Disqus - Latest Comments for sam

Re: Network Theory Can Explain US Credit Crunch

sam — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:59:50 -0000

This is a very misleading analogy. A less-poor analogy is when a developer asks his OS for 10K of memory and gets a pointer... but it's only for 3K of memory. Are you going to trust the method you just called? Are you (the big banks) going to buy a mortgage bundle from a bank that claims they are worth 1M and 15% of the assets default? Are you going to buy stock in those banks that currently own mortgages where 15% or more of the assets may end in bankruptcy? Will you lend to a small business? There's the problem. It starts in housing, but is not contained therein. Our economy has plenty of "bandwidth" and intelligent agent leaf-nodes which are very able to find new interfaces. The problem is that we are learning that things are not as stable as we had hoped. Step 1 is to discover the value of the assets that the failing / merging banks hold. Step 2 will probably be taking those assets (the "bail out" bill) from those banks and leave them holding more stable assets so those who will lend to them can trust that they can perhaps actually pay. :)

Sorry to be so negative, but man, this post is really misleading.

Re: Come On, Common Criteria People!

sam — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 16:01:24 -0000

Having read a few published formal debates may I recommend that the format be:

Thesis: CC is Whack / Ineffective
(Perhaps this could be formalized some ;) )

Both sides write and opening position. Why CC is ineffective, why it is. (some word limit)

Both sides rebut the opener. (smaller word limit)

Both sides respond to the rebuttal (smaller yet).

If you are concerned about audience attention spans, break the topic up into many sub topics and go round-and-round in this format. In my opinion, it works very very well if you want the resulting document to be a good self-contained work. Looking forward to the scuffle!!! Cheers!

Re: $5 Deal of the Day Giveaway

sam — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:09:23 -0000

During my recent unemployment I realized that, if prayer were like meeting with my father for coffee, would I spend the whole time pleading the same thing, asking for the same thing? No, it's ridiculous.

God knows our requests before we ask, and deals with His people in love, then why did I blatantly distrust Him by asking over and over again as if God didn't hear? I now spend perhaps 10% of the time asking for what I need and I split the remainder of the time repenting for my lack of trust and repeating back to God his psalms to try conform my own mind and attitude.

I think that single metaphor (talking over coffee) highlighted how much faithless, trustless sin was in my prayer, and probably has been there for years.

I have more stories Lessons from Joblessness, but that's the big one I'm still integrating into my life. :) God gave a verbal promise of a job recently, and I should have paperwork any day now. :)

Re: $5 Deal of the Day Giveaway

sam — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:11:15 -0000

By "verbal" I mean a person gave me a verbal promise and I credit God with the good that may come of it. Yikes. Should have re-read that before posting...