Sign in or Create an account
friends
rooms
me
everyone
Larry Greenfield: Comments

Services

Facebook Google Reader LinkedIn Yelp YouTube

Discussion

none this week, 107 all time
none this week, 13 all time

Subscriptions

Bindu Reddy
Bret Taylor
Carl Sjogreen
Ginger Makela
Jess Lee
Jim Norris
Mihai Parparita
Neha Narula
niniane
Paul Buchheit
Ronojoy Chakrabarti
ⓞnor

Rooms

Oil Talk
Larry Greenfield's Comments - View full feed
FriendFeed
bob posted a link
the annual global production of steel is now around 800 million tons per year - roughly enough to make a cube 452 meters on a side.
August 20 at 4:57 pm - Link
Turns out big cubes of metal are heavy and expensive. - ⓞnor
I like the phrase "steel consumption of 300 kg per man per year". Yum. - Larry Greenfield
Show 12 more comments
When construction of the Golden Gate and Bay bridges was at their peak in 1933 their combined steel needs equaled 6% of the national annual production. - Kevin Fox
i find the large solid cubes to be a useful way for getting a feeling of scale for certain things - bob
The annual global production of concrete is around 5 billion cubic yards - roughly enough to make a cube a mile on a side, or in standard metric units, "a holy ginormous fuckton" of concrete. - ⓞnor
Or, enough to make a solid concrete coffin for every person on earth. - Larry Greenfield
Hell, given that we take 60 years to die, a big ol' concrete sarcophagus. - ⓞnor
haha, but how much of the grand canyon could you fill in? - bob
10 miles average width * 1 mile average depth / 2 (assume triangular shape) = 5 square miles of cross sectional area, so a cubic mile of concrete would occupy 1/5 mile, or ~ 1000 ft, of the Grand Canyon. - ⓞnor
We better get started soon because it sounds like it may take a while to fill in. - Paul Buchheit
What size cube of steel do you need to reinforce the concrete used to fill in the Grand Canyon? - Gabe Schaffer
i assume that since it will be solid and resting on the local rock that minimal reinforcing will be needed - maybe just a little bit between the 1000ft sections :P - bob
Shouldn't that be "a holy ginormous fucktonne"? - Jim Norris
According to wikipedia, rebar is 1-5% by volume of reinforced concrete, usually on the low end. If all the world's steel was combined with all the world's concrete, it would be a 2% mixture. What I want to know is how you would build the form. - ⓞnor
urbandictionary agrees with you, Jim: "Metric Fuckton: More properly, "Metric Fucktonne." The Fuckton is the Imperial standard for the measurement of fuckweight, while the Fucktonne, in contrast, constitutes the Metric measure of fuckmass... Generally used to imply superlative quantity with the Metric standard included to emphasize this point. The inclusion of the term is, however, fundamentally a misuse of the standard, as the Imperial Fuckton (2000 Imperial Fuckpounds) denotes a slightly greater measure of fuckweight within Earth's gravitational pull than does the Metric Fuckton (1000 Metric Fuckilograms)." - ⓞnor
Onor, presumably you would fill the Grand Canyon with concrete the same way you would build a large concrete dam -- that is, in sections. If you just poured the whole Canyon at once, it would never finish curing, so you have to do it in chunks just a few yards at a time. - Gabe Schaffer
Wow, about 1/100000000000000000000000000000000000th the size of the puny Earth....keep trying hu-man! - Hayes Haugen
FriendFeed
Paul Buchheit posted a link
Marginal Revolution: Designing Monopoly
August 17 at 5:29 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"In Alabama it is illegal to recommend shades of paint without a license. In Nevada it is illegal to move any large piece of furniture for purposes of design without a license. In fact, hundreds of people have been prosecuted in Alabama and Nevada for practicing "interior design" without a license. Getting a license is no easy task, typically requiring at least 4 years of education and 2 years of apprenticeship." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet
Paul, Licensing in general is a serious problem in a free market. It creates an artificial barrier to entry and leads people to believe that the government can protect them from poor quality. But licensing doesn't ensure quality it limits supply which keeps prices high, thus hurting those it claims to protect, the consumer. - Steve Olson
I don't see any reason why my interior decorator needs a license or my real estate agent needs to be a Realtor®™©, but I'd prefer to stick with a doctor who passed her boards. - Jim Norris
There are good arguments that US doctor's salaries are kept artificial high by medical schools (they only admit a small number of people), licensing boards (requiring internships of immigrants), and immigration policies (keeping them out in the first place). And of course doctors won't let nurses perform procedures they might be well qualified to do. Overall health might be higher if we relaxed some of these requirements. - Larry Greenfield
Larry, Yes, you are correct. If the purpose of licensing is to ensure quality of health care, why do patients frequently have correct a doctor's incorrect diagnosis. I predict that in the future medical care will shift to nations where licensing is relaxed. Medicine aside, why do you need a license to cut hair? It is the government's responsibility to protect you from a bad haircut? Seesh! - Steve Olson
