Disqus - Latest Comments for mattmcknight

Re: A VC: Employee Equity: The Option Strike Price

mattmcknight — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 22:44:51 -0000

Another quick note is that with some of these things, you get them to show their work and you have a formula you plug in the values to next year, with whatever market wind adjustment you find most correlated.

Re: Why Our Schools Suck, The Movie

mattmcknight — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:55:37 -0000

Motivation is the problem. Without it, no schooling system will work. Are you suggesting that the problem with American schools is that the students are motivated, but the schools not giving them opportunities? There are many subcultures in America that actively denigrate education and the educated in an attempt to deflect their own status inadequacies and many that just don't care.

It's just like there is no point in building a perfect system of doctors and hospitals if people are just going to sit around writing blog comments and eating snacks all night while they grow to dangerous weights.

Re: The 0.00% Yield

mattmcknight — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:16:07 -0000

Fred, last year I put a large sum of cash assets in FXA, a CurrencyShares ETF for the Australian Dollar. The yield was above 3% at the time, and it was a decent inflation hedge against the dollar. Since then it's up nearly 40%, which has been an positive side effect, one that I expected, but not at that magnitude. It's hard to see where it's going next, but most people are not predicting a huge recovery for the US dollar in the near term, so I am still holding.

Re: When Rails Fails

mattmcknight — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:31:03 -0000

"I think you are discovering the fundamental trade-off of static vs dynamic languages."
I wouldn't call this a tradeoff, it's just a difference as to when things are evaluated. You can run into the exact same run time vs. compile time error checking with uncompiled JSPs or use of reflection in Java or C#.

The fundamental tradeoff is performance.

(definitely agree with you on the capability of the IDE in these circumstances.)

Re: When Rails Fails

mattmcknight — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:27:24 -0000

The stupidest part about this is that he is suggesting that compilers (or the mysterious "static" analyzers) provide better error messages. Interestingly enough, the RubyMine IDE provides an excellent dynamic analyzer that underlines many of the errors listed here.

Re: Left brain, Right brain, and the other half of the story

mattmcknight — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:50:44 -0000

The strict locality theory of the brain is not so simple as L/R. However, a severed corpus callosum shows that there is some clear difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: Speaking My Mind

mattmcknight — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:26:35 -0000

I thought that the healthcare comment was just way off. The ideas you were presenting were very similar to the ideas of people that have been studying this for years. The fact that the ideas make sense to you (and me) doesn't make them less valid.

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

mattmcknight — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:32:29 -0000

Unfortunately, in the aggregate, many forms of preventative care cost more. The basic reason is that you don't which of the people are going to get sick with disease X, so you use the preventative care on all of them that are susceptible. In addition, the ones who live through disease X live longer, thus potentially incurring more costs when they die of something else.

This doesn't mean preventative care is a bad thing, indeed, it greatly increases quality of life and we should pay for as much of it as we can afford. However, it is not a cost savings in most cases. http://content.nejm.org/cgi...

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

mattmcknight — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:24:31 -0000

Isn't food a basic right as well? Why not use govt funded health savings account as our food stamp equivalent instead of having the government effectively set the price of bread? We could have differentials for women, in the manner of a WIC check. Just because it is a basic right doesn't mean it can't benefit from a proven pricing approach.

The point is to limit the price desensitization that occurs with third party payers, such as insurance and Medicare. This will ultimately lower prices and allows us to expand care to more people.

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

mattmcknight — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:17:20 -0000

Except that the original health care reform we were pursuing was to control the runaway costs of Medicare. The system sometimes works for the patient, but at the cost of crippling our economic future. We're working with non-market set of prices on Medicare that are propping up costs in some cases, and insufficient in others. In all cases, it's encouraging overtreatment. It's a system in need of percentage based, means tested copays, in the manner of Singapore.

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

mattmcknight — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:43:37 -0000

If I didn't have the million, I wouldn't demand that it be taken from others by force of law.

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

mattmcknight — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:50:47 -0000

Yes. It must. If there is a million dollar treatment that gives everyone another six months of life, it may not be worth it.

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

mattmcknight — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:47:18 -0000

It's not new and untried. It's similar to the Singapore model.
http://econlog.econlib.org/...

It's not arrogance, it's that this is the best way to reduce costs.

