Duff

I think that the root of this issue is the stupid Google policy of not distinguishing any variation of your address if a '.' character is in there -- until someone registers it. People get confused and try to login.

So if your address is jsmith@gmail.com, you can send email to (or login with) j.smith@gmail.com or jsmit.h@gmail.com.... at least until someone registers jsmit.h@gmail.com!

I was an early beta GMail user have a reasonably common first initial last name GMail address. I probably get 3-5 password reset attempts per month. I also routinely received a variety of interesting misdirected emails. Everything from someone's VPN credentials, a US military EEOC complaint, invitations to a stag party in Ireland, a video of a paratransit bus flipping over (intended to be sent to an investigator), to girls modelling underwear for boyfriends.

I'd interpret this as someone with high income/low net worth.

Think someone from a random middle class background that got good grades an above average public college. Basically, if he fucks up, he's bankrupt.

The WASPy types with Harvard MBA's benefit from their social safety net.

We're not talking about retail investors getting fleeced by big traders. We're talking about $100M positions held by professional traders who were told to go pound sand by the exchange.

The questionable nature of many aspects of Facebook's business are not new -- an IPO investment in Facebook is by it's nature a speculative investment in the future. So was Netscape, the company that started the dotcom boom.

But unlike the good old days in the 90's, today we find ourselves in a new world where for-profit exchanges who handle billions of trades a day suddenly cannot handle an IPO. You have institutional investors stuck with seemingly illiquid positions in Facebook panicking to close positions poisoning the well and creating an atmosphere of ambiguity and fear.

You can't roll out the "investment is a long term endeavor" bunkum when the entire business model of NASDAQ-OMX and NYSE-EuroNext is now to operate a liquid market. The NASDAQ utterly and completely failed to operate the market correctly, and traders who expect to be able to trade quickly were hosed. Facebook, the traders, and the retail investor all suffered because of NASDAQ's incompetence.

I had a similar experience, except I put my order in at 11 and was able to successfully cancel it at 12:30 as the order queue was processed. It took 20 minutes to process the cancellation, which Ameritrade can typcially do in less than a second.

Go to Home Depot. You can now make PayPal mobile payments.

You're going to use your bank for payments because you already have low-cost ways to make payments already (ie. checks, debit and credit cards).

But... there are millions of people in the US who operate outside of the banking system. They are mostly poor or working off the books in some form. For these folks, the idea of buying a $100 topoff card at a gas station to have access to mobile payments makes sense. How do I know this? Becuase the same folks are paying $5 for a disposable debit card today.

How many coins were created daily 3 years ago?

Drivers always have the authority to eject passengers. If they get resistance, they call the cops.

I'm not sure when they would clean a bus though. I'd rather have my bus driver drive than stop to pick up rubbish.

User count is only one dimension of the value that Facebook has. The user connections are arguably the more important dimension.

As Facebook figures out more ways to be a more pervasive force in people's lives, they'll have the ability to multiply the revenue they receive on a per-user basis.

Perhaps you are stuck in some weird loop due to attending school in different states, or have attended really lousy schools.

When i was in elementary school in NYC, we learned about ancient civilizations and NYC history in 4th grade -- the ancient part was kicked off with a field trip to the Egyptian artifacts at the Met.

In high school in upstate ny, we studied global history and current events from grade 9 through 11. The Chinese portion sucked -- we basically covered the opium wars though the cultural revolution, but we studied many aspects of global history.

NASDAQ allows any D-list dignitary type to "ring the bell". It's a total sham. See: http://www.nasdaq.com/marketsite/bell-event.html

I have to respect Zuckerberg for not wasting the flight to NYC to do this sort of thing.

Not really. Microsoft wants to make significant money on it's investment in developing operating system software. Samsung wants to make money on it's manufacturing operations.

You have an extra layer of overhead with a Microsoft device vs. an iPad. Plus, because Samsung, HTC, etc are all making the devices, they cannot come close to the economies of scale that Apple does.

