Disqus - Latest Comments for Larry Sheldon

Re: Anti-spam Theater

Larry Sheldon — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:28:00 -0000

You might want to look at the Sierra v. Ritz case in Fargo for comfort.

Re: Things I Never Knew about Telephones

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:36:29 -0000

Cheap phone bills? It depends.

When my parents has saved up enough money to afford Dad calling his parents in Madera, from Glendale he dialed 110 and tole the operator he was calling "Madera 417J". The "J" told the Madera operator how to do the ring thing (one long two short? I don't remember) because there were *four* parties on the line. Out of town in the rural areas there might be a lot more than 4.

Even after dialing came in there were lots of places that had way more than two parties on the line.

And yes, the letters were put on the dial for the Prefix or Exchange code.

And some dials had a "Z" on the zero hole because the precursor of "800" service was ZEnith service which you had to dial the operator for. I wonder if ZEnith 9000 will still get you the nearest California Highway Patrol office.

Re: More Heat than Light

Larry Sheldon — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 21:33:56 -0000

I long ago got out of the rat-race of arguing "efficiency".

It simply is not possible with some words to define what in the local context is meant by "efficiency".

Let me show an example that does not have the current emotional hangups (CFL's are bad because they can't be used in closed fixtures, they contain mercury, and they don't produce enough light, end of that discussion.)

In an earlier life I was involved in writing computer programs, where the efficiency argument would come up over using so-called low-level codes to get the maximum amount of work out of a machine versus using high-level codes to get the maximum amount of work out of the programmers.

Which is more efficient? It depends.

Re: Network Neutrality == End-to-End Principle?

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:19:32 -0000

I am not clear on what is mean some of the terms here, but one thing that grabbed me is that in general the ordinary user (including me, who for the sake of the discussion is very knowledgeable of the internal workings of networks) does NOT have the option of selecting other DNS servers (see the Ritz v. Sierra case in Fargo recently).

Most network providers disallow source routing. Period.

To me network neutrality means simply that the purchaser of services at some level in the protocol traffic is entitled to have his traffic treated exactly like every other purchaser of the same service. If somebody wants to introduce a notion of "class of service" I guess that is OK, but the network is going to need some re-engineering because the way it works now, when anybody hands the traffic off, they pretty much lose control of it.

Re: Network Neutrality == End-to-End Principle?

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:03:46 -0000

ISP preventing it is not the issue.

The issue is if you select 100 people using the Internet to change the DNS servers they use, most will have no idea what you are talking about.

Of the remainder, most will use (be required to use) DHCP or a cable-clone of it where the configuration received will carry the DNS server to use.

Of the remainder, most will not know an alternative to use. And a lot od fire-walls won't allow it.

And in any case, I don't think DNS has much to do with the neutrality issues.

What does have to do with it is policy routing where the "policies" involve source, destination, protocol, and things like that.

See "packet shaping" http://www.packeteer.com/

Re: Network Neutrality == End-to-End Principle?

Larry Sheldon — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:14:58 -0000

Why the fixation on DNS? It has nothing to do with routing or prioritizing, which I take to be the issues in "neutrality".

And there is considerable pressure to block port 53 traffic from end-user locations.

Re: Unrest in Egypt: More Fallout from Ethanol Subsidies

Larry Sheldon — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:42:16 -0000

Around where I live (for the past 18 years or so), there has bee a pretty rapid (it seems to me) conversion of land from corn, soybeans, and feeder cattle to houses, stores and hospitals.

The market in used houses appears to have died.

Has anybody measured the rate of conversion in light of the "biofuels" thing?

Re: INVENTIONS WANTED!

Larry Sheldon — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:38:25 -0000

I remember when there was (at most) one phone per house, office, etc.

Telephone company was required to install a pay-phone every block or two because lots of places had no phone at all for emergencies.

Re: Does Fee-for-Service Explain Rising Health-Care Costs?

Larry Sheldon — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 02:00:00 -0000

As a well-experienced user of the medical and health care systems (but without any credentialed analyses to support my position) I believe "who pays" is largely (but not entirely, see below) irrelevant to the problem of medical and health care costs.

For openers, I believe, but can not prove (neat book title--you should read it) that the costs stated as a function of hours-worked-to-pay-for-it is not that bad. Particularly of you somehow factor in the social costs of people not living as long.

But I believe, but can not prove, that the rising costs in the near past are mostly due to these factors;

1. Exorbitant and unconscionable "damage" suit awards.

2. Costs of insurance to protect practitioners and infrastructure operators from the effects of 1. above.

3. Defensive medicine practiced to try and prevent or at least ameliorate the costs of 1. and 2. above.

4. Cost of acquisition and maintenance of infrastructure (e. g. NMRI labs) needed only for 3. above.

5. Plain old economics of shortage of supply caused bu the reluctance of people to enter the trade because of the issues given here, exacerbated by union-mandated reduction of medical school seats.

6. Because a third person is the primary receiver of billing information the incentive and ability for anybody to audit a bill against services and products received are removed. We have found huge errors (frauds?) in bills, but there is no place to report them to and no hope for correction.

