random neuron misfires

I run a lot of domains for clients, Open Source projects and my own pet projects… and keeping them all registered, updated and proper zone files for forward and reverse DNS can be complicated. I run my own DNS, and would never trust a third-party to do it again. I used to use a third-party to manage my DNS, but their web-based system was clunky and wasn’t as fast as I needed it to be.

But checking the quality of your DNS records is another matter entirely. For example, there’s a huge difference between writing HTML, and writing valid HTML. This is why HTML validation exists.

Likewise, there is also a need for “DNS validation”. Enter DNS health and checking tools.

Previously, I used a free service called “DNS Report” from DNS Stuff, and it worked great… but decided to go non-free, and requires subscription to get to the same report data that they used to provide gratis. Seems that whenever someone feels they can charge for something, they do.

I’ve been seeking out another alternative, something free and full-featured. There are quite a few, and some are shady… but here’s the list I’ve found, along with my personal review of their “quality”:

CheckDNS

http://www.checkdns.net/

This is a no-frills DNS checking service. It basically gives you a quick rundown of your domain through the root servers, your local nameservers, the version correlation (making sure the serial in your zone file matches), your webserver and your mail server.

Pros: It just works, plain-jane simple. I wish it had more detail like the ability to check reverse DNS, traceroute, check route status, rate the speed to resolve DNS queries and so on.

Cons: No suggestions for resolving anything marked as an issue or conflict. If you know DNS inside and out, the errors are obvious, but if you don’t… it can be cryptic. For example, my mailserver is greylisting all incoming connections, so it will return a 421 response instead of the expected 250 response. Their incoming probe looks like the following to my DNS server:

Nov 30 15:53:15 neptune sm-mta[11904]: mAUKrEPP011904: Milter: from=, reject=421 4.3.2 graylisted - please try again later

intoDNS

http://www.intodns.com/

Pros: Simple and fast. The results it returns are very similar and almost identical to the ones provided by DNSReport. Here is one example against one of my most heavily-hit domains; plkr.org.

Cons: No real details on how to fix the issues it reports. It may report that your SOA refresh is not correct, but lacks any recommendations on how to fix it (i.e. increase/decrease the timeout, etc.)

ZoneCheck

http://www.zonecheck.fr/

Pros: Fast, clean and tests a lot of various bits about your DNS: SOA, coherence, serial, illegal characters, ip-to-ns matching and so on. Very thorough.

Cons: While it is powerful, the resulting report isn’t exactly the most user-friendly, and the initial interface is… well, clunky as well.

Here’s a sample of the output from one of my domains:

     Testing: misused '@' characters in SOA contact name (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: illegal characters in SOA contact name (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: serial number of the form YYYYMMDDnn (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA 'expire' between 1W and 6W (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA 'minimum' between 3M and 1W (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA 'refresh' between 1H and 2D (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA 'retry' between 15M and 1D (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA 'retry' lower than 'refresh' (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA 'expire' at least 7 times 'refresh' (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA master is not an alias (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: behaviour against AAAA query (IP=67.126.192.9)
     Testing: coherence between SOA and ANY records (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: SOA record present (IP=67.126.192.9)
     Testing: SOA authoritative answer (IP=67.126.192.9)
     Testing: coherence of serial number with primary nameserver (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: coherence of administrative contact with primary nameserver (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: coherence of master with primary nameserver (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: coherence of SOA with primary nameserver (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: NS record present (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: NS authoritative answer (IP=72.36.135.42)
     Testing: given primary nameserver is primary (IP=67.126.192.9)

And the results from that:

Test results
  ---- warning ----
   w: Reverse for the nameserver IP address doesn't match
     * ns.plkr.org./72.36.135.42
     * ns2.plkr.org./67.126.192.9

   w: [TEST delegated domain is not an open relay]: Mail error (Unexpected closing of connection)
     * generic

   w: [TEST can deliver email to 'postmaster']: Mail error (Unexpected closing of connection)
     * generic

   w: [TEST domain of the hostmaster email is not an open relay]: Mail error (Unexpected closing of connection)
     * generic

  ---- fatal ----

   f: [TEST can deliver email to hostmaster]: Mail error (Unexpected closing of connection)
     * generic

Final status

   FAILURE (and 5 warning(s))

Network Tools

http://network-tools.com/

Pros: You get what you get. Just information, in a raw, unstructured way.

Cons: Clunky, inconsistent GUI, information returned is returned haphazardly, in a very unstructured and unintuitive way.

iptools

http://www.iptools.com/

Pros: Lots of tools to check the health of your domain, dns, dns records, IP, routing and so on.

Cons: Bad colors and an unstructured user experience.

The UI could use a bit of work and the blue and white is a bit painful on the eyes, but you get what you get. They’re basically using OSS and other tools under the hood to make this work (dig, in at least one case). This could leave them subject to some interesting exploits.

DNS Tools from Domain Tools

http://dns-tools.domaintools.com/

Pros: It is what it is, another plain-jane DNS query service. It allows you to ping, traceroute and report on the zone records for the domain you enter.

Cons: Too basic, not very useful above and beyond what I can do on my own from my own server.

This one, like some of the others, just wraps common OSS tools to query DNS records, and presents them in an unstructured, “raw” format. No attempts to make any suggestions or recommendations to any issues that are reported.

Free DNS Report

http://www.dnscolos.com/dnsreport.php

This looks suspiciously-similar to DNS Report’s older UI. Some have suggested that this is a scam site, harvesting domains for parking or hijacking by poisoning the DNS of misconfigured domains. Mine domains are fine and secured, so I don’t mind testing them through this.

Pros: They actually do provide some basic recommendations to help resolve issues that are reported.

Cons: Not enough detail or depth on the DNS, zone, MX or domain itself. It is about 1/4 of what dnsreport was.

You Get Signal

http://www.yougetsignal.com/

Pros: Positive marks for the most-unique and humorous domain name. You can do ping, visual traceroute, reverse domain lookups, port-forwarding tester and so on. Not as full-featured as some of the others, but the information provided is somewhat structured in nature.

Cons: They made some good attempts at structure and visual appeal. They could use a bit more polish and more tools to round out the “suite” they provide, but it is what it is. The interface does “overlap” in places, tucking the output underneath other bits of the HTML and the maps, but you can select the text in your browser and paste it elsewhere to read it if you want.

Conclusions

While a lot of the tools make attempts to provide what you need to make sure your domains, MX, IP, routing and so on is correct, none of them really match what dnsreport used to provide for free. If I had to choose one out of the list above, I would choose intoDNS for First Place and CheckDNS for a close Second Place.

Ultimately, I may just write my own to do this, and make it spiffy. That’s the worst part about being in “First Place” (as dnsreport was): It’s easy to see where you missed the market, and open up a field for competition to dive in and take it from you.

I did something similar for my SEO keyword analysis tool. I was so frustrated with the inferior, broken alternatives out there… that I just wrote my own. Free, gratis, go play and have fun. It works for me and that’s why I wrote it.

First, I know you’re going to ask why you’d want to go from a high-quality VBR format like Ogg Vorbis to the paltry, low-quality mp3 format… and to that I have one word: Apple.

Apple saw fit in their infinite wisdom to NOT support the freely-available and license/patent free Ogg Vorbis audio format in their iPod and iPhone devices. Instead, they support the proprietary, licensed, restrictive mp3 formats instead.

The near-sightedness of commercial companies never ceases to amaze me.

To solve that, you can convert your oggs to mp3 (obviously, keeping the original .ogg files for your personal library), using the following one-liner (separated into multiple lines for ease of explanation):

for i in *.ogg; do 
[[ ! -a "${i%ogg}mp3" ]] && 
oggdec "$i" -o - | lame --preset standard - "${i%ogg}mp3" ; 
done

Now you can drag those mp3 files onto iTunes and sync them to your iPod or iPhone device. I much prefer SongBird on Windows and amaroK on Linux over iTunes, but… some may not have that option.

Easter Eggs in OpenOffice.org

Have you ever wanted to play Space Invaders while working on your spreadsheet? Well now you can… with OpenOffice.org Calc! Simply put the following function in any Calc cell to play your own game:

=GAME("StarWars")

Voila! Now waste more time inside your office suite, just like the 3D virtual fly-over built into Microsoft Excel.

If you’re like me, you use VMware Workstation heavily. I use it for testing, development, cloning and all manner of other things. One thing that has nagged me since upgrading to the 6.x series of Workstation is that native USB Palm synchronization stopped working.

I can sync over Bluetooth to Windows XP running inside the VM, but I can’t sync natively using the USB cable itself. Windows sees the device as a “Palm Handheld”, VMware connects it, all looks good… but it never actually wakes up the Palm HotSync applet in the System Tray.

Apparently VMware added “port reset forwarding” to the host for Workstation 6.5 but Palm devices (most, if not all) don’t work with this change. To offset that, they’ve added a way to control this, including a new way to control the “skipsetconfig” parameters on a per-device basis.

First, you’ll need to find the vendor id (vid) and product id (pid) of the Palm device you’re trying to connect to. You can usually snarf this out of the vmware.log for that VM session. Mine reported something like this:

Nov 23 13:56:52.371: vmx| USB: Found device [name:Palm\ Handheld vid:0830 pid:0061 path:5/1 speed:full family:vendor]

This means the Treo 680 was: vid:0830 pid:0061

You’ll also note that these are identical to the vendor_id and product_id that we use in pilot-link and other projects on the Linux side.

Then, you add a usb.quirks.deviceX line with the vid:pid pair, followed by the quirk. The two known “quirks” that help USB Palm devices are skip-setconfig and skip-reset. Here is the quirk entry to add to your VM’s vmx config file for the above example:

usb.quirks.device0 = "0x0830:0x0061 skip-setconfig, skip-reset"

Note that you need to use a 0x to denote that the number is hex, which is different from the vid:(hex number) used in log line and autoconnect lines. If you don’t put a 0x, it assumes a decimal number.

From the original thread in the VMware forums:

“This also acts differently than the usb.generic.skipsetconfig setting in that the skip-setconfig is only activated for a specifc device using a quirk versus having it turned on for all devices with the global usb.generic.skipsetconfig. Most devices can tolerate receiving multiple setconfigs and most devices don’t use anything but the first config. There are some devices that may need to set a second or third config, so using a skip-setconfig quirk for only those devices that need it and not using the global usb.generic.skipsetconfig is preferred.”

After setting this, uninstalling Palm Desktop, shutting down VMware entirely, rebooting and reinstalling Palm Desktop + HotSync, everything started working again.

I’ve always been a fan of female vocalists, from Lisa Loeb, Deanna from Accidental Groove (met her back at “Billy Wilson’s” when she was still doing gigs in local bars), Loreena McKennitt, Kerry Lauder (who seems to have vanished from the planet, other than her albums on Amazon), Seryn Potter from the band “Seryn” (where my daughter got her name) now at Flirt Brooklyn and others… If they’ve got a Celtic accent, they’ll turn my head even more. I’ve met some of these beautiful artists in person and have created some great friendships as a result…

But recently I’ve been turned onto a new, up-and-coming singer/artist… Marié Digby. Her voice, her lyrics and the depth and power just seems to come through in so many ways. I also like that she’s constantly trying to find new ways to express herself, through the acoustics of her own bathroom to a wooden schoolhouse room during a video shoot.

Here are some samples so you can judge for yourself:

g-speak by Oblong Industries is a new way of data input and manipulation using a spatial context. The g-speak operating system is “gestural I/O, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels,” to deliver what the creators call “the first major step in computer interface since 1984.” This may sound confusing, so give the video a watch and see for yourself.

Just watching the video gave me dozens of ideas where this could be used, from real-time video surveillance and tracking to traffic monitoring to gps and mapping applications to collaborative design and art and desktop publishing.

The possibilities for this are endless…

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

It seems that the financial problem plaguing many in the US is further along than we are being publicly told. I just received an email that included:

“You recently may have received a rebate check from BJ’s Wholesale Club. Please do not deposit or cash this check if you have not done so already.

We apologize for the inconvenience of this unusual request. Our rebate processor, Continental Promotion Group, Inc. (CPG), informed us that they do not have sufficient funds to cover the checks they have issued under BJ’s name.”

Is this a precursor of things to come?

I dread the Christmas retail season… Many retailers rely on the busy holiday shopping season to float their profits through to the new year and into 1Q09. With people losing their jobs at an ever-increasing rate and the price of gas and fuel oil on everyone’s mind, there probably won’t be a lot of free money floating around to spend at these retailers. Less money spent means less money earned. Many retailers may just close up shop forever after the new year begins.

So it begins…

My choice for a candidate isn’t in the top two running for the Presidential election this year but I stumbled across this on YouTube, and was simply floored! These are real people at a pro-Palin rally speaking about the “competition” she faces from Presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The quotes, if you didn’t catch them… were nothing short of shocking and ignorant:

“I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?”

Perhaps it will end up like… the melting pot it was always destined to become?

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

This is a famous line from a poem, “The New Colossus,” by the nineteenth-century American poet Emma Lazarus.

Sound familiar? Do you know where you’ve heard that before? That’s right, it’s emblazoned on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

“When you got a Nigger running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer.”

Really? You actually still use the word “nigger” in everyday speech?

“He seems like a sheep – or a wolf in sheep’s clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin – she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.”

“He’s related to a known terrorist, for one.”

Which terrorist would that be?

“He is friends with a terrorist of this country!”

McCain? Bush? Cheney? Palin? Rove? Who exactly are you referring to here?

“He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama.”

“Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody’s still kinda – a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but… I dunno, it’s just kinda… a little unnerving.”

“Obama and his wife, I’m concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that.”

It would be kind of hard to hide the fact that you’re not white… when you’re black, wouldn’t it?

“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash… because we’re not!”

Are you sure about that? I’m willing to bet a large cross-section of the US population would think you’re “white trash” too, and they’re white.

If you want to take control of an election, the best way to do it is to make sure you have a completely uninformed populace. Make sure your constituents are uneducated and do not have access to lots of sources of media (newspapers, radio, television, Internet).

Here’s something a bit more refreshing:

I’ve been a long-time subscriber to Netflix. They would ship DVDs from my movie queue on their website to my house several times a week for the last several years. I was a voracious movie watcher playing a movie in the background on one monitor while I worked in the foreground on another monitor.

Then they decided to create a feature to stream video from their website directly; no need to send DVDs in the mail anymore. Their “Watch It Now” section isn’t as up-to-date as the physical discs they mail out, but that’s ok… it’s a small sacrifice to make, given the convenience of being able to watch almost any movie I want, instantly.

But I went back to my old trusty ‘ol Windows machine to try to watch something live yesterday and noticed that Netflix upgraded their player requirements. The “Watch It Now” feature only works in IE, using Windows Media Player 11.

My Windows machine is running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002, which is too old for Windows Media Player 11 to install upon. The machine is only 2 years old and running Windows Media Player 10 but that’s too old to meet the new Netflix requirements. If I was running MCE 2005, it would work and I would be able to upgrade from version 10 to version 11 without any issues.

But I found a way to do it, cleanly, with minimal hackery. I’ve tested this on two separate machines and just watched “Meet the Robinsons” to verify that it works. Here’s how:

First, you have to cleanly uninstall Windows Media Player from your machine. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel → “Add or Remove Programs” → “Add/Remove Windows Components”.
   
2. Scroll to the bottom of that list and select “Windows Media Player” from the list and un-check it
   
3. Click Next to begin the removal of Windows Media Player from your system.

At this point, you can (and should) reboot, but I’m pedantic and usually run RegScrubXP and CCleaner to remove any of the leftover “breadcrumbs” from application addition and removal. Then I reboot.

When your machine comes back up, you’ll want to follow these steps:

1. Download and install a copy of 7zip. You’ll need this to unpack the Windows Media Player installer you download in a moment.
2. Download the latest version of Windows Media Player. The important thing is that you do not run the installer. Just save it locally on your hard drive for now. I saved mine to C:\Temp.
3. Navigate to the location where you saved the Windows Media Player installer executable (called “wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe“) and right-click on it.
4. In the right-click menu, go to 7-Zip → Extract to “wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu\” and select that option. You’ll now have a directory with this name and several files inside it, as shown below.
   