Wrt nurses performing procedures -- there are a couple of reasons: 1) You can't bill as much, or in some cases, at all if a resident or nurse does the procedure and 2) the supervising doctor has her name on the chart and has her ass on the line if something goes wrong. That being said, a significant percentage (~23% in 98-99) of health care today is performed by nurse practitioners -- heavily weighted to family practice and lower paying rural, women and pediatric populations. - Joe Beda
FriendFeed
ⓞnor posted a link
Make that SIR PENGUIN
Make that SIR PENGUIN
Make that SIR PENGUIN
Make that SIR PENGUIN
August 15 at 11:46 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
For Larry G.: "A penguin who was previously made a Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army has been knighted at Edinburgh Zoo. Penguin Nils Olav has been an honorary member and mascot of the Norwegian King's Guard since 1972." - ⓞnor via Bookmarklet
خيلي نازه :) - mhmazidi
Awesome. - Larry Greenfield
Twitter
patrick collison posted a message on Twitter
FriendFeed
Sanjeev Singh posted a link
Add unmap method to MappedByteBuffer
August 8 at 11:38 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"We at Sun have given this problem a lot of thought, both during the original development of NIO and in the time since. We have yet to come up with a way to implement an unmap() method that's safe, efficient, and plausibly portable across operating systems. We've explored several other alternatives aside from the two described above, but all of them were even more problematic. We'd be thrilled if someone could come up with a workable solution, so we'll leave this bug open in the hope that it will attract attention from someone more clever than we are." - Sanjeev Singh via Bookmarklet
"Suppose that a thread operating on behalf of Alice maps a file into memory and then unmaps it. A second thread operating on behalf of Bob then maps some other file that the underlying operating system happens to assign to the same memory address. Now Alice's thread can read, and possibly even modify, the contents of Bob's file." - Paul Buchheit
Show 12 more comments
Seems kind of dumb. Suppose that the threads are all under my control and I really do want to unmap a file? It's like they are still thinking strictly in terms of browser applets instead of normal server-side code, which is really the only thing people use java for anyway. - Paul Buchheit
It is kind of dumb. Fortunately the workaround (if you use a few, large files) is not that bad. Call System.gc(), System.runFinalization() and try again..... - Sanjeev Singh
Who designed a file API with an Open command but no Close? It seems almost useless to me. Paul: a browser would not have threads running on behalf of different users; a server would. - Gabe Schaffer
If they're unwilling the pay the cost to check whether the mapping is valid, how do they ever manage to stomach the cost of bounds checking the get() calls on the MappedByteBuffer? I suppose they probably consider the cost of bounds checking inevitable, and maybe it can even be optimized out with a sufficiently clever compiler. They could at the very least offer a slower unmappable flavor that does make the validity check. - ⓞnor
When I do use C++, it's not that C++ compiles to something faster than Java, but rather because C and C++ give me direct control over memory and other resources. Most languages focus on the common case, and make things easier 99% of the time, and then make that 1% tear-out-hair frustrating. C++ makes things harder 100% of the time, but it's predictably hard and I never feel like I'm going to run into something like the unmap issue. - Amit Patel
Gabe, the real issue is who controls the code. On the server, it's typically all my code and I'm not worried about complex security schemes to protect one thread from attack by another. The idea with applets was that you could run untrusted code from third-parties and they would all be kept in a secure sandbox. Of course such code would never be allowed to mmap, which is why "security" is a really dumb reason to exclude this feature. - Paul Buchheit
Even if you disregard the security, there's the safety issue to consider. Having another file mapped there is harmless, but mappings can be read/write. If you unmap and then some other part of the system (possibly a C library) allocates memory there you can end up crashing the program. Not good. - Larry Greenfield
What's wrong with mapping in /dev/null instead? Doesn't mmap normally replace existing mappings of the same address? - Jim Norris
Jim: there is a race condition where some other thread in the process could allocate the memory between when you unmap the file and map in /dev/null. - Gabe Schaffer
Larry, unmap is unsafe in the same way that free/delete are in c/c++. It's not ideal, but I'd rather have an unsafe op that I need to be careful with than not have it at all. They can call it "reallyDangerousAndScaryUnmapThatYouProbablyShouldNotUse()". - Paul Buchheit
Hmm, surprisingly you don't seem to be able to write your own mmap/munmap in JNI, so I can't say just use JNI nyah nyah. - Larry Greenfield
