Record as I Am

Tech && Soccer && PHP Coding - More Bolivian than America expected.

Go read Christopher Buckley's explanation of his NR resigation - its a fascinating look at how one conservative thinks of the "modern conservative movement."  The latter now apparently means, think as we tell you to think, and disloyalty must not be tolerated.  A lot of people are realizing that the current Republican leadereship, with its concentration of executive power, expansion of government spending, and theocratic totalitarian tendencies is not what used to be called the "Republican Party" just a few decades ago.

Good to see someone is finally asking their users to upgrade to IE6. I hope more websites start ignoring support for IE6 soon, since its such a headache to cater to. Of course, each will have to make its own cost-benefit decision, but we're pretty close to the point that for most sites, supporting IE6 isn't worth the time and effort. Just let your page degrade, and provide an avenue for users to upgrade.

Seems it probably won't work so good. Glad to see Bolivia bucking the trend here. Seems like privatizing, oops, I mean purchasing shares in a bank is more effective.

RGE - Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor

But government purchase of bad assets was the exception rather than the rule. It was used only in Mexico, Japan, Bolivia, Czech Republic, Jamaica, Malaysia, and Paraguay. Even in six of these seven cases where the recapitalization of banks occurred via the government purchase of bad assets such recapitalization was a combination of purchase of bad assets together with other forms of recapitalization (such as government purchase of preferred shares or subordinated debt).

Market forces could be used to clean up power plants in China by encouraging the use of cleaner burning coas. We need China to clean up its power sector if we want to make a real dent in global Carbon emissions. On CARMA, you can see the best publicly available data on the Chinese power sector's emissions. There are over  are 2,162 plants, emitting 3.12 billion tons of CO₂.

If you're trying to figure out why we're in the financial mess we are in, I highly recommend reading the report linked below. From what I can gather, its a systemic failure, and one cause came from relaxing lending standards. While it helped many people who couldn't afford a home afford one, a lot of them, obviously couldn't keep their homes once their adjustable rate mortgages readjusted. I think a lot of people had an interest in a few metrics focused on measuring home ownership and didn't consider other potential effects of their policies, namely the influx of speculators and flippers who took advantage of said standards.

TiVo and EchoStar, of Dish Network fame, have been embroiled in patent litigation for a number of years, regarding a number of patents that TiVo uses to implement some of its DVR features (AFAIK, these are not trivial patents but IANAL so don't quote me on that). TiVo got some good news today, as the Supreme Court refused to hear EchoStar's appeal and letting the preevious judegement stand. The stock, unlike most of the rest of the market,

I sincerely hope that both parties are negotiating in good faith and trying to prevent further violence and bloodshed.  But that's me, I'm a bit of an optimist that way.  When Morales says he will get his constitution approved "Por las buenos, o las malas", essentially translated as "By any means necessary", its difficult to believe that the opposition would come to the table and make many concessions.

Here's the thing, I agree that most, if not nearly all, Bolivians of European backgrounds hold very disturbing and racists views towards indigenous people.

Things continue to deteriorate in Boliva. First, Evo's government expels the U.S. ambassador - but at the same time sent a letter to Dept. of State indicating that Bolivia wants to "maintain bilateral relations." Me thinks someone should explain to him what expelling an ambassador indicates. The eastern provinces are in basically full rebellion against the central governnment.

Both sides have all the rhetoric, but at the heart of this dispute is who controls one of South America's largest natural gas reserves and the revenues that it generates.

"We were excellent," forward Landon Donovan said. "The first half was one of the most dominating performances I have ever been a part of. We were good all over the field."

As if there was any chance left that I'd vote for McCain this fall, this pretty much seals it. BTW, Comedy Central last Thursday had a great movie about candidate McCain. Yeah, I'm a few days behind on that, but life is hectic with a kid. Its actually kind of nice - practically the only time TV is on is for a soccer game.

Wonk Room » Is Sarah Palin A Creationist?

Is McCain’s choice for vice president a creationist?

I recently swapped my old Series 2 TiVo for an HD-capable DVR from Verizon FiOS. While I love the fact that I can record high-def programming, I miss my trusty, user-friendly TiVo. Here are a few things that Verizon — and all of the cable companies that also rent DVRs to their customers — could learn from TiVo.

Surfing on the sly with IE8's new "InPrivate" Internet

These new features are part of Microsoft's continuing Trustworthy Computing initiative to ensure that software and websites respect the user's privacy.

I might be a bit paranoid, but shouldn't that read:

These new features are part of Microsoft's continuing Trustworthy Computing initiative to ensure that software and websites must go through Microsoft to get a user's private information.