Recent Comments

• John Sinteur on UK citizens ready for biometrics The only thing the average banking industry executive has not trouble grasping is bailout money... or should that be "grabbing"?
• Bankman on UK citizens ready for biometrics As long as the average banking industry executive has trouble grasping the concept, I have little hope for the general public.
• John Z on Consider This…The Stupidest Exercise Machine You’ll Ever See This reminds me of Fred Flintstone and his car.
• Sue W on Once upon a time… er...lovely child, but what sensible person would put makeup on someone that age?
• Sue W on Sine Wave speech Amazing!
• Our Paul on February 2009 Change what the Marine is saying to: "Sir, the President is now in The Hague and will not be available for some time to come" and I will join the Marines if they offer me that job!!!!
• Mark on AIG to Pay Millions To Top Workers So many times in my career I was told the reason that the execs got the big bucks was as a reward for the huge responsibility placed on their shoulders and as a reflection of how well the company was doing. So many times I was told the reason for the single digit % raises for folks at my level were reflections of performance. Their never seems to be any accountability at exec levels for "performance" when a company goes down the toilet.
• doug on Patterns, Land Use Its interesting how Blue states follow the Mississippi River.
• Sue W on Dead Parrot sketch ancestor found Haha! Although in fact the person who wrote this book was interviewed on CBC Radio's "As It Happens" and said something to the effect that these jokes weren't the same at all. The joke about the parrot is that the parrot was deceased when Cleese bought it. The controversy continues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykN-00i7VVs
• Sue W on Leveraged ETFs With 300% Exposures Set To Launch I don't think it'll be as long as 10 years. The old fashioned wisdom is that the market bottom hasn't been reached until all of these speculators have finally puked their guts out in the gutter...the problem is that this might take the entire "world economy as we know it" into a black hole (that is a massive discontinuity). Looking at economic history, this is the kind of long term periodic event that seems likely to happen to average out the long-term effect of making money out of thin air. Forbidding day-trading seems prudent. However the fact that people want to buy things that others have held for <24 hours is the problem. Way back to the Dutch East India Company the value of a share in what was, long term, an insolvent company run for the benefit of its operators (cf. Braudel), kept going up and up until only an idiot could believe in it...and the idiots keep buying.
• Sue W on 90% yup...give the thing away and then sell a useful service based on the thing. Like love really :-)
• Roland Hesz on Successful Software Well, if they only followed it. But usually it's like "do it like always, with some minor twists - you know, we can't change everything -, and lets call it Agile/SCRUM/buzzword of the week". If you call your cow an eagle, it still won't fly.
• Roland Hesz on At U.N., Bush Says Faith Leads to ‘Common Values’ I don't know. I mean, isn't it some religion that causes all the trouble around Iran? Last I heard Bush said that "religious belief leads people to terrorism". So then which is true? On the other hand - if I think about it again, both the mullahs and Bush has common values - the ones you listed above. I would add "speaking nonsense all the time" to the list.
• John Sinteur on 15 Most Offensive, Banned and Rejected Ads Correct - and the only way to get the advantages without the disadvantages is eternal vigilance, never let the government do anything beyond what you've allowed them to do.
• Roland Hesz on 15 Most Offensive, Banned and Rejected Ads I have mixed feelings with the ID cards. First of all, I have to tell that in Hungary we have a national ID card, issued at the age of 13. This is the ID you use in every official business, inlcuding phone contracts, etc. I can see the downside - you are listed, your address, gender, height, etc. is known to the government, not that they can do a lot with it. On the other hand it is pretty difficult to implement voter caging, like in the US, as you don't have to register every single time. That has the additional advantage of nobody knows that you are a registered Dem or a registered Rep. Of course, you can live without it, but there are times it comes handy, and it does not contain that much info about you.