TomChoice

Daily DEALS! Best BARGAINS! Coupon PROMOTIONS!

Best Online Stores for Electronic and Computer Deals
Amazon . eBay . Buy . Dell . Apple . OfficeDepot . HP . JR . TigerDirect . CompUSA . SONY . MacMall . PCmall . Newegg . onSale . Palm

Home Goods to complement any Life Style
Walmart . Macy's . Gap . LNT . Magazineline . Netflix . iTunes . GameStop

Unbeatable Online Travel Deals
Travelocity . Expedia . Hotwire . Orbitz . Priceline . CheapTickets . CruiseDirect . ZUJI Hong Kong

Discount & Outlet Shopping for Super Bargains
Shopzilla . SmartBargains . SierraTradingPost . PetSmart . Petco

Download Yahoo! Toolbar

Interesting Reading!

1/20 Antipiracy Case Sends Shivers Through Some Legitimate Storage Sites
It is precisely because Megaupload skirts the edges of the law that it is so hard to prosecute. As the article below says, who is the criminal, the person who downloads and uses the data, or the enabler? Who among us has not copied a file he or she was not supposed to, whether it is a song, CD, DVD, movie, or other copyrighted material? What about all the so called legitimate sites who do exactly the same job as Megaupload, but do not advertise themselves in the brazen manner and purpose that Megaupload does? And several singers, songwriters, and producers and media companies openly associate with the site, and one is even an owner and rumored CEO (Swizz Beatz)! The philosophical question of any chain of action, be it human or natural, and the motivating factors and causes behind it, can be asked of all sorts of issues, ranging from drugs to prostitution to global warming to gun control. Who is the guilty one, the user or the provider, or both? If one is of legal age, in relative control of one's faculties, made aware of the law and able to make one's own choice, one should be responsible for one's own actions, no? Conservatives and liberals can argue till they are blue in the face, but the boundaries in each case are not so clear, so it leaves room for debate. Each of us bears a small portion of the blame and responsibility for all the things going on the internet, and those who are smart and nimble enough will win out over those who are not. Kudos to those who serve a need out there, succeed, and get away with it...that's the reality of the jungle out there.

1/20 Kim Dotcom: the millionaire playboy behind Megaupload
Recently, the Hong Kong based file-sharing site, Megaupload, has been shut down by the FBI with arrests made. The founder is Kim Dotcom (born Schmitz), a German hacker/entrepreneur/online pirate, and one of the early internet adopters, having learning his craft with varying degrees of success since the late 1990s. Operating from multiple international countries from Europe to Asia to New Zealand, Schmitz and other resourceful people like him skirt the edges of the law or take advantage of poor security on the internet to harvest a goldmine of data to make millions, sometimes legitimately, most times not. As more and more human activity and business moves from bricks and mortar into the cloud, the governments of the world are finding themselves ill equipped to tackle questions of security, privacy, and piracy, and advanced technologies they barely understand.

Jan 2012 China: A domestic wine industry starts to take root
I guess you've got to start somewhere. Most domestic wines in China are of the "two buck Chuck" variety, and according to the article, only two pass the grade, Grace Vineyard (Shanxi province) and Golden Heights (Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region), and one wine even won the top award at an international wine competition (He Lan Qing Xue Winery). All three wineries are located in the northwest part of China, in arid, landlocked, and remote areas, and benefit from foreign investment and/or expertise. Apart from their novelty factor (great to wow out your friends at dinner gatherings or blind wine tastings), the retail prices of their best bottles are on par with good wines from France and California, which means somewhere north of US$50/bottle. So don't get your hopes up too much for the next "Bordeaux killer" anytime soon. The viniculture and "terroir", not to mention the skillset and temperament necessary to produce fine wine, is going to take many more years to bring to fruition. In other words, it will be many more years before "Nava Valley" can be mentioned together in the same breath as "Napa Valley". In the meantime, with the stupendously high prices for first growth Bordeaux imports and so many fakes about, there is a small window of opportunity for a high quality domestic grower/producer to make its mark.