While browsing around the web today, I found this site:

http://www.ripoffreport.com

It allows you to search for a company and see if others have complaints against them.  Also, it allows you to write your own complaints.

A friend told me of another site of this type:

http://www.complaints.com

While many of the complaints may not be a typical experience with a company, it can help to see what others have experienced.

For some time now, BitTorrent goes hand-in-hand with illegal file sharing.  Now, they have decided to try reaping some of the cash out there for legal media downloads.  Welcome the new BitTorrent Entertainment Network to the fray of media download sites:

http://www.bittorrent.com

As with all the other legal media download sites, BitTorrent will charge expensive prices for movies.  While their price on new movies is cheaper than some, they still are higher than you local video store at $3.99 but at least you can watch the film for up to 30 days (only 24 hours to watch after you first start watching it).  Some movies are less, but those are usually movies you probably would not want to watch anyway, think "Almost Heroes". 

TV episodes though, are about the same as their other media sites at $1.99 per episode, way too much!  The content owners just place too much value one each episode.  Of course, their target market is problably those that do not have DVRs and happen to have missed episodes and this is their only way to catch up.  With this kind of pricing, you still need to keep your normal TV service providers as it would be way too expensive to watch online if you have more than a few shows you normally keep up with.

In this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6396733.stm

The officials are quoted as saying:

"We're really hammering the studios to say, 'Go easy on this audience,'" said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and president of BitTorrent. "We need to give them a price that feels like a good value relative to what they were getting for free."

While I do not partake of the free file sharing that are going on, I still think they will have a hard sell at $3.99 per movie (or the huge $1.99 per episode) that you can watch only for a limited time when compared to free.  While the movie price is coming down, I think the future will be monthly memberships for unlimited viewing.  That is when I will get serious about online video.

The article also mentioned about uploading your own video for others to download, but I do not have more information on that at this moment.  I feel this is what Google Video / YouTube / MSN Video has in their sights as a new revenue stream.  Empowering people to make money will always be a win-win situation!

Today, the topic of energy generation came up and I decided to go back an look a bit over the Stirling Engine and see what is happening lately.  Much to my suprise (although it happen a year and  a half ago), Southern California Edison contracted Stirling Energy Systems, inc to build a huge 500-megawatt solar power plant using an array of 20,000 37-foot Stirling solar dishs.  I would not mind having one of those dishing in my backyard!

http://www.edison.com/pressroom/pr.asp?id=5885

One my quest for more information, I found many examples of the Stirling engine being used in power generation.  It seems to be a real hot bed nowadays.  Another example I found Infinia Corp is planning on a backyard 3 kilowatt solar dish with a possible price tag of $15,000.

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/business/story/8614961p-8507518c.html

There are many others moving on the Stirling engine power generation, but while browsing around, I found this site:

http://www.freeenergynews.com

This is one cool site!  It instantly made it into my RSS feed list!  Currently, they have articles about:

• GE reinventing the incandescent light bulb
• A History of Dark Matter
• Balloon technology cuts solar cost 90% - inflatable solar PV concentrators to make solor cheaper than coal
• Dupont outlines commercialization strategy for biobutanol
• Thin film batteries designed with nanotechnology - charge within minutes, hold more energy and last 40 times longer
• Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gass by half - thin film solar cells
• and much more

Well, that is where I got side tracked on this to an article about a recently posted proof of concept video about the Searl Concept, which is a method of generating power without an external force.  Yep, free energy!

http://pesn.com//2007/02/21/9500458_Searl_demo_video/

This was way cool!  It reminded me of playing with magentic forces a decade or so ago, trying to figure a way to build a repulsive motor that would not require external forces other than gravity.  There is more information on the site above about Searl along with his concepts of antigravity.  If this stuff all checks out, the world could be for big changes if greed does not get in the way.  Here is another link with more information on Searl:

http://www.rexresearch.com/searl/searl.htm

After spending a too much time on all these sites, I happened to notice on the FreeEnergryNews site, a link about Steorn free energy all-magnet generator (Orbo energy technology).  It has a patent pending and some have said this was already busted by the Mythbusters, but Steorn is suppose to post all the details publically this quarter in the forums.  We will see!

http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Steorn_Free_Energy

http://www.steorn.com/

Overall, it is getting more exiciting every day!

It appeas that Charter Communications (my IP) has, without my permission, overroad my options for dns failure by redirecting me to "their" Yahoo! search site when I type a keyword in the browser and it is not found.  I was never asked if I wanted them to override Microsoft Live Search, which is the default in IE!

When you get automatically redirected to "their" page, there is an option at the very bottom "about this page" and when you click on it, you have an option to "opt out".  Hey Charter, how about an option to "opt in" and let me choose if I ever want this garbage.  I pay $70 per month for broadband from them (I use DirecTv and not Charter, I only use Charter for Internet) and THEY decide to override my default search engine?  What, they do not make enough off me? 

If I were Microsoft, I would be sending an army of lawers against Charter!