2008-09-30

Don't fall for the fear factor ...

Poynter Online - Forums:

The Administration has scared the markets and some key legislative leaders, but it has not laid out a coherent, specific and compelling need for this enormous proposal, which is the equivalent of a one-time 55 percent income tax surcharge. (Instead the money will be borrowed, so ask from whom and how this much can be raised so quickly if the credit markets are nearly seized up with fear.)

Ask this question -- are the credit markets really about to seize up?

If they are then lots of business owners should be eager to tell how their bank is calling their 90-day revolving loans, rejecting new loans and demanding more cash on deposit. I called businessmen I know yesterday and not one of them reported such problems. Indeed, Citibank offered yesterday to lend me tens of thousands of dollars on my signature at 2.99 percent, well below the nearly 5 percent inflation rate. That offer came after I said no last week to a 4.99 percent loan.

If the problem is toxic mortgages then how come they are still being offered all over the Internet? On the main page AOL generates for me there is an ad for a 1.9% loan (which means you pay that interest rate and the rest of the interest is added to your balance due.) Why oh why or why would taxpayers be bailing out banks that are continuing to sell these toxic loans?


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Financial Bailout Failed to Pass the House

The $700B financial bailout failed to pass the House.

The Dow Jones went down 7%. The S&P went down 8%.

In 1987, the Down Jones went down 20%, and we survived.

If the market assessment on the importance of the bailout is only 7%, then the whole thing has been another "weapons of mass destruction" error in intelligence.

Which isn't too surprising, since it was all just one guy's opinion.

This sums it up:


This financial calamity is not like other disasters we've faced. The drip, drip of the global financial catastrophe is a sort of invisible disaster. Last week my bank failed. Failed. In an instant, Washington Mutual went from "Whoo hoo" to "uh-oh." And what changed for me? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
[Update:]
My wife got a flyer in the mail from WaMu suggesting we refinance. She called them yesterday [2008/09/30 - after the bank failed and was sold of to JP Morgan Chase] and it turns out we have a better interest rate than they are currently offering. But the lady on the phone was pushing us to get a second mortgage!

There is no credit shortage.

[Update:]
Okay, maybe there is:

“The money markets have completely broken down, with no trading taking place at all,” said Christoph Rieger, a fixed-income strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Frankfurt. “There is no market any more. Central banks are the only providers of cash to the market; no one else is lending.”

But why would it last? People in the business of loaning money will still loan money - they'll just be more selective, as they have been for the last six months or so.

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2008-09-28

Fantasmic!

[Updated to point to higher-res YouTube version.]

I made a Disney fan video back in 1992/1993. It's a home video of Disneyland's Fantasmic.

I shot it over a period of a year and a half. Editing it was hard - it was put together using home consumer VHS decks where you had to do a lot of tricky timing to get any kind of an edit at all. Basically you would roll one deck, let it get to 1 1/2 seconds before you wanted to edit, roll the second deck, and then hit the edit button and hope it was sync'd. The original source material was S-VHS but I edited it down to VHS. I finally have a gadget - the Plexor ConvertX - which does a good job of encoding video. Unfortunately I don't have a great VHS deck anymore (time marches on), so the encoding to DivX isn't perfect. There is a little bit of video sync weirdness. I'll try to fix that some day, maybe by borrowing a deck from someone.

I was lucky to get some video above the crowd from the Pirates Gallery Balcony, which I used as the master. Then I went back and got some great video from right up front. Then I went back a few more times and ran around filling in shots I was missing. I think it's the equivalent of a six camera shoot.

Of course, it was all hand-held, so it's not totally stable, but it's a lot more stable than most of the Disney fan video I've seen!

Watch it on YouTube:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 (Finale - very cool)

I had a lot of fun editing it - although now 14 years later I wonder how I ever had the time. And of course it would be so much easier now to edit digitally on a PC.

One idea I had, after cutting all that together, was to work with Disney on a "Encyclopedia Fantasmica", which would be an interactive DVD that would let you click on any item in the show and then it would tell you about it - either where it came from, or the tech that was used to create it in the show, or whatever. I work in the games business but and I've even worked with Disney on some things but I never got around to 'pitching' my idea.

It would be cool if someone made it.

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

2008-09-27

The Wisdom of Sarah Palin

Fareed Zakaria: Palin Is Ready? Please. | Newsweek Voices - Fareed Zakaria | Newsweek.com:

Sarah Palin:
It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state.
Sarah Palin:
That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
Fareed Zakaria, author of the linked article, calls her comments "gibberish" and it's hard to disagree with his diagnosis. Have things really come to this? Is our great country in such a state of denial that anyone is willing to even entertain the thought that this woman will likely become president when McCain (most probably) dies in office?

Really? Seriously?

Fareed sums it up thusly:

This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.
It's no wonder the YouTube remix crowd has gone nuts with things like this:



*Heavy Sigh*
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2008-09-26

Wario Land Genius Ad

A Brilliant Ad for Wario Land.

Pure genius. Notice the address is really at YouTube.

Brilliant!

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2008-09-25

Retirement

I saw this ad at the New York Times online:



And I couldn't help think the punch line should be:

"RUN FOR PRESIDENT!"
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2008-09-24

Wisdom

A number of nuggets of wisdom have come my way recently:
From my colleague Kevin:  "He who procrasinates only has to implement the last design."  He learned that as a student at Digipen.
From my daughter, when told that an optimist sees the glass as half full, and a pessimist sees the glass as half empty:  "It depends - if I'm filling it up it is half full, and if I'm emptying it, then it is half empty."
From my son:  "How come light doesn't accelerate?  Everything else does."
From me, after hearing about someone who was complaining a lot: "When your head is up your ass, everything looks like shit."
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Dear American

This is making the rounds (thanks Kevin):

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

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2008-09-23

Avoiding the Palin Hack

Why the Palin Hack Could Happen Again and Again - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

The article summarizes how easy it was to hack into Governor Palin's Yahoo account.

The fix is easy (where possible). The fix is to give the wrong answer to the security question. What you do is take the name of some random city (or better yet, some random text) that you can remember and use that to answer the security question. You don't have to answer with the correct answer!

The problem with Yahoo is, now that you know this hint, you can't change your security question. But you might try this with your bank.

(I think I heard this idea on the Security Now podcast.)
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2008-09-15

TSA employee climbs up fuselage of plane

.:: Aero-News Network: The Aviation and Aerospace World's Daily/Real-Time News and Information Service ::.:

"They're the government... and remember, they're here to help. A bumbling inspector with the Transportation Safety Administration apparently has some explaining to do, after nine American Eagle regional jets were grounded at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Tuesday.

Citing sources within the aviation industry, ABC News reports an overzealous TSA employee attempted to gain access to the parked aircraft by climbing up the fuselage... reportedly using the Total Air Temperature (TAT) probes mounted to the planes' noses as handholds.

'The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers,' one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. 'They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder.'"
My question - why was this guy trying to climb into the plane? The TSA says it was to check if the doors were locked!

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5624381&page=1

TSA, however, strongly defended its inspector's actions, noting in a statement that he was able to gain interior access to seven of the nine aircraft he inspected, which was an "apparent violation of the airline's security program." TSA said it encourages its inspectors to look for such vulnerabilities and after reviewing the inspection results, the agency "could take action against the airline, up to and including levying civil penalties."
I suspect he could throw a rope ladder up over the plane and get access too.

Back to the original article:

In this case, ANN strongly recommends and encourages the criminal prosecution of this so-called inspector and his immediate supervisors... it is a matter of time before one of these morons does something stupid and gets someone killed... and with the way these incidents are occurring, we believe it is a virtual certainty that a TSA "Inpector" will hurt or kill someone in such a manner. No kidding.
What does TSA stand for? Terrorists Support Administration?
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Diebold finally admits votes dropped due to programming error

E-voting outfit confesses vote-dropping software bug • The Register:

"The logic error is present on Premier's touch screen and optical scan equipment and occurs when votes are being transferred from memory cards to a central database, according to The Washington Post. In some cases, stored votes waiting to be tallied are erased before they can be counted by other stored votes. The mistake occurs in milliseconds. The problem is most likely to plague larger counties that upload a large number of cards."
Great! Democracy done in by a race condition. Just great.
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2008-09-14

Now that's a tree ...



My wife took that picture on a trip to Victoria. I like it!
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2008-09-13

Fall TV schedule for start of 2008-2009 season

Fall TV schedule for start of 2008-2009 season | TVGuide.com

The link goes to a big chart that will be useful for people that still watch TV.

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The Day the Music Died



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Neoconservatives plan Project Sarah Palin to shape future American foreign policy - Telegraph

Neoconservatives plan Project Sarah Palin to shape future American foreign policy - Telegraph:

"Comments by the governor of Alaska in her first television interview, in which she said Nato may have to go to war with Russia and took a tough line on Iran's nuclear programme, were the result of two weeks of briefings by neoconservatives."
"Project Sarah" is the scariest thing I've read since ... any book I've read about George Bush's presidency.

The neocons want to kill us all.
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2008-09-12

Schneier on Security: How Well "See Something, Say Something" Actually Works

Schneier on Security: How Well "See Something, Say Something" Actually Works: "And as long as we're on the topic, read about the couple branded as terrorists in the UK for taking photographs in a mall. And this about a rail fan being branded a terrorist for trying to film a train."

© 2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

2008-09-11

Good Interview with Mark Russinovich

Good Interview with Mark Russinovich.

This guy (Mark) spends 100% of his time coding.

That reminds me of a friend of mine, Rick Lambright, who has (or had) a license plate cover that said, "So many programs, so little time."

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Has the large hadron collider destroyed the world yet

http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com has been making the rounds.

What's really funny is to open up the page source and read the comment at the bottom.

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UC Irvine Department of Information and Computer Science doing Warcraft Research!

Wow.  What a great time to be a grad student!
(Actually it was fun being a grad student when I was doing it back in the 1980's.)
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Indirection

Cuil’s VP Product Bails Out A Month After Launch:

"Vince Sollitto, Cuil VP Communications, confirms Monier’s departure and says he will remain on board as a consultant, continuing to contribute and advise the company. “I’m told by Louis that he believes strongly in the goals and potential of the company, especially its technology,” Sollitto said, adding “We think this will be the best role for the company and for him going forward.” Sollitto says there were philosophical differences in approach and style between Monier and the other management, and that the new consulting role provides the best way for Louis to contribute to the company going forward."
An extra level of indirection solves a lot of computer science problems. I think it can also solve a lot of organizational problems!
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2008-09-07

The Onion: 6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling

6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling | The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

"Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed. According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms."

This Onion article captures one of the main reasons for homeschooling.

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2008-09-04

Hulu doesn't suck

Hulu vs. Amazon: Amazon Never Stood A Chance

Apparently Hulu doesn't suck after all.

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VP Hunt in Four Minutes

See more funny videos at Funny or Die


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2008-09-03

iTunes, meet the Beatles

There has been a lot of web speculation about the big announcement from Apple.

But all of that stuff is not ground breaking, and yet Apple PR reps are telling everyone that something big will be announced.

What would be Jobsy-cool enough for a ton of press? How about introducing music rentals, the Genius recommendations, and the new iPods with music from The Beatles?

Yes, iTunes, meet the Beatles.

[Update 2008 09 09 - No Beatles.  In fact, nothing much exciting at all!  Why the overhype?]

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Day for Night


Here's a Day-for-Night shot I took of some trash cans.

A lot of Generation Kill was shot Day-for-Night, and thank goodness, because I could see what was going on.

It's pretty obvious that this is a shot taken in the daytime - the only way this could be a night shot is if the moon was incredibly bright. But none-the-less it communicates "night" while still giving enough detail to see what's going on.

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Sony, Pioneer Announce Pricey New Blu-ray Players - Yahoo! News

Sony, Pioneer Announce Pricey New Blu-ray Players - Yahoo! News

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2008-09-02

Celebrate 13 Years of Command & Conquer With Free Gaming - Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily

Celebrate 13 Years of Command & Conquer With Free Gaming - Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily:

"On Sunday, August 31 at 12:00 AM PT, gamers will be able to download a free version of the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert game from redalert3.com. EA is also offering C&C: Red Alert 2 for free to those who pre-order C&C: Red Alert 3 before October 27."
Downloading now. Except, maybe I already own this?

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Comcast 250 Gigabytes per Month Limit

Comcast to Cap Data Transfers at 250 GB in Oct. - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1.

"This is the same system we have in place today," Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. "The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted."

The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is "an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis."
Luckily we're topping out at about 100 gigabytes a month. Most of it is YouTube and "Let's Play" videos. Once Netflix starts streaming over Xbox 360 we might see another bump.

Amusingly, Comcast is not providing any tools so customers can tell how much bandwidth they are using! Luckily for me, I have DD-WRT (now installed in three routers), which is on the job.

One funny thing that Comcast loves to emphasize in the FAQ that this policy will affect less than 1% of their customers. Well, 1% of millions is 10s of thousands, which is still a lot of people!

But I'm cool with it. If we become serious resource hogs we can always buy another pipe from someone else, like Verizon.

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