If Sun didn't implement this in JNI, how else could they have done it? JVM changes? - Gabe Schaffer
Larry, you can use JNI to do mmap/unmap. One of the JNI examples does that: http://java.sun.com/developer/... - Sanjeev Singh
Sanjeev, that example appears to be simply copying the bytes of the mmaped file into a java byte array: jb=(*env)->NewByteArray(env, finfo.st_size); (*env)->SetByteArrayRegion(env, jb, 0, finfo.st_size, (jbyte *)m); close(fd); - Paul Buchheit
I take it back. It is possible, using NewDirectByteBuffer (I misread the definition of this call when I first looked at the JNI documentation). That should be sufficient to implement an unsafe unmmap for Java code. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0... - Larry Greenfield
Twitter
Rebecca Miller posted a message on Twitter
FriendFeed
Larry Greenfield posted a link
cbs5.com - Business Owners 'Yelp' About Internet Ratings Site
August 5 at 7:45 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Kellinger said Yelp told her they would move the negative posting to the bottom of her page. Kellinger refused to pay. "I felt like that was really unfair, and that they were holding me hostage," said Kellinger." - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
FriendFeed
Chris White posted a link
Pressure Grows for F.B.I. to Show Anthrax Evidence - NYTimes.com
August 4 at 7:59 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"But the investigators found some personal quirks, according to law enforcement officials and people who knew the scientist well. They found that Dr. Ivins, who had a history of alcohol abuse, had for years maintained a post office box under an assumed name that he used to receive pornographic pictures of blindfolded women. Years ago, he had visited Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses at universities in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, an obsession growing out of a romance with a sorority sister in his own college days at the University of Cincinnati — although someone who knew him well said the last such visit was in 1981." - Chris White via Bookmarklet
Maybe this guy did it, but the way this investigation was conducted and is being publicized just seems wrong to me. - Chris White
"They had even intensively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, “Your father did this,” according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend." - Chris White
More interesting is http://friendfeed.com/jayrosen 's crusade to get abcnews to out their sources, who, he argues, abused confidentiality to leak untrue stories about the source of the anthrax - j1m
Fundamentally, this is so awesome for conspiracy theories. It's not totally clear if Ivins did this, but it's pretty clear that someone or ones working for the _United_States_Army_ did commit a terrorist attack using biological weapons. ! - Larry Greenfield
That's just what they want you to think. - Jim Norris
FriendFeed
Larry Greenfield posted a link
NYC Airports Vow To Block Flight Auctions - News Story - WNBC | New York
August 4 at 2:28 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Industry opponents of the auction scheme contend it will not reduce delays but will jack up prices of airline tickets, and lawmakers in Congress are already pushing legislation that would short-circuit the Bush administration's auction plan." - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
Is there an unbiased economics reason why auctions should be opposed? It seems to me that airlines object to them because the current airlines have something for free that's very valuable. Is there a reason as a passenger I should oppose them? - Larry Greenfield
It might depend on your willingness to trade off time spent waiting for delayed flights and possibly higher ticket prices or fewer routes. There's clearly a big externality that the Port Authority doesn't care about though. - Jim Norris
If there's a large contingent of people who put a low value on their time, wouldn't the airlines be scheduling flights in the middle of the night once auctions begin? The airports can't be that clogged with cargo, right? - Larry Greenfield
People might have irrational expectations about wait times or might even act risk-positive (risk-perverse?) towards them? - Jim Norris
Google Reader
Kushal Dave shared an item on Google Reader
Frequently Asked Questions – slydial
August 2 at 1:44 pm - Link
How's it work? Do they just have complicated business relationships with all the cellular carriers? - Larry Greenfield
FriendFeed
Gary Burd posted a link
The single assignment cargo cult
July 26 at 9:04 pm - Link
"unlike virtually every other language on the planet where you are free to bind values to the same identifier over and over again, in Erlang you can do it once and only once." - Gary Burd
Isn't this the same old holy war about the value of referential integrity that rages among functional programmers (or between functional programmers and others) for decades? It seems to boil down to whether you think it's useful to name a value or a slot, and everyone talks past each other because it's hard to prove whether any particular conceptual framework is better or worse. - ⓞnor
Show 15 more comments
I think you, and the author, give the Erlang folks far to much credit. But does this really count as a cargo cult? - j1m
Cargo cult programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... - Gary Burd
Why do we need Erlang? Does it solve any problems not handled by other languages, and is it suitable to replace those languages? Is it a practical language like Python, or more of a theoretical language like Lisp and Prolog? - Chris White
It's a practical language, and it has a consistent concurrency model that works well with distributed systems, something that most languages struggle to grapple with. I don't actually know Erlang but it doesn't seem nearly as pointlessly me-too as, say, Ruby. - ⓞnor
Gary, but the thing we're discussing here is forced by the language, isn't it? I thought cargo culting referred to something programmers 'chose' to do, not something required by the language. - j1m
I don't think that single assignment is part of a functional holy war. Is there any other common language that enforces single assignment? (Maybe I use them all the time and don't realize it.) - Larry Greenfield
I thought single assignment was almost the definition of functionalism - I remember some group's logo being a ":=" with a no-sign around it. - ⓞnor
Functional languages generally allow you to rebind variables to new values (without destroying the old values). In SML, for instance: let val x = 3 val x = x + 1 in x end gives the value "4". Erlang doesn't allow that. - Larry Greenfield
I see. But why are these guys using X and Y and X1 and X2 and X3 in their examples? Those are dumb variable names. Surely part of the point would have to be some stylistic matter where you actually name a thing, and then never re-use that name for some other thing. - ⓞnor
I suppose so. Since I'm not an Erlang person, it seems kinda goofy to me. - Larry Greenfield
j1m, the author claims that some Erlang programmers think that multiple assignment is bad without really understanding why. If this does not fit the definition of "cargo cult programming", then it's something similar. - Gary Burd
I think of "cargo cult programming" as more or less verbatim copying of a code or technique without understanding anything about it - "I don't know what this does but it seems to make things easier". I've never seen it applied to a sort of fundamental concept like this. I sort of see where he's coming from but the analogy to the original South Pacific cargo cults seems pretty stretched. - ⓞnor
OK, it is stretched. Perhaps "The single assignment religion" is a better title. - Gary Burd
Regarding the dumb variable names with numerical suffixes: I find that code using the Erlang numeric suffix idiom is usually more readable than code with more descriptive names. For example, I think that "Events1 = add_foo(Events, FooArgs), Events2 = add_bar(Events1, BarArgs)" is easier to read than "EventsWithFoo = add_foo(Events, FooArgs), EventsWithFooBar = add_bar(EventsWithFoo, BarArgs)". - Gary Burd
Why is that? I obviously don't program in Erlang. Sounds like there's some sort of accumulation idiom here? - ⓞnor
The numbering scheme is used when some entity is updated or modified over several statements. In my made up example, I am accumulating events from a couple of sources. Here are some real examples that illustrate my point: The code at http://tinyurl.com/6774zw uses AttrsN to accumulate attributes for an XML element. The code at http://tinyurl.com/59vny5 uses PortsN for the listening port configuration. - Gary Burd
Does single assignment provide some advantage in distributed systems? Or was this just a non-related design/implementation decision made by the language authors? I think it was originally built on top of Prolog, but without the ability for backtracking or unbound variables. - Chris White
Single assignment does not provide any advantage in distributed systems. - Gary Burd
FriendFeed
Oil Talk: Larry Greenfield posted a link
Regulators Say Company Manipulated Oil Market - NYTimes.com
July 24 at 8:30 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Of the five attempts that regulators said were successful, three slightly pushed down the final prices of all three commodities, while two resulted in slightly higher prices for gasoline and West Texas Intermediate." - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
This is why you should mark to VWAP, not closing price. - ⓞnor
Google Reader
Larry Greenfield shared an item on Google Reader
Colbert VSL
July 17 at 9:02 pm - Link
"As the Bush administration lowers the value of life, the benefit from regulating pollution goes down. As we lower the value, we lower the regulation. Right on!" - Larry Greenfield
FriendFeed
Oil Talk: Larry Greenfield posted a link
This Week In Petroleum
July 17 at 7:00 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
Sometimes I love the US Government. The "Energy Information Adminstration" publishes "This Week In Petroleum". They even have RSS feeds for some of their publications! (Warning: there's not much character development in this serial.) - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
And yet they're so dry, even at the height of what most people are calling an unprecedented crisis. I guess you go there for the data, not the commentary. - ⓞnor
FriendFeed
Oil Talk: Chris White posted a message
“Wow, must have been a huge drop in demand or increase in supply over the last 3 days.”
