Will High Definition be the final blow to broadcast television?

Sometime in 2009 all analog television broadcast will cease, though it could be argued that high definition is also analog. Today an article said that half of US homes have a digital television, which means half do not. I have not decided whether to just let my television go black (or snowy white). With the government auctioning off the bandwidth there will be no going back. With DVD’s and internet videos I may instead just hook the television with a permanent connection to the internet. It also may help me be more creative and better use my personal time since I will need to plan my viewing.

Government subsidizing Telemarketers

Yesterday I had to file a government form locally. I was puzzled by the request because it duplicates a state filing. I assume the requirement dates back a hundred years ago when state and local governments had no easy way to communicate. I was also amazed to see them use an accounting accuracy method I had not seen in decades. I pointed it out to my colleague, who looked at me wondering why I was amazed. It was like I had stepped back in the time before computers. I had assumed decades ago when I saw it still being used by a clerk who was retiring I would never see it again. So other than a loss of time and twenty dollars what harm could filling out a redundant form have? This morning the telemarketing calls began. Telemarketers armed with information only available on that form. So I have found two important services my local government office offers; museum and telemarketing services.

Data Compatibility Automation

What is the next big thing on the web? It could be recycling data made incompatible by upgrades. Underlying web technology and standards have been stagnant this decade. That has been good for developers as languages and web browsers support code written years ago. This means that when sites like Yahoo upgrade their sites it is for minor improvements, but behind the scenes there are major changes. Yahoo upgraded this week. The old pages had a stock price tracker. It would track stocks you had previously looked up and you could also create a list. Both have disappeared today into the incompatible upgrade trash can. The feature is still there just not any data you previously put into it.

VH1 downgrades their music player

In 2006 VH1 redesigned their web site and built a new Flash music player. Fortunately they kept the old player. It appears they lost the programming expertise to build a comparable product. While there are many programmers that can write code, there are few that can write web applications at this level. In most industries these individuals receive top pay. In the computer software industry they receive the lowest pay. Creativity and inventiveness are not team qualities. A few companies are now seeking these qualities. Google has recruited over a thousand programmers based on intelligence and creativity. The top programmers at Blizzard, the creator of the most popular on-line game World of Warcraft, started their own company and are releasing their first title this Christmas. VH1 released the new player last month. It is much slower, has almost none of the original features, can not create a play list, and crashes after two hours of use. Its colors match the rest of the web site. As internet software matures I predict that companies will try to recruit creative developers instead of buying the companies they create or downgrading their software. Could the next Paris Hilton be a software engineer?

A New 8.25% Payroll Tax

States have been doing a lot of complaining that they are losing sales tax revenue to internet sales. They are working to get congress to pass a national sales tax that would collect this supposed loss of tax revenue. Never mind that the states lost this revenue in the 1700s when the US constitution made it illegal for states to tax interstate trade. What is really at stake is another employee tax. Employees are familiar with the Medicare and Social Security withholdings. More and more employees are seeing sales tax added to the list. If you do your job from home in Texas and do any of the work through the computer be prepared to add sales tax to the list of taxes to subtract from your paycheck. (I called the tax office and confirmed this). White collar jobs have seen a trend from working directly for companies to being contract. Now contract jobs are moving to day to day work similar to day laborers. Instead of waiting on the curb we wait for an email. Not only do you no longer have any benefits like health care but be prepared for more taxes. Unfortunately unlike Social Security this payroll deduction makes no promises and provides no services.

Sub-prime Rabbit

Even as the sub-prime melt down became apparent a few weeks ago many articles downplayed it. Articles on Yahoo Finance pointed out that the default rate is still low and is backed by homes that have value. What they failed to reveal is that many of the loans were bought by investors on credit with 5% or less as collateral. Meaning most investors have lost 100%. Here is a humorous video summing up the problem from an article by Gary Tanashian about investing in gold.

Stonehenge

Is this how they built Stonehenge? One engineer and a couple of helpers? Makes you want to move something big.

UFO spotted in Arlington Texas

Google mapping service accidentally documented a
daytime UFO. Google’s next project is finding Big Foot.

Fake Cows

Braum’s added a circular to the bag when I bought milk. After a sentence about the milk being rBGH free it says “and Comes from Real Cows!” So all the other stores get their milk from fake cows? I guess that goes along with chocolate milk coming from brown cows.

Why we Need the Private Sector

Tuesday President Bush announced a program to help those with mortgage problems including a hotline. He accidentally gave out the wrong number. Instead of the correct number 1-888-995-HOPE he said 1-800 which rings to a small Texas Christian group that provides home schooling material. The woman who answers the phone for Freedom Christian Academy tried to give callers the correct number but so many calls came in that she finally disconnected the phone. What I find disappointing is that with so many solutions available the government chose to do nothing. If they really considered these calls important they could have hired an answering service to sort out the calls. Since they planned to take these calls with a hotline they could have the number forwarded and do it themselves. A permanent solution would have been to buy the number from Freedom. Pay the cost for publishing a new number and a little extra for inconvenience. Freedom Christian Academy would have to agree to any solution, but as overwhelmed as they were it sounded like they would have accepted any reasonable offer.

One Way Street

The Wall Street Journal’s front page article How the Subprime Mess Hit Poor Immigrant Groups leaves out one important scammer. In this case the implied victim. Naira Costa was not the master mind in qualifying herself for a loan that her position as a housekeeper made impossible to pay back. She is a low income immigrant that could only pay back a $713,000 subprime mortgage for a California home if values went up. But she stood to gain the most if the get rich scheme worked. If she had done the scheme two years earlier I doubt she would feel remorse and return the profits. She knew how much she made and how much the loan was for. She understood that she would only be able to pay it back if the homes value increased. Now she feels sorry that it has ruined her credit and she did not get rich. So who is the victim? Ms. Costa will not be paying back the money. The bank will be bailed out by the government. The government will tax the hard working middle class. So I better stop writing on this blog and do some work.

Are Millions of Home Lots Worthless?

There has been a wealth of articles about the housing slump. A three part series by Reggie Middleton is the best I have read so far.

Straight Talk From the Homebuilder CFO: The Coming Land Recession, Pt I
Straight Talk From the Homebuilder CFO: The Coming Land Recession, Pt II
Straight Talk From the Homebuilder CFO: How independent are the independent auditors?

If he is correct then home builders abandoned reason and locked themselves into millions of home lots. With the down turn they now hold home lots worth less than the equity. Meaning to sell them they must pay money. In past downturns it has been ten or more years before the housing market recovered. Neither home builders nor banks are in a good position to wait it out. The last major housing slump in the 1980’s claimed several Savings and Loans and some home lots sold for little more than their tax liability. Those that bought and waited did well. The 1980s showed that buyers need not be in a rush and to expect real estate investments to be money pits for years. This downturn may have one additional bottom. Local and state governments spend much more now. In states such as Michigan that have already seen a downturn, instead of cutting spending they raised taxes.

It must be hard to be Customer Service

I had yet another software failure because of a Microsoft Update. This time it was Sonic DigitalMedia Plus the software that came with my HP to burn CD’s and DVD’s. I went to the Sonic web site which was down and used Google stored copy to find their phone number. I asked if they were still in business which they did not find funny. But since they had no working web site they did not hang up since I guess nobody else was calling to buy things. They do not support the software unless you buy it directly from them. HP is responsible for supporting it. They did offer to sell me a copy. So I fired off an email to HP who had no idea what to do other than restore it from the original file, which did not work. Though technically if I reloaded the operating system and did not allow for an update and did not reload Office I guess it would work. But since the whole purpose is to burn backups of the documents I create with Office I would no longer need it. I did notice latter that if you hold down the esc key after about 100 error messages the program does come up. I am not sure if it still works but I guess I could waste a CD and find out. The solution I found is that some of the Microsoft Software will burn a CD. Kind of weird that Microsoft took out their competitor’s software. Given the number of patches and the complexity of these programs it is surprising more stuff does not break. Sonic is so much easier to use they may actually come out ahead as users pay for an upgrade. I have pretty much stopped making backups which I hope does not come back to haunt me.

So much for ordering checks

I tried for the first time to order my checks through the internet. Obviously there is a certain amount of security so that valid checks are sent to the right person for the right account. My bank only allows re-ordering checks. I am not sure how you re-order checks if you are never allowed to order in the first place. I guess when you set up your account they set that up. I set up my account when I graduated from high school and the internet was still just an idea in Al Gore’s head. So I guess I will have to continue mailing my re-order form. I sent an email and customer support was not much help. I guess I was partly to blame I provided the information on the order form. They said they could not find me and asked if I really had an account. It was obvious to me that they put in the wrong number and why. At the bottom of the check are the routing and transit numbers then the account number. Maybe I should not have given them the entire number. I did not feel that old until this. My account is too old to be used through the internet.

Vongo should take over Microsoft support maybe

One of my readers called and said Vongo replied to my last blog. I was surprised and want Vongo to know I think Vongo is a great service. I like the speed and quality of the picture. You can start watching a movie before it is finished downloading. If you watch a movie that is still downloading do not try to rewind. The movie starts over from the beginning. If you watch all but the end of a movie be prepared to have to spend several minutes holding down the fast forward button to get back to the end. But these two problems may be the result of technical limitations of Windows Media Player. I heard another user complain that movies disappeared out of the movie queue too fast. I haven’t had that problem and like having the software manage the space.

What I was looking for from Vongo was how to satisfy their new requirements. Armed with the knowledge that it is possible to use Vongo and still have Internet Explorer 6.0 I tried upgrading again. This is how you do it if you have XP.
1. Go to http://www.update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us
2. Pick custom button
3. Validate that you bought your software
4. Remove IE 7.0 from the update list
5. On the left side panel click software optional. In that list will appear Update Rollup for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (KB925766). Check it and any of the other updates you want. You will need to check Windows Media Player 11 (for Windows Media Center Edition 2005) You may not see it the first time. Upgrade and after you reboot follow the above steps again. (This is what tripped me up)
6. Press install updates link.
7. Reboot. Expect two reboots in the above process and a third when you use your computer again.
8. Load Vongo and install the new version.
9. Watch a movie.

The Great Software Brownout

Some businesses and individuals are not upgrading to Vista. The Wall Street Journal said that 30% of businesses never plan to switch. But some software is upgrading and is not backwards compatible. Vongo an on-line movie service that shows movies from the Starz network now only works with Windows Media player 11. But to upgrade to the player you also have to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.0. While not part of the Vista operating system, IE 7.0 uses the same interface. So hold outs such as myself found that on Thanksgiving my Vongo service stopped working. Customer support suggested I upgrade to IE 7.0 and then downgrade after downloading Windows Media Player. Why would Microsoft require the upgrade for both if they did not require each other to operate? What most concerned me is that Vongo is not listing IE 7.0 on the list of requirements to use Vongo. But if it is a requirement of one of their requirements? Note: A brownout is when a location does not receive all of the electricity they request. But because they receive some electricity lights are dim and some appliances work while others do not. So in this case Vongo does not work and Netflix does.

Hot Potato

John Kerry received $1,000 in stolen campaign contributions July and took Hilary Clinton's lead and has donated that amount to charity. This involved a scandal by Norman Hsu who donated millions to political candidates that he stole in an investment scheme. This may be a good indication of what to expect from these two candidates in the future. They did not want to deal with the issue and gave the money away. They have no regard for the victims. Maybe they do not trust the police enough to turn the money over to the authorities.

Why extending Microsoft oversight is bad for business.

More states want to extend Microsoft oversight: report Supposedly states have been protecting small businesses from Microsoft and want to extend oversight from the 2002 antitrust settlement that is about to expire. All they appear to have achieved is higher prices. They are targeting the inequalities in the operating system. The government has yet to hear about Web 2.0 and software as a service, though someone at the state level do know enough to tax it. The browser not the operating system is what Microsoft is using to eliminate its competition. Microsoft does not fix bugs or even seriously field reports about bugs. They have reduced the memory in the browser at a time when the operating system has more memory than ever to share. This is because more memory to run applications in the browser competes with their server farm services, server farms that cost over a billion dollars (US). But this can actually be a positive for some programmers. Since the browser has not seen much change it has allowed programmers years to become experts. Developers who know how to optimize memory usage and have custom patches for the bugs and memory leaks have a valuable skill set. If the government really wanted to help they would not tax these new small businesses at three or four times the rate foreign companies are taxed. And to make money available to reduce these taxes they can eliminate the commission that failed to accomplish anything useful.