5. There are only two files you’re interested in here. First, run the installer named “wmfdist11.exe“.
   
6. When this completes (hopefully with success), run the one called “wmp11.exe“.
   
7. Reboot as indicated after the install, and you should be done!
8. Go back to Netflix, log in and select “Watch It Now”, and choose a movie. You should now be able to watch your streamed movies using WMP 11 on your XP MCE 2002 system.

It worked for me, it should work for you as well.

In my last post, I mentioned that “Tsai” from my local sushi restaurant tried to encourage me to join his “network” to help him push and sell a drink called “Mona Vie”, based on the Açaí (pronounced “assa-yee”) berry extract, which has been claimed to be rich in anti-oxidants and other nutrients.

His strong-arm approach and insults completely ruined a long friendship we’ve had. I will not be patronizing his business for a very long time, if at all. This MLM cost “Tsai” a valued friend and long-time customer to his brick and mortar business.

Now let’s get into the details about Mona Vie… where I will link to specific resources to back up my references and statements below. I did my research on this company and their methods, product and tactics. I would never jump feet-first into a business venture without doing my due diligence, and this one is no different.

(Editor’s note: If you don’t care to read the rest of this blog entry, read the review by Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D. where he gives MonaVie and their dubious claims a strong thumbs-down.)

First and foremost, “Mona Vie” (or “MonaVie” as it is sometimes called) is yet another MLM or “relationship networking” business model. Amway (now known as “Quixtar”) is the most-famous MLM business model to-date, and there have been literally thousands of them over the years. Here are a few you might recognize:

Many of the stock symbols above have been de-listed and are no longer valid.

The whole premise of these MLM “relationship networking” systems is that you need to build up your “network” of people beneath you in order to recoup a percentage of their eventual sales downstream from you. You find two people, who in turn find two more people and so on.

Relationship networking is the art of meeting people and taking advantage of those relationships. Often the benefit of these relationship is to obtain information and leads to further grow your business. Successful relationship networking is all about building those relationships and maintaining long lasting connections with other professionals.

The MonaVie business model (and MLM in general) is somewhat similar to a “Pyramid Scheme” where you’re charged a membership fee which is then used to pool the funds and pay everyone above you. The more people you build “beneath” you (base of the pyramid), the more money the people at the top make from the “membership fees” of those below.

But MonaVie is not a Pyramid Scheme, it is arguably a valid business model, with questionable tactics to reinforce its business practices. With subtle changes by each of the “Distributors” in the system, they could easily morph this into a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

MonaVie was created by “Dallin Larsen” who claims to have a 17-year history of direct-sell networking experience. If you look him up in Google, you’ll see several companies he’s created or been involved with that he has augered into the ground (Usana Health Sciences, VU1 Corp being the top two). Now he is the Chairman and CEO of “Monarch Health Sciences”.

Instead of just creating a product with the açaí berry, Dallin and his team of scientists identified 19 fruits that were included in the MonaVie product drink (see image above). Since that time, the product has evolved into the “MonaVie Active Formula Drink”.

Like all typical multi level marketing systems your guess is a correct about it’s selling propositions. You are normally encouraged to become Independent Distributors if you purchase MonaVie’s products. You profit by bringing in more distributors and get a percentage of every sale made by your downline.

You continue to work within the context of a “network marketing” based system where “leveraging upon others” is the common mantra and work ethic. The process centers around bringing in a network of people to consume and/or sell MonaVie juices to others; they sell to their friends, and their friends sell to their friends and so on.

The Cost

The first stinging point is the cost of MonaVie; a hefty $30-$45/bottle for 25oz of their engineered juice, depending on whether you get it at wholesale/distributor prices or retail prices. This means a one month supply is about $180 ($5/day or $2,160/year). They claim that you should be consuming 3oz-4oz of the juice every day (2oz in the morning and 1oz at night). This number is advertised (in their literature) to be the right amount to maintain healthy living and the right concentration of anti-oxidants.

The reality is that this 3oz-4oz number is designed exclusively so they can get you to consume 4 bottles a month of their juice, ensuring a solid profit stream. There is absolutely no science behind the juice concentration (which they intentionally do not publish), and nothing stating that 2oz isn’;t enough and 5oz is too much.

They intentionally made the bottle look like a wine bottle so they could justify the price. If they put the same juice in a plastic “sports” bottle, nobody would pay the price they ask for it. The reality is that it costs MORE than a bottle of wine.

