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?Yo dawg ? we heard you like to dream, so we put a dream in yo? dream so you can sleep while you sleep!?If Inception had been directed by Xzibit, then that would have been the tag line. But instead, it was directed by Christopher Nolan and so instead of a rapper?s folksy wisdom we were instead treated to two and half hours of poorly-filmed shaky-cam fight scenes, four thousand lines of expository dialogue and the kind of weak narrative thread that wouldn?t hold together an elementary school Christmas pageant. You know how when you go to see a play, and it turns out that it?s really a play within a play within a play ? within a play? This is exactly like that, only it?s with dreams ? and it sucks even harder.The basic problem about making a movie about dreaming is that in dreams, you can do anything you want to do and it doesn?t have to make any sense at all. If you were to commit that concept to film, you would end up with some kind of David Lynch meets Darren Aronofsky monstrosity that wiped your brain clean of rational thought by the time the opening credits had rolled by. Or a movie directed by Renny Harlin.Nolan, however, thought he had a better way to approach a movie about dreaming: make it really, really boring. In fact, make it so boring that the audience is unable to tell if it is asleep or awake. Then, insert a completely wasted cast of A-list actors and tell them to read every line as though it were coming from a text book on How To Be Dull And Alienate People. As a final touch, include only two female characters, one of whom is dead (SPOILER ALERT!), so that audiences don?t catch on to the fact that you are incapable of writing for anyone without a y chromosome.Oh, and make sure to stretch the *BLEEP*ing movie out as long as *BLEEP*ing possible by including the kind of pointless action sequences that look as though they have been pulled straight from a generic first person shooter set on the ice planet Hoth. Seriously, there is a 45-minute segment of Inception where everyone wears white camo and gets a huge gun, and in between scenes of faceless enemies blasting away at our heroes on snowmobiles we are treated to a slow motion shot of a Ford van falling off a bridge backwards. I only wish that I were making that last sentence up, but this is a really pivotal part of the movie ? at least, I think it was ? because right after it ended, I lost control of my bowels. All that was missing was a Wampa and Jaws from the James Bond franchise and it would have been the perfect generic movie mind*BLEEP*.I really would like to be able to say that Inception was an innovative film about dudes stealing the dreams of other dudes and maybe getting frisky with some kind of sexy ?dream girls? along the way, but I can?t. Instead, I have to tell you that Inception is the reason I became a homeless heroin addict. Or at least one of the reasons. Because it was boring or something. I?m sorry, I left the part of me that cares back in that movie theatre.Oh, and as a side note, has anyone else noticed that DiCaprio will now only star in movies that allow him to exclusively wear 50?s-style clothing? What is up with that?

So you don?t believe in astrology. Many people like you and me reject some theories, or only partially believe in them. There can be two reasons for disbelief; one comes after reasoning and observation, like all empirical sciences, and the other from lack of knowledge or incapacity of the human mind to grasp the subject matter of the theory. Sometimes a belief is also determined by a collective behaviour of a generation. It is not that we are right and the earlier generations were wrong, but it is the conditioning that is created by a particular generation that makes a certain belief a norm of the society.Astrology is one such subject where people always differ in their beliefs and opinions. If your disbelief in Astrology is purely based on lack of knowledge, or general opinion, I will try to explain it scientifically and write in more detail in my next post. Consider this as an introduction.Astrology has several school of thoughts; the most important are the Western Astrology based on the Sun, and the Indian Astrology based on the Moon. This is the reason why the Western calendar is based on the Sun and the Eastern on the Moon. Out of several contributions India made to the world in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, literature and science, Astrology is the biggest. It is worth mentioning that the Indian rishis (saints) discovered facts about the universe and the solar system, which NASA and other space agencies have only now recently discovered.Astrology to our belief is just limited to the science of predicting future or a person?s characterstics, which is not completely true. Instead, astrology is concerned with the movement of planets in the solar system and its gravitational impact on other planets and moons. When I first learnt about astrology, I too considered it as a superstition and rejected it prima facie. But only after doing