So, everywhere I turn these days, I hear quiet, terrified whispers about a growing 3rd bubble from guys I like to call 3rd bubble theorists. What is this 3rd bubble and what is a 3rd bubble theorist?
3rd bubble theory basically maintains that in the past 10 years we have gone through 2 violent economic bubbles and that a third one is now forming. The first bubble was the Internet bubble. It burst some time in mid September of 2000. The second bubble was the real estate bubble. It burst in mid September of 2008. Each bubble formed for about 6 or 7 years, then it exploded. You might argue that the internet bubble got underway in 1994. This when Al Gore held the famouse "Information Superhighway" conference at my dear UCLA... when I was a senior there. The second bubble got started early in 2001 when Alan Greenspan dropped interest rates to nearly nothing to cope with the onrushing crisis of the Internet bubble collapse. Household finance was cheap. Mortgages were considered safe. Banks rushed in.
Now we are building a 3rd bubble: The Government debt bubble. To cope with the explosion of the real estate bubble, the U.S. Federal Government is sucking in huge masses of capital in the form of T-Bills, whist prepping massive deficit spending packages to bail out giant corps and stimulate the dying economy. Terrified to put their money is stocks, corporate bonds, or just a plain old bank account, scarred investors are all to happy to slam their cash into a T-Bills. It is considered the only risk free investment.
These theorist maintain that we are in for a protracted period of grinding deflation. Everyone in the world is trying to deleverage at once. This is a fancy way of saying we're all trying to get out of debt... except the government. Firms and Families are taking all revenues and paying down debt. This is why spending has dried up, and the governments of the world are rushing to fill the gaps as spenders of last resort.
As the use of leverage goes away, the size of M1 and M2 money supplies dries up. As buyers take all profits and pay and pay down debt, demand slips. Together, these two forces produce enormous deflationary pressure. Business must offer fire-sale prices to attract any buyers at all. Ergo the prices of gasoline, Townhouses, Blu-ray disks and Tabasco sauce drop.
In this scenario, the value of the dollar increases. The value of commodities, goods and services decrease. Your dollar becomes more and more valuable as time goes on. Corporate profits look worse and worse. It doesn't make sense to buy stocks, commodities, or invest in new business when you are in a deflationary cycle.
In this scenario, investors will just keep stuffing their money into Government T-Bills. Since they are stuffing their money into Government T-Bills, Government debt increases. Since they are not stuffing their money into good, productive, profitable private enterprise, GDP does not grow. Rather, it is likely to shrink. Because GDP does not grow, but rather shrinks, Government tax revenues shrink. Because the government is likely to cut taxes as a stimulus, revenues will shrink here as well. [Beware of the Arthur Laugher curve, but not in this environment.]
So here it is: Another bubble of insolvency. With ever increasing debt, and with decreasing revenues to pay for it, the Government debt bubble eventually burst. What does the end of the world look like when the 3rd bubble bursts? What features will this Fiscal Armageddon manifest?
First, the Government will default on its debt. It will not be able to pay loan service without printing money. When the government defaults, probably after attempting to print itself out of this mess, the good 'ol Dollar bill will bust. The value of the USD will basically fall off to nothing. We will experience hyper-inflation of 3,000% per month, as producers of goods and services around the world shun our money. The Government will have to introduce a new currency, which I will call the VDollar, or virtual dollar. This will be an electronic currency only. There will be no paper or coin. It will probably be Gold-backed, but only in theory. Attempt to trade your digital bits for actual gold and you will get the cold shoulder. Nevertheless, expect the Government to spin-up some yarn about gold securities in Fort Knox, or something like that.
If the U.S. Federal Government busts the dollar bill, it will be a defeat the dimensions of which we have never experienced. It will be a route from which no honor can be salvaged. I don't want to imagine which Hell or what chaos will be visited upon the world if this scenario comes to pass.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Great Depression II will be good for Hollywood
In Hollywood, there has always been a huge battle between the artists and the entertainment companies. It is almost like the struggle between pitchers and batters in baseball, or offense and defense in football. This is the entire warp and woof of the game, from an insiders perspective.
Entertainment companies are run by businessmen. They want to make money. The best way to do that is to give the people what they want from a movie: Entertainment. Declinations from this stance are punishable by low profits and bad losses.
By the way, I should mention that the definition of hit has nothing to do with what the critics, the people, or the Oscars say about a film. A hit is defined as a 15% rate of internal studio return, within 12 calendar months, after all costs and payouts have been made. 15% pure cream makes a movie a hit. If you make this rate of return within 12 calendar months, you made a hit. It does not matter how the film is ultimately remembered or what people said about it. It made money. It was a hit.
Artists are manic, depressive, schizophrenic people with sexual and substance abuse problems. They are also extremely narcissistic. They think there can be nothing more important, or timely, or provocative, or artistic than stories about their personal problems. They think personal confessions are the stuff of art. Artists like money, but they like to tell their own personal stories about heroine addiction and homosexuality and life with AIDS much more.
Entertainment companies realize that grueling, punishing, depressing stories about actors and writers with heroine addiction, homosexual issues and AIDS related illnesses have zero commercial value at the box office. That's right, I said zero commercial value. When you toss in the manic, depressive, bipolar schizophrenia behavior, the screenplay really gets ugly beyond ugly.
These movies very seldom make a 15% rate of internal studio return within 12 months. Most of them loose money. 75% of the people in the United States of America have no interest buying a $10 ticket for a film about an actor who peddles his ass on the streets of West Hollywood whilst awaiting his break, only to become addicted to smack and infected with HIV. 50% of the people wouldn't watch that movie if you showed it to them for free. 25% wouldn't watch if you offered them free chicken and biscuts along with a free ticket.