Apple's model is very clever. As a niche player until recently, they had to be more clever to survive. Look at their product lines -- they all share lots of components.

EBay horror stories are usually transactional based on buyer/seller conflict. (including fraud) In those cases, Paypal is just the party stuck in the middle.

On the positive side, at least there is a chance of an amicable resolution with PayPal. 10 years ago, a sketchy buyer would be sending you a fake money order.

Sen. Schumer is in many ways the senatorial equivalent of a personal injury lawyer who advertises on the back of a bus.

He's a good politician, but a master self-promter. He focuses on hot issues to get cheap name recognition like the iPhone 4 "antennagate" issue, airport baggage fees, caffinated malt liquor and similar nonsense.

The tone of the article implies that TED is somehow suppressing the dissemination of this speech because it's content is somehow too controversial to handle.

I declare it inane because the speech described by the article isn't very controversial at all.

I've seen a few mentions about this fairly inane speech -- smells like PR/astroturfing to me.

Frankly, whenever I hear the phrase "job creation" I tune out immediately, because I know that nothing intelligent will follow that phrase ever.

People hire people to do things when they have work to do. You "create jobs" by increasing economic activity. The problem is, business these days is all about consolidation and labor arbitrage.

I think you hit it on the head. I'd break down the 75% a little further in my case:

- 25% Poisonous people in key architectural/infrastructure positions who actively make it as difficult as possible to communicate.

- 15% "Mea culpa". I fail to clarify or make an assumption due to busyness, lazyness or missing something.

- 25% Folks who do not take initiative to engage in conversations at the appropriate time. These folks typically pop up with 11th hour critical path problems.

- 35% General nonsense: People incapable of writing english, etc.

Good writers move up the organizational and/or salary ladder.

Good technicians or engineers who cannot communicate end up making the guy who translates whatever they are doing to the customer or management look good.

Roundabouts are great in suburban or low-volume urban environments where speeds are low.

But they can be dangerous for pedestrians in areas where you have a high density of traffic and pedestrians.

The problem is, transit planners tend to think of terms of making things flow well for suburban commuters going to work in the city. They tend to forget about the folks who live in the city.

Interesting POV -- you can get away without traffic lights in the country or in places where other forms of transit (ie. public transit & walking) are more prevalent than cars. You can do so in the city as well, by installing expensive street features that have huge downsides in snowy climates. But, many of the arguments used by the advocate in the story are bunk.

An example re: Pedestrian accidents: "People think traffic lights are a guarantee of safety but the latest audit from Westminster City Council, for example, has shown that 44% of personal injury accidents occurred at traffic lights."

Sure. Pedestrians generally cross the street at the crosswalks, which are placed next to traffic control devices. And many of those accidents are at intersections that lack directional control -- the driver doesn't pay attention, turns right and hits someone crossing the street.

The guy is right about a few things -- the regime of controlling traffic and handling peak demand is very inefficient. That's a feature of urban sprawl.

The problem with cars is that you get the "network effect" with respect to road capacity. Unlike computer networks, expanding capacity is alot harder than pulling a cable. Plus, if you have a two lane freeway or bridge, and you expand it to three lanes, traffic patterns will adjust and congest that road again. The New York City metropolitan area is a great example of this -- the driving suburbs of NYC extend nearly 75 miles north of the city at this point. People on Long Island literally commute over 2 hours to get to Manhattan via car and train.

Basically, the guy is a genius. Read his Wikipedia bio.

