Paradoxical Thoughts

Austin Lounge Lizards - Too Big to Fail

2009-06-25T15:57:40Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnE5zvosplc

So true, so true...

Anyone else with Time Warner cable modem seeing latency issues?

2009-06-20T12:16:00Z

Last night it was sky high, this morning I'm seeing stuff like:

...
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=458 ttl=53 time=62.543 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=459 ttl=53 time=55.939 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=457 ttl=53 time=2793.204 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=458 ttl=53 time=2122.937 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=459 ttl=53 time=1413.484 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=460 ttl=53 time=661.052 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=461 ttl=53 time=59.296 ms
...
--- yahoo.com ping statistics ---
465 packets transmitted, 459 packets received, +48 duplicates, 1% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 51.891/184.343/2793.204/427.977 ms

Hrm...

Working computer again...

2009-06-12T15:35:15Z

Moral of the story: Ignore almost anything Apple tells you and don't buy a Mac unless you want to buy a new system every 2-3 years or basically become unsupported.

So after:

* The new MacOS patch (10.5.7) apparently damaged my video card (granted, the NVIDIA 8800GTs are prone to dying in 6 months I read so it was probably bound to happen soon anyways)
- I suspect some fan control setting was changed maybe as the fans would rev up when I hit intense graphics before the patch but not after now that I think about it.
- LOTS of other people have experienced the exact same issue with various applications

* The Apple store telling me they don't sell the old version of Mac OS I needed

* Ignoring them and went to store anyways to find that version in plentiful amounts

* Arguing with the "Genius" (what a smug term) that I can't revert back to an older version of Mac OS

* Ignoring the "Genius" and reverting back to the older Mac OS version with all my settings perfectly saved

* Finding out that the NVIDIA graphics card I was using is discontinued and there are no real graphics card choices left for Gen 1 Mac Pros to play any reasonably graphical game

* Trying to buy a new video card in the Barton Creek Apple store but being refused because they only sell them store installed. Seriously, I argued with them for like 10 minutes. There is nothing special at all about installing this card, I'm 99% sure it is to prevent Gen 1 Macs from being upgraded to the card I was buying.

* Going to the Domain Apple store and buying a new video card which Apple informs me does not work in Gen 1 Macs but has plenty of horsepower (for twice what it should cost because they have 32KB extra ROM on the card; what a mark up!)

* Seeing the new video card (ATI HD 4870) run WoW beautifully on my Gen 1 Mac

I am up and running. It is obvious that Apple is placing artificial barriers in the way of people continuing to enjoy their Gen 1 Mac Pros in hopes of an up sell. These are not some ancient dinosaur as Apple apparently likes to treat them. Mine probably has 2x the processing power I could ever use still; it's all about the I/O and graphics now.

(*@#ing Apple and Mac OS 10.5.7!!!

2009-06-10T19:33:24Z

"We don't sell Mac OS 10.5.6 anymore, we only sell 10.5.7!"

W...T...F... I'm very close to literally taking a baseball bat and smashing my Mac Pro to pieces. Not even joking. The representative suggested I go on EBay to try to find 10.5.6; how nice of Apple to take care of customers so well after breaking my computer with their recent update. I practically have an aluminum brick sitting here but maybe in a few weeks I can find some back alley copy of the software to fix a problem Apple directly caused. What BS.

Police caught the shooting suspect near AMD

2009-04-20T18:23:37Z

http://www.keyetv.com/content/news/topnews/story/Austin-pellet-gun-shootings-suspect-caught/nhW26HBGpEO9vMKbOJaDKw.cspx

That is just sad. A 48 year old man allegedly shooting cars with a pellet gun. I thought this would surely be kids doing it. WTF...

I lost a little more faith in humanity today

2009-04-10T14:57:40Z

Nugget sent me:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/brown-asian-names/

How did I know there would be an (R) next to her name as I read that? I'm not sure if I'm done counting how many ways this is wrong yet...

My game on a historical game list...

2008-10-22T19:14:54Z

Scroll down to 1995 and search for "Illusia" at (his page screws up searching the entire thing from the top for some reason):
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/mudtimeline.shtml
... which is the history of MUDs and MMORPS. I'm surprised to see it on there actually. :)

I sent some more information to him to see if he'll update that brief section a bit:

Three co-founders of Illusia:

Paul Montgomery - Server architecture/coding (C)
Dave Boynton - Client architecture/coding (C)
Mike [forget last name] - Business/management/marketing

IIRC, we charged $10/month to play and had several hundred players. We were in magazine articles I'm told (never looked up from the 12-18 hour coding sessions those days) being compared to Ultima Online (who mysteriously implemented a lot of our newest features several weeks later after their implementors came into the game to play and ask questions...) :)

Things were going well until one of our co-founders decided to *ahem* clean the company bank account out just before our company "Living Mask Productions" closed a venture capital funding round of $10 million. Things quickly fell apart at that point unfortunately and our competitors are now practically a household name.

