Alan Greenspan, you’re my hero!

March 3, 2005 by 5 Comments

Today, Alan Greenspan Touts Idea of a National Sales Tax (via AOL News). I’ve always said that the one person in the US Government who holds all the power isn’t the President, but the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan. He’s my hero and idol, and yet again, today he reaffirms my faith in his incredibleness.

So, the idea is to overhaul the tax system and move from an income-based tax system to a consumption-based tax system. This is absolutely fantastic! It encourages saving (read: no more Social Security problem if people can finance their own retirement) and places more of the tax burden on those who spend money (read: big business) — this is the only system that really makes sense. While I wholly enjoy the benefits of an income-based tax system where those with large incomes can find allowances by the tax code to reduce their net income and lower their taxes, it does favor the wealthy and places more burden on the lower-income constituency. This is fine if you’re on the “right” side of the equation, taking advantage of tax breaks offered — the current system is naturally biased in favor of wealthy land owners, who were the founders of this country. However, the lower-income working class get exploited by having the tax burden placed on them. Yet, according to the article, “Democratic critics contend such a consumption tax would hit low-income Americans the hardest.” It’s this same lack of understanding that the Democratic critics exhibit that make me glad they didn’t win the last election.

More evidence of Greenspans genius: “As in past remarks, Greenspan said he supports tax changes that promote capital investment, such as the reduction of taxes on dividends.” Gee, make it more attractive for people to invest their money in big businesses, who in turn spend money and paying consumption tax! How perfect is this? Since I’m not paying income tax, I can take even more of my earned income and invest it which will make me even more money as dividends and help big businesses grow, who in turn pay the taxes to fund the government! This proposed reformation to the tax code, it’s downright Edenian! (Okay, so I just created that word, since utopian carries the negative connotation of ideal but impractical schemes, the Eden in Edenian refers to the Garden of Eden from Biblical context, which is a true paradise and state of ultimate happiness.)

Of course, I won’t be able to totally stop being a consumer, so I’ll have to pay my fair share of consumption tax. But, if it’s collected like today’s sales tax at the time of purchase, rather than today’s income tax which causes much grief and anxiety once a year, it at least makes my life easier, and businesses are already set up to collect sales tax, so it really isn’t an added burden for them. Greenspan even recognizes this by saying, “‘A simpler tax code would reduce the considerable resources devoted to complying with current tax laws, and the freed up resources could be used for more productive purposes,’ Greenspan said.”

The one thing that wasn’t mentioned in the article was whether the consumption tax would be a tiered or scaled system, where certain goods are taxed differently than others. I think certain essential items such as food products — perhaps even a small subset of food products — should either be consumption tax free or have a reduced tax. Luxury items, on the other hand, might carry an increased consumption tax, such as jewelery, automobiles, etc. Regardless, a consumption tax-based system is orders of magnitude better than an income tax-based system, especially the one we have currently implemented in the US.

Now is the time for everyone to embrace change and be vocal about something that really matters. If you’re the type to write to your local government representative, do it, and tell them it’s important that they support a reformed tax code which is consumption tax-based. Hell, people who know me know my position on voting, but if this came up as a referendum on the next ballot, I might bend my personal rules and go stand in line with the dirty huddled masses and vote, just on this issue. That’s how much this tax reform means to me.

I just hope this tax reform happens … and within my lifetime …

Filed Under: Finance 5 Comments

quick, before Sony sends another Cease and Desist!

March 2, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Figured some of you may be Beatles fans and might appreciate this … I saw this come across BoingBoing today from Cory Doctorow:

Revolved: Beatles mashup album

CCC’s “Revolved” is an album of Beatles mashups with some real standout tracks, like Here, There and Everywhere (mashed with Claudine Longet’s version), That’s All Yellow (Yellow Submarine and Genesis’s That’s All), She Said Traffic (She Said She Said and Jimi Hendrix’s Crosstown Traffic), and the best track of all, Got to Get You in the Mood — Got to Get You Into My Life with a punchy Glenn Miller’s In the Mood.

Link

(Thanks, Oscar!)

Update: Dave provides this torrent of all tracks and cover art.

The whole “album” is freely available for download. Quick, go and download a copy before Sony sends them a Cease and Desist order like they did to Beatallica.

