wangarific

Yeah, me neither… it turns out that Ron Wayne was one of the co-founders of Apple, along with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, and left with a payout of $800. His name is on the legal documents that created Apple and Wayne became friends with Jobs while both worked at Atari Corporation. Had Wayne stayed on, his 10% share would be worth $22 billion today. Wayne role was to be the documents and mediation guy and that role came with a 10% share of the company.

Eleven days after Apple was formed, Wayne removed himself from the company charter. He eventually was given $800 for his stake in Apple, and he let go of that valuable Apple stock, which has exploded in value since.

That… sucks.

The gambling man who co-founded Apple and left for $800 [CNN]

Did you know that Captain Jean-Luc Picard has been knighted by the Queen of England?

When I was younger (and to be honest, I am to this day), I was a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I loved it because it showed a future where we traveled through the stars to far away places and met interesting cultures and creatures.

It wasn’t until later that I learned Patrick Stewart was a very accomplished stage actor and his mythology only grew. I feel bad for the kids who only know him as Professor X in the X-Men movies.

I salute you Sir Patrick Stewart!

Can you guess what would happen if a tablet of Alka Seltzer were “dropped” in a ball of water on the International Space Station?

Unless you’re a fan of science, you probably didn’t guess what actually happened.

I think the play-by-play is really fun… then again I’m a huge nerd.

I play a lot of video games and I can say with near absolute certainty, that Electronic Arts is the king of monetizing downloadable content (DLC).

Just today I learned, via Kotaku, that Madden 11 will offer the ability to scout your online opponents. Are you kidding me? I don’t play much Madden anymore, not since Madden 2009 where you’d just have Randy Moss run a fly route every play, but the idea of online scouting reports is really cool.

Until you realize it’ll cost you “coins.” You can earn coins for playing and completing online games or you can buy them. While it’s not known how much each report is (there are 50) or how much they cost, you can be sure die-hard players will be willing to pay for these coins.

Say what you will about EA and their DLCs (people were pissed at how expensive the first Modern Warfare 2 DLC was… then 11.1 million people paid for it), but they have figured it out and are making bank.

Oh and the best part about the scouting? You know when your opponent has scouted you.

‘Madden 11′ introduces online scouting [ESPN]

An absolutely fascinating report has been produced by the Security Council on Somalian pirate operations and Undispatch pulls out a particularly intriguing bit on basic operations.

I’m always surprised to learn how organized and streamlined criminal operations are. I think having been exposed, in various forms including sensationalized movies, to organized crime like the mafia makes this less surprising, but it’s still an interesting story to read. There are class-A shareholders, financiers, local elders, supplies, and class-B shareholders – a nice hierarchy of who gets paid when.

There’s an article in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of Fortune Small Business that discusses nature vs. nurture. It tackles the question of whether entrepreneurs have something in their DNA or whether it’s something that can be taught. It cites a study from Case Western that concluded entrepreneurs are 40% born and 60% made. While that seems to point towards nurture, the argument that 40% of them are born is pretty surprising. The article continues to discuss how this could be exploited, how other data disputes that fact, etc.

I’m inclined to believe that the entrepreneurial spirit is very much tied to risk aversion. Risk aversion is part nature and part nurture. I’d like to believe that entrepreneur DNA is in my DNA but I think it’s more about taking on and managing risk.

My dad bought a one way ticket from Taiwan to New York to go to college on an education visa. Traveling thousands of miles to go to college in a language that you didn’t know very well. To buy a one way ticket, because it was cheaper, to a place where you had no network, no friends… nothing, because it potentially meant a better life for you and your family. That’s pretty risky.

I was raised to get good grades in high school, get into a good college, graduate and get a good job. By nurture, I was not taught to take on risks. I was taught this because it wasn’t necessary, we were completing the grand plan my dad set out on when he stepped onto a plane in Taipei.

But I think DNA took over… five years later, I’m a personal finance blogger working for myself, taking on risks, and trying to get to the next level.

Is it nature or nurture?

I was out at dinner with some friends the other day when we started talking about Tiger Woods, his recent accident, and admission of “transgressions.” One of my friends wondered why, in these types of “star infidelity” stories, you hear about multiple incidents all at once. There’s almost never just one and they’ve almost always been going on for many months, if not years. In the case of Woods, the tryst with the cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs lasted 31 months, that’s two and a half years!

As we were trying to come up with some reasons, my nascent economics brain came up with this theory. It’s your classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. (I had already enjoyed a pint of Guinness and was working on my second when I put together this theory, so my brain was working all cylinders)

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Prisoner’s Dilemma works as follows: Two suspects are arrested by police and interrogated separately. The police don’t have enough to convict either and they need one to turn on the other. If neither turns, they both get six months sentences for a lesser charge. If one confesses, they get no time while the other gets put in the slammer for ten years. If they both confess, they both get five years in jail.

The idea is that the best scenario is for them to keep quiet, both take the six months, though on an individual basis there’s almost no incentive to ever keep quiet. If they understand the idea of the Prisoner’s Dilemma and believe the other person does as well, then they are more likely to keep quiet.

How It Applies

The chances of any star athlete or movie star having just one affair is pretty slim, so chances are the star has multiple partners in several cities. If you read stories of NBA players, you’ll hear tall tales of having a mistress in every NBA city. So you take that idea and the fact that if each one of them keeps quiet, they enjoy a steady paycheck of dinners and gifts (like cars and apartments). This is the equivalent of a prisoner keeping quiet.

If you talk to the press, you kill the golden goose for a quick media fueled payday. That’s why no one ever talks until they see the end of the road. $100,000 and your name smeared in the press for a few years as a home wrecker is hardly appealing. However, when news of potential philandering leaks, everyone’s brain goes to the same place – they see the other side confessing. They see the ten years in jail (end of gifts and attention) and want that payday… so they confess.

Then the rush is on.

This isn’t another post about how you should be careful about what you say because it could be discovered by your employer (or potential employer) because that would be a case of tunnel vision. Be mindful of what you write in your blog because anyone can potentially find it… future boyfriends/girlfriends, employers, friends, etc.

If you haven’t done this before (and I have) then you’re probably going to in about three seconds, google someone you know. Heck, google yourself and see what happens. If you have a common name like me, then it doesn’t matter because there are a million Jim Wang’s. Even if you were like my friend Chih-Wei Yi, there are a lot more Chih-Wei Yi’s then you’d imagine. (The first site titled Chih-Wei Yi is not him).

But… if you dig a little harder, you will find almost anyone you can think of. With more searching, you’ll probably find that person’s blog and all the information they thought was only being shared with close friends.

So… be careful about the image you project (especially if you like to rant on your blog, like me!) and what your blog says about you.

There’s been a lot of noise over AOL’s recent release of nearly 500 megs of search data (with usernames replaced with numbers) and then their removal of that info from their research pages. Google recently told the DOJ it wouldn’t release search data because it was infringe on their user’s privacy and they were right.

Now check this Minority Report-esq find by Markus of Plentyoffish… check out the search queries of User 17556639 and postulate what this user is trying to find out more about. Looks like AOL opened up the can of worms that was bound to be opened and we’ll have to see how this all shakes out.

Clic here for mirrors to the data and some more info about this… this information is all over the web.

Think of Emurse.com as a resume clearinghouse. You can upload or manually enter in your resume, track where it goes (if you don’t mind sending a little Big Brother-ish clear GIF along in your emails), and create a webpage for it. If you enter a Word document, it doesn’t get processed and entered in as an Emurse resume, it’s like a separate pariah of a resume that isn’t really in the system. I don’t understand what the big hoopla about this is… or it a case of another app that all the Web 2.0-ish companies out there are just pimping because it’s one of their friends?

Someone please explain why this is so wonderful.