Q: Do you think it’s easier to connect emotionally with a found footage film (because the style seems more realistic) or more difficult (because of the lack of music, camera control, etc.) than a traditional narrative film?

A: It's difficult to generalize, because so much of it depends on a particular film. But, I don't think it's particularly easier for an audience to emotionally connect with a found-footage film. The main thing FF style adds is authenticity. But a film doesn't need to be a documentary or be authentic for the audience to connect with it, the audience connects quite well with complete works of fiction.

Nature and unfairness

life is inherently unfair by design and who gets the better end of the deal is really random/up to chance. for example, it's much better all around to be a lion than a zebra, but someone has to be a zebra. nobody asks you - would you like to be born a zebra or a lion - nature decides. actually, nobody asks you if you even want to be born, it just happens. there is always someone who is better off than you and worse off. but it's not because of you, nor is it your fault. it is simply your "destiny". things are the way they are and you are the way nature meant you to be. natural question then is why. i don't think anyone can fully answer that because it is beyond the scope of human understanding. why is there a planet here and not empty space. this could've easily been just an empty spot yet there is a planet here. why? i don't know. it doesn't serve any particular purpose in the universe. if it was gone tomorrow, it wouldn't matter in the large scheme of things. i keep thinking why, but I really don't have an answer. You could say - so humans can live, and life can exist. Then that makes nature a "good guy". But if nature is so great, why not have 20 planets next to each other - 20 times better, right? Or, then, why do living things suffer at all. Could be an utopia with no suffering where everyone is happy and lives forever. but it is not. and we don't have an answer as to why.

How much money can you make on Youtube - as of April 2013

so i turned on monetization on youtube - for my "yegor the russian" videos and some others. and, amazingly, it does make money. so far it works out to perhaps $1.20 per 1,000 views. 

if you extrapolate this to 1 million views, you would get about $1,200 per 1 million views. so, yes, there are people who make a living off of making youtube videos.

and i am guessing that this will only continue to grow as better monetization techniques for videos are developed - it's still a relatively new medium.

Karl Marx and Class Mobility

So I've been reading Karl Marx recently, he is the father of communism. His basic theory is battle of the classes - that the capitalists oppress the proletariat - or the working class. The capitalist employs the worker and becomes rich through the fact that the value of the labor is higher than what the worker is paid. And the worker is usually paid just enough to live on. The situation as he describes it is, for the most part, correct. The thing that he fails to address, however, is that the proletariat HAS THE ABILITY to become a capitalist. There is class mobility. Yes, some capitalists have money that is inherited. But that just means that their relatives were smart. That is not unfair in any way, to pass money onto your relatives. It's a bit of a conflict, since I do feel a lot of the working class are struggling, and in an ideal world, we should help them all, but the ideas that Marx proposed are not the solution.

How to change title on a home house in Riverside County

HOW TO ADD TO TITLE / TRANSFERRING TITLE IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA

Let's say you own a house and you want to add someone to title on this house or transfer the title to someone else's name.

Note: unless this is a transfer between parent and child, your home will be reassessed and you might end up paying more property taxes! (or less ... but probably more)

You have to do two things:

1) Fill out a grant deed form. In "legal description" you must put the assessor #/parcel #/lot #.

2) Fill out a preliminary change of ownership form.

3) If transfer is between parent & child, fill out the reassessment exclusion.

File these with the County Clerk Recorder of Riverside County, pay the Change of Ownership fee (currently $20) and you are done!

The Coming of the 2nd great real estate bubble - (price comparison and other interesting facts)

The coming of the 2nd great real estate bubble

Beginning in 2007, real estate prices plunged 2-5 times to hit the absolute rock bottom. The market was dead. Selling a house was next to impossible. Properties valued at $250k during the bubble heyday went for $30-$40k.

Nobody would believe you if you told them in 2005 this would happen. Some people knew it would go down at some point, but very few, certainly not those investing, expected a drop of that magnitude. Furthermore, nobody would believe you in 2009 that only four short years later, the situation would repeat itself! Amazingly, in 2013, the situation again is almost identical to 2005 - prices of sub-100k properties nearly doubling in a year and continuing the trend.

Sampling a few properties sold in 2004 in High Desert - an area in Southern California known as a hotbed for real estate investment activity - we can see that the price per square foot hovered somewhere in the range of $75 - $95, the average being around $85. However, some sold for much more:

http://www.redfin.com/CA/Victorville/12812-Yellowstone-Ave-92395/home/3774688

bought in 2004 for 175 (145/sq foot), sold in 2005 for 278 (an amazing $231/sq foot)

As of March 2013, the prices are close to $85/sq foot as well:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/16476-Sycamore-St-Hesperia-CA-92345/17450093_zpid/ - $80

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/19091-Goleta-St-Hesperia-CA-92345/17446951_zpid/ - $87

Many properties are above 90/sq foot.