Nevertheless, this doesn't prevent 20 such screenplays from being written each and every year. Go down to West Hollywood and stop at any Starbucks for a cup of coffee. You will see three guys, each with an Apple MacBook, writing just such a screenplay right now. I assure you, these three guys are each convinced that they are writing the most important literary work in the past 20 years. They know they are way beyond cool. They will all be shocked when doors get slammed in their faces. The corporate studios just can't recognize great art, or so they say.
Now how does this connect with the Great Depression II? Movies did well during the Great Depression I. It turns out that Hollywood is surging right now, but not everybody is doing equally well. It is said that Paramount may well fold in the year 2009. They are going to release just 18 new films this year. In the glory days, they tried to have 1 film ready to launch every single week. Not so now.
Everybody is keenly aware of Paramount's problems. The other four major studios are watching Paramount's dilemmas very closely. They know many of the material weaknesses in the Paramount system are evident in their own systems as well. They know they could suffer collapse unless they rid themselves of the problems Paramount is suffering from.
What are these problems? You might call it the Labor-Accord of the 1960s. I'm not talking about Unions or pay or benefits. I am talking about the balance of Art vs. Entertainment. You see, ever since the 1960s, there has been a clear understanding that goes a little something like this.
Artists have to work on a certain number of blockbuster A-pics each year for their respective studios. These are movies designed from jump street to make money. Hopefully they all make money. Some profits from these successful blockbusters are used to finance a limited number of art movies which the artists basically control. This is where you get strange movies like the ones made by Fox Searchlight, or Disney's Miramax. These movies contain a lot of drug addiction, insanity and homosexuality. Everybody understands that very few of these art films ever turn a profit. If you don't work on the blockbusters, you don't get to do an art film. If your blockbuster doesn't make money, you don't get to do a movie about your psychological train-wreck. You don't get any pudding until you finish your meat.
The only problem with this theory is that the blockbusters cost a ton of money, and they don't necessarily hit. When they fail, blockbusters loose a ton of money. Eddie Murphy's notorious Pluto Nash lost something like $90 million for Paramount. {This is an example of a worst case scenario.} The key point is that there are no sure-fire blockbusters. Some people in Hollywood say you need two good blockbusters just to cover the cost of one blockbuster failure. When you throw in the failures of the art films, you really start to encounter financial problems.
There were artists in Hollywood during the Great Depression I. They suffered the same insanity, drug addictions and homosexual issues current Hollywood artists do. There were also studio businessmen in Hollywood during the era of the Great Depression I. There was no Labor-Accord like the kind we have today. It was understood that money was too dear, failure too damaging, and studio-collapse too close to waste lots of capital on art films. The result was that very few art flicks got made during the Great Depression I. Thank God for that.
Rather, Hollywood constructed the Grindhouse system. A couple of film crews were formed at each major studio, and they were supposed to grind out 1 film every 2 weeks. Everybody had the same amount of time to write. Everybody had the same budget to shoot the pic. Some turned out. Some didn't. Any major actor under contract might shoot 10 or 15 movies per year. John Wayne did this during WWII. The objective was entertainment, always. The objective was to give the people a good show for their money, always. You were an entertainer, working for an entertainment company in those days, period. If you wanted to be an artist, you could get on a plane for Paris or Rome.
Most of the movies considered all-time classics were shot under this Grindhouse system. Casablanca was shot in this fashion. Casablanca is one of those films thought to be in top 5 all-time list.
Might this system return today? Might history repeat itself in Hollywood as the Great Depression II sets in?
Not exactly, but something like it is going to emerge. The model the Majors are studying very closely is Lion's Gate Entertainment. Lion's Gate has become little-big studio. It is the largest and most profitable of the minor studios in Hollywood, Pixar included. Right from its very inception, the guys driving the Lion's Gate project had a clear-cut objective of becoming a major studio. They didn't want to replace 1 of the big 5 studios, rather they wanted to become the 6th major studio. How do you do this?
Unless the studio execs can see a clear-cut path to profits, Lion's Gate will not finance a film. This means they make a lot of comic book films, action blockbusters, and horror movies. The objective is to give the people a good show for their money. The objective is to give the people what they want: Entertainment. If you work for Lion's Gate, you are a professional entertainer working for an entertainment company.
Lion's Gate is detested by the Hollywood art community. The members of SAG do not speak well of Lion's Gate. They are considered the ultimate corporate commercial studio in Hollywood. This means they don't finance art films. You don't see a lot of movies about heroine addiction, insanity and homosexuality coming from Lion's Gate. Despite their hard-hearted rejection of the art film, Lion's Gate is winning this game. They keep turning in one great winning season after another. SAG members often shake their heads in dismay that a studio can so brazenly disregard art and yet do so well financially.
If Paramount should fail, Lion's Gate will likely be the chief benefactor of this collapse. Lion's Gate will probably buy "I Love Lucy" and "Star Trek". Lion's gate will probably gain the Lion's share of the investor capital that Paramount once controlled. When the Hedge Funds return to the table, Lion's Gate will probably become the 5th major studio.
Moreover, the collapse of Paramount would send shock waves of fear through Warner Brothers, Universal and Fox. It is a copycat league. Teams emulate success and they anti-emulate failure. You can expect Warner, Universal and Fox to move away from their current systems {the Labor-Accord Paramount also practices} and move towards the model Lion's Gate manifests.
This would mean no finance for art films... At least from the major studios. This would mean artists would have to self-finance their movies about insanity, drug addiction and homosexuality. Most artists don't like that idea. They seem to be aware that they won't be able to punish society with very many films on this subject should these events come to pass.
Entertainment companies are run by businessmen. They want to make money. The best way to do that is to give the people what they want from a movie: Entertainment. Declinations from this stance are punishable by low profits and bad losses.
By the way, I should mention that the definition of hit has nothing to do with what the critics, the people, or the Oscars say about a film. A hit is defined as a 15% rate of internal studio return, within 12 calendar months, after all costs and payouts have been made. 15% pure cream makes a movie a hit. If you make this rate of return within 12 calendar months, you made a hit. It does not matter how the film is ultimately remembered or what people said about it. It made money. It was a hit.
Artists are manic, depressive, schizophrenic people with sexual and substance abuse problems. They are also extremely narcissistic. They think there can be nothing more important, or timely, or provocative, or artistic than stories about their personal problems. They think personal confessions are the stuff of art. Artists like money, but they like to tell their own personal stories about heroine addiction and homosexuality and life with AIDS much more.
Entertainment companies realize that grueling, punishing, depressing stories about actors and writers with heroine addiction, homosexual issues and AIDS related illnesses have zero commercial value at the box office. That's right, I said zero commercial value. When you toss in the manic, depressive, bipolar schizophrenia behavior, the screenplay really gets ugly beyond ugly.
These movies very seldom make a 15% rate of internal studio return within 12 months. Most of them loose money. 75% of the people in the United States of America have no interest buying a $10 ticket for a film about an actor who peddles his ass on the streets of West Hollywood whilst awaiting his break, only to become addicted to smack and infected with HIV. 50% of the people wouldn't watch that movie if you showed it to them for free. 25% wouldn't watch if you offered them free chicken and biscuts along with a free ticket.
Nevertheless, this doesn't prevent 20 such screenplays from being written each and every year. Go down to West Hollywood and stop at any Starbucks for a cup of coffee. You will see three guys, each with an Apple MacBook, writing just such a screenplay right now. I assure you, these three guys are each convinced that they are writing the most important literary work in the past 20 years. They know they are way beyond cool. They will all be shocked when doors get slammed in their faces. The corporate studios just can't recognize great art, or so they say.
Now how does this connect with the Great Depression II? Movies did well during the Great Depression I. It turns out that Hollywood is surging right now, but not everybody is doing equally well. It is said that Paramount may well fold in the year 2009. They are going to release just 18 new films this year. In the glory days, they tried to have 1 film ready to launch every single week. Not so now.
Everybody is keenly aware of Paramount's problems. The other four major studios are watching Paramount's dilemmas very closely. They know many of the material weaknesses in the Paramount system are evident in their own systems as well. They know they could suffer collapse unless they rid themselves of the problems Paramount is suffering from.
What are these problems? You might call it the Labor-Accord of the 1960s. I'm not talking about Unions or pay or benefits. I am talking about the balance of Art vs. Entertainment. You see, ever since the 1960s, there has been a clear understanding that goes a little something like this.
Artists have to work on a certain number of blockbuster A-pics each year for their respective studios. These are movies designed from jump street to make money. Hopefully they all make money. Some profits from these successful blockbusters are used to finance a limited number of art movies which the artists basically control. This is where you get strange movies like the ones made by Fox Searchlight, or Disney's Miramax. These movies contain a lot of drug addiction, insanity and homosexuality. Everybody understands that very few of these art films ever turn a profit. If you don't work on the blockbusters, you don't get to do an art film. If your blockbuster doesn't make money, you don't get to do a movie about your psychological train-wreck. You don't get any pudding until you finish your meat.
The only problem with this theory is that the blockbusters cost a ton of money, and they don't necessarily hit. When they fail, blockbusters loose a ton of money. Eddie Murphy's notorious Pluto Nash lost something like $90 million for Paramount. {This is an example of a worst case scenario.} The key point is that there are no sure-fire blockbusters. Some people in Hollywood say you need two good blockbusters just to cover the cost of one blockbuster failure. When you throw in the failures of the art films, you really start to encounter financial problems.
There were artists in Hollywood during the Great Depression I. They suffered the same insanity, drug addictions and homosexual issues current Hollywood artists do. There were also studio businessmen in Hollywood during the era of the Great Depression I. There was no Labor-Accord like the kind we have today. It was understood that money was too dear, failure too damaging, and studio-collapse too close to waste lots of capital on art films. The result was that very few art flicks got made during the Great Depression I. Thank God for that.
Rather, Hollywood constructed the Grindhouse system. A couple of film crews were formed at each major studio, and they were supposed to grind out 1 film every 2 weeks. Everybody had the same amount of time to write. Everybody had the same budget to shoot the pic. Some turned out. Some didn't. Any major actor under contract might shoot 10 or 15 movies per year. John Wayne did this during WWII. The objective was entertainment, always. The objective was to give the people a good show for their money, always. You were an entertainer, working for an entertainment company in those days, period. If you wanted to be an artist, you could get on a plane for Paris or Rome.
Most of the movies considered all-time classics were shot under this Grindhouse system. Casablanca was shot in this fashion. Casablanca is one of those films thought to be in top 5 all-time list.
Might this system return today? Might history repeat itself in Hollywood as the Great Depression II sets in?
Not exactly, but something like it is going to emerge. The model the Majors are studying very closely is Lion's Gate Entertainment. Lion's Gate has become little-big studio. It is the largest and most profitable of the minor studios in Hollywood, Pixar included. Right from its very inception, the guys driving the Lion's Gate project had a clear-cut objective of becoming a major studio. They didn't want to replace 1 of the big 5 studios, rather they wanted to become the 6th major studio. How do you do this?
Unless the studio execs can see a clear-cut path to profits, Lion's Gate will not finance a film. This means they make a lot of comic book films, action blockbusters, and horror movies. The objective is to give the people a good show for their money. The objective is to give the people what they want: Entertainment. If you work for Lion's Gate, you are a professional entertainer working for an entertainment company.
Lion's Gate is detested by the Hollywood art community. The members of SAG do not speak well of Lion's Gate. They are considered the ultimate corporate commercial studio in Hollywood. This means they don't finance art films. You don't see a lot of movies about heroine addiction, insanity and homosexuality coming from Lion's Gate. Despite their hard-hearted rejection of the art film, Lion's Gate is winning this game. They keep turning in one great winning season after another. SAG members often shake their heads in dismay that a studio can so brazenly disregard art and yet do so well financially.
If Paramount should fail, Lion's Gate will likely be the chief benefactor of this collapse. Lion's Gate will probably buy "I Love Lucy" and "Star Trek". Lion's gate will probably gain the Lion's share of the investor capital that Paramount once controlled. When the Hedge Funds return to the table, Lion's Gate will probably become the 5th major studio.
Moreover, the collapse of Paramount would send shock waves of fear through Warner Brothers, Universal and Fox. It is a copycat league. Teams emulate success and they anti-emulate failure. You can expect Warner, Universal and Fox to move away from their current systems {the Labor-Accord Paramount also practices} and move towards the model Lion's Gate manifests.
This would mean no finance for art films... At least from the major studios. This would mean artists would have to self-finance their movies about insanity, drug addiction and homosexuality. Most artists don't like that idea. They seem to be aware that they won't be able to punish society with very many films on this subject should these events come to pass.
Monday, February 9, 2009
So, whatever happened to my NEW HDTV?
I haven't bought it yet, that's what happened. Why? Essentially, my Dad is having financial trouble due to the close of his Restaurant. He wanted to back out of the deal. This suited me just fine, because--as it turns out--I was having a little financial problem of my own.
It turns out that HSBC turned me down for the Mitsubishi Diamond Credit program. They gave no specific reason for doing so. They simply stated that they had consulted Transunion before making their decision. I happen to subscribe to TrueCredit.com, a service provided by Transunion. Everything is fine there. I don't have a long and deep credit history including three car loans, and two mortgages, but what I do have is pretty good. My Transunion FICO is resting at 708 right now. That ain't bad. I am shocked that HSBC would turn down a 708 FICO for a TV loan... but then again I am not.
I just blogged recently about HSBC going into crisis. [Consult The Great Depression II.] I just want it to be understood that this is their fault, not mine. In an ordinary environment, they would have lent me the money. As we all know, this ain't no normal or ordinary banking environment.
There is a certain Korean car vendor I know [he also owns my apartment building and lives here] who was deeply dismayed when he heard my report on this matter. He claimed that no FICO above 700 ever drove away from his car lot without financing on a brand new car... At least prior to this mess. He has seen many cases like this lately. It is killing his business. He was hoping for news that the credit freeze was thawing. I brought news of continued winter weather.
Regardless, I am going to buy a new HDTV as soon as I can find a buyer for my current HDTV. I have more or less decided to buy a Mitsubishi DiamondScan WD-73835. This will give me an extra foot of screen, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 3d movies. I think this is the best value on the market. I would like more time to pay for it and lower interest, but I will do it anyway.
It turns out that HSBC turned me down for the Mitsubishi Diamond Credit program. They gave no specific reason for doing so. They simply stated that they had consulted Transunion before making their decision. I happen to subscribe to TrueCredit.com, a service provided by Transunion. Everything is fine there. I don't have a long and deep credit history including three car loans, and two mortgages, but what I do have is pretty good. My Transunion FICO is resting at 708 right now. That ain't bad. I am shocked that HSBC would turn down a 708 FICO for a TV loan... but then again I am not.
I just blogged recently about HSBC going into crisis. [Consult The Great Depression II.] I just want it to be understood that this is their fault, not mine. In an ordinary environment, they would have lent me the money. As we all know, this ain't no normal or ordinary banking environment.
There is a certain Korean car vendor I know [he also owns my apartment building and lives here] who was deeply dismayed when he heard my report on this matter. He claimed that no FICO above 700 ever drove away from his car lot without financing on a brand new car... At least prior to this mess. He has seen many cases like this lately. It is killing his business. He was hoping for news that the credit freeze was thawing. I brought news of continued winter weather.
Regardless, I am going to buy a new HDTV as soon as I can find a buyer for my current HDTV. I have more or less decided to buy a Mitsubishi DiamondScan WD-73835. This will give me an extra foot of screen, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 3d movies. I think this is the best value on the market. I would like more time to pay for it and lower interest, but I will do it anyway.
Windows-7 is a big winner. Apple is in for a very rough ride
First of all, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Windows-7 is not really a new operating system. Windows-7 is a marketing gimmick contrived to ditch the massive negative press dogging Vista. Windows-7 is actually Windows Vista SP2. It is the second major service pack, or redux, of the Vista operating system. Re-branding it is a smart move. It makes stupid & ignorant people {who generally don’t keep track of current events} take a second look at the system.
With that said, let me make another thing perfectly clear: Windows-7 is a killer winner. It is the real deal, the legitimate, genuine article. It has all the fit and finish we would expect in an SP2 level operating system. It is mature, stable and fast. It installs like butter and runs smooth as silk. It is faster & more efficient than Vista on 64 bit systems. It is somewhat lighter on memory use. All of your software packages work just— as well or better—as they would under Vista.
UAC, at least in my beta copy, has been toned down. UAC is still a bad idea and still somewhat obnoxious, but it has been improved a little. Don’t cleave too tightly to that statement though. Rumor has it that Microsoft is going to dial UAC up a notch due to the protestations of the FUD-ruckers. More on this subject in a moment.
After this weekend I have now officially installed Windows-7 twice. The first was on my new and luxurious Core i7 system. The second time was on my brother's Sony Vaio laptop. These are two very different systems, but both were installed from the exact same DVD-R disk. The results were basically the same in both cases. Both systems finished the install flawlessly. Neither needed any drivers. Both brought down two patches from MS-Update. Everything worked exactly as it was supposed to. You don't even need to Install the .NET framework 3.51. It is in the distribution. The system is butter-smooth. No problems.
My Config looks like this
My considered opinion is that Windows-7 is vastly better prepared to ship now than the original Vista RTM was. This is the best punch Microsoft has delivered since Windows XP SP2. When it ships, it is going to sweep over the land like a tidal wave. There mere fact that all you old and new hardware is supported in a rock-solid OS will be sufficient to cause people to jump. Easy setup makes for light migration pain. Quick setup makes for short rebuild-times.
Apple has had some fun in the past two years, but now they are in for a very rough ride. They need to batten down the hatches and secure for battle stations.
The one place where Microsoft can fuck themselves silly at this point is to listen to security wieners, and ratchet up UAC again. UAC was and is a bad idea. That is all. Only this and nothing more. We have always had unmanaged code in the system. It too late to impose management on unmanaged code. Attempting to do so is stupid and counterproductive. UAC should be entirely removed from the system. Fuck the security fagots.
I want to make another thing perfectly clear: All this paternalistic hand-holding has got to go. I don’t want to click “Yes I want to Install” 6 times before getting Adobe Flash installed under my web-browser. I do not want that system to prompt me before I unzip something I just downloaded. I don’t want the system to prompt me before running a Setup file I just unzipped after I downloaded. I do not want UAC to prevent NetBeans from launching Glassfish. I really get pissed when Windows interrupts large copy operations 10 or 12 times to ask “Are you really sure you want to Copy/Move this system file?” Fuck yes! That is why I copied/moved it, asshole! I do not want to have to go to PowerShell to type:
Copy-Item “C:\Music” J:\Music -Recurs –Force
Just to avoid the multitude of prompts UAC will throw when backing up my Music collection.
Honestly, I do not know what goes on inside these line-managers’ heads sometimes. Interfering with a backup process? They must be on drugs. Microsoft must have about 10,000 pounds of collective brain damage due to narcotics use. It takes 10,000 pounds of brain damage to cook up something like UAC. Just about all Windows developers shut off UAC immediately because of its wretched interference with simple productivity.
At the very least, you have to give us UAC setting levels where we can control how much disruption & interruption is going to be imposed on us.
With that said, let me make another thing perfectly clear: Windows-7 is a killer winner. It is the real deal, the legitimate, genuine article. It has all the fit and finish we would expect in an SP2 level operating system. It is mature, stable and fast. It installs like butter and runs smooth as silk. It is faster & more efficient than Vista on 64 bit systems. It is somewhat lighter on memory use. All of your software packages work just— as well or better—as they would under Vista.
UAC, at least in my beta copy, has been toned down. UAC is still a bad idea and still somewhat obnoxious, but it has been improved a little. Don’t cleave too tightly to that statement though. Rumor has it that Microsoft is going to dial UAC up a notch due to the protestations of the FUD-ruckers. More on this subject in a moment.
After this weekend I have now officially installed Windows-7 twice. The first was on my new and luxurious Core i7 system. The second time was on my brother's Sony Vaio laptop. These are two very different systems, but both were installed from the exact same DVD-R disk. The results were basically the same in both cases. Both systems finished the install flawlessly. Neither needed any drivers. Both brought down two patches from MS-Update. Everything worked exactly as it was supposed to. You don't even need to Install the .NET framework 3.51. It is in the distribution. The system is butter-smooth. No problems.
My Config looks like this
- Core i7 920 processor
- MSI X58 Platinum Eclipse motherboard
- 6GB of G.Skill DDR3-1333
- 3GB of disk storage
- Asus Radeon HD4850 with an Arctic Cooling heatsink
- An LG combo HD-DVD & Blu-Ray burner
- 1.86Ghz Core 2 Duo (Conroe)
- 2GB of DDR2-4200
- 200GB disk
- Intel X3100 graphics
- Standard DVD
- 3rd Gen Centrino chipset
My considered opinion is that Windows-7 is vastly better prepared to ship now than the original Vista RTM was. This is the best punch Microsoft has delivered since Windows XP SP2. When it ships, it is going to sweep over the land like a tidal wave. There mere fact that all you old and new hardware is supported in a rock-solid OS will be sufficient to cause people to jump. Easy setup makes for light migration pain. Quick setup makes for short rebuild-times.
Apple has had some fun in the past two years, but now they are in for a very rough ride. They need to batten down the hatches and secure for battle stations.
The one place where Microsoft can fuck themselves silly at this point is to listen to security wieners, and ratchet up UAC again. UAC was and is a bad idea. That is all. Only this and nothing more. We have always had unmanaged code in the system. It too late to impose management on unmanaged code. Attempting to do so is stupid and counterproductive. UAC should be entirely removed from the system. Fuck the security fagots.
I want to make another thing perfectly clear: All this paternalistic hand-holding has got to go. I don’t want to click “Yes I want to Install” 6 times before getting Adobe Flash installed under my web-browser. I do not want that system to prompt me before I unzip something I just downloaded. I don’t want the system to prompt me before running a Setup file I just unzipped after I downloaded. I do not want UAC to prevent NetBeans from launching Glassfish. I really get pissed when Windows interrupts large copy operations 10 or 12 times to ask “Are you really sure you want to Copy/Move this system file?” Fuck yes! That is why I copied/moved it, asshole! I do not want to have to go to PowerShell to type:
Copy-Item “C:\Music” J:\Music -Recurs –Force
Just to avoid the multitude of prompts UAC will throw when backing up my Music collection.
Honestly, I do not know what goes on inside these line-managers’ heads sometimes. Interfering with a backup process? They must be on drugs. Microsoft must have about 10,000 pounds of collective brain damage due to narcotics use. It takes 10,000 pounds of brain damage to cook up something like UAC. Just about all Windows developers shut off UAC immediately because of its wretched interference with simple productivity.
At the very least, you have to give us UAC setting levels where we can control how much disruption & interruption is going to be imposed on us.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
From whence comes this rubbish about Blu-ray failing?
One of the most persistently irritating aspects of CNET.com is their twice a week habit of publishing prophesies of doom upon Blu-ray. From whence comes all this rubbish?
Does it come from sour grapes? Is Blu-Ray just too expensive for these pee-ons to afford?
Does it come from a long-standing alliance with Microsoft? Let's remember that Microsoft backed the looser in the highdef war: HD-DVD.
Does it come from mis-predicting the outcome of the war? Let's remember CNET told us HD-DVD would win because of price advantages. This multi-component false prophecy yielded multiple black eyes. The entire basis was false. HD-DVD was never really cheaper than Blu-Ray... At least not during the war.
Does it come from the vast amount of traffic they get every time they publish one of these rants? It seems that each time one of these hit-pieces gets published, the item rises to the top of news.google.com. Remember this means page views and click-throughs. That adds up to dollars and cents.
Is it because John C. Dvorak no longer yields this sort of controversy and traffic with anti-Mac hit-pieces, and the revenues he once generated have to be replaced? Let's remember John C Dvorak now uses a Mac. {According to rumor he was offered a Dell or a Mac at his new place of work. The company John hates more than Apple is Dell, so he took the Mac.}
Could it be that they own stock in download firms?
Could it be that it is difficult to rip Blu-Rays and trade them on the Internet (although this is done on Bittorrent).
So just what is the substance of their argument and does it have any merit?
This, in short, is the full case they make against Blu-ray. Each time they post these 7 points, and they do so about twice a week, posters knock each other over to make the usual ripostes.
Does it come from sour grapes? Is Blu-Ray just too expensive for these pee-ons to afford?
Does it come from a long-standing alliance with Microsoft? Let's remember that Microsoft backed the looser in the highdef war: HD-DVD.
Does it come from mis-predicting the outcome of the war? Let's remember CNET told us HD-DVD would win because of price advantages. This multi-component false prophecy yielded multiple black eyes. The entire basis was false. HD-DVD was never really cheaper than Blu-Ray... At least not during the war.
Does it come from the vast amount of traffic they get every time they publish one of these rants? It seems that each time one of these hit-pieces gets published, the item rises to the top of news.google.com. Remember this means page views and click-throughs. That adds up to dollars and cents.
Is it because John C. Dvorak no longer yields this sort of controversy and traffic with anti-Mac hit-pieces, and the revenues he once generated have to be replaced? Let's remember John C Dvorak now uses a Mac. {According to rumor he was offered a Dell or a Mac at his new place of work. The company John hates more than Apple is Dell, so he took the Mac.}
Could it be that they own stock in download firms?
Could it be that it is difficult to rip Blu-Rays and trade them on the Internet (although this is done on Bittorrent).
So just what is the substance of their argument and does it have any merit?
- A year after HD-DVD died Blu-ray still isn't doing more volume than DVD.
- Blu-ray players are not selling. (At least the ones that aren't PS3s aren't selling)
- Blu-ray players are more expensive than upscaling DVD players.
- Blu-Ray discs are more expensive than DVD disks.
- Downloads will replace DVD. Blu-Ray will not replace DVD.
- Apple isn't supporting Blu-Ray as they once said they would.
- I can't rip my Blu-rays, and watch them on 2.5 inch portable LCD screen, as I can with DVD.
This, in short, is the full case they make against Blu-ray. Each time they post these 7 points, and they do so about twice a week, posters knock each other over to make the usual ripostes.
- Two years into the format's life span Blu-Ray is way ahead of where DVD was in terms of acceptance.
- PS3 constitutes 70% to 75% of the total installed base of all Blu-Ray players because it is the finest value in the land. It is the best damn media player in the world... for all types of media. Critics are foolish to expect inferior media players (which are often more expensive) to sell in the face of such tough competition. You cannot simply disregard the PS3 because it is not “A true Blu-Ray player” such an argument is utterly false, fallacious and preposterous.
- Since Blu-Ray players offer 622% better resolution and quantum improvement in audio, we would expect them to be more expensive than upscaling DVD players. Surely you do not believe that much quality comes for free? Do you really expect a 0.0% difference in marginal price and profits?
- Diddo for the disk. The disks are too expensive on average, but they are remarkably better.
- Now we reach the absolute balderdash, poppycock and rubbish. How are we to disinfect the ignorant of their ignorance? It is clear to anyone who understands binary bandwidth issues that HDTV and broadband are a mismatch made in hell. The typical broadband connection carries approximately 2.5Mbits to your computer. The typical video image stream on Blu-Ray is approximately 24-35 Mbits. Let's call it 10x higher. That's just the video. Then you have the audio stream. For uncompressed PCM, that is another 4.6Mbits. For compressed, but lossless, DTS-HD MA, we're talking about 1.5 to 2.5Mbits. Remember, we're talking about 7.1 surround sound sample at 24 bits and 96Khz in a best case scenario. A typical Blu-ray movie occupies something like 17GB of space. You try downloading 17GB of anything and just see how long it takes. Now you can compress the hell out of the stream, but then you decimate the quality. You can reduce the resolution, but then you aren't offering HDTV. Some people protest that they are downloading their movies right now. I do solemnly assure you that if you are downloading it now, it certainly is not HD. Even the crap Apple is downloading to you is just 720p. What you see on Netflix is standard def 480p. No crap-hounds, I am sorry to inform you that the Blu-Ray spec was designed from scratch to be almost untouchable. Until the mode, mean and median bandwidth in this country hits a brick solid 40Mbits, you are not going to be able to offer a service that streams Blu-Ray quality video through the net. The consumer market just can't handle it. The business model is not workable. Some fools may try, but they will lose lots and lots of money. Certainly FIOS has the potential to yield Blu-Ray bandwidth. How soon will FIOS become ubiquitous? With the current recession, project 10 years. That is a nice, long happy life span for Blu-Ray to prosper and become the institutionalized standard. If media tech writers understood anything about binary bandwidth, they would not embarrass themselves by stating that downloads will supersede Blu-Ray.