Praise of the man:

"The one talent of David's that stands out is his ability to lay out a course of action that would take into account any sort of complicated facts and develop a far-reaching scenario. It's a chess player's sense: If I do this, the following 15 things are going to happen, and if step 11 goes so, I'll do this rather than that. It's a fantastic game-playing ability." Thomas D. Barr, quoted in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, June 1, 1986

"The Boies memory is one of the first things cited when people discuss his strengths. What's most impressive about that gift -- focused as it may be by the intensified concentration that his dyslexia demands -- is Boies' uncanny ability to recall a key fact, legal citation or piece of contradictory testimony at moments of the most intense pressure." Time Magazine, "Get me Boies!" by Daniel Okrent, December 25, 2000

There's probably some corruption in there as well. Management doesn't give a crap about the work function, and only one vendor is qualified to respond to the maintenance RFP. So some old-timer is probably making a mint "maintaining" the system.

Google is great at targeting with search based ads, but the site-based ads are awful. Google thinks I'm really into gold coins based on me clicking on some story on reddit several months ago.

It's your ethical duty to click!

Seriously though, my local weekly newspaper knows nothing about my habits, but offers ads 10x more relevant than Google, who has been tracking me for a decade.

I don't really see the big deal about suits. I look good in them, and would wear them more but for the cost of acquiring and maintaining them.

Many folks, particularly in IT, dress like muppets. We have one guy who routinely wears track suits in the office, for example. It doesn't give off a good impression.

I never tried Celebrex, as I had surgery in early 2004 that eliminated the need for any medication.

I'm not a pharmacist, but the story regarding this drug is more nuanced. Doctors prescribed the two drugs differently, as folks with other drug sensitivities were not good celebrex candidates, and the risk factors associated with vioxx were not known. Vioxx was the more heavily marketed, "safe" choice.

People respect symbols of authority and perceive you as a bigshot.

I wear a suit for work when I meet with the various luminaries that I need to deal with (maybe 2-3 times a month). You get more respect. Waitresses are more attentive, and people listen to you more.

I don't agree with the conclusions in this article at all. Also consider that Celebrex (same drug family) is still on the market. If these drugs were truly a grim reaper, I don't think Celebrex would still be around.

If anything, this should be seen as a reason to not allow the pervasive advertising of prescription drugs and aggressive peddling of drug swag - Vioxx was peddled in the most ostentatious way -- my doctor STILL has Vioxx clipboards and other junk in his office. I'm sure that this constant brand awareness and patient nagging helped drive sales (ie. encourage potentially unnecessary or inappropriate scripts).

The other thing to consider is quality of life. I began suffering by a sudden onset of what was eventually diagnosed as a degenerated disc in my back -- at age 25. I went through some intensive physical therapy to try to avoid surgery (ultimately an unsuccessful effort), and Vioxx was the only thing that allowed me to function without narcotic pain relief (which I refused to take for more than a week at a time). It was that good at reducing chronic inflammation.

If I were a 75 year old man with severe, debilitating arthritis having difficulty walking or living a decent life, I'd happily volunteer to take a drug like Vioxx to improve the quality of my remaining time here, even knowing that I was at a higher risk of a heart attack.

A banker would never wear a hoodie to work because that just isn't something that you do. Banking by its nature is a profession based on who you know, where you went to school, and conforming to whatever social norms rule the day. In 1910, that meant you wore a topcoat and hat with a pocketwatch; 1960, it meant a double breasted suit and fedora; in 2012, a fancy single breasted suit with tie.

Wearing casual clothing to these sorts of meetings sends a clear signal -- "Fuck you, I'm the guy with the power here."

Zuckerberg can do this because in reality, what's the downside to him? If Facebook crashes and burns completely, he'll be a billionaire before age 30 who "lost it all" with just a couple hundred million in the bank.

The hot trend for visionary types to do today is wax on about how kids these days only text and use Facebook between Netflix show. Everything else is just too difficult, supposedly.

Maybe "finance" was the wrong word.

Whatever you want to call the worship of ratios like "return on equity" without an understanding of the business, that practice is dumb and destroys companies that actually create value.

Dell is a great example -- be a computer manufacturer that owns almost no assets related to the business. Their Taiwanese suppliers like Asus are laughing their way to the bank as the Dell management patted themselves on the back for improving some ratios.