July 17 at 3:10 pm - Link
And a big increase of financials at the same time. I guess you need cheap oil to run banks. ;) - Chris White
Why, yes, crude oil inventories did rise unexpectedly (though only 1%): http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil... - Larry Greenfield
Show 3 more comments
The oil correction that everyone said was going to come, finally did. - Morton Fox
Um, this was from last week. Oil started going down on Tuesday. i guess all the speculators took Bastille weekend off. - Chris White
I can't find the schedule. It might be that these reports come out on Monday reflecting the previous week. But both the supply and the demand (and the expectation of future) do seem to move faster than I would have expected. - Larry Greenfield
I'm absolutely positive that it has everything to do with the dollar finally strengthening. http://finance.google.com/fina... - Andrew Burd
The dollar hasn't strengthened very much. More likely, the dollar is stronger because oil has fallen. I've heard what is happening is that large banks are selling their oil futures to raise capital. We have no visibility into how large these banks' holding in oil and other commodities futures are. My hunch is they're huge. That's why we need transparency for oil trades just like we have for the stock market. - Chris White
We have transparency for the stock market? - ⓞnor
FriendFeed
Oil Talk: Larry Greenfield posted a link
Economic Fears Slice Oil Prices for Second Day - NYTimes.com
July 17 at 3:39 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"As a result of higher gas prices and reduced demand, refiners are using less oil. Instead of falling as refiners draw on their inventories as is common at this time of year, oil reserves have been building up. Oil inventories rose 2.95 million barrels last week, to 296.9 million barrels, the Energy Department said Wednesday. Analysts had expected inventories to drop by about 2.2 million barrels." - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
I love how these articles presuppose the reason for a rise in stock or a fail in oil prices. How do they know? Maybe the boats decided to land and sell their oil before it goes down in price. Maybe the banks decided to sell their futures to raise capital. If "Economic Fears" sliced oil prices, why did the Dow go way up today? - Chris White
Because the stock market has become an inverse oil market. - Morton Fox
Morton, I agree. But many times these articles are confusing cause and effect. - Chris White
FriendFeed
clarke thomas posted a link
Stop blaming speculators for high oil prices. - By Tim Harford - Slate Magazine
July 14 at 7:42 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
"As the great investment writer Fred Schwed Jr. commented, "Only the thoughtful ask, 'What is happening to us?' The popular cry is, 'Who is doing this to us?' and its satisfying sequel—'Just let me get my hands on him!' " - Hutch Carpenter
There's a big difference between speculation of oil and that of bank shares - everybody is dependent on oil. Bank shares can fall through the basement and the government will still bail them out. As we already know, there is no hope for speculation driving oil prices through the roof. - Jody C
Show 4 more comments
"True, when speculators make mistakes, that is destabilizing. But in the case of oil prices, it's hard to see that speculators are playing much of a role. For one thing, inventories don't seem to be rising. If the inventory data are correct, consumers were burning all that $135 oil." - Jason Wehmhoener
Contrary to popular belief, speculators actually lower volatility. To see what happens in a market without futures trading, you only have to take a look at onions: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/2... - Morton Fox
The onion thing is one data point, it's hardly a conclusive proof of anything. The inventory argument isn't very convincing; the cheapest form of inventory is unpumped oil. What we should really stop doing is using the word "speculator". - ⓞnor
The important difference is that if it's not "speculators", just producers conserving their supply of oil, then legislative fixes preventing speculation won't help and may hurt some folks. - Larry Greenfield
The onion example is a data point and a warning. If our legislators are so short-sighted as to end futures trading in oil, we'll see another data point in the oil spot market. - Morton Fox
"Destabilizing speculation requires the opposite: short-selling shares in a trough, thus deepening the trough, and betting that frothy shares will become frothier. In other words, destabilizing speculation means selling low and buying high. If that is a recipe for profit, I am missing something." Does this guy really not understand short selling? Really? - Andrew Burd
And a counter point - http://seekingalpha.com/articl... - Andrew Burd
FriendFeed
Chris White posted a message
“I'm somewhat annoyed at the idea of a 55mph speed limit. Why? Because I like to drive fast, but I don't drive that much. It's the continual driving that is causing the large use of fuel and carbon emissions.”