- So Apple is not supporting Blu-Ray as they said they would...? And...? Let us remember that Apple is a very little company after all. A lot of their Macs are being used to run Windows. That's how much market influence they have. Apple wants to sell you 720p movies through Apple TV, a product which is the biggest market failure they have offered in quite some time. Everybody who owns Apple stock knows that AppleTV is not doing well at all on the open market.
- Point 7 utterly defies logic. Do you really think you can display 1920x1080 pixels on a 320x240 screen? What made you think that HDTV was made for 2.5inch LCD? Truly, some people do not understand the entire concept of HDTV.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
So there are more rumors about the Rams #2 pick
So fresh rummors have surfaced about the Rams' #2 pick overall in the upcoming 2009 draft. What are these rummors?
- The New York Giants are said to be interested in the #2 pick. Why? The Giants have an excellent roster. They were the finest team in the league during the regular season. Eli Manning is arguably more talented than his elder brother, but his brother has plenty of things Eli doesn't have: 3 game breaking receivers and the most effective tight end in the league. Worse Plaxico Burris is probably going to do 3 years in prison, and this will effectively terminate his career. This legal case will also remove the 1 game breaking receiver Eli has. For these reasons, the Giants are said to be very interested in Michael Crabtree of Texas Tech. He is a legit game changing receiver. Unfortunately, he is also a top 5 pick. The Giants need a very high pick to secure this receiver for Eli. God knows they have the talent. They can afford to sacrifice this year's entire draft in the name of acquiring a great receiver.
- The Vikings are without a quarterback , and it is rumored that they have three options in mind (A) Sign Kurt Warner, who is a free agent, but this is considered unlikely, (2) Make a deal for Mark Bulger--which is highly questionable as an option, (3) Trade horses to get a high pick and draft a QB. The third option is considered the most realistic option.
The Great Depression II
So let us review the basic facts that we are aware of at the end of January
1.We just finished the worst January in the 81 year history of the S&P 500. Down 8.5%
2.The Dow seems locked in a range between 8,000 and 9,000
3.Nourial Rabini, the only man who correctly called this crisis ahead of time, claims the stock market will finish 2009 down 20% lower than it is right now. That means that the DJIA will be at 6,400. Rabini says that we are headed for a sharp U shape recession.
4.Nourial says that the top 3 or 4 banks in the U.S. Meet the technical definitions of insolvency. This includes my beloved Wells Fargo. Rabini says that the only way to fix them is to nationalize these banks for 2 to 3 years, reorganize them, separate good and bad assets, then sell the stock back to the private market after the heavy lifting has been done. The only alternative is to permit zombie banks to wander around for 10 years, as they did in Japan during their crisis of the 1990s.
5.Banks are still massively optimistic that they will only have to write down $1.1 trillion in loans. Nourial says the figure is more like $3.6 trillion. U.S. Banks are in a massive state of denial right now, just as Japanese banks were during the 1990s. Left to their own devices, these banks will remain in a state of denial about their bad loans, just as the Japanese banks did. This is why nationalization is necessary.
6.Total consumer spending fell 3.5% just during the th Quarter. This includes a 22.4% drop in demand for durable goods, and a 7.1% drop in demand for durable goods. Inventories of unsold goods are piling up in every store.
7.We are in a world synchronized recession. All world economies are going into recession. Even countries in major denial, such as France and China are now admitting that they are going into recession.
8.Mother England is one quarter into a recession, and the Pound Sterling is taking the most devastating hits of any major currency on the free market. Even as the Euro slides down against the dollar, the Pound is falling faster. Many believe that the Pound will soon trade at 1-to-1 parity with the Euro, and both will be worth approximately $1.25-1.30 USD. Why? The Pound is basically an oil currency, and oil is in bad shape right now. This is a far cry from the days when the British Pound was worth $2.00-2.50 USD.
9.Japanese industrial output dropped 40% just in the 4th quarter of 2008. That is a larger contraction in just one quarter than Japan saw during the entire recession of the 1990s. I should mention that the Japanese recession of the 1990s was an utterly devastating recession.
10.U.S. GDP dropped 3.8% just during the 4th Quarter of 2008. The most conservative estimates say that U.S. GDP will shrink another 1.5% during fiscal 2009, regardless of the stimulus package.
11.This contraction is worse than it sounds. Population in the United States continues to expand through in-migration, low death rates, and moderate birth-rates. The economy needs to expand just to maintain consistent per-capita GDP. If GDP contracts, while population expands, per capta GDP decreases at a faster rate than simple contraction would suggest.
12.The problem of population GDP is much worse in China. China cannot abide even 5% growth without loss in Per Captia GDP. They need sustained 10% growth just to maintain a constant GDP. In China, 5% growth constitutes a hard landing.
13.Unemployment filings reached near records levels in the United States. In Michigan, unemployment is over 10% and rising.
14.New housing starts reached record lows. This portends, augers and bodes extremely bad things in the future. Give such low housing starts now, we will see more GDP shrinkage in the near future. The next quarter for sure.
15.House purchases reached record lows. Banks are not writing new mortgages. Because most people cannot buy a home without a new mortgage, existing home sales are going nowhere fast. The consequence is that prices continue to grind down in every major market.
16.HSBC, seemingly the one unshakable bank, is now entering into crisis.
17.This is now officially the worst economic decline since 1982. That was the worst decline since the Great Depression itself.
18.More and more experts believe that all institutions and families are in the process of de-leveraging. They are throwing all their resources into the process of paying down debt. They are not spending on any new consumption or production. They are paying off old consumption and production. Banks are also de-leveraging themselves.
19.More and more experts believe that this de-leveraging process is going to take several years to finish. Most do not believe a large stimulus package can convince individuals and institutions to terminate this process of de-leveraging and engage in new production and consumption.
20.The government is going to run about 3 trillion of new debt up this year. That is more than $50,000 per man woman and child in the United States.
21.The stim package the congress just past is nothing more than a wish list of Democratic Party pork. The smart grid is pretty much the only element of the package which can have a dazzling stimulus effect on the economy.