Filed Under: Believe it, or not Leave a Comment

Okay, I’m sold on PurifyPlus

March 2, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Christopher Bowman of Wayport in the last few weeks has helped identify two memory leaks, one [1] in nsoracle, and another [2] in nsopenssl. Here’s the commit mail of Jeremy Collins committing Christopher’s patch to nsoracle. I’m in the process of creating a reproducible test case to verify his patch to nsopenssl.

So, what’s his secret? He uses PurifyPlus and apparently it clued him in. I’ve been hesitant to use Purify because I’ve never used it before; I’ve always used a free tool called Valgrind. Since I’ve been hunting this leak in nsopenssl for the past several months with little luck, I’ve decided it’s time I really got familiar with Purify and add it to my bag of tricks. Thanks a lot, Christopher, for showing me the value of Purify.

This might explain why folks like Janine Sisk and Andrew Grumet are still seeing memory leaks, if they’re using both nsoracle and nsopenssl on their servers. Hopefully soon, we’ll find out if their leaks have gone away or not.

Filed Under: Geeking out Leave a Comment

AOLserver in FreeBSD Ports tree needs updating

March 2, 2005 by Leave a Comment

So, on my PubSub“aolserver” feed (RSS), it picked up this change on FreshPorts for the AOLserver Port. (Link to actual FreeBSD Ports page is here.)

I wonder how many people are actually running AOLserver on FreeBSD, and of those, who are using the package from the Ports tree. If anyone is, I hope they can urge someone to update the version from what’s currently there (3.4.2) to the latest version (4.0.10 as of right now).

Filed Under: Geeking out Leave a Comment

a birthday trip to the museum

February 27, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Yesterday, we went to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in New York for my older daughter Charlene’s birthday. (Actually, both of my daughters’ birthdays are in February so it was more a joint birthday celebration, but Charlene’s actual birthday was yesterday.)

Getting there wasn’t much of a problem and finding the place is easy; it’s located on West 83rd St. between Broadway and Amsterdam. The hard part was finding parking, which is no surprise in Manhattan, but what was frustrating was every parking garage in the two or three block radius of the museum all told us they were full, at 10:00 AM on a Saturday morning in Manhattan. Maybe I should have known better, but being that I rarely ever go into the City for this very reason, because I like to drive and I hate finding parking, but the whole experience of driving around for 30 minutes trying to find a parking garage was extremely annoying. In the end, we ended up parking on the street at a meter in front of the museum — limit of 2 hours on the meter and you get 10 minutes a quarter and I put in 90 minutes worth, or $2.25, which gave us until noon before we needed to decide if we want to refill the meter or not.

Now with the parking situation out of the way, we unbuckled the kids and made our way into the museum. Normally, for two adults and two kids, you’d be looking at paying $32 for admission. However, there are advantages of working for big companies who invest in the communities where they have offices — they donate to these kinds of places! And, the museum offers free admission to corporate members: All Corporate Member employees receive unlimited FREE admission for themselves and their immediate family. Just present your company Photo ID card at the Museum’s admission desk and enjoy 5 floors of exciting exhibitions and programs for FREE! So, I just brought along my badge, showed it at the door and we all got in for free, which was awesome. Having been spared extortion at the parking garages, we only ended up shelling out the $2.25 at the meter and a couple of dollars in the gift shop, this was an incredibly good deal.

As an aside, while driving around looking for a parking garage, we managed to catch a glimpse of one section of The Gates exhibit at Central Park. It’s probably my inability to appreciate what others consider “art”, but man, what’s the big f’ing deal about ugly saffron-colored curtains hung up throughout the park? Is there some inside joke hidden in the exhibit (like a caricature of Winston Churchill only visible from an arial view) or something? I just don’t get it …

We spent the next hour and a half oohing and aahing at the Dr. Seuss exhibit on the first floor, which the kids really enjoyed. After a while, we went up a floor to the Dora the Explorer exhibit which had the kids running around happily some more. Going up another level brought us to an exhibit of Romare Bearden’s art, which the kids didn’t really get into and frankly, neither could I. Thankfully, all was not lost — we rode the slow-boat-to-China elevator all the way down to the lower level where the Magic Schoolbus exhibit was set up, and the kids had more fun! Finally, it was time for lunch and the kids were hungry, so we herded them towards the (free!) coat-check to get our coats, and head back outside for food.