some research, did I get some understanding of it.Indian astrology is all about the planet?s gravity and its impact on the Earth. Do you know what causes high tides and low tides in the sea? It is caused by the moon coming closer or going further away from the Earth during its orbit. You agree with it right ?? You must!! It was in your school books. So we can conclude that the Moon can impact the Earth?s ecosystem through gravitational force.We all know that the sea water contains salt, and the human body constitutes of 70% water. This follows that if the Moon can bring changes in ocean waves, it can also bring changes in our body and mind. According to Astrology, it is the Moon which governs our mind and thought process. The time, latitude and longitude of the location at which a person is born determines the angle of the Moon and its impact on him. Unlike Western Astrology which is based on the Sun and divides the population in 12 groups (i.e. 12 Sun Signs), Indian Astrology defines infinite possibilities. Two persons born on the same time can differ in every respect because of different birth locations. It also considers the fact that the Moon and the planets are always moving and can have different impacts on people born at the same time.Do you know the origin of the word ?Lunatic?? Every word added to our language has a history or a reason behind it. The term ?Lunatic? is associated with lunar (moon) movements and gravity. Research has proved that people?s (especially lunatics?) behaviour changes during a full moon and a no moon day.Just like the Moon, other planets also impact life on earth. Scientists have also started believing this. It is the combination of all the planets? gravity that impact our body and mind, and governs our action and thought processes. It is this planetery movement, that makes someone a poet, an artist, or a musician. Science cannot answer why one is more intelligent than the other, but Astrology can explain it.Indian Astrology is about planets and its impact on human beings. It doesn?t matter if people start worshipping Venus considering it as a Demi-God, or forecasting the future. Infact, Astrology does not even have any association with religion.To understand it, we must try to understand it scientifically and not as a superstition.

Don?t you hate it when you?re surfing the net, and the website you?re trying to access takes forever to load? There?s a common misconception out there that slow loading websites are the result of a poor internet connection. Although this can be the case, there is another common culprit ? the server the website is hosted on.The internet is essentially a collection of servers, all connected to each other. Every website on the internet lives, or is hosted on a server ? it?s like the house a website lives in. Servers can be small office based systems, or located in gigantic data centres that host literally millions of websites.So how does a server affect the loading speed of your website?1. DistanceWhere is your target market located? If you?re market is local, it?s important to have your website hosted on a local server. Why? If you?re targeting New Zealanders, but your website is hosted on a server in the States, this causes loading speed problems. This is because when your internet connection calls on the server to access the website, the signal has to travel through pipes from New Zealand to the USA, and then back again to your connection in New Zealand. That?s a pretty long way! Having your website hosted on a server in New Zealand makes for a much quicker load time.2. Server LoadImagine a server is like a house. If there are only a few people living in a house, everyone can live in harmony a lot easier than if you?ve got people sleeping on the floors and cuing up for the bathroom in the morning, right? A server is the same. If the server your website lives on is managed well, and has the right number of websites hosted on it, then they can work in harmony together. But if the server is overloaded with too many websites living on it, with too many internet surfers trying to access them at the same time, this clogs up the server and effects loading speed. It?s like having 20 people living in a three bedroom house, all trying to cook dinner at the same time.So why does this whole server thing matter?Studies show that if your website takes more than 8 seconds to load on a 56k modem, you risk losing the visitor, it?s that simple. It?s like going to a retail shop, and seeing a ?back in 10mins? sign on the door. Will you hang around, or just go somewhere else? If a visitor gets impatient, and clicks away before even getting to your website, how can they buy your products or enquire about your services?So what can you do?1. Ask where the servers are located? Are they local or overseas?2. Ask for an uptime (% of time the server is functional and working as expected) guarantee ? this should be at 99.5% or better.3. Ask if you?re on a shared server. These servers are typically more overcrowded than Virtual Private Servers which are the recommended option.