July 10 at 5:41 pm - Link
Better solutions are: 1) Telecommuting 2) Better public transportation 3) Electric cars 4) Corporate housing - Chris White
Also, does anyone know if airplane travel is more efficient per person in regards to fuel as driving. For example, if everyone stops driving to LA and takes a flight instead, does that result in more or less fuel consumption? - Chris White
Show 17 more comments
I like to drive fast(-ish) too, but I don't consider it a particularly important right on public highways. Airplane travel burns ~= the same carbon as driving solo (depending on the plane and the car), much worse than carpooling. - ⓞnor
No, it's not a right, anymore than fast broadband is, but it's what I want. And there doesn't seem to be any penalty for people driving for long periods, like driving 3 hours for a commute when they could carpool, take public transportation, or live/work closer. - Chris White
More strongly encouraged carpooling would be a bigger win. The efficiency gain from having 2 or 3 people in your car instead of 1 is much bigger than from driving 55 instead of 70. But the right idea is just to have oil cost a lot and have the government be useful about providing ways out (vanpool coordination, public transit, relocation assistance, etc). - ⓞnor
Presumably there are some safety benefits from slower speeds. I don't know what the externalities are, but if the slope is steep enough, outlawing high speeds makes sense. If they aren't, better would be GPS tracking so insurance agencies could adopt your rates accordingly. - Larry Greenfield
Larry, I couldn't disagree more. Are Germany's safety statistics worse than the US? And having insurance companies track me, are you serious? I believe accidents are caused by bad drivers, not high speed. Why should insurance companies benefit from my desire to drive fast? Should they also get more money for people who drive slow in the left lanes? - Chris White
Supposedly lowering highway speed limits actually increases traffic fatalities by encouraging more non-highway driving. - Paul Buchheit
People get really fired up about this, I think it's something about territoriality and cars and so on. Lots of people love to be really angry at slow drivers, for example, and defend aggressive tailgating as reasonable behavior, which is ridiculous. But the statistics on highway safety and speed are muddy at best, possibly because speed limits, police enforcement, actual driving habits, and accident (or fatality) rates are only loosely linked. - ⓞnor
I think it's about getting out of the way if you want to go slow. There are lots of people who drive faster than me, and I'm happy to move over for them. I actually don't care that much about safety statistics. If you want to be safe, don't drive. - Chris White
55 is a quick fix bandaid that does nothing - Christian Burns
Driving in Italy for the first time was a real eye opener for me. On a three lane highway, the right lane was almost exclusively trucks and slow cars. The second lane was for cars cruising along at a decent pace, and the left lane was strictly for passing. If you ventured into the left lane and stayed there for more than a few minutes, a very fast moving car would come up behind you and flash their high beams to move over. This is the right way to run a highway. - Chris White
Italy is not exactly famous for road safety, though. Not that you care about that... but surely you understand that the rest of us do. - ⓞnor
@nor, so you are saying that system is bad because of the statistics? Like I said before, if you care about safety statistics, you shouldn't drive. It's safer not to. Also, you should stay out of cities, don't go hiking or scuba diving, and never go skydiving. Also, reportedly contact with other humans statistically is more likely to cause disease. - Chris White
I really don't understand your point. Life is risky, therefore we should never take any steps to mitigate risk? - ⓞnor
Driving is not really all that dangerous. The key is to have laws -- which we do, very well enshrined laws -- to reign in people who drive dangerously, as iiuc you claim you do. - j1m
Just to be clear, my comment about not caring about safety statistics doesn't mean I don't care about safety. It just means I don't buy the reasons for the statistics. I am almost sure that people moving out of the left lane is safer than not doing so. Whatever Italy's reputation for safety, I'm sure both of us could come up with lots of other reasons other than their driving rules for why theirs is not heralded as great. - Chris White
j1m, not sure what the phrase "iiuc you claim you do" means, but I don't drive unsafely, I drive fast. I don't tailgate, and I don't pass on the right. Driving fast is not driving unsafely, especially if you have the right vehicle. - Chris White
So, is there any sort of evidential data that you would believe? - ⓞnor
Sure, if I can read it and believe it. Not so different than our oil speculation discussions. We can have a gut level feeling, but we don't have any hard data. - Chris White
I don't actually disagree that lane usage habits influence safety in the way you say, I just think that the effect is small and on the same scale as the effect of overall speed. But that sort of comparison really can't be made without much better data, and it's hard to come by good data because nobody is excited about experimenting with their laws with well structured control groups, and habits/conventions are even harder to experiment with than laws. - ⓞnor
@Chris: yeah, I thought you meant you didn't care about being safe. I read, somewhere, that driving safety is inversely proportional to speed variance, not speed. Intuitively, this has great appeal. You can't have an accident without variance! If true, what does this mean? Well, one way to reduce variance is not to go slow in the left lane. But another is just for everyone to slow down (because variances are proportional to means) - j1m
Google Reader
Chris Roat shared an item on Google Reader
Creationist teacher in Ohio to be fired
July 8 at 7:16 pm - Link
"A complaint filed in federal court on June 13, 2008, accused Freshwater of inappropriately bringing his religion to school -- including by displaying posters with the Ten Commandments and Bible verses, branding crosses into the arms of his students with a high-voltage electrical device, and teaching creationism." Wait, what? - ⓞnor
One of these isn't quite like the others? Which one has the most lasting effect? - Larry Greenfield
wtf? - j1m
Details, pictures of the cross-shaped burns on page 9 of the report. - Jutta Degener
FriendFeed
peter posted a message
“Startup idea: On a site enter in birthdays for your friends/family. The site will print and mail a real birthday card that will arrive in time. You pay $2 per card sent. Would you use this?”
