And even the iPad app is working.
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WordPress Upgraded
Amazing – I’ve been putting off this wordpress upgrade for almost a year and a half. Turns out I only needed about an hour and a half to get it done, with most of that time actually spent waiting for ftp processes to finish.
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A Year of Verizon
I’ve tweeted a fair bit about my troubles with Verizon and Verizon Wireless. With the latest snafu, I thought I’d recap our year of troubles.
January 2009 – Wife and I decide to combine to a family plan and order new phones. Her phone is lost in the shipping process and takes an extra five days to arrive.
February 2009 – Wife receives a bill from Verizon Wireless after she paid her final account balance for an additional sum of money. When asked, Verizon Wireless cannot explain what the charges are for and “override” them in their system.
February 2009 – Wife’s new phone dies. Replacement is sent.
March 2009 – Verizon Wireless credits us $50 on our bill for no reason. When called about it, they offer no explanation and say not to worry about it. A week later (after our auto payment runs), they receive the charge and turn off our account.
Summer 2009 – Squirrels chew through landline. After complaining about static on the phone, the line is replaced.
Summer 2009 – We move to a “double-play” Internet and phone service option. I call with two questions – are we eligible for the signup “reward” and can someone set up our line for Internet voicemail. Two hours and nine transfers later, someone says they can, in fact, set up the voicemail.
February 2010 – Phone line is dead (no phone and Internet) for 6 days during the first of the two February blizzards in Philly.
February 2010 – After fixing the line, service is now disrupted every time it rains. Phone quality degrades and Internet service is unstable.
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Oh Japanese TV
Those crazy Japanese are at it again. The latest – a new show called “Panic Face King”.
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Health Care Plan Comparison
The Wall Street Journal did a nice job summarizing the various health care plans floating around in Congress. Here’s the summary.
Note the completely useless options offered by House Republicans on most of the major issues. They do nothing to reduce either healthcare inflation or the rising numbers of uninsured who lack access to high quality, affordable medical care.
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Jailhouse Rock
Check out this crazy video from a camera showing a number of drug cartel members breaking out of prison. Apparently the guards couldn’t be bothered to stop the jail break.
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The Wonderful World of TKTS
Also known as a way of buying tickets to Broadway shows that I’ve never used.
The NY Times Arts Beat blog had an interview today with Victoria Bailey, the executive director of the group that runs the TKTS booths. Perhaps next time I’m in NYC I’ll finally have a chance to use the booths.
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Wall Street Wins Again?
Coming off the news of the latest Wall Street ripoff scam, federal regulation to reign in Wall Street is foundering in Congress. Hopefully the regulators, Administration, and Congress can get their act together to put through meaningful reform so banks don’t create multi-trillion dollar holes they need to be bailed out of again, all while making sure the individuals become filthy rich.
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High Speed High Stakes
Also known as how the big Wall Street firms are like casinos.
The NY Times today had an article out today that coincidentally jives with a story I heard earlier this week from someone I work with. Wall Street trading desks have essentially figured out how to determine what buy and sell decisions investors are making in the markets BEFORE those trades are executed and trade against them, allowing the firms to reap huge profits at the expense of regular investors.
It was July 15, and Intel, the computer chip giant, had reporting robust earnings the night before. Some investors, smelling opportunity, set out to buy shares in the semiconductor company Broadcom…The slower traders faced a quandary: If they sought to buy a large number of shares at once, they would tip their hand and risk driving up Broadcom’s price. So, as is often the case on Wall Street, they divided their orders into dozens of small batches, hoping to cover their tracks.
The slower traders began issuing buy orders. But rather than being shown to all potential sellers at the same time, some of those orders were most likely routed to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds — 0.03 seconds — in what are known as flash orders. While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, a loophole in regulations allows marketplaces like Nasdaq to show traders some orders ahead of everyone else in exchange for a fee.
In less than half a second, high-frequency traders gained a valuable insight: the hunger for Broadcom was growing. Their computers began buying up Broadcom shares and then reselling them to the slower investors at higher prices.
The result? The high-frequency traders ripped off the regular investors for $7,800 on $1.4 million in trades. As a %, not a lot, but if this happens EVERY day on EVERY trade, it adds up to billions. All because some large financial institutions have access to your orders before everyone else does, so they can bet against you to steal your money.
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Japanese Cell Phone Laments Go Global
Barring the guy from Gartner Japan in this NY Times article, everyone wants a cool Japanese cell phone. Even the folks at NPR’s On the Media did a story earlier this year.
And why not? On some of my trips to Japan I saw color screens, text messaging, and camera phones years before they ever appeared in the US. Despite Apple’s attempts to be the uber-cool phone of the moment, Japan’s phones are still the best representation of a digital pocket-knife.