DISQUS

Fred, the Democrats are not campaigning in Florida, due to Florida (along with Michigan) not honoring Democratic Party rules regarding primary dates. They don't have any delegates, and Hillary is the only one of the top 3 candidates on the ballot. So I would expect her to win.

Adding that I am thrilled for a new M. Ward album. THRILLED!

Post-War is one of my favorite albums of all time. Matt is so original and talented, and he deserves wider success. If you look at the acts he's supported or toured with, he's a favorite among many of our favorite musicians, and that says a lot.

Fred, Zoe and M. Ward are the cover of the next Under The Radar issue - should be on its way to you!

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/

Wow, Andy. What I find most amazing is not that you hold such a strong opinion, it's that you're absolutely convinced that you are correct.

1) The Constitution was designed as a living document. Any argument that claims something is invalid because it wasn't originally contained in the Constitution is a farce. Either make a real argument or stay out of the debate.
2) You said in an earlier post:

>>Your argument about tax increases is based on a false premise. You are assuming that decreased taxes lead to decreased revenues for the government.
>>In fact, if you look back at the data, the JFK, Reagan and Bush tax cuts were all followed by RECORD levels of government revenues (which we are enjoying
>>now), precisely because they served to reduce the friction in the economy and allow it to expand.

And you think there's not equal evidence that your's is a false premise? Really? I tend to believe that any untestable statement (and yours definitely does not have controlled experiments surrounding it) is at best opinion. So let's cut the bull and state that your opinion is that the Laffer curve, Reaganomics, Trickle-Down, etc is proven fact. Oh, I'm sure you can find lots of facts to back you up, but I can do the same in the opposite direction (probably more so). Again, your hypothesis is untestable. We can't go back in time, take the opposite track, and record the outcome. And you're citing the Bush Tax cuts? Really? That's your supporting evidence?

>>Do what it takes to GROW THE PIE (get the hell out of the way) and stop worrying so damn much about how to slice it!
Yes, let's grow the pie. But the division of the slices can not be separated from the method to grow it. Would you make the same statement if there were no taxes on income under $100k, and a 80% tax rate on incomes over $10,000,000 and the pie were growing?

Fred, the idea of a national sales tax, as you conjure it, is similar to that of the "fair tax" currently favored by Huckabee. And to that, I would ask a simple question:

If the goal is to tax consumption, what of the trillions of dopllars that already exist that have had taxes paid on it? In order to switch to this system, you would have to give people a tax credit based on what they had already saved or invested. So, tell me where that trilion dollars comes from? And how will that help out our problem?

I wrote a post back in August about the coming credit crunch:

http://www.nickdavis.com/The-Crash-Of-1929-Did-...

People forget that the market crash did not cause the depression (the market had almost recovered by the time the Great Depression began), rather the debt deflation and resulting credit crunch. I link to a quote by Minsky, who is perhaps the preeminant expert in all of this.

We need some sensible policy, but what we need most is to take the hit. At some point, we have to take our medicine.

Nice Crumpler sticker. That's a company that knows how to market. Their CEO is incredibly funny and engaging. 2 years ago at PMA they had a 40x40 or 60x60, with just a giant teepee, beanbag chairs, and coolers full of Foster's. Attendees put their badge in a hat, grabbed a beer and a beanbag, and were randomly selected to play Aussie 2-up to win great bags.

It's their authenticity that does it. We're starting to see it in blogs, but it takes great courage to make a real manifestation of that.

I was fortunate enough to see them at Shoreline in Mountain View and back in Kansas City a week later. We took our 12 year old daughter for her first concert. I agree with your take on the album, as well as the transformative experience in seeing them live. The band exudes so much energy, it's impossible to remain a passive observer. There's at least 10 people on stage and every single one of them plays with amazing intensity. They give SO MUCH. As someone who has lightly dabbled in performace, I don't see how they can do it over and over and not be completely exhasted, but they do.

And keep in mind, seeing a band like AF in Kansas City is not always a great experience. The venue was outdoor and only sold about half the seats. The band could have easily phoned that one in, but they gave as much, if not more, than they did playing to the packed Shoreline.

I agree with you 100%. I only started listening last week, but I've given the entire album at least 10 listenings. I know it's good because I CRAVE it.

My pearl has similar problems, albeit not every morning.

FYI, make sure you're on the newest version of Simulscribe. Also, if you have Gmail Manager or the Y! application, try turning them off or uninstalling one at a time.

That's a good list. I'm looking forward to yours.

I just started to listen to Bishop Allen this weekend when Atrios posted a clip.

Here's mine:

http://www.nickdavis.com/Top-Albums-Of-2007

Beautiful.

The killer peer-based geo service will be real-time traffic AND radar information in my bluetooth-enabled GPS (or GPRS or EVDO like Amazon Kindle). So long as the data were secure and anonymous, I could transmit my speed and location, as well as various radar (this could also help filter false positives, since the radar would be present 24/7) points. So I could get advanced notice of traffic delays and get rerouted automatically well in advance. As car GPS becomes more prevalent (and now many good devices selling at $100-$150), we get more data points. This information could also be sold to traffic-consuming entities (radio stations, etc) for a great deal of licensing revenue.

