Krugman on the challenge of Financial Regulation

A bit more on too big to fail and related - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

So my view is that you can’t run a financial system without a fairly active regulatory role; autopilot just won’t do the trick. Yes, this leaves us vulnerable to the problem of really bad regulators. But there’s only so much you can do; against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Krugman on Froomkin

The Froomkin firing - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

Thus we still live in an era in which you have to have been wrong to be respectable. You’re not considered serious about national security unless you were for invading Iraq; you’re not considered a serious political analyst unless you spent the last 3 years of the Bush administration predicting a Republican comeback; you’re not considered a serious economic analyst unless you dismissed the idea that the Bush Boom, such as it was, rested on a housing bubble.

That’s why the firing of Dan Froomkin now makes a perverse sort of sense. As long as the right was in power, he was in effect the Post’s designated moonbat, someone who attracted readers but didn’t threaten the self-esteem of the self-perceived serious people at the paper. But now he looks like someone who was right when the serious people were wrong — and that means he has to go.

This is why I don't write for a living. Paul Krugman said in two paragraphs what I have been trying to get straight in my mind for 2 days now.

Bad Web Page Design

FARO Laser Scanner Photon 120 & 20 - Features

FARO Laser Scanner Photon Applications

I was going to write something about how cool I thought this toy was but instead I want to make note of what a horrifying bad web site design they have.

For a company selling something like this they should really pay better attention to detail.

RIAA wins one

RIAA Copyright Fine Totals $1.92 Million

One music fan out there could be paying $80,000 for a Green Day track—whether he or she likes it or not.

The Recording Industry Association of America won a major victory June 18 in Minnesota federal court, which ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset was guilty of copyright violation for downloading 24 songs using the Kazaa file-sharing network.

The court fined Thomas-Rasset $1.92 million, which translates into $80,000 per song. It represents the first time a filing-sharing case has successfully gone to trial. The downloaded artists in question included Green Day and Sheryl Crow.

$80,000 a song? how the hell did they come up with that number. I am going to have to google around to find out where that number came from.

mirasol displays

How MEMS-based IMOD Technology Works

The Interferometric Modulator (IMOD) element is a simple MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) device that is composed of two conductive plates. One is a thin film stack on a glass substrate, the other is a reflective membrane suspended over the substrate. There is a gap between the two that is filled with air. The IMOD element has two stable states. When no voltage is applied, the plates are separated, and light hitting the substrate is reflected as shown above. When a small voltage is applied, the plates are pulled together by electrostatic attraction and the light is absorbed, turning the element black. This is the fundamental building block from which Qualcomm® mirasol displays are made.

Just because I am an incredible geek, I think this is fascinating.

The Cranberries - Zombie - Live!

One of my all time favorite songs

This will not end well