1) I was listening to a lecture online from Berkeley where the professor recommended using the Amazon.com/UK version for purchasing textbooks. He mentioned that the UK sets the pricing for their textbooks and this typically means a reduced price. However, once purchased, these books cannot be sold back to universities. There is a special mark in the UK sold materials. I was able to just randomly choose a textbook, enter the conversion rate and the Amazon UK book was about 7 dollars cheaper. Almost a 14% savings.
2) Donate your computing power from home. Thousands of personal computers (and game systems), being linked together via the internet, are surpassing supercomputer processing capabilities and are helping analyze some of the most intractable problems facing our world. Using BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) software you can download from the internet, you can volunteer for several projects: climate change in Africa, dengue fever, analyzing candidate drugs to stop the AIDS virus, etc. These projects borrow your processing power while the computer is on, but not being used. A BOINC screensaver shows the computer being harnessed for these worthwhile projects. An expansion of thought for people who are serious about tithing EVERYTHING (time, money, resources, etc.).
3) The advent of contests and public querys. Foundations are offering millions of dollars for the winners in the following categories: a) 100 MPG vehicle, $10 million purse b) astronaut glove, $400K purse. c) sequence 100 genomes in 10 days at a cost of 10K per genome, $10m purse. d) greenhouse gas scrubber, $25m purse. e) solve seven unsolved math problems, $1m purse per problem, f) improve Netflix movie recommendations, purse $1m. g) land on the moon, travel 500 feet and send data to earth. $20m purse. These and more from the latest issue of Wired magazine. Also, go to ninesigma.org for a list of problems Fortune 500 companies are experiencing. See their deadlines and the prices they are willing to pay to solve these problems. Supposedly, these contests and public offers are quite successful as they bring a much wider talent pool to bear on particular problems.
4) Dateline has a special tonight about fake document services. Evidently Lima, Peru is a hotspot. Fake IDs were first created and then real passports from the fake IDs. Undercover journalists were able to travel between Peru and Chile. This is from the teaser on the Today show this morning. I remember Henry Kissinger talking about holding a fake Italian passport in case he was taken hostage. If he can do it....
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