we moved. latest posts below:

8.08.2009

Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer

...and if uneducated, will harm your brain.

Blog of the dentist, I mean lawyer behind the birthers:

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 42 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 26 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-08-07, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-08-07.

8.07.2009

Flash trades being dropped next month by a couple exchanges

From today's Marketplace show:

The Nasdaq and the electronic exchange BATS say they'll both stop offering flash orders as of next month.
Flash trades, or flash orders are computerized "looks" at the market for securities milliseconds before the "public" views them. Doesn't sound like a lot of time, but the fact ~50% of daily trading is computer generated, milliseconds gives an unfair advantage to unknown players.

An unfair advantage to unknown players = another unknown level of complexity to maintaining stable markets, investor confidence & fair price discovery = another level of unnecessary enormous risk to the entire market.

Those reading this probably can't "move the market", but the big money who knows flash trading exists, uses it, & uses computer generated trading can & has moved the market. Remember Fall 2008 with the wild swings? Chance are it will happen again.

Previously here.

Is CPR dedicated to maintainting for-profit health insurance status quo

According to CPR, they are:

...a non-profit organization dedicated to educating and informing the public about the principles of patients rights and, in doing so, advancing the debate over health care reform. Those principles include choice, competition, accountability and responsibility. We believe the path to effective health care reform must be based on the patient-doctor relationship and not from a top-down, big government perspective. Anything that interferes with an individual’s freedom to consult their doctor of choice to make health care decisions defeats the purpose of meaningful health care reform.
CPR is run by the previous CEO of Columbia/HCA, now known as HCA and is a privately held company that is:
...the nation’s leading provider of healthcare.
Scott was apparently forced out, in part, due to the 10 year DOJ investigation into fraud which the company eventually agreed to pay a $1.7B fine. That is billion:
LARGEST HEALTH CARE FRAUD CASE IN U.S. HISTORY SETTLED HCA INVESTIGATION NETS RECORD TOTAL OF $1.7 BILLION at DOJ.
Surely Scott has no influence with HCA. He certainly does at CPR since he apparently runs it.

Why is an organization allegedly dedicated to educating and informing the public about the principles of patients rights pushing the talking point of:
The public option will kill competition, increase health care premiums, lead to the delay and denial of needed medical care and put bureaucrats in charge of health care rather than the doctor. The public option tramples on patients' rights and puts government in charge of your health care. The public option is patient enemy number one and we must stop it.
The talking point is being pushed by CPR at their website, with blog posts, tweets & Facebooking. According to them, on their own website, they are not organizing people to come out and discuss heath care at Town Hall Meetings.

Why is CPR fighting competition with an attack stating [t]he public option tramples on patients' rights?

Does that mean the status quo of a for-profit hospital system and a for-profit health insurance system that has been increasing premiums at multiples of other industries price increases protects patients' rights?

No where on their site do I find an explanation of how for-profit insurance companies currently dictate care.

Over & over they strongly imply you & your doctor alone dictates your care.

If their true mission is dedicated to educating and informing the public about the principles of patients rights and, in doing so, advancing the debate over health care reform, why wouldn't they choose to educate instead of choosing to try to kill the public option?

8.05.2009

Why I love insurance companies or screw the socialist plan for healthcare

Newsweek article via Daring Fire Ball:

Speaking of fair, it seems fair to me that cost-cutting bureaucrats at the insurance companies—not doctors—decide what's reimbursable. After all, the insurance companies know best.

Flash orders could be banned by SEC

Interesting name, flash orders. From The Wall Street Journal:

High-frequency trading, a lightning-fast, computer-based trading technique, now accounts for more than half of all stock trading in the U.S. Flash orders represent a much smaller part of the market, and are used by high-frequency and other traders....
Beyond the official scrutiny lies a tussle among exchanges for market share as high-speed trading becomes a central cog of the market.
So high speed, non-human computerized trading is 50% of the daily volume, with a goal to increase flash trading. Running more orders through dark pools is growing as well.

Flash trading at Bloomberg.
Does flash trading + computing power = a form of front running?
Front running & dark pools at Wikipedia.

Significance to you?

Besides the growth of dark pools' trading, plus the existence of the unregulated shadow banking system which collapsed pretty spectacularly last year, & an explosion in computerized trading - massive volatility in minutes to split seconds that could crash the stock market. Again. And again.

Flash trading gives unknown "players" an unknown advantage & certainly looks like it's close to impossible to "catch" illegal front running, or at the least, opens the door a little wider to tempt one to front run.

New & improved regulations must address all these risks to the system or the next time the market crashes, it'll make the crash of Fall 2008 look like an after school special.

Have you talked to your legislator to push for stiffer Wall Street regs?!

Protecting your privacy in social networking sites

From NYTimes.com, funny but pretty darn scary:

Attention on the issue was brought about with an outraged post on AOL’s Download Squad blog about a man who, while using a third-party app, saw an ad for a dating site that, to his surprise, was dressed up with his wife’s picture. No, she wasn’t looking for a lover. Her picture had been usurped by an ad network in the employ of a third-party application developer, which she believes was a quiz app.
Originally from EFF.org newsletter.

8.04.2009

Change Congress & drive a stake in lobbying

The Problem & a plan to fix it includes you taking a pledge:

“I’m pledging not to donate to any federal candidate unless they support legislation making congressional elections citizen-funded, not special-interest funded.”


If you give a crap about taking back your governement, check out Change-Congress.org & join.

8.03.2009

Giant orb weaver eats bird

Umm, yeah.

So we had this crablike spiny orb weaver in our back yard for a day.

And then we spotted one hiking with friends in First Landing State Park yesterday. Pics didn't turn out.

And then I learned Mary really likes spiders.

And then:

Joel Shakespeare, head spider keeper at the Australian Reptile Park, said the spider was a Golden Orb Weaver.
Are you sure you want to click here to read the article & view the image?

Vol Libre, fractals, CG, & modern finance theories

From Kottke.org, the first CG movie using fractals to generate graphics.

Vol Libre from Loren Carpenter on Vimeo.

In 1980, Boeing employee Loren Carpenter presented a film called Vol Libre at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. It was the world's first film using fractals to generate the graphics.
Fractals explained at Wikipedia.
The birth of Fractal Geometry was by BenoƮt Mandelbrot.

Mandelbrot's research, some of which can be found in his book, inspired others like Nassim Taleb author of The Black Swan. If a fraction of their theories are correct, what has been learned in undergrad & grad schools the last 20 or so years relating to modern finance theory & macro economics is sorta wrong to all wrong.

Imagine the field you are working in & you learn that what you and your collegues have been taught is wrong to various degrees & what that would do to your profession.

Now go "invest" like it's 1989.

Google Code tutorials

A comprehensive resource of tutorials at Google Code.

There are many ways to make websites run faster.