The Iron Yuppie

Answers on CDS

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:42:00 +0000

My very smart friend has written up some answers to my questions, which I will repost here.

1) It did go up proportionally. It probably was 98% of the bonds worth. (I’m guessing. I don’t have the data)
2) Not naked but no one ever had the $1B dollars to pay up when the bond defaulted. It was unregulated so there are no ‘capital reserves’. People were ‘netted’ on the belief that someone had that $1B. But no one ever did. So they are all bankrupt.
1b). So it didn’t matter if the CDS premium was 98% of the bond. $1B needs to get paid out on the chain. The guy receiving the 98% premium loses 2%. But two points. Someone else is losing the rest of the 98% through the chain of netting. And 2% is on the total bond value not the capital that guy had. He’s levered. He may have lost 20% or 200% and been wiped out.

I'll tell you what I told him, which is it doesn't seem possible that this many smart people could get caught in such a web. His response:

I’m sure most of them were aware. But when you can be a multi-millionaire in one year isn’t it worth the bet? If I said tomorrow you can be worth $100M or lose your job, how many would take that offer? That’s why derivatives need to be regulated. Asymmetric returns.

When people in the industry start saying things should be regulated, that's usually a sign that it's reached absolutely critical stage.

Today In Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:37:00 +0000

Looks like Politico is getting a lot of attention on Memeorandum with their story about GOP voters having issues with the momentum of the campaign.

I heard the clip of someone yelling terrorist ( ) and I guess it's pretty bad but who can really control people at a campaign event, anyway?

I guess they want McCain/Palin to go more in the direction of highlighting the Ayers connection ( ), but I can't believe that's really getting any play. I guess we'll see.

Dow To Zero?!?

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Dow Jones Falls to Zero in Six Weeks?

I don't know why anyone would make a statement like this except in jest. I read, based on the rest of his blog posting, that there's more to this guy than just this post, but it still seems pretty bad. Especially in that I found it through Steve Rubel, who didn't caveat the statement above with anything more than "unlikely." Twitter is like a giant game of telephone.

BTW, the failure of this logic is assuming that current trends will continue. My son, who is currently 14 months old is 29 inches tall and 24 lbs. If I start at his birth weight, and graph out his growth, he would by nearly a mile tall and 3.5 billion tons by the time he's thirty. This is not unlikely. This will not happen. Period.

D

Presidential Debate v2: Twitter/Blogosphere Has Spoken

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:03:00 +0000

It would appear there's one line that sets the night:
There's even a twitter group already! Thoughts?

D

Sort of Understand Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:49:00 +0000

Ok, I sort of get how we got to where we are in the credit markets. But after listening to an absolutely riveting hour of financial discussion on This American Life, I'm left with two questions:

One of the failures of the markets was the ability to use CDSs as a financial instrument without owning the underlying asset. For example, Lehman issues a bond for $100 M. MS buys the bond. MS buys a CDS from AIG on the bond for 2% of the bond’s value. Goldman, in a speculation move, also buys a CDS on the bond for 2% of the value. Then Lehman starts looking shaky – six months ago or something. More people start to buy CDSs from AIG. Why didn’t the cost of the CDS go up proportionally with the risk. For example, if it’s 1 week prior to Lehman going bankrupt, and people are freaking out about them, why wouldn’t a CDS on their bond cost 98% of the bond’s worth? The podcast seemed to indicate that it was so many people taking out CDSs on bonds that they didn’t have any relation to, purely as speculation devices. But isn’t the market supposed to handle that?
Another thing talked about during the podcast was the idea of netting out to hedge risk. AIG sells a CDS on Lehman’s bond to MS for 2%. Then they buy a CDS on Lehman’s bond from Wacovia for 1.98%. Then Wacovia buys a CDS on Lehman’s bond from the IMF for 2.01%. Then Wacovia goes under. The assets are still there, and the hedges are still there, correct? Meaning, yes, AIG may now take a 0.01% loss rather than a 0.02% gain… but surely they wouldn’t be considered to have a naked position, would they?

Anyone want to enlighten me?