Microsoft Help

After finding several bugs in Internet Explorer that I am not sure Microsoft knows about I called them. I spent two days on the phone. After talking to about a dozen support employees in India (and one in the USA) they never found anyone who was familiar with the product. I decided to try the online help one more time Microsoft Help Forum. I discovered why I was not able to submit my question on the Microsoft site. Apparently I made the mistake of using the Microsoft browser. The Microsoft web site uses pop-ups and as a part of my phone help I reset my browser to default settings which block pop-ups. So if you want to use Microsoft on-line help disable the IE pop-up blocker.

Cut and Copy broken in Internet Explorer

The commands oncopy, oncut, onbeforecopy, onbeforecut are broken in IE 6.0 and IE 7.0. I was unable to report these problems to Microsoft (see blog below). If a field is empty and copy or cut is used the browser does not report the event. This means that if the web page code has undo or any validation in the script or server side it will misfire. Google has an interesting fix for this in Google Spreadsheets. They never allow an empty field to be empty. They place a tab character in the field so that appears empty but really is not. However this took hundreds of lines of code to accomplish and has another problem. The browser does not allow focus on the field. If you do focus it does the tab and moves the focus to the next field. Onbeforecopy has an even bigger problem in IE 6.0. If you wand over edit in the drop down menu it fires the event. I was unable to actually do anything with this event. But if this is actually being fired by using the drop down menu could you trigger an event in the menu or use it to spy on the user. Does this focus go beyond the page you are currently in? Given that this could be a major security hole I am no longer using Onbeforecopy in any of my code. Since this HTML is only supported by Microsoft, web pages that support other browser do not use it.

Vista File Type Broken

Vista tries to open Word documents created in earlier versions of Office in Paint. You have to save the file and do an open as because Paint is not yet smart enough to read Word files (.doc). Not that many people probably use email or Word together (sarcasm). I was an idiot and called Microsoft to report my list of errors. Yes I checked if anyone else had already reported them. I am no longer sure why Microsoft answers the phone. I was on hold for two days and spoke to about a dozen people. None of them had the authority to do anything. Even after they did recognize that I appeared to know what I was talking about and that indeed there is a problem. They had nothing in their book about what to do. I did talk to someone in the US and they said the only option they could offer was to mail it and supplied a mail address (not email, regular mail). While on hold for two days I watched movies and watched the new premiers. I like the new Kitchen Nightmare series. Journey man has a great concept but failed to capitalize on the angel angle. I think they could just do the sister angle on Bionic Woman. It worked on Inspector Gadget (Penny).

Vista sinks the Presentation

Vista can be counted on to fail at the most inopportune moments. During an important presentation I could not use Office because I did not have internet access. I did not need the internet and nothing I was doing needed the internet. But Vista was home sick and would not work until it was allowed to call home to Microsoft. I was at a complete loss at why I kept clicking yes I want to stay offline and the message would not go away. Too bad help is online. The problem is User Account Control which protects you from internet viruses while you are offline. Once you know the solution it is easy to turn User Account Control off. There is a great page on how at http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/12/19/turn-off-or-disable-user-account-control-uac-in-windows-vista/ You could pay thousands of dollars for a training class to help you think on your feet in stressful situations or buy Vista.

When copy is not copy

In Internet Explorer the HTML command oncopy and oncut trigger no event if the input box is empty. This causes no problem if you are relying on the traditional response of the browser. But then why would you be asking if there was an event if you did not need to know? But then if Microsoft made it easy why would you need developers?

Explaining Away the Recession

The Recession is Here has some good points to confirm a recession, but some can also be explained. 1. Decline in tax receipts. That is mostly from the decline of home values and may not extend into the general economy. 2. A weak transportation industry. Summer is usually the lows for transportation stocks and the US recently opened the border to Mexico trucks. 3. Apple cut the price of their iPod by 30 percent because inventory was building up. Apple does extensive price and customer research. With Christmas coming up they determined what parents would pay. An initial profit margin of over 50% was not sustainable in such a competitive market. 4. Auto manufacturers who are offering 0 percent financing, again, for 60 months. Auto manufacturers have been struggling for a long time. 5. Over 150 mortgage companies have either shut down or filed for bankruptcy. Yes this is a lot of people out of work. 6. Real estate agents could really begin to feel the effects of a downturn. And these workers can not seek unemployment along with the many undocumented construction workers. 7. The Bureau of Labor Statistics ("BLS") household survey showed a drop of 360,000 jobs in the September report for August. Not a lot of jobs available for the mortgage brokers or real estate agents. These workers could weigh on the economy but are not enough to confirm a recession.

The Next Big Product?

Seeking a Niche, Companies Try New Web-to-TV Technologies Are web TV boxes going to replace cable boxes? I watch movies on my computer using Netflix and Vongo and when I saw this article I realized how easy it will be to make the transition to TV. The quality is not as good as DVD, but if you can surf the web in addition to watching the entertainment value greatly increases. I realized I could build such a box. Vista has the built in program to display on the TV and I was able to connect my laptop and watch an online movie. But the setup was a pain and the cables and laptop sitting in front of the TV was a disaster waiting to happen. The software would be most of the work. That is if you want a cable channel like experience using social networking sites. On my own it would take about two years to have a product that could compete with a cable box. So maybe we will see many competing products in the next few months. I wonder if cable companies see this coming. This could explain the fight between Apple and NBC. NBC leaves Apple for Amazon

Dry Aged

In The Search for the Perfect Steak article in the WSJ the biggest key to a better steak is to let the steak sit at room temperature for an hour so that the center is not cold when it is put on the grill.

Would you buy government bonds yielding 10%?