With the state of the economy these days along with the sky high price of Gas, groceries and other necessities of life, many people are finding that their money isn?t making it as far as it once did. So it?s not surprising that many people are turning to the Internet to make money fast. With Winter just around the corner, many people are worrying about how they will pay their Winter heating bill. Some have already been surprised by unexpected large energy bills. This leaves some families scrambling to find ways to make money fast in order to prevent something from going unpaid.Here are quick and easy ways to make money on the Internet. Will you get rich? No. But you just might bring in extra money each month and maybe keep your lights on this Winter!Project PaydayIf you can use a computer to surf the Internet, chances are good that you can use Project Payday to earn extra money on the Internet. It doesn?t require a lot of technical knowledge and it?s pretty darn quick and easy to use.Project Payday is free to join and they have loads of free training Video?s to help you get started. Plus they also have a mentoring program where you?ll get hands on tutoring if you need it. I?d highly suggest you watch the video?s and even consider the mentoring program to maximize your potential income opportunities. You can expect to get offers in the $15 to $30 range. I?ve seen some as high as $50 though, but those are rare. Most people can do several offers a day once they get the hang of it and get their routine down and become familiar with how the system works. They even have a $100 guarantee that if you follow their Fast First Fifty program and do not make at least $50, they?ll pay you a $100! I?m not aware of any other program that will make that offer!I tried it and after watching the training video?s and asking some questions in the forums, I made $50 the first day by doing about 4 hours worth of work. The next day I spent longer at it and made $95. My third day I was busy doing other things and only managed to make $65. It took a while sitting at the computer, but if I hadn?t been doing that I?d been wasting time surfing the internet! Click here to learn more about Project Payday.EbayNo article about making money online would be complete without mention of eBay. While it?s not as good as it once was for the person looking to make money fast on the Internet, it still allows many people to stay home and make a darn good income from selling goods online.You can find goods to sell on eBay on Craigslist, Garage Sales, Big Box stores like Sam?s and Costco and in your own home. I bet most of us have stuff we haven?t used in months that could be auctioned off on eBay to make a quick dollar or two.Time was once where you could go out and hit Garage sales and Estate auctions and bring the stuff back to your home, list it on eBay and make some good money. You can still do that, but the money isn?t as good as it once was because of the higher listing fees and many of the commercial companies drowning out the smaller individual auctions.A way some people have started taking advantage of these changes at eBay is to start their own stores. ProStores is an eBay company that offers several packages that make it easy to get up and running with your very own ecommerce store. This is a great way to get started without having to know a lot about web programming and using a lot of different programs. Check it out here if this sounds like something you?d want to do ?-> One Month Free Trial! ProStores ? an eBay CompanyFreelance YourselfThere are any number of places on the Internet where you can go and sign up as a freelance writer. Many people do not realize that there is a great demand for Writers due to the need for Content on the Internet. I myself buy a lot of articles written by several of these services. Businesses, Internet Marketers and mainstream sites like About.com all use freelance writers. The best part is, you don?t have to be an expert writer in most cases.One of these services, Freelance Home Writers, is a membership site that you join to access databases of companies looking for writers. You then pick and choose which writing jobs you want and just pass over the ones you don?t want. Typically you?ll be writing Blog post and Content articles for Websites. However you can get the chance to write fiction and non-fiction story?s as well. They also have several other opportunities for you to make money on the Internet. That?s pretty good money for people who can turn out a few articles per day. Currently they?re running a $2.97 for a 7 day trial. This is cheap enough to get in and see the writing opportunities they have as well as the other programs to make money at home. Click Here to find out more about this opportunity.Read Emails ? Take Online Surveys ? Product EvaluationIn my opinion, this isn?t as easy as Project Payday, but it?s real close. There are companies that receive thousands of emails every day that need to be read. Obviously the CEO or other employees can?t spend every day reading emails, so they outsource this.There are several companies where they outsource this type of work as well as other tedious, time consuming chores such as product testing and evaluation, online surveys, online mystery shopping and others. Send Earnings is one such company that other companies outsource