Agreed. What is the downside of letting dozens, or hundreds of bright developers write apps for your service for free? I love Simulscribe but the Blackberry app is bugg on my Pearl (it chokes on many network errors and stops getting my vmails, sometimes requiring a phone reboot). But I still love the service.

My biggest problem with Amazon is their browsing system. It's horrible. Everyone and their dog can add products, some years out of date, and muck up the system. Most of the times I'm only interested in Amazon Prime items and there's no easy filter: show me only Prime items!!!!!

If I know what I want, Amazon is a dream, especially with Amazon Prime and One-Click. If they could only fix their browsing issues...... Or someone could create one on their API.

Another good application of Covestor would be withing Financial Services compliance departments. Currently, mosted registered reps must provide statements to their compliance department to show that they aren't doing anything illegal. Real-time trade info would be much more useful. For instance, say I'm a stockbroker and I get a call from a client to sell his 100,000 shares of some fairly illiquid stock. I could sell my shares in advance (or short the stock) because I know this large trade will drop the price.

Having my personal trades in realtime makes this much easier to see than matching up a statement at the end of the month.

I rarely go wrong quoting the prescient Conor Oberst:

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

.....

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it

I doubt it

Nice timing on this post. It is described better in yesterday's Dilbert:

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/d...

I have no idea why they do that. For some reason, they still think control is good. Two years ago I got to shoot the White Stripes for a local paper. Usually you get 3 songs for press to shoot from the front of the stage. We got two before the manager/thug booted us rudely. Then I tried to get a snap with my point and shoot of my friends and almost got thrown out.

pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickdavis/37275330...

As for digicam video sound quality, I rarely care. For me it's about recording the moment. It's the best way to relive the experience - a video from where I was standing. The sound is usually 75% clipped (like that BK video I sent the other day).

Lastly, I just sold my Arctic Monkeys tickets for the KC show next week. Had like 8 concerts upcoming, and more that I still want to make (Bright Eyes in Lawrence!!!). So the Monkeys had to go. But if Voxtrot is the opener here, I might have made a big, big mistake. OK, just checked the website. I messed up :( Might have to buy another ticket.

There needs to be so much work in this area. I have 5000 photos on Flickr, and a Flickr app for Facebook, but I absolutely love the social tagging aspect of Facebook photos. The only problem is that Facebook photos has a 30 photo limit per album, and does not store hi-rez copies. What to do?

For now, I just pull some of my choice shots from Flickr to Facebook using a bookmarket (http://www.keebler.net/flickr2facebook/) and then tagging in Facebook. Not ideal, by any means.

You're right about photo aggregation - but when I show people like my parents the value of distributed tagging, they're amazed. "Here's every picture of you and X" is a pretty powerful way to (and probably only) organize photos. For instance, I recently did Shoebox Scanning on all my parents poose photos sitting in drawers - about 1500 of them. I've tagged many of them, but it would be nice to have help, especially since I don't know all the people in the photos.

I agree with your statements about VMWare. I've tried plenty of virtualization products, including Microsoft's Virtual PC, and VMWare kills it in comparison. I delivered a website demo project to my client yesterday on a VMWare image. All they had to do was download the free VMWare player, copy my files over, and double-click the icon. Now they have a completely self-contained computer running their demo. Database and web server local, so no need for an internet connection.

And now that you can convert your VMWare images to run directly on Amazon's EC2 (http://www.enomalism.com/features/amazon-ec2-mi...), VMWare will be driving the future of cheap, scalable, commodotized web services. Needless to say, this developer is bullish on VMWare.

Very interesting and true. Do you think this also applies to injecting adverisements in a traditional "syndicated" (as in TV, a la Oprah) model, where the content creator packages some ads with their content, and let the publishers add in their own ads? Or does the measurability of online meadi mean that the technology could be created to just do a revshare on the content?

Also, Google will have to change the way it thinks about duplicate content, or all parties involved could be dinged for showing the same thing.

As to Jeremy's comment, I see the same thing, but it shouldn't be too hard to solve from a technological standpoint.

With CBS owning Last.fm, why not do the world a favor and link those services?

Also, as I was listening to music on the speaker of my Pearl last night, which holds 2 gigs, I thought "How in the world can record labels find this threatening? I can have all my music with me all the time. I am a better, more engaged fan. I listen to so much more music. And they see this as a BAD thing?"

I've long wanted to mash up my Netflix movie ratings with RottenTomatoes, to filter the reviewer list down to a subset of those with whom I tend to agree. Then RT can show all reveiwers, Cream of the Crop, and MyReviewers. Seems obvious to me. RT is a good site but throw in community reviews, ratings, and critic matching and it's a huge hit. Then make it all work as a Facebook app.

But seriously. "Bug" should never be the name of a hardware or software company.