Recently in links-of-interest Category

I don't understand Jarvis's statement:

"I believe in the market but I also believe that the government must decide when to regulate it just enough. (That is the essence of why I am a Democrat.)" (The moral imbalance of bailouts)

My personal understanding of a general Democrats' opinion is that there is rarely a reason not to involve the government in our lives as long as it passes the litmus test of "helping" a given segment of the population. And this is exactly what makes me not a Democrat (and these days, less and less of a Republican).

The past few days have been so depressing for me. Every time I opened a browser to peruse the news, my heart sank deeper and deeper. Article after article has been written about the current financial turmoil and a very, very small minority have shown the author to have any understanding of basic economics and the interaction between markets and government regulations. I haven't been over to the Wall Street Journal for some time. No reason in particular... I sometimes lose interest in writing in the WSJ because it has slowly degraded in quality over the past two decades. (I started reading the WSJ and Economist when I was twelve. Soon after, I added a number of university review magazines that I found at Barnes and Noble and other financial mags that I was able to get my hands on. I have continued to read many of these over the years and the only publication that seems to have kept up the quality of writing and reporting - i.e. how good the writing itself is and how thorough the reporting is - is the Economist. I guess I should add that I started reading Reason Magazine 10 years ago and [thankfully] haven't seen a decline there, either.)

Walter Ferguson's editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from September 6, 2008, The state must be willing to take risks to be 'great' fails on so many levels to develop a cogent argument for state intervention, it took me three tries to read the entire piece. My absolute favorite piece is the ridiculously misleading portion of the article that mentions Denmark as a leader:

"Looking for a role model? You’d do worse than Denmark. Forbes named that country the best in the world for business. According to the magazine, Denmark has public policies that foster low inflation, low unemployment, low taxes, free trade, innovation, protection of intellectual property and the development of technology. In operating their businesses, it is worth noting the Danes are energy independent through wind power for electricity and technologies that convert pig blubber to heating oil."

No, Mr. Ferguson, it would be hard to make the United States or any State more inept and bureaucratically rigid as Denmark. Stagnant population growth (0.295%), low immigration (a measure of a country's desirability for finding new opportunities), and marginal tax rates for middle income (by US standards) reaching over 63% make Denmark a very, very poor example, indeed. I lived south of Denmark for over a year and every Dane I had ever met, whether in Germany or Denmark directly, complained about the ridiculous tax structure that afforded little upward movement for the average citizen, which limited their ability to pursue individual, productive desires and interests. Think of it this way, until mid July of each year, you will have spent the previous months paying your dues to the State. It is only after July that the money you have worked hard earning is actually yours. The motivation to work harder and/or be more creative is nullified by the fact that whatever extras you do earn, most of that will go to the State.

"Sorensen, who graduated from business school in Copenhagen, found himself earning the equivalent of more than $100,000 before he was 30 - and paying 63 percent of it in taxes...'When you are at 63 percent tax, you don't look forward to the evaluation with the boss to get a raise," Sorensen said. "You look for more vacation or a training course in the tropics - something that you get the full benefit of.'" (High income taxes in Denmark worsens a labor shortage - International Herald Tribune)

Denmark's low poverty level and unemployment is masked by the fact that the State doles out money and "jobs" to persons by earmarking huge portions of the working class's income towards those people. It is similar to the idea that there were no unemployed in the socialist/communist Soviet Union. While statistically true, as they say, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Mr. Ferguson should have stopped writing there. His idea that, "Wisconsin must seek to define those industries or technologies that are crucial for future economic development. The state should then push development of those industries or technologies through the full benefit of public policy instruments and expedient action..." is absolute nonsense. The government - i.e. no governing body, nor State institution - has ever been successful at guessing which ideas will become the next commercial hits. There have been cases where state fostered development of technologies has eventually reached the public and been the catalyst for new opportunities. GPS and Cellular Telephony are two examples. The state was working for a solution to a logistical problem in both of these cases and hadn't foreseen the possibility that your average citizen would find a use for these products - vis a vis mobile phones and in-car navigation systems. This is very different than saying the State should decide which new ideas/technologies are desirable and subsidize them. Let me put it this way: a product was developed because there was a specific, tangible need. Said product was then applied to unknown or unforeseen needs. This is not the same as saying we don't know what the need is for technology xyz, but we're going to subsidize it anyway.