22.We have gone from an Internet bubble to a Real Estate bubble and now there is a third bubble: The Government debt bubble. There is an emerging theory which says that we are in for a grinding deflation. In this scenario, the U.S. Dollar is going to continue to gain value, commodities are going to continue to cheapen up, stock values are going to continue to drop. In this scenario, government bonds are going to continue to be in demand. Government bonds are not going to clear through cash-outs. Investors are going to continue to slam money into the bond market. This means a continuing shrinkage in GDP and reductions in government revenues. With greater and greater debt to pay, and less and less revenue, the Government debt bubble is going to burst... sooner or later. Something like this is on the verge of happening in California.
If our Government busts the Dollar Bill, it will be a defeat the dimensions of which we have never experienced. It will be a route from which no honor can be salvaged. I don't even want to imagine which hell and chaos this will unleash in the world markets.
1.We just finished the worst January in the 81 year history of the S&P 500. Down 8.5%
2.The Dow seems locked in a range between 8,000 and 9,000
3.Nourial Rabini, the only man who correctly called this crisis ahead of time, claims the stock market will finish 2009 down 20% lower than it is right now. That means that the DJIA will be at 6,400. Rabini says that we are headed for a sharp U shape recession.
4.Nourial says that the top 3 or 4 banks in the U.S. Meet the technical definitions of insolvency. This includes my beloved Wells Fargo. Rabini says that the only way to fix them is to nationalize these banks for 2 to 3 years, reorganize them, separate good and bad assets, then sell the stock back to the private market after the heavy lifting has been done. The only alternative is to permit zombie banks to wander around for 10 years, as they did in Japan during their crisis of the 1990s.
5.Banks are still massively optimistic that they will only have to write down $1.1 trillion in loans. Nourial says the figure is more like $3.6 trillion. U.S. Banks are in a massive state of denial right now, just as Japanese banks were during the 1990s. Left to their own devices, these banks will remain in a state of denial about their bad loans, just as the Japanese banks did. This is why nationalization is necessary.
6.Total consumer spending fell 3.5% just during the th Quarter. This includes a 22.4% drop in demand for durable goods, and a 7.1% drop in demand for durable goods. Inventories of unsold goods are piling up in every store.
7.We are in a world synchronized recession. All world economies are going into recession. Even countries in major denial, such as France and China are now admitting that they are going into recession.
8.Mother England is one quarter into a recession, and the Pound Sterling is taking the most devastating hits of any major currency on the free market. Even as the Euro slides down against the dollar, the Pound is falling faster. Many believe that the Pound will soon trade at 1-to-1 parity with the Euro, and both will be worth approximately $1.25-1.30 USD. Why? The Pound is basically an oil currency, and oil is in bad shape right now. This is a far cry from the days when the British Pound was worth $2.00-2.50 USD.
9.Japanese industrial output dropped 40% just in the 4th quarter of 2008. That is a larger contraction in just one quarter than Japan saw during the entire recession of the 1990s. I should mention that the Japanese recession of the 1990s was an utterly devastating recession.
10.U.S. GDP dropped 3.8% just during the 4th Quarter of 2008. The most conservative estimates say that U.S. GDP will shrink another 1.5% during fiscal 2009, regardless of the stimulus package.
11.This contraction is worse than it sounds. Population in the United States continues to expand through in-migration, low death rates, and moderate birth-rates. The economy needs to expand just to maintain consistent per-capita GDP. If GDP contracts, while population expands, per capta GDP decreases at a faster rate than simple contraction would suggest.
12.The problem of population GDP is much worse in China. China cannot abide even 5% growth without loss in Per Captia GDP. They need sustained 10% growth just to maintain a constant GDP. In China, 5% growth constitutes a hard landing.
13.Unemployment filings reached near records levels in the United States. In Michigan, unemployment is over 10% and rising.
14.New housing starts reached record lows. This portends, augers and bodes extremely bad things in the future. Give such low housing starts now, we will see more GDP shrinkage in the near future. The next quarter for sure.
15.House purchases reached record lows. Banks are not writing new mortgages. Because most people cannot buy a home without a new mortgage, existing home sales are going nowhere fast. The consequence is that prices continue to grind down in every major market.
16.HSBC, seemingly the one unshakable bank, is now entering into crisis.
17.This is now officially the worst economic decline since 1982. That was the worst decline since the Great Depression itself.
18.More and more experts believe that all institutions and families are in the process of de-leveraging. They are throwing all their resources into the process of paying down debt. They are not spending on any new consumption or production. They are paying off old consumption and production. Banks are also de-leveraging themselves.
19.More and more experts believe that this de-leveraging process is going to take several years to finish. Most do not believe a large stimulus package can convince individuals and institutions to terminate this process of de-leveraging and engage in new production and consumption.
20.The government is going to run about 3 trillion of new debt up this year. That is more than $50,000 per man woman and child in the United States.
21.The stim package the congress just past is nothing more than a wish list of Democratic Party pork. The smart grid is pretty much the only element of the package which can have a dazzling stimulus effect on the economy.
22.We have gone from an Internet bubble to a Real Estate bubble and now there is a third bubble: The Government debt bubble. There is an emerging theory which says that we are in for a grinding deflation. In this scenario, the U.S. Dollar is going to continue to gain value, commodities are going to continue to cheapen up, stock values are going to continue to drop. In this scenario, government bonds are going to continue to be in demand. Government bonds are not going to clear through cash-outs. Investors are going to continue to slam money into the bond market. This means a continuing shrinkage in GDP and reductions in government revenues. With greater and greater debt to pay, and less and less revenue, the Government debt bubble is going to burst... sooner or later. Something like this is on the verge of happening in California.
If our Government busts the Dollar Bill, it will be a defeat the dimensions of which we have never experienced. It will be a route from which no honor can be salvaged. I don't even want to imagine which hell and chaos this will unleash in the world markets.
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