Re: Thank You for Agreeing

mattmcknight — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:26:10 -0000

I have been to the sort of meetings you are describing, and it is likely that they are being run incorrectly. Too many times, we just have people showing up in a room to argue about stuff. Completely Pointless.

To run an effective meeting, you need a strict agenda, time limits, a facilitator, etc.

See this link for more: http://manager-tools.com/20...

Re: Twitter Goes Hollywood and Nerds Go Ballistic

mattmcknight — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:32:28 -0000

I stopped listening to that Arrington guy a while ago, too much noise, anything important gets repeated elsewhere (in other words, thanks!) Twitter turn 140 characters to pure gold. It's pretty good for what is basically one to many SMS.

Re: Do We Deserve A Stock Market?

mattmcknight — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:05:40 -0000

Also agreed, but the short term focus on price and incentives are causing management to act against the long term interests. Sometimes I think Buffett's idea of a high tax on short term cap gains isn't such bad idea. Dividends can be a better way to provide value to shareholders without forcing them into selling their shares of the company ownership.

Re: your monkey called

mattmcknight — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:08:57 -0000

I've listened to this 3 times now. I think have to tweeter it.

Re: Reactions Now Available In The Comments

mattmcknight — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:59:26 -0000

Right, their Wordpress widget just brings in the web reaction piece, it doesn't run the comments. That said, this is something really cool. I'd like to see it somewhere slightly more accessible than the bottom of the comments though.

Re: Highlights

mattmcknight — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:05:49 -0000

The full API is great...

highlight(text, phrases, *args)

Highlights one or more phrases everywhere in text by inserting it into a :highlighter string. The highlighter can be specialized by passing :highlighter as a single-quoted string with \1 where the phrase is to be inserted (defaults to ’\1’)
Examples

highlight('You searched for: rails', 'rails')
# => You searched for: rails

highlight('You searched for: ruby, rails, dhh', 'actionpack')
# => You searched for: ruby, rails, dhh

highlight('You searched for: rails', ['for', 'rails'], :highlighter => '\1')
# => You searched for: rails

highlight('You searched for: rails', 'rails', :highlighter => '\1')
# => You searched for: rails

Re: Introducing Blogrollr - A Blogroll That Works For Me

mattmcknight — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:54:10 -0000

I use BackType and Google Reader shared links for much the same effect...as long as I make a comment.

Re: Kindle 2: Should you stop buying all those iPhone eBooks?

mattmcknight — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:57:56 -0000

Your criticism of the book market being different from the music market seems to be a real straw man. It's just not relevant to the success of the device. People still carry books and a phone, now they can just carry an ebook and a phone.

The iPhone/iPod Touch form factor doesn't really come close to the Kindle. I can read on the Kindle much faster and much more naturally. The book selection is really the big win though- much of the iPod's initial success had to do with iTunes, much like the Kindle leverages the world's best bookstore with preview chapters and the like. Given the choice, I would never read a book on the iPod touch, and I would never watch video on the Kindle, and I would keep emailing on my Blackberry.

Re: What’s Another $14 Billion Anyway?

mattmcknight — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 13:38:49 -0000

It's the not so much the union wages, as it is the work rules, seniority, and inability to scale back. In any case, the union is the parasite that is killing its host- the employees of the American car companies. The union and the management negotiated an untenable short term agreement that doesn't make sense any more.

GM has 96,000 employees covering the health care of over 1 million people.

I say take the bailout monies and fund 10 new car companies. Otherwise I'll be buying a BYD to replace my 05 Prius in a few years.

Re: You Can't Get Different Results Doing The Same Thing

mattmcknight — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:12:21 -0000

I read that NYT piece and it's just not that accurate. What about how many workers they have and the staffing mix? A huge problem with union contracts and seniority rules is the difficulty they create in reducing the size of the workforce when demand drops. If they make cutbacks, they have to cutback all of the lowest paid workers.

Re: You're Doing it Wrong

mattmcknight — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:38:35 -0000

Uh...I think he's talking about pages, not lines, eh? It's much easier when have a great gaggle of right parens. :-)

Re: your monkey called

mattmcknight — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:39:47 -0000

It's always difficult for the constantly touring musician to come up with subjects other than waking up in a hotel and taking a shower.