to. Consumers such as you sign up and are normally paid on a per assignment completed basis. The pay varies by what type of assignment you choose. You choose where you want to make money. Click Here to learn more or to sign up for this opportunity. It?s FREE to join and you can get started making money online very quickly.EtsyDo you create crafts? Etsy is a huge online marketplace where people sell their crafts. Since it draws people looking for handmade products or craft supplies, Sellers find it more profitable for many crafts than eBay.My Wife and Mother-In-Law have sold many items on Etsy including quilts and hand sewn dolls. They received pretty respectable prices for their items, much more than what they received on eBay for items of similar nature.As I guy, I have to admit there are some pretty interesting handmade crafts on that site. Some will make you scratch you head and wonder how anyone could make such a thing! If you have some crafts laying around you could get rid of, or if you could make some up quickly, then this might be the outlet for you to make money fast.CraigslistI love Craigslist! Mostly for the cool stuff I buy off of it in my local area. But Craigslist can also be a Goldmine if you?ll put the time into it. I call the method I use to make money from Craigslist ?Craigslist Arbitrage? because this is how it works.I scan the Free section of Craigslist looking for valuable things people are giving away. If you live near a large Metro area, you?ll simply be amazed at what others will give away just to get rid of it. You need to be quick, because others are doing the same thing you are! Once you pick up your Freebies, turn around and put them back on Craigslist for sale at a below market price. Chances are they?ll go quick and you?ll have made some quick cash.I first learned of this when we were moving and I was trying to score free moving boxes. I was constantly amazed at how quick they would go until someone told me people do nothing more than drive around grabbing up free boxes and turning around and selling them for $1 or more per box. The same goes for Furniture, electronics and other items. You need to be sitting at your computer refreshing the FREE page often. You can also find great deals in other areas of Craigslist so don?t just spend all your time in the FREE section.Sell EbooksDo you have a particular skill or knowledge? Maybe Award winning recipes? Special technique for training dogs? Then write an ebook. Don?t care or don?t think you have the skills to write an ebook? Then find a freelancer at one of the places mentioned above. Don?t think your idea will sell? You?d be surprised! I?ve heard of one gentleman who does quite well ($500+ per month) selling an ebook on raising Tomatoes. Nuff said!But if none of these thrill you, then there are places like ClickBank where you can become an affiliate and sell ebooks, software and other products. Some of these can be rebranded for yourself. If you find some that have Master Resell Rights, you can sell them on eBay, Craigslist or set up a PayPal order page and advertise your products. (if you sell them on ebay, they have to be in a digital form. Ebay does not allow electronic downloads any longer) There are hundreds of ways to drive traffic to your sales page so don?t get stuck in a rut! Get yourself a network of sites specific to each product and promote the crap out of it to bring in some quick money.Become a Go To GuruGetting back to those special skills or knowledge you have, have you ever thought about becoming a Consultant? Everywhere you look these days, there are consultants for this and that. Consultants for organizing a home, creating a baby?s room, throwing wedding showers and the list goes on.You?d be surprised at how much people will pay for information that they need and need quick! Show your community that you?re an expert in your field and they?ll beat a path to your door.One great thing about this business is that it?s easy and inexpensive to start. You can do it part time, in the Evenings or on weekends right from your home. Over time you may find your ?part time? job is making more money than your ?real? job!Have Camera, Will Take Photo?sDo you like taking pictures with your digital camera? Have you thought about selling them but thought you weren?t good enough because you?re not a ?professional?? Have to fear. Many people make extra money fast by selling their pictures online.Websites like BigStockPhoto, ShutterStock, Fotolia and others pay you each time one of your photo?s are downloaded. Many of these sites pay anywhere from 25 cents per photo downloaded to a percentage of the commission on specialty photo?s.Photographers who do this type of work are called Stock Photographers and the Photo?s they take are known as micro stock. It?s the same kind of pictures you?ll see on this site. Although 25 cents per photo doesn?t sound like much (some sites pay more), consider that you may have thousands of photo?s uploaded. One of the best know Stock Photographers is pulling down $300 or more a day from just one of the Stock Photography websites!Another huge advantage of taking stock photography is that your photo?s keep making you money over and over and over. One of the best residual income generators on the Web. Not only is this making money fast, it?s making money fast again and again!

