Patents and Attorneys

Does anyone know anyone who has gotten a patent?

I have talked to two poeple that have got patents. One was on a design, and it cost almost 10k, the other was on a concept and it was almost 100k.

Does anyone have any (credible) input on this? And I have already checked out the US patent website...but it just gives the filing fee, not the attorney fees, which I will need the latter.

http://doctorlazy.blogspot.com/2004/11/letter-to-charter-president.html

Giving Thanks!

Thank you to all of those that have impacted my life.

Thank you to my parents. Thank you for always being there for me when I need you, and knowing not to be there when I think I need you. Thank you for always teaching me to be my own person. For always teaching me to learn. For always teaching me that no matter how much I think I know, I do not know anything.

Thank you for being rough with me as a kid. It taught me about people. It taught me how to handle my own stress, and how I will handle stress when I have my own children.

Thank you to my 7 ear, nose, and throat surgeries. I am thankful that I was mediocre at athletics in high school. I am thankful for failing 2 classes in high school. I am thankful for dropping out of college as an undergrad. I am thankful that 4 days a week I wake up puking for no apparant reason. All of these have taught me resiliance. I will fall. I will get up. Without resiliance, I would be nothing.

Thank you to all of the kids at St. Dismas who made fun of me every day of my life. Yes I studdered, yes I would say quirky things, yes my mom did make most of my clothes, yes my hair was too long, yes I did spit when I talked, yes I did have to go to a school for retards to get rid of a terrible speach impedidement. But it taught me about people's insecurities. People have and will always try to bring me down because of their own insecurities. Thank you for teaching me that.

thank you to Mike Jasper, who in that one conversation in my parents kitchen forever changed my life. You taught me that the world is not like it seems. To never believe what you're sold. You taught me skepticism. You taught me cyncism. You also taught me loyalty. You fought for me. Over and over again. (Hell you even got jumped and then arrested for something I did, and wouldn't let me take the blame for it when I ratted myself out). You were a soldier. I miss that.

Thank you to the brothers I played sports with. Dropping you off in the ghetto taught me that not everyone is like me.

Thank you to all of you who believed in me. Thank you to the few teachers at Dismas who used to come to my house because you thought I was a genius, and was scared about me always getting in trouble. Thank you to everyone who has ever believed in me.

Thank you to my siblings. Tony and Joey, I am sorry that I always wanted to and threatened to kill you. I unfairly did what dad did to me. I deflected my anger at the world at you. I am sorry. Thank you for always being there for me. Tony thank you for always getting stuff done. Joey thank you for being smarter than me. Laura, thank you for showing me that principal means more than anything. Thank you also for always having hot friends!

Uncles, thank you for raising me as a kid, thank you for always inspiring me. Thank you for showing me how Wilson's are insane, and how I need to balance the Wilson curse...(a constant paradox of thinking you are great at the same time that you think you are worthless).

Thank you to my KC crew. There are few times in my life when I enjoy myself more than I do when I am hanging out with you.

Thank you to Hadley, Steph, Michele, Andy, Mai, and Jill. In my life, you 6 have been the only people who i have ever trusted to entirely open up to.

Thanks to all my doubters. Without you, I wouldn't be me. Keep fueling the fire! Keep telling me I can't and I won't. So I will.

Thank you to Nick, whoever the hell that is...I asked for comments in my previous blog and only he gave me some!

The list goes on and on. Every day of my life, I am thankful for all of you who have impacted my life. Thank you. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Letter to Charter President

The following is a letter I sent to the President of Charter Communications:

"I am a big fan of Charter. I have been following the company for years. Most people follow sports teams, I have been following Charter. To an outsider, it seems easy to fix Charter and make Charter larger than anyone imagined.

I'm going to be honest. I am sending this email with the hopes that I be given a chance to help make Charter everything it should be. I want to work side by side with you, and fix things.Here is a very concise overview of what I notice...

1) Of course the debt. This is the greatest obstacle. Let's get Charter to make insane amounts of money, and the debt will be easy to fix. First we will get Charter running smooth. We improve the efficiency of operations. (I've got plenty of ideas on this). Then we will be able to refinance the outstanding debt. All along we will aggressively pay it off.

2) Company morale. I know alot of Charter employees. They are miserable. Miserable people do not try. Miserable people do not innovate. It takes 2 to 3 miserable people to be as productive as a satisfied employee. How can a miserable sales person convince someone to buy cable? Let's not settle for satisfied employees, lets get and make happy, loyal employees. Whatever Charter is doing reminds me of when I bake. All you get is awful turnovers. Let's clean house, and hire quality people. Lets dedicate ourselves to training those people. Let's ask those people for feedback constantly (similar to 3M, or Edward Jones), and constantly give them feedback. Lets make Charter a place where everyone wants to work. Lets get Charter to be a place where no one wants to leave. I work at a company like that. Lets bring that to Charter. Let's get Charter ranked in Forbes top 100 companies to work for list.

3) Satellite. Satellite is not a problem! Satellite should not even be considered as Cable's competition. Satellite can not offer the bandwidth that cable can. End of story. Your competition should be yourself. Innovate. Make your employees happy, make your shareholders happy. The rest will follow.

4) Innovate. Why hasn't Charter combined TVs and computers yet? Why does VOD suck? Why hasn't VOD put Blockbuster out of business? Why can't I watch a basketball game, click on Kobe Bryant's shoes, and be taken to Amazon to buy those shoes? (Amazon would even pay a premium to be the preferred store). Why isn't this stuff done? Its not money. Let's make some money.

The above are just a few of my ideas. I have many many more. I want to see this happen. I want to make this happen.Hire me on, make me your sidekick. Let's make Charter a top company to work for, and a preferred source of information (TV, internet).

Thank you, and have a great day!"

So he hasn't replied. If anyone thinks any of the above is a good idea, or if anyone has any faith in me then please feel free to email cvogel@chartercom.com and let him know that you read a blog post at http://www.wilgrowinvestments.com/ that you think is a good idea, and that he should contact me...(if you don't refer him to my blog, he probably won't remember who I am.)

Do I think he will contact me? No. According to Bloomberg he owns less than 0.50% of their stock. What incentive does he have to turn them around? Plus, as most of you know, I am just a 25 year old kid. Noone listens to 25 year old kids. But hey, what do i have to lose?

Please send a few emails to Carl. It'll only take you 3 minutes. Feel free to post the email you sent on my comments.

Thanks all,

Greg.

I have hidden my last two posts....

For legal reasons, I have been advised to remove the previous two posts.....

More to come on this in the coming days.....

If you were directed to this site for my ideas on how toothpaste companies are missing an opportunity to make a ton of money, or for how to significantly limit software piracy.

Pirates of the Software-ribbian

In the last few weeks I have gotten back to what this blog should be about. Posting ideas that solve problems, or at least look at problems in a different way.

What is the single thing that hurts software companies more than anything? Piracy. There are several solutions.

1) have the software on DVDs that erases themselves after install.
2) live with it.
3) as more people get on broadband, they can track users by serial number...which will be quite costly.

or my ideas:

1) as broadband becomes commonplace and machines become faster (2 years from now?) have the products available on a central server where you have to pay for a subscription. Similiar to a high tech yahoo games, except you have to pay. This will obviously be expensive...probably more expensive then the dollars lost to piracy.
2) Innovate. Think outside the box. Stand on the table and look around...(ala Dead Poets Society). See things differently. Have corporate accounts continue to pay for licensed software. But for home users that don't want to pay the 1k for Office 2003 Premium Super Duper, or PhotoShop, or whatever, give it to them for free. Lay out the software products similiar to google's search results. On the right side (and where ever) have clickable ads on the documents that take you to the web. (Microsoft, you can finally become a Monoploy...have Microsoft Office products have links that take users to the MSN stores.) What if you don't want the ads? Then pay for the product. There will be far fewer licenses out there, so it would now be feasible for the software companies to monitor serial number usage. Better still someone could start up a third party company responsible for tracking serial numbers. (similiar to credit bureaus, or background check companies). This third party company would have an immediate monopoly with the first mover advantage. Eventually you could even have a smart search engine within the document (similiar to Amazon's technology) that customizes the ads based on you.

Why don't I do any of this? There's only 24 hours in a day. Either someone is going to come out of nowhere and pay me to be a think tank, or I am going to stay on the career quest I am on...(portfolio management). But I'm going to throw ideas out there.

I have emailed Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, and Adobe on the above. We'll see if anyone replies.

IQ tests and voters

Alright, I am not saying that either of these are valid. Both of these links were sent to me, and very interesting. Interpret them yourself.

http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm

here is some guy who tried to debunk the above, but said he couldn't (and admitted it).

http://www.zombietime.com/iq_of_2004_voters_by_state/

But I don't want/need these stats to back up this argument that I laid out in a previous post. Its simple logic. Half of Americans are below average intelligence. We should not be the decision makers. The decision makers should be one or just a few peope who are EXTREMELY wise, selfless, and moral. It should be a Ben Franklin, a Mark Twain, a Martin Luther King...(Ross Perot??).

How do you stand out?

This post is kinda-scattered brained, but I am lost on this problem, and am looking for advice.

When you are surrounded by the best of the best, how do you rise above the cream of the crop?

Each person in the group is very strong, very intelligent, very motivated, well-spoken, driven, and clawing to prove they are the best.

One thing I have noticed in open-discussion meetings is that the people that talk the most and the people that talk the least are the weakest. Its WHAT you say and WHEN you say it, not HOW MUCH you say. But that's all I have learned so far.