While driving around near the museum looking for parking (ugh!), we spied a few Indian restaurants, so we decided since the car was already parked that we’d just feed it another $2.25 worth of quarters and walk to lunch. Of course, the first place we walked to was closed (!) on a Saturday. WTF? Okay, this is New York City, there’s places to eat every fifty feet, so we’ll just walk some more. Great! Another Indian place … which was closed too! WTF? It seems that Annapurna was just not on our side that day, so after asking Charlie what she felt like eating — which was “a hamburger, with lots and lots of pickles!” — we decided to check out a place called Fred’s, which is your average “Americana” (you know, burgers, etc.) bar/restaurant. We had a nice meal, a little pricey but probably not for Manhattan, and afterwards got back in the car for our next stop on the day’s itinerary.

The next stop was the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn. Fortunately, they have their own parking which cost us $7 (extortion). This place didn’t have the same sweet deal for corporate members, so it ended up costing us $36 in admission here, on top of the parking. Frankly, after having experienced the aquarium, I have to say that it just wasn’t worth that much money. Wandering around in the cold outdoors looking at small bodies of murky water, and peering through thick glass in the muggy air of the indoor exhibits, it’s hard to get excited looking at animals in captivity while listening to the tree-hugging conservationist propaganda. We left, children and adults exhausted, ready to head on home.

All in all, it was an excellent way to spend the day and I highly recommend people with young children to take the family to see the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, especially if you work for one of their corporate members. I’d definitely go there with the kids again. I’d pass on the aquarium, though, it just wasn’t worth it.

Filed Under: Family Leave a Comment

Northern NJ MySQL Meetup on Monday, March 7 @ 7:00 PM

February 25, 2005 by Leave a Comment

I’m the organizer of several Meetup groups, one of them being the Northern NJ MySQL Meetup group. Up to now, all of the Meetup groups that I’m the organizer for have been idle, except very recently someone in the MySQL Meetup group contacted me and suggested that we hold an event at Panera Bread on Route 4 West in Paramus, across from the Bergen Mall.

As it stands, it looks like the turn-out might be three people, but I’m hoping between now and Monday, March 7th at 7:00 PM, that a few more people will RSVP and attend. If you’d be interested in meeting other folks who are interested in MySQL, then join the Meetup group and RSVP for the event! Or, if you know someone who might be interested, pass this information along to them. Thanks!

Filed Under: Geeking out Leave a Comment

WinXP’s “fsutil” secret

February 25, 2005 by 2 Comments

Okay, after being fed up with my Dell Latitude C840‘s sluggish performance, I decided to Google around for some WinXP tweaking tips and stumbled across one I’ve been thinking must exist for a long time. It’s tip #1, “Disable Last File Access Stamping”. Especially for a laptop, this makes a hell of a lot of sense. This, coupled with tip #2, “Turn Off Windows Indexing”, and tip #3, “Increase Your File System Cache”, should actually help extend the battery life of my laptop which is important. Hell, I don’t know why Dell doesn’t ship laptops with these tweaks straight from the factory!

Anyhow, the first tip uses the fsutil command to turn the disablelastaccess flag on. Normally, every time a file is accessed — even if it’s for reading only — WinXP will update some metadata about the file indicating when it was last accessed. This is different from the last modification time, which is important and you wouldn’t normally want to turn off. Turning off the update of last access time should be pretty harmless for a majority of users, and it’ll likely reduce the amount of disk writes that happen merely to update the metadata about files that you access. The one caveat from Microsoft’s documentation on disablelastaccess is important:

Note that using the disablelastaccess parameter can affect programs such as backup and Remote Storage that rely on this feature.

All told, after completing the three tweaks mentioned earlier, my system definitely feels much snappier, the hard drive light doesn’t blink nearly as much as it used to, and I haven’t experienced anything bad, yet. I’m happy and the system doesn’t feel as sluggish as it did — it would grind for a good few seconds starting up applications, which has measurably improved.

Filed Under: Geeking out 2 Comments

here’s a statistic you probably didn’t want to know

February 25, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Philip Greenspun blogs about this article about Ingvar Kamprad, the guy who founded IKEA. In the article, I ran across this sentence:

One in ten European children are conceived in an IKEA bed.