What does this mean? This means that as of March 2013 - the prices (unadjusted for inflation) are close to the 2004 levels!

This means that just 6 years after the worst real estate crash in the US history, we are back in the same situation. 

This also means that a crash is coming. The question is, when. If we look back, we can say that the bubble went mainly from 2002 - 2007, a span of 5 years. This current bubble started June 2011. We are now about 2 years into it. Will this bubble also last 5 years? If so, the crash should occur in summer 2018. 

The problem is, bubbles are not on a timer and don't last the same amount of time every time. This current crash can occur at ANY TIME. So, anyone currently buying a home is putting themselves at a severe risk of getting caught up in the bubble. Crashes happen fast. Houses are not stocks - they take time to sell. Once you are in a crash, you, most likely, will not have time to unload the real estate you own. 

Is the risk of buying real estate now worth it? That is up to you, the investor, to decide.

Serge Bronstein

March 2013

Recruiters suck

Suggestion for companies

if you want to hire qualified technical personnel, I would suggest not using outside recruiters. You will not get good quality engineers that way. A company employee with specific knowledge regarding the company they work for and the technical specifics of the position with a direct email, ie someone@company.com, would have a much higher probability of hiring someone qualified. It's really not that hard to post a job on dice/indeed/CL and review applicants. This is the way successful companies like Google and Apple do it.

I have direct knowledge of the HR industry because I actually created a technical job search website - http://www.acetiger.com

Just my 3cents.

Useful financial links

1. http://www.bloomberg.com/archive/news/ - Bloomberg News Archive, add date as follows to get that  days news. http://www.bloomberg.com/archive/news/2013-03-15/
2. http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/mdc_us_stocks.html?mod=mdc_topnav_2_3021 - wall street journal market data center
3. http://finance.yahoo.com/gainers?e=o - yahoo finance gainers
4. http://www.jagoinvestor.com/2010/04/understanding-different-commissions-on-mutual-funds.html - commissions paid on various mutual funds

Is there a purpose to anything in the universe?

I still cannot understand the grand purpose of the fact that anything exists or why things are the way they are. for example, whether this planet or even our galaxy exists makes virtually no difference in the large scheme of things. so then why is it here? could it be then that the world at large has no particular purpose. then that means human life doesn't have any particular purpose either and achievements don't really matter. i've always thought everything has to have some sort of reason or purpose but that might be wrong. in 10-20-30 billion years, when this planet falls apart from cosmic forces, will "anyone" even know it was here? there could've been planets/civilizations like our for eons of years and we don't know about them. these questions will never have an answer.

Do the 1% really have it handed to them?

its funny to see a lot of ppl complain about not having money, about how 1% has everything, how other ppl were more privileged than them

its the same ppl who, when young, say - i don't care about money, i will major in art, life is not about how much u make, its about happiness, same ppl that drank all weekend at bars and cared about being cool and having lots of friends and frowning upon nerds

while other ppl stayed in, studied, worked their butts off, got degrees, went to medical school, made websites, movies, SAVED MONEY, etc and now these people are quote unquote privileged and have it handed to them on a silver platter .... oh how ironic

What NOT to do when you invest in Real Estate

Real Estate investing can be done two ways - correctly, and incorrectly. Most people, unfortunately, choose the latter.

Jerry Buss, the late owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, amassed a great fortune in real estate, enough so that he was able to buy the LA Lakers and the Kings in the 80's.

Many people jump into real estate without knowing the basics. Big mistake.
Firstly, there is a thing called "return on investment" or "ROI". It is the money you make divided by the money you invested. Let's say you invested $10,000 and get $500 return annually on it. Your ROI is 500/10000 or 5%. Not bad, already beat inflation.

Secondly, caprate. Caprate in real estate is defined as rent you receive divided by the cash price of the purchase. If you buy a house for $100k and receive $1,000 a month in rent, your caprate is $1,000 * 12 (months) / $100,000 = 12%. That is a solid caprate. Not all caprates are 12%, however, most apartment buildings hover in the 5-6% rate.

Financing: it is better to finance properties than to pay cash for them. Why? For one, you can get more houses for your money. When you finance at 20% down, you can get about 4 times more houses than if you paid cash. For 100k houses - you can buy 1 house cash or 4 houses financed at 20k each. However, to qualify for financing, you have to have taxable income and you have to find a good lender. 90% of lenders are a pain in the butt to work with.

Serge Bronstein
Sebron Real Estate Investments

If you are interested in investing with us, please contact us at "sebron.solutions [at] gmail.com"

 Buy the Sebron Guide to Real Estate Investing for only $29.95
 DELIVERED INSTANTLY

Biggest problem with today's movies

i have figured out the PROBLEM with most movies. The PROBLEM is that:
** story is impossible to follow and makes no sense - viewer is lost **
most movies - you don't know what the hell is going on, or why. someone is doing something - but why - you don't know. difficult to follow. prime example: inception. impossible to follow. some car driving some ppl in hotel. why, what are they doing? who knows. nobody. 

a good movie has a clear sequential story. one thing happens after another and it makes sense. example - titanic. ppl get on ship, ship sails, hits iceberg. sequential. one thing after another that makes sense. u always know whats going on and why. 

indiana jones movies - first 3 - good sequential story. they escape by plane, fall into jungle, get in village, go look for stones, get inside palace - one thing after another that makes sense. it's believable.

Predicting the future: traversing the dimension of time

Traversing the dimension of time

Future can be predicted with 100% accuracy if you know all the necessary information

Since the ancient times the concept of moving through time has fascinated mankind. H.G. Wells, in his famous book titled “The Time Machine” has described a story of an inventor building a time machine to travel to very distant future, which, unfortunately, turned out to be pretty bleak with humans living in cages. I personally thought Jules Vern did a much better job at predicting the future in his stories about futuristic submarines and travels to space in rockets. But, enough with the small talk introduction, let’s get to the juicy stuff.

Time is a very interesting phenomenon. One could compare it to a dimension. But it is not like a dimension, because if you take one of the regular 3 dimensions, one can travel along them freely with varying speeds. In time, however, we can only travel in one direction, forward, and also only at a certain speed.

The fact that is completely fascinating is that time is very much linked with speed, which makes the comparison to a dimension even more substantial. What Einstein predicted and was later proven by scientists was that comparative amount of time is different for two objects when one is traveling close to speed of light when compared to another object. This can be illustrated in a simple example. If we put a person in a spaceship and send them to our nearest star and that person travels close to the speed of light for let’s say 10 years one way, and 10 years back, much more time would have passed on earth than on his spaceship. I am not really sure on the exact numbers, but when he comes back, what was 20 years to him might have been 200 years on earth.

Why is this happening? Clearly, time has a direct relationship to speed. The faster an object is moving compared to another object, the slower time SEEMS to them. Keyword here is seems, and time turns out to be a relative term, just like speed is. Earth is currently moving thousands of kilometers an hour orbiting around the sun. This speed is comparative to the SUN, but we don’t feel it since we judge it comparative to the earth beneath our feet.

Light and it’s speed are two very important points in our discussion. Light, or any other electromagnetic radiation, always moves at a constant speed c, which is about 300,000 m/s. Two important quotes from wikipedia: “locally light in a vacuum always passes an observer at a rate of c” and “the speed c of electromagnetic radiation does not depend on the velocity of the object emitting the radiation”. This is a very interesting concept, since light doesn’t seem to behave like a normal object. Why? Because if you throw a normal object off another moving object, their speeds are combined. Not true with light! Light always seems to travel at a constant to the observer. Can this suggest that the speed of light is always the same relative to vacuum, which means that we could consider vacuum or space stationary, meaning not everything is relative in this world, like Einstein suggested.

Let’s get back to our discussion of time. We’ve established that we can bend time with speed. However, we can only bend time a certain way. If we want to “fast forward” to the future, we get into a spaceship and travel away at a speed of light and come back. What if we want to slow down time? Will standing at an absolute standstill compared to an observer on Earth accomplish that. But standing absolutely still relative to Earth or relative to something else? Since this area of science doesn’t have enough research, we will skip over to the next section.

By Serge Bronstein

2007

THE MISSING LINK: Man came from interbreeding between Aliens & Monkeys

By Serge Bronstein, 2004

The Missing Link: Aliens & Monkeys

Origins of Man

ABSTRACT: Man came from cross-breeding of aliens and apes millions of years ago.

I have been pondering the origins of man. The current theory suggests that man comes from the apes and has somehow evolved from the ape. Yet, they are unable to explain why humans have been evolving so rapidly, yet apes have pretty much stayed where they have been for thousands, if not millions of years, pretty much like all the other animals. If you look at the way animals evolve, it has little in common with the way man evolves. Animals do adapt to their natural surroundings, for example birds growing beaks, zoo animals adapting to life in the zoo etc. But if you look at human progress, even a short period of time such as 100 years brings remarkable change.

Modern humans have appeared about 1.5 million years ago (Wikipedia, Human Evolution), they were called Homo Habilis. However, Homo Sapiens, or modern man, has only been around since about 250,000 years ago. The article also notes that human DNA is 98.4 similar to chimp DNA. To summarize, the information points out that humans are very similar to monkeys, yet they have distinct characteristics that monkeys don’t have. In fact, I will go further and state that humans have characteristics that no other animal organism on earth possesses. These characteristics have allowed man to evolve and become the dominant living form on planet earth.

