1-800-MAGIC

Sr Oracle needed at Bank of America

2009-12-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

...presumably so that they could predict the bursting of the next bubble ahead of time.

30000 new troops for Afghanistan - yeeeeeeehaw!

2009-12-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

Web applications!

2009-12-01T18:57:00.001-08:00

2 browsers (IE and Firefox) running Ajax.org demo are maxing out T9300 on my laptop - a Core 2 Duo running at 2.5 GHz. This is plugged in.

Try it yourself:

http://www.ajax.org/public/presentation/tae/presentation2.html#home

Best pie chart ever - directly from Fox (via Reddit)

2009-11-26T12:50:00.001-08:00

Modern capitalism

2009-11-25T17:05:00.000-08:00

The top 5 execs at Lehman Brothers made $1B from 2000 to 2008. The top 5 execs at Bearn Stearns made $1.4B during the same period.

"The whole idea of capitalism is that the people provide the capital and the executives take care of it for us. In this case, the people provided the capital, and the executives took it."

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/lehman-bros-bear-stearns-ceos-walked

Victim of car accident is tragically not Glenn Beck

2009-11-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

Victim In Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck

Meet Britain's Dick Cheney!

2009-10-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

The photo in this article is priceless...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/21/executive-pay-bonuses-goldmansachs

Matt Taibbi on naked short selling, or what killed Bear Stearns

2009-10-20T00:16:00.000-07:00

Really awesome article on naked shorts. There are only a handful of news organizations who do real journalism these days, and, surprisingly, Rolling Stones seems to be one of these few. I am also very impressed with Bloomberg reporting recently - it looks like after Murdoch bought WSJ the best people went to Bloomberg.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle/print

Here's the really scary thing - we've lost the integrity of our financial markets.

The reason US was so successful in attracting capital was the transparency with which financial markets here used to operate, and strong regulations that ensured this transparency - for the most part, the legacy of Great Depression. However, over the last couple of decades these regulations have been weakened, and now we're back to the turn of the century stock swindles and off the books accounting (http://www.creditloan.com/blog/mark-to-market-accounting-changes-favor-banks/).

All this - coupled with the dollar fall - can mean only one thing: US will certainly lose its status as a financial capital of the world within the next decade.

In other news, marijuana legislation has been relaxed (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AP-Newsbreak-New-medical-apf-4109207182.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=). So instead of worrying about markets, botched wars, and disappearing industrial base, the population can just get stoned! Finally, a government that knows how to rule...

Government rationing of health care

2009-10-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

There were all these inane reports in the press about "Obama's suicide panels" and government rationing the health care - all widely covered.

Let's see what they say about this beauty - an insurance company says that they will only cover a woman if she gets sterilized - because she had a C-section in the past.

Under the hill

2009-10-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

Check out where you can deliver a birthday present on 1-800-flowers.com!

Think pay for performance works? Think again...

2009-10-12T21:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

This TED talk alludes to a number of social experiments where adding monetary incentive has significantly decreased the productivity of creative work.

Extremely enlightening, a must watch for every manager - and yet another proof that the claim that the Wall Streeters need to be paid exorbitant amounts of money to retain "the best and the brightest" is just a crapload of bull.

United States v. 8,800 Pounds, More or Less of Powdered White Egg Product

2009-10-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

"United States v. 8,800 Pounds, More or Less of Powdered White Egg Product, et al., No. 07-3671, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 26098 (8th Cir. Dec. 24, 2008)(defendant’s importation of egg whites from Peru without first obtaining a pasteurization certificate from the Peruvian government and without obtaining authorization from the Food Safety Inspection Service violated the Egg Products Inspection Act, which could result in the condemnation and destruction of the egg whites; trial court’s granting of summary judgment upheld)."

It's hidden somewhere around the middle of the list on this page: http://www.calt.iastate.edu/aglawrl.html

I kid you not!

Big Pharma and research

2009-10-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

I love it when they say that the pharmaceuticals are so expensive in the US because the companies need this money to finance research. In reality, if you look at a typical big pharma income statement, you will discover that only ~20% of its expenses are research - the rest is mostly sales and marketing.

But here's another proof beyond any reasonable doubt that what big pharma is all about is sales - its donations to political parties. Researchers giving money to repubs? Basically, the same people who say that Earth is 10,000 years old, and dinosaurs walked the planet alongside people, radiocarbon dating be damned?

This political contributions profile is more in line with what you expect from used car salespeople than the research and development organizations...

http://www.goodguide.com/contributions#sector=Pharmaceuticals

By comparison, here's how the software sector looks like:

http://www.goodguide.com/contributions#sector=Computer/Internet&sort=total&query=

Bravo, Apple! You have class!

2009-10-06T16:57:00.001-07:00

Apple quits the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its ‘frustrating’ global warming denialism.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/05/apple-quits-chamber/

TFS 2010 will be much easier to install

2009-10-02T12:36:00.001-07:00

I've spent a week trying to get TFS 2008 installed on my home infrastructure. It was the most painful piece of software that I've ever installed. And it looks like I was not the only one who felt that:

"Installing TFS has been a pain point for years. Although it’s gotten better, 2010 represents a quantum leap. The TFS installer now has 3 wizards: Basic, Standard and Advanced. The big innovation is the new “Basic” install wizard. It is a Next, Next, Next install experience that allows you to install and configure TFS in about 20 minutes or less (assuming .NET and SQL Express are already on your computer – a little longer if TFS has to install them for you). Both will already be there if you’ve installed VS 2010. The Basic wizard will install and configure IIS (if it’s not already there), install and configure SQL Express (if it’s not already there), and install and configure TFS. The only thing that really pains me is installing .NET 4.0 requires a reboot :(."

http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/10/01/tfs-2010-for-sourcesafe-users.aspx

John Olivier on Afghanistan

2009-09-27T12:01:00.001-07:00

Afghanistan as the last level of a videogame "Empire"!

