kdw's comments

Okay, you win. I'll leave HN as well.

I'm just a guy with a deep and abiding fascination with economics and public policy. One so deep I recently picked up a graduate degree on the subject. One so deep that my current startup is based entirely on my desire to help individuals better understand the financial possibilities that lie before them.

But you've read a blog and some things on reddit, so clearly you understand it better than me.

I'm sick of arguing with people like you... people who base their economic beliefs not on solid econometric analysis, but rather on mostly inaccurate blog posts... and yet you still mistake yourself for an expert.

You win. I'm out of here too. I'm deleting my posts that are available for deletion, because the combined arrogance and ignorance of your response here makes clear that I was foolish for thinking that this could be a venue for informed discussion. I won't waste another second of my life "debating" well established knowledge with an idiot like you.

Personally, I take the approach advocated by Benjamin Graham. I have separate accounts for investing, and speculation/trading.

I just view them as fundamentally different activities, with different risk profiles, and different sorts of analysis required prior to taking or selling any given position.

Frankly, reddit is a truly horrible source of information about business and the economy. The loudest commenters on those topics tend to be educated primarily via blogs.

Personally, I'd advocate a subscription to the Financial Times, which is brief and factual in nature, with opinions kept to the opinion page.

> I think it is important that every business have a good impression of what they do, and what they do not do.

If this is the case, they should ditch the banner ads. On my laptop, with a vertically maximized browser window I can see three ads (EyeQ, LifeLock, and a google text ad that promises to let me know a shocking secret about coffee), but I can't see the legend.

That seems like the model for a site that is trying to make money by having a large volume of visitors clicking ads, not the model for a site that wants serious, important people who have some reason to care about weather.

For what it's worth, I'm running 10.6 on one of my Macs, and I still have some Ports that don't work on it.

In particular, I've had issues with ghc and R. Most other software (both common and uncommon) has been okay, but I'd recommend most people wait another month or so, unless 10.6 fixes something important to you, or is otherwise significant.

The article is right for the same reason that horoscopes seem right, because it doesn't really say anything. To my knowledge, nobody intelligent was seriously suggesting that a sharp recovery was likely. His article then discounts that relatively absurd possibility and then states his belief that the market will either be U-shaped, flat, or decline with a double-dip recession.

Given that at that point a serious depression was pretty much ruled out as well, he basically said that all possible responses were, in his opinion, possible... and then people read it and thought "wow, that horoscope was totally correct."

Part of the problem is likely that some menu items are simply far worse for you than you'd guess, if you don't check the nutrition information.

As an example, I was on the road recently and I stopped by a Burger King drive-thru to get a quick lunch. I knew that a Spicy Chicken Sandwich is 450 calories, which isn't wholly unreasonable.

Sadly, they were out of those, but they asked if I'd like an "angry tendercrisp sandwich' instead. It sounded similar, so I said yes.

The angry tendercrisp sandwich: 1030 calories, 61g of fat, 15g of fat, and 2670mg of sodium.

But I'm sure there are some people who order them, thinking they're healthier than a burger.

Restaurant meals have grown so large that I only order an entree if I'm planning to take home a doggie-bag.

If I want to actually eat all I order, I usually get two appetizers, or an appetizer and a salad.

I actually had one. I switched to blu-ray because of netflix.

A netflix subscription and a blu-ray player is both cheaper and more interesting than subscribing to all the premium movie channels.

They came down, but now there are EV SSL certs that are still a couple hundred dollars/yr for a non-wildcard cert.

As a business owner, I feel a bit like it's a big con game, as I have trouble understanding what it is that EV SSL certs solve that wasn't supposed to be solved with the original SSL certs. It could just be my ignorance, but I still find $400/yr to file some papers and then do some math a bit absurd.

Am I correct in thinking that a wildcard only gets you one level deep? e.g. that *.mycorp.com matches "foo.mycorp.com" but not "foo.bar.mycorp.com"?

Blu-Ray is a transition format anyway. Long-term, my money is on network-based digital distribution.

It sucks... but for a couple hundred bucks, I'm fine with my blu-ray player, my netflix subscription, and my purchased copy of Planet Earth.

As somebody who is over 30 and works in startups, I'd say you're right. I'd not even consider for a moment the standard YC deal ($11k + $3k/founder for 6%).

When I was right out of school, or off my first job I might've considered it... but these days? never.

Why exactly wouldn't I want a royalty on the sales?

Marketing: Meeting the needs and desires of the customer at a profit.

It's a pet peeve of mine when people conflate advertising (hiring a seductive model), and some very narrow areas of marketing (identifying that successful, young customers like sport-luxury vehicles) with marketing as a whole.

I'd agree that from a product stand point it's not so different from a BMW, Lincoln or Acura... but it's not remotely similar to a Chevy. If you're interested in a sport/luxury sedan, Chevy has nothing to offer you. They can do sport, or sedan, but not sport, luxury and sedan simultaneously.

I bought my car from a local dealer for a price that allowed them some profit not because I care deeply about "free oil changes", etc., but because I care about them staying in business.

If my local dealership goes out of business, the next closest one is approximately 50 miles away. That'd be so incredibly inconvenient that I'd almost assuredly end up selling the car and buying a different marque that was locally serviceable.

Auto dealerships add value for me, and as such I will pay a small premium over the marginal cost to help make sure they're incentivized to still be there in 5 or 10 years.

You can find a number of them on the opensolaris forums if you search on terms like 0906 iscsi, comstar 0906, etc... here's an example: http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=104593&...

Our experience was that 0906 was utterly unusable if you're using comstar, with performance being mildly degraded for straight zfs usage.

zfs performance in 2009.06 has some very serious problems, particularly with zvols.

My facebook account has precisely nothing in common with my real information.

It's all totally fake info that I use to play scrabble with my dentist, who also has a completely fake account.