I haven't figured out how to rise above the elite. A leader is someone who makes those around him better. A leader is someone with followers. Maybe you try to lead them, instead of compete with them? But how?

Does anyone have any ideas? What would you do? How would you do it? Help me out here.

A weak rhyme.

If I fall and I trip and I don't get up quick, I'll be passed by, by someone who smiles as they try to be the something I want to become. This competitions constantly surrounding me and sometimes its drowning me, but I refuse not to see the goal that I know I will reach while I step on the path of my past that I am leaving beneath this body of mind, that I've tried to refine into a resiliant machine, that grows in due time, if I stay true to my mine, and respect what I get, and thank who I've got, I won't ever stop trying to be the best me, fueled by those that have ever doubted me and anyone who doesn't believe that I am, and will be, everything I want to and will be.
This fire will not burn out. Its all I drink and eat, and it will always drive me to be the best me.

democracy is a bad idea.

Democracy is a bad idea. It all comes down to this. By definition more than half of America has average or below average intelligence and judgment (which is funny because if you ask anyone what their IQ is they'll say 120 or higher....or that they are a good judge of character....but the average IQ mathematically HAS to be 100 ALWAYS....if you don't believe that than I expect you to believe that some things have a correlation of 1.1). Anyway, if half of the people deciding our leaders are average or below than how can they be expected to make the right choice...they are condemned to making a mediocre pick, or get lucky and make the right one.

Another way to look at it...there are companies that have been around longer than the US...were they a democracy. Is any company a democracy? Would you ask the assembly line workers how to balance the company's budget or who they think should?

Popularity should not be grounds for leadership! The best choice in anything is seldom the most popular one....(e.g. your parents telling you to eat your brussel sprouts, or the doctor grabbing your balls and telling you to cough....god I hate that)....or vice versa, religion. Look at how popular religion is. T'is the Opiate of the Masses, because the masses are stupid.

I am not saying this because Kerry lost....he was a douche bag also.

Noone denies that ALL politicians are thieves. Then why don't we change that! Why do we let things keep falling down, while we smile and think we are strong and powerful? You can spray shit on perfume, but its still shit.

We should be led by the most intelligent, moral, and selfless man or woman. We should not choose them, they should be chosen. How is the hard part? I imagine testing would be the best option. (anyone who read Plato's Republic will be familiar with "the Philosopher King", which is what started me thinking this). We need a Franklin, or a Mark Twain, or a Socrates. These people cared about Truth and the pursuance of it. They were not concerned with making themselves wealthy.

Where are the wise, moral, selfless men?

It is not our war.

This is a long DownLoad, but worth the watch. Eminem Mosh

DUBAI, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Following are excerpts from a speech by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden addressing the American people in a video tape, parts of which were aired by Al Jazeera television on Saturday, as translated by Reuters.
"O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results. Security is an important foundation of human life and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden for example

"It is known that those who hate freedom do not possess proud souls like those of the 19, may God rest their souls. We fought you because we are free and because we want freedom for our nation. When you squander our security we squander yours. "I am surprised by you. Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed -- when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

"In those difficult moments many emotions came over me which are hard to describe, but which produced an overwhelming feeling to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the unjust. "As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.

"We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush and his administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings ... They have a lot of pride, arrogance, greed and thievery.

"He (Bush) adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act under the guise of combating terrorism.....

"We had agreed with the (the Sept. 11) overall commander Mohammed Atta, may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice. "It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces (Bush) would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This had given us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God...

"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.

((Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; editing by Sami Aboudi; Gulf


Greg: I do not condone Bin Laden. I am not afraid of him. I am afraid of our leaders. They mess with our lives. They messed with Bin Laden and he bit back. The above are his words taken from his sources. Our leaders need to fix our problems, then go fuck with other people. We are weak. We think might makes right. We are fragile. Our reaction to 9-11 showed that, and time will prove it further. We have only been around 225 years. We're an infant who is going to collapse thanks to our own over confidence. That's what's scary. I'd rather get fucked by Kerry and all of his piss poor democratic economic agendas and semi-socialist reforms on health care and social security, then bully other countries. We call Steve-O a Jackass cuz he gets naked and taunts snakes, and then gets bit. We as a country are no different. Get Americans to stop shooting each other, then let's go fuck with France, Iraq, and whoever you blood thirsty piles of insecurity feel like. Our insecurity obscures reality.

Almost 375k people got shot intentionally in 2001. So that's almost 1k people getting shot a day. That is americans shooting americans. yet we get pissed and rally together when an outsider retaliates and attacks us? We are so uneducated, naive, egocentric, and fragile. We need to look in the mirror. Bin Laden is not the problem. Iraq is not the problem. Each of us is the problem.

But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.