July 8 at 5:22 pm - Link
Printed birthday cards are tacky. If it could simulate handwriting... - ⓞnor
http://www.birthdayalarm.com/ - Kevin Gough
Show 17 more comments
You'll have some competition: http://www.jackcards.com - Mike Doeff
What if you could use your phone to take a photo of a handwritten note, and the site would clean it up, put it on a card, and send it? - Jim Norris
I would love this... I would want it to send a bunch of flowers or some such as well... - Bindu Reddy
jackcards is great! i'm using it now. thx mike doeff - peter
Will receiving a birthday card mean anything if it no longer means you remembered? - Amit Patel
Every X% of the time (X is based on a personality survey taken at signup) it will send the card late with an apology. - Larry Greenfield
Probably not because I never remember to do this early enough. Now, if you could promise same day delivery for an extra $1, I'm game. P.S. you should offer to include gift cards (I bet you could get some kind of commission from places like Best Buy, REI, Target, etc). - Michael Leggett
love the same day feature for those like Michael...and me! - peter
It should mail the card to *me*, along with a stamped, addressed envelope for the recipient. I take it out of my mailbox, sign it, write "Happy Birthday!", and stick it right back in the mailbox. I'm imagining some sort of netflix-esque mailer... - Doug Zongker
doug - check out jackcards.com - like it? - peter
doh! - Doug Zongker
do you think your friends know your handwriting? your family might recognize it. wondering if the handwriting could come from someone who isn't you. - peter
Knowing me I would enter a date that was too late. - j1m
sounds like a great app for a social network that already knows your friends birthdays - Kevin Marks
nah, i probably wouldn't use this. i like giving people real things. - Michael Sippey
i dont think this would work on a social network. it's more about your most important relationships. like your mom. - peter
i tried jackcards.com. cool concept but implementation needs some work. took me too long to schedule a card. - peter
How about calendar events that trigger *actual* events? Whether it's online bill payments or sending birthday cards, triggering arbitrary services / APIs based on a time/date you put on your Google Calendar could be interesting. - Jonathan Terleski
google calendar - who uses that? muhahahha - peter
no. these days for generic "happy birthday" greetings i send a $1 facebook cupcake (or some other gift). For people i really care about i send a text message (haaha, but uhm true) and for those i really care about i send a usually belated gift in addition to calling them and singing to them (really off key) on the actual day. I have a google calendar that's just for birthday's which reminds me of the date. Most people i get "day of" reminders, for the people i will gift or call i set up multiple reminders. - Natala Menezes
FriendFeed
Oil Talk: Larry Greenfield posted a link
United States Oil Fund - Daily Holdings
July 7 at 3:04 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
Trying to understand how oil ETFs work. I believe if we pay attention to this page, we'll see them sell a lot of selling of the Aug08 contract 2 weeks before expiration and buying Sep08. - Larry Greenfield
Why do they hold a billion dollars in cash? What is "Total Net Assets", since it's not a sum of the two "Market Value" figures? - ⓞnor
I puzzled about that over the weekend trying to understand, but I gave up and just posted the URL. - Larry Greenfield
USO seems to be weird. http://seekingalpha.com/articl... ... - ⓞnor
FriendFeed
Oil Talk: Larry Greenfield posted a link
The Big Picture | Crude Oil = $145 (The Trichet Oil Rally)
July 4 at 10:55 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
Here's another correlation: "Here's a question -- at what point does ECB Central Bank Chief Trichet realize that every time the ECB hikes rates, it pummels the dollar and sends oil higher?" - Larry Greenfield via Bookmarklet
What's the connection? Euro rate hike -> people move money from the dollar to the euro -> dollar falls -> ??? -> oil costs more? - ⓞnor
I think the argument is as the dollar falls, not only do people put more money into the euro, but they also put more money into oil. Of course, this all gets back to whether we believe oil futures affect oil spot price and all that. - Chris White
Reddit
Paul Buchheit liked a story on Reddit
Dollar Has Dropped 41% Since Bush
July 3 at 11:54 pm - Link
Any idea how the dollar did during the clinton reign? - Atul Arora
Thats super scary - Akshay Dodeja
Show 23 more comments
that's a shame. Surely he will be a stain on history for a long time. - Tsega Dinka
Here is a plot of USD against the Euro - http://finance.yahoo.com/echar... - Atul Arora
I guess frequent flyers from Europe spending their Euros in the US made the best out of it. - Nenad Nikolic via Alert Thingy
dont blame bush...blame the us-consumer - krz9000
I'm not going to Like this. - l0ckergn0me
