I did it, front and both side lawns. That gets my exercise done for the day.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Sibelius Shakedown
Obama's secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sibelius, has been calling CEO's of industries her department regulates asking for money, "voluntary donations", to fund Obamacare. Congress has refused the funding and so to bypass Congress, HHS is atempting to raise the money "privately".
Imagine your phone rings. It's Ms.Kathleen Sibelius, or perhaps its Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sibelius. You take the call. She asks you for money. What do you say? Knowing that bureaucrats under her command can make your life and your company's life, a living hell. Real voluntary that donation is.
Someone on NHPR said this was OK as long as Ms Sibelius didn't use here title over the phone. As if anyone in the health business wouldn't know who she was.
It may be legal, but it sure is tacky. Most people call it blackmail.
Imagine your phone rings. It's Ms.Kathleen Sibelius, or perhaps its Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sibelius. You take the call. She asks you for money. What do you say? Knowing that bureaucrats under her command can make your life and your company's life, a living hell. Real voluntary that donation is.
Someone on NHPR said this was OK as long as Ms Sibelius didn't use here title over the phone. As if anyone in the health business wouldn't know who she was.
It may be legal, but it sure is tacky. Most people call it blackmail.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Benghazi, where was the air support?
Benghazi has been getting plenty of air time on Fox News anyhow. All the talk is about 12 rewrites of Susan Ricet's talking points, and who failed to call it terrorism.
The real issue. Where was the air support for the Benghazi consulate. We could have had fighters overhead within two hours and heliborne infantry within four hours. Where were they? Who ordered the Tripoli rescue force to "stand down"? Was it General Carter Ham, commander of Africom?
Let's face it, bureaucrats will ignore security warnings. Pearl Harbors will occur. But to fail to send support to Americans under attack in Indian country is in excusable. I want to know who hung our men out to dry, and I want him fired.
The real issue. Where was the air support for the Benghazi consulate. We could have had fighters overhead within two hours and heliborne infantry within four hours. Where were they? Who ordered the Tripoli rescue force to "stand down"? Was it General Carter Ham, commander of Africom?
Let's face it, bureaucrats will ignore security warnings. Pearl Harbors will occur. But to fail to send support to Americans under attack in Indian country is in excusable. I want to know who hung our men out to dry, and I want him fired.
"Sorry, I probably won't hire you"
Title of a Wall St Journal opinion piece. The author, president of a New York ad-tech company, was saying that candidates who couldn't program a computer were in his opinion too poorly educated to consider for a job.
I tend to agree with him. I learned FORTRAN programming in college, and it was the reason I got a number of different jobs over my career. Over the years I became fluent in C, C++, PDP-8 assembly language, PDP-11 assembly language, Z-80 assembly language, BASIC, 8086 assembly language, Modula-2, 68300 assembly language, Pascal, and SPS-81 DSP assembly language, and probably a few others that escape me just now.
Ability to program kept me gainfully employed and my family supported for forty years.
Certainly programming is a much more worthwhile college subject than gender studies, black studies, sexual studies, sociology, political science, peace and justice, art history, education and underwater basket weaving.
Getting a computer program to work means you under stood the problem correctly, (easier said than done) and were able to express the solution clearly and correctly in an obscure artificial language. An unforgiving language that will do evil things for a single misplaced punctuation mark. A person who can do that, is able to write a proposal, or a specification, or a user's manual that worth someone's time to read. With some practical programming experience a person can estimate the degree of difficulty of a new product development project, and may have a chance of understanding what the technical people on the project are saying. When I'm hiring and I have a choice between a programmer and a non programmer I'm gonna hire the programmer 'cause programming demonstrates real thinking ability which a gender studies major does not.
A pity that few college graduates bother to learn to program while they are in college. Fortunately programming can be picked up by self study. You get a book, you download the necessary compiler, and you work the homework problems. Coding is fun, like woodworking, oil painting, or video games and only ordinary levels of motivation are required to get pretty good at it. A good reason for picking C, is the existence of a really marvelous book, "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie. Paperback, it's only 3/8 inch thick and contains everything anyone will ever need to know about C, and it's all written in real English.
I tend to agree with him. I learned FORTRAN programming in college, and it was the reason I got a number of different jobs over my career. Over the years I became fluent in C, C++, PDP-8 assembly language, PDP-11 assembly language, Z-80 assembly language, BASIC, 8086 assembly language, Modula-2, 68300 assembly language, Pascal, and SPS-81 DSP assembly language, and probably a few others that escape me just now.
Ability to program kept me gainfully employed and my family supported for forty years.
Certainly programming is a much more worthwhile college subject than gender studies, black studies, sexual studies, sociology, political science, peace and justice, art history, education and underwater basket weaving.
Getting a computer program to work means you under stood the problem correctly, (easier said than done) and were able to express the solution clearly and correctly in an obscure artificial language. An unforgiving language that will do evil things for a single misplaced punctuation mark. A person who can do that, is able to write a proposal, or a specification, or a user's manual that worth someone's time to read. With some practical programming experience a person can estimate the degree of difficulty of a new product development project, and may have a chance of understanding what the technical people on the project are saying. When I'm hiring and I have a choice between a programmer and a non programmer I'm gonna hire the programmer 'cause programming demonstrates real thinking ability which a gender studies major does not.