So which characteristics or traits do humans possess that no other animal on earth possesses. Firstly, let’s note superior intellect. It is clear that humans are the smartest beings on the planet. And not just the smartest, but by far the smartest. You could say that humans rule planet Earth. Why are humans given such superiority in nature? Why isn’t there a competing animal or a similarly smart creature? Humans also evolve like no other creature on earth. No other creature has such extensive language, emotions. No other creature has sex just for fun. No other creature possesses a concept of humor or laughter. I could go on and on…

Remarkably, with so many unique characteristics, humans are surprisingly similar to other earthly creatures as well. Humans have hearts, lungs, four appendages like countless other mammals on earth. The way the human body works is almost exactly similar to monkeys, for example, but even not too far from creatures such as cats or dogs. So, to summarize, people are very similar to other mammals, yet very unique in some concepts.

The main question is not why humans are in a lot of ways similar to other mammals, because that is not a mystery. The fact that a lot of earthly mammals share common traits is because that is how organisms on Earth adapt to this planet’s environment and nature (on earth) seems to think that this design (brain, lungs, arms/legs, blood, drink water etc) is the best design for life on this planet. The question is: where do the traits that only humans possess come from? The common answer seems to be: evolution. It seems that a long time ago (estimates range from a million to seven million years), the earliest humans appeared. According to evolution, they had to have come from apes. But why are apes today are almost exactly like apes a thousand, or a million years ago, possibly with only slight variations, and live in exactly the same way and environment as their ancient predecessors, yet human progress seems to be steaming ahead. People change their world very rapidly, if you look at only a hundred years ago compared to today, computers, internet, cars and airplanes did not even exist or were in their infantile stage. So if humans came from apes, what triggered the switch and rapid progress? Was it a mutation? Scientists really have a hard time explaining and even came up with a concept of the missing link. But this link has never been found and is in doubt of ever being found. But why?

Without further adue, I will summarize my theory now. I believe, that human origins lie beyond our planet. Basically, humans are a product of aliens from outer space and apes. I know that there has been theories suggesting that humans origins lie in beings from other planets, but none has suggested the cross breeding of aliens and apes. But, in fact, this theory would completely explain the unique traits of humans, which would come from extraterrestrials and human mammalian qualities, which would come from apes. It has been researched that human DNA is 98.5% similar to apes. Which means that the remaining 1.5% is our extraterrestrial heritage.

What would be a common scenario for how alien dna has come to Earth? Their ship somehow ended up crashing on planet earth. The surviving beings, let’s call them Sebs, and we are not sure on their number, started living on Earth and lived the rest of their life here. Sebs might have had children among themselves firstly, but along the line interbred with monkeys and with time, their pure lifeform disappeared and by pure I mean where your mother and father were pure Sebs without any crossbreeding from Earthly creatures. Why did Sebs picked monkeys as their partners? Sebs might have seen monkeys as similar to them in some characteristics and its hard to say which ones.

Now, we go one thousand years from Sebs crash on earth. Since Sebs are not Sebs now, but a product of monkeys and sebs, they do not possess nearly as much Seb dna as the original extraterrestrial Sebs did. At some point however, Sebs stopped interbreeding with pure monkeys and started interbreeding among themselves and this is how the human race was born. The early hominid possessed a certain mix of Sebs Dna and monkey dna. The percentage of Sebs dna would be a lot smaller than monkey dna and that’s where the 98.5% human dna similarity to humans comes from. We should also point out that the Sebs dna has characteristics that are remarkably different from any earth based dna and this is where the explanation of incredible human progress comes from.

Why, then, did early humans were so underdeveloped compared to todays humans? Because after the initial several Seb generations died out, the new species (sebs and monkeys cross) regressed. The original Sebs had to be an incredibly advanced species, able to build spaceships and fly to other planets and were clearly technologically superior, it’s even hard to imagine to what degree. They might have had knowledge today’s humans can’t even imagine, much less put into production. But, throughout their countless beginning generations and we are talking about millions of years, and due to their limited number (the original Sebs population might have been as few as a few hundred or even less) they regressed. However, the dormant Sebs dna, which resides in every human today, was the force behind human evolution.

By Serge Bronstein

January, 2009

WebCite archive Jan 25 , 2009

http://www.webcitation.org/5e6D539Yz

Recruiting and HR in most organizations is broken!

Just wanted to make a little rant.

 The people doing recruiting in most organizations are NOT qualified. Many times, they do not understand the industry they are hiring for, example – many tech companies have HR people with no background in technology as their first line – the ones that pick and sort resumes and pass them on to technical managers. 

Secondly, people do not hire the best candidates for the job for a variety of reasons – main one being that they are scared they will be displaced.

 About Me: I am the founder of CBCJobs.com, a very popular job search engine.