An article The Bond Matrix has an interesting take on interest rates. Foreign investors own much of government debt in the form of bonds. The yields are low and do not compete well with other domestic investment opportunities such as stocks. There are many government programs on the table such as national health care that would require borrowing money. But foreign countries are reluctant to loan that money. Baby boomers have hundreds of billions in savings in the form of 401k, stock and home equity. They would be willing to buy bonds at a higher yield. This article suggests that rate of return may be about 10% about double current rates.

Inventor Gets Nothing

The tangled history of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook, which has been valued at 1 billion US, has been sued by two fellow Harvard classmates who claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them. The problem is that all three liberally took their ideas from Aaron Greenspan who created houseSYSTEM a site for Harvard students. Without a patent does the idea have any protection beyond copyright? Maybe Zuckerberg should ask Microsoft for help.

Environmental Risk

The lead company Ivernia was recommended as a buy in an article The Commodity Supercycle Report. With strong lead prices the stock has gone from $0.15 to a recent high of over $2. Its price has recently dropped to $1.25 because at its main lead mine in Western Australia birds turned up dead. There is debate whether the mine will be allowed to reopen. Companies have already faced problems with market prices, lawsuits and government regulations. But for some companies environmental concerns real or perceived may replace those as the greatest risk. While much of the market concentrates on the impact of sub-prime mortgages on the stock market. A much greater risk to some companies may be the policies and regulations that result from global warming debates and other environmental crusades. While some environmental concerns have merit some actions will not. And that risk being unpredictable and sometimes extreme could be a surprise to some shareholders.

It is Only Paper Losses

Gateway founder Ted Waitt turned down an offer of US 7 billion from Compaq in 1997, which would have netted him 3 billion. http://www.answers.com/topic/ted-waitt?cat=biz-fin In 1999 Gateway’s stock price gave Waitt a paper value of over 8 billion, when he decided to retire from the company at age 36. Taiwan's Acer snags Gateway. Gateway was bought yesterday for 710 million. A price many analyst thought too high. While Waitt only suffered paper losses anyone who purchased the stock at its $84 high will only receive $1.90. I remember Waitt saying that he turned down the offer because the intrinsic value of the company was much higher than the physical value. Waitt appears to be a failure. He obviously missed cashing out at the top. But he reaped millions as CEO, and has sold the company at a premium. His total compensation from his Gateway venture could total over a billion dollars. Not bad for a business he started with a loan of $10,000 after dropping out of college.

They Tricked Me

Articles I read earlier this year that said median home prices had resisted the down turn in the housing market referred to specific areas not the entire market, assuming the Business Week statistic that this is the 12th consecutive monthly drop in median home prices Home prices: Steepest drop in 20 years. I should have picked up on this. There were many articles last year about median values rising, then a void of articles this year. The news media is bias but tries not to lie too much. Sometimes what is news is what is not news.

Housing Sales Slow at the Top

For the last year median home values have surged. This gave hope that the housing market might be close to a bottom. As banks stopped making loans to people with poor credit or financial means it shrunk the market for affordable homes. Homes on the higher end still continued to sell. But reports now show the median home value is falling Median price of homes seen falling: report. This means sales for homes on the high end are now slowing faster than those at the bottom. Those with good credit and who can afford 5% down are either not buying or they are buying less expensive homes. So far the market has been slowing from the bottom. Now the top is coming down.

No Compensation for Threat of Loss

Federal Court Slaps Data Theft Victims Some victims were outraged that they did not receive compensation when their personal data was stolen from National Bancorp. The court said that since victims suffered no financial loss they could not receive compensation from emotional distress. They would receive compensation if the lost data results in financial damages. While customers still remain open to threat of their data being used illegally a win would have been dangerous. It would allow anyone to sue if they felt that anything was unsafe or could lead to distress or financial loss. Does your car feel unsafe? What about the planes flying over your house? Every time we buy anything anywhere with a credit card we expose our personal data to theft. Should we receive compensation? I am feeling a lot of distres$.

The Wind does Not Blow This Way

Could our present course to create carbon caps and trade carbon credits actually make things much worse? An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal discussed how the caps work. Factories and electricity generators will be limited to current levels of carbon emission. To increase emissions they must buy emissions from another plant which has reduced theirs. Sounds like a recipe to ship the remaining manufacturing jobs over-seas. What about the credits from manufacturing jobs that recently exited the US? This law makes it illegal to bring jobs back to the US (and the carbon). So how much will this increase carbon emission? The standards and technology in the US for pollution control is much more stringent and efficient than in other countries. But it even gets worse. A main source of credits is China. They increase the pollution from the factory previously located in the US and then lower the pollution to a level still higher than the original pollution. They can then sell the carbon credits despite the fact they have added a net gain to carbon emissions. I guess this will work as long as the wind does not blow this way.

200% Sales Tax?

Missouri is suing cell phone providers to collect line charges for cell phones. Cellphone Taxes It is not the fact that there are no telephone lines, it is a matter that cell phone users are not paying their fair share. I have heard this phrase used frequently. What is fair share? In Missouri cell phone users currently pay 16.6% in phone taxes. Considering the taxes paid on earnings are about 40% (Federal 25%+Social Security and Medicare 15%+State Income Tax??) for a $100 dollar cell phone bill it cost $291 ($291*40%=$116.6). So fair share according to the state of Missouri is over $300 for a $100 cell bill. There has been talk of converting to a sales tax instead of an income tax. I think people would be shocked if Federal and local taxes were combined into a 200% sales tax. But Missouri does not think a 200% sales tax is fair. Is 300% fair?

Internet Red Light Camera

Increasingly criminals are using the internet for crime. Hackers attack world's largest jobs site Law enforcement has done little to crack down on these crimes, which include identity theft. What has happened is an increasing number of laws that define what is criminal and the punishment. Some of the penalties are severe when compared to the penalties for violent crimes such as murder. Is the government quietly installing the equivalent of red light cameras on the internet? If they are then these criminals could have a surprise when the government starts writing tickets.