A pity that few college graduates bother to learn to program while they are in college. Fortunately programming can be picked up by self study. You get a book, you download the necessary compiler, and you work the homework problems. Coding is fun, like woodworking, oil painting, or video games and only ordinary levels of motivation are required to get pretty good at it. A good reason for picking C, is the existence of a really marvelous book, "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie. Paperback, it's only 3/8 inch thick and contains everything anyone will ever need to know about C, and it's all written in real English.
Adaware
This is an old favorite anti pop up ad and anti virus program. It appeared on the scene back when spybots amd popup ads were first invented. It was, and still is free. Yesterday, suffering from excessive popup ads in Firefox, I though to try it again. I'd already run Malwarebytes, Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool, and Spybot Search and Destroy with no hits. So I downloaded a free version of AdAware and turned it loose. Seems to have worked, it claimed to have found a couple of things, and the pesky popups seem to have gone away.
Downside. AdAware is deeply into real time virus scanners. It installed three add-ons into Firefox, and three more "start at boot time" programs. The drain on CPU cycles was bad. But, trusty old Startup Manager turned off the "start at boot time" CPU hogs and Firefox's Add-on manager turned of the Adaware add-ons.
I love Windows. :-)
Downside. AdAware is deeply into real time virus scanners. It installed three add-ons into Firefox, and three more "start at boot time" programs. The drain on CPU cycles was bad. But, trusty old Startup Manager turned off the "start at boot time" CPU hogs and Firefox's Add-on manager turned of the Adaware add-ons.
I love Windows. :-)
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Security Lending, Legitmate financial activity or a scam?
The Economist reports on the existence of a "securities lending" market worth $1.5 trillion a year. In the spring, right around dividend payment time, European companies and pension funds loan some $100 billion worth of shares to tax exempt institutions. The borrowing institutions collect the dividend, and pay the share owners a "rental" fee equal to the dividend foregone. This dodge enables the lender to avoid paying a withholding tax due on dividends. They don't escape taxes, they just don't have to pay them early, they can wait til they do their taxes at the end of the year.
Borrowing stocks is popular with short sellers like hedge funds. Short sellers figure a stock is gonna fall, so they sell (putting downward pressure on the stock's price) and buy the stock back later when it is cheaper. Used to be, a short seller didn't actually have to own the stock he shorted, he just sold it, and he had the normal clearing time (days) to actually deliver the stock certificate. Stock market players and all public joint stock companies (just about all companies) hate short selling. They got Congress to tighten up on short sellers, the short seller is supposed to actually own the stock he is shorting, before he shorts it. Well, maybe they don't REALLY own it, they just borrow it.
Then there are banks who want their asset portfolio (stocks and bonds) to look "better". They borrow very safe bonds, and they lend out their speculative dollar stocks. Presto, chango, a high grade portfolio to show investors, bank regulators, central banks and other suckers. Greeks do this a lot. Far as I am concerned its a pure scam.
Or places like AIG, who loaned out $90 billion dollars worth of stock and used the cash so raised to play the mortgage backed security market. When SHTF, the borrowers of AIG's stock all returned the stock and demanded their money back. AIG had already lost the money playing the market and the US taxpayer had to pay off $90 billion to the borrowers.
None of this sounds like legitimate financial activity to me. But the Economist worries in print that bad things will happen if governments crack down on it.
Borrowing stocks is popular with short sellers like hedge funds. Short sellers figure a stock is gonna fall, so they sell (putting downward pressure on the stock's price) and buy the stock back later when it is cheaper. Used to be, a short seller didn't actually have to own the stock he shorted, he just sold it, and he had the normal clearing time (days) to actually deliver the stock certificate. Stock market players and all public joint stock companies (just about all companies) hate short selling. They got Congress to tighten up on short sellers, the short seller is supposed to actually own the stock he is shorting, before he shorts it. Well, maybe they don't REALLY own it, they just borrow it.
Then there are banks who want their asset portfolio (stocks and bonds) to look "better". They borrow very safe bonds, and they lend out their speculative dollar stocks. Presto, chango, a high grade portfolio to show investors, bank regulators, central banks and other suckers. Greeks do this a lot. Far as I am concerned its a pure scam.
Or places like AIG, who loaned out $90 billion dollars worth of stock and used the cash so raised to play the mortgage backed security market. When SHTF, the borrowers of AIG's stock all returned the stock and demanded their money back. AIG had already lost the money playing the market and the US taxpayer had to pay off $90 billion to the borrowers.
None of this sounds like legitimate financial activity to me. But the Economist worries in print that bad things will happen if governments crack down on it.
How to prevent it from ever happening again
To prevent it from happening again. They say this after every screwup. There is a simple answer. Find who caused it and fire him/her. Publically. That will teach 'em. We haven't fired anyone for causing great depression 2.0. We haven't fired anyone over Benghazi. We haven't fired anyone at FBI for failing to inform Cambridge police that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was fingered by the Russians as a terrorist. We haven't fired anyone at IRS for targeting the Tea Party. We haven't fired anyone at BATFE for giving guns to Mexican drug runners.
They never learn unless they know something bad will happen to them for being stuck on stupid.
They never learn unless they know something bad will happen to them for being stuck on stupid.
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