[Update: Changed CDO to CDS as I was using the wrong acronym.]

I Hate It When Blogs Go Unattended

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:52:00 +0000

It's really irritating to me when blogs go unattended for too long. I'm not sure if the people have died or have moved on or what, but I can tell you what has caused my (many) periods of lack of attention... the (perceived) effort to blog.

It's not like I've ever thought that I had so much to say, but I did always feel like if I was going to put something out there, it should be semi-meaningful. Unfortunately, this leads to a spiral where the longer it's been, the more I feel like I have to say and the more that I feel like the next post needs to achieve in order for me to put it out. I don't know if I'll ever get past that thought, but I'll do my best.

One thing I've started doing more of is posting to other social networks, in an attempt to make sure the writing juices, so to speak, keep flowing every day. I now have:

And, of course, more private stuff (facebook, linkedin, plaxo, etc etc) which I won't be sharing here ... I'll add more eventually, as more stuff comes up, but I'm doing my best to get it out there.

I Guess Breast Implants Aren't Enough Any More

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Sigh-- I know that pictures are basically lies now, but this new face-modification technology takes the cake. You don't even need a human any more to tell you what a human will find attractive! Better forget looking at MySpace profiles - you have just as much chance of finding a real live representative of a human being as you do at a replicant convention.

D

Deep Crow

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:17:00 +0000

Many people ask me what the heck I've been doing, since this blog seems to have gone a bit fallow, and I've left the company. Well, I've helped start up something new, what I will modestly call the greatest sound platform in history. But this is merely a day time job. My full time, night and day job is none other than to promote the use of the sound of this crow. I love it. I don't know why, but I do. My guess is that this crow, in crow-ese, is actually uttering hypnotic words that has weaved me deep into its warm embrace. Regardless, my mission is clear. If you're not listening to the crow, you're just not living.

Seriously? Take Some Responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:12:00 +0000

Powerline is complaining today about the legacy that Jimmy Carter's presidency left us with respect to the Middle East and/or oil.

Seriously? There have been four presidents since then, and 20 years of Republicans in the White House. Further, the congress has also had significant periods of large majorities in favor of Republicans (certainly not always, but enough to matter). And you still blame a president 30 years out of office? It's like blaming Teddy Roosevelt for a situation related to the Panama canal. Sure he may have been to blame at some time, but it's time to own the problem yourself.

D

Rating Restaurants

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:01:00 +0000

I've had a theory for a long time that the bread you get before a meal is a perfect leading indicator to the quality of the restaurant. I have yet to be proven wrong by it. Sometimes I'm off by a little bit, but it's never been 100% off. I think it's just a great example of what it means when you've got a lot of the system working, but you haven't debugged the system completely.

Anyhow, last night we had dinner at a really nice restaurant: Gerard's. Food was very good, but the bread was TERRIBLE. I realized I'd really like to start writing this stuff down for future reference. Obviously, it's really subjective

Bread Rating: D-. Stale, hard, flavorless. Tasted like I was chewing on paste. Gross.
Food Rating: B+. I thought it was actually pretty good food, I had the filet. The steak was tasty, but not phenomenal. I was really looking for great taste and tender. The sides were mashed yams and were really sweet, almost overly so. There was way too much gravy. The dessert, which was a macaroon with coconut and pistachio was terrible as well... too dry and flavorless.

Net: The rating system holds... even at the nicest restaurant in Maui. Never lose sight of the small stuff, it'll always bring you down.

MST3K reborn!

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:53:00 +0000

CinematicTitanic: Mystery Science Theatre 3000 rides again -- sheer hilarity! - Boing Boing

Just awesome! The last MST3K I saw live was about 10 years ago, and though I got some of the DVDs in the interim, I could not be more excited about this rebirth. And talk about a perfect medium for this... extremely passionate audiences willing to pay for content direct from the publisher is a perfect fit for CinematicTitanic (nee MST3K). Unfortunately, the licensing rights for 30 year old movies that are doing the studios exactly zero in business apparently is slowing the flow of this content to the web. You've got to be kidding me. Exactly what do these studios THINK is going to happen... a run on Joe Don Baker movies?