Did you know that on average 1 in every 4 Americans eat at McDonalds? Almost every American has probably at one time or another eaten at one of their 31,000 restaurants or they have at least heard of the mega fast food chain. For decades, Americans have enjoyed their array of menu items. Well, have you ever thought about what you are really eating? Recently, people have been looking deeper and deeper into if McDonalds is really a healthy restaurant to eat at. It can make you obese, the portions are way too big, there are much better alternatives and the food at McDonalds is practically phony.To start off, people all over the world that like the McDonalds shouldn?t eat at the familiar restaurant because it could lead to serious weight problems. Hopefully, people who eat at McDonalds will realize it isn?t doing them any good. Considering McDonalds is widely known as a fast food chain, a study published in the Lancet medical journal found those who frequently ate fast food gained 10 pounds more than those who did so less often, and were more than twice as likely to develop an insulin disorder linked to diabetes. Clearly, fast food eaters could gain more pounds especially if they foods that are high in fat, like the food served at McDonalds. Therefore, if you don?t want to get fat, I might steer clear from McDonalds.The second reason as to why you shouldn?t eat at McDonalds is because the portions are larger than life! As the years progress, the portions at McDonalds are getting bigger and bigger even though you might not even realize it. An article quotes, ?When McDonald?s first opened, a soda was 7 ounces. Today, the child size is 12 ounces; a small is 16 ounces, and the large 32 ounces. The problem is, people tend to eat or drink what's in front of them. We also significantly underestimate how many calories we consume. But even when consumers try to do right by their diets by choosing a small or medium of something at a fast-food chain, they may be getting more than they expect,? (Young par 5). Basically, this is teaching us that it is okay to eat what is in front of us, even if there is a lot. So, people should go for the smaller portions at other fast food places instead of McDonalds.Even though people believe that McDonalds is fast and convenient, there are so many other alternatives. You know, McDonalds isn?t the only fast food restaurant with a drive through. Many restaurants these days have catered to our needs by placing a drive through in to make it easier to get the healthy foods. On that note, people should try to eat at healthier alternatives like Subway or Wendy?s instead of McDonalds. In a study, researchers found that ?Subway's meal comes out at 265 calories, while the Big Mac meal hits a gluttonous 1230 calories,? (Foster par 1). Those 1,000 calories can make a huge impact in your diet. It is obviously proven to be unhealthy so people should eat at other restaurants because they can be fast and convenient too, McDonalds isn?t the only one, so don?t feel obligated to eat there.Last but not least, the food that they serve at McDonalds is not authentic because of all of the extra additives that they have added just for the taste. I believe that there is definitely a difference between real food and fake food. Real food is savory and in some cases it melts in your mouth, while fake food doesn?t even taste and the texture is similar to plastic. People deserve much better than fake food and that is the kind of stuff that you are consuming when you eat McDonalds. I don?t know about you but a sausage burrito containing 50 different ingredients including milk, egg, wheat, corn syrup, and a range of chemicals and preservative agents doesn?t sound very tempting to me. Not only that but the hash browns are cooked with animal products and the bacon contains wheat and soy (?Fast? par 4). I just don?t think that is right. The food that people eat should have real ingredients like potatoes in hash browns, not all those fake preservatives. You wouldn?t cook a meal at home with all of that extra stuff so why would you eat it in town? Much of the food at McDonalds contains extra additives. Even the crispy golden fries we have all grown to love have chemical spray on them just to make them golden. I think that we deserve much better than that. Just because of the ingredients in the food, I don?t think that we should eat at McDonalds.Citizens that take pleasure in the food at McDonalds shouldn?t eat it any longer because the risk is far too high. It can make you large because of the extra calories and fats that you are consuming. The portions of the food have grown year by year and you may not even know how much food you are actually eating. Also, there are so many other restaurant alternatives that offer a much better selection of food that actually have true ingredients. Last, in most cases, the food there isn?t really true because of all the extra additives and preservatives added just for taste. So, the next time you go to eat at a restaurant and even if a McDonalds is nearby, I would rethink your options.