Even if this statement is wildly inaccurate, what would actually motivate someone to try and compute it and publish it?

The article also makes some reference his having some kind of “involvement with a pro-Nazi movement” — not sure what that exactly means, since lots of European people in the 1940s had some kind of “involvement” — the way history goes, it sounded pretty damn hard to avoid. But, why pass up an opportunity to make a drive-by smearing in the last paragraph of an otherwise worthless article, right?

Filed Under: Believe it, or not Leave a Comment

kids, just say “no” to drugs

February 23, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Karl Weckstrom wrote about his psoriasis, drugs, gaming and his son in his blog today that I left a comment on. I’m reposting the comment here in my own blog because I expressed some ideas that I’ve been mulling over in my own head for quite some time. Here’s what I posted:

When I was a kid growing up, a short attention span meant lack of discipline and self-control. I don’t think 20 years has changed that truth one bit, but it’s hard for pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs if they can’t change the perception about it, at least.

Drugs are not going to teach your son, or anyone else, responsibility, discipline and self-control. Strong role-models and solid mentoring might stand a better chance.

When I was growing up, I spent many hours entertaining myself with the most powerful computer that exists even today: my brain. I spent a lot of time learning rules and facts, being hyper-creative learning mythos and creating my own. I’m talking about sessions that could run 12-16 hours — now that’s an attention span. Yes, I’m talking about playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Kids today don’t exercise their brains like we did growing up. They play these virtualized computer games where the imagination is left in meatspace and you only interact with what you can see on screen that some programmer or product manager thought would make the game more compelling. This is way sad, IMHO.

Daniel Goleman writes in his book Emotional Intelligence about impulse control in what he calls “the marshmallow test”:

Just imagine you’re four years old, and someone makes the following proposal: If you’ll wait until after he runs an errand, you can have two marshmallows for a treat. If you can’t wait until then, you can have only one–but you can have it right now. It is a challenge sure to try the soul of any four-year-old, a microcosm of the eternal battle between impulse and restraint, id and ego, desire and self-control, gratification and delay. Which of these choices a child makes is a telling test; it offers a quick reading not just of character, but of the trajectory that child will probably take through life. (pp. 80-81)

Goleman goes on to say that there was a study done in the 1960s testing just this, tracking down the four-year-olds as they graduated from high school. The study showed that the kids who had exhibited the necessary impulse control even at four-years-old showed a “dramatic” difference. “Those who had resisted temptation at four were now, as adolescents, more socially competent: personally effective, self-assertive, and better able to cope with the frustrations of life.”

The book is full of valuable information like this. If you’ve got some time to read, you might want to pick it up — as an adult, I’m learning a lot of things reading the book, too.

The net is that drugs only help eliminate truly physiological barriers to self-improvement, but without the necessary foundation of structure, discipline and fostering of self-control, drugs alone will not bring about behavioral change.

Filed Under: Piss and moan (Rants) Leave a Comment

My first public presentation on AOLserver!

February 23, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Tonight, I’ll be giving my first public presentation on AOLserver to the members of $GROUPNAME down in New Brunswick, NJ at 7:30pm.

According to their website, “$GROUPNAME is an organization for UNIX system administrators in New Jersey formed to facilitate information exchange pertaining to the field of Unix system administration. $GROUPNAME is not affiliated with a particular hardware or software vendor or company.” The meetings are held at the CoRE building (driving directions) on the Rutgers University New Brunswick campus.

As the $GROUPNAME website says, I’ll be giving an introduction to AOLserver talk. I won’t be revealing the secrets of the universe about AOLserver, but it should serve as an opportunity for people who are new to AOLserver to learn a bit about its history, how it came to be, what some folks are doing with it today and otherwise familiarize themselves a bit with what AOLserver is. I’m hoping it might get some new people interested in AOLserver who otherwise would never have looked into it. I’m very excited about this!

If you’re in the New Jersey or surrounding area and belong to or organize a club or user group or if your company would like to invite me to talk about AOLserver, please let me know. I’d be more than happy to discuss the opportunity and work out an arrangement, if possible.

Filed Under: Geeking out Leave a Comment
« Previous Page
Next Page »