Whatever comes to mind, and then the interesting directions that thought will take you on the web.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

What is Good News?

I'm a lender on the Person to Person web site Prosper.com

Today I got an email from them:
Good news! One of your Prosper loans has been paid in full! The final payment will be credited to your account within 2-4 business days.
They're a lending site. Why do they want to claim that this is good news? It's not good news for me - I would prefer that this person continued paying 10.44%. It's not good news for them: less commission.



Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Difference between Women and Ladies


A friend forwarded me the pricing for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

I was intrigued that the legend had icons to denote Men and Women, and then a third category of Ladies.

Does anybody have any idea what the difference is between Ladies and Women? Please update the comments.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

The Power of Words

Search for the word "Jew" on google, and an undesirable link comes up second on the list.


Google seems embarrassed by this, and has its own advertising on the right hand side of the page called Offensive Search Results to explain how this happened.


This page then has a link to an excellent article at the Jewish World Review.


My explanation of why the word "Jew" is offensive is as follows:

I think that if you call somebody Jewish, you're describing one of their attributes. If you call them a Jew, you are implying that they are completely described by that one attribute, ignoring all others. It's like me being called a "Brit" rather than "British" - British is one of my attributes, but I'm also a Father, Husband, Computer Programmer, Photographer, Movie Goer, Cyclist, etc.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Oil Price

Oil Jumps Above $100 on Refinery Outage

I don't understand how a refinery outage causes the price of oil to jump. Doesn't a refinery outage mean that the demand for crude oil should decrease?

I can certainly see that a refinery outage would cause the output of the refinery to decrease - gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Anthropomorphism

I took my 3 and a half year son to bed. He asked to read the book Big Truck and Little Truck.


He asked an interesting question: "Why do the trucks have eyes and mouthses(sic)?".


I replied that this was anthropomorphism.


The book had an effect on me. Big Truck has an engine failure, and is taken away. Little Truck missed Big Truck a lot. I was very worried that Big Truck would not come back - anthropomorphism indeed.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

License Plates in California

I bought my car in approximately September 2002. Its License Plate begins 4ZIX. I started looking at the structure of California's Licence plates, and saw that shortly afterwards, license plates started having the structure 5[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][0-9][0-9][0-9] . ie the Five Series.

In approximately September of 2007, the Six Series started. This means that a series of numbers last about 5 years. I got to wondering if I could reconcile this with new registrations in California.

Here's some math.
A series has at most 26*26*26*10*10*10 = 17,576,000 possible licence plates.

Now, I would guess that certain three letter sequences are not used. eg TIT, ASS, SEX
and because 5 can look like an S, we have to exclude naughty words that begin an S - eg 5HIT

But these exclusions just remove a 1000 license plates at a time, so not significant. So - does this reconcile with the number of vehicles registered in California?

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Motherboard Naming

Checking out some motherboards on newegg.com, and I came across a great spec board.

Problem is that it has the brand Fatal1ty. I just hate this name. I don't want to be reminded of the fragility of life while trying to build a computer.

Monday, June 28, 2004

Ali-G, the irreverent gangsta, once had a spoof interview with James Baker, the former Secretary of State.

He questioned Baker, if there was any danger that a fighter pilot might confuse Iran and Iraq, because of the similar sounding names.

"No Danger" replied Baker.

I found it very amusing listening to NPR this morning, when first John Danforth, the new US Ambassador to the UN said "Iran" when he met "Iraq", and then a few minutes later on KQED's forum, David Kay, former IAEA/UNSCOM Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector, said "Iraqi" instead of Iranian.

Monday, May 17, 2004

Interesting experiment
to compare how a person rates themselves with how good they actually are.


I always remember an incident at University. I was at a pub, and I overheard a conversation where some guys who were doing the same Engineering course as me were talking to some local girls.