Bush as the Change Agent

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:47:00 +0000

Bush: I would run as 'change' agent

You know how I know that The Onion is one of, if not THE, best social commentary of all time? Because what they say is so close to the truth that it often becomes real: Bush 2004 Campaign Pledges To Restore Honor And Dignity To White House

Here's my question. If Bush DID run as the change agent, exactly who is on the other side of the change equation?

The History of the Amiga

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 23:13:00 +0000

I had a Commodore 64. Then a Commodore 128D. These were my first significant computers, where I learned Basic and played so many games I can barely even remember. And nearly everyone I knew had a Commodore as well (or an Apple II). To think of the opportunity wasted with Commodore simply boggles the mind.

A particularly good walk down memory lane is The History of the Amiga on Ars.Technica. Read it and weap.

As an aside, I'm constantly impressed with the reporting quality on Ars Technica. Their chip analysis, as an example, is some of the best anywhere. I wonder how they do it.

Rhymes with Wah-se-ohm.

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:54:00 +0000

Last night's Hallow's Eve activities were just ok. But mostly because it was my 4th party or so in the past week. I hate it when holidays/celebrations fall mid-week. You never know when to celebrate. However, last night did mark the official debut of the following work:

Yeah, I guess that's an ok stencil from HomeStarRunner. Nice picture of Trogodor... maybe. Until I light that bad boy up.

Look. I'm not really the bragging type. But to call this anything but the GREATEST ARTISTIC WORK OF ALL TIME would lead me to seriously question your expertise in the arts.

Ok, One More Password Complaint

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:04:00 +0000

How is it possible that there are still sites that do not let you use a space, punctuation and/or caps as part of your password. Are you joking? It's almost as if they took extra effort to filter that out and make your passwords weaker. 'Cause let me promise you something... Ascii character 32 (a space) is a perfectly valid character for a computron and is functionally equivalent to char 44 (a quote), 52 (the number 4) or 119 (the letter w). The only reason that wouldn't work as a password is if you're storing the passwords in the database as clear text, and really? Are you that dumb? Really?

While I'm On the Subject of Passwords...

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:43:00 +0000

Let me give a thumb up (note, not thumbs) to Roboform. I can't believe I haven't used this before. Actually, I think I have used it before, I think it was just 10 years ago and it was miserable. Well, it's no longer miserable, but it could use a LOT of UI and UX help. It is great for not having to remember which permutation of my username or password I used on which site. Amazing how many differences there are, despite the fact that I try and use the same one every where. Yes, I know this is a huge security risk, but here's how I mitigate that (somewhat). Sites I don't care anything about my account being compromised = one user and pass. Sites that are financial related (there are probably a total of 10 of these) = another user and pass. Sites that are site admin related = a third user and pass. It's not perfect, but it works. But now that Roboform can remember all this shit for me, I'll use it, plus the randomly generated password function. The biggest problem is going to any other machine - there should be a way to go to Roboform first, and then browse to another site through them so that Roboform can manage your login ... though this offers up a sweet vector for attack as well.

Let me take a step aside for two seconds and comment on something else. It is RIDICULOUS that there isn't a magic cloud out there (from MS most likely) that stores EVERY bit of custom data that I do to a machine. When I got to a new machine, there should be virtually no time for me to sit down and have everything that was on the old machine now on the new machine. Programs, settings, font color, etc. The transfer cable is a nice idea, but it's one time only, which makes it meaningless. I have a home computer, a laptop and a desktop at work... I HATE the number of times I've had to re-install, re-set the same setting over and over again. For all of you that say, no, this is actually very hard... it's very hard because YOU the application developer, throw your shit all over the OS in shared libraries and what not. The registry is worthless... store your own config in your own directory, your own copies of shared libraries (if they're not installed), your own EVERYTHING and you make everything easier.