Absolutely priceless!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Unwinnable War in Afghanistan

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Guns and morons

2009-09-20T13:09:00.001-07:00

I am slowly building up my collection of World War II and former communist block firearms. This involves scouring the internet with searches on certain keywords.

Recently, I had a sad realization - most of the US gun-owning community is not mentally qualified to operate a fork, rather than own a gun. Which may explain an extremely high rate of gun-related death in the United States - 30896 in 2006.

Here's a representative post (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080920100316AAlVQMH):

"Should i buy an SKS, AK-47 or AR-15 rifle?

the cheaper the better, but not if it is total garbage. The purpose of owning one for me is to have a assault rifle before they are illegal. i want something that can pack a punch when the world goes to crap so i can defend my family. yes, the purpose would be to kill, so go somewhere else hippies, this is a hypothetical situation i would like to be prepared for if it ever happens."

"Tactical advantage", "firefight" are the terms that litter the gun boards, so instead of answering these questions in dozens of places, I decided to come up with one meta-response here.

"Dear Moron,

Let me try to answer your question from the liberal/hippie point of view, since this angle is typically not covered on the gun boards you are frequenting.

First of all, this is the stupidest thing I read on the internet today! Why, you might ask? Well, there are multiple reasons.

First, do you really expect that hippies will attack you and your family? Hippies? Seriously? Like this guy?

Second, if us hippies/liberals wanted to attack you, surely we wouldn't storm your house? Did you know that there is a strong positive correlation between education and liberal views? You might not realize that, but one skill that they teach in college is thinking. So if we really did want to get you, we would surely be able to devise a better approach.

For example, we could just wait outside your house, and spray you with bullets from a safe distance when you come out to buy groceries. Or if we wanted to force the events, why not setting your house on fire and then just shoot everything that comes out?

But in reality, we wouldn't even bother with this at all. We'd just send a black helicopter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter). As you know, being government/UN freaks, we have plenty at our command. It would take one missile to have your house look like this, from a safe distance:

Do you really think that AK-47 vs AR-15 would make a material difference here?

Finally, even if you really did get into one of the "firefights", I bet you would not have much luck in a "tactical combat situation". I've played with your kind in Halo. You will be the biggest target, in the center of the field, collecting all the bullets.

I bet like with any other profession, it takes years of hard work to train a soldier - not an act of buying a gun.

So take my advice - instead of wasting money on something that you aren't mentally qualified to operate and won't be able to use, buy a book. Or sign up for a history or biology class at your local community college. You really could use the extra IQ so that next time people won't look at your writing and say - Geez, this is the stupidest thing I've seen on the internet today!"

Beowulf

2009-09-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Queen Anne Blockbuster is going out of business, and, among other things, I picked up a copy of Beowulf (http://www.beowulfmovie.com/) for a couple of dollars.

Boy was this a weird experience! So weird that, in a sense, it deserves to be a cult movie - a la Striptease. For most of the movie we couldn't tell if these guys were being serious, or trying to spoof something. I am still not entirely sure. We laughed throughout big part of it.

From a really overdone dialog ((think of Gimili’s boasting in The Lord of the Rings, multiply that by 800, and you have the most humble of Beowulf’s pronouncements), to nude Angelina Jolie's feet, that seamlessly merged lack of shoes with high heels, to the way they were hiding - in a really conspicuous way - Beowulf's genitalia as he was fighting Grendel in the nude (this was very, very similar to the scene where Bart rides through the streets of Springfield in Simpsons The Movie) - it looked more like a comedy than what the movie was trying to present.

As a comedy it might have been mildly funny, though not hysterical. If you enjoyed Striptease, watch this one. Otherwise, it’s probably not worth the hour and a half.

If you don't like George Bush, you should take a look at his voters

2009-09-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html

"The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution."

An oldie...

2009-09-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

...but a goodie!

"Cheney Waits Until Last Minute Again To Buy Sept. 11 Gifts"

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/cheney_waits_until_last_minute

How much for shipping, again?

2009-09-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

Check out the Fedex Next Day rate on this $10 battery...

Think this is egregiously expensive? It is, but it still comes out way ahead of our local Best Buy where a similar (actually, less powerful) battery retails for $39.99 plus tax...

Classy Sarah Palin fans react to Kennedy's death

2009-08-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

Just look at the spelling in these gems. The correlation between the level of education and political views is very real...

"thank you for maintaining my belief in you as a real american, however this country is now much better off, one less socialist, anti freedom senator."

"Now if we could just talk God into taking Arlin Spector, Harry Reid,and Nancy Pelosi America would be Eutopia!"

"good riddens"

"If he makes it into Heaven (& I doubt he will with his stance on abortion) I hope that God makes him babysit all the aborted children for eternity. God have mercy on his soul."

"Ted Kennedy dying has made my day...."

"He cannot fillibuster God. Good ridencance to a sorry person."

"It's about time, we can only hope Pelosi and Ried will be joining him very soon. All 3 of them should be buried in Moscow for whom they work so tirelessly."

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/142220/sarah_palin%27s_facebook_%27friends%27_celebrate_ted_kennedy%27s_death%3A_%22one_less_socialist%2C%22_%22good_riddens%22/

"Brilliant" marketing

2009-08-26T15:37:00.001-07:00

I love it when people say that Microsoft has terrible products which only succeed because of our amazing marketing.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170820/microsoft_apologizes_for_racially_charged_image_alteration.html

I had no idea so many people hate Java...

2009-08-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

...so passionately!

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9dzpu/ask_reddit_why_does_everyone_hate_java/

All Hail His Noodly Appendage!

2009-08-22T19:52:00.000-07:00