It is surprising that as a consultant and former executive at two Silicon Valley companies, Mr. Ferguson is confused that infrastructure and legal consistencies - i.e. safe and reliable transportation, communication, legible/understandable laws etc. - are the same as providing bureaucratically driven "vision" to business development. Let me say this as a businessperson: leave me alone. Give me a consistent low tax burden and easy-to-navigate rules and regulations and I will provide the success you and your visionaries think the State is there to provide. Furthermore, the State does nothing more than muddle the playing field and cannot be held accountable for the inevitable mistakes it will make. The markets I and my business colleagues serve are very swift at telling us whether or not we are heading in the right direction. A measure of responsibility is handed down by way of business growth or shrinkage. We don't need more "help" from the State. Sure, there are plenty of us that wish for handouts and I believe those of us who do are not only lazy, but ignorant of the long term damage handouts do to any free market system. Socialism in its grand form - i.e. central planning - has had its day in the Soviet Union and modern day China. It lost the battle and will continue to lose the battle because markets and people's desires cannot be planned and they cannot be foretold by some any visionary - from the State or elsewhere.

By the way, all of the "subsidized employee training, property tax concessions, low or interest-free loans..." are patently unfair. Why are we being slapped with the financial responsibility for supporting your new wave of innovation just because our companies and our staff have been successful and providing a product to the market that is of obvious desire? Where do we stand when it comes to fostering growth and success? In your scheme of investing in future technologies, nowhere. You seem to forget that those new industries you wish to "help along" will not only stand on the shoulders of those who have already succeeded, but trample them to the ground through the process of recklessly transferring away from them what they have rightfully earned for themselves and need for future investment. Shame on you for suggesting such a thing.

A coworker came into my office yesterday afternoon and asked what I knew and/or thought of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae being taken over by the government. Oh god... here we go again, and I was gonna' get mad. I hate - as much as anyone can hate anything - when the government steps into a situation and cleans up a mess of someone else's making. Except in the case of Freddie and Fannie, the idea that the government was "stepping in" wasn't so clear. So, I took a deep breath, tried to tell him what I knew of the history of both organizations (i.e. that they were created to give out and/or support people who would have trouble getting loans for homes from private institutions) and what seems to have been the reason why the Treasury Department decided to step in and "seize" their business operations. (I was and am angry because yet again, the average taxpayer is going to be financially responsible for devastatingly inept fiscal management and no one will be truly held accountable for making poor choices - i.e. let financial ruin of many of those involved ensue.)

This morning, I open up my news reader (these days, Google Reader) and see a blog entry over at Cafe Hayek from Russell Roberts on this very issue. Here is a taste:

"Once upon a time, Fannie and Freddie were partners in a business. Well, it wasn’t exactly a business. It was almost a charity. Not quite. It was sort of a government agency. Or maybe it was all three together. When Fannie and Freddie talked to investors, they acted like a business. When they talked to the government regulators, they acted like a government agency." (Who is to blame? by Russell Roberts)

Russell nails it better than I could have. Thanks to him to not only explaining a few details of the Freddie/Fannie debacle, but also for making the topic entertaining.

Kottke always finds things that intrigue me... This is just plain 'ol good schtuff.

Had to update the link... Vimeo deleted the video for some or other reason that I ... I really don't care why. I can't stand the poor quality of YouTube videos, but I don't want to delete this post, so taking Kottke's lead - again - here it is on YouTube.