krz9000: I blame the US Taxpayer who doesn't mind us going to war, but won't raise taxes to pay for it. So the treasury prints more dollars and the dollar goes down in value. We get an implicit tax that way. I call this the George Bush tax plan. Sigh. - Robert Scoble
Honestly, I hope I can amass enough credibility and education over the next few years to pay off my impending law school debts and start a family. On the other hand, it looks like that's becoming abnormal for my generation. Sad. - Andrew Feinberg
I'm generally against taxes, but I view Bush's cuts as an illusion. My tax rates may have gone down by 5%, but the value of my dollars decreased by 41%, so in fact it was a huge tax increase. - Paul Buchheit
People wanting better services and not wanting to pay for them is a common theme the world over. - Jonathan Beckett
I blame Bush's economic policy - wait, what economic policy? - Jody C
Spare a thought for foreign bloggers et. paid in Dollars!! (ie me) - john conroy
Bush's economic policy? When the economy's good, cut taxes! When the economy's bad, cut more taxes! And give each person $600 that they'll have to repay--with interest--after he's long gone!! - Oliver Ortega Chua
I recently went to the ICA conference in Montreal, and yes, their prices haven't changed but I realized how inflated our prices have become. A $15 meal in the states is about the same in Canada. Back in my undergrad years that $15 meal would have seemed nearly double the price. In other words, financial reports are true. Dollar sucks and we get roughly dollar for dollar now in Canada. - Philip Ryan Johnson
Imports are something like 20% of the US economy, so a 40% decrease in dollars means that your costs go up more like 8%, blunted somewhat by finding domestic substitutes. (And it's great for exporters.) Of course, oil is a huge percentage of imports and that's painful for all the obvious reasons. - Larry Greenfield
the more I observe Bush and his team, the more I tend to think that Americans shall blame themselves in first place, or not exactly themselves but that WASP church-going majority of "red states" who gave its silent YES when not removed Bush on second term... you just have two countries within one border and afraid to admit that. - silpol
Afraid to admit that? Dude, liberals have been embracing the two-Americas concept for many years now. See the "Jesusland map", or the very notion of "red states", or the interminable handwringing about the "polarization" of politics, or the so-called "culture wars". State lines, or any set of geographic zones, are a bad place to draw those lines, though. The notion that we deserve our government is hardly new, but consider that Bush did not have a majority in 2004. - ⓞnor
The Federal Reserve and the subprime fiasco has been the largest part of this problem. We've been bailing out the banks by continuing to lower interest rates, taking on bad mortgages, and printing more money while the ECB is pursuing the opposite strategy of raising interest rates to flight inflation The Dow is actually below 7000 points if you track with euros since 2001. People naturally want to own euros because they are appreciating while paying higher interest - Chris White
@silpol we didn't know things would turn out this way - the prevailing political rhetoric hides the fact that we still have much more in common than it seems - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
blame the us consumer? absolutely not. blame the banks and speculators for dong business overseas and hoarding commodities - Cee Bee
@e3r well, the notion about population deserving it's own government is surely old enough (was it Talleyrand who said that?), may be even older than USA as such... as for Bush having no majority - correct me if I'm wrong, but there were no mass protests in US about Bush being re-elected... and by *mass protests* I mean not few shouters in front of White House but _major_ part of population. - silpol
Atul, your euro-usd chart is for the current day. Here is one over the last few years: http://friendfeed.com/e/fb48af... - Chris White
a Democratic Republic does not elect on majority review your government forms again..lol - Fred Grott
Chris, the URL was right - from a Yahoo! Finance chart. When you click on it Yahoo! Finance resets it to currrent day - Atul Arora
Atul, yeah I figured. I've done that before too, which is why I made a static pic. I just didn't want anyone to get confused and think the euro/dollar was going up and down over time. It's simply the dollar going down. :( - Chris White
Yay for mortgage holders! - Ivan Kirigin
While I'm certainly not a Pres. Bush fan, he's not wholly responsible for this sucky economy. http://davidadewumi.com/2008/0... “Greenspan relaxed all of the lending regulations [after 9/11] and printed money like there was no tomorrow,” ... "As the Chinese central bank disinvested — or took their money out — of the U.S. economy, many nations were soon to follow" - David Adewumi