Sunday, November 22, 2009
The shocking truth - the birthers are almost right ...
529 plans can be rebalanced twice in 2009
The Treasury Department and the IRS recently announced that for 2009 only, 529 plan account owners will be allowed to change Investment Options two times per year. This means that you can reallocate your investment to different investment options in your plan up to two times this year...
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Lipid guidelines: Sometimes the emperor really is starkers
Today, reading a JAMA editorial by Gaziano and Gaziano (brothers), I see that medicine has caught up with me. The risk calculator approach makes sense, though the models may have problems.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Sparta and the disturbing flexibility of human culture
Chrome OS - the Parental Controls
When to accept an Apple OS update
Snow Leopard
.... In my experience with Tiger & Leopard, a really usable version isn't available until around the .4 timeframe. My guess is the same will be true with SL. I play with a SL partition every now and then (whilst I test things like SoftRAID - great!), but I need a system that works.
SL ain't there yet, and once again, Steve Jobs and company thank us all very much for paying to be beta testers."Apple's point OS updates, like 10.5 to 10.6, are dramatic; even those like 10.6 that add few marketed features.
--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Google's failures - and recent improvements
The Quick
- Search and Scholar
- Android
- Google Reader
- Google Reader Comments and Shares
- Gmail
- Google Contacts
- Google Mobile Sync
- Chrome browser
- Chrome OS
- Picasa and Picasa Web Albums
- Calendar
- Maps
- Earth
- News
- Browser toolbars
- Translate
- Gmail Tasks (promoted)
- Custom search engines (promoted)
- YouTube (promoted)
- Mobile (promoted)
- Google Talk (promoted)
- Books (because they keep trying)
- Google Voice (iPhone web app frozen in time)
- Google Sites
- Google Apps
- Google Video Chat (demoted)
- Blogger (demoted)
- Shopping
- Google Checkout
- Google Base
- Orkut
- Desktop
- iGoogle
- Knol (all-but-dead)
- Google Notebook
- Google Page Creator
- Google Browser Sync
- Google Video
- Google Groups (demoted)
- Google Web Accelerator
- Google Name Verification (Knol)
- Google Gears
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Fans of Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck - Salon.com--
... every person in the last 2 years that I have introduced to the WN [White Nationalist] Philosophy have come largely from Alex Jones, Glen Beck and the Scriptures for America founder Pastor Pete Peters ... Baby steps are required for people like these, but the trio Beck, Jones, Peters are the baby food that feeds potential Nationalists… Glenn Beck is not far behind as his Mormon background indicates to me as most Mormons I have met are not friends of Jews like the Church was years ago...
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Twilight of the mail
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Friday, November 20, 2009
Health IT Standards - what I would do
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
How much is the gBook in the Window?
Q: Do you know what this Chrome OS netbooks will cost?Huh?
SP: You will hear that from our partners. They will be in the price range that people are used to for netbooks today. But it’s hard to predict a year from now. Also remember, they will be bigger.
What ChromeOS Means For Netbooks And Why Microsoft Needs To Be Scared
... ChromeOS may not be powerful, it may not play Far Cry and it may not run Microsoft Office but it’s a game changer. The underpowered laptops that limped along under Vista, XP, or 7 will fly under a new ChromeOS regime and thin-and-light laptops will fall below the vaunted $199 mark as the so-called “Microsoft Tax” – basically the small cost manufacturers pay for OEM licenses – disappears."..The XP tax, by the way, is less than $25.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A smart mind is a dangerous thing to waste
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)
Paul Graham on the price of the App Store
Apple's MistakeStart with allowing Google's products.
... I suppose Apple has a third misconception: that all the complaints about App Store approvals are not a serious problem. They must hear developers complaining. But partners and suppliers are always complaining. It would be a bad sign if they weren't; it would mean you were being too easy on them. Meanwhile the iPhone is selling better than ever. So why do they need to fix anything?
They get away with maltreating developers, in the short term, because they make such great hardware. I just bought a new 27" iMac a couple days ago. It's fabulous. The screen's too shiny, and the disk is surprisingly loud, but it's so beautiful that you can't make yourself care.
So I bought it, but I bought it, for the first time, with misgivings. I felt the way I'd feel buying something made in a country with a bad human rights record. That was new. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. Oh boy! They make such great stuff. This time it felt like a Faustian bargain. They make such great stuff, but they're such assholes. Do I really want to support this company?
Health insurance: we're defeated by a complexity attack
- The graphical portion of the simulation is probably wrong.
- Disregarding the graphical part, and parsing out rollover of the "HRA" part, and factoring in various combination of pre-tax and post-tax contributions and Flex guesses the plans are more similar than the appear -- but the numbers may be wrong
- The numbers in one resource are quite different from the simulation/web site numbers. They don't add up. On the other hand, one of the simulation numbers is probably wrong.
- Gordon's Notes: Employment benefit complexity: we are sheep
- Gordon's Notes: The hidden insurance problem: they can play the game better than we can
AT&T “A List” – the gift that’s not
AT&T markets a new “A List” feature…
Enjoy unlimited calls to and from the phone numbers in your A-List. Your A-List can include valid domestic phone numbers for any domestic service provider - wireless or landline.
I’ve added my corporate conference call number to my AT&T “A List”. The list already includes my home landline and, especially, the Google Voice number that connects me to Canada for free.
Once this is effective my corporate conference calls shouldn’t use any of my minutes (even toll-free calls use minutes).
Since Google Voice and Google Talk combined with the A List mean my whole family uses less than 300 minutes a month, we no longer need our family plan of 1,400. I’ve be fine with only 550 minutes.
Wow! I could drop my bill from $80 to $40. What a great feature …
Ahh. But you know there’s a hook, don’t you?
The A list feature is only available for plans with 1,400 minutes and up.
AT&T isn’t stupid. Crooked, sure. Stupid, no.