Continuing on the subject of website security, I totally agree with this blogger: Captchas are lame. First, whatever site you're working on/with ... you almost definitely do not need a captcha. How about having a problem first with spammers using your site as a through put and then implementing the solution. When I see it on some no name blog, it just makes me think you're just high on yourself. That's not to say you shouldn't use verification or logins to access your mailing function, just that you shouldn't be so full of yourself. Second, there are probably a bajillion other vectors of attack in your website, how about looking at some of those. I guarantee you have at least 1 sql injection, weak password/infrastructure, XSS or other much more serious attack to deal with than comment / user account spam. Third, there are a million other tools out there, stop pushing the pain onto me to use your site. You should be making it ridiculously easy for users to comment, not making them question whether or not it's worth it.

There was a creation the other day that almost made me question the above: The ReCaptcha Project. It's beautiful sideways thinking! In essence, they take printed text which machines can't read, scan it in and present it to users for translation. This translation goes back into the original project and helps to digitize the book. Like mechanical turk (one of the best names for a website ever, based on the ), except all three parties (the site looking to avoid spam, the digitizer looking for the translation and the user who wants both a spam free site and (theoretically) wants a world full of more knowledge) benefit.

PayPal Key?

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:15:00 +0000

Caught this little tool on The Consumerist --

Let me summarize with a big meh. Most business computers come with a fingerprint reader and, let's be honest, anything that requires you to remember to carry it around is worthless... unless your password is in you (your brain) or permanently attached (your finger) it's pretty much worthless. We just need a simple tool in all the default browsers to plug-in to the fingerprint reader. Of course, most of the time, it's not the password that's the problem... it's the person. Phishing and/or forgotten password is far more likely to be a cause of a compromised account than anything else.

More About Headphones (and Purchasing)

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:56:00 +0000

I know, I know, you're thinking, this guy never shuts up about headphones. Well if one post ever 3 years is too much for you, you better find yourself another blog.

Here's what I'm in the market for:

1) Pair of headphones that I can wear on the bus. Noise canceling would be great, but not critical. Bluetooth/wireless, also great, but not necessary. Current leader of the pack?

JVC Marshmallow Inner Ears

Normally I hate inner ear things, they always seem to hurt after wearing them for too long. But these are very cheap and seem to fit the bill (wearable on the bus, wrap up nicely)

2) Pair of headphones for listening at work all day. Yes, I'll be creating a bionic office eventually, but for now the new company I'm working on is cubes only. This means in order to get any work done, I need to strap them on. Requirements: Comfortable to wear for 8 straight hours, noise canceling. Nice to have: Bluetooth/wireless + recharging cradle. Current leader of the pack?

Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Basically, these are the highest rated according to the various online mags I read, but they seem pretty good.

As another aside, why is it that there isn't a great review site for stuff like this with UGC. Am I just missing it? I mean AVSForums is great, but there's no place to vote stuff up to the top. What am I missing?

Update on Dave's Listening Styles

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:11:00 +0000

Yahoo Music.... you're fired. You're so fired, it isn't even funny. Why? Quality of service? Nope that was great. Selection? Great as well. It was the player. THE DAMN PLAYER. Come on.

So I've switched over to Rhapsody, which is a bit better. But I wanted to catch some Kayne West, v. 50 Cent goodness so I could decide for myself which is better. Only when I come upon the Kayne West album to discover two tracks are missing because they haven't been given permission to be streamed. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Fuck you. FUCK YOU. F-U-C-K Y-O-U. I'm thinking it's not even Kayne West's fault... it's some label lackey who has decided this is the best way to upsell albums. FUCK YOU LACKEY.

Oh, and before you jump off and say DRM is wrong and Steve Jobs is right, I'm a huge fan of the subscription. HUGE. And, by and large, I'm willing to pay the DRM cost in order to keep the price down. The fact is, I can count on my dick the number of cd's I've needed to take to a place where I didn't have wifi/ethernet access and/or a connection back to the Interweb once at least once a month (Yahoo's method of working on this kind of stuff was you would download it to your portable player and it would need to call home once a month to make sure you're still subscribed... I'm not sure, as I haven't checked, but I think Rhapsody works the same way). And, the fact of the matter is, that except for the VERY rare release (Chutes Too Narrow, Give Up, Anything by the Strokes, maybe (and that's a big maybe) 200 full albums total since I started listening to music, etc), I don't even listen to releases more than a year after I have them. What difference is it to me whether or not I have a piece of dinosaur carcass and metal that provides me with some token of meaningless ownership.

Assume the two following scenarios:

1 CD per month = $15 x 12 = $180 plus ~200 tracks I can enjoy forever

1 subscription per month = $13 x 12 = $156 plus A BILLION TRACKS

At the end of one year, who is ahead? At the end of a thousand years, who is ahead?

And for those who care about switching services... yeah, I've got a hint for you too. Let me promise you that the search providers through all of these things are a million times better than your organization/search system. So here's a hint... delete all previous music you downloaded and just search based on what you want to listen to now. It's virtually instantaneous, and you'll never remember what you didn't want to listen to in the first place.

Before I finish up, let me reiterate my thoughts:

#1) Subscription = good

#2) Yahoo player = ass

#3) Rhapsody = meh, but better than Yahoo

#4) Senior douche working for Roc-a-Fella Records who is responsible for making me have a less than ideal experience simply because you think you're going to upsell me and claim some portion of Kayne West's quarterly album sales as "your doing".... YOU FUCKING SUCK. You make the world ever more miserable for the rest of us to live in. I hate you.

The Value of a College Education

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:08:00 +0000

Last night I got in a fairly heated discussion about the value of a college education, and today I check out a magazine (a 6 month old magazine, but a magazine nonetheless), with a great study in there about the actual value. I love it when that happens. Anyhow, they say the value of the education, monetarily anyway, is basically 50% at 30 years old. So $50,000 becomes $75,000 a year. That's pretty good! (this is up from a 17% gap in 1979 btw).

However, I really have to play up the networking aspect as well. Since I've started 3 companies with a buddy of mine from college (the first one was with another buddy as well) seems pretty valuable to me. I guess the question is whether or not that's worth the cost of $180k (current cost!!). I'd say it is, if for no other reason than you get to figure out how many beers you can really drink in a finite period of time.

But the best part of the article was learning yet another economics term which fits perfectly to a term I was looking for (again):

"Signaling" device - basically it means that the person (or object) you're looking at has done something in the past that requires some quality - hard work, creativity, connections, etc

Mr. Spolosky talks about this when he mentions hiring software developers. And it does make some sense. The biggest problem is that it also leads to me-too situations. Like how VCs chase after a company only after it has a term sheet, or invest in businesses where there has already been a successful (and often exactly the same) business in the marketplace. Or movie studios all pursue (and release) similar movies at the same time (see Mission to Mars v. Red Planet; Deep Impact v. Armageddon; etc etc). It's got to be one of the criteria that other people have looked at it and viewed your object/etc as valuable, but it seems like far too much weight is being placed on the fact that someone else has given the ok on something.

YouBeQB - Next Gen Fantasy Football

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:24:00 +0000

First, great name. I'm in the process of naming our new thing, and boy is it hard. This is a great one.

But second, YouBeQB is a PHENOMENALLY good idea. It really is the next gen for fantasy football, in that you actually MUST be pinned to the screen in order to predict the next play. Most important part for them is figuring out a gaming system where if I'm 10 minutes late to a game, that doesn't put me out of the running for whatever "prestige" is possible in the game.

Wow, That's Some Bad SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:21:00 +0000

I saw an interesting clip on Sportscenter while feeding Henry at 6:10 in the morning (a completely unreasonable hour, btw) and thought I would go look it up. It was about the top 10 rules for drafting on Fantasy Day and I found the analysis and use of the correct set of statistics quite good. This particular rule was to never take a kicker efore the last round, because the different between the 1st best kicker (who was undrafted last season) and the 12th best one was less than 35 points, which equates to less than 3 points a game and is basically a complete wash. This is something overlooked in a lot of analysis... rather than guessing about eventual performance of one player vs. another, instead look at the entire field and study the difference between players currently remaining. I feel so much of the time is spent on finding the perfect person for your team, but I think the key to drafting is just finding who is RELATIVELY right (meaning the best of what's left) because you never know what's going to happen on draft day. In this respect, I quite like a tool I've been using for a while to track draft day action, because it's extremely easy to see not only who is left, but how they compare relatively to the rest of the remaining field, both within their category and outside of their category. So if you are in a 8 team league and are currently debating between (for example) a WR and a TE, in my opinion the right thing to do is look at the difference between the 8th best WR and the 8th best TE rather than the top two. This tells you the richness of the field remaining and what would happen if you took one and were stuck with the alternative next round. YMMV.