The wall street bailout bill is so important to get passed quickly...

2008-10-02T18:19:56Z

... that there is time to tack on 40 amendments (when I stopped counting, there may be hundreds). The amendments only change the bill size from 113 pages to 451. Quick, vote yes, we don't have time to analyze all of this!!!! You wouldn't want zingers such as the following to slip by without a yes would you!? :

"Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility."

"Permanent authority for undercover operations."

"Accelerated depreciation for business property on Indian reservations."

Don't forget the ever important ammendment:
"Short title."

Want an impartial measure of where the US is going?

2008-10-01T20:27:49Z

Check out this 1946 film "Despotism & Democracy" which is obviously oblivious of our current status and yet eerily pertinent. I challenge you to measure the current US and it's future direction on this scale for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfrQalpmdqk

Interesting number game

2008-09-30T19:32:13Z

"The U.S. mortgage market is estimated at $12 trillion with approximately 9.2% of loans either delinquent or in foreclosure through August 2008."

So roughly $1.1 trillion delinquent or in foreclosure.

$700 billion proposed to be given to corporations by Congress which recently failed in its current incarnation.

Heck, you could bail out almost 64% of the folks in trouble directly with that kind of money and buy their house for them. Did I do some math wrong or does all of this seem pretty crazy?

Ron Paul at his finest...

2008-09-23T16:16:10Z

"The bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the purchase of AIG, and the latest multi-hundred billion dollar Treasury scheme all have one thing in common: They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay."

To the fed and gang: Stop acting like we are in trouble if we don't inject 700 billion. We ARE in trouble as the assets ARE already worthless. The 700 billion just props the system up a bit longer. Let's find a comprehensive solution instead of just trying to sweep the problem under a 700 billion dollar rug.

"Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets."

I'm amazed at how government, businesses, etc totally ignore positive and negative reinforcement concepts. The government is rewarding bad behavior (risky investments) and punishing the careful investors (and tax payers in general).

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/23/paul.bailout/index.html

How We Became the United States of France

2008-09-22T18:35:00Z

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1843168,00.html

... is an interesting read although I don't know why they have to make up outlandish stats on France etc. Detracts from the point that should be made for me.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/22/news/economy/the_threat_and_the_bailout/index.htm

Ok, I have to rant for a second. I keep reading about government folks defending this 700 billion dollar bailout with statements such as:
"But like a house on fire that's threatening to spread quickly through the neighborhood, the first priority is to put the fire out - not yell at the arsonist - supporters of the bailout would contend."

IMO, this analogy is flawed (and very self serving for the authors). The bailout is not putting out the fire; it is only containing the fire temporarily by tossing more wood on top. How? By propping up (rewarding) those who make risky investments and enabling them to continue doing so while punishing those who make sound investments. The government is taking the risk out of the basic risk/reward capitalist concept.

My friends, I predict children years from now will be reading about this chapter of American history and will be asking simple questions that we should all be asking like: Why did they let this happen? How did they squander such wealth and prosperity?

Wait... what?!

2008-09-12T18:06:56Z

Mike Wooten from "Troopergate":

Greg Grunberg from Heroes:

Peter Schiff's economic predictions in 2006

2008-07-29T20:39:48Z

First of the 8 part series; very accurate wouldn't you say?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3Qefbt0n4

Sorry but this is just too good to not share...

2008-07-29T14:31:22Z

Does the US have too -little- corruption?

2008-07-25T15:57:32Z

After talking to Elaine about China and some folks from India at work, I had an interesting thought experiment: Does the US have too little corruption?

The US (relative to China and India) has only corruption at the very high levels where people scam millions or billions of dollars from the system. I don't think anyone believes we can stop it completely which would be the best option. This is part of the cause of the "rich getting richer" for those super elite folks and thus the poor getting poorer (shrinking middle class). So if you can't stop the corruption, what type of system is stable in the long term?

Well, in India and China (and I imagine many other places but I speak from people's input with first hand insight only), corruption goes from the very elite all the way down to the poorest of people. You pay a bribe to get government documents, you pay bribes (on top of the normal fees) to get electricity hooked up... you name it, there are often bribes attached and it is considered normal business practice quite often.

This sounds horrible right? Well, it is annoying surely but self regulating and helps distribute the money more evenly. The most important thing is that it is self regulating without any laws or law enforcement intervention. This mechanism relies on a base human characteristic: greed. Call me pessimistic this morning but I never foresee a shortage of greed to keep the system in check. See, if a person starts taking too many bribes, someone under them will get jealous and find a way to remove them from their position to take the bribes themselves. Also, someone else may come along who requires smaller bribes and take over the business.

