Cool Stuff « Feral Jundi

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Cool Stuff: GPal, Inc.

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Finance,Weapons,Weapons Stuff — Tags: ammunition, Cool Stuff, Finance, g pal, gun pal, guns, paypal, Weapons Stuff — Matt @ 1:03 AM

I like it! GPal or Gun Pal is an alternative online payment system that you can use to purchase anything ‘legal’. So if you want to buy a firearm from someone using GPal, you can do that and your account will not be frozen. With the other online payment groups, they are not at all gun or ammo friendly, so GPal is definitely a gun friendly alternative. (for US folks)

The other important tidbit to mention here, is that you don’t have to use it for firearms or ammunition. You can use it just like you use Paypal, to buy all types of things or services ‘that are legal’. As you can see with the name change, they had to make it less specific of a title to symbolize it’s utility. Customers might get the impression that it is purely for gun or ammo purchases, and that is not the case.

Good move and I hope it takes off. I would be curious if any of the readers have signed up for GPal and what their thoughts were about the service? –Matt

Facebook for GPal here.

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HEALDSBURG, CA – May 13, 2010 (For Immediate Release)

GUNPAL, the leader in transaction-neutral online payment processing, is now operating as GPal, Inc. at the website https://www.gpal.net/

In order to appeal to a broader market and offer superior products and services, we are reorganizing under GPal, Inc. Our users will find familiar functionality and feel, secured by our Verisign EV SSL Certificate, the strongest in the world.

Only the name is evolving to better serve our user base and provide a growth path for expansion. All buttons, links and banners will continue to work but will be redirected to gpal.net. Thank you for your support thus far in providing a transaction-neutral payment service.

Sincerely, Ben Cannon

Chairman/CEO

GPal, Inc.

About GPal:

GPal is an online payments and money transfer service that allows you to send money to anyone with an email address in a transaction-neutral environment. GPal has revolutionized the transfer of money in heavily regulated industries and deals with fraud in a unique and very successful way. Accounts at GPal are FDIC insured. The company is expected to expand its offerings internationally in the near future. For more information please visit https://www.gpal.net/ or contact pr@gpal.net

*****

HEALDSBURG, CA – October 29, 2009 (For Immediate Release)

“GUNPAL, Inc. is a transaction-neutral online payments platform with a philanthropic spirit,” announces Founder/CEO Ben Cannon. “It is also the first serious competitor for PayPal Inc.”

A percentage of each transaction is donated to a selected charity at no additional cost to the user. The initial list of organizations includes the American Red Cross, American Cancer Society, and the Supercomputing Disease Research Center. Users can also suggest charities for consideration.

An avid supporter of constitutional rights, Cannon created a discrimination-free online payments application, starting with the recognition of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Prohibited by PayPal’s “Acceptable Use Policy”, the $3 billion firearms and accessories industry has adopted GUNPAL as the payments platform of choice. “Firearms can only be sold by licensed dealers. GUNPAL is more convenient than other forms of payment as its comprehensive transaction tracking system is secure and reliable for our audits,” says Mitchel Chapman of WBtactical.com, a licensed firearms dealer.

An estimated one hundred million firearm owners nationwide now have a platform with which they can trade ammunition, scopes, and other accessories securely and hassle-free. As a socially responsible company, GUNPAL directs its firearm buyers to government documentation on current firearm laws and regulations and will provide licensed dealer listings by buyers’ zip codes in a future release. Having dominated the firearms niche, GUNPAL is already targeting other under-served markets with several new projects under way.

With every line of code written in-house, most of the engineering effort has been dedicated to fraud prevention. GUNPAL’s unique anti-fraud and anti-phishing systems take a finer-toothed comb through customer data for maximum privacy and security. Reduced fraud cuts operating costs resulting in lower fees for most common transactions as compared to PAYPAL. Cannon’s first company, GeoVario, LLC, was the natural choice for web-hosting services.

Founded in 2004, GUNPAL is a transaction-neutral online payment system that allows easy transfer of funds to anyone with an email address. Privately funded, GUNPAL has revolutionized the transfer of money with its pro-constitutional voice, unique anti-fraud approach, and philanthropic spirit. The company is expected to expand its services internationally in the near future.