One of the girls was trying to show how smart she was compared to the University Student. "You think you know it all", she told the Student. "I work at Dixons (an electrical retailer), and I had to learn how to use a Video Recorder in a morning"



Charles Darwin says it well "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

Friday, February 13, 2004

Very Interesting discussion about Terms of Service on web sites LawMeme - Worst Terms of Service Ever

Thursday, February 05, 2004

Insider Trading

I've been following the Martha Stewart case, and I am coming to the conclusion that it's a complete travesty of Justice. Here's an interesting article about the case.


The Insider Trading Laws are completely unenforceable. The law seems to be used vindictively and arbitrarily.


And think of this scenario - why isn't this case considered Insider Trading?



Imagine I own shares in my company. I'm about to buy a house, and I need some money. I consider selling my shares, but I have some non-public information that I know is going to increase the value of my shares. So - instead of selling my shares, I take a Margin Loan against them (or just hold onto them), and then sell the shares at a later point at a higher price. I have certainly benefitted from my Insider Information, but this would not be considered as Insider Trading - why not??


But two wrongs do not make a right. I have to take issue with Martha's counsel for some of their tactics. Claiming that the alleged drug use of the star witness had any impact on this case is farcical.

Thursday, December 25, 2003

Extremes of weather in the Bay Area.

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Thursday, November 06, 2003

The weather in the San Francisco Bay area is notoriously variable by geography. It may be sunny and 90 degrees in Palo Alto, while over the hills, towards the coast, a few miles away it is 50 degrees.

That's why weather stations by AWS are very useful in this area. Check out the current weather where I live - Half Moon Bay

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Remove Movement

Check out this little project I worked on.

Sunday, January 13, 2002

Empty Legal Threats

I have a website that sends out a daily analysis of covered calls. Individuals subscribe to the service, and a mail message is sent out daily.


Imagine my surprise when I got the following email:


We appreciate the information that you are forwarding to one of our Financial Advisors in the Ponte Vedra Beach, FL office of Morgan Stanley.


However, this type of communication is not permitted by our firm from out sources. I respectfully request you take the Financial Advisors name off you list. Failure to do so will result in much stronger action by the Morgan Stanley Legal Council. Thank you for your assistance.


Rick Pomeroy

V.P. and Branch Manager

Morgan Stanley

Ponte Vedra Bch., FL



I replied with the following:

Rick,


Let's be clear about one thing. The list is a sign up list. ie your financial advisor chose to subscribe to the list.


I can not be responsible for administering the internal policies at Morgan Stanley.


The message you forwarded to me contains information on how to unsubscribe from the list. I suggest that you mandate your financial advisor to unsubscribe from the list, and that you consider disciplinary action against your employee for an implied violation of Morgan Stanley internal policies.



Thankyou for understanding,

Alan Fothergill



I then got the reply

Thank you for your reply. Now, let me be perfectly clear. I understand that someone from my office subscribed to your service in error and I
will handle it. However, if another message comes in to my office from you, the steps previously described will be taken.


This is extraordinary. I was never told the name of the employee, yet I risk the might of "Morgan Stanley Legal Council" if I happen to send him a message.


It got me thinking about empty legal threats, and the imbalance of power. I googled to "empty legal threats", which then took me to this interesting page, which had a reference to a Ohio Wesleyan University shamefully giving in to empty legal threats. I searched a bit more to find the background which described how the threat of legal action causes the party with fewer resources to back down.


This was rather more eloquently argued by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels


There was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbor hath a mind to my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself.


Now in this case I am the right owner lie under two great disadvantages. First, my lawyer, being practiced almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which as an office unnatural, he always attempts with ill-will.


The second disadvantage is that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary; and this, if it be skillfully done, will go a great way towards obtaining a favorable verdict; it having been found, from a careful observation of issues and events, that the wrong side, under the management of such practitioners, has the fairer chance for success.


Is there any law against a party throwing its weight around and making unwarranted legal threats? If not, why not?