MousePotatoPower

 For some reason, I’m a big fan of CompUSA.  The sales staff isn’t very helpful, but then again, how many big box stores can actually help you?  My local alternatives are Circuit City: their computer hardware/accessory section is a joke.  Then there’s Best Buy: selection is better, but their prices are never as good as CompUSA.

Kind of makes you think, CompUSA seemed to have the selection that appealed to the more advanced geek and they had cheaper prices.  That’s a smaller niche and that equals less profit.  Circuit City concentrates on TVs and has a nice car audio department and an excellent selection of DVDs.  Best Buy does car audio, home theater, and even appliances.  Much wider appeal…perhaps that was CompUSA’s downfall.

CompUSA is closing

I bring you this article to show you possibilities. This story does not need to be sensationalized, anybody with half a brain should be able to realize that this is not normal and that this situation could have happened even without MySpace. Dangerous things can happen online, dangerous things can happen at your front door, the more you are aware, the more you can take steps to avoid disastrous situations or prepare for them when they become unavoidable.

The original article appears to come from the St. Charles Journal in Missouri. The events took place a little over 1 year ago.

The article is well written and is followed by over 100 pages of comments by readers.

To summarize the story: A 13-year old girl who had a lifelong struggle with weight and self-esteem commits suicide after being rejected and ridiculed by a boy on MySpace. The boy turns out to be a fictitious character created by one of the 13-year old girl’s ex-friends and the ex-friend’s mother.

Be careful online. Take care of yourself and take care of your kids.

http://www.grupthink.com/topic/index.php5?id=22&page=1

1. TherapistFinder.com
2. PenIsland.com
3. PowergenItalia.com

This is just the top 3 in a list of over 50 easily mispronounced domain names.

Is this a female Bill Gates?

This 17 year old dropped out of school because a business idea based on MySpace is earning her $70,000/month. Believe it or not, she doesn’t even sell anything right now, she gives stuff away for FREE!

Article on DoshDosh

A more in-depth article from FastCompany.com here.

There are a few articles that I want to post that deal with ripping DVDs and transferring them to an Ipod. Copying music and movies to your Ipod should be easy and completely legal. Although it is relatively simple, it is also what I consider to be a gateway drug into more serious software/music/video piracy.

Knowledge is power. Be informed. Don’t use ignorance of the law as an excuse to copy music and movies. And don’t believe for a minute that borrowing a friend’s CD collection and transferring it to your Ipod is legal in any way. Wikipedia has a good list of things that you are usually NOT allowed to do with copyright material.

Piracy may not be a good thing, but for most mouse potatoes, it does NOT cause the financial losses that the record and movie industry would have you believe.

If you already have music and movies that you have not paid for, swing by this Piracy Calculator page to get an estimate of the retail value of your hoard. Be sure to read the MORAL OF THIS STORY at the bottom of the page.

I have seen a hoard that had a calculated value of about $31,000. The owner only made $30k/year. Even if this pirate had $30k in cash, I seriously doubt it would have been spent purchasing legitimate versions of all the movies, TV series, games, and music in their collection.

As an example: Because of a software leak in October 2004, I was able to play Halo 2 on the Xbox a full 4 weeks before it’s official release. The dozen or so people that I knew that played this leaked version ALL went out and bought a legitimate retail copy of Halo 2 on release day. Whether or not they pirated the game, they would still have purchased Halo 2.

At least once a month, I come across a friend who has a burned copy of a movie that is still in theaters. But none of these friends go to the movie theaters anyway. At almost $10 per ticket, it’s cheaper for a couple to buy the DVD. These friends do not have the desire to start large DVD collections either. Although they indulge in an occasional act of piracy, they are simply NOT in the market for a movie theater ticket or a DVD.

Piracy is theft in the sense of breaking the law and sin. It does not cause billions of dollars of loss to the music and movie industry.

I just read that in 2006, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary added the word mouse potato to its vocabulary. I guess I’m a year late, but it kind of has a ring to it. A day later, I registered the MousePotatoPower.com domain name and decided to start a blog that I’ve been thinking about.

Potatoes are supposed to be healthy, right?

MousePotatoPower is all about using your computer as a tool, not as an idiot box. There’s a lot of senseless things that you can do with a computer, but there are even more worthwhile things that you can do.

Follow along as I try to teach you new things to do. No doubt, I will learn a few new tricks as well.