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Thursday, July 8, 2010

Cool Stuff: Jake Allen Update–2010 Warrior Pride Ride

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Military News,Video — Tags: contribuventure, Cool Stuff, Jake Allen, warrior pride ride — Matt @ 6:28 PM

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Saturday, June 26, 2010

Kaizen: Sergey Brin’s Search For A Parkinson’s Cure, By Thomas Goetz

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Kaizen,Medical — Tags: Kaizen, Medical, military, Parkinsons disease, problem solving, research, sergey brin, thomas goetz, Wired — Matt @ 1:05 PM

Bravo to Mr. Goetz for putting together such an interesting and informative article. It is one of the main reasons why I keep coming back to the stuff that Wired produces every month in hard copy and online. They bring to the front, the latest technological achievements of our time. So why does this belong on FJ?

This article is not just about this man’s desperate search for a cure for Parkinsons. This article to me is about problem solving using today’s technologies and ideas to make research more efficient, or a ‘continuous improvement’ over the traditional means of medical research. This is about creating learning organizations that far outpace older models of learning. This is some radical stuff, and the lessons can be applied to many of today’s problems in my view. We can apply these lessons to business, to energy problems, to warfare, etc.

And many of today’s problems have time stamps on them too. Any means of compressing the problem solving mechanisms we apply to these problems, the better. I also hope that Sergey does find the cure for his disease, or that his work leads to someone else finding a cure. Because I definitely think his work is compressing the time required to get to that point and that is some serious Kaizen in my book.-Matt

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Wired

Can a model fueled by data sets and computational power compete with the gold standard of research? Maybe: Here are two timelines—one from an esteemed traditional research project run by the NIH, the other from the 23andMe Parkinson’s Genetics Initiative. They reached almost the same conclusion about a possible association between Gaucher’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, but the 23andMe project took a fraction of the time.—Rachel Swaby

Traditional Model

1. Hypothesis: An early study suggests that patients with Gaucher’s disease (caused by a mutation to the GBA gene) might be at increased risk of Parkinson’s.

2. Studies: Researchers conduct further studies, with varying statistical significance.

3. Data aggregation: Sixteen centers pool information on more than 5,500 Parkinson’s patients.

4. Analysis: A statistician crunches the numbers.

5. Writing: A paper is drafted and approved by 64 authors.

6. Submission: The paper is submitted to The New England Journal of Medicine. Peer review ensues.

7. Acceptance: NEJM accepts the paper.

8. Publication: The paper notes that people with Parkinson’s are 5.4 times more likely to carry the GBA mutation.

Total time elapsed: 6 years

Parkinson’s Genetics initiative

1. Tool Construction: Survey designers build the questionnaire that patients will use to report symptoms.

2. Recruitment: The community is announced, with a goal of recruiting 10,000 subjects with Parkinson’s.

3. Data aggregation: Community members get their DNA analyzed. They also fill out surveys.

4. Analysis: Reacting to the NEJM paper, 23andMe researchers run a database query based on 3,200 subjects. The results are returned in 20 minutes.

5. Presentation: The results are reported at a Royal Society of Medicine meeting in London: People with GBA are 5 times more likely to have Parkinson’s, which is squarely in line with the NEJM paper. The finding will possibly be published at a later date.

Total time elapsed: 8 months

*****

Sergey Brin’s Search for a Parkinson’s Cure

By Thomas Goetz

June 22, 2010

Buried deep within each cell in Sergey Brin’s body—in a gene called LRRK2, which sits on the 12th chromosome—is a genetic mutation that has been associated with higher rates of Parkinson’s.Illustration: Rafa Jenn

Several evenings a week, after a day’s work at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, Sergey Brin drives up the road to a local pool. There, he changes into swim trunks, steps out on a 3-meter springboard, looks at the water below, and dives.

Brin is competent at all four types of springboard diving—forward, back, reverse, and inward. Recently, he’s been working on his twists, which have been something of a struggle. But overall, he’s not bad; in 2006 he competed in the master’s division world championships. (He’s quick to point out he placed sixth out of six in his event.)

The diving is the sort of challenge that Brin, who has also dabbled in yoga, gymnastics, and acrobatics, is drawn to: equal parts physical and mental exertion. “The dive itself is brief but intense,” he says. “You push off really hard and then have to twist right away. It does get your heart rate going.”

(more…)

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