There are plenty of other juices on the market that include açaí in them. V8 even has their V8 V-Fusion Açaí Berry juice which is 32oz and costs 1/3 what the MonaVie juice costs ($0.15/oz vs. $1.60/oz).

MonaVie is missing a huge market of sports enthusiasts IMHO, by making their juice in a glass wine bottle looking container. If they put it into “kid-friendly” or sports-friendly bottle, they might be able to push even more of this snake-oil to their distributors/customers.

The Business Model

According to the actual printed marketing material from MonaVie, the 8 primary ways that you make money are:

1. Direct sales: You are expected to purchase 3-12 cases of the juice at wholesale, and sell at a retail price for about a 15% markup, but given the cost of the bottles, if you have some regular customers you can make a bit of money this way.
2. Bulk order bonus: If you have at least 200 PV (Product Volume), each time someone you’ve sponsored orders a bulk order you get paid. Good deal.
3. First Order Bonus: Qualified Distributors with at least 200 PV earn a one-time bonus for bringing new distributors under you.
4. Star Maker Bonus: for Qualified Distributors with at least 200 PV, each time someone you sponsor makes the rank of “star” you earn $40. Again, money for recruiting, not selling juice.
5. Team Commissions: This next part is written in ALL CAPS in their marketing material:

   “TEAM COMMISSIONS ARE THE FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF THE MONAVIE COMPENSATION PLAN”

   “The team commissions portion of our plan is binary. Binary means that you will be placed in one of two legs (right or left) in your sponsor’s organization. You will then be compensated based on successfully building two legs of your own. Your sponsor (or anyone else in your upline) may also place poeple in your organization. As your group begins to grow, you are entitled to team commissions based on the total volume generated in your lesser leg.”

6. Executive Check Match: If you reach this level, and have earned enough to build something called a “Personal” tree, which is different from the “binary tree”. It takes a LOT of work to get to this level. There is a lot of complicated detail inside the “Executive Check Match” ranking.
7. Leadership Pools: They have reserved 1% of total company GV for the elite group of Monavie Blue Diamonds. You basically split 1% of the gross profits from MonaVie across all executives at this level. Without an earnings disclosure, you never know if you’re really getting the true 1% you’re promised.
8. Multiple Business Centers: This is a point at which you are making lots of money. But like any pyramid scheme, does anyone other than the original company founders make it to this level? Not likely.

Here are 4 other important considerations I found while digging around on the Internet for the details of MonaVie:

1. MonaVie is not purchasing their Açaí berries from Sambazon (purported to be the source of the best berries)
2. The drink is not made up of 100% freeze dried Açaí. They use an undocumented blend of Açaí puree and freeze-dried Açaí
3. Independent distributors can abuse the system and try to recruit endless representatives
4. There are reports of people becoming very sick from the juice which can carry parasites that were present in the original berry material.

Most people get burned by #3 because it really isn’t that easy to recruit people who can work the same system to your liking. Once you exhaust (and burn) your friends and family, you’re stuck with adding strangers to your “weaker leg”. If your downline distributors aren’t as passionate or energetic in recruiting as you are, your own profits will suffer, and there’s nothing you can do to fix that, other than add more people to your downline. It’s an endless and vicious cycle.

Before you jump onto any of these MLM “business models”, make sure you check out MLM Watch to learn more about these techniques and how they’re used and abused.

In other words, avoid doing any sort of business with MonaVie or their Distributors, channel partners, executives and affiliates. Like “Tsai” said (in his own insulting way):

“The system isn’t designed for smart people.”

He’s right, because if you were smart, you’d find all of the obvious loopholes and deceit in the system and avoid throwing your own good money away at supporting it.

Quoting Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D.:

MonaVie is an expensive way to get your antioxidants – it sells for about $40 for a 25.3 ounce bottle. That works out to $4 to $6 per day if you use it as directed. While it is probably safe, I recommend sticking closer to home for your protective phytonutrients. Opt for organically grown blueberries, which are more available, much less expensive, and give you fiber as well as plenty of antioxidant activity. And don’t forget black raspberries and pomegranates, both of which have health benefits for which there is good scientific evidence.”