Re: Stamping Out Misconceptions

Larry Sheldon — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:45:30 -0000

Not only FedEx and UPS (which often make a couple of trips "out here"--even in mid-summer), but DHL, and several others.

And without subsidies that I know of, they are price-competitive against the service.

(Out here the Rural USPS person (not clear if she is an RFD contractor or a USPS employee) will take outbound mail (dunno about parcels anymore) but the other carriers will come on demand.

Re: Capitalism is Dead

Larry Sheldon — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:53:34 -0000

I'm having a little trouble understanding where the risk when when the first lender sold the paper.

I thought that whole deal involved net present value and net future value calculations to set the price of the paper in the trade.

Which econ class did I miss?

Re: Wal-Mart and Food

Larry Sheldon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:02:33 -0000

First, my credentials. Or lack of them.

I am an unemployed truck driver (couple of years OTR[1] -- dry vans and reefers) Quit because my body was complaining of the pain, I was chronically sick because truck drivers are not allow to rest, and my soul ached from the inhumane treatment up with which truck drivers have to put.

Before that I was an unemployed Associate Director for Technical Services And Communications at a local university where for most of 20 years I did everything thing they asked and everything they needed (two things) until I was found to be earning too much money and was too old.

Before that I was AUTOCODER programmer, COBOL programmer, Assembler programer, Systems Programmer, and ODAS[2]. I retired after nearly 30 years to avoid the too-much-money-too-old thing.

Before that, boring stuff with long-haul telephony and telegraphy that involved people, and wires and stuff.

I have a BS in Management from Golden Gate University recieved when I decided to bail from what was left of the Bell

System.

Summary: No meaningful credentials in Marketing, the Dismal Science, or anything else productive.

Walmart. Dreadful place. Unless you want prescriptions you can afford. Or the best avocados available in the area.

And I don't know about Walmarts where you are, but all the ones I have seen are surrounded by all sorts of stores--some of them in direct competition with Walmart.

But it the experiences driving a truck that come to mind when somebody starts in on Walmart.

Do you know where your food comes from? Most of the non-Walmart DC's[3] and warehouses (where your food lives on its way to the store) are just simply disgusting.

But the thing that comes to mind first when somebody starts in on Walmart is they way they treat OTR drivers at the stores. They recognize that drivers are humans, eat, wear clothes, buy stuff. That is rare. They even allow trucks to park on their lots -- for the occasional 10-hour break mandated by law. (Drivers have abused some stores and we are no longer welcome there but I discovered that even at those it is often possible to talk to the manager (a good idea anyway) and be allowed to park somewhere on the lot.)

Are things I don't like about Walmart? Sure. There are things about me that I don't like.

But low prices and availability of most of what I need in one place are not among the things I don't like.

[1]Over The Road

[2]Other Duties As Assigned

[3]Distribution Centers

Re: Wal-Mart and Food

Larry Sheldon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:59:38 -0000

Tax breaks? Sure. And so also to every body the local pols want to attract to buy the "new development" -- consisting of land grabbed by eminent domain.

But for another take on Walmart, dig around and find out who _actually_ (in disasters like Katrina) gets insulin ti the local diabetics, gets drinking water to people, and so forth.

(Clue: look for "Walmart store manager".)

Re: My mood

Larry Sheldon — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:09:44 -0000

Superheated just simply does not have the intelligence to understand the drivel she copies from the manual.

Enough about that.

The short summary, and I am not the irst to discover this, is that as bad as this place is, it is (was?) better than anyplace ion the planet.

Re: Cheap Shot

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:13:50 -0000

The tenure issue is only as important as you make it.

I read the blog for Economics--if you are going to de-emphasize Economics in favor of labor rants, I can drop you off the daily rotation.

Your call.

Re: The Administration's Sixth Sense

Larry Sheldon — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:36:36 -0000

Will ACORN get thrown under the bus for not telling him which of the people who voted for him were known to be dead at the time?

Re: What's working

Larry Sheldon — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:34:14 -0000

Thinks looking up? Really?

Don't worry, the Dems will fix it as soon as they catch on.

Right now they are sorta tied up surrendering to the Arabs, and trying to work out how to surrender to the Germans.

Re: Some Unlucky Numbers for Opponents of Proposition 13

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:41:43 -0000

I lived there then.

Then as now, the problem was Sacramento and Washington (it wasn't a District of Chicago in those days) spending money we could not afford.

Then as now, the PTB could not see that.

Re: The Einstein of compensation

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:34:46 -0000

What's in the Constitution is irrelevant.

This is a Dictatorship of the Won. Get used to it.

The part that has me puzzled is that all this is going to paid-for by taxing the rich. How will there be any rich?

Re: Either Obama Is A Liar, Or The Number Of Uninsured Americans Just Shrunk By 17 Million

Larry Sheldon — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:45:35 -0000

30 million + x million illegals = ????

Re: Carter Tries to Deny His Comments About Racism

Larry Sheldon — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:55:52 -0000

Knock knock.

Knock knock.

Knock knock.

Hmmmmmm.

Knock knock.

The lights seem to be on, but nobody's home.