I'm not saying I would want to live in this type of society but it is interesting to peer into the method some other countries handle corruption by embracing it widely. There are many unpleasant side effects of the system. One is the violence the system can create when someone tries to take too much. But in a society like India, what other option is available to the "little guy" to balance things out?

I can only wonder what would happen if an Enron had tried to happen in a completely free market corruption system. By the time enough people down the chain were bribed, could have things stayed quiet long enough for the plan to succeed? Would the reward for the people at the top have even made the venture worth while once all the bribes were paid? Hmmm...

"ALL credit card transactions must now be reported to the IRS"

2008-07-25T14:41:31Z

This was slipped into the "mother of all bailouts" bill on the house floor recently. Ron Paul gives a fairly brief explanation here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy6SlUpbnIU

PLEASE watch this video

2008-07-15T21:45:28Z

Seriously, it may be one of the most important things you ever watch. "Money as Debt":
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

Some things that stand out which may not be intuitive:
* Banks create money out of thin air through loans of money they don't have (the example shows roughly $1,000 growing into $99,000 of money that doesn't really exist; all legally)
* There is no way all debt can be paid off, there isn't enough money to do so; the only way the system can continue is by creating more debt in an exponential fashion
* Less than 5% of the money is printed by the mints (95% is by bank loans)
* Watch for the quote by President Woodrow Wilson near the end where he laments that he doomed the US by allowing the banking system as it exists right now
* Also watch for the quote from world bankers where they thank the press for keeping their empire building secret long enough to become so established that they publicly talk about how world rule by banks is better than any form of government

Don't rely on Google Maps

2008-07-07T15:16:58Z

In the last few weeks, Google Maps has fairly consistently given me the wrong location while the same exact search in Yahoo Maps works perfectly. Several others in the office have noticed this as well.

Examples:
"2804 North IH – 35, Austin, TX"
Try in Google (half way to San Antonio) and then in Yahoo. Yahoo even tells me the restaurant that is located there that I was looking up.

Another example where I had a conference recently. Google maps made several people late:
"3401 South IH-35, Austin, TX"

Anyone else noticing this? Anyone know someone at Google who would have care points/pull to fix this?

Playstation 3 or XBox 360?

2008-06-20T15:53:33Z

Go!

I'm pondering getting one of these but I'm not totally sure which yet. I'm leaning towards PS3 honestly. There are lots of discussions. PS3 seems technically better in many areas but harder to develop for so many features aren't used. Blue-ray is a plus on PS3. Cost is probably about the same once you get all the addons for the 360 to match the PS3. Games seem to win out on the 360 side but PS3 sales are higher than 360 around the world lately that I read so that may turn around. 360 has better online support but PS3 has some new online service launching soon that will be very similar (and free I believe).

I'm not sure if one caters to games I like more than the other. I like RPGs, some action games (Street Fighter-like) etc. Some of my favorite games, Diablo II, Masters of Orion, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Ultima Underworld...

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Amazon Kindle

2008-04-02T18:02:00Z

Has anyone heard anything about these devices? It sounds interesting enough that I'm tempted to get one actually. I like the cellular networking so you don't have to worry about wired/wireless connections etc. You could download a book almost anywhere/anytime; pretty sweet. The display looks paper-ish which I like too.

If this doesn't scare the &@#$ out of you... it should.

2008-03-17T17:39:27Z

I don't know why this isn't headline news on every news site. Bear Stearns (I'll appropriately call them BS here on in) is being bought by JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) for 230-250 million dollars. That is $2 per share of BS stock. One year ago BS was trading at $160 a share. It is also amazing how quickly the government is blessing this sale (they never do anything quickly).

So despite BS recently needing an emergency infusion of money to stay afloat, they've been talking about how financially stable they are and that their mid-long term status is fine. I must say, actions speak louder than words in this case.

Let's look at 1 asset of BS: their building at 383 Madison Ave. It's all fairly complicated as it is a "synthetic" ownership for tax reasons but folks are estimating the value of the building (for BS) is $570 million (some claim up to 1.2 billion or more based on other nearby buildings). "Effectively, this means that Bear Stearns was sold JP Morgan Chase for less than the value of its real estate assets."

My friends, there is an economic meltdown in progress; be afraid. IMO, this is just beginning; don't listen to the BS.

All you need to know about the subprime debacle

2008-02-28T17:56:40Z

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

Seriously, everyone read this closely. It is very good even though some of the language is a bit NSFW.

Geek the Vote

2007-12-20T20:43:16Z

Thanks Chevy driver with tag 830 XPC...

2007-12-18T16:07:51Z

... for the nice rock that put a crack in my windshield on Oltorf. Appreciate it!