...or, said another way: sitting on your Windows Vista machine, if you want to access an SMB/Windows share on a Mac running Leopard (aka 10.5), then following the instructions found on a MacTalk Forum solved my problem:

I couldn't get the Vista (Business) machine to access an SMB/Windows share on my Mac Pro. For some reason, it simply wouldn't accept my username and password combination. The answer is actually quite simple. In the Username field of the dialogue box on the Vista machine, you need to type in DOMAIN\yourusername instead of simply yourusername. Leave DOMAIN as just that. Worked like a charm. Click on the image above for a higher resolution view or simply click on the link to the MacTalk Form thread where I found the solution. Thank you to MacTalk Babysitter.

I love little applications that just work™. Back in my Windows days, I remember coming across an application for network throughput monitoring at analogx.com (NetStat Live) and thought, "how awesome! I don't need anything complicated, just a small app that shows network throughput on my system... and here it is!" The same thing occurred today. Now that OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) supports bluetooth stereo audio via the A2DP BT profile, I purchased a BT dongle that I can hook my headphones up to so that I'm not tethered to my office desk. (See the IOGear Audio Transport.) Once I got the dongle paired up with my workstation, I couldn't seem to connect to the stereo side of the headset. I was getting monaural sound, but not stereo. (Which, by the way, worked previously in 10.4. You could connect to a bluetooth stereo headset, but it would only pass audio in mono to the headset, not stereo.) I'm very familiar with how OS X handles audio input and output vis a vis System Preferences, but for some reason, I couldn't get stereo output.

I did a quick search via Google of the A2DP profile in 10.5 and found mention of Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource in a forum (I can't find the forum right now). I downloaded the app and had my problem solved in 30 seconds - literally. SoundSource is very good at showing sources and outputs for audio (the headset I'm using doesn't show up as well on their menu as in the Sound menu in System Preferences, but it is more intuitive). Just select and change source or output on the fly. It is that simple. To top it off, since it is free, there isn't a reason not to try it.

Screenshot:

I cannot believe it has taken this long for me to figure this out:

Multiple identities in one account with Apple Mail.app (link)

I work with an average of five different email accounts to separate work from personal from junk. Essentially, all of the email addresses I use pour into one single account except for those associated with email lists (because of the sheer bulk of messages I would receive and can't process). The problem is that I thought Apple's Mail.app didn't have an easy way of sending from these "identities" unless you added the identity as another mail account. Not true. If you follow the instructions in the above link, all you have to do is take the one account you wish to change and add every email address (i.e. identity) you want to send from in a comma separated list in the Email Address field where you set up your account. I know this works on OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) and will test on 10.5 (aka Leopard) later. Props to Jonathan for finding this very simple solution.

I really want to understand what is going on when I fiddle with f/stops, increasing depth of field, but further limiting the amount of light that hits the film or sensor. I also was having a difficult time understanding the concept of focal length considering that a lens labeled as 300mm, isn't necessarily 300mm long. Somehow, this afternoon, I stumbled across A Tedious Explanation of the f/stop. What a godsend. For issues with depth of field (which has been hitting below the belt on a lot of my pictures) and speed of the exposure (heavily impacting the clarity of my pictures), Matthew explains:

"You need to know the doubling/halving relationship and how it works with shutter speeds in exposure. This is key since the shutter speeds and f/stops you choose have implications in how your final photograph will look in ways other than purely the amount of light on the film. You need to know that as you stop down you get more depth of field. You do not need to go around calculating aperture areas for your lenses and f/stops. If you're like me, it's worth doing it once to see that it works, then forgetting about."

Thank you, Matthew, for taking the time to write down your notes. After a third read, I think I finally get what I'm doing wrong and now know how to clear up many of the problems I've had.

For most, the issue with general warming of populated areas and the environment in general is a closed issue. You would think with all the scientific postulating going on, one would at least be open to debate. We debate everything except when people invoke think about future generations ad hoc arguments. Once I get permission, I'll post a graph I found intriguing. For now, here is a link of interest:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide