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05
Oct 06
My first experience with Skypecasts
I downloaded the latest version of Skype and connected with my Bluetooth headset. I noticed a new tab for the Skypecasts service, which is a way to have group conversations in Skype. In theory this sounds like a good idea. I sorted and found a channel called “Happy Talk” with 8 other people and intruded. As I lurked and listened, a few non-english speakers were attempting to communicate with each other. It was an audio car wreck. Thick Chinese and Indian accents talking over one another, the echo of feedback, and crappy sound quality. Finally, it resorted to a good-natured game of “Shut up” / “No, you shut up.”
04
Oct 06
Sentences and Moral Maxims
By Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld:
54.—The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.
122.—If we conquer our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
04
Oct 06
A short rant on books
I spent a fruitless week searching for a few books that have proven either too popular or too unpopular to buy due to the apparent lack of copies anywhere in Dallas. After stopping at the mother of all Half-Price Books stores and two Barnes & Nobles I decided to try the massive, 9-story Dallas Public Library. While at the library I did find some of the books I wanted, but it turned out that most of them were located in Humanities on the third floor, which was closed off for renovations. Undaunted, I continued on to SMU’s charming and ratty old library with my TexShare card and located the books again, but when I tried to check out they told me I could only keep them for three days due to my not being a student. Screw that.
Why is it impossible to find certain small books for sale when all manner of other crap is available? As much as I hate waiting for packages, I may have to start book shopping online.
02
Oct 06
Online gambling ban – some wild speculation
Apparently, a piece of legislation passed the House making it illegal for credit card companies and banks within the United States to take payments for online gambling operations. This effectively shuts down online gambling’s most lucrative market. The legislation in question, H.R. 4954, is a bill dealing ostensibly with ports security. The two biggest supporters of the gambling legislation, John Kyl (AZ) and Jim Leach (IA), are both from states with legalized riverboat and Indian casino gambling. Prospective Republican candidate and Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, is also a major supporter. (When he runs for president it would be worth researching his campaign donations to see if any tribal money made it in there.) The legislation is also supported by diverse interests like the National Football League, but more speculation on that shortly. If I were a cynical person, I would suggest that this shutdown is simply a precursor to legal online gambling, which will work out in the following steps:
Step 1: Shut down all illegal online gambling in the United States. This is complete as of this week, provided it gets signed into law. If online gambling companies cannot take bets from within the United States they will lose tens of billions of dollars. Gamblers have no way to pay the sites because the sites can no longer legally process their bank or credit cards directly. Brick and mortar casinos are the winners here as they have been extremely unhappy about the competition from the online market where they were prohibited from operating due to existing laws. They have been shoveling buckets of money into the war chests of their distinguished representatives in Congress for over ten years.
Step 2: Brick and mortar casinos ghost-write and support legislation for the regulation of legalized Internet gambling. Shortly after online gambling is outlawed. It will return in a legal form. Essentially, the casinos will make deals with the state and federal governments to accept regulation in return for significant tax revenues, cooperation with money-laundering investigations, etc. I imagine the casinos might try for concessions tying online customers to the physical casino through various mechanisms. For example, requiring customers to create accounts in person (presumably for age verification), storing funds in casino accounts, or even making online gamblers play online only in approved gambling facilities. This would allow the casino business to open up legal online gambling terminals in bars, truck stops, airports, etc. Las Vegas will then be available across the country 24/7 and the state governments will be guaranteed their piece of the action. It may sound outlandish, but the gambling interests are very serious and long-range thinkers.
What stake does the NFL have in this? Their support may be a result of their desire to keep sports betting from negatively affecting their all-American image, however what if American society has grown more tolerant of gambling? What if the NFL ran its own online book-making operation? The odds could be determined by the marketplace, and the NFL could take a cut of all the bets made all while providing an open and authoritative eBay-style book-making marketplace.
26
Sep 06
Mammon and entertainment
I’m ambivalent about gambling maybe due to my Southern Baptist roots. On the one hand, it’s occasionally fun to go to a casino and lose a lot of money and feel stupid about it. On the other hand, plenty of people have the fun and lose the money, but somehow forget the discomfort of losing hard-earned money long enough to become repeat losers customers.
If you talk to the locals in places like Shreveport, they’re quick to tell you that casino gambling is a net drain on the economy. With the exception of a few select businesses in close proximity to the casinos, it has to be an economic wash. Sure, you have the good middle-income jobs as dealers and pit bosses, but otherwise most of the money made by casinos in places like Shreveport heads right back out to New York City, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Very little money is left to spend in the wider local economy. Wherever there is gambling, you almost certainly do not want to live there. It saps the vitality and spirit of a place, because easy-come winnings walk hand in hand with easy-go misery. There is no way to make everyone a winner. That is the lie of gambling. If you’re wealthy, loss is the cost of doing business, if you’re poor, loss can cripple you.
The gambling industry shows it’s true colors in situations like the one described in the following article: US arrest threat to gambling executives. It describes how Lousiana police at the behest of pro-gambling politicians are trying to get Internet gambling operations to stop taking bets from users in Louisiana by threatening to issue warrants for Internet gambling executives that can be served anywhere in the United States.
Louisiana police have warned all online gambling companies to stop accepting bets in the state or risk having their executives and directors arrested if they visit the US.
The police official responsible for the arrest of Peter Dicks, former chairman of Sportingbet, on a Louisiana warrant in New York three weeks ago, said the state was pressing ahead with its clampdown, in spite of what appears to be a rethink about the case at higher political levels.
Why should Louisiana care about Internet gambling when gambling is legal in that state? Quite simply, it’s an old school turf war. The brick and mortar casinos are using their corrupt influence within Louisiana politics to put the hurt on their low-cost, efficient competitors. The state also wants to make sure they get a taste (taxes) of any gambling that goes on within their borders.
In spite of my libertarian leanings, I think gambling is essentially a scam that needs to be closely controlled. And worse, it’s a scam that perpetuates and celebrates the ethos of scamming. Casinos are selling false hopes and dreams (scam #1) and casino visitors are hungry to consume this delusion for the possibility of gain without sacrifice (scam #2), or just for relief from pain. I doubt much good can ever come from gambling, despite its cross-dressing as wholesome family entertainment.
26
Sep 06
YouTube is fun for old music videos: It’s my life
A few weekends ago, I spent hours watching music videos on YouTube. Honestly, without a user-driven site like YouTube you would never see some of these videos in the wild. Especially girl groups like FuzzBox (We’ve got a Fuzzbox and we’re gonna use it), which I was unfamiliar with and found interesting from a cultural history perspective.
I like YouTube, but you have to wade through a ton of narcissistic teenage camwh*ring to get to the good stuff. Video sharing sites are irresistable to teenage human peacocks.
I found this video, which I really like for two reasons. Number one, it’s a great song by a great band from the 1980’s. Number two, the background video to the song uses nature film footage as well as whimsical animation techniques. Bon appetit!
26
Sep 06
For the last 3500 years.
This past weekend, Jody and I went to see the Hatshepsut exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. It’s called: Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. Apparently, Hatshepsut (Say that five times fast) was regent for her son, but she later upgraded to full pharaoh. This was around 1500 BC, which is really only about 140 human generations ago. The older I get, the more a millenium seems rather short.
The exhibit was pretty interesting, although I found myself thinking more about “culture” and “history” as a business rather than enjoying the priceless antiquities. The exhibit was incredibly crowded. The tickets were around $15 a piece mainly for the privilege of admiring baubles looted from the crypts of long-since departed Egyptians. Most of the non-statuary exhibits were comprised of jewelry and amulets worn by the dead, although there were also many small containers used to store eye makeup and various balms. Things any normal, respectable Egyptian would need for their one-way trip to the afterlife. The commonplace nature of most of the stuff was striking. Human beings have not changed at all in 3500 years. For example, there was whip handle (kinda like this) given to some overseer with an inscription of praise for a job well done. It reminded me of the plastic plaudits most large corporations award in lieu of bonuses: “This whip handle awarded to Amon, the Harvest Manager of Senemut, for bringing in the barley harvest under budget and ahead of schedule.” Something about this is depressing, although I think the Egyptians had a really boring culture judging from the stuff they left behind. Much like the Babylonians, most of their residue is rather uninspiring, with the exception of the pyramids, sculpture, and palaces. Did the Egyptians have a Plato or a Socrates? Maybe they did and that’s the kind of stuff that was destroyed when those idiots razed the Library of Alexandria.
One of the other things I really enjoyed was a game set in a small wooden box meant to be buried with its owner, obviously a lover of games. It reminded me of how we buried my grandmother with a deck of playing cards when she died, because playing games like Shanghai Rummy and Hand and Foot was one of the things she loved doing most with her friends and family.
If you have a chance, spend some a little while gawking at these old dead and their junk. It will make you glad that you’re still alive in your little place and time.
24
Sep 06
The fickle real estate market
It seems like most Americans are ill-equipped to deal with the vagaries of real estate. This does not bode well considering the high cost of an investment that can run several hundred thousands of dollars. From the NY Times: It Seemed Like a Good Bet at the Time:
One such owner, who requested anonymity rather than risk the embarrassment of exposing a financial blunder, bought a house in Port St. Lucie, Fla., as an investment in April of last year and financed the $410,000 purchase with an ARM, with an introductory rate of nearly 7 percent. The loan was an afterthought, since he expected to sell the house almost immediately for a profit. He didn’t, and now the developer recently sold a similar house in the neighborhood for $325,000.
“I just didn’t know what I was doing, and I shouldn’t have done it,†said the man, who does not have enough equity in the house to refinance and who will run out of money to pay the mortgage in 10 months. “Maybe the Lord will send a miracle.â€
Presumably, the best time to buy real estate is when everyone else is losing their shirts, not when everyone is talking about all the quick money to be had. With houses as with stocks, buy when everyone else is selling, sell when everyone else is buying.
19
Sep 06
Untitled
The Holy Grail of Synchronization: How to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google Calendar, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone with Funambol / ScheduleWorld.