Social media has evolved to a point that companies need to put some thought into selection of the right social media format rather than picking a medium just because everyone is using it. Take blogs as an example. I've touched upon this before in my blog post ?To Blog or Not to Blog?, where I've discussed that blog is a means to an end but the end has to be clearly defined before picking the format. It's very easy to misuse any given medium, as we've all seen plenty of examples where blogs are (ab)used as just another means of passing on corporate spin.Bottom line is that it's not about the medium, the key is to identify your objective/goal first and pick the format/medium last. Although, I have to admit in the social media crazy age, the objective seems to be an afterthought in many cases.This month, I came across an old(er) format that we're all familiar with and seems to have made a resurgence lately. I am referring to good ol' fashioned forums, that had taken a backseat to their more glitzier cousins, the blogs and rarely ever featured in social media plans.According to entrepreneurs like Vincent (Vinnie) Lauria forums are ready to rock the social media world. I rarely discuss specific products/services on my blog. When Lauria's startup Lefora.com recently announced Tal.ki , an ?embeddable forum? or (forum) software as a service, which can be deployed anywhere on your site, it sure got my attention. Tal.ki is a 2nd Generation forum product, based off of Lefora.com platform which has over 100,000 forums worldwide.Here's the thing, if social is all about community, crowd sourcing, and exchange of information, then forums are the original social media and yet, they rarely get featured in any social media planning or strategy conversations. Forums have traditionally been associated with customer support in the enterprise space or hobbyists/fans on the consumer side with text-based discussion threads. Forums have come a long way from the text-based discussions and now offer ability to embed videos, files into the conversation. However, the newer versions have much more potential and full of social features such as a Twitter, Facebook (likes), etc.Lauria says, Tal.ki forums allow members to sign-in with their social networking profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter. So a member does not need to create a new account in order to participate, instead they use their existing social network profile.So you're probably asking yourself at this point, does this mean I should start a blog or a forum?The answer isn't one or the other because each format has its own purpose and benefits. Blogs are a powerful way for companies to share information and have conversations with stakeholders but they require the conversation to be driven from the company (blogger). There is an expectation that the company/blogger will respond to the user's comments.However, forums require a more hands-off approach with minimal company ?intervention?. If your objective is to foster conversations and nurture a community then forums are the best way to help get discussions rolling between customers. A forum provides a great online place where customers can help each other but there?s a great deal of value in getting insights from the customer exchanges. You can use forums to uncover customer pain points, get product feedback, and also, channel top-of-mind issues to generate blog topics.According to Google search, there are over 100million monthly global searches for ?forum?.The challenge for any company today is that social content is growing exponentially and companies are caught up in this tsunami of social data. So the question for enterprises is around data security and storage. Amazon has addressed this need by allowing that allows startups like LeFora, offering software as a service, to be hosted on Amazon EC2 platform that offers secure storage and access to data walled off within Amazon on a private firewall with a private VPN tunnel to the organization. So with SaaS offerings like Tal.ki, a company doesn't need to install new servers, new software, nor worry about maintaining the security of the system, so that also allows them to scale easily as their community grows.I think forums should be integrated into every social media practitioner and marketer's plan. Forums are a treasure trove of invaluable insights direct from your customers. So the question that begs to be asked and answered is why do companies pay for market research when they could be mining data that's available through their own forums for free?

Nothing drives a person more nuts then a frozen computer. This goes for technicians, administrators, typical end users, and everyone else in between. You?ve been working for hours, when suddenly your computer completely locks up, and you are relegated to either rebooting your entire machine or simply killing all programs presently running. It typically happens for no rhyme or reason, but more often then not, is caused by multiple applications overloading your PC to the point where it can?t take it anymore.While rebooting is usually the most effective solution, it?s typically not the most practical. Fortunately, amongst many of their great products, Resplendence Software has come up with an amazing solution to your ?frozen? problems, called AntiFreeze.AntiFreeze is a self proclaimed ?Emergency Task Manager? that is capable is suspending all applications presently running, and killing them if necessary. This is how it works. While AntiFreeze is sitting in your system tray, eating up very little resources, it?s awaiting the hotkey combination of ?ALT+CTRL+WIN+HOME?. Once this sequence of keys is pressed, the task manager like AntiFreeze is launched and a majority of running applications go into a ?suspended? mode. Where as it doesn?t kill any particular app, but it places it into an anti virus like quarantine and allows you view any programs that may be the culprit. As opposed to the Windows Task Manager which doesn?t suspend applications, it forces you to kill applications one by one. The suspension feature of AntiFreeze is what makes it unique. It essentially ?kills? any item that may be the problem child, without actually killing it at all. In the screenshot below, you can see that you also have the option of resuming programs, which you know aren?t causing the issue.The only time that such a great application as AntiFreeze won?t come in handy, is when your mouse itself has become unresponsive and your system is quite literally LOCKED UP. This typically points to a hardware issue, whether it be a driver or overheating. Other then that, AntiFreeze is a perfect solution for software based lockups, which can be quite frequent on Windows based machines. This can be especially handy on a Windows based server, a server where a reboot cannot be accomplished during production hours. AntiFreeze is compatible with 32 and 64 bit XP, Vista and Server 2003 operating systems.For the amount of resources that it eats up, and its completely simple ease of use, you can?t go wrong with AntiFreeze. It does everything as advertised. I have yet to discover any bugs or problems thus far, but please let us know of any you already know or discover.