Look Outside

Hurricane Dean a Category 5 storm, threatens Mexico My previous post pointed out the low probability the National Weather Service gave Dean sustaining category 5 winds (15%). Was there really not much of a chance or did they have no idea? I am reminded of the stock market. Because the weather forecasts are always adjusting it may not be obvious how wrong they are as a whole. Then again I look at their chart and they just lowered the chances (10%). Hurricane DEAN Am I reading the chart wrong or is the article wrong? Hurricane DEAN Public Advisory says it is a strong category four. Is the chart maker not communicating with the advisor writer? If the hurricane is already a four shouldn’t the probability of it being a category four or five in the next 24 hours be 100%? Then again a category ranking may be entirely different than sustained winds. How many times do we look at data in a chart and think we know what we are seeing but really don’t?

Lizard News

I recently saw a large horned toad. My description to a friend had it at over 12 inches. I saw it again and it was close enough to measure against my hand. It turned out to be 10 inches, with half that being its tail. It is still large, but not as large as my first estimate. Today the news on Yahoo mentions a category five hurricane headed for Mexico and possibly hitting Texas. Hurricane Dean aims for Mexico's Yucatan I checked it out on the National Weather Service web site and it had very different numbers. Maximum 1-minute Wind Speed Probability Table It gives the highest probability to it being a category three today and a category one tomorrow. It gives the same probability to a category five as it turning into a category one within the next 24 hours, and almost no chance after that. They don’t even give Texas as a possible target. I am reminded of one hurricane last year that went outside their track area last year. I guess that lizard could have been over a foot long.

Is your 2 Cents Worth Millions?

The internet has reached a threshold where your ideas and opinions can be worth millions. Many companies already see this value and work hard to collect your 2 cents. Almost every service call I have made this year resulted in a request to fill out a survey. Jack n’ the Box offers a chance for a prize. Every piece of junk mail you receive cost the sender over a dollar. How much would it cost for you to instead sit down and listen to a sales pitch. Would you do it for sixty dollars an hour? A short pitch to clean your carpet and the reason for your answer; you have no carpet? What about a review of your last restaurant meal in exchange for it being free? A free meal for your review may sound like too much, but what if a hundred people eat there because of it. Your review of a movie, book, or product may only be worth two cents, but if it networks out to enough people that can translate into hundreds of dollars. A really funny joke could be worth thousands. Readers Digest has known this for years. Yahoo has a layout problem with some of their pages since switching to a Web 2.0 layout. I almost sent them the fix yesterday. The fix is fairly simple, but given the changes to Yahoo happened last year, it has eluded their programmers. I experienced the same problem a few years ago so there was no time involved in coming up with a solution. I would settle for a hundred dollars. This problem could cost thousands to fix in-house. The ragged look of the Yahoo pages could already have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much is that fix worth.

Dust Bowl 2008

This year’s corn crop is the largest since 1933 USDA Sees Huge Corn Harvest. The large harvest in 1933 is blamed on poor agricultural methods that pushed fields beyond sustainable crop levels in response to previous demand during World War I. The abnormally high rainfall and seasonable temperatures in 1933 allowed for a record harvest, and are mirrored in 2007. This is being attributed to El Nino. The next year in May 1934 started the famous Dust Bowl. Dust Bowl - Wikipedia Caused by a lack of rain and the soil being exposed to high winds. Farming methods are much improved compared to 1933, and because of ethanol, demand remains high for corn. Another difference is that 1933 is an abnormally high hurricane year Wet Southeast and Gulf Coast. Recent scientific studies indicate that the normalization of coastal and ocean temperatures caused by global warming could be reducing the number of hurricanes this year. The lessons learned in 1934 should allow us to avoid a dust bowl in 2008. Given that some years after El Nino have had reduced rainfall, corn futures could be a good investment this winter.

Why is it so hard to say no?

Money sent to Mexico by illegal immigrants failed to grow this year compared to the normal 10% growth Remittances to Mexico Slow . Since the illegal immigrant population continues to grow this was blamed on recently adopted state and local laws aimed at making life more difficult for illegal immigrants. The article said that a quarter of those polled were employed as construction workers or day laborers. This sector has been hard hit with the tightening of the credit market and the resulting slow down in home sales. Countrywide leads mortgage sector shares down ; Accredited Home forecasts loss; shares drop. Some employers were saying they need proper documentation to be able to hire. Given the slow down and lack of construction jobs are they really saying no jobs are available? Employment numbers show that the construction industry is also reducing the number of legal employees. In trying to deflect blame or soften the news of the slowdown they may be giving illegal immigrants false hope. Even if they gain legal status it could be years before the construction jobs are available again. Why do we have so much trouble saying no? When kids ask for something it can be so much easier to say maybe. My parents always seemed quick to say no. By giving hope that jobs are available when they are not is cruel. These workers may be trying to gain legal status when they really need to be looking for work in another sector.

Not so New

Today’s article Case of the Vanishing Airport Lines in the Wall Street Journal is about a new patented check in process developed by Alaska Air. Passengers check in at a self-service kiosk and receive a boarding pass. Then they drop off their luggage at a baggage drop station and proceed to the gate. The problem is that this is not new. I flew US Air a few years ago and their check-in at DFW that was the same as described by the article. The only difference is that US Air had a ticket counter that you could go to if you had a problem with the self-service kiosk. I can not remember the last time I checked in at the ticket counter. So exactly what is new about this process? Did Alaska Air copy the process used by other air lines in major airports and then remove the ticket counter and call it new. How is removing the ticket counter original enough to get a patent. Years ago I thought that it would only be a matter of time before the ticket counter disappeared. I remember seeing an article in the Wall Street Journal at least five years ago about the disappearing ticket counters. Maybe they should hit up Alaska Air for some royalties.

Stars

Michelle Pfeiffer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame People: A star for Michelle Pfeiffer . What struck me was the importance of including her family in the occasion and mentioning how her father played an important role. Sharing your success with family can be as important as the recognition. Not everyone achieves this level of success. Unfortunately most careers never recognize their top achievers. But even a small thank you when someone reaches that pinnacle can be remembered for a lifetime.