Any how, I'm generally an interested student of fantasy football, so I'm always reading suggestions. In this case, doing a search for "last round kicker fantasy football espn sportscenter" yielded nothing valuable, so I thought I'd start with the main page and work down from there. Search result for "espn sportscenter"?

#1: Wikipedia for SportsCenter - ok, but not great
#2: Wikipedia for ESPN - still ok, but not great
#3: Go.com home page for ESPN from ~3 years ago (!?!?!)

Nowhere in the top 10 is there ESPN's sportscenter home page. Don't blame Live.com either, the Google results look the exact same. Wow, that's bad web design / marketing.

FYI, this Sportscenter page is what I'm expecting to be first. Hopefully, this link will help out in the future.

[Update] ACK! It's even worse than I suspected. That page is to the excellent ad campaign "this is Sportscenter". From what I can tell, they don't even HAVE a page dedicated to the content shown on that episode of Sportscenter. WTF?

Blog, You Idiot, Blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:09:00 +0000

I was browsing through my RSS reader of choice, and came upon this blog by Naydne:

The taps in a shower are a really bad user experience. They're not standardized at all. The taps in this hotel room at the Westin in Bellevue, Washington, are nothing like the taps in a hotel room at the W in San Francisco. Every time I encounter a hotel room, I have to determine how to take a hot (not cold, not burning) shower. The taps don't give me an indication of how to work them. I have to figure out which way to turn them.

[...]

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a button near your shower that you could push and it would automatically give you a shower of the right water temperature? My car remembers where I like the seats, why can't my shower remember how hot I like the water to be?

Well spoken!

My thought was "didn't I say something about this before"? Then, after a quick search, I find nothing, which means it's one of many topics I wanted to blog about but did not, mostly because I'm lazy. I suppose there's no problem with two people talking about something like this, but the blog world does seem like first come = most insightful, no? Gaping Void must have some great drawing about this phenomenon... I wonder what keyword I would use to find it.

Too Much Information

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:53:00 +0000

So I don't know if you're familiar with this Internets thingy, but apparently there's a lot of great stuff out there. Case in point - DayTipper... what an incredibly useful set of stuff. The problem is that many if not all of the items are very specific. For example, getting a splinter out with no pain. The problem with this is that it's so specific, that it's almost silly to bookmark. I only need this bit of information when I actually need it. And considering I can barely keep important bits of info in there, like the address of my wife's blog, I can hardly expect to have this kind of stuff in my CPU registers, my second level cache, or even stored on disk... it's likely to be the kind of thing on tape backup. My question is what is the best way to maintain an index of this stuff, either in my head or my computer so that it can be readily accessible? Right now, it's a mix of my email inbox in a folder (and then just search), my favorites and my rss feeds. None of these are particularly good. Del.ico.us?

Hilarious Un-Expected Data

noreply@blogger.com (Iron Yuppie) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:46:00 +0000

One of the interesting things about consumer electronics is that the defaults tend to always be very obvious and well known. So all alarm clocks go off at 12 AM (much to Joel's disappointment), people's hard drives are open for the viewing (because the web server is on on their desktop machines, directory browsing is on and firewalls are off (or missing)), and apparently, one of the most common first pictures for new cameras are boobies. The only flaw with this analysis is that it doesn't look at what the next 100 pictures are either... I'd suspect it's pretty close to what the first one is. Actually, I'd be that as number of pictures per camera increase, likelihood of pornography also increases, considering pornographers just happen to take so many pictures.