April, 2009 archive
Twits on Twitter 1
Bloomberg:
“It’s the ability to tap into somebody’s interest at the moment it’s expressed,” said Li, founder of Altimeter Group, a San Mateo, California-based research firm that specializes in social technology.
Todd, in a recent podcast, stated that he had learned the GoDaddy, one of his sponsor, has started providing tech support via Twitter, in addition to using more traditional methods.
Man, when I worked support, I would have loved to limit some of the callers the 144 words.
Greater Wingnuttery II 0
These people are nuts.
Greater Wingnuttery 0
Clinical. They are all clinical.
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Via Brendan. Follow the link and read the rest of Brendan’s post.
Why “Zero Tolerance” Is Stupid, Yet One More Example Dept. (Updated) 3
Honest to Pete:
After handing out the slices, the teacher promptly turned the girl in for bringing a “deadly weapon” to school, her parents said.
This is right up there with strip-searching a girl for possibly having a legal, non-addictive prescription drug.
If you follow the link and read the story, you’ll see that the school has already had second thoughts and is looking for some way out without conceding that the whole damn policy is bull-headed, stupid, and irresponsible.
And why, you might ask but probably didn’t, is the whole damn policy bull-headed, stupid, and irresponsible?
Because it takes no account of intent or behavior. A child who empties out a backpack to use on a campling trip and forgets to remove the camping jack knife when returning to school on Monday is treated with the same severity as the child with a seven-inch switchblade and blood in his or her eye.
But it is easier, I suppose, to make and enforce blanket policies than it is to think.
Guess school is no place for thinking anyway.
Afterthought:
Oh, yeah, and the News-Journal’s headline is an insult to the child and her family. It reminds me or when my brother (he was about five) nearly died from an electrical short in a transformer at a light pole in the front yard. All the volts were going down a guy wire to ground. He was frozen to the wire screaming and my father broke into a dead run and ripped him free.
All the local paper could think of for a headline was “Billy —- Learns about Eletricity.”
Addendum:
No charges. Apparently the school district figured out that she is not a menace to the public peace.
Furrfu.
Stray Thought: Spring Dept. 0
The twosythias are in bloom. If I got two more, they would be forsythias.
FLHL Dispells the Myths 0
In their latest podcast, Free Linux Help Line explodes the anti-Linux old Windows’ wives’ tales.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
The official numbers are in, subject to (no doubt, upward) revision at a later date:
These initial claims totaled 669,000, a level that is up 72% from the same period in the prior year. The four-week average of these initial claims increased 6,500 to stand at 656,750 — also the highest level since October 1982.
The four-week average is considered a better gauge of labor market conditions than the volatile weekly figures because it smoothes out one-time distortions caused by holidays, bad weather or strikes.
One Can Only Hope 0
Why subsidize demonstrated incompetence when we can strive for mediocrity as a standard?
Darrell Delamaide at MarketWatch:
(snip)
In a new article in The Atlantic, (former IMF chief economist Simon–ed.) Johnson compares the plight in the U.S. to that in some emerging market economies that he dealt with first hand while at the IMF — a financial oligarchy pursuing its own selfish agenda has seized control of the government and blocked any effective reform. Unless the administration is willing to break up this financial oligarchy, it will fail in its effort to restore a healthy banking system, says Johnson, now a professor at MIT.
Read Mr. Johnson’s article here. The lead:
Of course, the U.S. is unique. And just as we have the world’s most advanced economy, military, and technology, we also have its most advanced oligarchy.
Afterthought:
The News Pundit explores the world of the zombie banks.
Mark to Market, Three Card Monte Dept. 0
I love this phrasing (emphasis added):
There ain’t no “recouping” about it. There is nothing to recoup.
The banks don’t want to admit that they screwed the pooch a long time ago.