Wal-Mart Runs out of Mountain Dew

I have had many acquaintances complaining of a lack of energy this week. I myself have experienced it and decided to pick up some Mountain Dew, which was sold out. The recent above average rains point to allergies. Because of landscaping and lawns cities have an above average problem with natural contaminates. But many other possibilities exist, such as a virus or the recent increase of temperatures by 5 to 8 degrees combined with high humidity. It could also be ozone levels or any of the many human made contaminates. There are even subtle things such as the alignment of the moon. Because of this lack of energy I have gotten very little work done in the first two days of the week. Apparently very few people have. I have never planned for this component in a business project. With information more easily obtained about environmental factors or the performance of workers could managing factors such as human energy level be the next area of productivity gains?

Google Looks for a New Show

It has been assumed that Google’s bid to expand their business into other areas Microsoft, Google set back in bid to use airwaves is because as more companies step into on-line advertising pricing will be more competitive and profit margins lower. Google’s main effort has been assembling a replica of Microsoft Office. The recent move to secure mobile phone access may point to the problem being content. Google’s main attraction is its search engine, which is the same as the broadcast televisions programming. Most television stations do not face much problem finding advertisers. Instead the challenge is finding programming. Web 2.0 has created web pages that can use the same code to display multiple content feeds by using XML. To stay current the search engine must constantly crawl these pages. AT&T allows users to pick different news items or topics to show in their home page. This means there is not one page that a search engine can capture. Some pages are built specifically for the user. An irony is that Google has helped make this possible. Amazon pages show custom book picks based on your Google and Amazon searches. So each Amazon page is specific to the user. In addition more content is being concentrated into large sites like Amazon which have much more control of how their content is used. In one sense the web has not changed much. There are still many web pages built for individuals. The who and how these pages are built is dramatically changing. Instead of static HTML pages that remain available for years these new pages are viewed once and thrown away leaving nothing for the search engines to crawl.

So Unpredictable

The stock market is full of repeating patterns. Looking at past stock and index prices it is easy to find these patterns. Despite this, it is almost impossible to recognize these patterns as they happen. John Mauldin wrote an article with an interesting The Subprime Virus take on how we tend to adjust our predictions over time. But we don’t include these adjustments in our risk assessment. We can predict a minor down turn. But if there is a major up swing first we are wrong. But when the down swing happens next we feel we are correct. For example the Shanghai Composite has formed a pattern that looks like a volcano. The two outer peaks are the rim of the volcano and the central peak is the dome. If it continues to form a volcano pattern it needs to plunge in value so it can form the right down slope. But it could easily go up and form some other pattern.

Lying about Global Warming

This week the Wall Street Journal had a commentary about the reduced number of hurricanes in the last few years. On-line articles are blaming global warming for a reduced number of storms and droughts in Asia. The theory is that warming of the oceans means a smaller difference in temperature between the land mass and the ocean water. Several articles today predict this reduction of storms to continue Philippines Prepare Contingency Plan For Impending Drought In a seeming response to the Wall Street Journal article numerous articles appeared today about how hurricanes are increasing. Global Warming Causing More Atlantic Hurricanes, Study Finds So who is right Bloomberg or the Wall Street Journal. Actually they are both right. However the article in Bloomberg uses a deceptive statistical practice used by some financial institutions. If they have an above average year they compare a short recent period to a long period to amplify the results (Bloomberg). In contrast if they have a bad year they only show a long period so that the previous years below average performance is averaged out. If they only have bad years then they show the industry average. The Wall Street Journal showed long term averages. They also showed a second average that removed extreme years both high and low. These numbers show a decline in hurricanes during the recorded history of weather. So overall statistically hurricane frequency is declining. However this period is too short to accurately forecast the future. If abnormally high years occur more regularly they could cancel out low hurricane years like 2006. But what we can know is that you can not blame both lower and higher hurricanes activity on global warming at the same time. The Wall Street Journal article did not blame global warming and instead concentrated on the misleading statistics in other articles. Global warming is probably a cause and possibly a major facture. But articles are saying there are going to be droughts because of lower storm activity while others say the opposite. Both are theories and need to be represented as such. Because one of them is wrong and if Murphy has a say then they are both wrong.

Google and Microsoft Team Up?

Microsoft again announced a software shift to the internet Microsoft Offers a Web-Based Strategy and Microsoft Describes Technology Behind Software Plus Services . The problem is that they are keeping their current strategy including their barriers to on-line development. Their main effort to stop software development on the web is the reduction of script memory in Microsoft Explorer. They recently lowered memory yet again. Microsoft Explorer has a flaw that makes reducing the memory even worse. The browser can not reclaim memory and will eventually freeze up. It takes a lot of script to cause it to freeze but relatively little to cause lag. Microsoft is building a massive server farm to store data on a server system instead of the browser. Google also has one of these billion dollar server farms. So this appears to be a move to limit browser software from any company with less than a billion dollars. The problem with this type of artificial limitation is that it only prevents traditional software development. If a start-up develops an architecture that is memory lean it can skip the billions in cost while enjoying little competition.

Why buy bulk?

Think twice before hoarding 'forever' stamps you might never use points out a reason not to buy in bulk is because it ties up your money that could otherwise be earning interest. If interest returns on bank accounts were greater than inflation this might make sense. If yours are I would like to know what bank. Inflation is running about 6% officially and as high as 15% on some common household items. Most banks or short term investments do not earn this. There is also the cost of multiple trips to the store. I have my neighbor pick up milk for me on their trips and I do the same for them in between and now go half as often. When buying in bulk make sure it is a good deal. Make sure you are going to use it. And make sure you need it and have a place for it. For example find out what kind of toilet paper you like. Then price an individual package compared to the giant package. Buy the best deal to last six months. You make money because of inflation. You save gasoline from fewer trips to the store. You help the environment by reducing pollution and traffic congestion. Be careful not to buy in bulk an unknown product. You could end up with too much of something you don’t like. It can be a great comfort during the next snow or ice storm knowing you are not going to run out of toilet paper. It can also be beneficial to not wait until you run out. Buy replacement toilet paper when you have used half your supply. This gives you more than one chance to stock back up without having a bathroom emergency. If you do limit your trips to the store don’t be surprised if neighbors ask to borrow things.

