Comment Re:Sick and tired of people ragging on mark-to-mar (Score 1) 368
You only need $10M to get in on the TALF offerings starting in Feb.
Comment Re:Sick and tired of people ragging on mark-to-mar (Score 1) 368
Think about what you just said. As long as Congress is willing to fund the FDIC, might as well take 3.5% interest on your deposit at a questionably solvent bank.
Comment Re:Sick and tired of people ragging on mark-to-mar (Score 2, Insightful) 368
Wow you're stupid.
The first pillar of Basel II already addresses your issue regarding the risk of sovereign debt.
AIG was killed by ridiculous exposure to credit default swaps, not CMOs on their books. It was predefined how they were to pay out in response to mortgage defaults (which they failed to model accurately).
With regard to banks, it's ridiculous to say that they got "screwed" as they were using the value of overpriced assets to overleverage during the credit boom. That rule works to their "benefit" in boom and forces them to stay solvent (or close) in bust.
Frankly the problem isn't that MTM rules are being used too strictly, rather they are being applied too loosely--and we have walking dead banks that NEED TO GET CLOSED soaking up capital from the Fed and refusing to lend. The Japanese had this problem and are warning us not to repeat it.
Comment Re:My very favorite (Score 1) 517
My favorite Perl book is Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices. Conway teaches how to modularize and make readable your Perl programs. The techniques are general to other languages as well.
Along the way Conway informs readers of a ton of great modules that I wouldn't have heard of otherwise.
Also the jokes are much better than the Camel book.
Comment Re:I can't support this use of tax dollars (Score 3, Interesting) 394
Otherwise, no manufacturer in their right minds would go through all the hassle and expense of buying batteries from an American plant, shipping them to China to be assembled into a product, then shipping them back to the U.S. for consumption...
That's how a lot of US turkey is produced--shipped to Asia for processing then returned for sale. Of course the difference is that turkeys are labor intensive to process and consumers would avoid foreign-raised meat.
Comment Re:Well (Score 3, Interesting) 331
Jobs founded Next which created much of the technology underlying OS X.
The success of OS X has a lot to do with the fact that the core technologies were incubated for eight years. You can go on YouTube and see Jobs' keynote presentations from when he was at Next (someone posted them in comments on
Submission + - Clocky: Thoughts on the commercial design??
Anonymous Coward writes: "Clocky: The Commercial Design
Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away, received a lot of attention on Slashdot back when he was only a prototype. MIT Start-up Nanda, founded by the MIT graduate inventor, recently launched Clocky commercially. It'd be great to get a discussion going on the commercial design of Clocky, especially since it's one of the few mainstream consumer robotics out there. Check out nandahome.com for more info. I'd love to read what other Slashdotters think! Linney"
Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away, received a lot of attention on Slashdot back when he was only a prototype. MIT Start-up Nanda, founded by the MIT graduate inventor, recently launched Clocky commercially. It'd be great to get a discussion going on the commercial design of Clocky, especially since it's one of the few mainstream consumer robotics out there. Check out nandahome.com for more info. I'd love to read what other Slashdotters think! Linney"
Submission + - Poker Champion's Account Cracked, Thousands Stolen
An anonymous reader writes: Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, 2004 World Series of Poker Champion and spokesman for PokerStars, had his PokerStars account cracked by a would-be thief. The miscreant logged in both as FossilMan and under his own account and intentionally lost over $12,000 of Raymer's money to his account before he was caught by eagle-eyed onlookers. Read the full story.
Submission + - Forking Ideas From Ex-Boss
An anonymous reader writes: I have decided to leave my current company of 10 years, after seeing a piece of application developed by me not fully utilized to serve and capture market shares, and I would like to start a new business offering a similar service. This app is surprisingly simple, like an online contact form with a few backend logics for distribution purposes, it is not currently patented and possibly cannot be patented. Obviously I will steer clear of using any codes in the existing app, but would there still legal problems by "forking" a similar service given my intimate involvement with the development in its previous life, and what steps should I take to minimize these risks?
Submission + - Men focus on crotches
JavaRob writes: A study by the Online Journalism Review using eye tracking to improve page layouts turned up an odd result: men tend to reliably look at crotches in photos.
"Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed. [...]This difference doesn't just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site."
Interestingly, it seems like even knowing that their eye movements were being recorded didn't affect the habit.
Side note: the main article is actually interesting, if you can manage to tear your eyes away from George Brett's groin.
"Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed. [...]This difference doesn't just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site."
Interestingly, it seems like even knowing that their eye movements were being recorded didn't affect the habit.
Side note: the main article is actually interesting, if you can manage to tear your eyes away from George Brett's groin.
Feed Hot but Virtuous Is an Unlikely Match for an Online Dating Service (nytimes.com)
In part because of its provocative ads, True.com has become one of the most popular and controversial sites in the online dating industry.
Submission + - Do you educate family about copyright issues?
QuantumG writes: "We live in a time where copyright owners form lobby groups (like the RIAA and MPAA) to misinform the public of their rights and obligations under copyright law. Those insane warnings at the beginning of movies make no mention of fair use and throw around words like "crime" and "theft" with semantic abandon. When your own mother asks you to copy a movie so she can give it to a friend, how wrong can it be? Does any else have these problems or do I just have technically competent, copyright blasé friends and family?"