What they want to do is say,
“Hey, you see that rusted out 1973 Chevy Impala over there–you know, the one with the blown engine and the broke rear axle what I wouldn’t of bought in the first place if I hadn’t a been drunk on pay for non-performance?
“Well, from now on, it’s a slightly used 2003 Bentley, and that’s how I’ve going to price it. That way, I must not be as stupid as I look. Take that, suckers.”
There’s No Delusion like Self-Delusion 0
Some Republican is on Marconi’s Magic Box prattling on about how the Republican Party is the party of fiscal discipline.
(I guess except when it isn’t. Like when it’s in the majority and can proceed about its mission of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.)
Republicans lie. Every single solitary last one of them. And the biggest lies they tell are the ones they tell themselves.
Disregard their words, for they are but a tinkling brass or a sounding cymbal.
Look to their deeds.
Oh, Good Grief! Corporate Lawyers Run Amuck Dept. 0
El Reg:
According to the Telegraph, 38-year-old Markus Bomhard’s principal sin was to adapt the figures . . . .
Playmobil said in a statement yesterday: “For private purposes – by collectors and fans – we are very tolerant of this so-called ‘customising’.”
However, the company described Bomhard’s creative adaptations as a “massive manipulation of the figures, for example reshaping their arms with a hairdryer or candle to nail them to a cross”.
I congratulate the pastor on his creativity.
Playmobile needs to get a life. They make toys, for heaven’s sake, not some bleedin’ plastic Mona Lisas.
Somewhere, right now, some three-year old is doing far worse to Playmobile figures.
(See the pastor’s website here while you still can.)
Mark to Market 0
What I’ve been saying:
But if a financial firm holds securities specifically for sale or in a liquid trading book, and funds itself partly or mainly with short-term borrowing, what do investors need to know? Pretty obviously, roughly what the securities would fetch if sold. Supporters of a fairly strict mark-to-market approach say its critics are blaming the messenger for problems of financial firms’ own making.
Now FASB appears to be caving under political pressure, at least to a point. Its proposed rules would give financial companies’ bosses and auditors more discretion to ignore actual market transactions as valuation benchmarks – instead using computer models or other methods to arrive at a value.
The Wall Street Bankers balance sheets have been fantasies for years. Now they shall be fantasies with the sanction of the accountancy profession.
Birds of a feather and all that . . . .
Toxicity 0
A clear explanation of “toxic assets”: what they are, how they work, and how they came to be (hint: illegal drugs are not the only things measured in Gramms; so to are shady deals).
From the website:
In his 1997 book FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street, Partnoy detailed how derivatives — financial instruments whose value is determined by another security — were being used and abused by big financial firms. Partnoy used his experiences as a derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley to give the book an insider’s perspective. In the preface to FIASCO, Partnoy wrote about the growing influence of derivatives:
“Derivatives have become the largest market in the world. The size of the derivatives market, estimated at $55 trillion in 1996, is double the value of all U.S. stocks and more than 10 times the entire U.S. national debt. Meanwhile, derivatives losses continue to multiply.”
Partnoy is a professor at the University of San Diego law school. In addition to FIASCO, he’s the author of Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets.
Partnoy joins Fresh Air to explain derivatives, credit default swaps and how they led to the current financial crisis.
I listened to the podcast on my way back from Virginia Beach yesterday; it is fascinating.
Follow the link to the website to listen to the interview.
Stray Thought 3
The cat is coming between me and my blog.
Conflickted 2
To downadup or not to downadup:
Also known as Downadup or Kido, Conficker turns infected PCs into slaves that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers.
The fears of an attack, however, may have been a windfall for anti-virus software makers, who warned consumers about the worm, industry analysts say.
In my Linux world, we do not have to worry about this stuff.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
The Republicanist hangover worsens:
U.S. private sector job losses accelerated in March to 742,000, more than economists’ expectations, according to a report by ADP Employer Services on Wednesday. February’s number was revised up to 706,000 job losses from a previously reported 697,000.