Global Air Conditioner

Average temperatures have increased over the last hundred years across the US. Most temperature readings that have historical data going back one hundred years are in major cities. These major cities produce much more heat than they did one hundred years ago. This heat is generated by everything from restaurants, air conditioners and automobiles. The areas outside these cities do not produce heat from these sources but overall are not represented in the temperature readings. The rural areas need to be included to establish an average temperature. Air conditioning is powered by electricity and generating that electricity adds heat at the point of generation. The heat from buildings is moved outside. Temperature readings in cities do not measure the average temperature of the city (including inside the buildings). They measure the temperature of the city, plus the heat that has been moved outside, plus any heat that has come into the city from power generation, while not subtracting the temperature difference in buildings. Obviously cities do produce more heat than they did in the past. Scientists need to determine how much heat is moved and how much is actually produced and then average in the rural areas. Even if air conditioning is only a small difference, it shows that global temperature readings are no longer accurate since they no longer measure the average temperature. The same thing happened with national surveys. In the past few years many middle and upper class individuals have switched to unlisted numbers or screen phone calls with caller id. Phone surveys no longer could reach this group of people. They have such a margin of error to make them almost useless.

Energy Crazy

A neighbor near my house has put up a sign “Stop urban gas drilling”. The sign is in response to the huge natural gas find in Texas. This begs many questions. The first is why they continue to use urban natural gas. Second, where should we get the natural gas, national wildlife reserves in Alaska? Third, even if they turn off their urban natural gas where do they think their electricity comes from. Some of it comes from nuclear, but the extra requirements for summer usage come from where? Is that their air conditioner I hear running? Should I put up a sign “Help turn off my neighbor’s urban gas air conditioner”?

Not so Easy

Easy Bake Toy Ovens Recalled Again How much research and engineering was actually done? It appears that product testing was done mainly through use. There is nothing like a lot of people using something to find its flaws. I have yet to work on a software project where gathering or using this information is part of the project. I have seen it used indirectly. In the beginning of my career my software was not web based and could not be easily updated. Testing and debugging after finishing the coding added another one-third to the project time-line. With web projects that is down to less then a tenth. I have seen products go out with no testing. Users find and report bugs in what is called a beta release. Users are expected to take the effort to make sure the developers fix these bugs. The bugs get fixed, but little effort is made to collect and implement change based on the user’s experience. There are sometimes questionnaires that users are asked to fill out. But they all seem to ask “did we build what we told you we were going to build so we can tell our bosses we did?” If negatives like bugs come out during beta use then there must also be positives. So should we consider a web based software release only two thirds of the project?

100% Taxes

There have been a few Wall Street Journal articles about the minimum tax issue The ABCs of Dealing With the AMT . If you make income above a certain level you lose the ability to claim deductions. Thus for a range of income above that level you pay 100% tax. Since that level is above 200k most Americans are not worried. I read an article yesterday about the cost of future government obligations. These range from the generous city fire fighter and police retirement benefits to the possible trillions of dollars for prescription drug benefits. Who Do We Owe and How Much? What worries me when I look at these numbers is that some estimates actually range beyond 100% of what the government can tax. Based on the obligations the government is spending twice as much as they take in. Estimates put total government tax at about 55% (total tax is everything from the tax added to gasoline to those penny taxes for this and that on your phone bill and everything in between). If you double 55% then we are actually racking up tax liabilities at more than 100% of what everyone makes. This total varies widely based on how you compute government spending, obligations and GNP. Is everyone in a 100% tax bracket?

Honey Bees being Killed by a Parasite

Scientists are attributing the mass die out of honey bees to a parasite from Asia. http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/43163/story.htm It was interesting to see all the completely unscientific theories such as the cell phones stories, one of which even made to the headline story on Yahoo. Now cell phone phobias will have to find another unexplained mystery to blame on cell phones. Genetic crops and the new pesticides were thrown around as a possible cause. But as usually with mysteries like this the solution is simple and logical.

Blizzard visits Sam's

Sixty million might have been a low estimate. WOW patch 2.05 - A lesson in failure Blizzard, according to this blog is pulling in over a billion dollars (US) a year from World of Warcraft (WOW). Blizzard appears to be having a lot of problems with a patch. I know they have had some developers defect because of poor compensation. The question is where is all the money going? And how much did their new on-line game engine really cost that they have to pull out all the stops? May be like a visit to Sam's and looking for a twenty in your wallet before they ring it up when what you need is a hundred.

Blizzard Jumps

One of the most successful home computer games is Blizzard’s Diablo II. It is the game engine that was re-written to become the most popular on-line game, World of Warcraft. Diablo 3 cometh? Gamers have heard rumors of a sequel for years. Diablo represents a significant intellectual property for Blizzard on par with the movie industry’s “Star Wars”. Rumors are that Blizzard as of last year had spent $60 million (US) funding a European development team to build a generic on-line game engine. Last year Blizzard said they would first launch an original or less valuable title. This appeared to be a move to make sure people liked the game engine, before applying it to a more valuable game title. This game engine is a generic set of tools to support a subscription based game that can be used for many different on-line games. This recent move to possibly by-pass a less significant title indicates that Blizzard may be facing what many software development firms have learned. You only really have a choice if you can abandon the method. Since Blizzard must spend additional money to apply the game engine to Diablo they may have come to the realization that regardless of how the game engine is received they no longer have the money to go back to the drawing board. It is much like do you leap into cold water or slowly ease in. Blizzard realized they were already in mid air.

Is this the Beginning of Internet Radio?

There has been a lot of press on the new radio internet tax that is going into effect retroactively to the beginning of last year. Sunday, The Beginning of the End for Internet Radio It is going to have a big impact on radio broadcast on the Internet and may make it difficult to impossible to support a radio internet site on just ad revenue. So over the next few days we should see the second major wave of internet radio stations closings. It is another attempt by the music industry to maintain control of the distribution of music. I think that in the long term this tax could actually be good for Internet radio and have unexpected consequences for the old distribution method. Internet sites can avoid the tax if they negotiate their own agreements with musicians. Until now it was not economical for individual web sites to negotiate directly. The music industry model of distribution is so cost effective and monopolized that without a tax of this nature it would be hard for individual web sites to justify the cost of trying to replace it. Will the old monopoly be replaced with a new monopoly or will the industry splinter? This should be good for musicians as competition heats up for their services.

If Apple had a game console would it be a Wii?

Sony has reduced the price of the PlayStation 3 Sony's PS3 price war giveaways while at the same time Microsoft is struggling with a recall of the Xbox 360 Do Xbox 360s Scratch Discs? . Both of these game consoles aimed to improve performance and graphic quality of game play. I think overall they achieved the goals, but are too expensive to appeal to as broad an audience as the Wii. The Wii has an innovative user interface that makes up for the lower graphic quality and the price is exactly what consumers want to pay. Apple has repeatedly been able to find the right mix of style, price and usability. Apple is not the first company to make a MP3 player. They did find the right mix of options, a stylish player, price range, and captured most of the market. They have done it again with the iPhone. I have always thought, “Build it and they will come”. But Apple has taught us it also needs to be easy to use, look good, and be the right price.

Butterflies and Moths

I received a comment from a friend on the butterflies. Natural selection through breeding can be considered survival of the fittest, which would be evolution. This is a great point. What I was concerned about was applying such a broad label with so many unknowns. Did the butterflies lose some characteristics by breeding with such a small gene pool? Thus did they de-evolve? Do these butterflies periodically go through this process? In which case it would not be evolving or de-evolving, but a normal part of their long-term life cycle. Thinking about butterflies; Dallas was emendated with web worms this year. Some trees were stripped nearly bare of leafs. Breeding conditions were ideal with the abnormally cool and wet weather we have had the last few months. A few days ago they all disappeared. Yesterday two white moths found each others on the inside of my back door. Looking on the web Species Hyphantria cunea - Fall Webworm Moth these webworm pictures of the moth match what was in my house. If all of the webworms turn into white moths at the same time we should have a spectacular show.

Evolution or Selective Breeding?

National Geographic has an article about male butterflies on the Samoan islands that have been decimated by bacteria. They have evolved to become resistant and have made a comeback. Butterfly Evolves Leg Up on Male-Killing Parasite I have a Pug dog on my lap and it is amazing to think she was breed from a wolf. Has nature been breeding all along? Some of the butterflies were already resistant to the bacteria and obviously being the only surviving males they then passed on this characteristic to their offspring. I dislike articles like this that are about selective breeding and label it evolution. It is like the word evolution has to be dropped at every chance. I guess the Pug on my lap is a new evolution and not a breed of dog. Before you post a comment about whether or not there is evolution, think about the real question here. Is the use of the word evolving proper for a case of natural breeding of an existing characteristic? If the answer is yes then why do we call it breeding a dog and not evolving a dog?

eBay is Hiring?

Some economic writers BLS "Phantom" Workers Now Account for 56% of Payroll Increase are wondering where are all the new jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is adding. I wonder how the government is counting all the new “internet jobs” like blogging. There are a few success stories of top bloggers making two-hundred thousand a month. TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz ... and Cash But I doubt that most blogs make much of anything (me). The revenue is reported to the IRS and even if you are making nearly nothing it may show up as employment. Then there are all the other mini-business/hobbies that can make money on the internet. Most do not pay for the expense of the computer. But is the government counting these as jobs? And are they double counting people who do blogs and have a paying job? Are you becoming a phantom worker every time you sell something on eBay?

Do We Need CSS for Database Tables?

For the last few years there has been a push to stop using HTML style and table tags and instead use style sheets (CSS). Style sheets allow centralized control of font styles and page layout and can reduce the size of pages and thus save considerable bandwidth. The main advantage is that you can say less and do more. Yet for databases nothing much has changed in my career. Oracle has come out with yet another release to improve the tools for the relational database model. Can Oracle's Database 11g Deliver? In many ways this is like continuing to support HTML table and style tags without style sheets. The demands for data and the time requirements added to web development continues to increase. Oracle has had a lot of success because the tools they built in the past have made it much easier to use databases. But the advantages from better tools have reached a threshold that means they may actually reduce efficiency because of the learning expense. I remember my company upgrading its Oracle servers in 2002 and suddenly all my web pages doubled in speed. The timing was perfect. Now if Oracle can help me with my SQL, like the statement that I just finished in two weeks, which should have taken three days.

Is Sprint broken?

Sprint dropped its phone subscribers that call customer service 50 times more a month than the average customer.
As Sprint's move shows, some customers aren't worth the hassle Sprint will save a lot of money not supporting these endless calls by an extremely small minority of customers? Won’t they? As a designer of web sites I sometimes have the opportunity to provide customer service. I can relate with Sprint. Out of all the users of one of the sites I supported, the same three people called. One day I receive a call about the servers being down from one of the three. It was an interesting problem because technically the servers were not down. They were running but bogged down to the point they were timing out before sending any web pages. Because the servers had not crashed none of the expensive software to notify the administrators was triggered. I call the administrators and they did not believe me. If the servers for a Fortune 500 company were down they would be getting thousands of calls not to mention all the server software that should be triggered. I finally get them to pull up one of the web sites on their browser. How could hundreds of web sites be down and I be the only one on the phone calling them? In the move to reduce cost and eliminate trivial calls groups like server administrators have insolated themselves so much that nobody can call. As trivial as the things these three users came up with they always seemed to be legitimate. So is the Sprint network down? I am not calling them.

Nielsen-NetRatings Tries Change

The speed at which technology changes can quickly spell the doom of the products made by entrenched companies. Nielsen-NetRatings is changing their rating system of web pages to include the time spent on the page in addition to how many times it is viewed. Nielsen adds time spent on sites to Web rankings But they failed to adapt fast enough to stay in the rating business for movie box office data. This Google Techtalk by a developer at Rentrack. Is your RDBMS letting you down? Applications of TV Viewing Behavior mentions how Rentrack introduced faster and greater detail for movie box offices and in one year had taken the rating business of all but one major studio from Nielsen. I am reminded of the movie Antitrust (2001) with Tim Robbins where he says that anyone in their garage can come up with a product and put him out of business. Rentrack’s product was not built in a garage, but it was a small scale project that led to a major improvement in technology.